‘Don’t torture yourself, Natalia …’
‘I’ll tell father,’ she cried, raising her hands to protect herself.
‘You’re an idiot! What are you shouting for?’
‘Go away, Mitka! I’ll go at once and tell father. What eyes you make at me! It’s a wonder the earth doesn’t open and swallow you up. Don’t come near me, Mitka,’ she pleaded.
‘I won’t now, but I’ll come at night. By God, I’ll come!’ he replied.
Trembling, Natalia left the yard. That evening she made her bed on the chest, and took her younger sister to sleep with her. All night she tossed and turned, her burning eyes seeking to pierce the darkness, her ears alert to the slightest sound, ready to scream the house down. But the silence was broken only by the snores of Grishaka sleeping in the next room, and an occasional grunt from her sister.
Mitka had not got over the shame of his recent attempt at marriage, and he went about morose and ill-tempered. He went out every evening, and rarely arrived home again before dawn. He formed associations with women of undesirable reputation in the village, and went to Stepan Astakhov’s to play cards for stakes. His father watched his behaviour, but said nothing.
Just before Easter, Natalia met Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch close to Mokhov’s shop. He called to her:
‘Wait a moment!’
She halted. Her heart yearned as she saw her father-in-law’s face, mournfully reminding her of Gregor.
‘Why don’t you come and see us sometimes?’ the old man asked her diffidently, avoiding her eyes as though he himself had been guilty of some offence against her. ‘The wife is longing to see you … Well, perhaps you will come, some day?’
Natalia recovered from her embarrassment. ‘Thank you …’ she said, and after a moment’s hesitation (she wanted to say ‘father’) she added: ‘Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch. I’ve been very busy at home.’
‘Our Grishka … ah!’ the old man shook his head bitterly. ‘He’s tricked us, the scoundrel. How well we’d have got on together.’
‘Oh, well, father,’ Natalia spoke in a high-pitched, grating voice. ‘Clearly it wasn’t to be.’
Pantaleimon fiddled about embarrassedly as he saw Natalia’s eyes fill with tears. Her lips were pressed together to restrain her desire to weep.
‘Good-bye, my dear,’ he said. ‘Don’t grieve over him, the son of a swine! He’s not worth the nail on your little finger. Maybe he’ll come back. I’m thinking of going to see him, but it’s difficult.’
Natalia walked away with her head sunk on her breast. Pantaleimon stood dancing from foot to foot as though about to break into a run. As she turned the corner Natalia glanced back; the old man was limping across the square, leaning heavily on his stick.
As spring approached the meetings in Stockman’s workshop were held less frequently. The villagers were preparing for the field work, and only Ivan Alexievitch the engine-man and Valet came from the mill, bringing David with them. On Maundy Thursday they gathered at the workshop in the early evening. Stockman was sitting at his bench, cleaning a silver ring made from a fifty-kopek piece. A broad bar of rays from the setting sun streamed through the window. The engine-man picked up a pair of pincers and turned them over in his hand:
‘I had to go to the master the other day to ask about a piston,’ he remarked. ‘It will have to be taken to Millerovo, we can’t mend it here. There’s a crack in it as long as this.’ Ivan Alexievitch measured the length on his little finger.
‘There’s a works at Millerovo, isn’t there?’ Stockman asked, scattering a fine silver rain as he filed the coin.
‘A steel foundry. I had to spend some days there last year,’ Ivan replied.
‘Many workers?’
‘Some five hundred.’
‘And what are they like?’ The words came deliberately from Stockman.
‘They’re well off. They’re none of your proletariat, they’re muck.’
‘Why is that?’ Valet asked.
‘Because they’re too well off. Each has his own little house, his wife, and every comfort. And a good half of them are Baptists into the bargain. The master himself is their preacher, and they suck one another’s noses, and the dirt on them is so thick you couldn’t scrape it off with a rake. Well, and I went to Sergei Platonovitch,’ Ivan Alexievitch continued his story, ‘and he had company with him, so he told me to wait outside. I sat down and waited and heard them talking through the door. Mokhov was saying there was going to be a war with the Germans very soon; he had read it in a book. But someone else said there couldn’t be a war between Germany and Russia, because Germany needed our grain. Then I heard a third voice: I found out afterwards it was that of the officer, old Listnitsky’s son. “There will be a war,” he said, “between Germany and France, over vineyards, but it is nothing to do with us.” What do you think, Osip Davidovitch?’ Ivan asked, turning to Stockman.
‘I’m no good at prophecies,’ Stockman replied, staring fixedly at the ring in his hand.
‘Once they do start we’ll have to go. Like it or not, they’ll drag us there by the hair,’ Valet declared.
‘It’s like this, boys,’ Stockman said, gently taking the pincers out of the engine-man’s hands. He spoke seriously, evidently intending to explain the matter thoroughly. Valet sat himself comfortably on the bench, and David’s lips shaped into an ‘O’, revealing his strong teeth.
In definite, well-chosen words Stockman outlined the struggle of the capitalist states for markets and colonies. When he had finished Ivan Alexievitch asked anxiously:
‘Yes, but where do we come in?’
‘Your heads will ache for the drunken orgies of others,’ Stockman smiled.
‘Don’t talk like a child,’ Valet said venomously. ‘You know the saying: “The master tugs at the lead, but the dog shakes its head.”’
‘And what was Listnitsky visiting Mokhov for?’ David changed the subject.
‘He was on his way to the station. Yes, and here’s some more news. When I went out of the house I saw … who do you think? Gregor Melekhov! He was standing outside with a whip in his hand.’
‘He’s Listnitsky’s coachman,’ David explained.
It was getting late, and Ivan Alexievitch initiated a general movement to depart. Stockman accompanied his guests to the gate, then locked up the workshop and went into the hut.
Gregor returned on Palm Sunday from his journey with Eugene to the station. He found the thaw had eaten away the snow; the road had broken up within a couple of days.
At an Ukrainian village some twenty miles back from the station he all but lost his horses as he was crossing a stream. He arrived at the village early in the evening. During the previous night the ice of the rivulet had broken and floated away, and the stream was swollen and foaming with muddy brown water. The tavern at which he had stopped to feed the horses on the way out lay on the farther side of the stream. The water might easily rise still higher during the night, and Gregor decided to cross.
He drove to the point where he had crossed over the ice on the outward journey, and found the stream had overflowed its banks. A piece of fencing and half a cartwheel were eddying in the middle. There were fresh traces of sledge runners on the bare sand at the edge. He halted the horses and jumped down to look at the marks more closely. At the water’s edge the tracks turned a little to the left and disappeared into the stream. He measured the distance to the other side with his eyes: fifty yards at the most. He went to the horses to see that the harness was in good order. At that moment an aged Ukrainian came towards him from the nearest hut.
‘Is there a good crossing here?’ Gregor asked him, waving his reins at the seething brown flood.
‘People crossed there this morning.’
‘Is it deep?’
‘No. It might flow into the sleigh.’
Gregor gathered up the reins, and holding his knout ready, urged on the horses with a curt, imperative command. They moved unwillingly, snorting and snuffing at the
water. Gregor cracked his whip and stood up on the seat.
The bay on the left shook its head and suddenly pulled on the traces. Gregor glanced down at his feet; the water was swirling over the front of the sleigh. At first the horses were wading up to their knees, but suddenly the stream rose to their breasts. Gregor tried to turn them back, but they refused to answer the rein and began to swim. The tail of the sleigh was swung round by the current, and the horses’ heads were forced upstream. The water flowed in waves over their backs, the sleigh rocked and pulled them back strongly.
‘Hey! Hey! to the right!’ the Ukrainian shouted, running along the bank and waving his three-cornered cap in his hands.
Savagely raging, Gregor incessantly hallooed and urged on the horses. The water foamed in eddies behind the dragging sleigh. The runners struck against a jutting pile, the remains of the bridge which had been swept away overnight, and the sleigh turned over with extraordinary ease. With a groan Gregor plunged in head first, but he did not lose his grip of the reins. He was dragged by the edges of his sheepskin, by his feet, drawn with gentle insistence, rocking and turning over and over at the side of the sleigh. He succeeded in clutching a runner, dropped the reins, and hauled himself along hand over hand, making his way to the swinging-trees. He was about to seize the iron-shod end of the swinging-tree when one horse, in its struggle against the current, lashed out with its hind leg and struck him on the knee. Choking, Gregor threw out his hands and caught at the traces. His body fierily tingling with the cold, he managed to reach the horse’s head, and the animal fixed the maddened, mortally terrified gaze of its bloodshot eyes right into his dilated pupils.
Again and again he grasped at the slippery leather reins, but they eluded his fingers. Somehow he managed at last to seize them. Abruptly his legs scraped along ground. Dragging himself to the edge of the water, he stumbled forward and fell in the foaming shallows, knocked off his feet by the horses’ breasts.
Trampling over him, the horses tugged the sleigh violently out of the water and halted a few paces away, exhausted, shuddering and steaming. Unconscious of any pain, Gregor jumped to his feet; the cold enveloped him as though in unbearably hot dough. He was trembling even more than the horses, feeling that he was as weak on his legs as an unweaned infant. He gathered his wits, and turning the sleigh on to its runners, drove the horses off at a gallop to get them warm. He flew into the street of the village as though attacking an enemy, and turned into the first open gate without slackening his pace.
Fortunately he had chanced upon a hospitable Ukrainian, who sent his son to attend to the horses and himself helped Gregor to undress. In a tone permitting of no question he ordered his wife to light the stove. Until his own clothes were dry Gregor stretched himself out on top of the stove in his host’s trousers. After a supper of cabbage soup he went to sleep.
He set off again long before dawn came. A good eighty-five miles of travel lay before him, and every minute was precious. The untracked confusion of the flooded spring steppe was at hand; every little ravine or gully was become a roaring torrent of snow-water.
The black, bare road exhausted the horses. Over the hard road of the early morning frost he reached a village lying three miles off his route, and stopped at a crossroads. The horses were smoking with sweat; behind him lay the gleaming track of the sleigh runners in the ground. He abandoned the sleigh, and set off again, riding one horse bare-back and leading the other by the reins. He arrived at Yagodnoe in the morning of Palm Sunday.
Old Listnitsky listened attentively to his story of the journey, and went to look at the horses. Sashka was leading them up and down the yard, angrily eyeing their sunken flanks.
‘How are they?’ the master asked. ‘They haven’t been over-driven, have they?’
‘No. The bay has a sore on the chest where the collar has rubbed, but it’s nothing.’
‘Go and get some rest.’ Listnitsky indicated Gregor with his hand. Gregor went to his room. But he had only one night’s rest. The next morning Benyamin came and called to him:
‘Gregor, the master wants you. At once.’
The general was shuffling about the hall in felt slippers. Only after Gregor had coughed twice did he look up.
‘Ah, yes! Go and saddle the stallion and my horse. Tell Lukeria not to feed the dogs. They’re going hunting.’
Gregor turned to leave the room. His master stopped him with a shout:
‘D’you hear? And you’re going with me.’
Gregor led the saddled horses to the palisade, and whistled the dogs. Listnitsky came out, attired in a jerkin of blue cloth and girdled with an ornamental leather belt. A nickel cork-lined flask was slung at his back, the whip hanging from his arm trailed behind him like a snake.
As he held the rein for his master to mount Gregor was astonished at the ease with which old Listnitsky hoisted his bony body into the saddle. ‘Keep close behind me,’ the general curtly ordered, as he gathered the reins in his gloved hand.
Gregor rode the stallion. It was not shod on the hind hoofs, and as it trod on the shards of ice it slipped and sat on its hind quarters. It called for strong use of the bridle, for it arched its short neck and glanced askance at its rider, trying to bite his knees. When they reached the top of the hill from Yagodnoe, Listnitsky put his horse into a fast trot. The chain of hounds followed Gregor; one black old bitch ran with her muzzle touching the end of the stallion’s tail. The horse tried to reach her by falling back on its hind quarters, but the bitch dropped behind, giving Gregor a yearning, grandmotherly glance.
They reached their objective, the Olshansky ravine, in half an hour. Listnitsky rode through the undergrowth along the brow of the ravine. Gregor dropped down into the valley, cautiously avoiding the numerous holes. From time to time he looked up, and through the steely-blue of a straggling and naked alder grove he saw Listnitsky’s clearly defined figure standing in the stirrups. Behind him the hounds were running in a bunch along the undulating ridge. Pulling off his glove, Gregor fumbled in his pocket for some cigarette paper, thinking to have a smoke.
‘After him!’ a shout came like a pistol shot from the other side of the ridge.
Gregor raised his head, and saw Listnitsky galloping along with upraised whip.
‘After him!’
Crossing the rushy and reedy bottom of the ravine, slipping along with body close to the ground, a shaggy, dirty brown wolf was running swiftly. Leaping the bed of the stream, he stopped, and turning quickly, caught sight of the dogs. They were coming after him stretched in horse-shoe formation, to cut him off from the wood at the end of the ravine.
With a springy stride the wolf made for the wood. The old bitch came almost straight towards him, another hound behind her. The wolf hesitated for a moment, and as Gregor rode up out of the ravine he lost sight of him. When next he had a good view from a hillock the wolf was far away in the steppe, making for a neighbouring ravine. Gregor could see the hounds running through the undergrowth behind it, and old Listnitsky riding slightly to the side, plying his horse with the butt of his whip. As the wolf reached the ravine the hounds were beginning to overtake him, and one was almost on top of the hunted animal.
Gregor put his horse into a gallop, vainly trying to see what was happening ahead of him. His eyes were streaming with tears, and his ears were deafened by the whistling wind. He was suddenly possessed by the excitement of the hunt. Bending over his horse’s neck, he flew along like the wind. When he reached the ravine neither wolf nor dogs were to be seen. A moment or two later Listnitsky overtook him. Reining in his horse sharply he shouted:
‘Which way did they go?’
‘Into the ravine, I think.’
‘You overtake them from the left. After them!’ The old man dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode off to the right. Gregor dropped into a hollow, and with whip and shout rode his horse hard for a good mile. The damp, sticky earth flew up under the hoofs, striking him on the face. The long ravine bent to the right and branche
d into three. Gregor crossed the first fork, and caught sight of the dark chain of hounds chasing the wolf across the steppe. The animal had been headed off from the heart of the ravine, which was densely overgrown with oaks and alders, and was now making for a dry, brush and thistle-covered valley.
Rising in his stirrups, and wiping the tears from his eyes with his sleeve, Gregor watched them. Glancing momentarily to the left, he realized that he was in the steppe close to his native village. Near by lay the irregular square of land which he and Natalia had ploughed in the autumn. He deliberately guided the stallion across the patch, and during the few moments in which the animal was sliding and stumbling over the clods the zest for the hunt died to ashes within him. He now calmly urged on the heavily sweating horse, and glancing round to see whether Listnistky was looking, dropped into an easy trot.
Some distance away he could see the empty camping quarters of ploughers; a little farther off three pairs of bullocks were dragging a plough across the fresh, velvety soil.
‘From the village, surely? Whose land is that? That’s not Anikushka, is it?’ Gregor screwed up his eyes as he recognized the man following the plough.
He saw two cossacks drop the plough and run to head off the wolf from the near-by ravine. One, in a peaked, red-banded cap, chin-strap under his chin, was waving an iron bar. Suddenly the wolf squatted down in a deep furrow. The foremost hound flew right over him and fell with its forelegs tucked beneath it; the old bitch following tried to stop, her hind quarters scraping along the cloddy, ploughed ground; but unable to halt in time, she tumbled against the wolf. The hunted animal shook his head violently, and the bitch ricochetted off him. Now the mass of hounds fastened on the wolf, and they all dragged for some yards over the ploughed land. Gregor was off his horse half a minute before his master. He fell to his knees, his hand on his hunting knife.
‘There! In the throat!’ the cossack with the iron bar cried in a voice which Gregor knew well. Panting heavily, he ran up and lay down at Gregor’s side, and dragging away the hound which had fastened on the hunted animal’s belly, tied the wolf’s forelegs with a cord. Gregor felt under the animal’s shaggy fur for its windpipe, and drew the knife across it.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 17