‘Piotra, I’m dead in spirit. I’m like a man all but killed. As though I’d been between millstones; they’ve crushed me and spat me out.’ His voice was complainingly highpitched, and the furrows (only now, with a feeling of anxiety, did Piotra notice them) darkened and streamed across his forehead.
‘Why, what’s the matter?’ Piotra asked as he pulled off his shirt, revealing his bare white body with the cleancut line of sunburn around the neck.
‘It’s like this,’ Gregor said hurriedly, and his voice grew strong in its bitterness. ‘They’ve set us fighting one another, but they don’t come themselves. The people are become worse than wolves. Evil all around you. I think to myself that if I was to bite a man he’d go mad.’
‘Have you had to … kill anyone?’
‘Yes,’ Gregor almost shouted, screwing up his shirt and throwing it underfoot. Then he sat clutching with his fingers at his throat as though choking with a stranded word, and gazed aside.
‘Tell me!’ Piotra ordered, avoiding his brother’s eyes.
‘My conscience is killing me. I sent my lance through one man … in hot blood … I couldn’t have done it otherwise … But why did I cut down the other?’
‘Well?’
‘It isn’t “well”! I cut down a man, and I’m sick at heart because of him, the reptile! He comes to me in my dreams, the swine. Was I to blame?’
‘You’re not used to it yet; that’s what’s wrong.’
‘Are you stopping with our company?’ Gregor asked abruptly.
‘No, we’re drafted to the 27th regiment.’
‘Well, let’s have a bathe.’
Gregor hastily pulled off his trousers and went to the edge of the dam; he was clearly older than when they last saw each other, Piotra thought. Raising his hands, he dived into the water; a heavy green wave closed over him and billowed away. Gracefully cleaving the water, lazily moving his shoulders, he swam towards a group of cossacks larking about in the middle.
Piotra was slow in removing the cross with the prayer sewn to it slung round his neck. He thrust the string under his pile of clothes, entered the water with timorous caution, wetted his breast and shoulders, then pressed forward with a groan and swam to overtake Gregor. They made for the opposite bank. The movement through the water cooled and soothed, and Gregor flung himself down on the bank and spoke restrainedly and without his previous passion.
‘The lice have eaten me up!’ he remarked. ‘If I was at home now I’d fly as if I had wings. Only to take one little peep! How are they all?’
‘Natalia is living with us.’
‘How are father and mother?’
‘All right. But Natalia still waits for you. She still believes you will go back to her.’
Gregor snorted and silently spat out water. Piotra turned his head and tried to look into his brother’s eyes.
‘You might send her a word in your letters. The woman lives only for you.’
‘What, does she still want to tie up the broken ends?’
‘Well, “hope springs eternal …” She’s a fine little woman. Strict too. She won’t let anybody play about with her!’
‘She ought to get a husband.’
‘Strange words from you!’
‘Nothing strange about them. That’s how it ought to be.’
‘Well, it’s your business. I shan’t interfere.’
‘And how’s Dunia?’
‘She’s a woman, brother! She’s grown so much this year that you wouldn’t know her.’
‘No!’ Gregor said in astonishment.
‘God’s truth! She’ll be getting married next, and we shan’t even get our whiskers into the vodka. We’ll be killed off, damn them!’
They lay side by side on the sand, bathing in the warm sun. Burying a beetle in the sand, Gregor asked:
‘Heard anything of Aksinia?’
‘I saw her in the village just before war was declared.’
‘What was she doing there?’
‘She’d come to get some things of hers from her husband.’
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘Only passed the time of day. She was looking well, and cheerful. She seems to have an easy time at the estate.’
‘And what about Stepan?’
‘He gave her her odds and ends all right. Behaved decently enough. But you keep your eyes open! I’ve been told that when he was drunk he swore to put a bullet through you in the first battle. He can’t forgive you.’
‘I know.’
‘I got myself a new horse,’ Piotra changed the conversation.
‘Sold the bullocks?’
‘For a hundred and eighty. And the horse cost a hundred and fifty. Not a bad one, either.’
‘What’s the grain like?’
‘Good. They took us off before we could get it in.’
The talk turned to domestic matters, and the intensity of feeling passed. Gregor thirstily drank in Piotra’s news of home. For a brief while he was living there again, a simple and restive lad.
They returned with a crowd of cossacks to the yard. At the fence of the orchard Stepan Astakhov overtook them. As he walked he was combing his hair and adjusting it under the peak of his cap. Drawing level with Gregor, he said:
‘Hallo, friend!’
‘Hallo!’ Gregor halted and turned to him with a slightly embarrassed, guilty expression on his face.
‘You haven’t forgotten me, have you?’
‘Almost.’
‘But I remember you!’ Stepan smiled and passed by without stopping.
After sundown a telephone message came from the divisional staff for Gregor’s regiment to return to the front. The companies were assembled within fifteen minutes, and rode off singing to close a breach made in the line by the enemy cavalry.
As they said good-bye to each other Piotra thrust a folded paper into his brother’s hand.
‘What’s this?’ Gregor asked.
‘I’ve written down a prayer for you. Take it …’
‘Is it any good?’
‘Don’t laugh, Gregor!’
‘I’m not laughing.’
‘Well, good-bye brother. Don’t dash away in front of the rest. Death has a fancy for the hot-blooded ones. Look after yourself,’ Piotra shouted.
‘And what about the prayer?’
Piotra waved his hand.
For some time the companies rode without observing any precautions. Then the sergeants gave orders for the utmost possible quiet, and for all cigarettes to be put out. Over a distant wood flew rockets adorned with tails of lilac smoke.
During August the twelfth cavalry division took town after town by storm, and by the end of the month they were deployed around the town of Kamenka-Strumilovo. The reconnaissance patrols reported that considerable forces of enemy cavalry were approaching the town. In the woods along the roads little battles broke out where the cossack outposts came into collision with the enemy advance guards.
During all the days since he saw his brother, Gregor Melekhov had sought to put an end to his painful thoughts, and to recover his former tranquillity of spirit. But he was unable. Among the last reinforcements from the second line of reservists a cossack from the Kazan district, Alexei Uriupin, had been drafted into Gregor’s troop. Uriupin was tall, round-shouldered, with an aggressive lower jaw and drooping Kalmik whiskers. His merry, fearless eyes were always smiling, and he was bald, with only scanty ruddy hair around the edges of his angular cranium. On the very first day of his arrival he was nicknamed ‘Tufty’.
After fighting around Broda the regiment had a few days’ respite. Gregor and Uriupin were quartered in the same hut. One evening, after feeding their horses they were smoking, their backs against a mossgrown, decrepit fence. Hussars were riding four abreast along the street; dead bodies were littered in the yards, for fighting had occurred in the suburbs. The town was one immense destruction and loathsome emptiness in the colourful early evening hour.
Suddenly Uriupin remarked:
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br /> ‘You know, Melekhov, you’re moulting or something.’
‘What do you mean by moulting?’ Gregor asked, his face clouding.
‘You’re all limp, as though you’re ill,’ Uriupin explained.
‘I’m all right,’ Gregor spat out, not looking at the other.
‘You’re lying! I’ve got eyes to see!’
‘Well, and what can you see?’
‘You’re afraid! Is it death you fear?’
‘You’re a fool!’ Gregor said contemptuously, staring at his finger nails.
‘Tell me, have you killed anyone?’
‘Yes. What of it?’
‘Does it weigh on your mind?’
‘Weigh on my mind?’ Gregor laughed.
Uriupin drew his sabre from its sheath. ‘Would you like me to chop your head off?’ he asked.
‘What for?’
‘I can kill a man without sighing over it. I have no pity.’ Uriupin’s eyes were smiling, but by his voice and the rapacious quiver of his mouth Gregor realized that he meant what he said.
‘You’ve got a soft heart,’ he added. ‘Do you know this stroke? Watch!’ He selected an old birch tree in the hedge and went straight towards it, measuring the distance with his eyes. His long, venous arms with their unusually broad wrists hung motionless.
‘Watch!’
He slowly raised his sabre, and suddenly swung it slantwise with terrible force. Completely severed four feet from the ground, the birch toppled over, its branches scraping at the window and clawing the walls of the hut.
‘Did you see that? I’ll teach you the stroke. You could cut a horse in two like that.’
It took Gregor a long time to master the technique of the new stroke. ‘You’re strong, but you’re a fool with your sabre. This is the way!’ Uriupin instructed him. ‘Cut a man down boldly! Man is as soft as butter! Don’t think about the why and the wherefore. You’re a cossack, and it’s your business to cut down without asking questions. To kill your enemy in battle is a holy work. For every man you kill God will wipe out one of your sins, just as he does for killing a serpent. You mustn’t kill an animal unless it’s necessary, but destroy man! He’s a heathen, unclean; he poisons the earth; his life is like a toadstool!’
When Gregor raised objections he only frowned and lapsed into an obstinate silence.
Gregor noticed with astonishment that all horses were afraid of Uriupin. When he went near them they would prick up their ears and bunch together as though an animal were approaching, and not a man. On one occasion the company had to attack over a wooded and swampy district, and took to their feet, the horses being led aside into a dell. Uriupin was among those assigned to take charge of the horses, but he flatly refused.
‘Uriupin, why the devil don’t you lead away your horses?’ the troop sergeant flew at him.
‘They’re afraid of me. God’s truth, they are!’ he replied.
He never took his turn at minding the horses. He was kind enough to his own mount, but Gregor observed that whenever he went up to it a shiver ran down the animal’s back, and it fidgeted uneasily.
‘Tell me, why are the horses afraid of you?’ Gregor once asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘I’m kind enough to them.’
‘They know a drunken man and are afraid of him; but you’re always sober.’
‘I have a hard heart, and they seem to feel it.’
‘You have a wolf’s heart. Or maybe it’s a stone you’ve got and not a heart at all.’
‘Maybe!’ Uriupin willingly agreed.
The troop was despatched on reconnaissance work. The evening previously a Czech deserter from the Austrian army had informed the Russian command of a change in the disposition of the enemy forces and a proposed counter-attack, and there was need for continual observation over the road along which the hostile regiments must pass.
The troop officer left four cossacks with the sergeant at the edge of a wood, and rode with the others towards a town lying beyond the next rise. Gregor, Uriupin, Misha Koshevoi and another cossack were left with the sergeant. They lay smoking by a fallen pine, whilst the sergeant watched the country through his binoculars. Half an hour they lay there, exchanging lazy remarks. From somewhere to the right came the incessant roar of gunfire. A few paces away a field of ungathered rye, its ears emptied of grain, was waving in the wind. Gregor crawled into the rye and selected some still full ears, husked them, and chewed the grain.
A group of horsemen rode out of a distant plantation and halted, surveying the open country, then set off again in the direction of the cossacks.
‘Austrians, surely?’ the sergeant exclaimed under his breath. ‘We’ll let them get closer and then send them a greeting. Have your rifles ready, boys,’ he added feverishly.
The riders steadily drew closer. They were six Hungarian hussars, in handsome tunics ornamented with white braid and piping. The leader, on a big black horse, held his carbine in his hands and was quietly laughing.
‘Fire!’ the sergeant ordered. The volley went echoing through the trees. The hussars galloped in single file into the grain. One of them fired into the air. Uriupin was the first to leap to his feet. He sped off, stumbling through the rye, holding his rifle across his chest. Some hundred yards away he found a fallen horse kicking and struggling, and a Hungarian hussar standing close by, rubbing his knee hurt in the fall. He shouted something to Uriupin and raised his hands in token of surrender, staring after his retreating comrades.
All this had happened so quickly that Gregor hardly had time to take in what was occurring before Uriupin had brought back his prisoner.
‘Off with it!’ Uriupin shouted at the Hungarian, roughly tearing at the hussar’s sword.
The prisoner smiled apprehensively and fumbled with his belt, only too willing to hand over his sword. But his hands trembled, and he could not manage to unfasten the clasp. Gregor cautiously assisted him, and the hussar, a young, fat-cheeked boy with a downy moustache just showing on the upper lip, thanked him with a smile and a nod of the head. He seemed glad to be deprived of the weapon, and fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a leather pouch and muttered something, offering the cossacks tobacco.
‘He’s treating us!’ the sergeant smiled, and felt for his cigarette papers. The cossacks rolled cigarettes from the hussar’s tobacco and smoked. The strong, black tobacco quickly went to their heads.
‘He must be escorted to the company. Who’ll take him, boys?’ the sergeant asked, passing his eyes over his men.
‘I will,’ Uriupin replied quickly.
‘All right, off with you!’
The prisoner evidently realized what was to happen to him, for he smiled wrily, turned out his pockets, and offered the cossacks some broken chocolate.
‘Rusin ich … Rusin … nein Austrische …’ he stammered, gesticulating absurdly and holding out the chocolate.
‘Any weapons?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Don’t rattle away like that, we can’t understand you. Got a revolver? A bang-bang?’ The sergeant pulled an imaginary trigger. The prisoner furiously shook his head.
He willingly allowed himself to be searched, his fat cheeks quivering. Blood was streaming from his torn knee. Talking incessantly, he tied his handkerchief around it. He had left his cap by his horse, and he asked permission to go and fetch it and his blanket and notebook, in which were photographs of his family. The sergeant tried hard to understand what he wanted, but at last waved his hand in despair:
‘Off with him!’
Uriupin took his horse and mounted it. Adjusting his rifle across his back, he pointed to the prisoner. Encouraged by his smile, the Hungarian also smiled and set off at the horse’s side. With an attempt at familiarity he patted Uriupin’s knee, but the cossack harshly flung off his hand and pulled on the reins.
The prisoner guiltily drew away from the horse and strode along with a serious face, frequently looking back at the other cossacks. His lint-white hair stuck up vivid
ly on the crown of his head. So he remained in Gregor’s memory: his tunic flung open, his flaxen tuft of hair, and his confident, brave mien.
‘Melekhov, go and unsaddle his horse!’ the sergeant ordered, regretfully spitting out the end of his cigarette. Gregor went to the fallen animal, removed the saddle, and then for some undefined reason picked up the cap lying close by. He smelt at the lining and caught the scent of cheap soap and sweat. He carried the horse’s equipment back to the trees. Squatting on their haunches, the cossacks rummaged in the saddle-bags and stared at the unfamiliar design of the saddle.
‘That tobacco he had was good; we should have asked him for some more,’ the sergeant sighed at the memory and swallowed down his spittle.
Not many minutes had passed when a horse’s head appeared through the pines, and Uriupin rode up.
‘Why, where’s the Austrian? You haven’t let him go?’ the sergeant questioned him.
‘He tried to run away,’ Uriupin snarled.
‘And so you let him?’
‘We reached an open glade, and he … So I cut him down.’
‘You’re a liar!’ Gregor shouted. ‘You killed him for nothing.’
‘What are you shouting about? What’s it to do with you?’ Uriupin fixed icy eyes on Gregor’s face.
‘What?’ Gregor’s voice slowly rose, and he swung his arms round in readiness to grapple with Uriupin.
‘Don’t poke your nose in where it isn’t wanted! Understand?’ the other replied sternly. Gregor snatched up his rifle and threw it to his shoulder. His finger quivered as it felt for the trigger, and his face worked angrily.
‘Now then!’ the sergeant exclaimed threateningly, running to him. His jostle preceded the shot, and the bullet cut a branch from a tree and went whistling into space. He tore the rifle out of Gregor’s hands. Uriupin stood without changing his position, his feet planted apart, his left hand on his belt.
‘Fire again!’ he remarked.
‘I’ll kill you!’ Gregor rushed towards him.
‘Here, what’s all this about? Do you want to be court-martialled and shot? Put your arms down!’ the sergeant commanded.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 26