On the right flank were the companies of the 44th regiment. Golubov was leading his own regiment in the centre. Gregor was on his left. Beyond were Red Guard detachments covering the left flank. Three machine-guns had been allotted to Gregor’s companies. Their commander, a thickset Red Guard, with morose face and hairy hands, directed their fire excellently, paralysing the enemy’s attempts at an offensive. He remained the whole time close to the machine-gun that was moving forward with the Ataman cossacks. At his side was a stocky woman in a soldier’s tunic. As Gregor passed along the file of cossacks he thought angrily: ‘The petticoat! Going into battle, and he can’t leave his woman behind! He should have brought his children and his feather-bed with him too!’
The commander of the machine-gun detachment came up to him.
‘Are you in command of this section?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll direct a barrage fire in front of the Ataman half-company. The enemy are preventing their advance.’
‘All right!’ Gregor assented. At a shout from the direction of the momentarily silent machine-gun he turned, and heard the bearded machine-gunner roar furiously:
‘Bunchuk! We shall melt the gun! You human devil, you can’t go on like that!’
The woman in a soldier’s tunic went down on her knees. Her black eyes, burning under her kerchief, reminded Gregor of Aksinia, and for a second he stared at her with an unwinking gaze, holding his breath.
At noon an orderly galloped up from Golubov, with instructions for Gregor to withdraw his two companies from their positions and to encircle the right flank of the enemy, doing so unobserved if possible. He was to strike from the flank immediately the main forces opened a decisive attack. Gregor at once drew off his companies, and after mounting them, led them in a semi-circle for eight miles along a valley. The horses stumbled and floundered in the deep snow, which sometimes reached to their chests. Gregor listened to the sound of firing and looked anxiously at his watch, a trophy taken from the hand of a dead German officer in Roumania. He directed their course by a compass, but even so deviated rather more to the left than necessary. They emerged into the open field over a broad down. The horses were smoking with sweat and wet in the groins. Gregor gave the order to dismount, and was the first to climb the hill. The horses were left in the valley. The cossacks crawled after him up the steep slope. He looked back, saw more than a company of cossacks scattered over the snowy rise, and felt stronger and more confident. Like most other men, in battle he was strongly possessed by the herd instinct.
Taking in the situation of the battle at a glance, he realized that he was late by half an hour at the least. With a daring strategic manoeuvre Golubov had almost cut off the rear of the Chornetsov forces, sending out flanking detachments on both sides, and was now striking at them from in front. The rifle-fire was rattling like shot in a frying pan, shrapnel was sweeping the demoralized ranks of the enemy, and the shells were falling thickly.
‘Forward!’ Gregor shouted.
He struck with his companies on the flank. The cossacks advanced as though on parade, but a dexterous Chornetsov machine-gunner sprayed them so healthily with bullets that they were glad to lie down, after losing three of their number.
In the early afternoon Gregor was struck by a bullet which pierced the flesh above the knee. Feeling a burning pain and the familiar nausea from loss of blood, he grated his teeth. He crawled out of the line and jumped to his feet, half-delirious with the shock and shaking his head. The pain was all the greater as the bullet had not passed out, but remained buried in the muscle. The burning, lacerating agony prevented all movement, and he lay down again. As he lay his mind vividly recalled the attack of the 12th regiment in the Transylvanian mountains, when he had been wounded in the arm …
Gregor’s assistant took charge of the companies, and ordered two cossacks to lead Gregor back to the horses. As they sat him on his horse they sympathetically advised him to tie up the wound. Gregor was already in his saddle, but he slipped down, and dropping his trousers, frowning with pain, hurriedly bandaged the inflamed, bleeding hole. Then, accompanied by his orderly he rode back by the same circuitous route through the valley, to the spot where the counter-attack had begun. Drowsy with sleep, he stared at the traces of horse-hoofs in the snow, at the familiar outlines of the valley, and the incidents on the hillside already seemed to have happened a long time ago.
For two miles they rode through the valley. The horses began to tire with the heavy going.
‘Make for the open!’ Gregor snorted to his orderly, and turned his own horse up the drifted slope of the down.
In the distance they saw the scattered figures of the dead lying like settled crows. On the very horizon a tiny riderless horse was galloping. Gregor saw the main forces of the enemy, shattered and thinned, break away from the battle, turn, and retreat towards Gluboka. He put his bay into a gallop. Some way off were several scattered groups of cossacks. As he rode up to the nearest of them Gregor recognized Golubov. The commander was sitting huddled in his saddle. His sheepskin jacket was flung open, his fur cap was pushed back on his head, his brows were wet with sweat. Twisting his sergeant-major whiskers, he hoarsely shouted:
‘Melekhov, brave lad! What, are you wounded? The devil! Is the bone whole?’ Without awaiting an answer he broke into a smile: ‘We’ve completely smashed them! Completely! We’ve smashed the officers’ division so that they’ll never be able to assemble them again.’
Gregor asked for a cigarette. Over all the steppe cossacks and Red Guards were streaming. A cossack on horseback came galloping from a dense crowd approaching in the distance.
‘Forty men taken, Golubov!’ he shouted when still a little way off. ‘Forty officers, and Chornetsov among them!’
‘You’re lying!’ Golubov turned anxiously in his saddle, and rode off to meet the prisoners, ruthlessly plying his whip across his white-stockinged horse.
Gregor waited a moment, then trotted after him.
The crowd of captured officers was escorted by a convoy of thirty cossacks. Chornetsov strode in front of the others. In an endeavour to escape he had thrown away his sheepskin coat, and was wearing only a light leather jerkin. The epaulette had been torn from his left shoulder, and a fresh abrasion was bleeding above his left eye. He walked quickly and firmly. His fur cap, set on one side, gave him a carefree and youthful appearance. There was not a shadow of fear on his rosy face. Evidently he had not shaved for some days, for a growth of hair gilded his cheeks and chin. He harshly and swiftly surveyed the cossacks running towards him, and a bitter, hateful frown darkened between his brows. He struck a match and lit the cigarette held in one corner of his firm lips.
The majority of the officers were young, only one or two having traces of grey hair. One, wounded in the leg, hung back, and was driven on with a butt-end by a small, pock-marked cossack. Almost at Chornetsov’s side was a tall, dashing captain. Two more walked arm in arm, smiling; behind them came a stocky, capless Junker. Another officer had hurriedly flung a soldier’s tunic around his shoulders. Yet another was hatless, and had an officer’s red cowl pulled down over his handsome eyes.
Golubov rode behind them. He halted and shouted to the cossack escort:
‘Listen! You will answer with all the discipline of the military-revolutionary times for the safety of these prisoners. See that they reach staff headquarters unharmed.’
He called a mounted cossack to him, wrote a note and ordered the man to give it to Podtielkov. Then he turned to Gregor and asked:
‘Are you going to the staff, Melekhov?’
Receiving an affirmative reply, Golubov rode up close to him and said:
‘Tell Podtielkov that I will be responsible for Chornetsov. Understand? All right, off you go!’
Gregor outdistanced the crowd of prisoners and rode off to the Revolutionary Committee staff, which was stationed near to a small village. He found Podtielkov surrounded with staff officers, couriers, and cossack orderlies. Minae
v and Podtielkov had both only just returned from the scene of the battle. Gregor called Podtielkov aside.
‘The prisoners will be here in a minute,’ he reported. ‘Have you received Golubov’s note?’
Podtielkov waved his whip violently, and dropping his bloodshot eyes, shouted:
‘Damn Golubov! It’s a fine thing he’s asking for! He’ll take charge of Chornetsov, will he? Take charge of that counter-revolutionary and brigand! Well, he won’t! I’ll have them all shot and be done with them!’
‘Golubov said he would be responsible for him,’ Gregor objected.
‘I won’t give him up! I’ve said that, and I mean it. That’s all! He will be tried by a revolutionary court and the sentence carried out immediately. As an example to others! You know …’ he spoke more quietly, staring keenly at the crowd of approaching prisoners. ‘You know how much blood he has made to flow? Oceans …! How many miners has he had shot?’ And again stuttering with fury, his eyes rolling frenziedly, he shouted: ‘I won’t hand him over!’
‘There’s nothing to shout about!’ Gregor also raised his voice. He was inwardly trembling, as though Podtielkov had communicated his frenzy to him. ‘You have enough judges here! You go back there!’ His nostrils quivering, he pointed behind him to the battlefield. ‘There are too many of you wanting to settle accounts with the prisoners!’
Podtielkov retreated, tightly gripping his whip in his hands. From a safe distance he shouted:
‘I’ve been there! Don’t think I’ve been saving my skin by this cart. You keep your mouth shut, Melekhov! Understand? Who are you talking to? Get rid of those officer ways of yours! So! The Revolutionary Committee will judge, and not any …’
Gregor set his horse at him, and jumped out of his saddle, forgetting his wound for the moment. But he doubled up with pain and fell headlong. The blood poured from his leg. He rose without assistance, dragged himself somehow or other to a cart, and dropped with his back against the rear spring.
The prisoners came up. Some of the escort mingled with the orderlies and cossacks acting as bodyguard to the staff. The fire of the battle had not yet burnt itself out in them, and their eyes glittered feverishly and evilly as they exchanged opinions on the recent struggle.
Stepping heavily over the deep snow, Podtielkov went towards the prisoners. Chornetsov, still a little way in front, stared at him with his clear, desperate eyes screwed up contemptuously, his left leg carelessly swinging, his upper teeth clenched over his lower lip. Podtielkov, trembling violently, went right up to him, his unwinking gaze wandering over the untrodden snow. He raised his eyes, and his stare crossed with Chornetsov’s hateful, fearless, scornful gaze.
‘So we’ve caught you, you serpent!’ he said in a low, gurgling voice, stepping a pace backward. A wry, sombre smile gashed his cheeks like a sabre stroke.
‘Betrayer of the cossacks! Hound! Traitor!’ Chornetsov spat through his teeth.
Podtielkov shook his head as though avoiding a blow, his face darkened, and his open mouth gasped in air.
What followed occurred with astonishing speed. Chornetsov, his teeth bared, his face pale, his fists pressed against his chest, all his body bent forward, strode towards Podtielkov. Unintelligible words mingled with curses fell from his quivering lips. Only the slowly retreating Podtielkov caught what he said.
‘Your time will come … you know that!’ he raised his voice suddenly, so that the words were heard by the prisoners, the escort, and the staff officers.
‘Well …’ Podtielkov hoarsely choked, fumbling for his sword hilt.
There was an abrupt silence. The snow scrunched clearly beneath the feet of Minaev, Krivoshlikov, and half a dozen others who threw themselves in Podtielkov’s direction. But he out-distanced them. Turning his entire body to the right, and crouching, he tore his sword from its scabbard, flung himself violently forward, and struck Chornetsov with terrible force across the head.
Gregor saw the officer shudder and raise his left hand to ward off the blow; he saw the sword cut through the wrist as though it were paper and come down on Chornetsov’s defenceless head. First the fur cap fell; then, like corn broken at the stalk, Chornetsov slowly dropped, his mouth twisted wryly, his eyes agonizingly screwed up and frowning as if before lightning.
As the officer lay Podtielkov sabred him again, then turned and walked away with an aged, heavy gait, wiping his bloodstained sword. Stumbling against the cart, he turned to the escort and shouted in a choking, howling voice:
‘Cut them down … Damn them! All of them! We take no prisoners! In their hearts, in their blood!’
Shots rang out feverishly. The officers turned and fled in a disorderly, jostling mob. The lieutenant with beautiful, womanish eyes and a red cowl ran with his hands clutching his head. A bullet sent him jumping high as though over a barrier. He fell, and did not rise again. Two cossacks cut down the tall captain. He caught at the blade of one sword, and the blood poured out of his hand over his sleeve. He screamed like a child, fell on his knees, on to his back, his head rolling over the snow, his face all bloodshot eyes and a black mouth lacerated with a cry. The flying blades played over his face, his mouth, but still he shrieked in a voice thin with pain and horror. Straddling over him, a cossack finished him off with a bullet. The Junker all but broke through the ring; he was overtaken and struck down by an ataman cossack. The same man sent a bullet through the back of an officer running with his coat flapping in the wind. The officer squatted down and grabbled with his fingers at his breast until he died. A grey-haired lieutenant was killed on the spot; as he parted with life he dug a deep hole in the snow with his feet, and would have gone on kicking like a mettlesome, haltered horse if a cossack had not taken pity on him and ended his struggles.
Immediately the execution began Gregor had burst up from the cart, and fixing his eyes on Podtielkov, had limped swiftly towards him. But Minaev seized him from behind, twisted his arms, tore the pistol out of his hand, and gazing into his eyes with a dull stare, pantingly demanded:
‘And you … what game are you playing?’
Chapter Three
Flooded with a sunny glare and the blue of a cloudless sky, the blindingly brilliant, snowy spine of the hill whitened and sparkled like sugar. Below the hill a scattered village lay like a tattered blanket. To the right, little hamlets and German settlements nestled in blue patches. To the east of the village straddled another sloping hill, rent with gulleys. Over its brow ran a palisade of telegraph posts. The day was unusually clear and frosty. Pillars of haze smoked in rainbow hues around the sun. The wind was blowing from the north, and driving up the snow from the steppe. But the snowy expanse was clear to the horizon: only to the east, right on the skyline, did a violet haze lurk over the steppe.
Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch had been to Millerovo to bring Gregor home. He decided not to stop at the village, but to drive on to Kashara and spend the night there. He had set out from Tatarsk in reply to a telegram from Gregor, and had found his son awaiting him at a peasants’ tavern. After being wounded at Gluboka Gregor had been a week travelling in a field-hospital wagon to Millerovo. When his leg had healed a little he resolved to go home. He went with feelings of mingled dissatisfaction and gladness: dissatisfaction because he had abandoned his regiment at the very height of the struggle for power in the Don, and gladness at the thought that he would see his own people again. He concealed even from himself his desire to see Aksinia, yet he could not help thinking of her.
His meeting with his father was attended by a feeling of estrangement. Pantaleimon (Piotra had been whispering in his ear) stared moodily at Gregor, and discontent and expectant anxiety lurked in his eyes. In the evening he questioned Gregor at some length about events occurring in the Don region, and evidently his son’s replies did not content him. He chewed at his grey beard, stared at his felt boots, and snorted. He entered reluctantly into argument, but flared up in defence of Kaledin, told Gregor to shut up as in the old days, and even stamped with his lame leg
.
‘Don’t try to tell me! Kaledin was in Tatarsk in the autumn. We had a meeting in the square, and he climbed on to a table and talked with the old men, and prophesied like the Bible that the peasants would come, there would be war, and if we didn’t make up our minds what we were going to do they would take everything from us and begin to live on our land. Even then he knew there would be war. And what do you think about it, you son of a swine? Does he know less than your lot? An educated general like that, who’s led the army, and who is it he knows less than? The men in Kamenska are uneducated talkers like you, and they’re troubling the people. Your Podtielkov – who is he? A sergeant-major? Oho! A man who served with me. That’s what we’ve come to!’
Gregor entered unwillingly into the argument with him. He knew beforehand what attitude his father would take. And a new element had entered into the situation for him: he could not forget, he could not forgive the death of Chornetsov and the slaughter of the officer prisoners without trial.
The two horses easily drew the basket-sleigh along. Gregor’s saddled horse was tied behind. The well-known villages and settlements unfolded along the road. All the way to his own village Gregor was thinking disconnectedly and aimlessly of the recent happenings, and trying at least to discern some landmarks in the future. But his mind could see no farther than a rest at home. ‘When I get back I’ll take a little rest, and get my wound healed, and after that …’ He mentally shrugged his shoulders. ‘We shall see. Time will show.’
He was broken by weariness engendered of the war. He wanted to turn his back upon all the tempestuous, hate-filled, hostile and incomprehensible world. Behind him everything was entangled, contradictory. With difficulty he had found the right path; but as soon as he had set foot upon it the ground had risen up beneath him, the path had dwindled to nothing, and he had lost all confidence that he was on the right course. He had been drawn towards the Bolsheviks, had led others after him, then had hesitated, his heart had turned cold. ‘Is Izvarin right after all? Who are we to trust?’ But when he thought that soon it would be time to get the harrows ready for spring, mangers would have to be woven of willows, and that when the earth was unclothed and dry he would be driving out into the steppe, his labour-yearning hands gripping the plough handles; when he remembered that soon he would be breathing in the sweet scent of the young grass and the damp-smelling earth turned over by the plough-share, his heart warmed within him. He longed to collect the cattle, to toss the hay, to smell the withered scent of the clover, the twitch, the pungent smell of dung. He wanted peace and quietness; and so his harsh eyes nursed a constrained gladness as they gazed at the steppe, at the horses, at his father’s back. Everything reminded him of his half-forgotten former life: the scent of sheepskin from his father’s coat, the homely appearance of the ungroomed horses, and a cock crowing from some farmyard. Life here, in this retirement, seemed sweet and heavily intoxicating.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 52