The Cossacks - graf Tolstoy Leo (suggested reading TXT) 📗

‘Yes,’ thought Olenin, as he walked home. ‘I need only slacken the

reins a bit and I might fall desperately in love with this Cossack

girl.’ He went to bed with these thoughts, but expected it all to

blow over and that he would continue to live as before.

But the old life did not return. His relations to Maryanka were

changed. The wall that had separated them was broken down. Olenin

now greeted her every time they met.

The master of the house having returned to collect the rent, on

hearing of Olenin’s wealth and generosity invited him to his hut.

The old woman received him kindly, and from the day of the party

onwards Olenin often went in of an evening and sat with them till

late at night. He seemed to be living in the village just as he

used to, but within him everything had changed. He spent his days

in the forest, and towards eight o’clock, when it began to grow

dusk, he would go to see his hosts, alone or with Daddy Eroshka.

They grew so used to him that they were surprised when he stayed

away. He paid well for his wine and was a quiet fellow. Vanyusha

would bring him his tea and he would sit down in a comer near the

oven. The old woman did not mind him but went on with her work,

and over their tea or their chikhir they talked about Cossack

affairs, about the neighbours, or about Russia: Olenin relating

and the others inquiring. Sometimes he brought a book and read to

himself. Maryanka crouched like a wild goat with her feet drawn up

under her, sometimes on the top of the oven, sometimes in a dark

comer. She did not take part in the conversations, but Olenin saw

her eyes and face and heard her moving or cracking sunflower

seeds, and he felt that she listened with her whole being when he

spoke, and was aware of his presence while he silently read to

himself. Sometimes he thought her eyes were fixed on him, and

meeting their radiance he involuntarily became silent and gazed at

her. Then she would instantly hide her face and he would pretend

to be deep in conversation with the old woman, while he listened

all the time to her breathing and to her every movement and waited

for her to look at him again. In the presence of others she was

generally bright and friendly with him, but when they were alone

together she was shy and rough. Sometimes he came in before

Maryanka had returned home. Suddenly he would hear her firm

footsteps and catch a glimmer of her blue cotton smock at the open

door. Then she would step into the middle of the hut, catch sight

of him, and her eyes would give a scarcely perceptible kindly

smile, and he would feel happy and frightened.

He neither sought for nor wished for anything from her, but every

day her presence became more and more necessary to him.

Olenin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully

that his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future,

especially a future outside the world in which he was now living,

it did not interest him at all. When he received letters from

home, from relatives and friends, he was offended by the evident

distress with which they regarded him as a lost man, while he in

his village considered those as lost who did not live as he was

living. He felt sure he would never repent of having broken away

from his former surroundings and of having settled down in this

village to such a solitary and original life. When out on

expeditions, and when quartered at one of the forts, he felt happy

too; but it was here, from under Daddy Eroshka’s wing, from the

forest and from his hut at the end of the village, and especially

when he thought of Maryanka and Lukashka, that he seemed to see

the falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his

indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and

ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and

more of a man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to

what his imagination had painted it. He had found nothing at all

like his dreams, nor like the descriptions of the Caucasus he had

heard and read. ‘There are none of all those chestnut steeds,

precipices, Amalet Beks, heroes or villains,’ thought he. ‘The

people live as nature lives: they die, are born, unite, and more

are born—they fight, eat and drink, rejoice and die, without any

restrictions but those that nature imposes on sun and grass, on

animal and tree. They have no other laws.’ Therefore these people,

compared to himself, appeared to him beautiful, strong, and free,

and the sight of them made him feel ashamed and sorry for himself.

Often it seriously occurred to him to throw up everything, to get

registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and marry a

Cossack woman (only not Maryanka, whom he conceded to Lukashka),

and to live with Daddy Eroshka and go shooting and fishing with

him, and go with the Cossacks on their expeditions. ‘Why ever

don’t I do it? What am I waiting for?’ he asked himself, and he

egged himself on and shamed himself. ‘Am I afraid of doing what I

hold to be reasonable and right? Is the wish to be a simple

Cossack, to live close to nature, not to injure anyone but even to

do good to others, more stupid than my former dreams, such as

those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?’ but a voice

seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any decision. He

was held back by a dim consciousness that he could not live

altogether like Eroshka and Lukashka because he had a different

idea of happiness—he was held back by the thought that happiness

lies in self-sacrifice. What he had done for Lukashka continued to

give him joy. He kept looking for occasions to sacrifice himself

for others, but did not meet with them. Sometimes he forgot this

newly discovered recipe for happiness and considered himself

capable of identifying his life with Daddy Eroshka’s, but then he

quickly bethought himself and promptly clutched at the idea of

conscious self-sacrifice, and from that basis looked calmly and

proudly at all men and at their happiness.