The Cossacks - graf Tolstoy Leo (suggested reading TXT) 📗
- Author: graf Tolstoy Leo
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‘Yes, that’s what I tell him. “Mind, Lukashka, don’t you get into
mischief. Well, of course, a young fellow naturally wants to cut a
dash. But there’s a time for everything. Well, you’ve captured or
stolen something and killed an abrek! Well, you’re a fine fellow!
But now you should live quietly for a bit, or else there’ll be
trouble.”’
‘Yes, I saw him a time or two in the division, he was always
merrymaking. He has sold another horse,’ said Olenin, and glanced
towards the oven. A pair of large, dark, and hostile eyes
glittered as they gazed severely at him.
He became ashamed of what he had said. ‘What of it? He does no one
any harm,’ suddenly remarked Maryanka. ‘He makes merry with his
own money,’ and lowering her legs she jumped down from the oven
and went out banging the door.
Olenin followed her with his eyes as long as she was in the hut,
and then looked at the door and waited, understanding nothing of
what Granny Ulitka was telling him.
A few minutes later some visitors arrived: an old man, Granny
Ulitka’s brother, with Daddy Eroshka, and following them came
Maryanka and Ustenka.
‘Good evening,’ squeaked Ustenka. ‘Still on holiday?’ she added,
turning to Olenin.
‘Yes, still on holiday,’ he replied, and felt, he did not know
why, ashamed and ill at ease.
He wished to go away but could not. It also seemed to him
impossible to remain silent. The old man helped him by asking for
a drink, and they had a drink. Olenin drank with Eroshka, with the
other Cossack, and again with Eroshka, and the more he drank the
heavier was his heart. But the two old men grew merry. The girls
climbed onto the oven, where they sat whispering and looking at
the men, who drank till it was late. Olenin did not talk, but
drank more than the others. The Cossacks were shouting. The old
woman would not let them have any more chikhir, and at last turned
them out. The girls laughed at Daddy Eroshka, and it was past ten
when they all went out into the porch. The old men invited
themselves to finish their merrymaking at Olenin’s. Ustenka ran
off home and Eroshka led the old Cossack to Vanyusha. The old
woman went out to tidy up the shed. Maryanka remained alone in the
hut. Olenin felt fresh and joyous, as if he had only just woke up.
He noticed everything, and having let the old men pass ahead he
turned back to the hut where Maryanka was preparing for bed. He
went up to her and wished to say something, but his voice broke.
She moved away from him, sat down crosslegged on her bed in the
corner, and looked at him silently with wild and frightened eyes.
She was evidently afraid of him. Olenin felt this. He felt sorry
and ashamed of himself, and at the same time proud and pleased
that he aroused even that feeling in her.
‘Maryanka!’ he said. ‘Will you never take pity on me? I can’t tell
you how I love you.’
She moved still farther away.
‘Just hear how the wine is speaking! … You’ll get nothing from
me!’
‘No, it is not the wine. Don’t marry Lukashka. I will marry you.’
(‘What am I saying,’ he thought as he uttered these words. ‘Shall
I be able to say the same to-morrow?’ ‘Yes, I shall, I am sure I
shall, and I will repeat them now,’ replied an inner voice.)
‘Will you marry me?’
She looked at him seriously and her fear seemed to have passed.
‘Maryanka, I shall go out of my mind! I am not myself. I will do
whatever you command,’ and madly tender words came from his lips
of their own accord.
‘Now then, what are you drivelling about?’ she interrupted,
suddenly seizing the arm he was stretching towards her. She did
not push his arm away but pressed it firmly with her strong hard
fingers. ‘Do gentlemen marry Cossack girls? Go away!’
‘But will you? Everything…’
‘And what shall we do with Lukashka?’ said she, laughing.
He snatched away the arm she was holding and firmly embraced her
young body, but she sprang away like a fawn and ran barefoot into
the porch: Olenin came to his senses and was terrified at himself.
He again felt himself inexpressibly vile compared to her, yet not
repenting for an instant of what he had said he went home, and
without even glancing at the old men who were drinking in his room
he lay down and fell asleep more soundly than he had done for a
long time.
The next day was a holiday. In the evening all the villagers,
their holiday clothes shining in the sunset, were out in the
street. That season more wine than usual had been produced, and
the people were now free from their labours. In a month the
Cossacks were to start on a campaign and in many families
preparations were being made for weddings.
Most of the people were standing in the square in front of the
Cossack Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which
cakes and pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and
cotton prints. On the earth-embankment of the office-building sat
or stood the old men in sober grey, or black coats without gold
trimmings or any kind of ornament. They conversed among themselves
quietly in measured tones, about the harvest, about the young
folk, about village affairs, and about old times, looking with
dignified equanimity at the younger generation. Passing by them,
the women and girls stopped and bent their heads. The young
Cossacks respectfully slackened their pace and raised their caps,
holding them for a while over their heads. The old men then
stopped speaking. Some of them watched the passersby severely,
others kindly, and in their turn slowly took off their caps and
put them on again.
The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their khorovods, but
having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured beshmets with
white kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat
either on the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts
sheltered from the oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and
chattered in their ringing voices. Little boys and girls playing
in the square sent their balls high up into the clear sky, and ran
about squealing and shouting. The half-grown girls had started
dancing their khorovods, and were timidly singing in their thin
shrill voices. Clerks, lads not in the service, or home for the
holiday, bright-faced and wearing smart white or new red
Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in arm in twos or
threes from one group of women or girls to another, and stopped to
joke and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper, in
a gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door
through which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were
visible and, conscious of his own importance and with the pride of
an Oriental tradesman, waited for customers. Two red-bearded,
barefooted Chechens, who had come from beyond the Terek to see the
fete, sat on their heels outside the house of a friend,
negligently smoking their little pipes and occasionally spitting,
watching the villagers and exchanging remarks with one another in
their rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a workaday-looking
soldier in an old overcoat passed across the square among the
bright-clad girls. Here and there the songs of tipsy Cossacks who
were merrymaking could already be heard. All the huts were
closed; the porches had been scrubbed clean the day before. Even
the old women were out in the street, which was everywhere
sprinkled with pumpkin and melon seed-shells. The air was warm and
still, the sky deep and clear. Beyond the roofs the dead-white
mountain range, which seemed very near, was turning rosy in the
glow of the evening sun. Now and then from the other side of the
river came the distant roar of a cannon, but above the village,
mingling with one another, floated all sorts of merry holiday
sounds.
Olenin had been pacing the yard all that morning hoping to see
Maryanka. But she, having put on holiday clothes, went to Mass at
the chapel and afterwards sat with the other girls on an earth-embankment cracking seeds; sometimes again, together with her
companions, she ran home, and each time gave the lodger a bright
and kindly look. Olenin felt afraid to address her playfully or in
the presence of others. He wished to finish telling her what he
had begun to say the night before, and to get her to give him a
definite answer. He waited for another moment like that of
yesterday evening, but the moment did not come, and he felt that
he could not remain any longer in this uncertainty. She went out
into the street again, and after waiting awhile he too went out
and without knowing where he was going he followed her. He passed
by the corner where she was sitting in her shining blue satin
beshmet, and with an aching heart he heard behind him the girls
laughing.
Beletski’s hut looked out onto the square. As Olenin was passing
it he heard Beletski’s voice calling to him, ‘Come in,’ and in he
went.
After a short talk they both sat down by the window and were soon
joined by Eroshka, who entered dressed in a new beshmet and sat
down on the floor beside them.
‘There, that’s the aristocratic party,’ said Beletski, pointing
with his cigarette to a brightly coloured group at the corner.
‘Mine is there too. Do you see her? in red. That’s a new beshmet.
Why don’t you start the khorovod?’ he shouted, leaning out of the
window. ‘Wait a bit, and then when it grows dark let us go too.
Then we will invite them to Ustenka’s. We must arrange a ball for
them!’
‘And I will come to Ustenka’s,’ said Olenin in a decided tone.
‘Will Maryanka be there?’
‘Yes, she’ll be there. Do come!’ said Beletski, without the least
surprise. ‘But isn’t it a pretty picture?’ he added, pointing to
the motley crowds.
‘Yes, very!’ Olenin assented, trying to appear indifferent.
‘Holidays of this kind,’ he added, ‘always make me wonder why all
these people should suddenly be contented and jolly. To-day for
instance, just because it happens to be the fifteenth of the
month, everything is festive. Eyes and faces and voices and
movements and garments, and the air and the sun, are all in a
holiday mood. And we no longer have any holidays!’
‘Yes,’ said Beletski, who did not like such reflections.
‘And why are you not drinking, old fellow?’ he said, turning to
Eroshka.
Eroshka winked at Olenin, pointing to Beletski. ‘Eh, he’s a proud
one that kunak of yours,’ he said.
Beletski raised his glass. ALLAH BIRDY’ he said, emptying it.
(ALLAH BIRDY, ‘God has given!’—the usual greeting of Caucasians
when drinking together.)
‘Sau bul’ (‘Your health’), answered Eroshka smiling, and emptied
his glass.
‘Speaking of holidays!’ he said, turning to Olenin as he rose and
looked out of the window, ‘What sort of holiday is that! You
should have seen them make merry in the old days! The women used
to come out in their gold—trimmed sarafans. Two rows of gold
coins hanging round their necks and gold-cloth diadems on their
heads, and when they passed they made a noise, “flu, flu,” with
their dresses. Every woman looked like a princess. Sometimes
they’d come out, a whole herd of them, and begin singing songs so
that the
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