The Cossacks - graf Tolstoy Leo (suggested reading TXT) 📗
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The cornet was pale and grew confused. Lukashka dismounted from
his horse, threw the reins to one of the other Cossacks, and went
up to Gurka. Olenin also dismounted and, bending down, followed
Lukashka. They had hardly reached Gurka when two bullets whistled
above them.
Lukashka looked around laughing at Olenin and stooped a little.
‘Look out or they will kill you, Dmitri Andreich,’ he said. ‘You’d
better go away—you have no business here.’ But Olenin wanted
absolutely to see the ABREKS.
From behind the mound he saw caps and muskets some two hundred
paces off. Suddenly a little cloud of smoke appeared from thence,
and again a bullet whistled past. The ABREKS were hiding in a
marsh at the foot of the hill. Olenin was much impressed by the
place in which they sat. In reality it was very much like the rest
of the steppe, but because the ABREKS sat there it seemed to
detach itself from all the rest and to have become distinguished.
Indeed it appeared to Olenin that it was the very spot for ABREKS
to occupy. Lukashka went back to his horse and Olenin followed
him.
‘We must get a hay-cart,’ said Lukashka, ‘or they will be killing
some of us. There behind that mound is a Nogay cart with a load of
hay.’
The cornet listened to him and the corporal agreed. The cart of
hay was fetched, and the Cossacks, hiding behind it, pushed it
forward. Olenin rode up a hillock from whence he could see
everything. The hay-cart moved on and the Cossacks crowded
together behind it. The Cossacks advanced, but the Chechens, of
whom there were nine, sat with their knees in a row and did not
fire.
All was quiet. Suddenly from the Chechens arose the sound of a
mournful song, something like Daddy Eroshka’s ‘Ay day, dalalay.’
The Chechens knew that they could not escape, and to prevent
themselves from being tempted to take to flight they had strapped
themselves together, knee to knee, had got their guns ready, and
were singing their death-song.
The Cossacks with their hay-cart drew closer and closer, and
Olenin expected the firing to begin at any moment, but the silence
was only broken by the abreks’ mournful song. Suddenly the song
ceased; there was a sharp report, a bullet struck the front of the
cart, and Chechen curses and yells broke the silence and shot
followed on shot and one bullet after another struck the cart. The
Cossacks did not fire and were now only five paces distant.
Another moment passed and the Cossacks with a whoop rushed out on
both sides from behind the cart—Lukashka in front of them. Olenin
heard only a few shots, then shouting and moans. He thought he saw
smoke and blood, and abandoning his horse and quite beside himself
he ran towards the Cossacks. Horror seemed to blind him. He could
not make out anything, but understood that all was over. Lukashka,
pale as death, was holding a wounded Chechen by the arms and
shouting, ‘Don’t kill him. I’ll take him alive!’ The Chechen was
the red-haired man who had fetched his brother’s body away after
Lukashka had killed him. Lukashka was twisting his arms. Suddenly
the Chechen wrenched himself free and fired his pistol. Lukashka
fell, and blood began to flow from his stomach. He jumped up, but
fell again, swearing in Russian and in Tartar. More and more blood
appeared on his clothes and under him. Some Cossacks approached
him and began loosening his girdle. One of them, Nazarka, before
beginning to help, fumbled for some time, unable to put his sword
in its sheath: it would not go the right way. The blade of the
sword was bloodstained.
The Chechens with their red hair and clipped moustaches lay dead
and hacked about. Only the one we know of, who had fired at
Lukashka, though wounded in many places was still alive. Like a
wounded hawk all covered with blood (blood was flowing from a
wound under his right eye), pale and gloomy, he looked about him
with wide—open excited eyes and clenched teeth as he crouched,
dagger in hand, still prepared to defend himself. The cornet went
up to him as if intending to pass by, and with a quick movement
shot him in the ear. The Chechen started up, but it was too late,
and he fell.
The Cossacks, quite out of breath, dragged the bodies aside and
took the weapons from them. Each of the red-haired Chechens had
been a man, and each one had his own individual expression.
Lukashka was carried to the cart. He continued to swear in Russian
and in Tartar.
‘No fear, I’ll strangle him with my hands. ANNA SENI!’ he cried,
struggling. But he soon became quiet from weakness.
Olenin rode home. In the evening he was told that Lukashka was at
death’s door, but that a Tartar from beyond the river had
undertaken to cure him with herbs.
The bodies were brought to the village office. The women and the
little boys hastened to look at them.
It was growing dark when Olenin returned, and he could not collect
himself after what he had seen. But towards night memories of the
evening before came rushing to his mind. He looked out of the
window, Maryanka was passing to and fro from the house to the
cowshed, putting things straight. Her mother had gone to the
vineyard and her father to the office. Olenin could not wait till
she had quite finished her work, but went out to meet her. She was
in the hut standing with her back towards him. Olenin thought she
felt shy.
‘Maryanka,’ said he, ‘I say, Maryanka! May I come in?’
She suddenly turned. There was a scarcely perceptible trace of
tears in her eyes and her face was beautiful in its sadness. She
looked at him in silent dignity.
Olenin again said:
‘Maryanka, I have come—’
‘Leave me alone!’ she said. Her face did not change but the tears
ran down her cheeks.
‘What are you crying for? What is it?’
‘What?’ she repeated in a rough voice. ‘Cossacks have been killed,
that’s what for.’
‘Lukashka?’ said Olenin.
‘Go away! What do you want?’
‘Maryanka!’ said Olenin, approaching her.
‘You will never get anything from me!’
‘Maryanka, don’t speak like that,’ Olenin entreated.
‘Get away. I’m sick of you!’ shouted the girl, stamping her foot,
and moved threateningly towards him. And her face expressed such
abhorrence, such contempt, and such anger that Olenin suddenly
understood that there was no hope for him, and that his first
impression of this woman’s inaccessibility had been perfectly
correct.
Olenin said nothing more, but ran out of the hut.
For two hours after returning home he lay on his bed motionless.
Then he went to his company commander and obtained leave to visit
the staff. Without taking leave of anyone, and sending Vanyusha to
settle his accounts with his landlord, he prepared to leave for
the fort where his regiment was stationed. Daddy Eroshka was the
only one to see him off. They had a drink, and then a second, and
then yet another. Again as on the night of his departure from
Moscow, a three-horsed conveyance stood waiting at the door. But
Olenin did not confer with himself as he had done then, and did
not say to himself that all he had thought and done here was ‘not
it’. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved Maryanka more
than ever, and knew that he could never be loved by her.
‘Well, good-bye, my lad!’ said Daddy Eroshka. ‘When you go on an
expedition, be wise and listen to my words—the words of an old
man. When you are out on a raid or the like (you know I’m an old
wolf and have seen things), and when they begin firing, don’t get
into a crowd where there are many men. When you fellows get
frightened you always try to get close together with a lot of
others. You think it is merrier to be with others, but that’s
where it is worst of all! They always aim at a crowd. Now I used
to keep farther away from the others and went alone, and I’ve
never been wounded. Yet what things haven’t I seen in my day?’
‘But you’ve got a bullet in your back,’ remarked Vanyusha, who was
clearing up the room.
‘That was the Cossacks fooling about,’ answered Eroshka.
‘Cossacks? How was that?’ asked Olenin.
‘Oh, just so. We were drinking. Vanka Sitkin, one of the Cossacks,
got merry, and puff! he gave me one from his pistol just here.’
‘Yes, and did it hurt?’ asked Olenin. ‘Vanyusha, will you soon be
ready?’ he added.
‘Ah, where’s the hurry! Let me tell you. When he banged into me,
the bullet did not break the bone but remained here. And I say:
“You’ve killed me, brother. Eh! What have you done to me? I won’t
let you off! You’ll have to stand me a pailful!”’
‘Well, but did it hurt?’ Olenin asked again, scarcely listening to
the tale.
‘Let me finish. He stood a pailful, and we drank it, but the blood
went on flowing. The whole room was drenched and covered with
blood. Grandad Burlak, he says, “The lad will give up the ghost.
Stand a bottle of the sweet sort, or we shall have you taken up!”
They bought more drink, and boozed and boozed—’
‘Yes, but did it hurt you much?’ Olenin asked once more.
‘Hurt, indeed! Don’t interrupt: I don’t like it. Let me finish. We
boozed and boozed till morning, and I fell asleep on the top of
the oven, drunk. When I woke in the morning I could not unbend
myself anyhow—’
‘Was it very painful?’ repeated Olenin, thinking that now he would
at last get an answer to his question.
‘Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but
I could not bend and could not walk.’
‘And then it healed up?’ said Olenin, not even laughing, so heavy
was his heart.
‘It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!’ And
lifting his shirt he showed his powerful back, where just near the
bone a bullet could be felt and rolled about.
‘Feel how it rolls,’ he said, evidently amusing himself with the
bullet as with a toy. ‘There now, it has rolled to the back.’
‘And Lukashka, will he recover?’ asked Olenin.
‘Heaven only knows! There’s no doctor. They’ve gone for one.’
‘Where will they get one? From Groznoe?’ asked Olenin. ‘No, my
lad. Were I the Tsar I’d have hung all your Russian doctors long
ago. Cutting is all they know! There’s our Cossack Baklashka, no
longer a real man now that they’ve cut off his leg! That shows
they’re fools. What’s Baklashka good for now? No, my lad, in the
mountains there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vorchik, he
was on an expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well,
your doctors gave him up, but one of theirs came from the
mountains and cured him! They understand herbs, my lad!’
‘Come, stop talking rubbish,’ said Olenin. ‘I’d better send a
doctor from headquarters.’
‘Rubbish!’ the old man said mockingly. ‘Fool, fool! Rubbish.
You’ll send a doctor!—If yours cured people, Cossacks and
Chechens would go to you for treatment, but as it is your officers
and colonels send to the mountains for doctors. Yours are all
humbugs, all humbugs.’
Olenin
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