The Cossacks - graf Tolstoy Leo (suggested reading TXT) 📗
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gate. Twilight has fallen on the village. The air is full of the
smell of vegetables, cattle, and scented kisyak smoke. From the
gates and along the streets Cossack women come running, carrying
lighted rags. From the yards one hears the snorting and quiet
chewing of the cattle eased of their milk, while in the street
only the voices of women and children sound as they call to one
another. It is rare on a weekday to hear the drunken voice of a
man.
One of the Cossack wives, a tall, masculine old woman, approaches
Granny Ulitka from the homestead opposite and asks her for a
light. In her hand she holds a rag.
‘Have you cleared up. Granny?’
‘The girl is lighting the fire. Is it fire you want?’ says Granny
Ulitka, proud of being able to oblige her neighbour.
Both women enter the hut, and coarse hands unused to dealing with
small articles tremblingly lift the lid of a matchbox, which is a
rarity in the Caucasus. The masculine-looking new-comer sits down
on the doorstep with the evident intention of having a chat.
‘And is your man at the school. Mother?’ she asked.
‘He’s always teaching the youngsters. Mother. But he writes that
he’ll come home for the holidays,’ said the cornet’s wife.
‘Yes, he’s a clever man, one sees; it all comes useful.’
‘Of course it does.’
‘And my Lukashka is at the cordon; they won’t let him come home,’
said the visitor, though the cornet’s wife had known all this long
ago. She wanted to talk about her Lukashka whom she had lately
fitted out for service in the Cossack regiment, and whom she
wished to marry to the cornet’s daughter, Maryanka.
‘So he’s at the cordon?’
‘He is. Mother. He’s not been home since last holidays. The other
day I sent him some shirts by Fomushkin. He says he’s all right,
and that his superiors are satisfied. He says they are looking out
for abreks again. Lukashka is quite happy, he says.’
‘Ah well, thank God,’ said the cornet’s wife.’ “Snatcher” is
certainly the only word for him.’ Lukashka was surnamed ‘the
Snatcher’ because of his bravery in snatching a boy from a watery
grave, and the cornet’s wife alluded to this, wishing in her turn
to say something agreeable to Lukashka’s mother.
‘I thank God, Mother, that he’s a good son! He’s a fine fellow,
everyone praises him,’ says Lukashka’s mother. ‘All I wish is to
get him married; then I could die in peace.’
‘Well, aren’t there plenty of young women in the village?’
answered the cornet’s wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid
of the matchbox with her horny hands.
‘Plenty, Mother, plenty,’ remarked Lukashka’s mother, shaking her
head. ‘There’s your girl now, your Maryanka—that’s the sort of
girl! You’d have to search through the whole place to find such
another!’ The cornet’s wife knows what Lukashka’s mother is after,
but though she believes him to be a good Cossack she hangs back:
first because she is a cornet’s wife and rich, while Lukashka is
the son of a simple Cossack and fatherless, secondly because she
does not want to part with her daughter yet, but chiefly because
propriety demands it.
‘Well, when Maryanka grows up she’ll be marriageable too,’ she
answers soberly and modestly.
‘I’ll send the matchmakers to you—I’ll send them! Only let me get
the vineyard done and then we’ll come and make our bows to you,’
says Lukashka’s mother. ‘And we’ll make our bows to Elias Vasilich
too.’
‘Elias, indeed!’ says the cornet’s wife proudly. ‘It’s to me you
must speak! All in its own good time.’
Lukashka’s mother sees by the stern face of the cornet’s wife that
it is not the time to say anything more just now, so she lights
her rag with the match and says, rising: ‘Don’t refuse us, think
of my words. I’ll go, it is time to light the fire.’
As she crosses the road swinging the burning rag, she meets
Maryanka, who bows.
‘Ah, she’s a regular queen, a splendid worker, that girl!’ she
thinks, looking at the beautiful maiden. ‘What need for her to
grow any more? It’s time she was married and to a good home;
married to Lukashka!’
But Granny Ulitka had her own cares and she remained sitting on
the threshold thinking hard about something, till the girl called
her.
The male population of the village spend their time on military
expeditions and in the cordon—or ‘at their posts’, as the
Cossacks say. Towards evening, that same Lukashka the Snatcher,
about whom the old women had been talking, was standing on a
watch-tower of the Nizhni-Prototsk post situated on the very banks
of the Terek. Leaning on the railing of the tower and screwing up
his eyes, he looked now far into the distance beyond the Terek,
now down at his fellow Cossacks, and occasionally he addressed the
latter. The sun was already approaching the snowy range that
gleamed white above the fleecy clouds. The clouds undulating at
the base of the mountains grew darker and darker. The clearness of
evening was noticeable in the air. A sense of freshness came from
the woods, though round the post it was still hot. The voices of
the talking Cossacks vibrated more sonorously than before. The
moving mass of the Terek’s rapid brown waters contrasted more
vividly with its motionless banks. The waters were beginning to
subside and here and there the wet sands gleamed drab on the banks
and in the shallows. The other side of the river, just opposite
the cordon, was deserted; only an immense waste of low-growing
reeds stretched far away to the very foot of the mountains. On the
low bank, a little to one side, could be seen the flat-roofed clay
houses and the funnel-shaped chimneys of a Chechen village. The
sharp eyes of the Cossack who stood on the watch-tower followed,
through the evening smoke of the pro-Russian village, the tiny
moving figures of the Chechen women visible in the distance in
their red and blue garments.
Although the Cossacks expected abreks to cross over and attack
them from the Tartar side at any moment, especially as it was May
when the woods by the Terek are so dense that it is difficult to
pass through them on foot and the river is shallow enough in
places for a horseman to ford it, and despite the fact that a
couple of days before a Cossack had arrived with a circular from
the commander of the regiment announcing that spies had reported
the intention of a party of some eight men to cross the Terek, and
ordering special vigilance—no special vigilance was being
observed in the cordon. The Cossacks, unarmed and with their
horses unsaddled just as if they were at home, spent their time
some in fishing, some in drinking, and some in hunting. Only the
horse of the man on duty was saddled, and with its feet hobbled
was moving about by the brambles near the wood, and only the
sentinel had his Circassian coat on and carried a gun and sword.
The corporal, a tall thin Cossack with an exceptionally long back
and small hands and feet, was sitting on the earth-bank of a hut
with his beshmet unbuttoned. On his face was the lazy, bored
expression of a superior, and having shut his eyes he dropped his
head upon the palm first of one hand and then of the other. An
elderly Cossack with a broad greyish-black beard was lying in his
shirt, girdled with a black strap, close to the river and gazing
lazily at the waves of the Terek as they monotonously foamed and
swirled. Others, also overcome by the heat and half naked, were
rinsing clothes in the Terek, plaiting a fishing line, or humming
tunes as they lay on the hot sand of the river bank. One Cossack,
with a thin face much burnt by the sun, lay near the hut evidently
dead drunk, by a wall which though it had been in shadow some two
hours previously was now exposed to the sun’s fierce slanting
rays.
Lukashka, who stood on the watch-tower, was a tall handsome lad
about twenty years old and very like his mother. His face and
whole build, in spite of the angularity of youth, indicated great
strength, both physical and moral. Though he had only lately
joined the Cossacks at the front, it was evident from the
expression of his face and the calm assurance of his attitude that
he had already acquired the somewhat proud and warlike bearing
peculiar to Cossacks and to men generally who continually carry
arms, and that he felt he was a Cossack and fully knew his own
value. His ample Circassian coat was torn in some places, his cap
was on the back of his head Chechen fashion, and his leggings had
slipped below his knees. His clothing was not rich, but he wore it
with that peculiar Cossack foppishness which consists in imitating
the Chechen brave. Everything on a real brave is ample, ragged,
and neglected, only his weapons are costly. But these ragged
clothes and these weapons are belted and worn with a certain air
and matched in a certain manner, neither of which can be acquired
by everybody and which at once strike the eye of a Cossack or a
hillsman. Lukashka had this resemblance to a brave. With his hands
folded under his sword, and his eyes nearly closed, he kept
looking at the distant Tartar village. Taken separately his
features were not beautiful, but anyone who saw his stately
carriage and his dark-browed intelligent face would involuntarily
say, ‘What a fine fellow!’
‘Look at the women, what a lot of them are walking about in the
village,’ said he in a sharp voice, languidly showing his
brilliant white teeth and not addressing anyone in particular.
Nazarka who was lying below immediately lifted his head and
remarked:
‘They must be going for water.’
‘Supposing one scared them with a gun?’ said Lukashka, laughing,
‘Wouldn’t they be frightened?’
‘It wouldn’t reach.’
‘What! Mine would carry beyond. Just wait a bit, and when their
feast comes round I’ll go and visit Girey Khan and drink buza
there,’ said Lukashka, angrily swishing away the mosquitoes which
attached themselves to him.
A rustling in the thicket drew the Cossack’s attention. A pied
mongrel half-setter, searching for a scent and violently wagging
its scantily furred tail, came running to the cordon. Lukashka
recognized the dog as one belonging to his neighbour, Uncle
Eroshka, a hunter, and saw, following it through the thicket, the
approaching figure of the hunter himself.
Uncle Eroshka was a gigantic Cossack with a broad, snow-white
beard and such broad shoulders and chest that in the wood, where
there was no one to compare him with, he did not look particularly
tall, so well proportioned were his powerful limbs. He wore a
tattered coat and, over the bands with which his legs were
swathed, sandals made of undressed deer’s hide tied on with
strings; while on his head he had a rough little white cap. He
carried over one shoulder a screen to hide behind when shooting
pheasants, and a bag containing a hen for luring hawks, and a
small falcon; over the other shoulder, attached by a strap, was a
wild cat he had killed; and stuck in his belt behind were some
little bags containing bullets, gunpowder, and bread, a horse’s
tail to swish away the mosquitoes, a large dagger in a torn
scabbard smeared with old bloodstains, and two dead pheasants.
Having glanced at the cordon he stopped.
‘Hy, Lyam!’ he called to the dog in
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