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

Cossack village of

Novomlinsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies’

wagons were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and

with logs gathered from various yards (where they had not been

sufficiently securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service

Corps men were driving piles in the ground to which to tie the

horses, and the quartermasters were going about the streets just

as if they were at home, showing officers and men to their

quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in a line, the

company’s carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat porridge

was being cooked. Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the

sergeant-major, Onisim Mikhaylovich, and all this was in the

Cossack village where it was reported that the companies were

ordered to take up their quarters: therefore they were at home

here. But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were,

and whether they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they

were Old Believers or not—was all quite immaterial. Having

received their pay and been dismissed, tired out and covered with

dust, the soldiers noisily and in disorder, like a swarm of bees

about to settle, spread over the squares and streets; quite

regardless of the Cossacks’ ill will, chattering merrily and with

their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts

and hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered

the women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons,

a large group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between

their teeth they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot

sky, becoming visible when it thickened into white clouds as it

rose, and now at the camp fires which were quivering in the pure

air like molten glass, and bantered and made fun of the Cossack

men and women because they do not live at all like Russians. In

all the yards one could see soldiers and hear their laughter and

the exasperated and shrill cries of Cossack women defending their

houses and refusing to give the soldiers water or cooking

utensils. Little boys and girls, clinging to their mothers and to

each other, followed all the movements of the troopers (never

before seen by them) with frightened curiosity, or ran after them

at a respectful distance. The old Cossacks came out silently and

dismally and sat on the earthen embankments of their huts, and

watched the soldiers’ activity with an air of leaving it all to

the will of God without understanding what would come of it.

 

Olenin, who had joined the Caucasian Army as a cadet three months

before, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village,

the house of the cornet, Elias Vasilich—that is to say at Granny

Ulitka’s.

 

‘Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmitri Andreich,’ said the

panting Vanyusha to Olenin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and

mounted on a Kabarda horse which he had bought in Groznoe, was

after a five-hours’ march gaily entering the yard of the quarters

assigned to him.

 

‘Why, what’s the matter?’ he asked, caressing his horse and

looking merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried

Vanyusha, who had arrived with the baggage wagons and was

unpacking.

 

Olenin looked quite a different man. In place of his clean-shaven

lips and chin he had a youthful moustache and a small beard.

Instead of a sallow complexion, the result of nights turned into

day, his cheeks, his forehead, and the skin behind his ears were

now red with healthy sunburn. In place of a clean new black suit

he wore a dirty white Circassian coat with a deeply pleated skirt,

and he bore arms. Instead of a freshly starched collar, his neck

was tightly clasped by the red band of his silk BESHMET. He wore

Circassian dress but did not wear it well, and anyone would have

known him for a Russian and not a Tartar brave. It was the thing—

but not the real thing. But for all that, his whole person

breathed health, joy, and satisfaction.

 

‘Yes, it seems funny to you,’ said Vanyusha, ‘but just try to talk

to these people yourself: they set themselves against one and

there’s an end of it. You can’t get as much as a word out of

them.’ Vanyusha angrily threw down a pail on the threshold.

‘Somehow they don’t seem like Russians.’

 

‘You should speak to the Chief of the Village!’

 

‘But I don’t know where he lives,’ said Vanyusha in an offended

tone.

 

‘Who has upset you so?’ asked Olenin, looking round.

 

‘The devil only knows. Faugh! There is no real master here. They

say he has gone to some kind of KRIGA, and the old woman is a real

devil. God preserve us!’ answered Vanyusha, putting his hands to

his head. ‘How we shall live here I don’t know. They are worse

than Tartars, I do declare—though they consider themselves

Christians! A Tartar is bad enough, but all the same he is more

noble. Gone to the KRIGA indeed! What this KRIGA they have

invented is, I don’t know!’ concluded Vanyusha, and turned aside.

 

‘It’s not as it is in the serfs’ quarters at home, eh?’ chaffed

Olenin without dismounting.

 

‘Please sir, may I have your horse?’ said Vanyusha, evidently

perplexed by this new order of things but resigning himself to his

fate.

 

‘So a Tartar is more noble, eh, Vanyusha?’ repeated Olenin,

dismounting and slapping the saddle.

 

‘Yes, you’re laughing! You think it funny,’ muttered Vanyusha

angrily.

 

‘Come, don’t be angry, Vanyusha,’ replied Olenin, still smiling.

‘Wait a minute, I’ll go and speak to the people of the house;

you’ll see I shall arrange everything. You don’t know what a jolly

life we shall have here. Only don’t get upset.’

 

Vanyusha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked

contemptuously after his master, and shook his head. Vanyusha

regarded Olenin as only his master, and Olenin regarded Vanyusha

as only his servant; and they would both have been much surprised

if anyone had told them that they were friends, as they really

were without knowing it themselves. Vanyusha had been taken into

his proprietor’s house when he was only eleven and when Olenin was

the same age. When Olenin was fifteen he gave Vanyusha lessons for

a time and taught him to read French, of which the latter was

inordinately proud; and when in specially good spirits he still

let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he did so.

 

Olenin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of

the hut. Maryanka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all

Cossack women do in the house, jumped away from the door,

frightened, and pressing herself against the wall covered the

lower part other face with the broad sleeve of her Tartar smock.

Having opened the door wider, Olenin in the semi-darkness of the

passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure of the young Cossack

girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily

noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock,

and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike terror

and wild curiosity. ‘This is SHE,’ thought Olenin. ‘But there will

be many others like her’ came at once into his head, and he opened

the inner door. Old Granny Ulitka, also dressed only in a smock,

was stooping with her back turned to him, sweeping the floor.

 

‘Good-day to you. Mother! I’ve come about my lodgings,’ he began.

 

The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still

handsome face towards him.

 

‘What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I’ll teach

you to mock; may the black plague seize you!’ she shouted, looking

askance from under her frowning brow at the new-comer.

 

Olenin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian

Army (of which he was a member) would be everywhere received

joyfully, and especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war;

and he therefore felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing

presence of mind however he tried to explain that he meant to pay

for his lodgings, but the old woman would not give him a hearing.

 

‘What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your

scraped face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he’ll

show you your place. I don’t want your dirty money! A likely

thing—just as if we had never seen any! You’ll stink the house

out with your beastly tobacco and want to put it right with money!

Think we’ve never seen a pest! May you be shot in your bowels and

your heart!’ shrieked the old woman in a piercing voice,

interrupting Olenin.

 

‘It seems Vanyusha was right!’ thought Olenin. “A Tartar would be

nobler”,’ and followed by Granny Ulitka’s abuse he went out of the

hut. As he was leaving, Maryanka, still wearing only her pink

smock, but with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white

kerchief, suddenly slipped out from the passage past him.

Pattering rapidly down the steps with her bare feet she ran from

the porch, stopped, and looking round hastily with laughing eyes

at the young man, vanished round the corner of the hut.

 

Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening

from under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the

young beauty, struck Olenin even more powerfully than before.

‘Yes, it must be SHE,’ he thought, and troubling his head still

less about the lodgings, he kept looking round at Maryanka as he

approached Vanyusha.

 

‘There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild

filly!’ said Vanyusha, who though still busy with the luggage

wagon had now cheered up a bit. ‘LA FAME!’ he added in a loud

triumphant voice and burst out laughing.