Hadji Murád - Leo Tolstoy (books suggested by bill gates .TXT) 📗

well, very well,” said Vorontsóv; “but what exactly does he wish to do?⁠ ⁠… Sit down, sit down!”

Hadji Murád sat down, and said that if only they would send him to the Lesghian line, and would give him an army, he would guarantee to raise the whole of Daghestan, and Shamil would then be unable to hold out.

“That would be excellent.⁠ ⁠… I’ll think it over,” said Vorontsóv.

The interpreter translated Vorontsóv’s words to Hadji Murád.

Hadji Murád pondered.

“Tell the Sirdar one thing more,” Hadji Murád began again: “that my family are in the hands of my enemy, and that as long as they are in the mountains I am bound, and cannot serve him. Shamil would kill my wife and my mother and my children if I went openly against him. Let the Prince first exchange my family for the prisoners he has, and then I will destroy Shamil or die!”

“All right, all right,” said Vorontsóv. “I will think it over.⁠ ⁠… Now let him go to the chief of the staff, and explain to him in detail his position, intentions, and wishes.”

Thus ended the first interview between Hadji Murád and Vorontsóv.

That evening, at the new theatre, which was decorated in Oriental style, an Italian opera was performed. Vorontsóv was in his box when the striking figure of the limping Hadji Murád wearing a turban appeared in the stalls. He came in with Lóris-Mélikov,28 Vorontsóv’s aide-de-camp, in whose charge he was placed, and took a seat in the front row. Having sat through the first act with Oriental, Mohammedan dignity, expressing no pleasure, but only obvious indifference, he rose and looking calmly round at the audience went out, drawing to himself everybody’s attention.

The next day was Monday, and there was the usual evening party at the Vorontsóvs’. In the large brightly-lighted hall a band was playing, hidden among trees. Young women and not very young women, in dresses that displayed their bare necks, arms, and breasts, turned round and round in the embrace of men in bright uniforms. At the buffet, footmen in red swallowtail coats and wearing shoes and knee-breeches, poured out champagne and served sweetmeats to the ladies. The “Sirdar’s” wife also, in spite of her age, went about half-dressed among the visitors, smiling affably, and through the interpreter said a few amiable words to Hadji Murád, who glanced at the visitors with the same indifference he had shown yesterday in the theater. After the hostess, other half-naked women came up to him, and all of them stood shamelessly before him and smilingly asked him the same question: How he liked what he saw? Vorontsóv himself, wearing gold epaulets and gold shoulder-knots, with his white cross and ribbon at his neck, came up and asked him the same question, evidently feeling sure, like all the others, that Hadji Murád could not help being pleased at what he saw. Hadji Murád replied to Vorontsóv as he had replied to them all, that among his people nothing of the kind was done, without expressing an opinion as to whether it was good or bad that it was so.

Here at the ball Hadji Murád tried to speak to Vorontsóv about buying out his family; but Vorontsóv, pretending that he had not heard him, walked away; and Lóris-Mélikov afterwards told Hadji Murád that this was the place to talk about business.

When it struck eleven Hadji Murád, having made sure of the time by the watch the Vorontsóvs had given him, asked Lóris-Mélikov whether he might now leave. Lóris-Mélikov said he might, though it would be better to stay. In spite of this Hadji Murád did not stay, but drove in the phaeton placed at his disposal to the quarters that had been assigned to him.

XI

On the fifth day of Hadji Murád’s stay in Tiflis, Lóris-Mélikov, the Viceroy’s aide-de-camp, came to see him at the latter’s command.

“My head and my hands are glad to serve the Sirdar,” said Hadji Murád with his usual diplomatic expression, bowing his head and putting his hands to his chest. “Command me!” said he, looking amiably into Lóris-Mélikov’s face.

Lóris-Mélikov sat down in an armchair placed by the table, and Hadji Murád sank onto a low divan opposite, and resting his hands on his knees, bowed his head and listened attentively to what the other said to him.

Lóris-Mélikov, who spoke Tartar fluently, told him that though the Prince knew about his past life, he yet wanted to hear the whole story from himself.

“Tell it me, and I will write it down and translate it into Russian, and the Prince will send it to the Emperor.”

Hadji Murád remained silent for a while (he never interrupted anyone, but always waited to see whether his interlocutor had not something more to say). Then he raised his head, shook back his cap, and smiled the peculiar childlike smile that had captivated Márya Vasílevna.

“I can do that,” said he, evidently flattered by the thought that his story would be read by the Emperor.

“Thou must tell me” (nobody is addressed as “you”in Tartar) “everything, deliberately from the beginning,” said Lóris-Mélikov, drawing a notebook from his pocket.

“I can do that, only there is much⁠—very much⁠—to tell! Many events have happened!” said Hadji Murád.

“If thou canst not do it all in one day, thou wilt finish it another time,” said Lóris-Mélikov.

“Shall I begin at the beginning?”

“Yes, at the very beginning⁠ ⁠… where thou wast born, and where thou didst live.”

Hadji Murád’s head sank, and he sat in that position for a long time. Then he took a stick that lay beside the divan, drew a little knife with an ivory gold-inlaid handle, sharp as a razor, from under his dagger, and started whittling the stick with it and speaking at the same time.

“Write: Born in Tselméss, a small aoul, ‘the size of an ass’s head,’ as we in the mountains say,” he began. “not far from it, about two cannon-shots, lies Khunzákh, where the Khans lived. Our family was closely connected