And quiet flows the Don; a novel (15 page)

"Mitka! Mitka! Hey, Mitka!"

But Mitka only sighed and drew his legs up. Grishaka grew more ruthless and began to bore the stick into Mitka's stomach. With a gasp Mitka seized the end of the stick and woke up suddenly.

"How you sleep!" grumbled the old man.

"Quiet, Grandad. Don't bumble," Mitka muttered sleepily, groping for his boots.

The lad made his way to the square. The village cocks were already crowing for the second time. As he passed Father Vissarion's house he heard a cock flap its wings in the hen-coop and give a mighty bellow worthy of the head deacon, while the hens clucked in alarm,

A night watchman was asleep on the steps of the shop, his nose tucked into the sheepskin warmth of his collar.

Mitka reached Mokhov's fence, set down his fishing tackle, and on tiptoe, so as not to disturb the dogs, crept into the porch. He tried the cold iron latch. The door was shut fast. He clambered across the banister of the verandah and went up to the window. It was half-closed. Through the black gap came the sweet scent of a girl's warm, sleeping body and the mysteriously sweet smell of perfume.

"Yelizaveta Sergeyevna!"

Mitka thought he had called very loudly. He

waited. Silence. "Suppose I'm at the wrong window! Suppose Mokhov's asleep in there! I'll be for it then. He'll use a gun!"

"Yelizaveta Sergeyevna, coming fishing?"

If he'd mistaken the window there'd be some fish caught all right!

"Are you getting up?" he said in irritation, and thrust his head through the window opening.

"Who's there?" a low startled voice sounded in the darkness.

"It's me, Korshunov. Coming fishing?"

"Oh! Just a minute."

There was a sound of movement inside. Her warm, sleepy voice seemed to smell of mint. Mitka saw something white and rustling moving about the room.

"I'd rather sleep with her than get cold fishing," he thought vaguely with the smell of the bedroom in his nostrils.

After a while her smiling face, framed in a white kerchief, appeared at the window.

"I'm coming out this way. Give me your hand." As he helped her down, she looked closely into his eyes.

"I didn't take long, did I?"

"It's all right, we'll be in time."

They went down to the Don. She rubbed her sleep-swollen eyes with a pink hand.

"I was sleeping so sweetly. I could have slept on. It's too early to go yet."

"We'll be just in time."

They followed the first lane from the square leading down to the river. During the night the river had risen, and the boat, which had been left high and dry the evening before, was now rocking on the water a little way out.

"I'll have to take off my shoes," she sighed, measuring the distance to the boat with her eyes.

"Let me carry you," Mitka proposed.

"No, I'd better take my shoes off."

"Carrying you would be easier."

"I'd rather not," she said, with embarrassment in her voice.

Mitka embraced her legs above the knees with his left arm, and, lifting her easily, splashed through the water. She clutched involuntarily at the finn, dark column of his neck and laughed with a cooing softness.

If Mitka had not stumbled over a stone used by the village women when washing clothes, there would not have been a brief, accidental kiss. She gasped and pressed her face against Mitka's hard cracked lips, and he came to a halt two paces away from the boat. The water swirled over the tops of his boots and chilled his feet.

Unfastening the boat, he pushed it off and jumped in. He rowed standing. The water rustled and wept under the stern. The boat gently breasted the stream, making for the opposite bank. The fishing rods jumped and clattered at the bottom of the boat.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, glancing back.

"To the other side."

The keel grated on the sandy shore. Without asking permission he picked the girl up in his arms, and carried her into a clump of hawthorn. She bit at his face, scratched, gave one or two stifled screams, and feeling her strength ebbing, she wept angrily, but without tears.

They returned about nine o'clock. The sky was wrapped in a ruddy yellow haze. A strong breeze danced over the river, maning the waves. The boat danced over the waves, and the cold frothy spray sprinkled on Liza's pallid face and clung to her lashes and the strands of her hair. She wearily closed her vacant eyes, twisting in her fingers a flower that had fallen into the boat. Mitka rowed without looking at her. A small carp and a bream lay goggle-eyed at his feet, their mouths twisted in death; Mit-ka's face wore an expression of mingled guilt, content and anxiety.

"I'll take you to Semyonov's landing stage.

It will be nearer for you," he told her, as he turned the boat into the stream.

"All right/' she whispered.

Along the deserted shore the dusty wattle fences pined in the hot wind, drenching the air with the smell of burnt brushwood. The heavy over-ripe caps of the sunflowers, pecked by sparrows, drooped low, scattering fluffy seeds over the ground. The meadowland was emerald with the young aftermath. Colts were frisking about in the distance; and the hot southerly wind wafted up the echoing laughter of the bells tied round their necks.

As Liza was getting out of the boat Mitka picked up a fish and held it out to her.

"Here, take the catch."

Her lashes flickered in alarm, but she took the fish.

"Well, I'm going."

Holding the fish by the willow twig Mitka had fixed through their gills, she turned miserably away. Gone were her recent assurance and gaiety, left behind in the hawthorn bushes.

"Liza!"

She turned round, surprise and irritation in her frown.

"Come back a minute."

And when she came closer he said, annoyed at his own embarrassment, "We were a bit care-

less. Your dress at the back ... there's a stain on it. It's only a little one.. . ."

A hot flush spread over her face and neck. After a moment's silence, Mitka advised: "Go by the back ways,"

"I'll have to pass through the square in any case. ... I meant to put my black skirt on," she whispered, looking at Mitka with regret and sudden hatred.

"Let me green it a bit with a leaf," Mitka suggested simply, and was surprised to see the tears come into her eyes.

Like the rustling whisper of a summer breeze the news flew round the village. "Mitka Kor-shunov's been out all night with Sergei Plato-novich's daughter." The women talked about it as they drove out the cattle to join the village herd in the morning, as they stood in the narrow shade of the well-sweeps with the grey dust swirling round them and water dripping from their buckets, or as they beat out their washing on the flat stones down by the river.

"Her own mother's dead you know."

"Her father never has a minute to spare, and her stepmother just doesn't trouble."

"The watchman says he saw a man tapping at the end window at midnight. He thought at first it was someone trying to break in. He ran to see who it waS/ and found it was Mitka."

"The girls these days, I don't know what they're coming to."

"Mitka told my Nikita he's going to marry her."

"He'd better wipe his nose first."

"He forced her, they say."

"Don't you believe it.. . ."

The rumours flowed round main street and back street, smearing the girl's good name, as a clean gate is smeared with thick tar.

Finally they descended on the greying head of Mokhov himself and crushed him to the ground. For two days he went neither to the shop nor to the mill. His servants, who lived downstairs, came to him only at dinner.

On the third day Sergei Platonovich had his dapple-grey stallion harnessed to his droshki, and drove to the stanitsa, bowing remotely to the Cossacks he met on the way. The droshki was followed by a highly-varnished carriage, which swished out of the yard, drawn by a pair of prancing black horses. Yemelyan the coachman, sucking his pipe, which had become permanently attached to his greying beard, shook out the blue silk of the reins and the two black horses went prancing down the street. Liza could be seen sitting pale-faced behind Yemelyan's craggy back. She held a light valise on her knees and was smiling sadly. At the

gate she waved her glove to Vladimir and her stepmother.

Pantelei Prokofyevich happened to be limping out of the shop at the moment, and he stopped to ask the yardman Nikita: "Where's the master's daughter going?"

And Nikita, condescending to the simple human weakness, replied: "To Moscow, to study."

The next day an incident occurred which was long the subject of talk down by the river, under the shadow of the well-sweeps, and when the cattle were being driven out to graze. Just before nightfall (the village herd had already returned from the steppe) Mitka went to see Sergei Platonovich. He had waited until evening in order to avoid meeting anyone, for he came not merely to make a friendly call, but to ask for the hand of Mokhov's daughter, Liza.

He had met her perhaps four times, not more. At the last meeting the conversation had taken the following course:

"Liza, will you marry me?"

"Nonsense!"

"I shall care for you, I'll love you. We have people to work for us, you shall sit at the window and read your books."

"You're a fool!"

Mitka took offence, and said no more. That evening he went home early, and in the

morning he announced to his astonished father:

"Father, arrange for my marriage."

"Don't be a fool."

"Honestly, Father, I'm not joking."

"In a hurry, aren't you? Who're you smitten on-crazy Marfa?"

"Send the match-makers to Sergei Platono-vich."

Miron Grigoryevich carefully set down the cobbling tools with which he was mending harness, and roared with laughter.

"You're in a funny vein today, my son."

But Mitka stuck to his guns, and his father flared up.

"You fool! Sergei Platonovich has a capital of over a hundred thousand rubles. He's a merchant, and what are you? Clear off, or I'll leather you with this strap."

"We've got fourteen pairs of bullocks, and look at the land we own. Besides he's a muzhik, and we're Cossacks."

"Clear off!" Miron said curtly. He did not like long discussions.

Mitka found a sympathetic listener only in his grandfather. The old man attempted to persuade Miron in favour of his son's suit.

"Miron!" old Grishaka said. "Why don't you agree? As the boy's taken it into his head..,."

"Father, you're a great baby, God's truth you are! Mitka's silly enough, but you're...."

"Hold your tongue!" Grishaka rapped his stick on the floor. "Aren't we good enough for them? He ought to take it as an honour for a Cossack's son to wed his daughter. He'll give up, and gladly too. We're known all over the countryside. We're not farm-hands, we're masters. Go and ask him, Miron. What's stopping you? Let him give his mill as the dowry."

Miron snorted and went out into the yard. So Mitka decided to wait until evening and then go to Mokhov himself. He knew that his father's obstinacy was like a well-rooted elm: you might bend it, but you could never break it. It was not worth trying.

He went whistling as far as Mokhov's front door, then grew timid. He hesitated a moment, and finally went through the yard to the side door. On the steps he asked the maid in her crackling starched apron: "Master at home?" "He's drinking his tea. Wait!" Mitka sat down and waited, lit a cigarette, smoked it, and crushed the end on the floor. Mokhov came out, brushing crumbs off his waistcoat. When he saw Mitka he frowned, but said: "Come in."

Mitka entered Mokhov's cool private room that smelled of books and tobacco, feeling that

the courage with which he had been charged so far had been sufficient to last only to the merchant's threshold. The merchant went to his table, and swung round on his heels: "Well?" Behind his back his fingers scratched at the top of the table.

"I've come to find out . . ." Mitka plunged into the cold slime of Mokhov's piercing eyes and shuddered. "Perhaps you'll give me Liza?" Despair, anger, fear, all combined to bring his face out in perspiration, fine as dew during a drought.

Mokhov's left eyebrow quivered, and his upper lip writhed back from the gums. He stretched out his neck and leaned all his body forward:

"What? Wha-a-at? You scoundrel! Get out! I'll have you before the ataman! You son of a bitch!"

Encouraged by this shout, Mitka watched the grey-blue blood flooding into Mokhov's cheeks.

"Don't take it as an insult. I only wanted to make up for what I've done."

Mokhov rolled his bloodshot eyes and threw a massive iron ash-tray at Mitka's feet. It rebounded and struck him on the knee. But he stoically bore the pain, and jerking open the door, shouted, baring his teeth with resentment and pain:

"As you like, Sergei Platonovich, just as you

like, but I meant it. . . . Who would want her now? I thought I'd cover her shame. But now .. . even a dog won't touch a gnawed bone."

Pressing a crumpled handkerchief to his lips, Mokhov followed on Mitka's heels. He barred the way to the main door, and Mitka ran out into the yard. Here the master had only to wink to Yemelyan the coachman, and as Mitka was struggling with the stout latch at the wicket-gate, four unleashed hounds tore round the corner of the barn. Seeing a stranger, they bounded across the clean-swept yard straight at him.

In 1910, Sergei Platonovich had brought back a pair of black curly-haired pups from the fair at Nizhny Novgorod. In a year those black, curly, big-mouthed pups shot up like yearling calves. At first they snapped at the skirts of the women who passed Mokhov's yard, then they learned to pull the women to the ground and bite their legs, and it was only when they had killed Father Pankraty's calf and a pair of Atyopin's hogs that Sergei Platonovich ordered them to be chained up. Now the dogs were let loose only at night, and once every spring for the mating.

Before Mitka could turn round the foremost dog was up at his shoulders with its teeth fastened into his jacket. The writhing black bodies bit and tore at him. Mitka fought them off