And quiet flows the Don; a novel (18 page)

"At Rostov."

"What were you imprisoned for in 1907?"

Stockman's eyes glided over the inspector's brief case and his bowed head with its scurfy side parting.

"For disturbances."

"Hm! Where were you working then?"

"At the railway workshops,"

"What as?"

"Mechanic."

"You're not a Jew, are you? Or a converted one?"

"No. I think "

"I'm not interested in what you think. Have you been in exile?"

"Yes, I have."

The inspector raised his head, and bit his clean-shaven, pimply lips.

"I advise you to clear out of this district," he said, adding to himself, "and I'll see to it that you do."

"Why, inspector?"

The answer was another question.

"What did you talk to the Cossacks about on the day of the fight at the mill?"

"Well. . . ."

"All right, you can go."

Stockman went out on to the verandah of Mokhov's house (the authorities always made the merchant's house their headquarters) and glanced back at the painted double doors with a shrug.

VII

Winter came on slowly. After Intercession the snow melted and the herds were driven out to pasture again. For a week a south wind blew, warming the earth; a late stunted green gave a last bright gleam in the steppe. The thaw

lasted until St. Michael's Day, then the frost returned and heavy snow fell, and the vegetable patches by the Don, where the snow had drifted to the top of the fences, were criss-crossed with the marks of hares' feet. The streets were deserted.

The smoke of dung fuel hung low over the village, and rooks pecked about on the heaps of ash scattered by the roadside. The smooth sledge-track wound in a faded grey-blue ribbon through the village.

A village assembly was to be held to arrange for the allotment and cutting of brushwood. The Cossacks crowded round the steps of the village administration in their sheepskins and greatcoats, until the cold drove them inside. Behind a table, beside the ataman and clerk, the respected village elders with their silvery beards were gathered; the younger Cossacks with beards of various colours and those with no beard at all stood round in groups and muttered to one another out of the warmth of their coat collars. The clerk covered sheet after sheet of paper with close writing, while the ataman watched over his shoulder, and a restrained hum filled the chilly room,

"The hay this year. .. ,"

"Aye, the meadow hay is good, but the steppe hay is all clover,"

"In the old days they'd be grazing in the steppe till Christmas."

"That was all right for the Kalmyks."

A throaty cough.

"The ataman's getting a neck like a wolf's on him. So fat he can't turn his head."

"Fed himself up like a pig, the devil!"

"Hullo, Grandpa, trying to scare the winter away? What a sheepskin you've got on!"

"Time for the gypsy to sell his coat soon."

"Did ye hear of the gypsy lad who spent the night in the steppe and hadn't anything to cover himself with except a fishing net? When the cold started creeping round his guts, he wakes up, pushes his finger through a loop in the net and says to his mother: 'So that's where the draught's coming from. I thought it was chilly.' "

"I fear we'll have some slippery days soon."

"Better get the oxen shod."

"I've been cutting the willows down in Devil's gully. Good stuff there."

"Button your fly, Zakhar. If you get frostbite, your woman'll turn you out of the house,"

"What's this I hear about you taking over one of the common bulls, Avdeyich?"

"I decided not to. That Parasha woman's going to take care of it. I'm a widow, she says, the more the merrier. All right, I says, it may give you an addition to the family, ,,."

"Haw-haw-haw!"

"Now, elders! What about the wood-cutting? Quiet there!"

"Yes, I says, if you get an addition, you'll need a godfather."

"A little quieter, please."

The meeting began. Toying with his rod of office, the ataman called out the names, plucking icicles out of his beard with his little finger. Now and then the door slammed at the back of the room and people squeezed in amid clouds of cold air.

"You can't fix the wood-cutting for Thursday!" Ivan Tomilin attempted to shout down the ataman and rubbed his purple ears, cocking his head in its blue artillery cap on one side.

"Why not?"

"You'll rub your ears off, gunner!" somebody called out.

"We'll sew on a pair of bull's ears for him."

"On Thursday half the village will be going out to bring in hay. A fine way to arrange things. . , ."

"You can leave that till Sunday!"

"Elders!"

"What now!"

"Good luck to him!"

A howl of derision arose from the assembly.

Old Matvei Kashulin leaned across the rickety table and, pointing his smooth ash stick at Tomilin, croaked furiously.

"The hay can wait! It's for the community to say. Ye're always agin everybody else. Ye're a young fool, my lad! And that's that!"

"You've got no brains to boast about, anyway . . ." one-armed Alexei joined in, his disfigured cheek twitching. For six years he had been quarreling with old Kashulin over a strip of land. Alexei beat up the old man every spring, although the strip that Kashulin had grabbed was not big enough to swing a cat in anyway.

"Shut up, jelly-face!"

"Pity you're out of my reach, or I'd bloody your nose for you," Alexei threatened, "Why, you one-armed twitcher. . .!" "Now then, enough of this bickering. , . ." "Go outside if you want to try your strength." "Chuck it, Alexei, look how the old fellow's bristling up, he'll lose his hat in a minute." "Put 'em in the cooler if they won't behave." The table groaned as the ataman brought his heavy fist down on it with a crash.

"I'll call the watchman in in a moment, if there isn't silence." When order was restored, he added: "Wood-cutting will begin on Thursday at dawn."

"Well, what do you say, elders?"

"Good luck to it!"

"God grant it!"

"They don't listen much to the old folk nowadays!"

"They'll listen all right. Do they think they can do what they like? My Alexander, when I gave him his portion, he wanted to start a fight over it, laid hands on me, he did. I put him in his place though. 'I'll go to the ataman this minute,' I says, 'and have you thrashed, . ..' That cooled him off all right. .. ."

"And one other thing, elders. I've received an order from the district ataman." The village ataman raised his voice and twisted his neck; the stiff collar of his uniform was cutting into his chin, "Next Saturday the youngsters are to go to be sworn in at the district ataman's office. They are to be there by the afternoon."

Pantelei Prokofyevich was standing by the window nearest the door, holding up his lame leg like a crane. At his side Miron Grigorye-vich was sitting on the window-sill, smiling into his ruddy beard. His short fair eye-lashes were fluffed with hoar-frost, his big brown freckles had turned grey in the cold. The younger Cossacks were crowded close by, winking and smiling at one another. In the middle of their group, his blue-topped quardsman's cap thrust

back on his smooth bald head, his unageing face everlastingly blushing like a ruddy winter apple, stood Avdeyich Sinilin,

Avdeyich had served in the Ataman's Lifeguards, and had come back with the nickname "Braggart." He had been one of the first in the village to be assigned to the Ataman's Regiment. He had always been a little queer in the head, but on active service something very strange had happened to him. From the very first day of his return he had begun to tell astonishing stories of service at the court and his extraordinary adventures in St. Petersburg. His astounded listeners at first believed him, drinking it all in with gaping mouths, but then they discovered that Avdeyich was the biggest liar the village had ever produced, and they openly laughed at him. But he was not to be abashed (although he was always so red in the face you could never tell if he was blushing), and did not give up his lying. As he grew older he began to get annoyed when caught out in a lie, and would resort to his fists; but if his listeners only laughed and said nothing he grew more and more expansive in his story-telling.

As far as his farming was concerned he was a practical and hard-working Cossack, in everything he acted sensibly, sometimes cunningly, but when the subject turned to his service in

the Lifeguards-everyone simply threw up their hands and doubled up with laughter.

Avdeyich stood in the middle of the room, rocking on his heels. Glancing round the assembled Cossacks, he observed in his ponderous, bass voice:

"Speaking of service, these days the Cossacks aren't at all what they were. They're just shrimps, no size at all. You could crack any one of 'em in half just by sneezing at him. But. ..'' and he smiled contemptuously, "I saw some Cossack skeletons once! Ah! They were Cossacks in those days!"

"Where did you dig the skeletons up, Avdeyich?" smooth-faced Anikushka asked, nudging his neighbour.

"Don't start telling any of your lies, Avdeyich, with the Holy Day so near," Pantelei said, wrinkling up his nose and tugging his ear-ring. He did not like Avdeyich's bragging habits.

"It isn't in my nature to lie, brother," Avdeyich replied firmly, and stared in astonishment at Anikushka, who was shaking as though with fever. "I saw these skeletons when we were building a house for my brother-in-law. As we were digging the foundation we came to a grave. So down here by the Don, next the church there must have been a cemetery in the old days,"

"Well, what about the skeletons?" Pantelei asked impatiently, getting ready to go,

"Arms-that long." Avdeyich said extending both his rake-like arms. "Head as big as a cauldron-true as I live!"

"You'd better tell the youngsters how you caught a robber in St. Petersburg," Miron suggested, as he rose from the window-sill.

"There's nothing really to tell," Avdeyich replied, affected by a sudden attack of modesty

"Tell us, tell us, Avdeyich!"

"Well, it was like this," Avdeyich cleared his throat and drew his tobacco pouch out of his trouser pocket. He replaced the two copper coins that had dropped out of the pouch, poured a pinch of tobacco on to his palm, and ran a beaming eye over his audience. "Some villain had escaped from prison. They looked for him all over the place, but do you think they could find him? They just couldn't. All the authorities were beaten.

"Well, one night the officer of the guard calls me to him: 'Go into the imperial palace,' he says. 'His Imperial Majesty wants to see you.' So in I went. I stood to attention, but he claps me on the shoulder and says: 'Listen!' he says, 'Ivan Avdeyich, the biggest villain in our kingdom has done a bunk. Find him, even if you have to stand on your head to do it. And don't

let me see you till you have!' 'Very good. Your Imperial Majesty!' I says. Yes, lads, that was a facer.... So I took three of the best horses in the tsar's stables and set out."

Lighting a cigarette, Avdeyich surveyed the bowed heads of his listeners and, warming to his subject, boomed out of the cloud of smoke enveloping his face:

"I rode all day, and I rode all night, until on the third day I came up with the villain near Moscow. I clapped the bird into my coach, and hauled him back to St. Petersburg. I arrived at midnight, all covered with mud, and went straight to His Imperial Majesty himself. All sorts of counts and princes tried to stop me, but in I marched. Hm. .. . Well, I knocks at the door. 'May I come in. Your Imperial Majesty?' 'Who is it?' 'It's me,' I says, 'Ivan Avdeyich Si-nilin.' I heard a noise in the room, and heard His Majesty himself cry out: 'Maria Fyodo-rovna, Maria Fyodorovna! Get up quick and get a samovar going. Ivan Avdeyich has arrived.' "

There was a roar of laughter from the Cossacks at the back of the crowd. The clerk, who had been reading a notice about stray cattle, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and the ataman stretched out his neck like a goose and stared hard at the guffawing crowd.

Avdeyich's face clouded and his eyes wandered uncertainly over the faces before him.

"Wait a bit!"

"Ha-ha-ha!"

"Oh, he'll be the death of us!"

" 'Get a samovar going! Avdeyich has arrived!' Ha-ha-ha!"

The assembly began to break up. A constant steady creaking rose from the frozen steps of the administration house. On the trampled snow outside Stepan Astakhov and a tall, long-slianked Cossack, the owner of the windmill, were wrestling to get themselves warm.

The Cossacks gathered round shouting advice.

"Throw him, the heathen!"

"Knock the stuffing out of him, Stepan!"

"Don't grab him there! Think you're clever!" old Kashulin shouted, hopping about like a sparrow; and in his excitement he failed to notice a large bright dewdrop hanging shyly from the tip of his bluish nose,

VIII

When Pantelei returned from the meeting he went at once to the room which he and his wife occupied. Ilyinichna had been unwell for some days, and her puffy face reflected her weariness

and pain. She lay propped up high on a plump feather bed with a pillow at her back. At the sound of Pantelei's footsteps she turned her head; her eyes rested on his breath-dampened beard and matted whiskers with the look of severity that had become a habit with her, and her nostrils twitched. But the old man smelled only of frost and sour sheepskin. "Sober today," she thought, and contentedly laid down her knitting-needles.

"Well, what about the wood-cutting?"

"They've decided to begin on Thursday." Pantelei stroked his moustache. "Thursday morning," he added, sitting down on a chest at the side of the bed. "Well, feeling any better?"

"Just the same. Shooting pains in all my joints."

"I told you not to go into the water, you fool. And in autumn too! You knew what would happen," Pantelei fumed, tracing broad circles on the floor with his stick. "There were plenty of other women to ret that hemp, curse the stuff .. . curse it all!"

"I couldn't let the hemp be wasted. There weren't any women. Grisha was out ploughing with his. Pyotr and Darya had gone off somewhere."