And quiet flows the Don; a novel (21 page)

"Yes, Your Excellency," Grigory replied, coming stiffly to attention. He recalled his father's stories of the retired General Listnitsky, a hero of the Russo-Turkish war.

"Why are you seeking work?" the old man inquired.

"I'm not living with my father. Your Excellency."

"What sort of Cossack will you make if you hire yourself out? Didn't your father provide for you when you left him?"

"No, Your Excellency."

"Hm, that's another matter. You want work for your wife as well?"

The younger Listnitsky's bed creaked heavily. Grigory, glancing in his direction, saw the officer winking and nodding his head.

"That's right. Your Excellency."

"None of your 'excellencies.' I don't like them. Your wage will be eight rubles a month. For both of you. Your wife will cook for the servants and seasonal workers. Is that satisfactory?"

"Yes."

"Move in tomorrow morning. You'll occupy the previous coachman's quarters."

"How did the hunting go yesterday?" List-

nitsky asked his father, lowering his narrow feet on to the carpet.

"We started a fox out of the gully at Gremya-chy and chased it as far as the woods, but it was an old one and fooled the dogs."

"Is Kazbek still limping?"

"He must have sprained his foot. Hurry up, Yevgeny, breakfast is getting cold."

The old man turned to Grigory and snapped his bony fingers.

"Quick march! Be here at eight."

Grigory went out. On the far side of the bam the borzois were sunning themselves on a patch of ground bare of snow. The old bitch with the rheumy eyes trotted up to Grigory, sniffed at him from behind and followed him a little way with head still drooping mournfully, then turned back.

XII

Aksinya had finished her cooking early. She banked up the fire, washed the dishes, and glanced out of the window looking on to the yard. Stepan was standing by the wood-pile close to the fence bordering on the Melekhovs' yard. A half-smoked cigarette hung from the corner of his firm lips. The left-hand corner of the shed was tumbling down, and he was selecting posts suitable for its repair.

Aksinya had arisen with two rosy blushes in her cheeks and a youthful glitter in her eyes. Stepan noticed the change, and as he was having breakfast he could not forbear to ask: "What's happened to you?"

"What's happened?" Aksinya echoed him, flushing.

"Your face is shining as though you had smeared yourself with oil."

"It's the heat of the fire." And turning away she glanced stealthily out of the window to see whether Misha Koshevoi's sister was coming.

But the girl did not arrive until late in the afternoon. Tormented with waiting, Aksinya started up:

"Do you want me, Mashutka?"

"Come out for a moment."

Stepan was standing before a scrap of mirror fixed into the whitewashed stove, combing his forelock and chestnut moustache with a stumpy ox-horn comb. Aksinya looked at him nervously.

"You aren't going out, are you?"

He did not answer immediately, but put the comb into his trouser pocket, and picked up a pack of cards and his tobacco pouch which were lying on the stove ledge. Then he said: "I'm going along to Anikushka's for a while."

"And when are you ever at home? You spend every night at cards. And all night, too."

"All right, I've heard that before."

"Are you going to play pontoon again?"

"Oh, drop it, Aksinya. Look, there's someone coming to see you."

Aksinya sidled out into the passage. The freckled, rosy-faced Mashutka welcomed her with a smile.

"Grisha's back."

"Well?"

"He told me to tell you to come along to our house as soon as it's dark."

Seizing the girl's hand, Aksinya drew her towards the outer door.

"Softer, softer, dear! Did he tell you to say anything else?"

"He said you're to get your things together and take them along."

Burning and trembling, unable to keep her feet still, Aksinya turned and glanced at the kitchen door.

"Lord, how am I to.... So quickly? Well . . . wait. Tell him I'll be along as soon as I can. But where will he meet me?"

"You're to come to our house."

"Oh, no!"

"All right, I'll tell him to come out and wait for you."

Stepan was drawing on his coat as Aksinya went in.

"What did she want?" he asked between two puffs at a cigarette.

"Who?"

"The Koshevois' girl."

"Oh, she came to ask me to cut out a skirt for her,"

Blowing the ash off his cigarette, Stepan went to the door.

"Don't wait up for me," he said as he went out.

Aksinya ran to the frosted window and dropped to her knees before the bench. Stepan's footsteps sounded along the path trodden out in the snow to the gate. The wind caught a spark from his cigarette and carried it back to the window. Through the melted circle of glass Aksinya caught a glimpse of his fur cap and the outline of his swarthy cheek.

Feverishly she turned jackets, skirts and ker-chiefs-her dowry-out of the great chest and threw them into a large shawl. Panting and wild-eyed, she passed through the kitchen for the last time, and putting out the light, ran on to the steps. Someone emerged from the Mele-khovs' house to see to the cattle. She waited until the footsteps had died away, fastened the door by the chain, then ran down to the Don. Strands of hair escaped from her kerchief and tickled her cheeks, and as she made her way by

side lanes to the Koshevois' hut, clutching her bundle, her strength ebbed and her feet dragged leadenly, Grigory was waiting for her at the gate. He took the bundle and silently led the way into the steppe.

Beyond the threshing-floor Aksinya slowed her pace and caught at Grigory's sleeve. "Wait a moment," she said.

"What for? The moon will be late tonight, we must hurry."

"Wait, Grisha!" She halted, doubled up with pain,

"What's the matter?" Grigory turned back to her.

"Something .. , inside me. I must have lifted something heavy." She licked her dry lips, screwing up her eyes in pain till she saw pinpoints of fire, and clutched at her belly. She stood a moment, bowed and miserable, and then, poking her hair under her kerchief, set off again.

"I'm all right now, come along."

"You haven't even asked where I'm taking you to. I might be leading you to the nearest cliff to push you over," Grigory said smiling in the darkness.

"It's all the same to me now. I can't go back." Her voice trembled with an unhappy laugh.

That night Stepan returned at midnight as

usual. He went first to the stable, threw the scattered hay back into the manger, removed the horse's halter, then went to the house. "She must have gone out for the evening," he thought, as he unfastened the chain. He entered the kitchen, closed the door fast, and struck a match. He had been in a winning vein that evening, and so was quiet and drowsy. He lit the lamp, and gaped at the disorder of the kitchen, not guessing the reason, A little astonished, he went into the best room. The open chest yawned blackly. On the floor lay an old jacket which Aksinya had forgotten in her hurry. Stepan tore off his sheepskin and ran back to the kitchen for the light. He stared around the best room, and at last he understood. He dropped the lamp, and, scarcely aware of what he was doing, tore his sabre from the wall, gripped the hilt until the veins swelled in his fingers, raised Aksinya's blue and yellow jacket on its point, threw the jacket up in the air and with a short swing of the sabre slashed it in two as it fell.

Grey, savage in his wolfish grief, he threw the pieces of the old jacket up to the ceiling again and again; the sharp steel whistled as it cut them in their flight.

Then, tearing off the sword-knot, he threw the sabre into a corner, went into the kitchen,

and sat down at the table. His head bowed, with trembling iron fingers he sat stroking the unwashed table-top.

XIII

Troubles never come singly. The morning after Grigory left home, through Het-Baba's carelessness Miron Korshunov's pedigree bull gored the throat of his finest mare. Het-Baba came running into the house, white, distracted and trembling:

"Trouble, master! The bull, curse him, the damned bull...."

"Well, what about the bull?" Miron asked in alarm.

"He's done the mare in. Gored her. .. ."

Miron ran half-dressed into the yard. By the well Mitka was beating the red five-year-old bull with a stake. The bull, his head down and dewlap dragging over the ground, was churning up the snow with his hoofs and scattering a silvery powder around his tail. Instead of yielding before the drubbing, he bellowed huskily and stamped his hind-feet as though about to charge. Mitka beat him on his nose and sides, cursing the while and paying no heed to Mikhei, who was trying to drag him back by his belt,

"Keep back, Mitka ... for Lord's sake. He'll gore you! Master, why don't you tell him?"

Miron ran to the well. The mare was standing by the fence, her head drooping sadly. Her dark heaving flanks were wet with sweat, and blood was running down her chest. Her light-bay back and sides were quivering, causing great shivers in her groin,

Miron ran to look at her front. A rose-coloured wound, big enough to take a man's hand, and revealing the windpipe, gaped in her neck. Miron seized her by the forelock and raised her head. The mare fixed her glittering violet eyes on her master as though mutely asking: "What next?" And as if in answer to the question Miron shouted: "Run and tell someone to scald some oak bark. Hurry!"

Het-Baba, his Adam's apple trembling in his dirty neck, ran to strip some bark from a tree, and Mitka came across to his father, one eye fixed on the bull circling and bellowing about the yard.

"Hold the mare by her forelock," his father ordered. "Someone run for some twine. Quick! Or do you want a box on the ears?"

They tied the string tightly round the mare's velvety, slightly hairy upper lip so that she should not feel the pain.

Old Grishaka came hobbling up. An infusion, the colour of acorns, was brought out in a painted bowl.

"Cool it down," he croaked. "It's too hot, isn't it? Miron, do you hear me?"

"Go inside. Dad. You'll catch cold out here."

"I tell you to cool it down. Do you want to kill the mare?"

The wound was bathed. With freezing fingers Miron threaded raw twine through a darning needle and sewed up the edges, making a neat seam. He had hardly turned away to go back to the house when his wife came running from the kitchen, alarm written large on her flabby cheeks. She called her husband aside:

"Natalya's here, Miron.. .! Oh, my God!"

"Now what's the matter?" Miron demanded, his face paling.

"It's Grigory. He's left home!" Lukinichna flung out her arms like a rook preparing for flight, clapped her hands against her skirt, and broke into a wail:

"Disgraced before the whole village! Lord, what a blow! Oh..,!"

Miron found Natalya in a shawl and short winter coat standing in the middle of the kitchen. Two tears welled in her eyes, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.

"What are you doing here?" her father blustered as he ran into the room. "Has your husband beaten you? Can't you get on together?" "He's gone away!" Natalya groaned, swallowing dry tears, and she swayed and fell on her knees before her father. "Father, my life is ruined.. .. Take me back. . ,. Grigory's gone away with that woman. He's left me. Father, I've been crushed into the dust!" she sobbed out the half-finished phrases, gazing imploringly up at her father's ruddy beard. "Wait, wait now, . .."

"There's nothing for me to live for there! Take me back!" She crawled on her knees to the chest and dropped her head on to her arms. Her kerchief slipped off her head and her smooth straight black hair fell over her pale ears. Tears at such a time are like rain in a May drought. Her mother pressed Natalya's head against her sunken belly, whispering motherly foolish words of comfort; but Miron, infuriated, ran out to the steps,

"Harness up two sleighs!" he shouted. On the steps a cock, perched busily on the back of a hen, took fright at the shout, jumped clear, and stalked off towards the bam, squawking indignantly.

"Harness up two sleighs!" Miron kicked again and again at the fretted balustrade of the

steps until it was hopelessly ruined. He returned to the house only when Het-Baba hurried out from the stables with a pair of horses, harnessing them as he ran.

Mitka and Het-Baba drove to the Melekhovs' for Natalya's possessions. In his abstraction Het-Baba sent a young pig in the road flying. "Mebbe the master will forget all about the mare now," he was thinking, and rejoiced, letting the reins hang loose. "But he's such an old devil, he'll never forget," and sneering to himself, Het-Baba tried to get the whip lash under the tenderest part of the horse's belly.

XIV

Yevgeny Listnitsky held a commission as lieutenant in the Ataman's Lifeguards Regiment. Having had a tumble during the officers' hurdle races and broken his left arm, he took furlough when he came out of hospital and went to stay with his father for six weeks.

The old general lived alone at Yagodnoye. He had lost his wife while driving in the suburbs of Warsaw in the 1880's. Shots fired at the Cossack general had missed him, but riddled the carriage, killing his wife and coachman. Listnitsky was left with his two-year-old son Yevgeny. Soon after this event the gen-

eral retired, abandoned an estate of ten thousand acres in the Saratov Province which had been granted to his great-grandfather in recognition of his services during the war of 1812, and moved to Yagodnoye, where he lived an austere and rigorous life. i

He sent his son Yevgeny to the cadets' corps as soon as the lad was old enough, and occupied himself with farming. He purchased blood stock from the imperial stables, crossed them with the finest mares from England and from the famous Provalsky stables, and reared a new breed. He raised cattle and livestock on his own, and bought land, sowed grain (with hired labour), hunted with his borzois in the autumn and winter, and occasionally locked himself in the dining hall and drank for weeks on end. He was troubled with a stomach complaint, and his doctor had strictly forbidden him to swallow anything solid; he had to extract the goodness from all his food by mastication, spitting out the residue on to a silver tray held by his personal servant Venyamin.