And quiet flows the Don; a novel (43 page)

Old Pantelei was a pitiful sight to see. He was dazed with joy. He seized both letters and went into the village with them, stopping all who could read and forcing them to read the letters. It was not vanity but belated joy made him brag all through the village,

"Aha! What do you think of my Grisha?" he raised his hand when the stumbling reader came to the passage where Pyotr described Gri-gory's exploit. "He's the first to get the Cross in our village," he declared proudly. And jealously taking the letters, he would thrust them into the lining of his cap and go off in search of another reader.

Even Sergei Mokhov, who saw him through his shop window, came out, taking off his cap.

"Come in for a minute, Prokofyevich!"

Inside, he squeezed the old man's fist in his own puffy white hand and said:

"Well, I congratulate you; I congratulate you. You must be proud to have such a son. I've just been reading about his exploit in the newspapers."

"Is it in the papers?" Pantelei's throat went dry and he swallowed hard.

"Yes, I've just read it."

Mokhov took a packet of the finest Turkish tobacco down from a shelf, and poured out some expensive sweets into a bag without troubling to weigh them. Handing the tobacco and sweets to Pantelei, he said:

"When you send Grigory Panteleyevich a parcel, send him a greeting and these from me."

"My God! What an honour for Grisha! The whole village is talking about him. I've lived to see ..." the old man muttered, as he went down the steps of the shop. He blew his nose violently and wiped the tears from his cheek with his sleeve, thinking: "I'm getting old. Tears come too easily. Ah, Pantelei, what has life done to you? You were as hard as flint once, you could carry eight poods on your back as easily as a feather, but now. . . . Grisha's business has taken it out of you a bit!"

As he limped along the street, pressing the bag of sweets to his chest, his thoughts again fluttered around Grigory like a lapwing over a marsh, and the words of Pyotr's letter wandered through his mind. Grigory's father-in-law Korshunov was coming along the road, and he called to Pantelei:

"Hey, Pantelei, stop a minute!"

The two men had not met since the day war was declared. A cold, constrained relationship had arisen between them after Grigory left home. Miron was annoyed with Natalya for humbling herself to Grigory, and for forcing her father to endure a similar humiliation.

"The wandering bitch," he would rail against Natalya to his family. "Why can't she live at home instead of going to her in-laws. As if they

fed her better there. It's through her foolishness that her father has to bear such shame and can't hold up his head in the village."

Miron went straight up to Pantelei and thrust out his oak-coloured hand:

"How are you?"

"Thanks be to God. . . ."

"Been shopping?"

Pantelei shook his head. "These are gifts to our hero. Sergei Platonovich read about his deed in the peapers and has sent him some sweets and tobacco. Do you know, the tears came to his eyes," the old man boasted, staring fixedly into Miron's face in the attempt to discover what impression his words had made.

The shadows gathered under Miron's blond eye-lashes, giving his face a condescending smile.

"I see!" he croaked, and turned to cross the street. Pantelei hurried after him, opening the bag and trembling with anger.

"Here, try these chocolates, they're as sweet as honey," he said spitefully. "Try them, I offer them in my son's name. Your life is none too sweet, so you can have one; and your son may earn such an honour some day, but then he may not."

"Don't pry into my life. ... I know best what it's like."

''Just try one, do me the favour." Pantelei bowed with exaggerated affability, running in front of Miron and fumbling with the paper bag.

"We're not used to sweets," Miron pushed away his hand. "Gifts from strangers are bad for our teeth. It was hardly decent of you to go begging alms for your son. If you're in need, you can come to me. Our Natalya's eating your bread. We could have given to you in your poverty."

"Don't you tell those lies, no one has ever begged for alms in our family. You're too proud, much too proud. Maybe it's because you're so rich that your daughter came to us."

"Wait!" Miron said authoritatively. "There's no point in our quarrelling. I didn't stop you to have a quarrel. I've some business I want to talk over with you."

"We have no business to talk over."

"Yes, we have. Come on."

He seized Pantelei's sleeve and dragged him into a side-street. They walked out of the village into the steppe.

"Well, what's the business?" Pantelei asked in more amiable tones. He glanced sidelong at Korshunov's freckled face. Folding the tail of his long coat under him, Miron sat down on

the bank of a ditch and pulled out his old tobacco pouch.

"You know, Prokofyevich, the devil knows why you went for me like a quarrelsome cock. As it is, things aren't too good, are they? I want to know," his voice changed to a hard, rough tone, "how long your son's going to make a laughing-stock of Natalya. Tell me that!"

"You must ask him about it, not me."

"I've nothing to ask him; you're the head of your house and I'm talking to you."

Pantelei squeezed the chocolate he still held in his hand, and the sticky mess oozed through his fingers. He wiped his palm on the brown clay of the bank and silently began to make a cigarette, opening the packet of Turkish tobacco and taking a pinch. Then he offered the packet to Miron. Korshunov took it without hesitation and made a cigarette from the tobacco Mokhov had presented so generously. Above them hung a sumptuous foaming white cloud, and a tender thread stretched up towards it, wavering in the wind.

The day came to its close. The September stillness was lulled in peace and inexpressible sweetness. The sky had lost its full summer gleam, and was a hazy dove colour. Apple-leaves, brought from God knows where,

scattered the ditch with vivid purple. The road disappeared over the undulating ridge of the hill; in vain did it beckon towards the unknown regions beyond the emerald, dream-vague thread of the horizon. Held down to their huts and their daily round, the people pined in their labour, exhausted their strength on the threshing-floor; and the road, a deserted, yearning track, flowed across the horizon into the unseen. The wind trod along it, stirring up the dust.

"This is weak tobacco, it's like grass," Miron said, puffing out a cloud of smoke.

"It's weak, but it's pleasant," Pantelei half-agreed.

"Give me an answer, Pantelei," Korshunov asked in a quieter tone, putting out his cigarette.

"Grigory never says anything about it in his letters. He's wounded now."

"Yes, I've heard. . . ."

"What will come after, I don't know. Maybe he'll be killed, and then what?"

"But how can it go on like this?" Miron blinked distractedly and miserably. "There she is, neither maid nor wife nor honest widow, and it's a disgrace. If I had known it was going to turn out like this I'd never have allowed the match-makers across my threshold. Ah, Pante-

lei. . . Pantelei. . . . Each is sorry for his own child. Blood is thicker than water."

"How can I help it?" Pantelei replied with restrained frenzy. "Tell me! Do you think I'm glad my son left home? Was it any gain to me? You people!"

"Write to him," Miron dictated, and the dust trickling from under his hands into the ditch kept time with his words. "Let him say once and for all."

"He's got a child by that. . . ."

"And he'll have a child by this!" Korshunov shouted, turning livid. "Can you treat a human being like that? Huh? She's already tried to kill herself and is maimed for life.... Do you want to trample her into the grave? Huh. . . . His heart, his heart. . ." Miron hissed, tearing at his breast with one hand, tugging at Pante-lei's coat tails with the other. "Is it a wolf's heart he's got?"

Pantelei wheezed and turned away.

"The woman's devoted to him, and there's no other life for her without him. Is she a serf in your service?"

"She's more than a daughter to us! Hold your tongue!" Pantelei shouted, and he rose from the bank.

They parted without a word of farewell, and went off in different directions.

When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into many streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where today it trickles, like a rivulet over sand-banks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, tomorrow it will flow rich and full.

Suddenly Natalya came to the decision to go to Aksinya at Yagodnoye, and to ask, to beseech her to return Grigory to her. For some reason it seemed to Natalya that everything depended on Aksinya, that she had only to ask her and Grigory would return, and with him, her own former happiness. She did not stop to consider whether this was possible, or how Aksinya would receive her strange request. Driven on by subconscious motives, she sought to act upon her decision as quickly as possible.

At the end of the month a letter arrived from Grigory. After messages to his father and mother he sent his greeting and regards to Natalya. Whatever the reason inciting him to this, it was the stimulus Natalya required, and she made ready to go to Yagodnoye the very next Sunday.

"Where are you off to, Natalya?" Dunya

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asked, watching her as she attentively studied her features in the scrap of looking-glass.

"I'm going to visit my people," Natalya lied, and blushed as she realized for the first time that she was risking great humiliation, a terrible moral test.

"You might have an evening out with me just for once," Darya suggested. "Come this evening, won't you?"

"I don't know, but I don't think so."

"You little nun! Our turn only comes when our husbands are away," Darya said with a wink and stooped to examine the embroidered hem of her new pale-blue skirt. Darya had altered considerably since Pyotr's departure. Unrest showed in her eyes, her movements and carriage. She arrayed herself more diligently on Sundays, and came back late in the evening sombre-eyed and out of temper, to complain to Natalya:

"It's terrible, really it is! They've taken away all the decent Cossacks, and left only boys and old men in the village!"

"Well, what difference does that make to you?"

"Why, there's nobody to lark about with of an evening. If only I could go off alone to the mill one day. There's no fun to be had here with our father-in-law." And with cynical frank-

ness she asked Natalya: "How can you bear it, dear; so long without a Cossack?"

"Shame on you! Haven't you any conscience?" Natalya blushed.

"Don't you feel any desire?"

"It's clear you do."

"Of course I do!" Darya flushed and laughed and the arches of her brows quivered. "Why should I hide it? I'd make even an old man hot and bothered this very minute! Just think, it's two months since Pyotr left."

"You're laying up sorrow for yourself, Darya."

"Shut up, you respectable old woman! We know you quiet ones! You would never admit it."

"I've nothing to admit."

Darya gave her an amused sidelong glance, and bit her lips with her small snappish teeth.

"The other day Timofei Manitsev, the ataman's son, sat down beside me. I could see he was afraid to begin. Then he quietly slipped his hand under my arm, and his hand was trembling. I just waited and said nothing, but I was getting angry. If he had been a lad now -but he's only a little snot. Sixteen years old, not a day more. I sat without speaking, and he pawed and pawed, and whispered: 'Come along to our shed.' Then I gave him something!"

She laughed merrily; her brows quivered and laughter spurted from her half-closed eyes.

"What a ticking off I gave him! I jumped up. 'Oh, you this and that! You yellow-necked whelp! Do you think you can wheedle me like that? When did you wet the bed last?' I gave him a fine talking to."

Darya's attitude to Natalya had changed of late, and their relations had grown simple and friendly. The dislike which she had felt for the younger woman was gone, and the two, different in every respect, lived together amicably.

Natalya finished dressing and went out. Darya overtook her in the porch.

"You'll open the door for me tonight?" she asked.

"I expect I shall stop the night with my people."

Darya thoughtfully scratched her nose with her comb and shook her head:

"Oh, all right. I didn't want to ask Dunya, but I see I shall have to."

Natalya told Ilyinichna she was going to visit her people, and went into the street. The wagons were rattling away from the market in the square, and the villagers were coming from church. She turned up a side lane and hurriedly climbed the hill. At the top she turned and

looked back. The village lay flooded in sunlight, the little limewashed houses looked daz-zlingly white, and the sun glittered on the steep roof of the mill, making the sheet-iron glitter like molten ore.

XIX

Yagodnoye also had been plucked of its menfolk by the war. Venyamin and Tikhon had gone, and the place was even sleepier, drearier and more isolated than before. Aksinya waited on the general in Venyamin's place, while fat-bottomed Lukerya took over all the cooking and fed the fowls. Old Sashka tended the horses and looked after the orchard. There was only one new face, an old Cossack named Niki-tich who had been taken on as coachman.

This year old Listnitsky sowed less, and supplied some twenty horses for army remounts, leaving only three or four for the needs of the estate. He passed his time shooting bustards and hunting with the borzois.

Aksinya received only brief, infrequent letters from Grigory, informing her that so far he was well and going through the grind. He had grown stronger, or else he did not want to tell her of his weakness, for he never let slip any complaint that he found active service difficult

and dreary. There was a cold note in his let ters, as though he had written them because he felt he had to, and only in one did he write: "All the time at the front, and I'm fed up with fighting and carrying death on my back." In every letter he asked after his daughter, telling Aksinya to write about her.