And quiet flows the Don; a novel (47 page)

The distinguished personage went the round of the wards, asking the usual absurd questions befitting one of his position and circumstances. The wounded, their eyes staring out of their heads, replied in accordance with the instructions of the junior surgeon. "Just so. Your Imperial Highness," and "Not at all. Your Imperial Highness." The chief surgeon supplied commentaries to their answers, squirming like a grass-snake pierced by a fork; he was a pitiful sight even from afar. The regal personage distributed little icons to the soldiers. The throng of brilliant uniforms and the heavy wave of expensive perfumes rolled towards Grigory. He stood by his bed, unshaven, gaunt, with feverish eyes. The slight tremor of the brown skin over his angular cheek-bones revealed his agitation.

"There they are!" he was thinking. "There are the people who get pleasure out of driving us from our native villages and flinging us

to death. Ah! The swine! Curse them! There are the lice on our backs. Was it for them we trampled other people's grain with our horses and killed strangers? And I crawled over the stubble and shouted? And our fear? They dragged us away from our families, starved us in barracks." The burning thoughts choked his brain. His lips quivered with fury. "Look at their fat shining faces! I'd send you out there, curse you. Put you on a horse, with a rifle on your back, load you with lice, feed you on rotten bread and maggoty meat!"

Grigory's eyes bored into the sleek-faced officers of the retinue, and rested on the marsupial cheeks of the royal personage.

"A Don Cossack, Cross of St. George," the chief surgeon smirked as he pointed to Grigory, and from the tone of his voice one would have thought it was he who had won the cross.

"From what district?" the personage inquired, holding an icon ready,

"Vyeshenskaya, Your Imperial Highness."

"How did you win the cross?"

Boredom and satiety lurked in the clear, empty eyes of the royal personage. His left eyebrow was artificially raised, in a manner intended to give his face greater expression. For a moment Grigory felt cold, and a queer

chopping sensation went on inside him. He had felt a similar sensation when going into attack. His lips twisted and quivered irresistibly.

"Excuse me. ... I badly want to.., . Your Imperial. . .. Just a little need." Grigory swayed as though his back were broken, and pointed under the bed.

The personage's left eyebrow rose still higher. The hand holding the icon half-extended towards Grigory froze stiffly. His flabby lips gaping with astonishment, the personage turned to a grey-haired general at his side and asked him something in English. A hardly perceptible embarrassment troubled the members of his suite. A tall officer with epaulettes touched his eye with his white gloved hand; a second bowed his head; a third glanced inquiringly at his neighbour. The grey-haired general smiled respectfully and replied in English to His Imperial Highness, and His Highness was pleased to thrust the icon into Grigory's hand, and even to bestow on him the highest of honours, a touch on the shoulder.

After the guests had departed Grigory dropped on to his bed and, burying his face in his pillow, lay for some minutes, his shoulders shaking. It was impossible to tell whether he was crying or laughing. Certain it is that he

rose with dry eyes. He was immediately summoned to the room of the chief surgeon.

"You common lout!" the doctor began, crushing his mousy-coloured beard in his fingers.

"I'm not a lout, you snake!" Grigory replied, striding towards the doctor. "I never saw you at the front." Then, recovering his self-control, he said quietly: "Send me home."

The doctor retreated behind his writing table, saying more gently: "We'll send you! You can go to the devil!"

Grigory went out, his lips trembling with a smile, his eyes glaring. For his monstrous, unpardonable behaviour in the presence of the royal personage he was deprived of his food for three days. But his comrades in the ward, and the cook, a soft-hearted man who suffered from rupture, kept him supplied,

XXIV

It was evening of November the fourth when Grigory on his way from the station arrived at the first village in his own district. Yagodnoye was only a few versts distant. As he passed down the street children were singing a Cossack song under the river willows:

With shining swords the Cossacks ride....

As he listened to the familiar words a chill gripped his heart and hardened his eyes. Avidly sniffing in the scent of the smoke coming from the chimneys, he strode through the village, the song following him.

"And I used to sing that song, but now my voice is gone and life has broken off the song. Here am I going to stay with another man's wife, no comer of my own, no home, like a wolf," he thought, walking along at a steady, tired pace, and bitterly smiling at his own queerly twisted life. He climbed out of the village, and at the top of the hill turned to look back. The yellow light of a hanging-lamp shone through the window of the last house, and in its light he saw an elderly woman sitting at a spinning-wheel.

He went on, walking through the damp, frosty grass at the side of the road. He spent the night in a little village, and set out again as soon as day was dawning. He reached Yagodnoye in the evening. Jumping across the fence, he went past the stables. The sound of Sashka's coughing arrested him.

"Grandad Sashka, you asleep?" he shouted.

"Wait, who is that? I know the voice. Who is it?"

Sashka came out, throwing his old coat around his shoulders. "Holy fathers... !

Grisha! Where the devil have you come from?"

They embraced. Gazing up into Grigory's face, Sashka said: "Come in and have a smoke."

"No, not now. I will tomorrow. I. .. /'

"Come in, I tell you."

Grigory unwillingly followed him in, and sat down on the wooden bunk while the old man recovered from a fit of coughing.

"Well, Grandad, so you're still alive. Still walking the earth?"

"Ah, I'm like a flint. There'll be no wear with me."

"And how's Aksinya?"

"Aksinya? Praise be, she's all right."

The old man coughed violently. Grigory guessed it was a pretence to hide his embarrassment,

"Where did you bury Tanya?"

"In the orchard under a poplar."

"Well, tell me all the news."

"My cough's been troubling me a lot, Grisha."

"Well?"

"We're all alive and well. The master drinks beyond all sense, the fool."

"How's Aksinya?"

"She's a housemaid now. You might have a smoke. Try my tobacco, it's first-rate,"

"I don't want to smoke. Talk, or I'm leaving! I feel. . . ." Grigory turned heavily, and the wooden bunk creaked under him. "I feel you're keeping something from me, like a stone under your coat. Strike!"

"And I will strike! I can't keep silent, Grisha, and silence would be shameful."

"Tell me, then," Grigory said, letting his hand drop caressingly on the old man's shoulder. He waited, bowing his back.

"You've been nursing a snake," Sashka suddenly exclaimed in a harsh, shrill voice. "You've been feeding a serpent. She's been playing about with Yevgeny."

A stream of sticky spittle ran down over the old man's scarred chin. He wiped it away and dried his hand on his trousers.

"Are you telling the truth?"

"I've seen them with my own eyes. Every night he goes to her, I expect he's with her now,"

"So that's how it is!" Grigory cracked his knuckles and sat with hunched shoulders for a long time, the muscles of his face working. There was a great vibrant ringing in his ears.

"A woman's like a cat," Sashka said. "She

makes up to anyone who strokes her. Don't you trust them, don't give them your trust."

He rolled a cigarette and thrust it into Grigory's hand. "Smoke!"

Grigory took a couple of pulls at the cigarette, then stubbed it out with his fingers. He went out without a word. He stopped by the window of the servants' quarters, panting heavily, and raised his hand several times to knock. But each time his hand fell as though struck away. When at last he did knock he tapped at first with his finger; but then, losing patience, he threw himself against the wall and beat at the window furiously with his fist. The frame rang with the blows, and the blue, nocturnal light shimmered on the pane.

Aksinya's frightened face appeared at the window for an instant, then she opened the door and gave a little scream. He embraced her, peering into her eyes.

"You knocked so hard you terrified me. I wasn't expecting you. My dear. ..."

"I'm frozen."

Aksinya felt his big body shivering violently although his hands were feverishly hot. She fussed about unnecessarily, lighted the lamp and ran about the room, a downy shawl around her plump, white shoulders. Finally she lit a fire in the stove.

"I wasn't expecting you. It's so long since you wrote. I thought you'd never come. Did you get my last letter? I was going to send you a parcel, but then I thought I'd wait to see if I received a letter. .. ."

She cast sidelong glances at Grigory, her red lips frozen in a smile.

Grigory sat down on the bench without taking off his greatcoat. His unshaven cheeks burned, and his lowered eyes were heavily shadowed by the cowl of his coat. He began to unfasten the cowl, but suddenly turned to fidget with his tobacco pouch, and searched his pockets for paper. With measureless yearning he ran his eyes over Aksinya's face.

She had devilishly improved during his absence, he thought. Her beautiful head was carried with a new, authoritative poise, and only her eyes and the large, fluffy ringlets of her hair were the same. But her destructive, fiery beauty did not belong to him. How could it, when she was the mistress of the master's son!

"You don't look like a housemaid, you're more like a housekeeper."

She gave him a startled look, and laughed forcedly.

Dragging his pack behind him, Grigory went towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To have a smoke."

"I've fried you some eggs."

"I won't be long."

On the steps Grigory opened his pack, and from the bottom drew out a hand-painted kerchief carefully wrapped in a clean shirt. He had bought it from a Jewish trader in Zhitomir for two rubles and had guarded it as the apple of his eye, occasionally pulling it out and enjoying its wealth of rainbow colours, foretasting the rapture with which Aksinya would be possessed when he should spread it open before her. A miserable gift! Could he compete in presents with the son of a rich landowner? Choking down a spasm of dry sobbing, he tore the kerchief into little pieces and pushed them under the step. He threw the pack on to the bench in the passage and went back to the room.

"Sit down and I'll pull your boots off, Grisha."

With white hands long divorced from hard work she struggled with Grigory's heavy army boots. Falling at his knees, she wept long and silently. Grigory let her weep to her heart's content, then asked:

"What's the matter? Aren't you glad to see me?"

In bed, he quickly fell asleep. Aksinya went out to the steps in only her shift. She stood there in the cold, piercing wind, with her arms round the damp pillar, listening to the funeral dirge of the northern blast, and did not change her position until dawn came.

In the morning Grigory threw his greatcoat across his shoulders and went to the house. The old master was standing on the steps, dressed in a fur jacket and a yellow Astrakhan cap.

"Why, there he is, the Cavalier of St. George! But you're a man, my friend!" He saluted Grigory and stretched out his hand.

"Staying long?"

"Two weeks. Your Excellency,"

"We buried your daughter. A pity ... a pity "

Grigory was silent. Yevgeny came on to the steps, drawing on his gloves.

"Why, it's Grigory. Where have you arrived from?"

Grigory's eyes darkened, but he smiled,

"Back on leave, from Moscow."

"You were wounded in the eye, weren't you? I heard about it. What a fine lad he's grown, hasn't he. Papa?"

He nodded to Grigory and turned towards the stables, calling to the coachman:

"The horse, Nikitich!"

With a dignified air Nikitich finished harnessing the horse and, giving Grigory an unfriendly look, led the old grey trotting horse to the steps. The frost-bound earth rustled under the wheels of the light droshki.

"Your Honour, let me drive you for the sake of old times," Grigory turned to Yevgeny with an ingratiating smile.

"The poor chap doesn't guess," Yevgeny thought, smiling with satisfaction, and his eyes glittered behind his pince-nez.

"All right, jump up."

"What, hardly arrived and you're already leaving your young wife? Didn't you miss her?" Old Listnitsky smiled benevolently.

Grigory laughed, "A wife isn't a bear. She won't run off into the forest."

He mounted the driver's seat, thrust the knout under it and gathered up the reins.

"Ah, I'll give you a drive, Yevgeny Nikolayevich!"

"Drive well and I'll stand you a tip."

"Haven't I already got enough to be thankful for. . . , I'm grateful to you for feeding .. . my Aksinya ... for giving her ... a piece. . .."

Grigory's voice suddenly broke, and a vague, unpleasant suspicion troubled the lieutenant. "Surely he doesn't know? Of course

not! How could he?" He leaned back in his seat and lit a cigarette.

"Don't be long," old Listnitsky called after them.

Needle-sharp snow dust flew from under the wheels.

Grigory pulled with the reins at the horse's mouth and urged it to its topmost speed. Within fifteen minutes they had crossed the rise, and the house was out of sight. In the very first dell they came to, Grigory jumped down and pulled the knout from under the seat.

"What's the matter?" the lieutenant frowned.

"I'll show you!"

Grigory swung the knout and brought it down with terrible force across the lieutenant's face. Then, seizing it by the lash, he beat the officer with the butt on the face and arms, giving him no time to get up. A fragment of the glass from his pince-nez cut Listnitsky above the brow, and a little stream of blood flowed into his eyes. At first he covered his face with his hands, but the blows grew more frequent. He jumped up, his face disfigured with blood and fury, and attempted to defend himself; but Grigory fell back and paralyzed his arm with a blow on the wrist.