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Title: The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852

Author: graf Leo Tolstoy

Translator: Aylmer Maude
Louise Maude

Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4761]
Most recently updated: May 7, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4761

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
COSSACKS: A TALE OF 1852 ***

THE COSSACKS
A Tale of 1852

By Leo Tolstoy

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

CONTENTS

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII

Chapter I

All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the
snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the street
lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne over the city
from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning. The streets are
deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman’s sledge kneads up the snow and
sand in the street as the driver makes his way to another corner where he
falls asleep while waiting for a fare. An old woman passes by on her way to
church, where a few wax candles burn with a red light reflected on the gilt
mountings of the icons. Workmen are already getting up after the long
winter night and going to their work—but for the gentlefolk it is still
evening.
From a window in Chevalier’s Restaurant a light—illegal at that hour—is
still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the entrance a carriage, a
sledge, and a cabman’s sledge, stand close together with their backs to the
curbstone. A three-horse sledge from the post-station is there also. A yard-
porter muffled up and pinched with cold is sheltering behind the corner of
the house.
“And what’s the good of all this jawing?” thinks the footman who sits in
the hall weary and haggard. “This always happens when I’m on duty.”
From the adjoining room are heard the voices of three young men, sitting
there at a table on which are wine and the remains of supper. One, a rather
plain, thin, neat little man, sits looking with tired kindly eyes at his friend,
who is about to start on a journey. Another, a tall man, lies on a sofa beside
a table on which are empty bottles, and plays with his watch-key. A third,
wearing a short, fur-lined coat, is pacing up and down the room stopping
now and then to crack an almond between his strong, rather thick, but well-
tended fingers. He keeps smiling at something and his face and eyes are all
aglow. He speaks warmly and gesticulates, but evidently does not find the

words he wants and those that occur to him seem to him inadequate to
express what has risen to his heart.
“Now I can speak out fully,” said the traveller. “I don’t want to defend
myself, but I should like you at least to understand me as I understand
myself, and not look at the matter superficially. You say I have treated her
badly,” he continued, addressing the man with the kindly eyes who was
watching him.
“Yes, you are to blame,” said the latter, and his look seemed to express
still more kindliness and weariness.
“I know why you say that,” rejoined the one who was leaving. “To be
loved is in your opinion as great a happiness as to love, and if a man obtains
it, it is enough for his whole life.”
“Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow, more than enough!” confirmed the
plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes.
“But why shouldn’t the man love too?” said the traveller thoughtfully,
looking at his friend with something like pity. “Why shouldn’t one love?
Because love doesn’t come ... No, to be beloved is a misfortune. It is a
misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you cannot
give. O my God!” he added, with a gesture of his arm. “If it all happened
reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a way of its own!
Why, it’s as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don’t deny it. You
must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and stupid things I
have found time to do in my life—and there are many—this is one I do not
and cannot repent of. Neither at the beginning nor afterwards did I lie to
myself or to her. It seemed to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I
saw that it was an involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to
love, and I could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I couldn’t?
What was I to do?”
“Well, it’s ended now!” said his friend, lighting a cigar to master his
sleepiness. “The fact is that you have not yet loved and do not know what
love is.”
The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put his hands
to his head, but could not express what he wanted to say.
“Never loved! ... Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I have within
me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger than that desire! But

then, again, does such love exist? There always remains something
incomplete. Ah well! What’s the use of talking? I’ve made an awful mess of
life! But anyhow it’s all over now; you are quite right. And I feel that I am
beginning a new life.”
“Which you will again make a mess of,” said the man who lay on the
sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen to him.
“I am sad and yet glad to go,” he continued. “Why I am sad I don’t
know.”
And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing that this
did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man is never such an
egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that
there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.
“Dmítri Andréich! The coachman won’t wait any longer!” said a young
serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf tied round his head.
“The horses have been standing since twelve, and it’s now four o’clock!”
Dmítri Andréich looked at his serf, Vanyúsha. The scarf round
Vanyúsha’s head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be calling his
master to a new life of labour, hardship, and activity.
“True enough! Good-bye!” said he, feeling for the unfastened hook and
eye on his coat.
In spite of advice to mollify the coachman by another tip, he put on his
cap and stood in the middle of the room. The friends kissed once, then
again, and after a pause, a third time. The man in the fur-lined coat
approached the table and emptied a champagne glass, then took the plain
little man’s hand and blushed.
“Ah well, I will speak out all the same ... I must and will be frank with
you because I am fond of you ... Of course you love her—I always thought
so—don’t you?”
“Yes,” answered his friend, smiling still more gently.
“And perhaps...”
“Please sir, I have orders to put out the candles,” said the sleepy
attendant, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation and
wondering why gentlefolk always talk about one and the same thing. “To
whom shall I make out the bill? To you, sir?” he added, knowing whom to
address and turning to the tall man.

“To me,” replied the tall man. “How much?”
“Twenty-six rubles.”
The tall man considered for a moment, but said nothing and put the bill in
his pocket.
The other two continued their talk.
“Good-bye, you are a capital fellow!” said the short plain man with the
mild eyes. Tears filled the eyes of both. They stepped into the porch.
“Oh, by the by,” said the traveller, turning with a blush to the tall man,
“will you settle Chevalier’s bill and write and let me know?”
“All right, all right!” said the tall man, pulling on his gloves. “How I
envy you!” he added quite unexpectedly when they were out in the porch.
The traveller got into his sledge, wrapped his coat about him, and said:
“Well then, come along!” He even moved a little to make room in the
sledge for the man who said he envied him—his voice trembled.
“Good-bye, Mítya! I hope that with God’s help you...” said the tall one.
But his wish was that the other would go away quickly, and so he could not
finish the sentence.
They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, “Good-bye,” and a
voice cried, “Ready,” and the coachman touched up the horses.
“Hy, Elisár!” One of the friends called out, and the other coachman and
the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their tongues and pulling at the
reins. Then the stiffened carriage-wheels rolled squeaking over the frozen
snow.
“A fine fellow, that Olénin!” said one of the friends. “But what an idea to
go to the Caucasus—as a cadet, too! I wouldn’t do it for anything. ... Are
you dining at the club tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
They separated.
The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on the bottom
of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three shaggy post-horses
dragged themselves out of one dark street into another, past houses he had
never before seen. It seemed to Olénin that only travellers starting on a long
journey went through those streets. All was dark and silent and dull around

him, but his soul was full of memories, love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful
feeling.

Chapter II

“I’m fond of them, very fond! ... First-rate fellows! ... Fine!” he kept
repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to cry, who were the
first-rate fellows he was so fond of—was more than he quite knew. Now
and then he looked round at some house and wondered why it was so
curiously built; sometimes he began wondering why the post-boy and
Vanyúsha, who were so different from himself, sat so near, and together
with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the side-horses
gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: “First rate ... very fond!”
and once he even said: “And how it seizes one ... excellent!” and wondered
what made him say it. “Dear me, am I drunk?” he asked himself. He had
had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was not the wine alone that was
having this effect on Olénin. He remembered all the words of friendship
heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he believed) addressed to him on his
departure. He remembered the clasp of hands, glances, the moments of
silence, and the sound of a voice saying, “Good-bye, Mítya!” when he was
already in the sledge. He remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all
this had a touching significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not
only people who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not
like him, seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive
him, before his departure, as people do before confession or death. “Perhaps
I shall not return from the Caucasus,” he thought. And he felt that he loved
his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But it was not
love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart that he could not
repress the meaningless words that seemed to rise of themselves to his lips;
nor was it love for a woman (he had never yet been in love) that had
brought on this mood. Love for himself, love full of hope—warm young
love for all that was good in his own soul (and at that moment it seemed to
him that there was nothing but good in it)—compelled him to weep and to
mutter incoherent words.

Olénin was a youth who had never completed his university course,
never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government
office or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the
age of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career.
He was what in Moscow society is termed un jeune homme.
At the age of eighteen he was free—as only rich young Russians in the
’forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither physical
nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as he liked,
lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor fatherland, nor
religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in nothing and admitted
nothing. But although he believed in nothing he was not a morose or blase
young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the contrary continually let himself
be carried away. He had come to the conclusion that there is no such thing
as love, yet his heart always overflowed in the presence of any young and
attractive woman. He had long been aware that honours and position were
nonsense, yet involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius
came up and spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so
far as they did not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to any
influence and became conscious of its leading on to labour and struggle, he
instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or activity into which
he was being drawn and to regain his freedom. In this way he experimented
with society-life, the civil service, farming, music—to which at one time he
intended to devote his life—and even with the love of women in which he
did not believe. He meditated on the use to which he should devote that
power of youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force
which gives a man the power of making himself, or even—as it seemed to
him—of making the universe, into anything he wishes: should it be to art, to
science, to love of woman, or to practical activities? It is true that some
people are devoid of this impulse, and on entering life at once place their
necks under the first yoke that offers itself and honestly labour under it for
the rest of their lives. But Olénin was too strongly conscious of the presence
of that all-powerful God of Youth—of that capacity to be entirely
transformed into an aspiration or idea—the capacity to wish and to do—to
throw oneself headlong into a bottomless abyss without knowing why or
wherefore. He bore this consciousness within himself, was proud of it and,
without knowing it, was happy in that consciousness. Up to that time he had
loved only himself, and could not help loving himself, for he expected

nothing but good of himself and had not yet had time to be disillusioned.
On leaving Moscow he was in that happy state of mind in which a young
man, conscious of past mistakes, suddenly says to himself, “That was not
the real thing.” All that had gone before was accidental and unimportant.
Till then he had not really tried to live, but now with his departure from
Moscow a new life was beginning—a life in which there would be no
mistakes, no remorse, and certainly nothing but happiness.
It is always the case on a long journey that till the first two or three stages
have been passed imagination continues to dwell on the place left behind,
but with the first morning on the road it leaps to the end of the journey and
there begins building castles in the air. So it happened to Olénin.
After leaving the town behind, he gazed at the snowy fields and felt glad
to be alone in their midst. Wrapping himself in his fur coat, he lay at the
bottom of the sledge, became tranquil, and fell into a doze. The parting with
his friends had touched him deeply, and memories of that last winter spent
in Moscow and images of the past, mingled with vague thoughts and
regrets, rose unbidden in his imagination.
He remembered the friend who had seen him off and his relations with
the girl they had talked about. The girl was rich. “How could he love her
knowing that she loved me?” thought he, and evil suspicions crossed his
mind. “There is much dishonesty in men when one comes to reflect.” Then
he was confronted by the question: “But really, how is it I have never been
in love? Every one tells me that I never have. Can it be that I am a moral
monstrosity?” And he began to recall all his infatuations. He recalled his
entry into society, and a friend’s sister with whom he spent several evenings
at a table with a lamp on it which lit up her slender fingers busy with
needlework, and the lower part of her pretty delicate face. He recalled their
conversations that dragged on like the game in which one passes on a stick
which one keeps alight as long as possible, and the general awkwardness
and restraint and his continual feeling of rebellion at all that
conventionality. Some voice had always whispered: “That’s not it, that’s not
it,” and so it had proved. Then he remembered a ball and the mazurka he
danced with the beautiful D——. “How much in love I was that night and
how happy! And how hurt and vexed I was next morning when I woke and
felt myself still free! Why does not love come and bind me hand and foot?”
thought he. “No, there is no such thing as love! That neighbour who used to

tell me, as she told Dubróvin and the Marshal, that she loved the stars, was
not it either.”
And now his farming and work in the country recurred to his mind, and
in those recollections also there was nothing to dwell on with pleasure.
“Will they talk long of my departure?” came into his head; but who “they”
were he did not quite know. Next came a thought that made him wince and
mutter incoherently. It was the recollection of M. Cappele the tailor, and the
six hundred and seventy-eight rubles he still owed him, and he recalled the
words in which he had begged him to wait another year, and the look of
perplexity and resignation which had appeared on the tailor’s face. “Oh, my
God, my God!” he repeated, wincing and trying to drive away the
intolerable thought. “All the same and in spite of everything she loved me,”
thought he of the girl they had talked about at the farewell supper. “Yes, had
I married her I should not now be owing anything, and as it is I am in debt
to Vasílyev.” Then he remembered the last night he had played with
Vasílyev at the club (just after leaving her), and he recalled his humiliating
requests for another game and the other’s cold refusal. “A year’s
economizing and they will all be paid, and the devil take them!”... But
despite this assurance he again began calculating his outstanding debts,
their dates, and when he could hope to pay them off. “And I owe something
to Morell as well as to Chevalier,” thought he, recalling the night when he
had run up so large a debt. It was at a carousel at the gipsies arranged by
some fellows from Petersburg: Sáshka B——, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar,
Prince D——, and that pompous old——. “How is it those gentlemen are
so self-satisfied?” thought he, “and by what right do they form a clique to
which they think others must be highly flattered to be admitted? Can it be
because they are on the Emperor’s staff? Why, it’s awful what fools and
scoundrels they consider other people to be! But I showed them that I at any
rate, on the contrary, do not at all want their intimacy. All the same, I fancy
Andrew, the steward, would be amazed to know that I am on familiar terms
with a man like Sáshka B——, a colonel and an aide-de-camp to the Tsar!
Yes, and no one drank more than I did that evening, and I taught the gipsies
a new song and everyone listened to it. Though I have done many foolish
things, all the same I am a very good fellow,” thought he.
Morning found him at the third post-stage. He drank tea, and himself
helped Vanyúsha to move his bundles and trunks and sat down among them,
sensible, erect, and precise, knowing where all his belongings were, how

much money he had and where it was, where he had put his passport and
the post-horse requisition and toll-gate papers, and it all seemed to him so
well arranged that he grew quite cheerful and the long journey before him
seemed an extended pleasure-trip.
All that morning and noon he was deep in calculations of how many
versts he had travelled, how many remained to the next stage, how many to
the next town, to the place where he would dine, to the place where he
would drink tea, and to Stavrópol, and what fraction of the whole journey
was already accomplished. He also calculated how much money he had
with him, how much would be left over, how much would pay off all his
debts, and what proportion of his income he would spend each month.
Towards evening, after tea, he calculated that to Stavrópol there still
remained seven-elevenths of the whole journey, that his debts would require
seven months’ economy and one-eighth of his whole fortune; and then,
tranquillized, he wrapped himself up, lay down in the sledge, and again
dozed off. His imagination was now turned to the future: to the Caucasus.
All his dreams of the future were mingled with pictures of Amalat-Beks,
Circassian women, mountains, precipices, terrible torrents, and perils. All
these things were vague and dim, but the love of fame and the danger of
death furnished the interest of that future. Now, with unprecedented courage
and a strength that amazed everyone, he slew and subdued an innumerable
host of hillsmen; now he was himself a hillsman and with them was
maintaining their independence against the Russians. As soon as he pictured
anything definite, familiar Moscow figures always appeared on the scene.
Sáshka B—— fights with the Russians or the hillsmen against him. Even
the tailor Cappele in some strange way takes part in the conqueror’s
triumph. Amid all this he remembered his former humiliations, weaknesses,
and mistakes, and the recollection was not disagreeable. It was clear that
there among the mountains, waterfalls, fair Circassians, and dangers, such
mistakes could not recur. Having once made full confession to himself there
was an end of it all. One other vision, the sweetest of them all, mingled with
the young man’s every thought of the future—the vision of a woman. And
there, among the mountains, she appeared to his imagination as a Circassian
slave, a fine figure with a long plait of hair and deep submissive eyes. He
pictured a lonely hut in the mountains, and on the threshold she stands
awaiting him when, tired and covered with dust, blood, and fame, he returns
to her. He is conscious of her kisses, her shoulders, her sweet voice, and her

submissiveness. She is enchanting, but uneducated, wild, and rough. In the
long winter evenings he begins her education. She is clever and gifted and
quickly acquires all the knowledge essential. Why not? She can quite easily
learn foreign languages, read the French masterpieces and understand them:
Notre Dame de Paris, for instance, is sure to please her. She can also speak
French. In a drawing-room she can show more innate dignity than a lady of
the highest society. She can sing, simply, powerfully, and passionately....
“Oh, what nonsense!” said he to himself. But here they reached a post-
station and he had to change into another sledge and give some tips. But his
fancy again began searching for the “nonsense” he had relinquished, and
again fair Circassians, glory, and his return to Russia with an appointment
as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose before his imagination. “But there’s
no such thing as love,” said he to himself. “Fame is all rubbish. But the six
hundred and seventy-eight rubles?... And the conquered land that will bring
me more wealth than I need for a lifetime? It will not be right though to
keep all that wealth for myself. I shall have to distribute it. But to whom?
Well, six hundred and seventy-eight rubles to Cappele and then we’ll see.”
... Quite vague visions now cloud his mind, and only Vanyúsha’s voice and
the interrupted motion of the sledge break his healthy youthful slumber.
Scarcely conscious, he changes into another sledge at the next stage and
continues his journey.
Next morning everything goes on just the same: the same kind of post-
stations and tea-drinking, the same moving horses’ cruppers, the same short
talks with Vanyúsha, the same vague dreams and drowsiness, and the same
tired, healthy, youthful sleep at night.

Chapter III

The farther Olénin travelled from Central Russia the farther he left his
memories behind, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus the lighter his
heart became. “I’ll stay away for good and never return to show myself in
society,” was a thought that sometimes occurred to him. “These people
whom I see here are not people. None of them know me and none of them
can ever enter the Moscow society I was in or find out about my past. And
no one in that society will ever know what I am doing, living among these
people.” And quite a new feeling of freedom from his whole past came over
him among the rough beings he met on the road whom he did not consider
to be people in the sense that his Moscow acquaintances were.
The rougher the people and the fewer the signs of civilization the freer he
felt. Stavrópol, through which he had to pass, irked him. The signboards,
some of them even in French, ladies in carriages, cabs in the marketplace,
and a gentleman wearing a fur cloak and tall hat who was walking along the
boulevard and staring at the passersby, quite upset him. “Perhaps these
people know some of my acquaintances,” he thought; and the club, his
tailor, cards, society ... came back to his mind. But after Stavrópol
everything was satisfactory—wild and also beautiful and warlike, and
Olénin felt happier and happier. All the Cossacks, post-boys, and post-
station masters seemed to him simple folk with whom he could jest and
converse simply, without having to consider to what class they belonged.
They all belonged to the human race which, without his thinking about it,
all appeared dear to Olénin, and they all treated him in a friendly way.
Already in the province of the Don Cossacks his sledge had been
exchanged for a cart, and beyond Stavrópol it became so warm that Olénin
travelled without wearing his fur coat. It was already spring—an
unexpected joyous spring for Olénin. At night he was no longer allowed to
leave the Cossack villages, and they said it was dangerous to travel in the
evening. Vanyúsha began to be uneasy, and they carried a loaded gun in the

cart. Olénin became still happier. At one of the post-stations the post-master
told of a terrible murder that had been committed recently on the high road.
They began to meet armed men. “So this is where it begins!” thought
Olénin, and kept expecting to see the snowy mountains of which mention
was so often made. Once, towards evening, the Nogáy driver pointed with
his whip to the mountains shrouded in clouds. Olénin looked eagerly, but it
was dull and the mountains were almost hidden by the clouds. Olénin made
out something grey and white and fleecy, but try as he would he could find
nothing beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and heard.
The mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike, and he thought
the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he had so often been told,
was as much an invention as Bach’s music and the love of women, in which
he did not believe. So he gave up looking forward to seeing the mountains.
But early next morning, being awakened in his cart by the freshness of the
air, he glanced carelessly to the right. The morning was perfectly clear.
Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces away as it seemed to him at first
glance, pure white gigantic masses with delicate contours, the distinct
fantastic outlines of their summits showing sharply against the far-off sky.
When he had realized the distance between himself and them and the sky
and the whole immensity of the mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that
beauty, he became afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave
himself a shake to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.
“What’s that! What is it?” he said to the driver.
“Why, the mountains,” answered the Nogáy driver with indifference.
“And I too have been looking at them for a long while,” said Vanyúsha.
“Aren’t they fine? They won’t believe it at home.”
The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road caused
the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon, while their rosy
crests glittered in the light of the rising sun. At first Olénin was only
astonished at the sight, then gladdened by it; but later on, gazing more and
more intently at that snow-peaked chain that seemed to rise not from among
other black mountains, but straight out of the plain, and to glide away into
the distance, he began by slow degrees to be penetrated by their beauty and
at length to feel the mountains. From that moment all he saw, all he thought,
and all he felt, acquired for him a new character, sternly majestic like the
mountains! All his Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his

trivial dreams about the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. “Now it has
begun,” a solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the Térek, just
becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages and the people,
all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at himself or Vanyúsha,
and again thought of the mountains. ... Two Cossacks ride by, their guns in
their cases swinging rhythmically behind their backs, the white and bay legs
of their horses mingling confusedly ... and the mountains! Beyond the Térek
rises the smoke from a Tartar village... and the mountains! The sun has risen
and glitters on the Térek, now visible beyond the reeds ... and the
mountains! From the village comes a Tartar wagon, and women, beautiful
young women, pass by... and the mountains! “Abreks canter about the plain,
and here am I driving along and do not fear them! I have a gun, and
strength, and youth... and the mountains!”

Chapter IV

That whole part of the Térek line (about fifty miles) along which lie the
villages of the Grebénsk Cossacks is uniform in character both as to country
and inhabitants. The Térek, which separates the Cossacks from the
mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already broad and smooth,
always depositing greyish sand on its low reedy right bank and washing
away the steep, though not high, left bank, with its roots of century-old
oaks, its rotting plane trees, and young brushwood. On the right bank lie the
villages of pro-Russian, though still somewhat restless, Tartars. Along the
left bank, back half a mile from the river and standing five or six miles
apart from one another, are Cossack villages. In olden times most of these
villages were situated on the banks of the river; but the Térek, shifting
northward from the mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and
now there remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of
pear and plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and
wild vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the deer,
the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to love these
places. From village to village runs a road cut through the forest as a
cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of Cossacks and watch-
towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip about seven hundred
yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the Cossacks. To the north of it
begin the sand-drifts of the Nogáy or Mozdók steppes, which fetch far to
the north and run, Heaven knows where, into the Trukhmén, Astrakhán, and
Kirghíz-Kaisátsk steppes. To the south, beyond the Térek, are the Great
Chéchnya river, the Kochkálov range, the Black Mountains, yet another
range, and at last the snowy mountains, which can just be seen but have
never yet been scaled. In this fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has
dwelt as far back as memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian
tribe belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebénsk
Cossacks.

Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled
beyond the Térek among the Chéchens on the Grebén, the first range of
wooded mountains of Chéchnya. Living among the Chéchens the Cossacks
intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs of the hill
tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all its purity, as
well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among them, declares that
Tsar Iván the Terrible came to the Térek, sent for their Elders, and gave
them the land on this side of the river, exhorting them to remain friendly to
Russia and promising not to enforce his rule upon them nor oblige them to
change their faith. Even now the Cossack families claim relationship with
the Chéchens, and the love of freedom, of leisure, of plunder and of war,
still form their chief characteristics. Only the harmful side of Russian
influence shows itself—by interference at elections, by confiscation of
church bells, and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march
through it.
A Cossack is inclined to hate less the dzhigit hillsman who maybe has
killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his village,
but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects his enemy the
hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an alien and an
oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack’s point of view a Russian peasant is a
foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he sees a sample in the
hawkers who come to the country and in the Ukrainian immigrants whom
the Cossack contemptuously calls “woolbeaters”. For him, to be smartly
dressed means to be dressed like a Circassian. The best weapons are
obtained from the hillsmen and the best horses are bought, or stolen, from
them. A dashing young Cossack likes to show off his knowledge of Tartar,
and when carousing talks Tartar even to his fellow Cossack.
In spite of all these things this small Christian clan stranded in a tiny
corner of the earth, surrounded by half-savage Mohammedan tribes and by
soldiers, considers itself highly advanced, acknowledges none but Cossacks
as human beings, and despises everybody else. The Cossack spends most of
his time in the cordon, in action, or in hunting and fishing. He hardly ever
works at home. When he stays in the village it is an exception to the general
rule and then he is holiday-making. All Cossacks make their own wine, and
drunkenness is not so much a general tendency as a rite, the non-fulfilment
of which would be considered apostasy. The Cossack looks upon a woman
as an instrument for his welfare; only the unmarried girls are allowed to

amuse themselves. A married woman has to work for her husband from
youth to very old age: his demands on her are the Oriental ones of
submission and labour. In consequence of this outlook women are strongly
developed both physically and mentally, and though they are—as
everywhere in the East—nominally in subjection, they possess far greater
influence and importance in family-life than Western women. Their
exclusion from public life and inurement to heavy male labour give the
women all the more power and importance in the household. A Cossack,
who before strangers considers it improper to speak affectionately or
needlessly to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her
superiority. His house and all his property, in fact the entire homestead, has
been acquired and is kept together solely by her labour and care. Though
firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack and is only proper
for a Nogáy labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware of the fact that all he
makes use of and calls his own is the result of that toil, and that it is in the
power of the woman (his mother or his wife) whom he considers his slave,
to deprive him of all he possesses. Besides, the continuous performance of
man’s heavy work and the responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed
the Grebénsk women with a peculiarly independent masculine character and
have remarkably developed their physical powers, common sense,
resolution, and stability. The women are in most cases stronger, more
intelligent, more developed, and handsomer than the men. A striking feature
of a Grebénsk woman’s beauty is the combination of the purest Circassian
type of face with the broad and powerful build of Northern women.
Cossack women wear the Circassian dress: a Tartar smock, beshmet, and
soft slippers; but they tie their kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian
fashion. Smartness, cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the
arrangement of their huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their
relations with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy
perfect freedom.
Novomlínsk village was considered the very heart of Grebénsk
Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebénsk
population have been preserved, and its women have from time immemorial
been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack’s
livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and
pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing, and
from war plunder. Novomlínsk village lies about two and a half miles away

from the Térek, from which it is separated by a dense forest. On one side of
the road which runs through the village is the river; on the other, green
vineyards and orchards, beyond which are seen the driftsands of the Nogáy
Steppe. The village is surrounded by earth-banks and prickly bramble
hedges, and is entered by tall gates hung between posts and covered with
little reed-thatched roofs. Beside them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an
unwieldy cannon captured by the Cossacks at some time or other, and
which has not been fired for a hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel
with dagger and gun sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on
guard beside the gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing officer
and sometimes does not.
Below the roof of the gateway is written in black letters on a white board:
“Houses 266: male inhabitants 897: female 1012.” The Cossacks’ houses
are all raised on pillars two and a half feet from the ground. They are
carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved gables. If not new they
are at least all straight and clean, with high porches of different shapes; and
they are not built close together but have ample space around them, and are
all picturesquely placed along broad streets and lanes. In front of the large
bright windows of many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark
green poplars and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and scented white
blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow flaunting yellow
sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open square are three
shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and
gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier and larger than
the other houses, stands the Regimental Commander’s dwelling with its
casement windows, behind a row of tall poplars. Few people are to be seen
in the streets of the village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young
men are on duty in the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are
fishing or helping the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very
old, the sick, and the children, remain at home.

Chapter V

It was one of those wonderful evenings that occur only in the Caucasus.
The sun had sunk behind the mountains but it was still light. The evening
glow had spread over a third of the sky, and against its brilliancy the dull
white immensity of the mountains was sharply defined. The air was
rarefied, motionless, and full of sound. The shadow of the mountains
reached for several miles over the steppe. The steppe, the opposite side of
the river, and the roads, were all deserted. If very occasionally mounted
men appeared, the Cossacks in the cordon and the Chéchens in their aouls
(villages) watched them with surprised curiosity and tried to guess who
those questionable men could be.
At nightfall people from fear of one another flock to their dwellings, and
only birds and beasts fearless of man prowl in those deserted spaces.
Talking merrily, the women who have been tying up the vines hurry away
from the gardens before sunset. The vineyards, like all the surrounding
district, are deserted, but the villages become very animated at that time of
the evening. From all sides, walking, riding, or driving in their creaking
carts, people move towards the village. Girls with their smocks tucked up
and twigs in their hands run chatting merrily to the village gates to meet the
cattle that are crowding together in a cloud of dust and mosquitoes which
they bring with them from the steppe. The well-fed cows and buffaloes
disperse at a run all over the streets and Cossack women in coloured
beshmets go to and fro among them. You can hear their merry laughter and
shrieks mingling with the lowing of the cattle. There an armed and mounted
Cossack, on leave from the cordon, rides up to a hut and, leaning towards
the window, knocks. In answer to the knock the handsome head of a young
woman appears at the window and you can hear caressing, laughing voices.
There a tattered Nogáy labourer, with prominent cheekbones, brings a load
of reeds from the steppes, turns his creaking cart into the Cossack captain’s
broad and clean courtyard, and lifts the yoke off the oxen that stand tossing

their heads while he and his master shout to one another in Tartar. Past a
puddle that reaches nearly across the street, a barefooted Cossack woman
with a bundle of firewood on her back makes her laborious way by clinging
to the fences, holding her smock high and exposing her white legs. A
Cossack returning from shooting calls out in jest: “Lift it higher, shameless
thing!” and points his gun at her. The woman lets down her smock and
drops the wood. An old Cossack, returning home from fishing with his
trousers tucked up and his hairy grey chest uncovered, has a net across his
shoulder containing silvery fish that are still struggling; and to take a short
cut climbs over his neighbour’s broken fence and gives a tug to his coat
which has caught on the fence. There a woman is dragging a dry branch
along and from round the corner comes the sound of an axe. Cossack
children, spinning their tops wherever there is a smooth place in the street,
are shrieking; women are climbing over fences to avoid going round. From
every chimney rises the odorous kisyak smoke. From every homestead
comes the sound of increased bustle, precursor to the stillness of night.
Granny Ulítka, the wife of the Cossack cornet who is also teacher in the
regimental school, goes out to the gates of her yard like the other women,
and waits for the cattle which her daughter Maryánka is driving along the
street. Before she has had time fully to open the wattle gate in the fence, an
enormous buffalo cow surrounded by mosquitoes rushes up bellowing and
squeezes in. Several well-fed cows slowly follow her, their large eyes
gazing with recognition at their mistress as they swish their sides with their
tails.
The beautiful and shapely Maryánka enters at the gate and throwing
away her switch quickly slams the gate to and rushes with all the speed of
her nimble feet to separate and drive the cattle into their sheds. “Take off
your slippers, you devil’s wench!” shouts her mother, “you’ve worn them
into holes!” Maryánka is not at all offended at being called a “devil’s
wench”, but accepting it as a term of endearment cheerfully goes on with
her task. Her face is covered with a kerchief tied round her head. She is
wearing a pink smock and a green beshmet. She disappears inside the lean-
to shed in the yard, following the big fat cattle; and from the shed comes
her voice as she speaks gently and persuasively to the buffalo: “Won’t she
stand still? What a creature! Come now, come old dear!” Soon the girl and
the old woman pass from the shed to the dairy carrying two large pots of
milk, the day’s yield. From the dairy chimney rises a thin cloud of kisyak

smoke: the milk is being used to make into clotted cream. The girl makes
up the fire while her mother goes to the gate. Twilight has fallen on the
village. The air is full of the smell of vegetables, cattle, and scented kisyak
smoke. From the gates and along the streets Cossack women come running,
carrying lighted rags. From the yards one hears the snorting and quiet
chewing of the cattle eased of their milk, while in the street only the voices
of women and children sound as they call to one another. It is rare on a
week-day to hear the drunken voice of a man.
One of the Cossack wives, a tall, masculine old woman, approaches
Granny Ulítka from the homestead opposite and asks her for a light. In her
hand she holds a rag.
“Have you cleared up, Granny?”
“The girl is lighting the fire. Is it fire you want?” says Granny Ulítka,
proud of being able to oblige her neighbour.
Both women enter the hut, and coarse hands unused to dealing with small
articles tremblingly lift the lid of a matchbox, which is a rarity in the
Caucasus. The masculine-looking new-comer sits down on the doorstep
with the evident intention of having a chat.
“And is your man at the school, Mother?” she asked.
“He’s always teaching the youngsters, Mother. But he writes that he’ll
come home for the holidays,” said the cornet’s wife.
“Yes, he’s a clever man, one sees; it all comes useful.”
“Of course it does.”
“And my Lukáshka is at the cordon; they won’t let him come home,” said
the visitor, though the cornet’s wife had known all this long ago. She
wanted to talk about her Lukáshka whom she had lately fitted out for
service in the Cossack regiment, and whom she wished to marry to the
cornet’s daughter, Maryánka.
“So he’s at the cordon?”
“He is, Mother. He’s not been home since last holidays. The other day I
sent him some shirts by Fómushkin. He says he’s all right, and that his
superiors are satisfied. He says they are looking out for abreks again.
Lukáshka is quite happy, he says.”

“Ah well, thank God,” said the cornet’s wife. “‘Snatcher’ is certainly the
only word for him.” Lukáshka was surnamed “the Snatcher” because of his
bravery in snatching a boy from a watery grave, and the cornet’s wife
alluded to this, wishing in her turn to say something agreeable to
Lukáshka’s mother.
“I thank God, Mother, that he’s a good son! He’s a fine fellow, everyone
praises him,” says Lukáshka’s mother. “All I wish is to get him married;
then I could die in peace.”
“Well, aren’t there plenty of young women in the village?” answered the
cornet’s wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid of the matchbox with
her horny hands.
“Plenty, Mother, plenty,” remarked Lukáshka’s mother, shaking her head.
“There’s your girl now, your Maryánka—that’s the sort of girl! You’d have
to search through the whole place to find such another!” The cornet’s wife
knows what Lukáshka’s mother is after, but though she believes him to be a
good Cossack she hangs back: first because she is a cornet’s wife and rich,
while Lukáshka is the son of a simple Cossack and fatherless, secondly
because she does not want to part with her daughter yet, but chiefly because
propriety demands it.
“Well, when Maryánka grows up she’ll be marriageable too,” she
answers soberly and modestly.
“I’ll send the matchmakers to you—I’ll send them! Only let me get the
vineyard done and then we’ll come and make our bows to you,” says
Lukáshka’s mother. “And we’ll make our bows to Elias Vasílich too.”
“Elias, indeed!” says the cornet’s wife proudly. “It’s to me you must
speak! All in its own good time.”
Lukáshka’s mother sees by the stern face of the cornet’s wife that it is not
the time to say anything more just now, so she lights her rag with the match
and says, rising: “Don’t refuse us, think of my words. I’ll go, it is time to
light the fire.”
As she crosses the road swinging the burning rag, she meets Maryánka,
who bows.
“Ah, she’s a regular queen, a splendid worker, that girl!” she thinks,
looking at the beautiful maiden. “What need for her to grow any more? It’s
time she was married and to a good home; married to Lukáshka!”

But Granny Ulítka had her own cares and she remained sitting on the
threshold thinking hard about something, till the girl called her.

Chapter VI

The male population of the village spend their time on military
expeditions and in the cordon—or “at their posts”, as the Cossacks say.
Towards evening, that same Lukáshka the Snatcher, about whom the old
women had been talking, was standing on a watch-tower of the Nízhni-
Protótsk post situated on the very banks of the Térek. Leaning on the railing
of the tower and screwing up his eyes, he looked now far into the distance
beyond the Térek, now down at his fellow Cossacks, and occasionally he
addressed the latter. The sun was already approaching the snowy range that
gleamed white above the fleecy clouds. The clouds undulating at the base of
the mountains grew darker and darker. The clearness of evening was
noticeable in the air. A sense of freshness came from the woods, though
round the post it was still hot. The voices of the talking Cossacks vibrated
more sonorously than before. The moving mass of the Térek’s rapid brown
waters contrasted more vividly with its motionless banks. The waters were
beginning to subside and here and there the wet sands gleamed drab on the
banks and in the shallows. The other side of the river, just opposite the
cordon, was deserted; only an immense waste of low-growing reeds
stretched far away to the very foot of the mountains. On the low bank, a
little to one side, could be seen the flat-roofed clay houses and the funnel-
shaped chimneys of a Chéchen village. The sharp eyes of the Cossack who
stood on the watch-tower followed, through the evening smoke of the pro-
Russian village, the tiny moving figures of the Chéchen women visible in
the distance in their red and blue garments.
Although the Cossacks expected abreks to cross over and attack them
from the Tartar side at any moment, especially as it was May when the
woods by the Térek are so dense that it is difficult to pass through them on
foot and the river is shallow enough in places for a horseman to ford it, and
despite the fact that a couple of days before a Cossack had arrived with a
circular from the commander of the regiment announcing that spies had

reported the intention of a party of some eight men to cross the Térek, and
ordering special vigilance—no special vigilance was being observed in the
cordon. The Cossacks, unarmed and with their horses unsaddled just as if
they were at home, spent their time some in fishing, some in drinking, and
some in hunting. Only the horse of the man on duty was saddled, and with
its feet hobbled was moving about by the brambles near the wood, and only
the sentinel had his Circassian coat on and carried a gun and sword. The
corporal, a tall thin Cossack with an exceptionally long back and small
hands and feet, was sitting on the earth-bank of a hut with his beshmet
unbuttoned. On his face was the lazy, bored expression of a superior, and
having shut his eyes he dropped his head upon the palm first of one hand
and then of the other. An elderly Cossack with a broad greyish-black beard
was lying in his shirt, girdled with a black strap, close to the river and
gazing lazily at the waves of the Térek as they monotonously foamed and
swirled. Others, also overcome by the heat and half naked, were rinsing
clothes in the Térek, plaiting a fishing line, or humming tunes as they lay on
the hot sand of the river bank. One Cossack, with a thin face much burnt by
the sun, lay near the hut evidently dead drunk, by a wall which though it
had been in shadow some two hours previously was now exposed to the
sun’s fierce slanting rays.
Lukáshka, who stood on the watch-tower, was a tall handsome lad about
twenty years old and very like his mother. His face and whole build, in spite
of the angularity of youth, indicated great strength, both physical and moral.
Though he had only lately joined the Cossacks at the front, it was evident
from the expression of his face and the calm assurance of his attitude that
he had already acquired the somewhat proud and warlike bearing peculiar
to Cossacks and to men generally who continually carry arms, and that he
felt he was a Cossack and fully knew his own value. His ample Circassian
coat was torn in some places, his cap was on the back of his head Chéchen
fashion, and his leggings had slipped below his knees. His clothing was not
rich, but he wore it with that peculiar Cossack foppishness which consists in
imitating the Chéchen brave. Everything on a real brave is ample, ragged,
and neglected, only his weapons are costly. But these ragged clothes and
these weapons are belted and worn with a certain air and matched in a
certain manner, neither of which can be acquired by everybody and which
at once strike the eye of a Cossack or a hillsman. Lukáshka had this
resemblance to a brave. With his hands folded under his sword, and his eyes

nearly closed, he kept looking at the distant Tartar village. Taken separately
his features were not beautiful, but anyone who saw his stately carriage and
his dark-browed intelligent face would involuntarily say, “What a fine
fellow!”
“Look at the women, what a lot of them are walking about in the
village,” said he in a sharp voice, languidly showing his brilliant white teeth
and not addressing anyone in particular.
Nazárka who was lying below immediately lifted his head and remarked:
“They must be going for water.”
“Supposing one scared them with a gun?” said Lukáshka, laughing,
“Wouldn’t they be frightened?”
“It wouldn’t reach.”
“What! Mine would carry beyond. Just wait a bit, and when their feast
comes round I’ll go and visit Giréy Khan and drink buza there,” said
Lukáshka, angrily swishing away the mosquitoes which attached
themselves to him.
A rustling in the thicket drew the Cossack’s attention. A pied mongrel
half-setter, searching for a scent and violently wagging its scantily furred
tail, came running to the cordon. Lukáshka recognized the dog as one
belonging to his neighbour, Uncle Eróshka, a hunter, and saw, following it
through the thicket, the approaching figure of the hunter himself.
Uncle Eróshka was a gigantic Cossack with a broad, snow-white beard
and such broad shoulders and chest that in the wood, where there was no
one to compare him with, he did not look particularly tall, so well
proportioned were his powerful limbs. He wore a tattered coat and, over the
bands with which his legs were swathed, sandals made of undressed deer’s
hide tied on with strings; while on his head he had a rough little white cap.
He carried over one shoulder a screen to hide behind when shooting
pheasants, and a bag containing a hen for luring hawks, and a small falcon;
over the other shoulder, attached by a strap, was a wild cat he had killed;
and stuck in his belt behind were some little bags containing bullets,
gunpowder, and bread, a horse’s tail to swish away the mosquitoes, a large
dagger in a torn scabbard smeared with old bloodstains, and two dead
pheasants. Having glanced at the cordon he stopped.

“Hy, Lyam!” he called to the dog in such a ringing bass that it awoke an
echo far away in the wood; and throwing over his shoulder his big gun, of
the kind the Cossacks call a “flint”, he raised his cap.
“Had a good day, good people, eh?” he said, addressing the Cossacks in
the same strong and cheerful voice, quite without effort, but as loudly as if
he were shouting to someone on the other bank of the river.
“Yes, yes, Uncle!” answered from all sides the voices of the young
Cossacks.
“What have you seen? Tell us!” shouted Uncle Eróshka, wiping the sweat
from his broad red face with the sleeve of his coat.
“Ah, there’s a vulture living in the plane tree here, Uncle. As soon as
night comes he begins hovering round,” said Nazárka, winking and jerking
his shoulder and leg.
“Come, come!” said the old man incredulously.
“Really, Uncle! You must keep watch,” replied Nazárka with a laugh.
The other Cossacks began laughing.
The wag had not seen any vulture at all, but it had long been the custom
of the young Cossacks in the cordon to tease and mislead Uncle Eróshka
every time he came to them.
“Eh, you fool, always lying!” exclaimed Lukáshka from the tower to
Nazárka.
Nazárka was immediately silenced.
“It must be watched. I’ll watch,” answered the old man to the great
delight of all the Cossacks. “But have you seen any boars?”
“Watching for boars, are you?” said the corporal, bending forward and
scratching his back with both hands, very pleased at the chance of some
distraction. “It’s abreks one has to hunt here and not boars! You’ve not
heard anything, Uncle, have you?” he added, needlessly screwing up his
eyes and showing his close-set white teeth.
“Abreks,” said the old man. “No, I haven’t. I say, have you any chikhir?
Let me have a drink, there’s a good man. I’m really quite done up. When
the time comes I’ll bring you some fresh meat, I really will. Give me a
drink!” he added.

“Well, and are you going to watch?” inquired the corporal, as though he
had not heard what the other said.
“I did mean to watch tonight,” replied Uncle Eróshka. “Maybe, with
God’s help, I shall kill something for the holiday. Then you shall have a
share, you shall indeed!”
“Uncle! Hallo, Uncle!” called out Lukáshka sharply from above,
attracting everybody’s attention. All the Cossacks looked up at him. “Just
go to the upper water-course, there’s a fine herd of boars there. I’m not
inventing, really! The other day one of our Cossacks shot one there. I’m
telling you the truth,” added he, readjusting the musket at his back and in a
tone that showed he was not joking.
“Ah! Lukáshka the Snatcher is here!” said the old man, looking up.
“Where has he been shooting?”
“Haven’t you seen? I suppose you’re too young!” said Lukáshka. “Close
by the ditch,” he went on seriously with a shake of the head. “We were just
going along the ditch when all at once we heard something crackling, but
my gun was in its case. Elias fired suddenly ... But I’ll show you the place,
it’s not far. You just wait a bit. I know every one of their footpaths ... Daddy
Mósev,” said he, turning resolutely and almost commandingly to the
corporal, “it’s time to relieve guard!” and holding aloft his gun he began to
descend from the watch-tower without waiting for the order.
“Come down!” said the corporal, after Lukáshka had started, and glanced
round. “Is it your turn, Gúrka? Then go ... True enough your Lukáshka has
become very skilful,” he went on, addressing the old man. “He keeps going
about just like you, he doesn’t stay at home. The other day he killed a boar.”

Chapter VII

The sun had already set and the shades of night were rapidly spreading
from the edge of the wood. The Cossacks finished their task round the
cordon and gathered in the hut for supper. Only the old man still stayed
under the plane tree watching for the vulture and pulling the string tied to
the falcon’s leg, but though a vulture was really perching on the plane tree it
declined to swoop down on the lure. Lukáshka, singing one song after
another, was leisurely placing nets among the very thickest brambles to trap
pheasants. In spite of his tall stature and big hands every kind of work, both
rough and delicate, prospered under Lukáshka’s fingers.
“Hallo, Luke!” came Nazárka’s shrill, sharp voice calling him from the
thicket close by. “The Cossacks have gone in to supper.”
Nazárka, with a live pheasant under his arm, forced his way through the
brambles and emerged on the footpath.
“Oh!” said Lukáshka, breaking off in his song, “where did you get that
cock pheasant? I suppose it was in my trap?”
Nazárka was of the same age as Lukáshka and had also only been at the
front since the previous spring.
He was plain, thin and puny, with a shrill voice that rang in one’s ears.
They were neighbours and comrades. Lukáshka was sitting on the grass
cross-legged like a Tartar, adjusting his nets.
“I don’t know whose it was—yours, I expect.”
“Was it beyond the pit by the plane tree? Then it is mine! I set the nets
last night.”
Lukáshka rose and examined the captured pheasant. After stroking the
dark burnished head of the bird, which rolled its eyes and stretched out its
neck in terror, Lukáshka took the pheasant in his hands.
“We’ll have it in a pilau tonight. You go and kill and pluck it.”

“And shall we eat it ourselves or give it to the corporal?”
“He has plenty!”
“I don’t like killing them,” said Nazárka.
“Give it here!”
Lukáshka drew a little knife from under his dagger and gave it a swift
jerk. The bird fluttered, but before it could spread its wings the bleeding
head bent and quivered.
“That’s how one should do it!” said Lukáshka, throwing down the
pheasant. “It will make a fat pilau.”
Nazárka shuddered as he looked at the bird.
“I say, Lukáshka, that fiend will be sending us to the ambush again
tonight,” he said, taking up the bird. (He was alluding to the corporal.) “He
has sent Fómushkin to get wine, and it ought to be his turn. He always puts
it on us.”
Lukáshka went whistling along the cordon.
“Take the string with you,” he shouted.
Nazirka obeyed.
“I’ll give him a bit of my mind today, I really will,” continued Nazárka.
“Let’s say we won’t go; we’re tired out and there’s an end of it! No, really,
you tell him, he’ll listen to you. It’s too bad!”
“Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!” said Lukáshka,
evidently thinking of something else. “What bosh! If he made us turn out of
the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can have some
fun, but here what is there? It’s all one whether we’re in the cordon or in
ambush. What a fellow you are!”
“And are you going to the village?”
“I’ll go for the holidays.”
“Gúrka says your Dunáyka is carrying on with Fómushkin,” said Nazárka
suddenly.
“Well, let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, showing his regular white
teeth, though he did not laugh. “As if I couldn’t find another!”
“Gúrka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was
Fómushkin sitting and eating pie. Gúrka stopped awhile and then went

away, and passing by the window he heard her say, ‘He’s gone, the fiend....
Why don’t you eat your pie, my own? You needn’t go home for the night,’
she says. And Gúrka under the window says to himself, ‘That’s fine!’”
“You’re making it up.”
“No, quite true, by Heaven!”
“Well, if she’s found another let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, after
a pause. “There’s no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.”
“Well, see what a devil you are!” said Nazárka. “You should make up to
the cornet’s girl, Maryánka. Why doesn’t she walk out with any one?”
Lukáshka frowned. “What of Maryánka? They’re all alike,” said he.
“Well, you just try...”
“What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?”
And Lukáshka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon
pulling leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching
sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his dagger
and cut it down. “What a ramrod it will make,” he said, swinging the
sapling till it whistled through the air.

The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor of
the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose turn it
was to lie in ambush was raised. “Who is to go tonight?” shouted one of the
Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in the next room.
“Who is to go?” the corporal shouted back. “Uncle Burlák has been and
Fómushkin too,” said he, not quite confidently. “You two had better go, you
and Nazárka,” he went on, addressing Lukáshka. “And Ergushóv must go
too; surely he has slept it off?”
“You don’t sleep it off yourself so why should he?” said Nazárka in a
subdued voice.
The Cossacks laughed.
Ergushóv was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near the
hut. He had only that moment staggered into the room rubbing his eyes.
Lukáshka had already risen and was getting his gun ready.

“Be quick and go! Finish your supper and go!” said the corporal; and
without waiting for an expression of consent he shut the door, evidently not
expecting the Cossack to obey. “Of course,” thought he, “if I hadn’t been
ordered to I wouldn’t send anyone, but an officer might turn up at any
moment. As it is, they say eight abreks have crossed over.”
“Well, I suppose I must go,” remarked Ergushóv, “it’s the regulation.
Can’t be helped! The times are such. I say, we must go.”
Meanwhile Lukáshka, holding a big piece of pheasant to his mouth with
both hands and glancing now at Nazárka, now at Ergushóv, seemed quite
indifferent to what passed and only laughed at them both. Before the
Cossacks were ready to go into ambush. Uncle Eróshka, who had been
vainly waiting under the plane tree till night fell, entered the dark outer
room.
“Well, lads,” his loud bass resounded through the low-roofed room
drowning all the other voices, “I’m going with you. You’ll watch for
Chéchens and I for boars!”

Chapter VIII

It was quite dark when Uncle Eróshka and the three Cossacks, in their
cloaks and shouldering their guns, left the cordon and went towards the
place on the Térek where they were to lie in ambush. Nazárka did not want
to go at all, but Lukáshka shouted at him and they soon started. After they
had gone a few steps in silence the Cossacks turned aside from the ditch
and went along a path almost hidden by reeds till they reached the river. On
its bank lay a thick black log cast up by the water. The reeds around it had
been recently beaten down.
“Shall we lie here?” asked Nazárka.
“Why not?” answered Lukáshka. “Sit down here and I’ll be back in a
minute. I’ll only show Daddy where to go.”
“This is the best place; here we can see and not be seen,” said Ergushóv,
“so it’s here we’ll lie. It’s a first-rate place!”
Nazárka and Ergushóv spread out their cloaks and settled down behind
the log, while Lukáshka went on with Uncle Eróshka.
“It’s not far from here. Daddy,” said Lukáshka, stepping softly in front of
the old man; “I’ll show you where they’ve been—I’m the only one that
knows, Daddy.”
“Show me! You’re a fine fellow, a regular Snatcher!” replied the old man,
also whispering.
Having gone a few steps Lukáshka stopped, stooped down over a puddle,
and whistled. “That’s where they come to drink, d’you see?” He spoke in a
scarcely audible voice, pointing to fresh hoof-prints.
“Christ bless you,” answered the old man. “The boar will be in the
hollow beyond the ditch,” he added. “I’ll watch, and you can go.”
Lukáshka pulled his cloak up higher and walked back alone, throwing
swift glances now to the left at the wall of reeds, now to the Térek rushing

by below the bank. “I daresay he’s watching or creeping along somewhere,”
thought he of a possible Chéchen hillsman. Suddenly a loud rustling and a
splash in the water made him start and seize his musket. From under the
bank a boar leapt up—his dark outline showing for a moment against the
glassy surface of the water and then disappearing among the reeds.
Lukáshka pulled out his gun and aimed, but before he could fire the boar
had disappeared in the thicket. Lukáshka spat with vexation and went on.
On approaching the ambuscade he halted again and whistled softly. His
whistle was answered and he stepped up to his comrades.
Nazárka, all curled up, was already asleep. Ergushóv sat with his legs
crossed and moved slightly to make room for Lukáshka.
“How jolly it is to sit here! It’s really a good place,” said he. “Did you
take him there?”
“Showed him where,” answered Lukáshka, spreading out his cloak. “But
what a big boar I roused just now close to the water! I expect it was the very
one! You must have heard the crash?”
“I did hear a beast crashing through. I knew at once it was a beast. I
thought to myself: ‘Lukáshka has roused a beast,’” Ergushóv said, wrapping
himself up in his cloak. “Now I’ll go to sleep,” he added. “Wake me when
the cocks crow. We must have discipline. I’ll lie down and have a nap, and
then you will have a nap and I’ll watch—that’s the way.”
“Luckily I don’t want to sleep,” answered Lukáshka.
The night was dark, warm, and still. Only on one side of the sky the stars
were shining, the other and greater part was overcast by one huge cloud
stretching from the mountaintops. The black cloud, blending in the absence
of any wind with the mountains, moved slowly onwards, its curved edges
sharply defined against the deep starry sky. Only in front of him could the
Cossack discern the Térek and the distance beyond. Behind and on both
sides he was surrounded by a wall of reeds. Occasionally the reeds would
sway and rustle against one another apparently without cause. Seen from
down below, against the clear part of the sky, their waving tufts looked like
the feathery branches of trees. Close in front at his very feet was the bank,
and at its base the rushing torrent. A little farther on was the moving mass
of glassy brown water which eddied rhythmically along the bank and round
the shallows. Farther still, water, banks, and cloud all merged together in
impenetrable gloom. Along the surface of the water floated black shadows,

in which the experienced eyes of the Cossack detected trees carried down
by the current. Only very rarely sheet-lightning, mirrored in the water as in
a black glass, disclosed the sloping bank opposite. The rhythmic sounds of
night—the rustling of the reeds, the snoring of the Cossacks, the hum of
mosquitoes, and the rushing water, were every now and then broken by a
shot fired in the distance, or by the gurgling of water when a piece of bank
slipped down, the splash of a big fish, or the crashing of an animal breaking
through the thick undergrowth in the wood. Once an owl flew past along the
Térek, flapping one wing against the other rhythmically at every second
beat. Just above the Cossack’s head it turned towards the wood and then,
striking its wings no longer after every other flap but at every flap, it flew to
an old plane tree where it rustled about for a long time before settling down
among the branches. At every one of these unexpected sounds the watching
Cossack listened intently, straining his hearing, and screwing up his eyes
while he deliberately felt for his musket.
The greater part of the night was past. The black cloud that had moved
westward revealed the clear starry sky from under its torn edge, and the
golden upturned crescent of the moon shone above the mountains with a
reddish light. The cold began to be penetrating. Nazárka awoke, spoke a
little, and fell asleep again. Lukáshka feeling bored got up, drew the knife
from his dagger-handle and began to fashion his stick into a ramrod. His
head was full of the Chéchens who lived over there in the mountains, and of
how their brave lads came across and were not afraid of the Cossacks, and
might even now be crossing the river at some other spot. He thrust himself
out of his hiding-place and looked along the river but could see nothing.
And as he continued looking out at intervals upon the river and at the
opposite bank, now dimly distinguishable from the water in the faint
moonlight, he no longer thought about the Chéchens but only of when it
would be time to wake his comrades, and of going home to the village. In
the village he imagined Dunáyka, his “little soul”, as the Cossacks call a
man’s mistress, and thought of her with vexation. Silvery mists, a sign of
coming morning, glittered white above the water, and not far from him
young eagles were whistling and flapping their wings. At last the crowing
of a cock reached him from the distant village, followed by the long-
sustained note of another, which was again answered by yet other voices.
“Time to wake them,” thought Lukáshka, who had finished his ramrod
and felt his eyes growing heavy. Turning to his comrades he managed to

make out which pair of legs belonged to whom, when it suddenly seemed to
him that he heard something splash on the other side of the Térek. He
turned again towards the horizon beyond the hills, where day was breaking
under the upturned crescent, glanced at the outline of the opposite bank, at
the Térek, and at the now distinctly visible driftwood upon it. For one
instant it seemed to him that he was moving and that the Térek with the
drifting wood remained stationary. Again he peered out. One large black log
with a branch particularly attracted his attention. The tree was floating in a
strange way right down the middle of the stream, neither rocking nor
whirling. It even appeared not to be floating altogether with the current, but
to be crossing it in the direction of the shallows. Lukáshka stretching out his
neck watched it intently. The tree floated to the shallows, stopped, and
shifted in a peculiar manner. Lukáshka thought he saw an arm stretched out
from beneath the tree.
“Supposing I killed an abrek all by myself!” he thought, and seized his
gun with a swift, unhurried movement, putting up his gun-rest, placing the
gun upon it, and holding it noiselessly in position. Cocking the trigger, with
bated breath he took aim, still peering out intently.
“I won’t wake them,” he thought. But his heart began beating so fast that
he remained motionless, listening. Suddenly the trunk gave a plunge and
again began to float across the stream towards our bank.
“Suppose I miss?...” thought he, and now by the faint light of the moon
he caught a glimpse of a Tartar’s head in front of the floating wood. He
aimed straight at the head which appeared to be quite near—just at the end
of his rifle’s barrel. He glanced cross. “Right enough it is an abrek!” he
thought joyfully, and suddenly rising to his knees he again took aim.
Having found the sight, barely visible at the end of the long gun, he said:
“In the name of the Father and of the Son,” in the Cossack way learnt in his
childhood, and pulled the trigger. A flash of lightning lit up for an instant
the reeds and the water, and the sharp, abrupt report of the shot was carried
across the river, changing into a prolonged roll somewhere in the far
distance. The piece of driftwood now floated not across, but with the
current, rocking and whirling.
“Stop, I say!” exclaimed Ergushóv, seizing his musket and raising
himself behind the log near which he was lying.
“Shut up, you devil!” whispered Lukáshka, grinding his teeth. “Abreks!”

“Whom have you shot?” asked Nazárka. “Who was it, Lukáshka?”
Lukáshka did not answer. He was reloading his gun and watching the
floating wood. A little way off it stopped on a sand-bank, and from behind it
something large that rocked in the water came into view.
“What did you shoot? Why don’t you speak?” insisted the Cossacks.
“Abreks, I tell you!” said Lukáshka.
“Don’t humbug! Did the gun go off? ...”
“I’ve killed an abrek, that’s what I fired at,” muttered Lukáshka in a
voice choked by emotion, as he jumped to his feet. “A man was
swimming...” he said, pointing to the sandbank. “I killed him. Just look
there.”
“Have done with your humbugging!” said Ergushóv again, rubbing his
eyes.
“Have done with what? Look there,” said Lukáshka, seizing him by the
shoulders and pulling him with such force that Ergushóv groaned.
He looked in the direction in which Lukáshka pointed, and discerning a
body immediately changed his tone.
“O Lord! But I say, more will come! I tell you the truth,” said he softly,
and began examining his musket. “That was a scout swimming across:
either the others are here already or are not far off on the other side—I tell
you for sure!” Lukáshka was unfastening his belt and taking off his
Circassian coat.
“What are you up to, you idiot?” exclaimed Ergushóv. “Only show
yourself and you’ve lost all for nothing, I tell you true! If you’ve killed him
he won’t escape. Let me have a little powder for my musket-pan—you have
some? Nazárka, you go back to the cordon and look alive; but don’t go
along the bank or you’ll be killed—I tell you true.”
“Catch me going alone! Go yourself!” said Nazárka angrily.
Having taken off his coat, Lukáshka went down to the bank.
“Don’t go in, I tell you!” said Ergushóv, putting some powder on the pan.
“Look, he’s not moving. I can see. It’s nearly morning; wait till they come
from the cordon. You go, Nazárka. You’re afraid! Don’t be afraid, I tell
you.”
“Luke, I say, Lukáshka! Tell us how you did it!” said Nazárka.

Lukáshka changed his mind about going into the water just then. “Go
quick to the cordon and I will watch. Tell the Cossacks to send out the
patrol. If the abreks are on this side they must be caught,” said he.
“That’s what I say. They’ll get off,” said Ergushóv, rising. “True, they
must be caught!”
Ergushóv and Nazárka rose and, crossing themselves, started off for the
cordon—not along the riverbank but breaking their way through the
brambles to reach a path in the wood.
“Now mind, Lukáshka—they may cut you down here, so you’d best keep
a sharp look-out, I tell you!”
“Go along; I know,” muttered Lukáshka; and having examined his gun
again he sat down behind the log.
He remained alone and sat gazing at the shallows and listening for the
Cossacks; but it was some distance to the cordon and he was tormented by
impatience. He kept thinking that the other abreks who were with the one
he had killed would escape. He was vexed with the abreks who were going
to escape just as he had been with the boar that had escaped the evening
before. He glanced round and at the opposite bank, expecting every moment
to see a man, and having arranged his gun-rest he was ready to fire. The
idea that he might himself be killed never entered his head.

Chapter IX

It was growing light. The Chéchen’s body which was gently rocking in
the shallow water was now clearly visible. Suddenly the reeds rustled not
far from Luke and he heard steps and saw the feathery tops of the reeds
moving. He set his gun at full cock and muttered: “In the name of the
Father and of the Son,” but when the cock clicked the sound of steps
ceased.
“Hallo, Cossacks! Don’t kill your Daddy!” said a deep bass voice calmly;
and moving the reeds apart Daddy Eróshka came up close to Luke.
“I very nearly killed you, by God I did!” said Lukáshka.
“What have you shot?” asked the old man.
His sonorous voice resounded through the wood and downward along the
river, suddenly dispelling the mysterious quiet of night around the Cossack.
It was as if everything had suddenly become lighter and more distinct.
“There now. Uncle, you have not seen anything, but I’ve killed a beast,”
said Lukáshka, uncocking his gun and getting up with unnatural calmness.
The old man was staring intently at the white back, now clearly visible,
against which the Térek rippled.
“He was swimming with a log on his back. I spied him out! ... Look
there. There! He’s got blue trousers, and a gun I think.... Do you see?”
inquired Luke.
“How can one help seeing?” said the old man angrily, and a serious and
stern expression appeared on his face. “You’ve killed a brave,” he said,
apparently with regret.
“Well, I sat here and suddenly saw something dark on the other side. I
spied him when he was still over there. It was as if a man had come there
and fallen in. Strange! And a piece of driftwood, a good-sized piece, comes
floating, not with the stream but across it; and what do I see but a head

appearing from under it! Strange! I stretched out of the reeds but could see
nothing; then I rose and he must have heard, the beast, and crept out into the
shallow and looked about. ‘No, you don’t!’ I said, as soon as he landed and
looked round, ‘you won’t get away!’ Oh, there was something choking me!
I got my gun ready but did not stir, and looked out. He waited a little and
then swam out again; and when he came into the moonlight I could see his
whole back. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost’... and through the smoke I see him struggling. He moaned, or so it
seemed to me. ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘the Lord be thanked, I’ve killed him!’ And
when he drifted onto the sand-bank I could see him distinctly: he tried to
get up but couldn’t. He struggled a bit and then lay down. Everything could
be seen. Look, he does not move—he must be dead! The Cossacks have
gone back to the cordon in case there should be any more of them.”
“And so you got him!” said the old man. “He is far away now, my lad!
...” And again he shook his head sadly.
Just then the sound reached them of breaking bushes and the loud voices
of Cossacks approaching along the bank on horseback and on foot. “Are
you bringing the skiff?” shouted Lukáshka.
“You’re a trump, Luke! Lug it to the bank!” shouted one of the Cossacks.
Without waiting for the skiff Lukáshka began to undress, keeping an eye
all the while on his prey.
“Wait a bit, Nazárka is bringing the skiff,” shouted the corporal.
“You fool! Maybe he is alive and only pretending! Take your dagger with
you!” shouted another Cossack.
“Get along,” cried Luke, pulling off his trousers. He quickly undressed
and, crossing himself, jumped, plunging with a splash into the river. Then
with long strokes of his white arms, lifting his back high out of the water
and breathing deeply, he swam across the current of the Térek towards the
shallows. A crowd of Cossacks stood on the bank talking loudly. Three
horsemen rode off to patrol. The skiff appeared round a bend. Lukáshka
stood up on the sandbank, leaned over the body, and gave it a couple of
shakes.
“Quite dead!” he shouted in a shrill voice.
The Chéchen had been shot in the head. He had on a pair of blue trousers,
a shirt, and a Circassian coat, and a gun and dagger were tied to his back.

Above all these a large branch was tied, and it was this which at first had
misled Lukáshka.
“What a carp you’ve landed!” cried one of the Cossacks who had
assembled in a circle, as the body, lifted out of the skiff, was laid on the
bank, pressing down the grass.
“How yellow he is!” said another.
“Where have our fellows gone to search? I expect the rest of them are on
the other bank. If this one had not been a scout he would not have swum
that way. Why else should he swim alone?” said a third.
“Must have been a smart one to offer himself before the others; a regular
brave!” said Lukáshka mockingly, shivering as he wrung out his clothes
that had got wet on the bank.
“His beard is dyed and cropped.”
“And he has tied a bag with a coat in it to his back.”
“That would make it easier for him to swim,” said some one.
“I say, Lukáshka,” said the corporal, who was holding the dagger and gun
taken from the dead man. “Keep the dagger for yourself and the coat too;
but I’ll give you three rubles for the gun. You see it has a hole in it,” said
he, blowing into the muzzle. “I want it just for a souvenir.”
Lukáshka did not answer. Evidently this sort of begging vexed him but he
knew it could not be avoided.
“See, what a devil!” said he, frowning and throwing down the Chéchen’s
coat. “If at least it were a good coat, but it’s a mere rag.”
“It’ll do to fetch firewood in,” said one of the Cossacks.
“Mósev, I’ll go home,” said Lukáshka, evidently forgetting his vexation
and wishing to get some advantage out of having to give a present to his
superior.
“All right, you may go!”
“Take the body beyond the cordon, lads,” said the corporal, still
examining the gun, “and put a shelter over him from the sun. Perhaps
they’ll send from the mountains to ransom it.”
“It isn’t hot yet,” said someone.
“And supposing a jackal tears him? Would that be well?” remarked
another Cossack.

“We’ll set a watch; if they should come to ransom him it won’t do for
him to have been torn.”
“Well, Lukáshka, whatever you do you must stand a pail of vodka for the
lads,” said the corporal gaily.
“Of course! That’s the custom,” chimed in the Cossacks. “See what luck
God has sent you! Without ever having seen anything of the kind before,
you’ve killed a brave!”
“Buy the dagger and coat and don’t be stingy, and I’ll let you have the
trousers too,” said Lukáshka. “They’re too tight for me; he was a thin
devil.”
One Cossack bought the coat for a ruble and another gave the price of
two pails of vodka for the dagger.
“Drink, lads! I’ll stand you a pail!” said Luke. “I’ll bring it myself from
the village.”
“And cut up the trousers into kerchiefs for the girls!” said Nazárka.
The Cossacks burst out laughing.
“Have done laughing!” said the corporal. “And take the body away. Why
have you put the nasty thing by the hut?”
“What are you standing there for? Haul him along, lads!” shouted
Lukáshka in a commanding voice to the Cossacks, who reluctantly took
hold of the body, obeying him as though he were their chief. After dragging
the body along for a few steps the Cossacks let fall the legs, which dropped
with a lifeless jerk, and stepping apart they then stood silent for a few
moments. Nazárka came up and straightened the head, which was turned to
one side so that the round wound above the temple and the whole of the
dead man’s face were visible. “See what a mark he has made right in the
brain,” he said. “He won’t get lost. His owners will always know him!” No
one answered, and again the Angel of Silence flew over the Cossacks.
The sun had risen high and its diverging beams were lighting up the
dewy grass. Near by, the Térek murmured in the awakened wood and,
greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another. The Cossacks
stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at him. The brown body,
with nothing on but the wet blue trousers held by a girdle over the sunken
stomach, was well shaped and handsome. The muscular arms lay stretched
straight out by his sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round head with the

clotted wound on one side of it was thrown back. The smooth tanned
forehead contrasted sharply with the shaven part of the head. The open
glassy eyes with lowered pupils stared upwards, seeming to gaze past
everything. Under the red trimmed moustache the fine lips, drawn at the
corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-natured subtle raillery. The
fingers of the small hands covered with red hairs were bent inward, and the
nails were dyed red.
Lukáshka had not yet dressed. He was wet. His neck was redder and his
eyes brighter than usual, his broad jaws twitched, and from his healthy body
a hardly perceptible steam rose in the fresh morning air.
“He too was a man!” he muttered, evidently admiring the corpse.
“Yes, if you had fallen into his hands you would have had short shrift,”
said one of the Cossacks.
The Angel of Silence had taken wing. The Cossacks began bustling about
and talking. Two of them went to cut brushwood for a shelter, others
strolled towards the cordon. Luke and Nazárka ran to get ready to go to the
village.
Half an hour later they were both on their way homewards, talking
incessantly and almost running through the dense woods which separated
the Térek from the village.
“Mind, don’t tell her I sent you, but just go and find out if her husband is
at home,” Luke was saying in his shrill voice.
“And I’ll go round to Yámka too,” said the devoted Nazárka. “We’ll have
a spree, shall we?”
“When should we have one if not today?” replied Luke.
When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to
sleep till evening.

Chapter X

On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a
Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of Novomlínsk.
The horses had been unharnessed and the companies’ wagons were standing
in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs gathered from various
yards (where they had not been sufficiently securely stored) were now
cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were settling accounts with the soldiers.
The Service Corps men were driving piles in the ground to which to tie the
horses, and the quartermasters were going about the streets just as if they
were at home, showing officers and men to their quarters. Here were green
ammunition boxes in a line, the company’s carts, horses, and cauldrons in
which buckwheat porridge was being cooked.
Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the sergeant-major, Onisim
Mikháylovich, and all this was in the Cossack village where it was reported
that the companies were ordered to take up their quarters: therefore they
were at home here.
But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether
they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they were Old Believers or
not—was all quite immaterial. Having received their pay and been
dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in
disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares and
streets.
Quite regardless of the Cossacks’ ill will, chattering merrily and with
their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and hung
up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the women. At
their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large group of soldiers
assembled and with little pipes between their teeth they gazed, now at the
smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming visible when it thickened into
white clouds as it rose, and now at the camp fires which were quivering in
the pure air like molten glass, and bantered and made fun of the Cossack

men and women because they do not live at all like Russians. In all the
yards one could see soldiers and hear their laughter and the exasperated and
shrill cries of Cossack women defending their houses and refusing to give
the soldiers water or cooking utensils. Little boys and girls, clinging to their
mothers and to each other, followed all the movements of the troopers
(never before seen by them) with frightened curiosity, or ran after them at a
respectful distance.
The old Cossacks came out silently and dismally and sat on the earthen
embankments of their huts, and watched the soldiers’ activity with an air of
leaving it all to the will of God without understanding what would come of
it.
Olénin, who had joined the Caucasian Army as a cadet three months
before, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village, the house of
the cornet, Elias Vasílich—that is to say at Granny Ulítka’s.
“Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmítri Andréich,” said the panting
Vanyúsha to Olénin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and mounted on a
Kabardá horse which he had bought in Gróznoe, was after a five-hours’
march gaily entering the yard of the quarters assigned to him.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked, caressing his horse and looking
merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried Vanyúsha, who had
arrived with the baggage wagons and was unpacking.
Olénin looked quite a different man. In place of his clean-shaven lips and
chin he had a youthful moustache and a small beard. Instead of a sallow
complexion, the result of nights turned into day, his cheeks, his forehead,
and the skin behind his ears were now red with healthy sunburn. In place of
a clean new black suit he wore a dirty white Circassian coat with a deeply
pleated skirt, and he bore arms. Instead of a freshly starched collar, his neck
was tightly clasped by the red band of his silk beshmet. He wore Circassian
dress but did not wear it well, and anyone would have known him for a
Russian and not a Tartar brave. It was the thing—but not the real thing. But
for all that, his whole person breathed health, joy, and satisfaction.
“Yes, it seems funny to you,” said Vanyúsha, “but just try to talk to these
people yourself: they set themselves against one and there’s an end of it.
You can’t get as much as a word out of them.” Vanyúsha angrily threw
down a pail on the threshold. “Somehow they don’t seem like Russians.”
“You should speak to the Chief of the Village!”

“But I don’t know where he lives,” said Vanyúsha in an offended tone.
“Who has upset you so?” asked Olénin, looking round.
“The devil only knows. Faugh! There is no real master here. They say he
has gone to some kind of kriga, and the old woman is a real devil. God
preserve us!” answered Vanyúsha, putting his hands to his head. “How we
shall live here I don’t know. They are worse than Tartars, I do declare—
though they consider themselves Christians! A Tartar is bad enough, but all
the same he is more noble. Gone to the kriga indeed! What this kriga they
have invented is, I don’t know!” concluded Vanyúsha, and turned aside.
“It’s not as it is in the serfs’ quarters at home, eh?” chaffed Olénin
without dismounting.
“Please sir, may I have your horse?” said Vanyúsha, evidently perplexed
by this new order of things but resigning himself to his fate.
“So a Tartar is more noble, eh, Vanyúsha?” repeated Olénin, dismounting
and slapping the saddle.
“Yes, you’re laughing! You think it funny,” muttered Vanyúsha angrily.
“Come, don’t be angry, Vanyúsha,” replied Olénin, still smiling. “Wait a
minute, I’ll go and speak to the people of the house; you’ll see I shall
arrange everything. You don’t know what a jolly life we shall have here.
Only don’t get upset.”
Vanyúsha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked
contemptuously after his master, and shook his head. Vanyúsha regarded
Olénin as only his master, and Olénin regarded Vanyúsha as only his
servant; and they would both have been much surprised if anyone had told
them that they were friends, as they really were without knowing it
themselves. Vanyúsha had been taken into his proprietor’s house when he
was only eleven and when Olénin was the same age. When Olénin was
fifteen he gave Vanyúsha lessons for a time and taught him to read French,
of which the latter was inordinately proud; and when in specially good
spirits he still let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he did
so.
Olénin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the hut.
Maryánka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women do in
the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing herself
against the wall covered the lower part of her face with the broad sleeve of

her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olénin in the semi-
darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure of the young
Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily
noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock, and the
beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike terror and wild curiosity.
“This is she,” thought Olénin. “But there will be many others like her”
came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door.
Old Granny Ulítka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her
back turned to him, sweeping the floor.
“Good-day to you. Mother! I’ve come about my lodgings,” he began.
The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still
handsome face towards him.
“What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I’ll teach you to
mock; may the black plague seize you!” she shouted, looking askance from
under her frowning brow at the new-comer.
Olénin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian Army
(of which he was a member) would be everywhere received joyfully, and
especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore felt
perplexed by this reception. Without losing presence of mind however he
tried to explain that he meant to pay for his lodgings, but the old woman
would not give him a hearing.
“What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your scraped
face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he’ll show you your
place. I don’t want your dirty money! A likely thing—just as if we had
never seen any! You’ll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco and
want to put it right with money! Think we’ve never seen a pest! May you be
shot in your bowels and your heart!” shrieked the old woman in a piercing
voice, interrupting Olénin.
“It seems Vanyúsha was right!” thought Olénin. “‘A Tartar would be
nobler’,” and followed by Granny Ulítka’s abuse he went out of the hut. As
he was leaving, Maryánka, still wearing only her pink smock, but with her
forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief, suddenly slipped
out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidly down the steps with her
bare feet she ran from the porch, stopped, and looking round hastily with
laughing eyes at the young man, vanished round the corner of the hut.

Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening from
under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the young beauty,
struck Olénin even more powerfully than before. “Yes, it must be she,” he
thought, and troubling his head still less about the lodgings, he kept looking
round at Maryánka as he approached Vanyúsha.
“There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild filly!” said
Vanyúsha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now cheered
up a bit. “La fame!” he added in a loud triumphant voice and burst out
laughing.

Chapter XI

Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing, and
having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging, pacified the old
woman and satisfied Vanyúsha’s demands.
Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved into the
winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for three rubles a month.
Olénin had something to eat and went to sleep. Towards evening he woke
up, washed and made himself tidy, dined, and having lit a cigarette sat
down by the window that looked onto the street. It was cooler. The slanting
shadow of the hut with its ornamental gables fell across the dusty road and
even bent upwards at the base of the wall of the house opposite. The steep
reed-thatched roof of that house shone in the rays of the setting sun. The air
grew fresher. Everything was peaceful in the village. The soldiers had
settled down and become quiet. The herds had not yet been driven home
and the people had not returned from their work.
Olénin’s lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At rare
intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Térek in those parts whence
Olénin had just come (the Chéchen or the Kumýtsk plain), came muffled
sounds of firing. Olénin was feeling very well contented after three months
of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his powerful body
clean (an unaccustomed sensation after the campaign) and in all his rested
limbs he was conscious of a feeling of tranquillity and strength. His mind,
too, felt fresh and clear. He thought of the campaign and of past dangers. He
remembered that he had faced them no worse than other men, and that he
was accepted as a comrade among valiant Caucasians. His Moscow
recollections were left behind Heaven knows how far! The old life was
wiped out and a quite new life had begun in which there were as yet no
mistakes. Here as a new man among new men he could gain a new and
good reputation. He was conscious of a youthful and unreasoning joy of
life. Looking now out of the window at the boys spinning their tops in the

shadow of the house, now round his neat new lodging, he thought how
pleasantly he would settle down to this new Cossack village life. Now and
then he glanced at the mountains and the blue sky, and an appreciation of
the solemn grandeur of nature mingled with his reminiscences and dreams.
His new life had begun, not as he imagined it would when he left Moscow,
but unexpectedly well. “The mountains, the mountains, the mountains!”
they permeated all his thoughts and feelings.
“He’s kissed his dog and licked the jug! ... Daddy Eróshka has kissed his
dog!” suddenly the little Cossacks who had been spinning their tops under
the window shouted, looking towards the side street. “He’s drunk his bitch,
and his dagger!” shouted the boys, crowding together and stepping
backwards.
These shouts were addressed to Daddy Eróshka, who with his gun on his
shoulder and some pheasants hanging at his girdle was returning from his
shooting expedition.
“I have done wrong, lads, I have!” he said, vigorously swinging his arms
and looking up at the windows on both sides of the street. “I have drunk the
bitch; it was wrong,” he repeated, evidently vexed but pretending not to
care.
Olénin was surprised by the boys’ behavior towards the old hunter, but
was still more struck by the expressive, intelligent face and the powerful
build of the man whom they called Daddy Eróshka.
“Here Daddy, here Cossack!” he called. “Come here!”
The old man looked into the window and stopped.
“Good evening, good man,” he said, lifting his little cap off his cropped
head.
“Good evening, good man,” replied Olénin. “What is it the youngsters
are shouting at you?”
Daddy Eróshka came up to the window. “Why, they’re teasing the old
man. No matter, I like it. Let them joke about their old daddy,” he said with
those firm musical intonations with which old and venerable people speak.
“Are you an army commander?” he added.
“No, I am a cadet. But where did you kill those pheasants?” asked
Olénin.

“I dispatched these three hens in the forest,” answered the old man,
turning his broad back towards the window to show the hen pheasants
which were hanging with their heads tucked into his belt and staining his
coat with blood. “Haven’t you seen any?” he asked. “Take a brace if you
like! Here you are,” and he handed two of the pheasants in at the window.
“Are you a sportsman yourself?” he asked.
“I am. During the campaign I killed four myself.”
“Four? What a lot!” said the old man sarcastically. “And are you a
drinker? Do you drink chikhir?”
“Why not? I like a drink.”
“Ah, I see you are a trump! We shall be kunaks, you and I,” said Daddy
Eróshka.
“Step in,” said Olénin. “We’ll have a drop of chikhir.”
“I might as well,” said the old man, “but take the pheasants.” The old
man’s face showed that he liked the cadet. He had seen at once that he
could get free drinks from him, and that therefore it would be all right to
give him a brace of pheasants.
Soon Daddy Eróshka’s figure appeared in the doorway of the hut, and it
was only then that Olénin became fully conscious of the enormous size and
sturdy build of this man, whose red-brown face with its perfectly white
broad beard was all furrowed by deep lines produced by age and toil. For an
old man, the muscles of his legs, arms, and shoulders were quite
exceptionally large and prominent. There were deep scars on his head under
the short-cropped hair. His thick sinewy neck was covered with deep
intersecting folds like a bull’s. His horny hands were bruised and scratched.
He stepped lightly and easily over the threshold, unslung his gun and placed
it in a corner, and casting a rapid glance round the room noted the value of
the goods and chattels deposited in the hut, and with out-turned toes stepped
softly, in his sandals of raw hide, into the middle of the room. He brought
with him a penetrating but not unpleasant smell of chikhir wine, vodka,
gunpowder, and congealed blood.
Daddy Eróshka bowed down before the icons, smoothed his beard, and
approaching Olénin held out his thick brown hand. “Koshkildy,” said he;
“That is Tartar for ‘Good-day’—‘Peace be unto you,’ it means in their
tongue.”

“Koshkildy, I know,” answered Olénin, shaking hands.
“Eh, but you don’t, you won’t know the right order! Fool!” said Daddy
Eróshka, shaking his head reproachfully. “If anyone says ‘Koshkildy’ to
you, you must say ‘Allah rasi bo sun,’ that is, ‘God save you.’ That’s the
way, my dear fellow, and not ‘Koshkildy.’ But I’ll teach you all about it. We
had a fellow here, Elias Mósevich, one of your Russians, he and I were
kunaks. He was a trump, a drunkard, a thief, a sportsman—and what a
sportsman! I taught him everything.”
“And what will you teach me?” asked Olénin, who was becoming more
and more interested in the old man.
“I’ll take you hunting and teach you to fish. I’ll show you Chéchens and
find a girl for you, if you like—even that! That’s the sort I am! I’m a
wag!”—and the old man laughed. “I’ll sit down. I’m tired. Karga?” he
added inquiringly.
“And what does ‘Karga’ mean?” asked Olénin.
“Why, that means ‘All right’ in Georgian. But I say it just so. It is a way I
have, it’s my favourite word. Karga, Karga. I say it just so; in fun I mean.
Well, lad, won’t you order the chikhir? You’ve got an orderly, haven’t
you?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, Iván!” shouted the old man. “All your soldiers are Iváns. Is yours
Iván?”
“True enough, his name is Iván—Vanyúsha. Here Vanyúsha! Please get
some chikhir from our landlady and bring it here.”
“Iván or Vanyúsha, that’s all one. Why are all your soldiers Iváns? Iván,
old fellow,” said the old man, “you tell them to give you some from the
barrel they have begun. They have the best chikhir in the village. But don’t
give more than thirty kopeks for the quart, mind, because that witch would
be only too glad.... Our people are anathema people; stupid people,” Daddy
Eróshka continued in a confidential tone after Vanyúsha had gone out.
“They do not look upon you as on men, you are worse than a Tartar in their
eyes. ‘Worldly Russians’ they say. But as for me, though you are a soldier
you are still a man, and have a soul in you. Isn’t that right? Elias Mósevich
was a soldier, yet what a treasure of a man he was! Isn’t that so, my dear

fellow? That’s why our people don’t like me; but I don’t care! I’m a merry
fellow, and I like everybody. I’m Eróshka; yes, my dear fellow.”
And the old Cossack patted the young man affectionately on the shoulder.

Chapter XII

Vanyúsha, who meanwhile had finished his housekeeping arrangements
and had even been shaved by the company’s barber and had pulled his
trousers out of his high boots as a sign that the company was stationed in
comfortable quarters, was in excellent spirits. He looked attentively but not
benevolently at Eróshka, as at a wild beast he had never seen before, shook
his head at the floor which the old man had dirtied and, having taken two
bottles from under a bench, went to the landlady.
“Good evening, kind people,” he said, having made up his mind to be
very gentle. “My master has sent me to get some chikhir. Will you draw
some for me, good folk?”
The old woman gave no answer. The girl, who was arranging the kerchief
on her head before a little Tartar mirror, looked round at Vanyúsha in
silence.
“I’ll pay money for it, honoured people,” said Vanyúsha, jingling the
coppers in his pocket. “Be kind to us and we, too will be kind to you,” he
added.
“How much?” asked the old woman abruptly. “A quart.”
“Go, my own, draw some for them,” said Granny Ulítka to her daughter.
“Take it from the cask that’s begun, my precious.”
The girl took the keys and a decanter and went out of the hut with
Vanyúsha.
“Tell me, who is that young woman?” asked Olénin, pointing to
Maryánka, who was passing the window. The old man winked and nudged
the young man with his elbow.
“Wait a bit,” said he and reached out of the window. “Khm,” he coughed,
and bellowed, “Maryánka dear. Hallo, Maryánka, my girlie, won’t you love
me, darling? I’m a wag,” he added in a whisper to Olénin. The girl, not
turning her head and swinging her arms regularly and vigorously, passed

the window with the peculiarly smart and bold gait of a Cossack woman
and only turned her dark shaded eyes slowly towards the old man.
“Love me and you’ll be happy,” shouted Eróshka, winking, and he
looked questioningly at the cadet.
“I’m a fine fellow, I’m a wag!” he added. “She’s a regular queen, that
girl. Eh?”
“She is lovely,” said Olénin. “Call her here!”
“No, no,” said the old man. “For that one a match is being arranged with
Lukáshka, Luke, a fine Cossack, a brave, who killed an abrek the other day.
I’ll find you a better one. I’ll find you one that will be all dressed up in silk
and silver. Once I’ve said it I’ll do it. I’ll get you a regular beauty!”
“You, an old man—and say such things,” replied Olénin. “Why, it’s a
sin!”
“A sin? Where’s the sin?” said the old man emphatically. “A sin to look
at a nice girl? A sin to have some fun with her? Or is it a sin to love her? Is
that so in your parts? ... No, my dear fellow, it’s not a sin, it’s salvation!
God made you and God made the girl too. He made it all; so it is no sin to
look at a nice girl. That’s what she was made for; to be loved and to give
joy. That’s how I judge it, my good fellow.”
Having crossed the yard and entered a cool dark storeroom filled with
barrels, Maryánka went up to one of them and repeating the usual prayer
plunged a dipper into it. Vanyúsha standing in the doorway smiled as he
looked at her. He thought it very funny that she had only a smock on, close-
fitting behind and tucked up in front, and still funnier that she wore a
necklace of silver coins. He thought this quite un-Russian and that they
would all laugh in the serfs’ quarters at home if they saw a girl like that. “La
fille comme c’est tres bien, for a change,” he thought. “I’ll tell that to my
master.”
“What are you standing in the light for, you devil!” the girl suddenly
shouted. “Why don’t you pass me the decanter!”
Having filled the decanter with cool red wine, Maryánka handed it to
Vanyúsha.
“Give the money to Mother,” she said, pushing away the hand in which
he held the money.
Vanyúsha laughed.

“Why are you so cross, little dear?” he said good-naturedly, irresolutely
shuffling with his feet while the girl was covering the barrel.
She began to laugh.
“And you! Are you kind?”
“We, my master and I, are very kind,” Vanyúsha answered decidedly.
“We are so kind that wherever we have stayed our hosts were always very
grateful. It’s because he’s generous.”
The girl stood listening.
“And is your master married?” she asked.
“No. The master is young and unmarried, because noble gentlemen can
never marry young,” said Vanyúsha didactically.
“A likely thing! See what a fed-up buffalo he is—and too young to
marry! Is he the chief of you all?” she asked.
“My master is a cadet; that means he’s not yet an officer, but he’s more
important than a general—he’s an important man! Because not only our
colonel, but the Tsar himself, knows him,” proudly explained Vanyúsha.
“We are not like those other beggars in the line regiment, and our papa
himself was a Senator. He had more than a thousand serfs, all his own, and
they send us a thousand rubles at a time. That’s why everyone likes us.
Another may be a captain but have no money. What’s the use of that?”
“Go away. I’ll lock up,” said the girl, interrupting him.
Vanyúsha brought Olénin the wine and announced that “La fille c’est tres
joulie,” and, laughing stupidly, at once went out.

Chapter XIII

Meanwhile the tattoo had sounded in the village square. The people had
returned from their work. The herd lowed as in clouds of golden dust it
crowded at the village gate. The girls and the women hurried through the
streets and yards, turning in their cattle. The sun had quite hidden itself
behind the distant snowy peaks. One pale bluish shadow spread over land
and sky. Above the darkened gardens stars just discernible were kindling,
and the sounds were gradually hushed in the village. The cattle having been
attended to and left for the night, the women came out and gathered at the
corners of the streets and, cracking sunflower seeds with their teeth, settled
down on the earthen embankments of the houses. Later on Maryánka,
having finished milking the buffalo and the other two cows, also joined one
of these groups.
The group consisted of several women and girls and one old Cossack
man.
They were talking about the abrek who had been killed.
The Cossack was narrating and the women questioning him.
“I expect he’ll get a handsome reward,” said one of the women.
“Of course. It’s said that they’ll send him a cross.”
“Mósev did try to wrong him. Took the gun away from him, but the
authorities at Kizlyár heard of it.”
“A mean creature that Mósev is!”
“They say Lukáshka has come home,” remarked one of the girls.
“He and Nazárka are merry-making at Yámka’s.” (Yámka was an
unmarried, disreputable Cossack woman who kept an illicit pot-house.) “I
heard say they had drunk half a pailful.”
“What luck that Snatcher has,” somebody remarked. “A real snatcher.
But there’s no denying he’s a fine lad, smart enough for anything, a right-

minded lad! His father was just such another. Daddy Kiryák was: he takes
after his father. When he was killed the whole village howled. Look, there
they are,” added the speaker, pointing to the Cossacks who were coming
down the street towards them.
“And Ergushóv has managed to come along with them too! The
drunkard!”
Lukáshka, Nazárka, and Ergushóv, having emptied half a pail of vodka,
were coming towards the girls. The faces of all three, but especially that of
the old Cossack, were redder than usual. Ergushóv was reeling and kept
laughing and nudging Nazárka in the ribs.
“Why are you not singing?” he shouted to the girls. “Sing to our merry-
making, I tell you!”
They were welcomed with the words, “Had a good day? Had a good
day?”
“Why sing? It’s not a holiday,” said one of the women. “You’re tight, so
you go and sing.”
Ergushóv roared with laughter and nudged Nazárka. “You’d better sing.
And I’ll begin too. I’m clever, I tell you.”
“Are you asleep, fair ones?” said Nazárka. “We’ve come from the cordon
to drink your health. We’ve already drunk Lukáshka’s health.”
Lukáshka, when he reached the group, slowly raised his cap and stopped
in front of the girls. His broad cheekbones and neck were red. He stood and
spoke softly and sedately, but in his tranquillity and sedateness there was
more of animation and strength than in all Nazárka’s loquacity and bustle.
He reminded one of a playful colt that with a snort and a flourish of its tail
suddenly stops short and stands as though nailed to the ground with all four
feet. Lukáshka stood quietly in front of the girls, his eyes laughed, and he
spoke but little as he glanced now at his drunken companions and now at
the girls. When Maryánka joined the group he raised his cap with a firm
deliberate movement, moved out of her way and then stepped in front of her
with one foot a little forward and with his thumbs in his belt, fingering his
dagger. Maryánka answered his greeting with a leisurely bow of her head,
settled down on the earth-bank, and took some seeds out of the bosom of
her smock. Lukáshka, keeping his eyes fixed on Maryánka, slowly cracked

seeds and spat out the shells. All were quiet when Maryánka joined the
group.
“Have you come for long?” asked a woman, breaking the silence.
“Till tomorrow morning,” quietly replied Lukáshka.
“Well, God grant you get something good,” said the Cossack; “I’m glad
of it, as I’ve just been saying.”
“And I say so too,” put in the tipsy Ergushóv, laughing. “What a lot of
visitors have come,” he added, pointing to a soldier who was passing by.
“The soldiers’ vodka is good—I like it.”
“They’ve sent three of the devils to us,” said one of the women.
“Grandad went to the village Elders, but they say nothing can be done.”
“Ah, ha! Have you met with trouble?” said Ergushóv.
“I expect they have smoked you out with their tobacco?” asked another
woman. “Smoke as much as you like in the yard, I say, but we won’t allow
it inside the hut. Not if the Elder himself comes, I won’t allow it. Besides,
they may rob you. He’s not quartered any of them on himself, no fear, that
devil’s son of an Elder.”
“You don’t like it?” Ergushóv began again.
“And I’ve also heard say that the girls will have to make the soldiers’
beds and offer them chikhir and honey,” said Nazárka, putting one foot
forward and tilting his cap like Lukáshka.
Ergushóv burst into a roar of laughter, and seizing the girl nearest to him,
he embraced her. “I tell you true.”
“Now then, you black pitch!” squealed the girl, “I’ll tell your old
woman.”
“Tell her,” shouted he. “That’s quite right what Nazárka says; a circular
has been sent round. He can read, you know. Quite true!” And he began
embracing the next girl.
“What are you up to, you beast?” squealed the rosy, round-faced Ústenka,
laughing and lifting her arm to hit him.
The Cossack stepped aside and nearly fell.
“There, they say girls have no strength, and you nearly killed me.”
“Get away, you black pitch, what devil has brought you from the
cordon?” said Ústenka, and turning away from him she again burst out

laughing. “You were asleep and missed the abrek, didn’t you? Suppose he
had done for you it would have been all the better.”
“You’d have howled, I expect,” said Nazárka, laughing.
“Howled! A likely thing.”
“Just look, she doesn’t care. She’d howl, Nazárka, eh? Would she?” said
Ergushóv.
Lukáshka all this time had stood silently looking at Maryánka. His gaze
evidently confused the girl.
“Well, Maryánka! I hear they’ve quartered one of the chiefs on you?” he
said, drawing nearer.
Maryánka, as was her wont, waited before she replied, and slowly raising
her eyes looked at the Cossack. Lukáshka’s eyes were laughing as if
something special, apart from what was said, was taking place between
himself and the girl.
“Yes, it’s all right for them as they have two huts,” replied an old woman
on Maryánka’s behalf, “but at Fómushkin’s now they also have one of the
chiefs quartered on them and they say one whole corner is packed full with
his things, and the family have no room left. Was such a thing ever heard of
as that they should turn a whole horde loose in the village?” she said. “And
what the plague are they going to do here?”
“I’ve heard say they’ll build a bridge across the Térek,” said one of the
girls.
“And I’ve been told that they will dig a pit to put the girls in because they
don’t love the lads,” said Nazárka, approaching Ústenka; and he again made
a whimsical gesture which set everybody laughing, and Ergushóv, passing
by Maryánka, who was next in turn, began to embrace an old woman.
“Why don’t you hug Maryánka? You should do it to each in turn,” said
Nazárka.
“No, my old one is sweeter,” shouted the Cossack, kissing the struggling
old woman.
“You’ll throttle me,” she screamed, laughing.
The tramp of regular footsteps at the other end of the street interrupted
their laughter. Three soldiers in their cloaks, with their muskets on their

shoulders, were marching in step to relieve guard by the ammunition
wagon.
The corporal, an old cavalry man, looked angrily at the Cossacks and led
his men straight along the road where Lukáshka and Nazárka were
standing, so that they should have to get out of the way. Nazárka moved,
but Lukáshka only screwed up his eyes and turned his broad back without
moving from his place.
“People are standing here, so you go round,” he muttered, half turning his
head and tossing it contemptuously in the direction of the soldiers.
The soldiers passed by in silence, keeping step regularly along the dusty
road.
Maryánka began laughing and all the other girls chimed in.
“What swells!” said Nazárka, “Just like long-skirted choristers,” and he
walked a few steps down the road imitating the soldiers.
Again everyone broke into peals of laughter.
Lukáshka came slowly up to Maryánka.
“And where have you put up the chief?” he asked.
Maryánka thought for a moment.
“We’ve let him have the new hut,” she said.
“And is he old or young,” asked Lukáshka, sitting down beside her.
“Do you think I’ve asked?” answered the girl. “I went to get him some
chikhir and saw him sitting at the window with Daddy Eróshka. Red-
headed he seemed. They’ve brought a whole cartload of things.”
And she dropped her eyes.
“Oh, how glad I am that I got leave from the cordon!” said Lukáshka,
moving closer to the girl and looking straight in her eyes all the time.
“And have you come for long?” asked Maryánka, smiling slightly.
“Till the morning. Give me some sunflower seeds,” he said, holding out
his hand.
Maryánka now smiled outright and unfastened the neckband of her
smock.
“Don’t take them all,” she said.

“Really I felt so dull all the time without you, I swear I did,” he said in a
calm, restrained whisper, helping himself to some seeds out of the bosom of
the girl’s smock, and stooping still closer over her he continued with
laughing eyes to talk to her in low tones.
“I won’t come, I tell you,” Maryánka suddenly said aloud, leaning away
from him.
“No really ... what I wanted to say to you, ...” whispered Lukáshka. “By
the Heavens! Do come!”
Maryánka shook her head, but did so with a smile.
“Nursey Maryánka! Hallo Nursey! Mammy is calling! Supper time!”
shouted Maryánka’s little brother, running towards the group.
“I’m coming,” replied the girl. “Go, my dear, go alone—I’ll come in a
minute.”
Lukáshka rose and raised his cap.
“I expect I had better go home too, that will be best,” he said, trying to
appear unconcerned but hardly able to repress a smile, and he disappeared
behind the corner of the house.
Meanwhile night had entirely enveloped the village. Bright stars were
scattered over the dark sky. The streets became dark and empty. Nazárka
remained with the women on the earth-bank and their laughter was still
heard, but Lukáshka, having slowly moved away from the girls, crouched
down like a cat and then suddenly started running lightly, holding his
dagger to steady it: not homeward, however, but towards the cornet’s house.
Having passed two streets he turned into a lane and lifting the skirt of his
coat sat down on the ground in the shadow of a fence. “A regular cornet’s
daughter!” he thought about Maryánka. “Won’t even have a lark—the devil!
But just wait a bit.”
The approaching footsteps of a woman attracted his attention. He began
listening, and laughed all by himself. Maryánka with bowed head, striking
the pales of the fences with a switch, was walking with rapid regular strides
straight towards him. Lukáshka rose. Maryánka started and stopped.
“What an accursed devil! You frightened me! So you have not gone
home?” she said, and laughed aloud.
Lukáshka put one arm round her and with the other hand raised her face.
“What I wanted to tell you, by Heaven!” his voice trembled and broke.

“What are you talking of, at night time!” answered Maryánka. “Mother is
waiting for me, and you’d better go to your sweetheart.”
And freeing herself from his arms she ran away a few steps. When she
had reached the wattle fence of her home she stopped and turned to the
Cossack who was running beside her and still trying to persuade her to stay
a while with him.
“Well, what do you want to say, midnight-gadabout?” and she again
began laughing.
“Don’t laugh at me, Maryánka! By the Heaven! Well, what if I have a
sweetheart? May the devil take her! Only say the word and now I’ll love
you—I’ll do anything you wish. Here they are!” and he jingled the money
in his pocket. “Now we can live splendidly. Others have pleasures, and I? I
get no pleasure from you, Maryánka dear!”
The girl did not answer. She stood before him breaking her switch into
little bits with a rapid movement of her fingers.
Lukáshka suddenly clenched his teeth and fists.
“And why keep waiting and waiting? Don’t I love you, darling? You can
do what you like with me,” said he suddenly, frowning angrily and seizing
both her hands.
The calm expression of Maryánka’s face and voice did not change.
“Don’t bluster, Lukáshka, but listen to me,” she answered, not pulling
away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm’s length. “It’s true I am a
girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love me I’ll
tell you this. Let go my hands, I’ll tell you without.—I’ll marry you, but
you’ll never get any nonsense from me,” said Maryánka without turning her
face.
“What, you’ll marry me? Marriage does not depend on us. Love me
yourself, Maryánka dear,” said Lukáshka, from sullen and furious becoming
again gentle, submissive, and tender, and smiling as he looked closely into
her eyes.
Maryánka clung to him and kissed him firmly on the lips.
“Brother dear!” she whispered, pressing him convulsively to her. Then,
suddenly tearing herself away, she ran into the gate of her house without
looking round.

In spite of the Cossack’s entreaties to wait another minute to hear what he
had to say, Maryánka did not stop.
“Go,” she cried, “you’ll be seen! I do believe that devil, our lodger, is
walking about the yard.”
“Cornet’s daughter,” thought Lukáshka. “She will marry me. Marriage is
all very well, but you just love me!”
He found Nazárka at Yámka’s house, and after having a spree with him
went to Dunáyka’s house, where, in spite of her not being faithful to him, he
spent the night.

Chapter XIV

It was quite true that Olénin had been walking about the yard when
Maryánka entered the gate, and had heard her say, “That devil, our lodger,
is walking about.” He had spent that evening with Daddy Eróshka in the
porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a samovar, wine, and a candle
brought out, and over a cup of tea and a cigar he listened to the tales the old
man told seated on the threshold at his feet. Though the air was still, the
candle dripped and flickered: now lighting up the post of the porch, now the
table and crockery, now the cropped white head of the old man. Moths
circled round the flame and, shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on
the table and in the glasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in
the black space beyond. Olénin and Eróshka had emptied five bottles of
chikhir. Eróshka filled the glasses every time, offering one to Olénin,
drinking his health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old
days: of his father, “The Broad”, who alone had carried on his back a boar’s
carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two pails of chikhir at
one sitting. He told of his own days and his chum Gírchik, with whom
during the plague he used to smuggle felt cloaks across the Térek. He told
how one morning he had killed two deer, and about his “little soul” who
used to run to him at the cordon at night. He told all this so eloquently and
picturesquely that Olénin did not notice how time passed. “Ah yes, my dear
fellow, you did not know me in my golden days; then I’d have shown you
things. Today it’s ‘Eróshka licks the jug’, but then Eróshka was famous in
the whole regiment. Whose was the finest horse? Who had a Gurda sword?
To whom should one go to get a drink? With whom go on the spree? Who
should be sent to the mountains to kill Ahmet Khan? Why, always Eróshka!
Whom did the girls love? Always Eróshka had to answer for it. Because I
was a real brave: a drinker, a thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the
mountains), a singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks
like that nowadays. It’s disgusting to look at them. When they’re that high

(Eróshka held his hand three feet from the ground) they put on idiotic boots
and keep looking at them—that’s all the pleasure they know. Or they’ll
drink themselves foolish, not like men but all wrong. And who was I? I was
Eróshka, the thief; they knew me not only in this village but up in the
mountains. Tartar princes, my kunaks, used to come to see me! I used to be
everybody’s kunak. If he was a Tartar—with a Tartar; an Armenian—with
an Armenian; a soldier—with a soldier; an officer—with an officer! I didn’t
care as long as he was a drinker. He says you should cleanse yourself from
intercourse with the world, not drink with soldiers, not eat with a Tartar.”
“Who says all that?” asked Olénin.
“Why, our teacher! But listen to a Mullah or a Tartar Cadi. He says, ‘You
unbelieving Giaours, why do you eat pig?’ That shows that everyone has his
own law. But I think it’s all one. God has made everything for the joy of
man. There is no sin in any of it. Take example from an animal. It lives in
the Tartar’s reeds or in ours. Wherever it happens to go, there is its home!
Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But our people say we have to lick red-
hot plates in hell for that. And I think it’s all a fraud,” he added after a
pause.
“What is a fraud?” asked Olénin.
“Why, what the preachers say. We had an army captain in Chervlëna who
was my kunak: a fine fellow just like me. He was killed in Chéchnya. Well,
he used to say that the preachers invent all that out of their own heads.
‘When you die the grass will grow on your grave and that’s all!’” The old
man laughed. “He was a desperate fellow.”
“And how old are you?” asked Olénin.
“The Lord only knows! I must be about seventy. When a Tsaritsa reigned
in Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it out. I must be
seventy.”
“Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.”
“Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a woman, a
witch, has harmed me....”
“How?”
“Oh, just harmed me.”
“And so when you die the grass will grow?” repeated Olénin.

Eróshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He was
silent for a while.
“And what did you think? Drink!” he shouted suddenly, smiling and
handing Olénin some wine.

Chapter XV

“Well, what was I saying?” he continued, trying to remember. “Yes, that’s
the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to equal me in the
whole army. I will find and show you any animal and any bird, and what
and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and two guns, and nets, and a screen
and a hawk. I have everything, thank the Lord! If you are not bragging but
are a real sportsman, I’ll show you everything. Do you know what a man I
am? When I have found a track—I know the animal. I know where he will
lie down and where he’ll drink or wallow. I make myself a perch and sit
there all night watching. What’s the good of staying at home? One only gets
into mischief, gets drunk. And here women come and chatter, and boys
shout at me—enough to drive one mad
“It’s a different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself a
place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a jolly
fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One looks up at
the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out from them how the
time goes. One looks round—the wood is rustling; one goes on waiting,
now there comes a crackling—a boar comes to rub himself; one listens to
hear the young eaglets screech and then the cocks give voice in the village,
or the geese. When you hear the geese you know it is not yet midnight. And
I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired somewhere far away, thoughts
come to me. One thinks, who is that firing? Is it another Cossack like
myself who has been watching for some animal? And has he killed it? Or
only wounded it so that now the poor thing goes through the reeds smearing
them with its blood all for nothing? I don’t like that! Oh, how I dislike it!
Why injure a beast? You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, ‘Maybe an abrek has
killed some silly little Cossack.’ All this passes through one’s mind. And
once as I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was
sound except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that
time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a Tartar

village and seized the Chéchen women, and one of the devils has killed the
little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a wall. Don’t they do
such things? Sh! Men have no souls! And thoughts came to me that filled
me with pity. I thought: they’ve thrown away the cradle and driven the wife
out, and her brave has taken his gun and come across to our side to rob us.
One watches and thinks. And when one hears a litter breaking through the
thicket, something begins to knock inside one. Dear one, come this way!
‘They’ll scent me,’ one thinks; and one sits and does not stir while one’s
heart goes dun! dun! dun! and simply lifts you. Once this spring a fine litter
came near me, I saw something black. ‘In the name of the Father and of the
Son,’ and I was just about to fire when she grunts to her pigs: ‘Danger,
children,’ she says, ‘there’s a man here,’ and off they all ran, breaking
through the bushes. And she had been so close I could almost have bitten
her.”
“How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?” asked Olénin.
“What do you think? You think the beast’s a fool? No, he is wiser than a
man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take this for
instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice it; but a pig as
soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at once: that shows there is
wisdom in him, since he scents your smell and you don’t. And there is this
to be said too: you wish to kill it and it wishes to go about the woods alive.
You have one law and it has another. It is a pig, but it is no worse than you
—it too is God’s creature. Ah, dear! Man is foolish, foolish, foolish!” The
old man repeated this several times and then, letting his head drop, he sat
thinking.
Olénin also became thoughtful, and descending from the porch with his
hands behind his back began pacing up and down the yard.
Eróshka, rousing himself, raised his head and began gazing intently at the
moths circling round the flickering flame of the candle and burning
themselves in it.
“Fool, fool!” he said. “Where are you flying to? Fool, fool!” He rose and
with his thick fingers began to drive away the moths.
“You’ll burn, little fool! Fly this way, there’s plenty of room.” He spoke
tenderly, trying to catch them delicately by their wings with his thick
fingers and then letting them fly again. “You are killing yourself and I am
sorry for you!”

He sat a long time chattering and sipping out of the bottle. Olénin paced
up and down the yard. Suddenly he was struck by the sound of whispering
outside the gate. Involuntarily holding his breath, he heard a woman’s
laughter, a man’s voice, and the sound of a kiss. Intentionally rustling the
grass under his feet he crossed to the opposite side of the yard, but after a
while the wattle fence creaked. A Cossack in a dark Circassian coat and a
white sheepskin cap passed along the other side of the fence (it was Luke),
and a tall woman with a white kerchief on her head went past Olénin. “You
and I have nothing to do with one another” was what Maryánka’s firm step
gave him to understand. He followed her with his eyes to the porch of the
hut, and he even saw her through the window take off her kerchief and sit
down. And suddenly a feeling of lonely depression and some vague
longings and hopes, and envy of someone or other, overcame the young
man’s soul.
The last lights had been put out in the huts. The last sounds had died
away in the village. The wattle fences and the cattle gleaming white in the
yards, the roofs of the houses and the stately poplars, all seemed to be
sleeping the labourers’ healthy peaceful sleep. Only the incessant ringing
voices of frogs from the damp distance reached the young man. In the east
the stars were growing fewer and fewer and seemed to be melting in the
increasing light, but overhead they were denser and deeper than before. The
old man was dozing with his head on his hand. A cock crowed in the yard
opposite, but Olénin still paced up and down thinking of something. The
sound of a song sung by several voices reached him and he stepped up to
the fence and listened. The voices of several young Cossacks carolled a
merry song, and one voice was distinguishable among them all by its firm
strength.
“Do you know who is singing there?” said the old man, rousing himself.
“It is the Brave, Lukáshka. He has killed a Chéchen and now he rejoices.
And what is there to rejoice at? ... The fool, the fool!”
“And have you ever killed people?” asked Olénin.
“You devil!” shouted the old man. “What are you asking? One must not
talk so. It is a serious thing to destroy a human being ... Ah, a very serious
thing! Good-bye, my dear fellow. I’ve eaten my fill and am drunk,” he said
rising. “Shall I come tomorrow to go shooting?”
“Yes, come!”

“Mind, get up early; if you oversleep you will be fined!”
“Never fear, I’ll be up before you,” answered Olénin.
The old man left. The song ceased, but one could hear footsteps and
merry talk. A little later the singing broke out again but farther away, and
Eróshka’s loud voice chimed in with the other. “What people, what a life!”
thought Olénin with a sigh as he returned alone to his hut.

Chapter XVI

Daddy Eróshka was a superannuated and solitary Cossack: twenty years
ago his wife had gone over to the Orthodox Church and run away from him
and married a Russian sergeant-major, and he had no children. He was not
bragging when he spoke of himself as having been the boldest dare-devil in
the village when he was young. Everybody in the regiment knew of his old-
time prowess. The death of more than one Russian, as well as Chéchen, lay
on his conscience. He used to go plundering in the mountains, and robbed
the Russians too; and he had twice been in prison. The greater part of his
life was spent in the forests, hunting. There he lived for days on a crust of
bread and drank nothing but water. But on the other hand, when he was in
the village he made merry from morning to night. After leaving Olénin he
slept for a couple of hours and awoke before it was light. He lay on his bed
thinking of the man he had become acquainted with the evening before.
Olénin’s “simplicity” (simplicity in the sense of not grudging him a drink)
pleased him very much, and so did Olénin himself. He wondered why the
Russians were all “simple” and so rich, and why they were educated, and
yet knew nothing. He pondered on these questions and also considered what
he might get out of Olénin.
Daddy Eróshka’s hut was of a good size and not old, but the absence of a
woman was very noticeable in it. Contrary to the usual cleanliness of the
Cossacks, the whole of this hut was filthy and exceedingly untidy. A blood-
stained coat had been thrown on the table, half a dough-cake lay beside a
plucked and mangled crow with which to feed the hawk. Sandals of raw
hide, a gun, a dagger, a little bag, wet clothes, and sundry rags lay scattered
on the benches. In a corner stood a tub with stinking water, in which
another pair of sandals were being steeped, and near by was a gun and a
hunting-screen. On the floor a net had been thrown down and several dead
pheasants lay there, while a hen tied by its leg was walking about near the
table pecking among the dirt. In the unheated oven stood a broken pot with

some kind of milky liquid. On the top of the oven a falcon was screeching
and trying to break the cord by which it was tied, and a moulting hawk sat
quietly on the edge of the oven, looking askance at the hen and occasionally
bowing its head to right and left. Daddy Eróshka himself, in his shirt, lay on
his back on a short bed rigged up between the wall and the oven, with his
strong legs raised and his feet on the oven. He was picking with his thick
fingers at the scratches left on his hands by the hawk, which he was
accustomed to carry without wearing gloves. The whole room, especially
near the old man, was filled with that strong but not unpleasant mixture of
smells that he always carried about with him.
“Uyde-ma, Daddy?” (Is Daddy in?) came through the window in a sharp
voice, which he at once recognized as Lukáshka’s.
“Uyde, Uyde, Uyde. I am in!” shouted the old man. “Come in, neighbour
Mark, Luke Mark. Come to see Daddy? On your way to the cordon?”
At the sound of his master’s shout the hawk flapped his wings and pulled
at his cord.
The old man was fond of Lukáshka, who was the only man he excepted
from his general contempt for the younger generation of Cossacks. Besides
that, Lukáshka and his mother, as near neighbours, often gave the old man
wine, clotted cream, and other home produce which Eróshka did not
possess. Daddy Eróshka, who all his life had allowed himself to get carried
away, always explained his infatuations from a practical point of view.
“Well, why not?” he used to say to himself. “I’ll give them some fresh
meat, or a bird, and they won’t forget Daddy: they’ll sometimes bring a
cake or a piece of pie.”
“Good morning, Mark! I am glad to see you,” shouted the old man
cheerfully, and quickly putting down his bare feet he jumped off his bed and
walked a step or two along the creaking floor, looked down at his out-
turned toes, and suddenly, amused by the appearance of his feet, smiled,
stamped with his bare heel on the ground, stamped again, and then
performed a funny dance-step. “That’s clever, eh?” he asked, his small eyes
glistening. Lukáshka smiled faintly. “Going back to the cordon?” asked the
old man.
“I have brought the chikhir I promised you when we were at the cordon.”
“May Christ save you!” said the old man, and he took up the extremely
wide trousers that were lying on the floor, and his beshmet, put them on,

fastened a strap round his waist, poured some water from an earthenware
pot over his hands, wiped them on the old trousers, smoothed his beard with
a bit of comb, and stopped in front of Lukáshka. “Ready,” he said.
Lukáshka fetched a cup, wiped it and filled it with wine, and then handed
it to the old man.
“Your health! To the Father and the Son!” said the old man, accepting the
wine with solemnity. “May you have what you desire, may you always be a
hero, and obtain a cross.”
Lukáshka also drank a little after repeating a prayer, and then put the
wine on the table. The old man rose and brought out some dried fish which
he laid on the threshold, where he beat it with a stick to make it tender;
then, having put it with his horny hands on a blue plate (his only one), he
placed it on the table.
“I have all I want. I have victuals, thank God!” he said proudly. “Well,
and what of Mósev?” he added.
Lukáshka, evidently wishing to know the old man’s opinion, told him
how the officer had taken the gun from him.
“Never mind the gun,” said the old man. “If you don’t give the gun you
will get no reward.”
“But they say, Daddy, it’s little reward a fellow gets when he is not yet a
mounted Cossack; and the gun is a fine one, a Crimean, worth eighty
rubles.”
“Eh, let it go! I had a dispute like that with an officer, he wanted my
horse. ‘Give it me and you’ll be made a cornet,’ says he. I wouldn’t, and I
got nothing!”
“Yes, Daddy, but you see I have to buy a horse; and they say you can’t
get one the other side of the river under fifty rubles, and mother has not yet
sold our wine.”
“Eh, we didn’t bother,” said the old man; “when Daddy Eróshka was
your age he already stole herds of horses from the Nogáy folk and drove
them across the Térek. Sometimes we’d give a fine horse for a quart of
vodka or a cloak.”
“Why so cheap?” asked Lukáshka.

“You’re a fool, a fool, Mark,” said the old man contemptuously. “Why,
that’s what one steals for, so as not to be stingy! As for you, I suppose you
haven’t so much as seen how one drives off a herd of horses? Why don’t
you speak?”
“What’s one to say, Daddy?” replied Lukáshka. “It seems we are not the
same sort of men as you were.”
“You’re a fool, Mark, a fool! ‘Not the same sort of men!’” retorted the
old man, mimicking the Cossack lad. “I was not that sort of Cossack at your
age.”
“How’s that?” asked Lukáshka.
The old man shook his head contemptuously.
“Daddy Eróshka was simple; he did not grudge anything! That’s why I
was kunak with all Chéchnya. A kunak would come to visit me and I’d
make him drunk with vodka and make him happy and put him to sleep with
me, and when I went to see him I’d take him a present—a dagger! That’s
the way it is done, and not as you do nowadays: the only amusement lads
have now is to crack seeds and spit out the shells!” the old man finished
contemptuously, imitating the present-day Cossacks cracking seeds and
spitting out the shells.
“Yes, I know,” said Lukáshka; “that’s so!”
“If you wish to be a fellow of the right sort, be a brave and not a peasant!
Because even a peasant can buy a horse—pay the money and take the
horse.”
They were silent for a while.
“Well, of course it’s dull both in the village and the cordon, Daddy: but
there’s nowhere one can go for a bit of sport. All our fellows are so timid.
Take Nazárka. The other day when we went to the Tartar village, Giréy
Khan asked us to come to Nogáy to take some horses, but no one went, and
how was I to go alone?”
“And what of Daddy? Do you think I am quite dried up? ... No, I’m not
dried up. Let me have a horse and I’ll be off to Nogáy at once.”
“What’s the good of talking nonsense!” said Luke. “You’d better tell me
what to do about Giréy Khan. He says, ‘Only bring horses to the Térek, and
then even if you bring a whole stud I’ll find a place for them.’ You see he’s
also a shaven-headed Tartar—how’s one to believe him?”

“You may trust Giréy Khan, all his kin were good people. His father too
was a faithful kunak. But listen to Daddy and I won’t teach you wrong:
make him take an oath, then it will be all right. And if you go with him,
have your pistol ready all the same, especially when it comes to dividing up
the horses. I was nearly killed that way once by a Chéchen. I wanted ten
rubles from him for a horse. Trusting is all right, but don’t go to sleep
without a gun.” Lukáshka listened attentively to the old man.
“I say, Daddy, have you any stone-break grass?” he asked after a pause.
“No, I haven’t any, but I’ll teach you how to get it. You’re a good lad and
won’t forget the old man.... Shall I tell you?”
“Tell me, Daddy.”
“You know a tortoise? She’s a devil, the tortoise is!”
“Of course I know!”
“Find her nest and fence it round so that she can’t get in. Well, she’ll
come, go round it, and then will go off to find the stone-break grass and will
bring some along and destroy the fence. Anyhow next morning come in
good time, and where the fence is broken there you’ll find the stone-break
grass lying. Take it wherever you like. No lock and no bar will be able to
stop you.”
“Have you tried it yourself, Daddy?”
“As for trying, I have not tried it, but I was told of it by good people. I
used only one charm: that was to repeat the Pilgrim rhyme when mounting
my horse; and no one ever killed me!”
“What is the Pilgrim rhyme, Daddy?”
“What, don’t you know it? Oh, what people! You’re right to ask Daddy.
Well, listen, and repeat after me:
“Hail! Ye, living in Sion,
This is your King,
Our steeds we shall sit on,
Sophonius is weeping.
Zacharias is speaking,
Father Pilgrim,
Mankind ever loving.”

“Kind ever loving,” the old man repeated. “Do you know it now? Try it.”
Lukáshka laughed.

“Come, Daddy, was it that that hindered their killing you? Maybe it just
happened so!”
“You’ve grown too clever! You learn it all, and say it. It will do you no
harm. Well, suppose you have sung ‘Pilgrim’, it’s all right,” and the old man
himself began laughing. “But just one thing, Luke, don’t you go to Nogáy!”
“Why?”
“Times have changed. You are not the same men. You’ve become
rubbishy Cossacks! And see how many Russians have come down on us!
You’d get to prison. Really, give it up! Just as if you could! Now Gírchik
and I, we used...”
And the old man was about to begin one of his endless tales, but
Lukáshka glanced at the window and interrupted him.
“It is quite light. Daddy. It’s time to be off. Look us up some day.”
“May Christ save you! I’ll go to the officer; I promised to take him out
shooting. He seems a good fellow.”

Chapter XVII

From Eróshka’s hut Lukáshka went home. As he returned, the dewy mists
were rising from the ground and enveloped the village. In various places the
cattle, though out of sight, could be heard beginning to stir. The cocks
called to one another with increasing frequency and insistence. The air was
becoming more transparent, and the villagers were getting up. Not till he
was close to it could Lukáshka discern the fence of his yard, all wet with
dew, the porch of the hut, and the open shed. From the misty yard he heard
the sound of an axe chopping wood. Lukáshka entered the hut. His mother
was up, and stood at the oven throwing wood into it. His little sister was
still lying in bed asleep.
“Well, Lukáshka, had enough holiday-making?” asked his mother softly.
“Where did you spend the night?”
“I was in the village,” replied her son reluctantly, reaching for his
musket, which he drew from its cover and examined carefully.
His mother swayed her head.
Lukáshka poured a little gunpowder onto the pan, took out a little bag
from which he drew some empty cartridge cases which he began filling,
carefully plugging each one with a ball wrapped in a rag. Then, having
tested the loaded cartridges with his teeth and examined them, he put down
the bag.
“I say, Mother, I told you the bags wanted mending; have they been
done?” he asked.
“Oh yes, our dumb girl was mending something last night. Why, is it time
for you to be going back to the cordon? I haven’t seen anything of you!”
“Yes, as soon as I have got ready I shall have to go,” answered Lukáshka,
tying up the gunpowder. “And where is our dumb one? Outside?”
“Chopping wood, I expect. She kept fretting for you. ‘I shall not see him
at all!’ she said. She puts her hand to her face like this, and clicks her

tongue and presses her hands to her heart as much as to say—‘sorry.’ Shall I
call her in? She understood all about the abrek.”
“Call her,” said Lukáshka. “And I had some tallow there; bring it: I must
grease my sword.”
The old woman went out, and a few minutes later Lukáshka’s dumb sister
came up the creaking steps and entered the hut. She was six years older than
her brother and would have been extremely like him had it not been for the
dull and coarsely changeable expression (common to all deaf and dumb
people) of her face. She wore a coarse smock all patched; her feet were bare
and muddy, and on her head she had an old blue kerchief. Her neck, arms,
and face were sinewy like a peasant’s. Her clothing and her whole
appearance indicated that she always did the hard work of a man. She
brought in a heap of logs which she threw down by the oven. Then she went
up to her brother, and with a joyful smile which made her whole face
pucker up, touched him on the shoulder and began making rapid signs to
him with her hands, her face, and whole body.
“That’s right, that’s right, Stëpka is a trump!” answered the brother,
nodding. “She’s fetched everything and mended everything, she’s a trump!
Here, take this for it!” He brought out two pieces of gingerbread from his
pocket and gave them to her.
The dumb woman’s face flushed with pleasure, and she began making a
weird noise for joy. Having seized the gingerbread she began to gesticulate
still more rapidly, frequently pointing in one direction and passing her thick
finger over her eyebrows and her face. Lukáshka understood her and kept
nodding, while he smiled slightly. She was telling him to give the girls
dainties, and that the girls liked him, and that one girl, Maryánka—the best
of them all—loved him. She indicated Maryánka by rapidly pointing in the
direction of Maryánka’s home and to her own eyebrows and face, and by
smacking her lips and swaying her head. “Loves” she expressed by pressing
her hands to her breast, kissing her hand, and pretending to embrace
someone. Their mother returned to the hut, and seeing what her dumb
daughter was saying, smiled and shook her head. Her daughter showed her
the gingerbread and again made the noise which expressed joy.
“I told Ulítka the other day that I’d send a matchmaker to them,” said the
mother. “She took my words well.”
Lukáshka looked silently at his mother.

“But how about selling the wine, mother? I need a horse.”
“I’ll cart it when I have time. I must get the barrels ready,” said the
mother, evidently not wishing her son to meddle in domestic matters.
“When you go out you’ll find a bag in the passage. I borrowed from the
neighbours and got something for you to take back to the cordon; or shall I
put it in your saddle-bag?”
“All right,” answered Lukáshka. “And if Giréy Khan should come across
the river send him to me at the cordon, for I shan’t get leave again for a long
time now; I have some business with him.”
He began to get ready to start.
“I will send him on,” said the old woman. “It seems you have been
spreeing at Yámka’s all the time. I went out in the night to see the cattle,
and I think it was your voice I heard singing songs.”
Lukáshka did not reply, but went out into the passage, threw the bags
over his shoulder, tucked up the skirts of his coat, took his musket, and then
stopped for a moment on the threshold.
“Good-bye, mother!” he said as he closed the gate behind him. “Send me
a small barrel with Nazárka. I promised it to the lads, and he’ll call for it.”
“May Christ keep you, Lukáshka. God be with you! I’ll send you some,
some from the new barrel,” said the old woman, going to the fence: “But
listen,” she added, leaning over the fence.
The Cossack stopped.
“You’ve been making merry here; well, that’s all right. Why should not a
young man amuse himself? God has sent you luck and that’s good. But now
look out and mind, my son. Don’t you go and get into mischief. Above all,
satisfy your superiors: one has to! And I will sell the wine and find money
for a horse and will arrange a match with the girl for you.”
“All right, all right!” answered her son, frowning.
His deaf sister shouted to attract his attention. She pointed to her head
and the palm of her hand, to indicate the shaved head of a Chéchen. Then
she frowned, and pretending to aim with a gun, she shrieked and began
rapidly humming and shaking her head. This meant that Lukáshka should
kill another Chéchen.

Lukáshka understood. He smiled, and shifting the gun at his back under
his cloak stepped lightly and rapidly, and soon disappeared in the thick
mist.
The old woman, having stood a little while at the gate, returned silently
to the hut and immediately began working.

Chapter XVIII

Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eróshka
whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to Olénin’s
lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked meeting women
before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olénin still asleep, and
even Vanyúsha, though awake, was still in bed and looking round the room
considering whether it was not time to get up, when Daddy Eróshka, gun on
shoulder and in full hunter’s trappings, opened the door.
“A cudgel!” he shouted in his deep voice. “An alarm! The Chéchens are
upon us! Iván! Get the samovar ready for your master, and get up yourself
—quick,” cried the old man. “That’s our way, my good man! Why even the
girls are already up! Look out of the window. See, she’s going for water and
you’re still sleeping!”
Olénin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight
of the old man and at the sound of his voice.
“Quick, Vanyúsha, quick!” he cried.
“Is that the way you go hunting?” said the old man. “Others are having
their breakfast and you are asleep! Lyam! Here!” he called to his dog. “Is
your gun ready?” he shouted, as loud as if a whole crowd were in the hut.
“Well, it’s true I’m guilty, but it can’t be helped! The powder, Vanyúsha,
and the wads!” said Olénin.
“A fine!” shouted the old man.
“Du tay voulay vou?” asked Vanyúsha, grinning.
“You’re not one of us—your gabble is not like our speech, you devil!”
the old man shouted at Vanyúsha, showing the stumps of his teeth.
“A first offence must be forgiven,” said Olénin playfully, drawing on his
high boots.

“The first offence shall be forgiven,” answered Eróshka, “but if you
oversleep another time you’ll be fined a pail of chikhir. When it gets
warmer you won’t find the deer.”
“And even if we do find him he is wiser than we are,” said Olénin,
repeating the words spoken by the old man the evening before, “and you
can’t deceive him!”
“Yes, laugh away! You kill one first, and then you may talk. Now then,
hurry up! Look, there’s the master himself coming to see you,” added
Eróshka, looking out of the window. “Just see how he’s got himself up.
He’s put on a new coat so that you should see that he’s an officer. Ah, these
people, these people!”
Sure enough Vanyúsha came in and announced that the master of the
house wished to see Olénin.
“L’arjan!” he remarked profoundly, to forewarn his master of the
meaning of this visitation. Following him, the master of the house in a new
Circassian coat with an officer’s stripes on the shoulders and with polished
boots (quite exceptional among Cossacks) entered the room, swaying from
side to side, and congratulated his lodger on his safe arrival.
The cornet, Elias Vasílich, was an educated Cossack. He had been to
Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was noble.
He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling beneath his
grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his self-confidence, and his
absurd way of speaking, he was just the same as Daddy Eróshka. This could
also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face and his hands and his red nose.
Olénin asked him to sit down.
“Good morning, Father Elias Vasílich,” said Eróshka, rising with (or so it
seemed to Olénin) an ironically low bow.
“Good morning. Daddy. So you’re here already,” said the cornet, with a
careless nod.
The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny
and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come to
see Olénin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary Cossack,
and wanted to let Olénin feel his importance from the first.
“That’s our Egyptian Nimrod,” he remarked, addressing Olénin and
pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. “A mighty hunter before

the Lord! He’s our foremost man on every hand. You’ve already been
pleased to get acquainted with him.”
Daddy Eróshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and shook
his head thoughtfully at the cornet’s ability and learning, and muttered to
himself: “Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he invents!”
“Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,” answered Olénin.
“Yes, sir, exactly,” said the cornet, “but I have a small business with
you.”
“What do you want?”
“Seeing that you are a gentleman,” began the cornet, “and as I may
understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and therefore we may
always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.” (He stopped and looked
with a smile at Olénin and at the old man.) “But if you have the desire with
my consent, then, as my wife is a foolish woman of our class, she could not
quite comprehend your words of yesterday’s date. Therefore my quarters
might be let for six rubles to the Regimental Adjutant, without the stables;
but I can always avert that from myself free of charge. But, as you desire,
therefore I, being myself of an officer’s rank, can come to an agreement
with you in everything personally, as an inhabitant of this district, not
according to our customs, but can maintain the conditions in every way....”
“Speaks clearly!” muttered the old man.
The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last, not
without difficulty, Olénin gathered that the cornet wished to let his rooms to
him, Olénin, for six rubles a month. The latter gladly agreed to this, and
offered his visitor a glass of tea. The cornet declined it.
“According to our silly custom we consider it a sort of sin to drink out of
a ‘worldly’ tumbler,” he said. “Though, of course, with my education I may
understand, but my wife from her human weakness...”
“Well then, will you have some tea?”
“If you will permit me, I will bring my own particular glass,” answered
the cornet, and stepped out into the porch.
“Bring me my glass!” he cried.
In a few minutes the door opened and a young sunburnt arm in a print
sleeve thrust itself in, holding a tumbler in the hand. The cornet went up,

took it, and whispered something to his daughter. Olénin poured tea for the
cornet into the latter’s own “particular” glass, and for Eróshka into a
“worldly” glass.
“However, I do not desire to detain you,” said the cornet, scalding his lips
and emptying his tumbler. “I too have a great liking for fishing, and I am
here, so to say, only on leave of absence for recreation from my duties. I too
have the desire to tempt fortune and see whether some Gifts of the Térek
may not fall to my share. I hope you too will come and see us and have a
drink of our wine, according to the custom of our village,” he added.
The cornet bowed, shook hands with Olénin, and went out. While Olénin
was getting ready, he heard the cornet giving orders to his family in an
authoritative and sensible tone, and a few minutes later he saw him pass by
the window in a tattered coat with his trousers rolled up to his knees and a
fishing net over his shoulder.
“A rascal!” said Daddy Eróshka, emptying his “worldly” tumbler. “And
will you really pay him six rubles? Was such a thing ever heard of? They
would let you the best hut in the village for two rubles. What a beast! Why,
I’d let you have mine for three!”
“No, I’ll remain here,” said Olénin.
“Six rubles!... Clearly it’s a fool’s money. Eh, eh, eh!” answered the old
man. “Let’s have some chikhir, Iván!”
Having had a snack and a drink of vodka to prepare themselves for the
road, Olénin and the old man went out together before eight o’clock.
At the gate they came up against a wagon to which a pair of oxen were
harnessed. With a white kerchief tied round her head down to her eyes, a
coat over her smock, and wearing high boots, Maryánka with a long switch
in her hand was dragging the oxen by a cord tied to their horns.
“Mammy,” said the old man, pretending that he was going to seize her.
Maryánka flourished her switch at him and glanced merrily at them both
with her beautiful eyes.
Olénin felt still more light-hearted.
“Now then, come on, come on,” he said, throwing his gun on his
shoulder and conscious of the girl’s eyes upon him.

“Gee up!” sounded Maryánka’s voice behind them, followed by the creak
of the moving wagon.
As long as their road lay through the pastures at the back of the village
Eróshka went on talking. He could not forget the cornet and kept on abusing
him.
“Why are you so angry with him?” asked Olénin.
“He’s stingy. I don’t like it,” answered the old man. “He’ll leave it all
behind when he dies! Then who’s he saving up for? He’s built two houses,
and he’s got a second garden from his brother by a law-suit. And in the
matter of papers what a dog he is! They come to him from other villages to
fill up documents. As he writes it out, exactly so it happens. He gets it quite
exact. But who is he saving for? He’s only got one boy and the girl; when
she’s married who’ll be left?”
“Well then, he’s saving up for her dowry,” said Olénin.
“What dowry? The girl is sought after, she’s a fine girl. But he’s such a
devil that he must yet marry her to a rich fellow. He wants to get a big price
for her. There’s Luke, a Cossack, a neighbour and a nephew of mine, a fine
lad. It’s he who killed the Chéchen—he has been wooing her for a long
time, but he hasn’t let him have her. He’s given one excuse, and another,
and a third. ‘The girl’s too young,’ he says. But I know what he is thinking.
He wants to keep them bowing to him. He’s been acting shamefully about
that girl. Still, they will get her for Lukáshka, because he is the best
Cossack in the village, a brave, who has killed an abrek and will be
rewarded with a cross.”
“But how about this? When I was walking up and down the yard last
night, I saw my landlord’s daughter and some Cossack kissing,” said
Olénin.
“You’re pretending!” cried the old man, stopping.
“On my word,” said Olénin.
“Women are the devil,” said Eróshka pondering. “But what Cossack was
it?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Well, what sort of a cap had he, a white one?”
“Yes.”

“And a red coat? About your height?”
“No, a bit taller.”
“It’s he!” and Eróshka burst out laughing. “It’s himself, it’s Mark. He is
Luke, but I call him Mark for a joke. His very self! I love him. I was just
such a one myself. What’s the good of minding them? My sweetheart used
to sleep with her mother and her sister-in-law, but I managed to get in. She
used to sleep upstairs; that witch her mother was a regular demon; it’s awful
how she hated me. Well, I used to come with a chum, Gírchik his name was.
We’d come under her window and I’d climb on his shoulders, push up the
window and begin groping about. She used to sleep just there on a bench.
Once I woke her up and she nearly called out. She hadn’t recognized me.
‘Who is there?’ she said, and I could not answer. Her mother was even
beginning to stir, but I took off my cap and shoved it over her mouth; and
she at once knew it by a seam in it, and ran out to me. I used not to want
anything then. She’d bring along clotted cream and grapes and everything,”
added Eróshka (who always explained things practically), “and she wasn’t
the only one. It was a life!”
“And what now?”
“Now we’ll follow the dog, get a pheasant to settle on a tree, and then
you may fire.”
“Would you have made up to Maryánka?”
“Attend to the dogs. I’ll tell you tonight,” said the old man, pointing to
his favourite dog, Lyam.
After a pause they continued talking, while they went about a hundred
paces. Then the old man stopped again and pointed to a twig that lay across
the path.
“What do you think of that?” he said. “You think it’s nothing? It’s bad
that this stick is lying so.”
“Why is it bad?”
He smiled.
“Ah, you don’t know anything. Just listen to me. When a stick lies like
that don’t you step across it, but go round it or throw it off the path this way,
and say ‘Father and Son and Holy Ghost,’ and then go on with God’s
blessing. Nothing will happen to you. That’s what the old men used to teach
me.”

“Come, what rubbish!” said Olénin. “You’d better tell me more about
Maryánka. Does she carry on with Lukáshka?”
“Hush ... be quiet now!” the old man again interrupted in a whisper: “just
listen, we’ll go round through the forest.”
And the old man, stepping quietly in his soft shoes, led the way by a
narrow path leading into the dense, wild, overgrown forest. Now and again
with a frown he turned to look at Olénin, who rustled and clattered with his
heavy boots and, carrying his gun carelessly, several times caught the twigs
of trees that grew across the path.
“Don’t make a noise. Step softly, soldier!” the old man whispered
angrily.
There was a feeling in the air that the sun had risen. The mist was
dissolving but it still enveloped the tops of the trees. The forest looked
terribly high. At every step the aspect changed: what had appeared like a
tree proved to be a bush, and a reed looked like a tree.

Chapter XIX

The mist had partly lifted, showing the wet reed thatches, and was now
turning into dew that moistened the road and the grass beside the fence.
Smoke rose everywhere in clouds from the chimneys. The people were
going out of the village, some to their work, some to the river, and some to
the cordon. The hunters walked together along the damp, grass-grown path.
The dogs, wagging their tails and looking at their masters, ran on both sides
of them. Myriads of gnats hovered in the air and pursued the hunters,
covering their backs, eyes, and hands. The air was fragrant with the grass
and with the dampness of the forest. Olénin continually looked round at the
ox-cart in which Maryánka sat urging on the oxen with a long switch.
It was calm. The sounds from the village, audible at first, now no longer
reached the sportsmen. Only the brambles cracked as the dogs ran under
them, and now and then birds called to one another. Olénin knew that
danger lurked in the forest, that abreks always hid in such places. But he
knew too that in the forest, for a man on foot, a gun is a great protection.
Not that he was afraid, but he felt that another in his place might be; and
looking into the damp misty forest and listening to the rare and faint sounds
with strained attention, he changed his hold on his gun and experienced a
pleasant feeling that was new to him. Daddy Eróshka went in front,
stopping and carefully scanning every puddle where an animal had left a
double track, and pointing it out to Olénin. He hardly spoke at all and only
occasionally made remarks in a whisper. The track they were following had
once been made by wagons, but the grass had long overgrown it. The elm
and plane-tree forest on both sides of them was so dense and overgrown
with creepers that it was impossible to see anything through it. Nearly every
tree was enveloped from top to bottom with wild grape vines, and dark
bramble bushes covered the ground thickly. Every little glade was
overgrown with blackberry bushes and grey feathery reeds. In places, large
hoof-prints and small funnel-shaped pheasant-trails led from the path into

the thicket. The vigour of the growth of this forest, untrampled by cattle,
struck Olénin at every turn, for he had never seen anything like it. This
forest, the danger, the old man and his mysterious whispering, Maryánka
with her virile upright bearing, and the mountains—all this seemed to him
like a dream.
“A pheasant has settled,” whispered the old man, looking round and
pulling his cap over his face—“Cover your mug! A pheasant!” he waved his
arm angrily at Olénin and pushed forward almost on all fours. “He don’t
like a man’s mug.”
Olénin was still behind him when the old man stopped and began
examining a tree. A cock-pheasant on the tree clucked at the dog that was
barking at it, and Olénin saw the pheasant; but at that moment a report, as
of a cannon, came from Eróshka’s enormous gun, the bird fluttered up and,
losing some feathers, fell to the ground. Coming up to the old man Olénin
disturbed another, and raising his gun he aimed and fired. The pheasant
flew swiftly up and then, catching at the branches as he fell, dropped like a
stone to the ground.
“Good man!” the old man (who could not hit a flying bird) shouted,
laughing.
Having picked up the pheasants they went on. Olénin, excited by the
exercise and the praise, kept addressing remarks to the old man.
“Stop! Come this way,” the old man interrupted. “I noticed the track of
deer here yesterday.”
After they had turned into the thicket and gone some three hundred paces
they scrambled through into a glade overgrown with reeds and partly under
water. Olénin failed to keep up with the old huntsman and presently Daddy
Eróshka, some twenty paces in front, stooped down, nodding and beckoning
with his arm. On coming up with him Olénin saw a man’s footprint to
which the old man was pointing.
“D’you see?”
“Yes, well?” said Olénin, trying to speak as calmly as he could. “A man’s
footstep!”
Involuntarily a thought of Cooper’s Pathfinder and of abreks flashed
through Olénin’s mind, but noticing the mysterious manner with which the

old man moved on, he hesitated to question him and remained in doubt
whether this mysteriousness was caused by fear of danger or by the sport.
“No, it’s my own footprint,” the old man said quietly, and pointed to
some grass under which the track of an animal was just perceptible.
The old man went on, and Olénin kept up with him. Descending to lower
ground some twenty paces farther on they came upon a spreading pear-tree,
under which, on the black earth, lay the fresh dung of some animal.
The spot, all covered over with wild vines, was like a cosy arbour, dark
and cool.
“He’s been here this morning,” said the old man with a sigh; “the lair is
still damp, quite fresh.”
Suddenly they heard a terrible crash in the forest some ten paces from
where they stood. They both started and seized their guns, but they could
see nothing and only heard the branches breaking. The rhythmical rapid
thud of galloping was heard for a moment and then changed into a hollow
rumble which resounded farther and farther off, re-echoing in wider and
wider circles through the forest. Olénin felt as though something had
snapped in his heart. He peered carefully but vainly into the green thicket
and then turned to the old man. Daddy Eróshka with his gun pressed to his
breast stood motionless; his cap was thrust backwards, his eyes gleamed
with an unwonted glow, and his open mouth, with its worn yellow teeth,
seemed to have stiffened in that position.
“A horned stag!” he muttered, and throwing down his gun in despair he
began pulling at his grey beard, “Here it stood. We should have come round
by the path.... Fool! fool!” and he gave his beard an angry tug. “Fool! Pig!”
he repeated, pulling painfully at his own beard. Through the forest
something seemed to fly away in the mist, and ever farther and farther off
was heard the sound of the flight of the stag.
It was already dusk when, hungry, tired, but full of vigour, Olénin
returned with the old man. Dinner was ready. He ate and drank with the old
man till he felt warm and merry. Olénin then went out into the porch. Again,
to the west, the mountains rose before his eyes. Again the old man told his
endless stories of hunting, of abreks, of sweethearts, and of all that free and
reckless life. Again the fair Maryánka went in and out and across the yard,
her beautiful powerful form outlined by her smock.

Chapter XX

The next day Olénin went alone to the spot where he and the old man
startled the stag. Instead of passing round through the gate he climbed over
the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and before he had had time to pull
out the thorns that had caught in his coat, his dog, which had run on in
front, started two pheasants. He had hardly stepped among the briers when
the pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man had not shown him
that place the day before as he meant to keep it for shooting from behind the
screen). Olénin fired twelve times and killed five pheasants, but clambering
after them through the briers he got so fatigued that he was drenched with
perspiration. He called off his dog, uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above
the small shot, and brushing away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of
his Circassian coat he went slowly to the spot where they had been the day
before. It was however impossible to keep back the dog, who found trails
on the very path, and Olénin killed two more pheasants, so that after being
detained by this it was getting towards noon before he began to find the
place he was looking for.
The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture had
dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes literally covered his
face, his back, and his arms. His dog had turned from black to grey, its back
being covered with mosquitoes, and so had Olénin’s coat through which the
insects thrust their stings. Olénin was ready to run away from them and it
seemed to him that it was impossible to live in this country in the summer.
He was about to go home, but remembering that other people managed to
endure such pain he resolved to bear it and gave himself up to be devoured.
And strange to say, by noontime the feeling became actually pleasant. He
even felt that without this mosquito-filled atmosphere around him, and that
mosquito-paste mingled with perspiration which his hand smeared over his
face, and that unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for
him some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were so well

suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these multitudes of birds
and beasts which filled the forest, this dark foliage, this hot scented air,
these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere soaked through
from the Térek and gurgled here and there under the overhanging leaves,
that the very thing which had at first seemed to him dreadful and intolerable
now seemed pleasant. After going round the place where yesterday they had
found the animal and not finding anything, he felt inclined to rest. The sun
stood right above the forest and poured its perpendicular rays down on his
back and head whenever he came out into a glade or onto the road. The
seven heavy pheasants dragged painfully at his waist. Having found the
traces of yesterday’s stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where
the stag had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the dark foliage
around him, the place marked by the stag’s perspiration and yesterday’s
dung, the imprint of the stag’s knees, the bit of black earth it had kicked up,
and his own footprints of the day before. He felt cool and comfortable and
did not think of or wish for anything. And suddenly he was overcome by
such a strange feeling of causeless joy and of love for everything, that from
an old habit of his childhood he began crossing himself and thanking
someone. Suddenly, with extraordinary clearness, he thought: “Here am I,
Dmítri Olénin, a being quite distinct from every other being, now lying all
alone Heaven only knows where—where a stag used to live—an old stag, a
beautiful stag who perhaps had never seen a man, and in a place where no
human being has ever sat or thought these thoughts. Here I sit, and around
me stand old and young trees, one of them festooned with wild grape vines,
and pheasants are fluttering, driving one another about and perhaps scenting
their murdered brothers.” He felt his pheasants, examined them, and wiped
the warm blood off his hand onto his coat. “Perhaps the jackals scent them
and with dissatisfied faces go off in another direction: above me, flying in
among the leaves which to them seem enormous islands, mosquitoes hang
in the air and buzz: one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million
mosquitoes, and all of them buzz something or other and each one of them
is separate from all else and is just such a separate Dmítri Olénin as I am
myself.” He vividly imagined what the mosquitoes buzzed: “This way, this
way, lads! Here’s some one we can eat!” They buzzed and stuck to him.
And it was clear to him that he was not a Russian nobleman, a member of
Moscow society, the friend and relation of so-and-so and so-and-so, but just
such a mosquito, or pheasant, or deer, as those that were now living all

around him. “Just as they, just as Daddy Eróshka, I shall live awhile and
die, and as he says truly: ‘grass will grow and nothing more’.”
“But what though the grass does grow?” he continued thinking. “Still I
must live and be happy, because happiness is all I desire. Never mind what I
am—an animal like all the rest, above whom the grass will grow and
nothing more; or a frame in which a bit of the one God has been set,—still I
must live in the very best way. How then must I live to be happy, and why
was I not happy before?” And he began to recall his former life and he felt
disgusted with himself. He appeared to himself to have been terribly
exacting and selfish, though he now saw that all the while he really needed
nothing for himself. And he looked round at the foliage with the light
shining through it, at the setting sun and the clear sky, and he felt just as
happy as before. “Why am I happy, and what used I to live for?” thought
he. “How much I exacted for myself; how I schemed and did not manage to
gain anything but shame and sorrow! and, there now, I require nothing to be
happy;” and suddenly a new light seemed to reveal itself to him.
“Happiness is this!” he said to himself. “Happiness lies in living for others.
That is evident. The desire for happiness is innate in every man; therefore it
is legitimate. When trying to satisfy it selfishly—that is, by seeking for
oneself riches, fame, comforts, or love—it may happen that circumstances
arise which make it impossible to satisfy these desires. It follows that it is
these desires that are illegitimate, but not the need for happiness. But what
desires can always be satisfied despite external circumstances? What are
they? Love, self-sacrifice.” He was so glad and excited when he had
discovered this, as it seemed to him, new truth, that he jumped up and
began impatiently seeking some one to sacrifice himself for, to do good to
and to love. “Since one wants nothing for oneself,” he kept thinking, “why
not live for others?” He took up his gun with the intention of returning
home quickly to think this out and to find an opportunity of doing good. He
made his way out of the thicket. When he had come out into the glade he
looked around him; the sun was no longer visible above the tree-tops. It had
grown cooler and the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the
country round the village. Everything seemed changed—the weather and
the character of the forest; the sky was wrapped in clouds, the wind was
rustling in the tree-tops, and all around nothing was visible but reeds and
dying broken-down trees. He called to his dog who had run away to follow
some animal, and his voice came back as in a desert. And suddenly he was

seized with a terrible sense of weirdness. He grew frightened. He
remembered the abreks and the murders he had been told about, and he
expected every moment that an abrek would spring from behind every bush
and he would have to defend his life and die, or be a coward. He thought of
God and of the future life as for long he had not thought about them. And
all around was that same gloomy stern wild nature. “And is it worth while
living for oneself,” thought he, “when at any moment you may die, and die
without having done any good, and so that no one will know of it?” He
went in the direction where he fancied the village lay. Of his shooting he
had no further thought; but he felt tired to death and peered round at every
bush and tree with particular attention and almost with terror, expecting
every moment to be called to account for his life. After having wandered
about for a considerable time he came upon a ditch down which was
flowing cold sandy water from the Térek, and, not to go astray any longer,
he decided to follow it. He went on without knowing where the ditch would
lead him. Suddenly the reeds behind him crackled. He shuddered and seized
his gun, and then felt ashamed of himself: the over-excited dog, panting
hard, had thrown itself into the cold water of the ditch and was lapping it!
He too had a drink, and then followed the dog in the direction it wished
to go, thinking it would lead him to the village. But despite the dog’s
company everything around him seemed still more dreary. The forest grew
darker and the wind grew stronger and stronger in the tops of the broken old
trees. Some large birds circled screeching round their nests in those trees.
The vegetation grew poorer and he came oftener and oftener upon rustling
reeds and bare sandy spaces covered with animal footprints. To the howling
of the wind was added another kind of cheerless monotonous roar.
Altogether his spirits became gloomy. Putting his hand behind him he felt
his pheasants, and found one missing. It had broken off and was lost, and
only the bleeding head and beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more
frightened than he had ever done before. He began to pray to God, and
feared above all that he might die without having done anything good or
kind; and he so wanted to live, and to live so as to perform a feat of self-
sacrifice.

Chapter XXI

Suddenly it was as though the sun had shone into his soul. He heard
Russian being spoken, and also heard the rapid smooth flow of the Térek,
and a few steps farther in front of him saw the brown moving surface of the
river, with the dim-coloured wet sand of its banks and shallows, the distant
steppe, the cordon watch-tower outlined above the water, a saddled and
hobbled horse among the brambles, and then the mountains opening out
before him. The red sun appeared for an instant from under a cloud and its
last rays glittered brightly along the river over the reeds, on the watch-
tower, and on a group of Cossacks, among whom Lukáshka’s vigorous
figure attracted Olénin’s involuntary attention.
Olénin felt that he was again, without any apparent cause, perfectly
happy. He had come upon the Nízhni-Protótsk post on the Térek, opposite a
pro-Russian Tartar village on the other side of the river. He accosted the
Cossacks, but not finding as yet any excuse for doing anyone a kindness, he
entered the hut; nor in the hut did he find any such opportunity. The
Cossacks received him coldly. On entering the mud hut he lit a cigarette.
The Cossacks paid little attention to him, first because he was smoking a
cigarette, and secondly because they had something else to divert them that
evening. Some hostile Chéchens, relatives of the abrek who had been killed,
had come from the hills with a scout to ransom the body; and the Cossacks
were waiting for their Commanding Officer’s arrival from the village. The
dead man’s brother, tall and well shaped with a short cropped beard which
was dyed red, despite his very tattered coat and cap was calm and majestic
as a king. His face was very like that of the dead abrek. He did not deign to
look at anyone, and never once glanced at the dead body, but sitting on his
heels in the shade he spat as he smoked his short pipe, and occasionally
uttered some few guttural sounds of command, which were respectfully
listened to by his companion. He was evidently a brave who had met
Russians more than once before in quite other circumstances, and nothing

about them could astonish or even interest him. Olénin was about to
approach the dead body and had begun to look at it when the brother,
looking up at him from under his brows with calm contempt, said
something sharply and angrily. The scout hastened to cover the dead man’s
face with his coat. Olénin was struck by the dignified and stern expression
of the brave’s face. He began to speak to him, asking from what village he
came, but the Chéchen, scarcely giving him a glance, spat contemptuously
and turned away. Olénin was so surprised at the Chéchen not being
interested in him that he could only put it down to the man’s stupidity or
ignorance of Russian; so he turned to the scout, who also acted as
interpreter. The scout was as ragged as the other, but instead of being red-
haired he was black-haired, restless, with extremely white gleaming teeth
and sparkling black eyes. The scout willingly entered into conversation and
asked for a cigarette.
“There were five brothers,” began the scout in his broken Russian. “This
is the third brother the Russians have killed, only two are left. He is a brave,
a great brave!” he said, pointing to the Chéchen. “When they killed Ahmet
Khan (the dead brave) this one was sitting on the opposite bank among the
reeds. He saw it all. Saw him laid in the skiff and brought to the bank. He
sat there till the night and wished to kill the old man, but the others would
not let him.”
Lukáshka went up to the speaker, and sat down. “Of what village?” asked
he.
“From there in the hills,” replied the scout, pointing to the misty bluish
gorge beyond the Térek. “Do you know Suuk-su? It is about eight miles
beyond that.”
“Do you know Giréy Khan in Suuk-su?” asked Lukáshka, evidently
proud of the acquaintance. “He is my kunak.”
“He is my neighbour,” answered the scout.
“He’s a trump!” and Lukáshka, evidently much interested, began talking
to the scout in Tartar.
Presently a Cossack captain, with the head of the village, arrived on
horseback with a suite of two Cossacks. The captain—one of the new type
of Cossack officers—wished the Cossacks “Good health,” but no one
shouted in reply, “Hail! Good health to your honour,” as is customary in the
Russian Army, and only a few replied with a bow. Some, and among them

Lukáshka, rose and stood erect. The corporal replied that all was well at the
outposts. All this seemed ridiculous: it was as if these Cossacks were
playing at being soldiers. But these formalities soon gave place to ordinary
ways of behaviour, and the captain, who was a smart Cossack just like the
others, began speaking fluently in Tartar to the interpreter. They filled in
some document, gave it to the scout, and received from him some money.
Then they approached the body.
“Which of you is Luke Gavrílov?” asked the captain.
Lukáshka took off his cap and came forward.
“I have reported your exploit to the Commander. I don’t know what will
come of it. I have recommended you for a cross; you’re too young to be
made a sergeant. Can you read?”
“I can’t.”
“But what a fine fellow to look at!” said the captain, again playing the
commander. “Put on your cap. Which of the Gavrílovs does he come of? ...
the Broad, eh?”
“His nephew,” replied the corporal.
“I know, I know. Well, lend a hand, help them,” he said, turning to the
Cossacks.
Lukáshka’s face shone with joy and seemed handsomer than usual. He
moved away from the corporal, and having put on his cap sat down beside
Olénin.
When the body had been carried to the skiff the brother Chéchen
descended to the bank. The Cossacks involuntarily stepped aside to let him
pass. He jumped into the boat and pushed off from the bank with his
powerful leg, and now, as Olénin noticed, for the first time threw a rapid
glance at all the Cossacks and then abruptly asked his companion a
question. The latter answered something and pointed to Lukáshka. The
Chéchen looked at him and, turning slowly away, gazed at the opposite
bank. That look expressed not hatred but cold contempt. He again made
some remark.
“What is he saying?” Olénin asked of the fidgety scout.
“Yours kill ours, ours slay yours. It’s always the same,” replied the scout,
evidently inventing, and he smiled, showing his white teeth, as he jumped
into the skiff.

The dead man’s brother sat motionless, gazing at the opposite bank. He
was so full of hatred and contempt that there was nothing on this side of the
river that moved his curiosity. The scout, standing up at one end of the skiff
and dipping his paddle now on one side now on the other, steered skilfully
while talking incessantly. The skiff became smaller and smaller as it moved
obliquely across the stream, the voices became scarcely audible, and at last,
still within sight, they landed on the opposite bank where their horses stood
waiting. There they lifted out the corpse and (though the horse shied) laid it
across one of the saddles, mounted, and rode at a foot-pace along the road
past a Tartar village from which a crowd came out to look at them. The
Cossacks on the Russian side of the river were highly satisfied and jovial.
Laughter and jokes were heard on all sides. The captain and the head of the
village entered the mud hut to regale themselves. Lukáshka, vainly striving
to impart a sedate expression to his merry face, sat down with his elbows on
his knees beside Olénin and whittled away at a stick.
“Why do you smoke?” he said with assumed curiosity. “Is it good?”
He evidently spoke because he noticed Olénin felt ill at ease and isolated
among the Cossacks.
“It’s just a habit,” answered Olénin. “Why?”
“H’m, if one of us were to smoke there would be a row! Look there now,
the mountains are not far off,” continued Lukáshka, “yet you can’t get
there! How will you get back alone? It’s getting dark. I’ll take you, if you
like. You ask the corporal to give me leave.”
“What a fine fellow!” thought Olénin, looking at the Cossack’s bright
face. He remembered Maryánka and the kiss he had heard by the gate, and
he was sorry for Lukáshka and his want of culture. “What confusion it is,”
he thought. “A man kills another and is happy and satisfied with himself as
if he had done something excellent. Can it be that nothing tells him that it is
not a reason for any rejoicing, and that happiness lies not in killing, but in
sacrificing oneself?”
“Well, you had better not meet him again now, mate!” said one of the
Cossacks who had seen the skiff off, addressing Lukáshka. “Did you hear
him asking about you?”
Lukáshka raised his head.
“My godson?” said Lukáshka, meaning by that word the dead Chéchen.

“Your godson won’t rise, but the red one is the godson’s brother!”
“Let him thank God that he got off whole himself,” replied Lukáshka.
“What are you glad about?” asked Olénin. “Supposing your brother had
been killed; would you be glad?”
The Cossack looked at Olénin with laughing eyes. He seemed to have
understood all that Olénin wished to say to him, but to be above such
considerations.
“Well, that happens too! Don’t our fellows get killed sometimes?”

Chapter XXII

The Captain and the head of the village rode away, and Olénin, to please
Lukáshka as well as to avoid going back alone through the dark forest,
asked the corporal to give Lukáshka leave, and the corporal did so. Olénin
thought that Lukáshka wanted to see Maryánka and he was also glad of the
companionship of such a pleasant-looking and sociable Cossack. Lukáshka
and Maryánka he involuntarily united in his mind, and he found pleasure in
thinking about them. “He loves Maryánka,” thought Olénin, “and I could
love her,” and a new and powerful emotion of tenderness overcame him as
they walked homewards together through the dark forest. Lukáshka too felt
happy; something akin to love made itself felt between these two very
different young men. Every time they glanced at one another they wanted to
laugh.
“By which gate do you enter?” asked Olénin.
“By the middle one. But I’ll see you as far as the marsh. After that you
have nothing to fear.”
Olénin laughed.
“Do you think I am afraid? Go back, and thank you. I can get on alone.”
“It’s all right! What have I to do? And how can you help being afraid?
Even we are afraid,” said Lukáshka to set Olénin’s self-esteem at rest, and
he laughed too.
“Then come in with me. We’ll have a talk and a drink and in the morning
you can go back.”
“Couldn’t I find a place to spend the night?” laughed Lukáshka. “But the
corporal asked me to go back.”
“I heard you singing last night, and also saw you.”
“Every one...” and Luke swayed his head.
“Is it true you are getting married?” asked Olénin.

“Mother wants me to marry. But I have not got a horse yet.”
“Aren’t you in the regular service?”
“Oh dear no! I’ve only just joined, and have not got a horse yet, and
don’t know how to get one. That’s why the marriage does not come off.”
“And what would a horse cost?”
“We were bargaining for one beyond the river the other day and they
would not take sixty rubles for it, though it is a Nogáy horse.”
“Will you come and be my drabánt?” (A drabánt was a kind of orderly
attached to an officer when campaigning.) “I’ll get it arranged and will give
you a horse,” said Olénin suddenly. “Really now, I have two and I don’t
want both.”
“How—don’t want it?” Lukáshka said, laughing. “Why should you make
me a present? We’ll get on by ourselves by God’s help.”
“No, really! Or don’t you want to be a drabánt?” said Olénin, glad that it
had entered his head to give a horse to Lukáshka, though, without knowing
why, he felt uncomfortable and confused and did not know what to say
when he tried to speak.
Lukáshka was the first to break the silence.
“Have you a house of your own in Russia?” he asked.
Olénin could not refrain from replying that he had not only one, but
several houses.
“A good house? Bigger than ours?” asked Lukáshka good-naturedly.
“Much bigger; ten times as big and three storeys high,” replied Olénin.
“And have you horses such as ours?”
“I have a hundred horses, worth three or four hundred rubles each, but
they are not like yours. They are trotters, you know.... But still, I like the
horses here best.”
“Well, and did you come here of your own free will, or were you sent?”
said Lukáshka, laughing at him. “Look! that’s where you lost your way,” he
added, “you should have turned to the right.”
“I came by my own wish,” replied Olénin. “I wanted to see your parts
and to join some expeditions.”

“I would go on an expedition any day,” said Lukáshka. “D’you hear the
jackals howling?” he added, listening.
“I say, don’t you feel any horror at having killed a man?” asked Olénin.
“What’s there to be frightened about? But I should like to join an
expedition,” Lukáshka repeated. “How I want to! How I want to!”
“Perhaps we may be going together. Our company is going before the
holidays, and your ‘hundred’ too.”
“And what did you want to come here for? You’ve a house and horses
and serfs. In your place I’d do nothing but make merry! And what is your
rank?”
“I am a cadet, but have been recommended for a commission.”
“Well, if you’re not bragging about your home, if I were you I’d never
have left it! Yes, I’d never have gone away anywhere. Do you find it
pleasant living among us?”
“Yes, very pleasant,” answered Olénin.
It had grown quite dark before, talking in this way, they approached the
village. They were still surrounded by the deep gloom of the forest. The
wind howled through the tree-tops. The jackals suddenly seemed to be
crying close beside them, howling, chuckling, and sobbing; but ahead of
them in the village the sounds of women’s voices and the barking of dogs
could already be heard; the outlines of the huts were clearly to be seen;
lights gleamed and the air was filled with the peculiar smell of kisyak
smoke. Olénin felt keenly, that night especially, that here in this village was
his home, his family, all his happiness, and that he never had and never
would live so happily anywhere as he did in this Cossack village. He was so
fond of everybody and especially of Lukáshka that night. On reaching
home, to Lukáshka’s great surprise, Olénin with his own hands led out of
the shed a horse he had bought in Gróznoe—it was not the one he usually
rode but another—not a bad horse though no longer young, and gave it to
Lukáshka.
“Why should you give me a present?” said Lukáshka, “I have not yet
done anything for you.”
“Really it is nothing,” answered Olénin. “Take it, and you will give me a
present, and we’ll go on an expedition against the enemy together.”
Lukáshka became confused.

“But what d’you mean by it? As if a horse were of little value,” he said
without looking at the horse.
“Take it, take it! If you don’t you will offend me. Vanyúsha! Take the
grey horse to his house.”
Lukáshka took hold of the halter.
“Well then, thank you! This is something unexpected, undreamt of.”
Olénin was as happy as a boy of twelve.
“Tie it up here. It’s a good horse. I bought it in Gróznoe; it gallops
splendidly! Vanyúsha, bring us some chikhir. Come into the hut.”
The wine was brought. Lukáshka sat down and took the wine-bowl.
“God willing I’ll find a way to repay you,” he said, finishing his wine.
“How are you called?”
“Dmítri Andréich.”
“Well, ’Mitry Andréich, God bless you. We will be kunaks. Now you
must come to see us. Though we are not rich people still we can treat a
kunak, and I will tell mother in case you need anything—clotted cream or
grapes—and if you come to the cordon I’m your servant to go hunting or to
go across the river, anywhere you like! There now, only the other day, what
a boar I killed, and I divided it among the Cossacks, but if I had only
known, I’d have given it to you.”
“That’s all right, thank you! But don’t harness the horse, it has never
been in harness.”
“Why harness the horse? And there is something else I’ll tell you if you
like,” said Lukáshka, bending his head. “I have a kunak, Giréy Khan. He
asked me to lie in ambush by the road where they come down from the
mountains. Shall we go together? I’ll not betray you. I’ll be your murid.”
“Yes, we’ll go; we’ll go some day.”
Lukáshka seemed quite to have quieted down and to have understood
Olénin’s attitude towards him. His calmness and the ease of his behaviour
surprised Olénin, and he did not even quite like it. They talked long, and it
was late when Lukáshka, not tipsy (he never was tipsy) but having drunk a
good deal, left Olénin after shaking hands.
Olénin looked out of the window to see what he would do. Lukáshka
went out, hanging his head. Then, having led the horse out of the gate, he

suddenly shook his head, threw the reins of the halter over its head, sprang
onto its back like a cat, gave a wild shout, and galloped down the street.
Olénin expected that Lukáshka would go to share his joy with Maryánka,
but though he did not do so Olénin still felt his soul more at ease than ever
before in his life. He was as delighted as a boy, and could not refrain from
telling Vanyúsha not only that he had given Lukáshka the horse, but also
why he had done it, as well as his new theory of happiness.
Vanyúsha did not approve of his theory, and announced that “l’argent il
n’y a pas!” and that therefore it was all nonsense.
Lukáshka rode home, jumped off the horse, and handed it over to his
mother, telling her to let it out with the communal Cossack herd. He himself
had to return to the cordon that same night. His deaf sister undertook to take
the horse, and explained by signs that when she saw the man who had given
the horse, she would bow down at his feet. The old woman only shook her
head at her son’s story, and decided in her own mind that he had stolen it.
She therefore told the deaf girl to take it to the herd before daybreak.
Lukáshka went back alone to the cordon pondering over Olénin’s action.
Though he did not consider the horse a good one, yet it was worth at least
forty rubles and Lukáshka was very glad to have the present. But why it had
been given him he could not at all understand, and therefore he did not
experience the least feeling of gratitude. On the contrary, vague suspicions
that the cadet had some evil intentions filled his mind. What those
intentions were he could not decide, but neither could he admit the idea that
a stranger would give him a horse worth forty rubles for nothing, just out of
kindness; it seemed impossible. Had he been drunk one might understand
it! He might have wished to show off. But the cadet had been sober, and
therefore must have wished to bribe him to do something wrong. “Eh,
humbug!” thought Lukáshka. “Haven’t I got the horse and we’ll see later
on. I’m not a fool myself and we shall see who’ll get the better of the
other,” he thought, feeling the necessity of being on his guard, and therefore
arousing in himself unfriendly feelings towards Olénin. He told no one how
he had got the horse. To some he said he had bought it, to others he replied
evasively. However, the truth soon got about in the village, and Lukáshka’s
mother and Maryánka, as well as Elias Vasílich and other Cossacks, when
they heard of Olénin’s unnecessary gift, were perplexed, and began to be on

their guard against the cadet. But despite their fears his action aroused in
them a great respect for his simplicity and wealth.
“Have you heard,” said one, “that the cadet quartered on Elias Vasílich
has thrown a fifty-ruble horse at Lukáshka? He’s rich! ...”
“Yes, I heard of it,” replied another profoundly, “he must have done him
some great service. We shall see what will come of this cadet. Eh! what
luck that Snatcher has!”
“Those cadets are crafty, awfully crafty,” said a third. “See if he don’t go
setting fire to a building, or doing something!”

Chapter XXIII

Olénin’s life went on with monotonous regularity. He had little
intercourse with the commanding officers or with his equals. The position
of a rich cadet in the Caucasus was peculiarly advantageous in this respect.
He was not sent out to work, or for training. As a reward for going on an
expedition he was recommended for a commission, and meanwhile he was
left in peace. The officers regarded him as an aristocrat and behaved
towards him with dignity. Cardplaying and the officers’ carousals
accompanied by the soldier-singers, of which he had had experience when
he was with the detachment, did not seem to him attractive, and he also
avoided the society and life of the officers in the village. The life of officers
stationed in a Cossack village has long had its own definite form. Just as
every cadet or officer when in a fort regularly drinks porter, plays cards, and
discusses the rewards given for taking part in the expeditions, so in the
Cossack villages he regularly drinks chikhir with his hosts, treats the girls to
sweet-meats and honey, dangles after the Cossack women, and falls in love,
and occasionally marries there. Olénin always took his own path and had an
unconscious objection to the beaten tracks. And here, too, he did not follow
the ruts of a Caucasian officer’s life.
It came quite naturally to him to wake up at daybreak. After drinking tea
and admiring from his porch the mountains, the morning, and Maryánka, he
would put on a tattered ox-hide coat, sandals of soaked raw hide, buckle on
a dagger, take a gun, put cigarettes and some lunch in a little bag, call his
dog, and soon after five o’clock would start for the forest beyond the
village. Towards seven in the evening he would return tired and hungry
with five or six pheasants hanging from his belt (sometimes with some
other animal) and with his bag of food and cigarettes untouched. If the
thoughts in his head had lain like the lunch and cigarettes in the bag, one
might have seen that during all those fourteen hours not a single thought
had moved in it. He returned morally fresh, strong, and perfectly happy, and

he could not tell what he had been thinking about all the time. Were they
ideas, memories, or dreams that had been flitting through his mind? They
were frequently all three. He would rouse himself and ask what he had been
thinking about; and would see himself as a Cossack working in a vineyard
with his Cossack wife, or an abrek in the mountains, or a boar running away
from himself. And all the time he kept peering and watching for a pheasant,
a boar, or a deer.
In the evening Daddy Eróshka would be sure to be sitting with him.
Vanyúsha would bring a jug of chikhir, and they would converse quietly,
drink, and separate to go quite contentedly to bed. The next day he would
again go shooting, again be healthily weary, again they would sit
conversing and drink their fill, and again be happy. Sometimes on a holiday
or day of rest Olénin spent the whole day at home. Then his chief
occupation was watching Maryánka, whose every movement, without
realizing it himself, he followed greedily from his window or his porch. He
regarded Maryánka and loved her (so he thought) just as he loved the
beauty of the mountains and the sky, and he had no thought of entering into
any relations with her. It seemed to him that between him and her such
relations as there were between her and the Cossack Lukáshka could not
exist, and still less such as often existed between rich officers and other
Cossack girls. It seemed to him that if he tried to do as his fellow officers
did, he would exchange his complete enjoyment of contemplation for an
abyss of suffering, disillusionment, and remorse. Besides, he had already
achieved a triumph of self-sacrifice in connexion with her which had given
him great pleasure, and above all he was in a way afraid of Maryánka and
would not for anything have ventured to utter a word of love to her lightly.
Once during the summer, when Olénin had not gone out shooting but was
sitting at home, quite unexpectedly a Moscow acquaintance, a very young
man whom he had met in society, came in.
“Ah, mon cher, my dear fellow, how glad I was when I heard that you
were here!” he began in his Moscow French, and he went on intermingling
French words in his remarks. “They said, ‘Olénin’. What Olénin? and I was
so pleased.... Fancy fate bringing us together here! Well, and how are you?
How? Why?” and Prince Belétski told his whole story: how he had
temporarily entered the regiment, how the Commander-in-Chief had offered

to take him as an adjutant, and how he would take up the post after this
campaign although personally he felt quite indifferent about it.
“Living here in this hole one must at least make a career—get a cross—
or a rank—be transferred to the Guards. That is quite indispensable, not for
myself but for the sake of my relations and friends. The prince received me
very well; he is a very decent fellow,” said Belétski, and went on
unceasingly. “I have been recommended for the St. Anna Cross for the
expedition. Now I shall stay here a bit until we start on the campaign. It’s
capital here. What women! Well, and how are you getting on? I was told by
our captain, Stártsev you know, a kind-hearted stupid creature.... Well, he
said you were living like an awful savage, seeing no one! I quite understand
you don’t want to be mixed up with the set of officers we have here. I am so
glad now you and I will be able to see something of one another. I have put
up at the Cossack corporal’s house. There is such a girl there. Ústenka! I tell
you she’s just charming.”
And more and more French and Russian words came pouring forth from
that world which Olénin thought he had left for ever. The general opinion
about Belétski was that he was a nice, good-natured fellow. Perhaps he
really was; but in spite of his pretty, good-natured face, Olénin thought him
extremely unpleasant. He seemed just to exhale that filthiness which Olénin
had forsworn. What vexed him most was that he could not—had not the
strength—abruptly to repulse this man who came from that world: as if that
old world he used to belong to had an irresistible claim on him. Olénin felt
angry with Belétski and with himself, yet against his wish he introduced
French phrases into his own conversation, was interested in the
Commander-in-Chief and in their Moscow acquaintances, and because in
this Cossack village he and Belétski both spoke French, he spoke
contemptuously of their fellow officers and of the Cossacks, and was
friendly with Belétski, promising to visit him and inviting him to drop in to
see him. Olénin however did not himself go to see Belétski. Vanyúsha for
his part approved of Belétski, remarking that he was a real gentleman.
Belétski at once adopted the customary life of a rich officer in a Cossack
village. Before Olénin’s eyes, in one month he came to be like an old
resident of the village; he made the old men drunk, arranged evening
parties, and himself went to parties arranged by the girls—bragged of his
conquests, and even got so far that, for some unknown reason, the women

and girls began calling him grandad, and the Cossacks, to whom a man who
loved wine and women was clearly understandable, got used to him and
even liked him better than they did Olénin, who was a puzzle to them.

Chapter XXIV

It was five in the morning. Vanyúsha was in the porch heating the
samovar, and using the leg of a long boot instead of bellows. Olénin had
already ridden off to bathe in the Térek. (He had recently invented a new
amusement: to swim his horse in the river.) His landlady was in her
outhouse, and the dense smoke of the kindling fire rose from the chimney.
The girl was milking the buffalo cow in the shed. “Can’t keep quiet, the
damned thing!” came her impatient voice, followed by the rhythmical
sound of milking.
From the street in front of the house horses’ hoofs were heard clattering
briskly, and Olénin, riding bareback on a handsome dark-grey horse which
was still wet and shining, rode up to the gate. Maryánka’s handsome head,
tied round with a red kerchief, appeared from the shed and again
disappeared. Olénin was wearing a red silk shirt, a white Circassian coat
girdled with a strap which carried a dagger, and a tall cap. He sat his well-
fed wet horse with a slightly conscious elegance and, holding his gun at his
back, stooped to open the gate. His hair was still wet, and his face shone
with youth and health. He thought himself handsome, agile, and like a
brave; but he was mistaken. To any experienced Caucasian he was still only
a soldier. When he noticed that the girl had put out her head he stooped with
particular smartness, threw open the gate and, tightening the reins, swished
his whip and entered the yard. “Is tea ready, Vanyúsha?” he cried gaily, not
looking at the door of the shed. He felt with pleasure how his fine horse,
pressing down its flanks, pulling at the bridle and with every muscle
quivering and with each foot ready to leap over the fence, pranced on the
hard clay of the yard. “C’est prêt,” answered Vanyúsha. Olénin felt as if
Maryánka’s beautiful head was still looking out of the shed but he did not
turn to look at her. As he jumped down from his horse he made an awkward
movement and caught his gun against the porch, and turned a frightened

look towards the shed, where there was no one to be seen and whence the
sound of milking could still be heard.
Soon after he had entered the hut he came out again and sat down with
his pipe and a book on the side of the porch which was not yet exposed to
the rays of the sun. He meant not to go anywhere before dinner that day,
and to write some long-postponed letters; but somehow he felt disinclined
to leave his place in the porch, and he was as reluctant to go back into the
hut as if it had been a prison. The housewife had heated her oven, and the
girl, having driven the cattle, had come back and was collecting kisyak and
heaping it up along the fence. Olénin went on reading, but did not
understand a word of what was written in the book that lay open before
him. He kept lifting his eyes from it and looking at the powerful young
woman who was moving about. Whether she stepped into the moist
morning shadow thrown by the house, or went out into the middle of the
yard lit up by the joyous young light, so that the whole of her stately figure
in its bright coloured garment gleamed in the sunshine and cast a black
shadow—he always feared to lose any one of her movements. It delighted
him to see how freely and gracefully her figure bent: into what folds her
only garment, a pink smock, draped itself on her bosom and along her
shapely legs; how she drew herself up and her tight-drawn smock showed
the outline of her heaving bosom, how the soles of her narrow feet in her
worn red slippers rested on the ground without altering their shape; how her
strong arms with the sleeves rolled up, exerting the muscles, used the spade
almost as if in anger, and how her deep dark eyes sometimes glanced at
him. Though the delicate brows frowned, yet her eyes expressed pleasure
and a knowledge of her own beauty.
“I say, Olénin, have you been up long?” said Belétski as he entered the
yard dressed in the coat of a Caucasian officer.
“Ah, Belétski,” replied Olénin, holding out his hand. “How is it you are
out so early?”
“I had to. I was driven out; we are having a ball tonight. Maryánka, of
course you’ll come to Ústenka’s?” he added, turning to the girl.
Olénin felt surprised that Belétski could address this woman so easily.
But Maryánka, as though she had not heard him, bent her head, and
throwing the spade across her shoulder went with her firm masculine tread
towards the outhouse.

“She’s shy, the wench is shy,” Belétski called after her. “Shy of you,” he
added as, smiling gaily, he ran up the steps of the porch.
“How is it you are having a ball and have been driven out?”
“It’s at Ústenka’s, at my landlady’s, that the ball is, and you two are
invited. A ball consists of a pie and a gathering of girls.”
“What should we do there?”
Belétski smiled knowingly and winked, jerking his head in the direction
of the outhouse into which Maryánka had disappeared.
Olénin shrugged his shoulders and blushed.
“Well, really you are a strange fellow!” said he.
“Come now, don’t pretend”
Olénin frowned, and Belétski noticing this smiled insinuatingly. “Oh,
come, what do you mean?” he said, “living in the same house—and such a
fine girl, a splendid girl, a perfect beauty—”
“Wonderfully beautiful! I never saw such a woman before,” replied
Olénin.
“Well then?” said Belétski, quite unable to understand the situation.
“It may be strange,” replied Olénin, “but why should I not say what is
true? Since I have lived here women don’t seem to exist for me. And it is so
good, really! Now what can there be in common between us and women
like these? Eróshka—that’s a different matter! He and I have a passion in
common—sport.”
“There now! In common! And what have I in common with Amália
Ivánovna? It’s the same thing! You may say they’re not very clean—that’s
another matter... À la guerre, comme à la guerre!...”
“But I have never known any Amália Ivánovas, and have never known
how to behave with women of that sort,” replied Olénin. “One cannot
respect them, but these I do respect.”
“Well go on respecting them! Who wants to prevent you?”
Olénin did not reply. He evidently wanted to complete what he had begun
to say. It was very near his heart.
“I know I am an exception...” He was visibly confused. “But my life has
so shaped itself that I not only see no necessity to renounce my rules, but I
could not live here, let alone live as happily as I am doing, were I to live as

you do. Therefore I look for something quite different from what you look
for.”
Belétski raised his eyebrows incredulously. “Anyhow, come to me this
evening; Maryánka will be there and I will make you acquainted. Do come,
please! If you feel dull you can go away. Will you come?”
“I would come, but to speak frankly I am afraid of being seriously carried
away.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” shouted Belétski. “Only come, and I’ll see that you aren’t.
Will you? On your word?”
“I would come, but really I don’t understand what we shall do; what part
we shall play!”
“Please, I beg of you. You will come?”
“Yes, perhaps I’ll come,” said Olénin.
“Really now! Charming women such as one sees nowhere else, and to
live like a monk! What an idea! Why spoil your life and not make use of
what is at hand? Have you heard that our company is ordered to
Vozdvízhensk?”
“Hardly. I was told the 8th Company would be sent there,” said Olénin.
“No. I have had a letter from the adjutant there. He writes that the Prince
himself will take part in the campaign. I am very glad I shall see something
of him. I’m beginning to get tired of this place.”
“I hear we shall start on a raid soon.”
“I have not heard of it; but I have heard that Krinovítsin has received the
Order of St. Anna for a raid. He expected a lieutenancy,” said Belétski
laughing. “He was let in! He has set off for headquarters.”
It was growing dusk and Olénin began thinking about the party. The
invitation he had received worried him. He felt inclined to go, but what
might take place there seemed strange, absurd, and even rather alarming.
He knew that neither Cossack men nor older women, nor anyone besides
the girls, were to be there. What was going to happen? How was he to
behave? What would they talk about? What connexion was there between
him and those wild Cossack girls? Belétski had told him of such curious,
cynical, and yet rigid relations. It seemed strange to think that he would be
there in the same hut with Maryánka and perhaps might have to talk to her.

It seemed to him impossible when he remembered her majestic bearing. But
Belétski spoke of it as if it were all perfectly simple. “Is it possible that
Belétski will treat Maryánka in the same way? That is interesting,” thought
he. “No, better not go. It’s all so horrid, so vulgar, and above all—it leads to
nothing!” But again he was worried by the question of what would take
place; and besides he felt as if bound by a promise. He went out without
having made up his mind one way or the other, but he walked as far as
Belétski’s, and went in there.
The hut in which Belétski lived was like Olénin’s. It was raised nearly
five feet from the ground on wooden piles, and had two rooms. In the first
(which Olénin entered by the steep flight of steps) feather beds, rugs,
blankets, and cushions were tastefully and handsomely arranged, Cossack
fashion, along the main wall. On the side wall hung brass basins and
weapons, while on the floor, under a bench, lay watermelons and pumpkins.
In the second room there was a big brick oven, a table, and sectarian icons.
It was here that Belétski was quartered, with his camp-bed and his pack and
trunks. His weapons hung on the wall with a little rug behind them, and on
the table were his toilet appliances and some portraits. A silk dressing-gown
had been thrown on the bench. Belétski himself, clean and good-looking,
lay on the bed in his underclothing, reading Les Trois Mousquetaires.
He jumped up.
“There, you see how I have arranged things. Fine! Well, it’s good that
you have come. They are working furiously. Do you know what the pie is
made of? Dough with a stuffing of pork and grapes. But that’s not the point.
You just look at the commotion out there!”
And really, on looking out of the window they saw an unusual bustle
going on in the hut. Girls ran in and out, now for one thing and now for
another.
“Will it soon be ready?” cried Belétski.
“Very soon! Why? Is Grandad hungry?” and from the hut came the sound
of ringing laughter.
Ústenka, plump, small, rosy, and pretty, with her sleeves turned up, ran
into Belétski’s hut to fetch some plates.
“Get away or I shall smash the plates!” she squeaked, escaping from
Belétski. “You’d better come and help,” she shouted to Olénin, laughing.

“And don’t forget to get some refreshments for the girls.” (“Refreshments”
meaning spicebread and sweets.)
“And has Maryánka come?”
“Of course! She brought some dough.”
“Do you know,” said Belétski, “if one were to dress Ústenka up and clean
and polish her up a bit, she’d be better than all our beauties. Have you ever
seen that Cossack woman who married a colonel; she was charming!
Bórsheva? What dignity! Where do they get it...”
“I have not seen Bórsheva, but I think nothing could be better than the
costume they wear here.”
“Ah, I’m first-rate at fitting into any kind of life,” said Belétski with a
sigh of pleasure. “I’ll go and see what they are up to.”
He threw his dressing-gown over his shoulders and ran out, shouting,
“And you look after the ‘refreshments’.”
Olénin sent Belétski’s orderly to buy spice-bread and honey; but it
suddenly seemed to him so disgusting to give money (as if he were bribing
someone) that he gave no definite reply to the orderly’s question: “How
much spice-bread with peppermint, and how much with honey?”
“Just as you please.”
“Shall I spend all the money,” asked the old soldier impressively. “The
peppermint is dearer. It’s sixteen kopeks.”
“Yes, yes, spend it all,” answered Olénin and sat down by the window,
surprised that his heart was thumping as if he were preparing himself for
something serious and wicked.
He heard screaming and shrieking in the girls’ hut when Belétski went
there, and a few moments later saw how he jumped out and ran down the
steps, accompanied by shrieks, bustle, and laughter.
“Turned out,” he said.
A little later Ústenka entered and solemnly invited her visitors to come
in: announcing that all was ready.
When they came into the room they saw that everything was really ready.
Ústenka was rearranging the cushions along the wall. On the table, which
was covered by a disproportionately small cloth, was a decanter of chikhir
and some dried fish. The room smelt of dough and grapes. Some half dozen

girls in smart tunics, with their heads not covered as usual with kerchiefs,
were huddled together in a corner behind the oven, whispering, giggling,
and spluttering with laughter.
“I humbly beg you to do honour to my patron saint,” said Ústenka,
inviting her guests to the table.
Olénin noticed Maryánka among the group of girls, who without
exception were all handsome, and he felt vexed and hurt that he met her in
such vulgar and awkward circumstances. He felt stupid and awkward, and
made up his mind to do what Belétski did. Belétski stepped to the table
somewhat solemnly yet with confidence and ease, drank a glass of wine to
Ústenka’s health, and invited the others to do the same. Ústenka announced
that girls don’t drink.
“We might with a little honey,” exclaimed a voice from among the group
of girls.
The orderly, who had just returned with the honey and spice-cakes, was
called in. He looked askance (whether with envy or with contempt) at the
gentlemen, who in his opinion were on the spree; and carefully and
conscientiously handed over to them a piece of honeycomb and the cakes
wrapped up in a piece of greyish paper, and began explaining
circumstantially all about the price and the change, but Belétski sent him
away.
Having mixed honey with wine in the glasses, and having lavishly
scattered the three pounds of spice-cakes on the table, Belétski dragged the
girls from their corners by force, made them sit down at the table, and
began distributing the cakes among them. Olénin involuntarily noticed how
Maryánka’s sunburnt but small hand closed on two round peppermint nuts
and one brown one, and that she did not know what to do with them. The
conversation was halting and constrained, in spite of Ústenka’s and
Belétski’s free and easy manner and their wish to enliven the company.
Olénin faltered, and tried to think of something to say, feeling that he was
exciting curiosity and perhaps provoking ridicule and infecting the others
with his shyness. He blushed, and it seemed to him that Maryánka in
particular was feeling uncomfortable. “Most likely they are expecting us to
give them some money,” thought he. “How are we to do it? And how can
we manage quickest to give it and get away?”

Chapter XXV

“How is it you don’t know your own lodger?” said Belétski, addressing
Maryánka.
“How is one to know him if he never comes to see us?” answered
Maryánka, with a look at Olénin.
Olénin felt frightened, he did not know of what. He flushed and, hardly
knowing what he was saying, remarked: “I’m afraid of your mother. She
gave me such a scolding the first time I went in.”
Maryánka burst out laughing. “And so you were frightened?” she said,
and glanced at him and turned away.
It was the first time Olénin had seen the whole of her beautiful face. Till
then he had seen her with her kerchief covering her to the eyes. It was not
for nothing that she was reckoned the beauty of the village. Ústenka was a
pretty girl, small, plump, rosy, with merry brown eyes, and red lips which
were perpetually smiling and chattering. Maryánka on the contrary was
certainly not pretty but beautiful. Her features might have been considered
too masculine and almost harsh had it not been for her tall stately figure, her
powerful chest and shoulders, and especially the severe yet tender
expression of her long dark eyes which were darkly shadowed beneath their
black brows, and for the gentle expression of her mouth and smile. She
rarely smiled, but her smile was always striking. She seemed to radiate
virginal strength and health. All the girls were good-looking, but they
themselves and Belétski, and the orderly when he brought in the spice-
cakes, all involuntarily gazed at Maryánka, and anyone addressing the girls
was sure to address her. She seemed a proud and happy queen among them.
Belétski, trying to keep up the spirit of the party, chattered incessantly,
made the girls hand round chikhir, fooled about with them, and kept making
improper remarks in French about Maryánka’s beauty to Olénin, calling her
“yours” (la vôtre), and advising him to behave as he did himself. Olénin felt

more and more uncomfortable. He was devising an excuse to get out and
run away when Belétski announced that Ústenka, whose saint’s day it was,
must offer chikhir to everybody with a kiss. She consented on condition that
they should put money on her plate, as is the custom at weddings.
“What fiend brought me to this disgusting feast?” thought Olénin, rising
to go away.
“Where are you off to?”
“I’ll fetch some tobacco,” he said, meaning to escape, but Belétski seized
his hand.
“I have some money,” he said to him in French.
“One can’t go away, one has to pay here,” thought Olénin bitterly, vexed
at his own awkwardness. “Can’t I really behave like Belétski? I ought not to
have come, but once I am here I must not spoil their fun. I must drink like a
Cossack,” and taking the wooden bowl (holding about eight tumblers) he
almost filled it with chikhir and drank it almost all. The girls looked at him,
surprised and almost frightened, as he drank. It seemed to them strange and
not right. Ústenka brought them another glass each, and kissed them both.
“There girls, now we’ll have some fun,” she said, clinking on the plate the
four rubles the men had put there.
Olénin no longer felt awkward, but became talkative.
“Now, Maryánka, it’s your turn to offer us wine and a kiss,” said
Belétski, seizing her hand.
“Yes, I’ll give you such a kiss!” she said playfully, preparing to strike at
him.
“One can kiss Grandad without payment,” said another girl.
“There’s a sensible girl,” said Belétski, kissing the struggling girl. “No,
you must offer it,” he insisted, addressing Maryánka. “Offer a glass to your
lodger.”
And taking her by the hand he led her to the bench and sat her down
beside Olénin.
“What a beauty,” he said, turning her head to see it in profile.
Maryánka did not resist but proudly smiling turned her long eyes towards
Olénin.
“A beautiful girl,” repeated Belétski.

“Yes, see what a beauty I am,” Maryánka’s look seemed to endorse.
Without considering what he was doing Olénin embraced Maryánka and
was going to kiss her, but she suddenly extricated herself, upsetting Belétski
and pushing the top off the table, and sprang away towards the oven. There
was much shouting and laughter. Then Belétski whispered something to the
girls and suddenly they all ran out into the passage and locked the door
behind them.
“Why did you kiss Belétski and won’t kiss me?” asked Olénin.
“Oh, just so. I don’t want to, that’s all!” she answered, pouting and
frowning. “He’s Grandad,” she added with a smile. She went to the door
and began to bang at it. “Why have you locked the door, you devils?”
“Well, let them be there and us here,” said Olénin, drawing closer to her.
She frowned, and sternly pushed him away with her hand. And again she
appeared so majestically handsome to Olénin that he came to his senses and
felt ashamed of what he was doing. He went to the door and began pulling
at it himself.
“Belétski! Open the door! What a stupid joke!”
Maryánka again gave a bright happy laugh. “Ah, you’re afraid of me?”
she said.
“Yes, you know you’re as cross as your mother.”
“Spend more of your time with Eróshka; that will make the girls love
you!” And she smiled, looking straight and close into his eyes.
He did not know what to reply. “And if I were to come to see you—” he
let fall.
“That would be a different matter,” she replied, tossing her head.
At that moment Belétski pushed the door open, and Maryánka sprang
away from Olénin and in doing so her thigh struck his leg.
“It’s all nonsense what I have been thinking about—love and self-
sacrifice and Lukáshka. Happiness is the one thing. He who is happy is
right,” flashed through Olénin’s mind, and with a strength unexpected to
himself he seized and kissed the beautiful Maryánka on her temple and her
cheek. Maryánka was not angry, but only burst into a loud laugh and ran out
to the other girls.

That was the end of the party. Ústenka’s mother, returned from her work,
gave all the girls a scolding, and turned them all out.

Chapter XXVI

“Yes,” thought Olénin, as he walked home. “I need only slacken the reins
a bit and I might fall desperately in love with this Cossack girl.” He went to
bed with these thoughts, but expected it all to blow over and that he would
continue to live as before.
But the old life did not return. His relations to Maryánka were changed.
The wall that had separated them was broken down. Olénin now greeted her
every time they met.
The master of the house having returned to collect the rent, on hearing of
Olénin’s wealth and generosity invited him to his hut. The old woman
received him kindly, and from the day of the party onwards Olénin often
went in of an evening and sat with them till late at night. He seemed to be
living in the village just as he used to, but within him everything had
changed. He spent his days in the forest, and towards eight o’clock, when it
began to grow dusk, he would go to see his hosts, alone or with Daddy
Eróshka. They grew so used to him that they were surprised when he stayed
away. He paid well for his wine and was a quiet fellow. Vanyúsha would
bring him his tea and he would sit down in a corner near the oven. The old
woman did not mind him but went on with her work, and over their tea or
their chikhir they talked about Cossack affairs, about the neighbours, or
about Russia: Olénin relating and the others inquiring. Sometimes he
brought a book and read to himself. Maryánka crouched like a wild goat
with her feet drawn up under her, sometimes on the top of the oven,
sometimes in a dark corner. She did not take part in the conversations, but
Olénin saw her eyes and face and heard her moving or cracking sunflower
seeds, and he felt that she listened with her whole being when he spoke, and
was aware of his presence while he silently read to himself. Sometimes he
thought her eyes were fixed on him, and meeting their radiance he
involuntarily became silent and gazed at her. Then she would instantly hide
her face and he would pretend to be deep in conversation with the old

woman, while he listened all the time to her breathing and to her every
movement and waited for her to look at him again. In the presence of others
she was generally bright and friendly with him, but when they were alone
together she was shy and rough. Sometimes he came in before Maryánka
had returned home. Suddenly he would hear her firm footsteps and catch a
glimmer of her blue cotton smock at the open door. Then she would step
into the middle of the hut, catch sight of him, and her eyes would give a
scarcely perceptible kindly smile, and he would feel happy and frightened.
He neither sought for nor wished for anything from her, but every day her
presence became more and more necessary to him.
Olénin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully that his
past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future, especially a future
outside the world in which he was now living, it did not interest him at all.
When he received letters from home, from relatives and friends, he was
offended by the evident distress with which they regarded him as a lost
man, while he in his village considered those as lost who did not live as he
was living. He felt sure he would never repent of having broken away from
his former surroundings and of having settled down in this village to such a
solitary and original life. When out on expeditions, and when quartered at
one of the forts, he felt happy too; but it was here, from under Daddy
Eróshka’s wing, from the forest and from his hut at the end of the village,
and especially when he thought of Maryánka and Lukáshka, that he seemed
to see the falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his
indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and
ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and more of a
man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to what his imagination
had painted it. He had found nothing at all like his dreams, nor like the
descriptions of the Caucasus he had heard and read. “There are none of all
those chestnut steeds, precipices, Amalet Beks, heroes or villains,” thought
he. “The people live as nature lives: they die, are born, unite, and more are
born—they fight, eat and drink, rejoice and die, without any restrictions but
those that nature imposes on sun and grass, on animal and tree. They have
no other laws.” Therefore these people, compared to himself, appeared to
him beautiful, strong, and free, and the sight of them made him feel
ashamed and sorry for himself. Often it seriously occurred to him to throw
up everything, to get registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and
marry a Cossack woman (only not Maryánka, whom he conceded to

Lukáshka), and to live with Daddy Eróshka and go shooting and fishing
with him, and go with the Cossacks on their expeditions. “Why ever don’t I
do it? What am I waiting for?” he asked himself, and he egged himself on
and shamed himself. “Am I afraid of doing what I hold to be reasonable and
right? Is the wish to be a simple Cossack, to live close to nature, not to
injure anyone but even to do good to others, more stupid than my former
dreams, such as those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?” but a
voice seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any decision. He was
held back by a dim consciousness that he could not live altogether like
Eróshka and Lukáshka because he had a different idea of happiness—he
was held back by the thought that happiness lies in self-sacrifice. What he
had done for Lukáshka continued to give him joy. He kept looking for
occasions to sacrifice himself for others, but did not meet with them.
Sometimes he forgot this newly discovered recipe for happiness and
considered himself capable of identifying his life with Daddy Eróshka’s, but
then he quickly bethought himself and promptly clutched at the idea of
conscious self-sacrifice, and from that basis looked calmly and proudly at
all men and at their happiness.

Chapter XXVII

Just before the vintage Lukáshka came on horseback to see Olénin. He
looked more dashing than ever.
“Well? Are you getting married?” asked Olénin, greeting him merrily.
Lukáshka gave no direct reply.
“There, I’ve exchanged your horse across the river. This is a horse! A
Kabardá horse from the Lov stud. I know horses.”
They examined the new horse and made him caracole about the yard. The
horse really was an exceptionally fine one, a broad and long gelding, with
glossy coat, thick silky tail, and the soft fine mane and crest of a
thoroughbred. He was so well fed that “you might go to sleep on his back”
as Lukáshka expressed it. His hoofs, eyes, teeth, were exquisitely shaped
and sharply outlined, as one only finds them in very pure-bred horses.
Olénin could not help admiring the horse, he had not yet met with such a
beauty in the Caucasus.
“And how it goes!” said Lukáshka, patting its neck. “What a step! And so
clever—he simply runs after his master.”
“Did you have to add much to make the exchange?” asked Olénin.
“I did not count it,” answered Lukáshka with a smile. “I got him from a
kunak.”
“A wonderfully beautiful horse! What would you take for it?” asked
Olénin.
“I have been offered a hundred and fifty rubles for it, but I’ll give it you
for nothing,” said Lukáshka, merrily. “Only say the word and it’s yours. I’ll
unsaddle it and you may take it. Only give me some sort of a horse for my
duties.”
“No, on no account.”

“Well then, here is a dagger I’ve brought you,” said Lukáshka,
unfastening his girdle and taking out one of the two daggers which hung
from it. “I got it from across the river.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“And mother has promised to bring you some grapes herself.”
“That’s quite unnecessary. We’ll balance up some day. You see I don’t
offer you any money for the dagger!”
“How could you? We are kunaks. It’s just the same as when Giréy Khan
across the river took me into his home and said, ‘Choose what you like!’ So
I took this sword. It’s our custom.”
They went into the hut and had a drink.
“Are you staying here awhile?” asked Olénin.
“No, I have come to say good-bye. They are sending me from the cordon
to a company beyond the Térek. I am going tonight with my comrade
Nazárka.”
“And when is the wedding to be?”
“I shall be coming back for the betrothal, and then I shall return to the
company again,” Lukáshka replied reluctantly.
“What, and see nothing of your betrothed?”
“Just so—what is the good of looking at her? When you go on campaign
ask in our company for Lukáshka the Broad. But what a lot of boars there
are in our parts! I’ve killed two. I’ll take you.”
“Well, good-bye! Christ save you.”
Lukáshka mounted his horse, and without calling on Maryánka, rode
caracoling down the street, where Nazárka was already awaiting him.
“I say, shan’t we call round?” asked Nazárka, winking in the direction of
Yámka’s house.
“That’s a good one!” said Lukáshka. “Here, take my horse to her and if I
don’t come soon give him some hay. I shall reach the company by the
morning anyway.”
“Hasn’t the cadet given you anything more?”
“I am thankful to have paid him back with a dagger—he was going to ask
for the horse,” said Lukáshka, dismounting and handing over the horse to

Nazárka.
He darted into the yard past Olénin’s very window, and came up to the
window of the cornet’s hut. It was already quite dark. Maryánka, wearing
only her smock, was combing her hair preparing for bed.
“It’s I—” whispered the Cossack.
Maryánka’s look was severely indifferent, but her face suddenly
brightened up when she heard her name. She opened the window and leant
out, frightened and joyous.
“What—what do you want?” she said.
“Open!” uttered Lukáshka. “Let me in for a minute. I am so sick of
waiting! It’s awful!”
He took hold of her head through the window and kissed her.
“Really, do open!”
“Why do you talk nonsense? I’ve told you I won’t! Have you come for
long?”
He did not answer but went on kissing her, and she did not ask again.
“There, through the window one can’t even hug you properly,” said
Lukáshka.
“Maryánka dear!” came the voice of her mother, “who is that with you?”
Lukáshka took off his cap, which might have been seen, and crouched
down by the window.
“Go, be quick!” whispered Maryánka.
“Lukáshka called round,” she answered; “he was asking for Daddy.”
“Well then send him here!”
“He’s gone; said he was in a hurry.”
In fact, Lukáshka, stooping, as with big strides he passed under the
windows, ran out through the yard and towards Yámka’s house unseen by
anyone but Olénin. After drinking two bowls of chikhir he and Nazárka
rode away to the outpost. The night was warm, dark, and calm. They rode in
silence, only the footfall of their horses was heard. Lukáshka started a song
about the Cossack, Mingál, but stopped before he had finished the first
verse, and after a pause, turning to Nazárka, said:
“I say, she wouldn’t let me in!”

“Oh?” rejoined Nazárka. “I knew she wouldn’t. D’you know what
Yámka told me? The cadet has begun going to their house. Daddy Eróshka
brags that he got a gun from the cadet for getting him Maryánka.”
“He lies, the old devil!” said Lukáshka, angrily. “She’s not such a girl. If
he does not look out I’ll wallop that old devil’s sides,” and he began his
favourite song:
“From the village of Izmáylov,
From the master’s favourite garden,
Once escaped a keen-eyed falcon.
Soon after him a huntsman came a-riding,
And he beckoned to the falcon that had strayed,
But the bright-eyed bird thus answered:
‘In gold cage you could not keep me,
On your hand you could not hold me,
So now I fly to blue seas far away.
There a white swan I will kill,
Of sweet swan-flesh have my fill.’”

Chapter XXVIII

The betrothal was taking place in the cornet’s hut. Lukáshka had returned
to the village, but had not been to see Olénin, and Olénin had not gone to
the betrothal though he had been invited. He was sad as he had never been
since he settled in this Cossack village. He had seen Lukáshka earlier in the
evening and was worried by the question why Lukáshka was so cold
towards him. Olénin shut himself up in his hut and began writing in his
diary as follows:
“Many things have I pondered over lately and much have I changed,”
wrote he, “and I have come back to the copybook maxim: The one way to
be happy is to love, to love self-denyingly, to love everybody and
everything; to spread a web of love on all sides and to take all who come
into it. In this way I caught Vanyúsha, Daddy Eróshka, Lukáshka, and
Maryánka.”
As Olénin was finishing this sentence Daddy Eróshka entered the room.
Eróshka was in the happiest frame of mind. A few evenings before this,
Olénin had gone to see him and had found him with a proud and happy face
deftly skinning the carcass of a boar with a small knife in the yard. The
dogs (Lyam his pet among them) were lying close by watching what he was
doing and gently wagging their tails. The little boys were respectfully
looking at him through the fence and not even teasing him as was their
wont. His women neighbours, who were as a rule not too gracious towards
him, greeted him and brought him, one a jug of chikhir, another some
clotted cream, and a third a little flour. The next day Eróshka sat in his
store-room all covered with blood, and distributed pounds of boar-flesh,
taking in payment money from some and wine from others. His face clearly
expressed, “God has sent me luck. I have killed a boar, so now I am
wanted.” Consequently, he naturally began to drink, and had gone on for
four days never leaving the village. Besides which he had had something to
drink at the betrothal.

He came to Olénin quite drunk: his face red, his beard tangled, but
wearing a new beshmet trimmed with gold braid; and he brought with him a
balaláyka which he had obtained beyond the river. He had long promised
Olénin this treat, and felt in the mood for it, so that he was sorry to find
Olénin writing.
“Write on, write on, my lad,” he whispered, as if he thought that a spirit
sat between him and the paper and must not be frightened away, and he
softly and silently sat down on the floor. When Daddy Eróshka was drunk
his favourite position was on the floor. Olénin looked round, ordered some
wine to be brought, and continued to write. Eróshka found it dull to drink
by himself and he wished to talk.
“I’ve been to the betrothal at the cornet’s. But there! They’re shwine!—
Don’t want them!—Have come to you.”
“And where did you get your balaláyka?” asked Olénin, still writing.
“I’ve been beyond the river and got it there, brother mine,” he answered,
also very quietly. “I’m a master at it. Tartar or Cossack, squire or soldiers’
songs, any kind you please.”
Olénin looked at him again, smiled, and went on writing.
That smile emboldened the old man.
“Come, leave off, my lad, leave off!” he said with sudden firmness.
“Well, perhaps I will.”
“Come, people have injured you but leave them alone, spit at them!
Come, what’s the use of writing and writing, what’s the good?”
And he tried to mimic Olénin by tapping the floor with his thick fingers,
and then twisted his big face to express contempt.
“What’s the good of writing quibbles. Better have a spree and show
you’re a man!”
No other conception of writing found place in his head except that of
legal chicanery.
Olénin burst out laughing and so did Eróshka. Then, jumping up from the
floor, the latter began to show off his skill on the balaláyka and to sing
Tartar songs.
“Why write, my good fellow! You’d better listen to what I’ll sing to you.
When you’re dead you won’t hear any more songs. Make merry now!”

First he sang a song of his own composing accompanied by a dance:
“Ah, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim,
Say where did they last see him?
In a booth, at the fair,
He was selling pins, there.”

Then he sang a song he had learnt from his former sergeant-major:
“Deep I fell in love on Monday,
Tuesday nothing did but sigh,
Wednesday I popped the question,
Thursday waited her reply.
Friday, late, it came at last,
Then all hope for me was past!
Saturday my life to take
I determined like a man,
But for my salvation’s sake
Sunday morning changed my plan!”

Then he sang again:
“Oh dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim,
Say where did they last see him?”

And after that, winking, twitching his shoulders, and footing it to the tune,
he sang:
“I will kiss you and embrace,
Ribbons red twine round you;
And I’ll call you little Grace.
Oh, you little Grace now do
Tell me, do you love me true?”

And he became so excited that with a sudden dashing movement he started
dancing around the room accompanying himself the while.
Songs like “Dee, dee, dee”—“gentlemen’s songs”—he sang for Olénin’s
benefit, but after drinking three more tumblers of chikhir he remembered
old times and began singing real Cossack and Tartar songs. In the midst of
one of his favourite songs his voice suddenly trembled and he ceased
singing, and only continued strumming on the balaláyka.
“Oh, my dear friend!” he said.
The peculiar sound of his voice made Olénin look round.

The old man was weeping. Tears stood in his eyes and one tear was
running down his cheek.
“You are gone, my young days, and will never come back!” he said,
blubbering and halting. “Drink, why don’t you drink!” he suddenly shouted
with a deafening roar, without wiping away his tears.
There was one Tartar song that specially moved him. It had few words,
but its charm lay in the sad refrain. “Ay day, dalalay!” Eróshka translated
the words of the song: “A youth drove his sheep from the aoul to the
mountains: the Russians came and burnt the aoul, they killed all the men
and took all the women into bondage. The youth returned from the
mountains. Where the aoul had stood was an empty space; his mother not
there, nor his brothers, nor his house; one tree alone was left standing. The
youth sat beneath the tree and wept. ‘Alone like thee, alone am I left,’” and
Eróshka began singing: “Ay day, dalalay!” and the old man repeated several
times this wailing, heart-rending refrain.
When he had finished the refrain Eróshka suddenly seized a gun that
hung on the wall, rushed hurriedly out into the yard and fired off both
barrels into the air. Then again he began, more dolefully, his “Ay day,
dalalay—ah, ah,” and ceased.
Olénin followed him into the porch and looked up into the starry sky in
the direction where the shots had flashed. In the cornet’s house there were
lights and the sound of voices. In the yard girls were crowding round the
porch and the windows, and running backwards and forwards between the
hut and the outhouse. Some Cossacks rushed out of the hut and could not
refrain from shouting, re-echoing the refrain of Daddy Eróshka’s song and
his shots.
“Why are you not at the betrothal?” asked Olénin.
“Never mind them! Never mind them!” muttered the old man, who had
evidently been offended by something there. “Don’t like them, I don’t. Oh,
those people! Come back into the hut! Let them make merry by themselves
and we’ll make merry by ourselves.”
Olénin went in.
“And Lukáshka, is he happy? Won’t he come to see me?” he asked.
“What, Lukáshka? They’ve lied to him and said I am getting his girl for
you,” whispered the old man. “But what’s the girl? She will be ours if we

want her. Give enough money—and she’s ours. I’ll fix it up for you.
Really!”
“No, Daddy, money can do nothing if she does not love me. You’d better
not talk like that!”
“We are not loved, you and I. We are forlorn,” said Daddy Eróshka
suddenly, and again he began to cry.
Listening to the old man’s talk Olénin had drunk more than usual. “So
now my Lukáshka is happy,” thought he; yet he felt sad. The old man had
drunk so much that evening that he fell down on the floor and Vanyúsha had
to call soldiers in to help, and spat as they dragged the old man out. He was
so angry with the old man for his bad behaviour that he did not even say a
single French word.

Chapter XXIX

It was August. For days the sky had been cloudless, the sun scorched
unbearably and from early morning the warm wind raised a whirl of hot
sand from the sand-drifts and from the road, and bore it in the air through
the reeds, the trees, and the village. The grass and the leaves on the trees
were covered with dust, the roads and dried-up salt marshes were baked so
hard that they rang when trodden on. The water had long since subsided in
the Térek and rapidly vanished and dried up in the ditches. The slimy banks
of the pond near the village were trodden bare by the cattle and all day long
you could hear the splashing of water and the shouting of girls and boys
bathing. The sand-drifts and the reeds were already drying up in the steppes,
and the cattle, lowing, ran into the fields in the day-time. The boars
migrated into the distant reed-beds and to the hills beyond the Térek.
Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and
villages. The snow-peaks were hidden in grey mist. The air was rarefied and
smoky. It was said that abreks had crossed the now shallow river and were
prowling on this side of it. Every night the sun set in a glowing red blaze. It
was the busiest time of the year. The villagers all swarmed in the melon-
fields and the vineyards. The vineyards thickly overgrown with twining
verdure lay in cool, deep shade. Everywhere between the broad translucent
leaves, ripe, heavy, black clusters peeped out. Along the dusty road from the
vineyards the creaking carts moved slowly, heaped up with black grapes.
Clusters of them, crushed by the wheels, lay in the dirt. Boys and girls in
smocks stained with grape-juice, with grapes in their hands and mouths, ran
after their mothers. On the road you continually came across tattered
labourers with baskets of grapes on their powerful shoulders; Cossack
maidens, veiled with kerchiefs to their eyes, drove bullocks harnessed to
carts laden high with grapes. Soldiers who happened to meet these carts
asked for grapes, and the maidens, clambering up without stopping their
carts, would take an armful of grapes and drop them into the skirts of the

soldiers’ coats. In some homesteads they had already begun pressing the
grapes; and the smell of the emptied skins filled the air. One saw the blood-
red troughs in the pent-houses in the yards and Nogáy labourers with their
trousers rolled up and their legs stained with the juice. Grunting pigs gorged
themselves with the empty skins and rolled about in them. The flat roofs of
the outhouses were all spread over with the dark amber clusters drying in
the sun. Daws and magpies crowded round the roofs, picking the seeds and
fluttering from one place to another.
The fruits of the year’s labour were being merrily gathered in, and this
year the fruit was unusually fine and plentiful.
In the shady green vineyards amid a sea of vines, laughter, songs,
merriment, and the voices of women were to be heard on all sides, and
glimpses of their bright-coloured garments could be seen.
Just at noon Maryánka was sitting in their vineyard in the shade of a
peach-tree, getting out the family dinner from under an unharnessed cart.
Opposite her, on a spread-out horse-cloth, sat the cornet (who had returned
from the school) washing his hands by pouring water on them from a little
jug. Her little brother, who had just come straight out of the pond, stood
wiping his face with his wide sleeves, and gazed anxiously at his sister and
his mother and breathed deeply, awaiting his dinner. The old mother, with
her sleeves rolled up over her strong sunburnt arms, was arranging grapes,
dried fish, and clotted cream on a little low, circular Tartar table. The cornet
wiped his hands, took off his cap, crossed himself, and moved nearer to the
table. The boy seized the jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and
daughter crossed their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in
the shade it was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt
unpleasant: the strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought no
coolness, but only monotonously bent the tops of the pear, peach, and
mulberry trees with which the vineyard was sprinkled. The cornet, having
crossed himself once more, took a little jug of chikhir that stood behind him
covered with a vine-leaf, and having had a drink from the mouth of the jug
passed it to the old woman. He had nothing on over his shirt, which was
unfastened at the neck and showed his shaggy muscular chest. His fine-
featured cunning face looked cheerful; neither in his attitude nor in his
words was his usual wiliness to be seen; he was cheerful and natural.

“Shall we finish the bit beyond the shed tonight?” he asked, wiping his
wet beard.
“We’ll manage it,” replied his wife, “if only the weather does not hinder
us. The Dëmkins have not half finished yet,” she added. “Only Ústenka is at
work there, wearing herself out.”
“What can you expect of them?” said the old man proudly.
“Here, have a drink, Maryánka dear!” said the old woman, passing the
jug to the girl. “God willing we’ll have enough to pay for the wedding
feast,” she added.
“That’s not yet awhile,” said the cornet with a slight frown.
The girl hung her head.
“Why shouldn’t we mention it?” said the old woman. “The affair is
settled, and the time is drawing near too.”
“Don’t make plans beforehand,” said the cornet. “Now we have the
harvest to get in.”
“Have you seen Lukáshka’s new horse?” asked the old woman. “That
which Dmítri Andréich Olénin gave him is gone — he’s exchanged it.”
“No, I have not; but I spoke with the servant today,” said the cornet, “and
he said his master has again received a thousand rubles.”
“Rolling in riches, in short,” said the old woman.
The whole family felt cheerful and contented.
The work was progressing successfully. The grapes were more abundant
and finer than they had expected. After dinner Maryánka threw some grass
to the oxen, folded her beshmet for a pillow, and lay down under the wagon
on the juicy down-trodden grass. She had on only a red kerchief over her
head and a faded blue print smock, yet she felt unbearably hot. Her face
was burning, and she did not know where to put her feet, her eyes were
moist with sleepiness and weariness, her lips parted involuntarily, and her
chest heaved heavily and deeply.
The busy time of year had begun a fortnight ago and the continuous
heavy labour had filled the girl’s life. At dawn she jumped up, washed her
face with cold water, wrapped herself in a shawl, and ran out barefoot to see
to the cattle. Then she hurriedly put on her shoes and her beshmet and,
taking a small bundle of bread, she harnessed the bullocks and drove away

to the vineyards for the whole day. There she cut the grapes and carried the
baskets with only an hour’s interval for rest, and in the evening she returned
to the village, bright and not tired, dragging the bullocks by a rope or
driving them with a long stick. After attending to the cattle, she took some
sunflower seeds in the wide sleeve of her smock and went to the corner of
the street to crack them and have some fun with the other girls. But as soon
as it was dusk she returned home, and after having supper with her parents
and her brother in the dark outhouse, she went into the hut, healthy and free
from care, and climbed onto the oven, where half drowsing she listened to
their lodger’s conversation. As soon as he went away she would throw
herself down on her bed and sleep soundly and quietly till morning. And so
it went on day after day. She had not seen Lukáshka since the day of their
betrothal, but calmly awaited the wedding. She had got used to their lodger
and felt his intent looks with pleasure.

Chapter XXX

Although there was no escape from the heat and the mosquitoes swarmed
in the cool shadow of the wagons, and her little brother tossing about beside
her kept pushing her, Maryánka having drawn her kerchief over her head
was just falling asleep, when suddenly their neighbour Ústenka came
running towards her and, diving under the wagon, lay down beside her.
“Sleep, girls, sleep!” said Ústenka, making herself comfortable under the
wagon. “Wait a bit,” she exclaimed, “this won’t do!”
She jumped up, plucked some green branches, and stuck them through
the wheels on both sides of the wagon and hung her beshmet over them.
“Let me in,” she shouted to the little boy as she again crept under the
wagon. “Is this the place for a Cossack—with the girls? Go away!”
When alone under the wagon with her friend, Ústenka suddenly put both
her arms round her, and clinging close to her began kissing her cheeks and
neck.
“Darling, sweetheart,” she kept repeating, between bursts of shrill, clear
laughter.
“Why, you’ve learnt it from Grandad,” said Maryánka, struggling. “Stop
it!”
And they both broke into such peals of laughter that Maryánka’s mother
shouted to them to be quiet.
“Are you jealous?” asked Ústenka in a whisper.
“What humbug! Let me sleep. What have you come for?”
But Ústenka kept on, “I say! But I wanted to tell you such a thing.”
Maryánka raised herself on her elbow and arranged the kerchief which
had slipped off.
“Well, what is it?”

“I know something about your lodger!”
“There’s nothing to know,” said Maryánka.
“Oh, you rogue of a girl!” said Ústenka, nudging her with her elbow and
laughing. “Won’t tell anything. Does he come to you?”
“He does. What of that?” said Maryánka with a sudden blush.
“Now I’m a simple lass. I tell everybody. Why should I pretend?” said
Ústenka, and her bright rosy face suddenly became pensive. “Whom do I
hurt? I love him, that’s all about it.”
“Grandad, do you mean?”
“Well, yes!”
“And the sin?”
“Ah, Maryánka! When is one to have a good time if not while one’s still
free? When I marry a Cossack I shall bear children and shall have cares.
There now, when you get married to Lukáshka not even a thought of joy
will enter your head: children will come, and work!”
“Well? Some who are married live happily. It makes no difference!”
Maryánka replied quietly.
“Do tell me just this once what has passed between you and Lukáshka?”
“What has passed? A match was proposed. Father put it off for a year, but
now it’s been settled and they’ll marry us in autumn.”
“But what did he say to you?”
Maryánka smiled.
“What should he say? He said he loved me. He kept asking me to come
to the vineyards with him.”
“Just see what pitch! But you didn’t go, did you? And what a dare-devil
he has become: the first among the braves. He makes merry out there in the
army too! The other day our Kírka came home; he says: ‘What a horse
Lukáshka’s got in exchange!’ But all the same I expect he frets after you.
And what else did he say?”
“Must you know everything?” said Maryánka laughing. “One night he
came to my window tipsy, and asked me to let him in.”
“And you didn’t let him?”

“Let him, indeed! Once I have said a thing I keep to it firm as a rock,”
answered Maryánka seriously.
“A fine fellow! If he wanted her, no girl would refuse him.”
“Well, let him go to the others,” replied Maryánka proudly.
“You don’t pity him?”
“I do pity him, but I’ll have no nonsense. It is wrong.”
Ústenka suddenly dropped her head on her friend’s breast, seized hold of
her, and shook with smothered laughter. “You silly fool!” she exclaimed,
quite out of breath. “You don’t want to be happy,” and she began tickling
Maryánka.
“Oh, leave off!” said Maryánka, screaming and laughing. “You’ve
crushed Lazútka.”
“Hark at those young devils! Quite frisky! Not tired yet!” came the old
woman’s sleepy voice from the wagon.
“Don’t want happiness,” repeated Ústenka in a whisper, insistently. “But
you are lucky, that you are! How they love you! You are so crusty, and yet
they love you. Ah, if I were in your place I’d soon turn the lodger’s head! I
noticed him when you were at our house. He was ready to eat you with his
eyes. What things Grandad has given me! And yours they say is the richest
of the Russians. His orderly says they have serfs of their own.”
Maryánka raised herself, and after thinking a moment, smiled.
“Do you know what he once told me: the lodger I mean?” she said, biting
a bit of grass. “He said, ‘I’d like to be Lukáshka the Cossack, or your
brother Lazútka—.’ What do you think he meant?”
“Oh, just chattering what came into his head,” answered Ústenka. “What
does mine not say! Just as if he was possessed!”
Maryánka dropped her hand on her folded beshmet, threw her arm over
Ústenka’s shoulder, and shut her eyes.
“He wanted to come and work in the vineyard today: father invited him,”
she said, and after a short silence she fell asleep.

Chapter XXXI

The sun had come out from behind the pear-tree that had shaded the
wagon, and even through the branches that Ústenka had fixed up it scorched
the faces of the sleeping girls. Maryánka woke up and began arranging the
kerchief on her head. Looking about her, beyond the pear-tree she noticed
their lodger, who with his gun on his shoulder stood talking to her father.
She nudged Ústenka and smilingly pointed him out to her.
“I went yesterday and didn’t find a single one,” Olénin was saying as he
looked about uneasily, not seeing Maryánka through the branches.
“Ah, you should go out there in that direction, go right as by compasses,
there in a disused vineyard denominated as the Waste, hares are always to
be found,” said the cornet, having at once changed his manner of speech.
“A fine thing to go looking for hares in these busy times! You had better
come and help us, and do some work with the girls,” the old woman said
merrily. “Now then, girls, up with you!” she cried.
Maryánka and Ústenka under the cart were whispering and could hardly
restrain their laughter.
Since it had become known that Olénin had given a horse worth fifty
rubles to Lukáshka, his hosts had become more amiable and the cornet in
particular saw with pleasure his daughter’s growing intimacy with Olénin.
“But I don’t know how to do the work,” replied Olénin, trying not to look
through the green branches under the wagon where he had now noticed
Maryánka’s blue smock and red kerchief.
“Come, I’ll give you some peaches,” said the old woman.
“It’s only according to the ancient Cossack hospitality. It’s her old
woman’s silliness,” said the cornet, explaining and apparently correcting his
wife’s words. “In Russia, I expect, it’s not so much peaches as pineapple
jam and preserves you have been accustomed to eat at your pleasure.”

“So you say hares are to be found in the disused vineyard?” asked
Olénin. “I will go there,” and throwing a hasty glance through the green
branches he raised his cap and disappeared between the regular rows of
green vines.
The sun had already sunk behind the fence of the vineyards, and its
broken rays glittered through the translucent leaves when Olénin returned to
his host’s vineyard. The wind was falling and a cool freshness was
beginning to spread around. By some instinct Olénin recognized from afar
Maryánka’s blue smock among the rows of vine, and, picking grapes on his
way, he approached her. His highly excited dog also now and then seized a
low-hanging cluster of grapes in his slobbering mouth. Maryánka, her face
flushed, her sleeves rolled up, and her kerchief down below her chin, was
rapidly cutting the heavy clusters and laying them in a basket. Without
letting go of the vine she had hold of, she stopped to smile pleasantly at him
and resumed her work. Olénin drew near and threw his gun behind his back
to have his hands free. “Where are your people? May God aid you! Are you
alone?” he meant to say but did not say, and only raised his cap in silence.
He was ill at ease alone with Maryánka, but as if purposely to torment
himself he went up to her.
“You’ll be shooting the women with your gun like that,” said Maryánka.
“No, I shan’t shoot them.”
They were both silent.
Then after a pause she said: “You should help me.”
He took out his knife and began silently to cut off the clusters. He
reached from under the leaves low down a thick bunch weighing about
three pounds, the grapes of which grew so close that they flattened each
other for want of space. He showed it to Maryánka.
“Must they all be cut? Isn’t this one too green?”
“Give it here.”
Their hands touched. Olénin took her hand, and she looked at him
smiling.
“Are you going to be married soon?” he asked.
She did not answer, but turned away with a stern look.
“Do you love Lukáshka?”

“What’s that to you?”
“I envy him!”
“Very likely!”
“No really. You are so beautiful!”
And he suddenly felt terribly ashamed of having said it, so commonplace
did the words seem to him. He flushed, lost control of himself, and seized
both her hands.
“Whatever I am, I’m not for you. Why do you make fun of me?” replied
Maryánka, but her look showed how certainly she knew he was not making
fun.
“Making fun? If you only knew how I—”
The words sounded still more commonplace, they accorded still less with
what he felt, but yet he continued, “I don’t know what I would not do for
you—”
“Leave me alone, you pitch!”
But her face, her shining eyes, her swelling bosom, her shapely legs, said
something quite different. It seemed to him that she understood how petty
were all things he had said, but that she was superior to such considerations.
It seemed to him she had long known all he wished and was not able to tell
her, but wanted to hear how he would say it. “And how can she help
knowing,” he thought, “since I only want to tell her all that she herself is?
But she does not wish to understand, does not wish to reply.”
“Hullo!” suddenly came Ústenka’s high voice from behind the vine at no
great distance, followed by her shrill laugh. “Come and help me, Dmítri
Andréich. I am all alone,” she cried, thrusting her round, naïve little face
through the vines.
Olénin did not answer nor move from his place.
Maryánka went on cutting and continually looked up at Olénin. He was
about to say something, but stopped, shrugged his shoulders and, having
jerked up his gun, walked out of the vineyard with rapid strides.

Chapter XXXII

He stopped once or twice, listening to the ringing laughter of Maryánka
and Ústenka who, having come together, were shouting something. Olénin
spent the whole evening hunting in the forest and returned home at dusk
without having killed anything. When crossing the road he noticed her open
the door of the outhouse, and her blue smock showed through it. He called
to Vanyúsha very loud so as to let her know that he was back, and then sat
down in the porch in his usual place. His hosts now returned from the
vineyard; they came out of the outhouse and into their hut, but did not ask
him in. Maryánka went twice out of the gate. Once in the twilight it seemed
to him that she was looking at him. He eagerly followed her every
movement, but could not make up his mind to approach her. When she
disappeared into the hut he left the porch and began pacing up and down the
yard, but Maryánka did not come out again. Olénin spent the whole
sleepless night out in the yard listening to every sound in his hosts’ hut. He
heard them talking early in the evening, heard them having their supper and
pulling out their cushions, and going to bed; he heard Maryánka laughing at
something, and then heard everything growing gradually quiet.
The cornet and his wife talked a while in whispers, and someone was
breathing. Olénin re-entered his hut. Vanyúsha lay asleep in his clothes.
Olénin envied him, and again went out to pace the yard, always expecting
something, but no one came, no one moved, and he only heard the regular
breathing of three people. He knew Maryánka’s breathing and listened to it
and to the beating of his own heart. In the village everything was quiet. The
waning moon rose late, and the deep-breathing cattle in the yard became
more visible as they lay down and slowly rose. Olénin angrily asked
himself, “What is it I want?” but could not tear himself away from the
enchantment of the night. Suddenly he thought he distinctly heard the floor
creak and the sound of footsteps in his hosts’ hut. He rushed to the door, but
all was silent again except for the sound of regular breathing, and in the

yard the buffalo-cow, after a deep sigh, again moved, rose on her foreknees
and then on her feet, swished her tail, and something splashed steadily on
the dry clay ground; then she lay down again in the dim moonlight. He
asked himself: “What am I to do?” and definitely decided to go to bed, but
again he heard a sound, and in his imagination there arose the image of
Maryánka coming out into this moonlit misty night, and again he rushed to
her window and again heard the sound of footsteps. Not till just before
dawn did he go up to her window and push at the shutter and then run to the
door, and this time he really heard Maryánka’s deep breathing and her
footsteps. He took hold of the latch and knocked. The floor hardly creaked
under the bare cautious footsteps which approached the door. The latch
clicked, the door creaked, and he noticed a faint smell of marjoram and
pumpkin, and Maryánka’s whole figure appeared in the doorway. He saw
her only for an instant in the moonlight. She slammed the door and,
muttering something, ran lightly back again. Olénin began rapping softly
but nothing responded. He ran to the window and listened. Suddenly he was
startled by a shrill, squeaky man’s voice.
“Fine!” exclaimed a rather small young Cossack in a white cap, coming
across the yard close to Olénin. “I saw ... fine!”
Olénin recognized Nazárka, and was silent, not knowing what to do or
say.
“Fine! I’ll go and tell them at the office, and I’ll tell her father! That’s a
fine cornet’s daughter! One’s not enough for her.”
“What do you want of me, what are you after?” uttered Olénin.
“Nothing; only I’ll tell them at the office.”
Nazárka spoke very loud, and evidently did so intentionally, adding:
“Just see what a clever cadet!”
Olénin trembled and grew pale.
“Come here, here!” He seized the Cossack firmly by the arm and drew
him towards his hut.
“Nothing happened, she did not let me in, and I too mean no harm. She is
an honest girl—”
“Eh, discuss—”
“Yes, but all the same I’ll give you something now. Wait a bit!”

Nazárka said nothing. Olénin ran into his hut and brought out ten rubles,
which he gave to the Cossack.
“Nothing happened, but still I was to blame, so I give this!—Only for
God’s sake don’t let anyone know, for nothing happened...”
“I wish you joy,” said Nazárka laughing, and went away.
Nazárka had come to the village that night at Lukáshka’s bidding to find
a place to hide a stolen horse, and now, passing by on his way home, had
heard the sound of footsteps. When he returned next morning to his
company he bragged to his chum, and told him how cleverly he had got ten
rubles. Next morning Olénin met his hosts and they knew nothing about the
events of the night. He did not speak to Maryánka, and she only laughed a
little when she looked at him. Next night he also passed without sleep,
vainly wandering about the yard. The day after he purposely spent shooting,
and in the evening he went to see Belétski to escape from his own thoughts.
He was afraid of himself, and promised himself not to go to his hosts’ hut
any more.
That night he was roused by the sergeant-major. His company was
ordered to start at once on a raid. Olénin was glad this had happened, and
thought he would not again return to the village.
The raid lasted four days. The commander, who was a relative of
Olénin’s, wished to see him and offered to let him remain with the staff, but
this Olénin declined. He found that he could not live away from the village,
and asked to be allowed to return to it. For having taken part in the raid he
received a soldier’s cross, which he had formerly greatly desired. Now he
was quite indifferent about it, and even more indifferent about his
promotion, the order for which had still not arrived. Accompanied by
Vanyúsha he rode back to the cordon without any accident several hours in
advance of the rest of the company. He spent the whole evening in his porch
watching Maryánka, and he again walked about the yard, without aim or
thought, all night.

Chapter XXXIII

It was late when he awoke the next day. His hosts were no longer in. He
did not go shooting, but now took up a book, and now went out into the
porch, and now again re-entered the hut and lay down on the bed. Vanyúsha
thought he was ill.
Towards evening Olénin got up, resolutely began writing, and wrote on
till late at night. He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no
one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not
necessary that anyone but himself should understand it.
This is what he wrote:
“I receive letters of condolence from Russia. They are afraid that I shall
perish, buried in these wilds. They say about me: ‘He will become coarse;
he will be behind the times in everything; he will take to drink, and who
knows but that he may marry a Cossack girl.’ It was not for nothing, they
say, that Ermólov declared: ‘Anyone serving in the Caucasus for ten years
either becomes a confirmed drunkard or marries a loose woman.’ How
terrible! Indeed it won’t do for me to ruin myself when I might have the
great happiness of even becoming the Countess B——’s husband, or a
Court chamberlain, or a Maréchal de noblesse of my district. Oh, how
repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You do not know what happiness
is and what life is! One must taste life once in all its natural beauty, must
see and understand what I see every day before me—those eternally
unapproachable snowy peaks, and a majestic woman in that primitive
beauty in which the first woman must have come from her creator’s hands
—and then it becomes clear who is ruining himself and who is living truly
or falsely—you or I. If you only knew how despicable and pitiable you, in
your delusions, seem to me! When I picture to myself—in place of my hut,
my forests, and my love—those drawing-rooms, those women with their
pomatum-greased hair eked out with false curls, those unnaturally
grimacing lips, those hidden, feeble, distorted limbs, and that chatter of

obligatory drawing-room conversation which has no right to the name—I
feel unendurably revolted. I then see before me those obtuse faces, those
rich eligible girls whose looks seem to say: ‘It’s all right, you may come
near though I am rich and eligible’—and that arranging and rearranging of
seats, that shameless match-making and that eternal tittle-tattle and
pretence; those rules—with whom to shake hands, to whom only to nod,
with whom to converse (and all this done deliberately with a conviction of
its inevitability), that continual ennui in the blood passing on from
generation to generation. Try to understand or believe just this one thing:
you need only see and comprehend what truth and beauty are, and all that
you now say and think and all your wishes for me and for yourselves will
fly to atoms!
“Happiness is being with nature, seeing her, and conversing with her. ‘He
may even (God forbid) marry a common Cossack girl, and be quite lost
socially’ I can imagine them saying of me with sincere pity! Yet the one
thing I desire is to be quite ‘lost’ in your sense of the word. I wish to marry
a Cossack girl, and dare not because it would be a height of happiness of
which I am unworthy.
“Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryánka.
The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh in me. I did
not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted in her beauty just
as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and the sky, nor could I help
delighting in her, for she is as beautiful as they. I found that the sight of her
beauty had become a necessity of my life and I began asking myself
whether I did not love her. But I could find nothing within myself at all like
love as I had imagined it to be. Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness
and desire for marriage, nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I
have experienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that she
was near—and if I was not happy, I was at peace.
“After an evening gathering at which I met her and touched her, I felt that
between that woman and myself there existed an indissoluble though
unacknowledged bond against which I could not struggle, yet I did struggle.
I asked myself: ‘Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand
the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible to love a woman simply
for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?’ But I was already in love
with her, though I did not yet trust to my feelings.

“After that evening when I first spoke to her our relations changed.
Before that she had been to me an extraneous but majestic object of external
nature: but since then she has become a human being. I began to meet her,
to talk to her, and sometimes to go to work for her father and to spend
whole evenings with them, and in this intimate intercourse she remained
still in my eyes just as pure, inaccessible, and majestic. She always
responded with equal calm, pride, and cheerful equanimity. Sometimes she
was friendly, but generally her every look, every word, and every
movement expressed equanimity—not contemptuous, but crushing and
bewitching. Every day with a feigned smile on my lips I tried to play a part,
and with torments of passion and desire in my heart I spoke banteringly to
her. She saw that I was dissembling, but looked straight at me cheerfully
and simply. This position became unbearable. I wished not to deceive her
but to tell her all I thought and felt. I was extremely agitated. We were in
the vineyard when I began to tell her of my love, in words I am now
ashamed to remember. I am ashamed because I ought not to have dared to
speak so to her because she stood far above such words and above the
feeling they were meant to express. I said no more, but from that day my
position has been intolerable. I did not wish to demean myself by
continuing our former flippant relations, and at the same time I felt that I
had not yet reached the level of straight and simple relations with her. I
asked myself despairingly, ‘What am I to do?’ In foolish dreams I imagined
her now as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with
disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be
murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmítri Andréich Olénin,
like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our officers, would be
still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukáshka, and steal horses, get
drunk on chikhir, sing rollicking songs, kill people, and when drunk climb
in at her window for the night without a thought of who and what I am, it
would be different: then we might understand one another and I might be
happy.
“I tried to throw myself into that kind of life but was still more conscious
of my own weakness and artificiality. I cannot forget myself and my
complex, distorted past, and my future appears to me still more hopeless.
Every day I have before me the distant snowy mountains and this majestic,
happy woman. But not for me is the only happiness possible in the world; I
cannot have this woman! What is most terrible and yet sweetest in my

condition is that I feel that I understand her but that she will never
understand me; not because she is inferior: on the contrary she ought not to
understand me. She is happy, she is like nature: consistent, calm, and self-
contained; and I, a weak distorted being, want her to understand my
deformity and my torments! I have not slept at night, but have aimlessly
passed under her windows not rendering account to myself of what was
happening to me. On the 18th our company started on a raid, and I spent
three days away from the village. I was sad and apathetic, the usual songs,
cards, drinking-bouts, and talk of rewards in the regiment, were more
repulsive to me than usual. Yesterday I returned home and saw her, my hut.
Daddy Eróshka, and the snowy mountains, from my porch, and was seized
by such a strong, new feeling of joy that I understood it all. I love this
woman; I feel real love for the first and only time in my life. I know what
has befallen me. I do not fear to be degraded by this feeling, I am not
ashamed of my love, I am proud of it. It is not my fault that I love. It has
come about against my will. I tried to escape from my love by self-
renunciation, and tried to devise a joy in the Cossack Lukáshka’s and
Maryánka’s love, but thereby only stirred up my own love and jealousy.
This is not the ideal, the so-called exalted love which I have known before;
not that sort of attachment in which you admire your own love and feel that
the source of your emotion is within yourself and do everything yourself. I
have felt that too. It is still less a desire for enjoyment: it is something
different. Perhaps in her I love nature: the personification of all that is
beautiful in nature; but yet I am not acting by my own will, but some
elemental force loves through me; the whole of God’s world, all nature,
presses this love into my soul and says, ‘Love her.’ I love her not with my
mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself
to be an integral part of all God’s joyous world. I wrote before about the
new convictions to which my solitary life had brought me, but no one
knows with what labour they shaped themselves within me and with what
joy I realized them and saw a new way of life opening out before me;
nothing was dearer to me than those convictions... Well! ... love has come
and neither they nor any regrets for them remain! It is even difficult for me
to believe that I could prize such a one-sided, cold, and abstract state of
mind. Beauty came and scattered to the winds all that laborious inward toil,
and no regret remains for what has vanished! Self-renunciation is all
nonsense and absurdity! That is pride, a refuge from well-merited

unhappiness, and salvation from the envy of others’ happiness: ‘Live for
others, and do good!’—Why? when in my soul there is only love for myself
and the desire to love her and to live her life with her? Not for others, not
for Lukáshka, I now desire happiness. I do not now love those others.
Formerly I should have told myself that this is wrong. I should have
tormented myself with the questions: What will become of her, of me, and
of Lukáshka? Now I don’t care. I do not live my own life, there is
something stronger than me which directs me. I suffer; but formerly I was
dead and only now do I live. Today I will go to their house and tell her
everything.”

Chapter XXXIV

Late that evening, after writing this letter, Olénin went to his hosts’ hut.
The old woman was sitting on a bench behind the oven unwinding cocoons.
Maryánka with her head uncovered sat sewing by the light of a candle. On
seeing Olénin she jumped up, took her kerchief and stepped to the oven.
“Maryánka dear,” said her mother, “won’t you sit here with me a bit?”
“No, I’m bareheaded,” she replied, and sprang up on the oven.
Olénin could only see a knee, and one of her shapely legs hanging down
from the oven. He treated the old woman to tea. She treated her guest to
clotted cream which she sent Maryánka to fetch. But having put a plateful
on the table Maryánka again sprang on the oven from whence Olénin felt
her eyes upon him. They talked about household matters. Granny Ulítka
became animated and went into raptures of hospitality. She brought Olénin
preserved grapes and a grape tart and some of her best wine, and pressed
him to eat and drink with the rough yet proud hospitality of country folk,
only found among those who produce their bread by the labour of their own
hands.
The old woman, who had at first struck Olénin so much by her rudeness,
now often touched him by her simple tenderness towards her daughter.
“Yes, we need not offend the Lord by grumbling! We have enough of
everything, thank God. We have pressed sufficient chikhir and have
preserved and shall sell three or four barrels of grapes and have enough left
to drink. Don’t be in a hurry to leave us. We will make merry together at the
wedding.”
“And when is the wedding to be?” asked Olénin, feeling his blood
suddenly rush to his face while his heart beat irregularly and painfully.
He heard a movement on the oven and the sound of seeds being cracked.
“Well, you know, it ought to be next week. We are quite ready,” replied
the old woman, as simply and quietly as though Olénin did not exist. “I

have prepared and have procured everything for Maryánka. We will give
her away properly. Only there’s one thing not quite right. Our Lukáshka has
been running rather wild. He has been too much on the spree! He’s up to
tricks! The other day a Cossack came here from his company and said he
had been to Nogáy.”
“He must mind he does not get caught,” said Olénin.
“Yes, that’s what I tell him. ‘Mind, Lukáshka, don’t you get into
mischief. Well, of course, a young fellow naturally wants to cut a dash. But
there’s a time for everything. Well, you’ve captured or stolen something and
killed an abrek! Well, you’re a fine fellow! But now you should live quietly
for a bit, or else there’ll be trouble.’”
“Yes, I saw him a time or two in the division, he was always merry-
making. He has sold another horse,” said Olénin, and glanced towards the
oven. A pair of large, dark, and hostile eyes glittered as they gazed severely
at him.
He became ashamed of what he had said. “What of it? He does no one
any harm,” suddenly remarked Maryánka. “He makes merry with his own
money,” and lowering her legs she jumped down from the oven and went
out banging the door.
Olénin followed her with his eyes as long as she was in the hut, and then
looked at the door and waited, understanding nothing of what Granny
Ulítka was telling him.
A few minutes later some visitors arrived: an old man, Granny Ulítka’s
brother, with Daddy Eróshka, and following them came Maryánka and
Ústenka.
“Good evening,” squeaked Ústenka. “Still on holiday?” she added,
turning to Olénin.
“Yes, still on holiday,” he replied, and felt, he did not know why,
ashamed and ill at ease.
He wished to go away but could not. It also seemed to him impossible to
remain silent. The old man helped him by asking for a drink, and they had a
drink. Olénin drank with Eróshka, with the other Cossack, and again with
Eróshka, and the more he drank the heavier was his heart. But the two old
men grew merry. The girls climbed onto the oven, where they sat
whispering and looking at the men, who drank till it was late. Olénin did

not talk, but drank more than the others. The Cossacks were shouting. The
old woman would not let them have any more chikhir, and at last turned
them out. The girls laughed at Daddy Eróshka, and it was past ten when
they all went out into the porch. The old men invited themselves to finish
their merry-making at Olénin’s. Ústenka ran off home and Eróshka led the
old Cossack to Vanyúsha. The old woman went out to tidy up the shed.
Maryánka remained alone in the hut. Olénin felt fresh and joyous, as if he
had only just woke up. He noticed everything, and having let the old men
pass ahead he turned back to the hut where Maryánka was preparing for
bed. He went up to her and wished to say something, but his voice broke.
She moved away from him, sat down cross-legged on her bed in the corner,
and looked at him silently with wild and frightened eyes. She was evidently
afraid of him. Olénin felt this. He felt sorry and ashamed of himself, and at
the same time proud and pleased that he aroused even that feeling in her.
“Maryánka!” he said. “Will you never take pity on me? I can’t tell you
how I love you.”
She moved still farther away.
“Just hear how the wine is speaking! ... You’ll get nothing from me!”
“No, it is not the wine. Don’t marry Lukáshka. I will marry you.” (“What
am I saying,” he thought as he uttered these words. “Shall I be able to say
the same tomorrow?” “Yes, I shall, I am sure I shall, and I will repeat them
now,” replied an inner voice.)
“Will you marry me?”
She looked at him seriously and her fear seemed to have passed.
“Maryánka, I shall go out of my mind! I am not myself. I will do
whatever you command,” and madly tender words came from his lips of
their own accord.
“Now then, what are you drivelling about?” she interrupted, suddenly
seizing the arm he was stretching towards her. She did not push his arm
away but pressed it firmly with her strong hard fingers. “Do gentlemen
marry Cossack girls? Go away!”
“But will you? Everything...”
“And what shall we do with Lukáshka?” said she, laughing.
He snatched away the arm she was holding and firmly embraced her
young body, but she sprang away like a fawn and ran barefoot into the

porch: Olénin came to his senses and was terrified at himself. He again felt
himself inexpressibly vile compared to her, yet not repenting for an instant
of what he had said he went home, and without even glancing at the old
men who were drinking in his room he lay down and fell asleep more
soundly than he had done for a long time.

Chapter XXXV

The next day was a holiday. In the evening all the villagers, their holiday
clothes shining in the sunset, were out in the street. That season more wine
than usual had been produced, and the people were now free from their
labours. In a month the Cossacks were to start on a campaign and in many
families preparations were being made for weddings.
Most of the people were standing in the square in front of the Cossack
Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which cakes and
pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and cotton prints. On the
earth-embankment of the office-building sat or stood the old men in sober
grey, or black coats without gold trimmings or any kind of ornament. They
conversed among themselves quietly in measured tones, about the harvest,
about the young folk, about village affairs, and about old times, looking
with dignified equanimity at the younger generation. Passing by them, the
women and girls stopped and bent their heads. The young Cossacks
respectfully slackened their pace and raised their caps, holding them for a
while over their heads. The old men then stopped speaking. Some of them
watched the passers-by severely, others kindly, and in their turn slowly took
off their caps and put them on again.
The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their khorovóds, but having
gathered in groups, in their bright coloured beshmets with white kerchiefs
on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat either on the ground or on
the earth-banks about the huts sheltered from the oblique rays of the sun,
and laughed and chattered in their ringing voices. Little boys and girls
playing in the square sent their balls high up into the clear sky, and ran
about squealing and shouting. The half-grown girls had started dancing
their khorovóds, and were timidly singing in their thin shrill voices. Clerks,
lads not in the service, or home for the holiday, bright-faced and wearing
smart white or new red Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in
arm in twos or threes from one group of women or girls to another, and

stopped to joke and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper,
in a gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door through
which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were visible and, conscious
of his own importance and with the pride of an Oriental tradesman, waited
for customers. Two red-bearded, barefooted Chéchens, who had come from
beyond the Térek to see the fête, sat on their heels outside the house of a
friend, negligently smoking their little pipes and occasionally spitting,
watching the villagers and exchanging remarks with one another in their
rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a workaday-looking soldier in an old
overcoat passed across the square among the bright-clad girls. Here and
there the songs of tipsy Cossacks who were merry-making could already be
heard. All the huts were closed; the porches had been scrubbed clean the
day before. Even the old women were out in the street, which was
everywhere sprinkled with pumpkin and melon seed-shells. The air was
warm and still, the sky deep and clear. Beyond the roofs the dead-white
mountain range, which seemed very near, was turning rosy in the glow of
the evening sun. Now and then from the other side of the river came the
distant roar of a cannon, but above the village, mingling with one another,
floated all sorts of merry holiday sounds.
Olénin had been pacing the yard all that morning hoping to see
Maryánka. But she, having put on holiday clothes, went to Mass at the
chapel and afterwards sat with the other girls on an earth-embankment
cracking seeds; sometimes again, together with her companions, she ran
home, and each time gave the lodger a bright and kindly look. Olénin felt
afraid to address her playfully or in the presence of others. He wished to
finish telling her what he had begun to say the night before, and to get her
to give him a definite answer. He waited for another moment like that of
yesterday evening, but the moment did not come, and he felt that he could
not remain any longer in this uncertainty. She went out into the street again,
and after waiting awhile he too went out and without knowing where he
was going he followed her. He passed by the corner where she was sitting in
her shining blue satin beshmet, and with an aching heart he heard behind
him the girls laughing.
Belétski’s hut looked out onto the square. As Olénin was passing it he
heard Belétski’s voice calling to him, “Come in,” and in he went.

After a short talk they both sat down by the window and were soon
joined by Eróshka, who entered dressed in a new beshmet and sat down on
the floor beside them.
“There, that’s the aristocratic party,” said Belétski, pointing with his
cigarette to a brightly coloured group at the corner. “Mine is there too. Do
you see her? in red. That’s a new beshmet. Why don’t you start the
khorovód?” he shouted, leaning out of the window. “Wait a bit, and then
when it grows dark let us go too. Then we will invite them to Ústenka’s. We
must arrange a ball for them!”
“And I will come to Ústenka’s,” said Olénin in a decided tone. “Will
Maryánka be there?”
“Yes, she’ll be there. Do come!” said Belétski, without the least surprise.
“But isn’t it a pretty picture?” he added, pointing to the motley crowds.
“Yes, very!” Olénin assented, trying to appear indifferent.
“Holidays of this kind,” he added, “always make me wonder why all
these people should suddenly be contented and jolly. Today for instance,
just because it happens to be the fifteenth of the month, everything is
festive. Eyes and faces and voices and movements and garments, and the air
and the sun, are all in a holiday mood. And we no longer have any
holidays!”
“Yes,” said Belétski, who did not like such reflections.
“And why are you not drinking, old fellow?” he said, turning to Eróshka.
Eróshka winked at Olénin, pointing to Belétski. “Eh, he’s a proud one
that kunak of yours,” he said.
Belétski raised his glass.
“Allah birdy!” he said, emptying it. (Allah birdy, “God has given!”—the
usual greeting of Caucasians when drinking together.)
“Sau bul” (“Your health”), answered Eróshka smiling, and emptied his
glass.
“Speaking of holidays!” he said, turning to Olénin as he rose and looked
out of the window, “What sort of holiday is that! You should have seen
them make merry in the old days! The women used to come out in their
gold-trimmed sarafáns. Two rows of gold coins hanging round their necks
and gold-cloth diadems on their heads, and when they passed they made a

noise, ‘flu, flu,’ with their dresses. Every woman looked like a princess.
Sometimes they’d come out, a whole herd of them, and begin singing songs
so that the air seemed to rumble, and they went on making merry all night.
And the Cossacks would roll out a barrel into the yards and sit down and
drink till break of day, or they would go hand-in-hand sweeping the village.
Whoever they met they seized and took along with them, and went from
house to house. Sometimes they used to make merry for three days on end.
Father used to come home—I still remember it—quite red and swollen,
without a cap, having lost everything: he’d come and lie down. Mother
knew what to do: she would bring him some fresh caviar and a little chikhir
to sober him up, and would herself run about in the village looking for his
cap. Then he’d sleep for two days! That’s the sort of fellows they were
then! But now what are they?”
“Well, and the girls in the sarafáns, did they make merry all by
themselves?” asked Belétski.
“Yes, they did! Sometimes Cossacks would come on foot or on horse and
say, ‘Let’s break up the khorovóds,’ and they’d go, but the girls would take
up cudgels. Carnival week, some young fellow would come galloping up,
and they’d cudgel his horse and cudgel him too. But he’d break through,
seize the one he loved, and carry her off. And his sweetheart would love
him to his heart’s content! Yes, the girls in those days, they were regular
queens!”

Chapter XXXVI

Just then two men rode out of the side street into the square. One of them
was Nazárka. The other, Lukáshka, sat slightly sideways on his well-fed
bay Kabardá horse which stepped lightly over the hard road jerking its
beautiful head with its fine glossy mane. The well-adjusted gun in its cover,
the pistol at his back, and the cloak rolled up behind his saddle showed that
Lukáshka had not come from a peaceful place or from one near by. The
smart way in which he sat a little sideways on his horse, the careless motion
with which he touched the horse under its belly with his whip, and
especially his half-closed black eyes, glistening as he looked proudly
around him, all expressed the conscious strength and self-confidence of
youth. “Ever seen as fine a lad?” his eyes, looking from side to side, seemed
to say. The elegant horse with its silver ornaments and trappings, the
weapons, and the handsome Cossack himself attracted the attention of
everyone in the square. Nazárka, lean and short, was much less well
dressed. As he rode past the old men, Lukáshka paused and raised his curly
white sheepskin cap above his closely cropped black head.
“Well, have you carried off many Nogáy horses?” asked a lean old man
with a frowning, lowering look.
“Have you counted them, Grandad, that you ask?” replied Lukáshka,
turning away.
“That’s all very well, but you need not take my lad along with you,” the
old man muttered with a still darker frown.
“Just see the old devil, he knows everything,” muttered Lukáshka to
himself, and a worried expression came over his face; but then, noticing a
corner where a number of Cossack girls were standing, he turned his horse
towards them.
“Good evening, girls!” he shouted in his powerful, resonant voice,
suddenly checking his horse. “You’ve grown old without me, you witches!”

and he laughed.
“Good evening, Lukáshka! Good evening, laddie!” the merry voices
answered. “Have you brought much money? Buy some sweets for the
girls!... Have you come for long? True enough, it’s long since we saw
you....”
“Nazárka and I have just flown across to make a night of it,” replied
Lukáshka, raising his whip and riding straight at the girls.
“Why, Maryánka has quite forgotten you,” said Ústenka, nudging
Maryánka with her elbow and breaking into a shrill laugh.
Maryánka moved away from the horse and throwing back her head
calmly looked at the Cossack with her large sparkling eyes.
“True enough, you have not been home for a long time! Why are you
trampling us under your horse?” she remarked dryly, and turned away.
Lukáshka had appeared particularly merry. His face shone with audacity
and joy. Obviously staggered by Maryánka’s cold reply he suddenly knitted
his brow.
“Step up on my stirrup and I’ll carry you away to the mountains.
Mammy!” he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark thoughts he
caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards Maryánka, he said, “I’ll
kiss, oh, how I’ll kiss you! ...”
Maryánka’s eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.
“Oh, bother you! you’ll crush my feet,” she said, and bending her head
looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light blue stockings
with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with narrow silver braid.
Lukáshka turned towards Ústenka, and Maryánka sat down next to a
woman with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little hands
towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down onto her blue
beshmet. Maryánka bent towards the child and glanced at Lukáshka from
the corner of her eyes. Lukáshka just then was getting out from under his
coat, from the pocket of his black beshmet, a bundle of sweetmeats and
seeds.
“There, I give them to all of you,” he said, handing the bundle to Ústenka
and smiling at Maryánka.

A confused expression again appeared on the girl’s face. It was as though
a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her kerchief down below
her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-skinned face of the baby that still
held her by her coin necklace she suddenly began to kiss it greedily. The
baby pressed his little hands against the girl’s high breasts, and opening his
toothless mouth screamed loudly.
“You’re smothering the boy!” said the little one’s mother, taking him
away; and she unfastened her beshmet to give him the breast. “You’d better
have a chat with the young fellow.”
“I’ll only go and put up my horse and then Nazárka and I will come back;
we’ll make merry all night,” said Lukáshka, touching his horse with his
whip and riding away from the girls.
Turning into a side street, he and Nazárka rode up to two huts that stood
side by side.
“Here we are all right, old fellow! Be quick and come soon!” called
Lukáshka to his comrade, dismounting in front of one of the huts; then he
carefully led his horse in at the gate of the wattle fence of his own home.
“How d’you do, Stëpka?” he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly
dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his horse; and he
made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but not to unsaddle it.
The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as she
pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to say that she
loved it and that it was a fine horse.
“How d’you do, Mother? How is it that you have not gone out yet?”
shouted Lukáshka, holding his gun in place as he mounted the steps of the
porch.
His old mother opened the door.
“Dear me! I never expected, never thought, you’d come,” said the old
woman. “Why, Kírka said you wouldn’t be here.”
“Go and bring some chikhir, Mother. Nazárka is coming here and we will
celebrate the feast day.”
“Directly, Lukáshka, directly!” answered the old woman. “Our women
are making merry. I expect our dumb one has gone too.”

She took her keys and hurriedly went to the outhouse. Nazárka, after
putting up his horse and taking the gun off his shoulder, returned to
Lukáshka’s house and went in.

Chapter XXXVII

“Your health!” said Lukáshka, taking from his mother’s hands a cup
filled to the brim with chikhir and carefully raising it to his bowed head.
“A bad business!” said Nazárka. “You heard how Daddy Burlák said,
‘Have you stolen many horses?’ He seems to know!”
“A regular wizard!” Lukáshka replied shortly. “But what of it!” he added,
tossing his head. “They are across the river by now. Go and find them!”
“Still it’s a bad lookout.”
“What’s a bad lookout? Go and take some chikhir to him tomorrow and
nothing will come of it. Now let’s make merry. Drink!” shouted Lukáshka,
just in the tone in which old Eróshka uttered the word. “We’ll go out into
the street and make merry with the girls. You go and get some honey; or no,
I’ll send our dumb wench. We’ll make merry till morning.”
Nazárka smiled.
“Are we stopping here long?” he asked.
“Till we’ve had a bit of fun. Run and get some vodka. Here’s the money.”
Nazárka ran off obediently to get the vodka from Yámka’s.
Daddy Eróshka and Ergushóv, like birds of prey, scenting where the
merry-making was going on, tumbled into the hut one after the other, both
tipsy.
“Bring us another half-pail,” shouted Lukáshka to his mother, by way of
reply to their greeting.
“Now then, tell us where did you steal them, you devil?” shouted
Eróshka. “Fine fellow, I’m fond of you!”
“Fond indeed...” answered Lukáshka laughing, “carrying sweets from
cadets to lasses! Eh, you old...”

“That’s not true, not true! ... Oh, Mark,” and the old man burst out
laughing. “And how that devil begged me. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘and arrange it.’
He offered me a gun! But no. I’d have managed it, but I feel for you. Now
tell us where have you been?” And the old man began speaking in Tartar.
Lukáshka answered him promptly.
Ergushóv, who did not know much Tartar, only occasionally put in a
word in Russian: “What I say is he’s driven away the horses. I know it for a
fact,” he chimed in.
“Giréy and I went together.” (His speaking of Giréy Khan as “Giréy”
was, to the Cossack mind, evidence of his boldness.) “Just beyond the river
he kept bragging that he knew the whole of the steppe and would lead the
way straight, but we rode on and the night was dark, and my Giréy lost his
way and began wandering in a circle without getting anywhere: couldn’t
find the village, and there we were. We must have gone too much to the
right. I believe we wandered about well-nigh till midnight. Then, thank
goodness, we heard dogs howling.”
“Fools!” said Daddy Eróshka. “There now, we too used to lose our way
in the steppe. (Who the devil can follow it?) But I used to ride up a hillock
and start howling like the wolves, like this!” He placed his hands before his
mouth, and howled like a pack of wolves, all on one note. “The dogs would
answer at once ... Well, go on—so you found them?”
“We soon led them away! Nazárka was nearly caught by some Nogáy
women, he was!”
“Caught indeed,” Nazárka, who had just come back, said in an injured
tone.
“We rode off again, and again Giréy lost his way and almost landed us
among the sand-drifts. We thought we were just getting to the Térek but we
were riding away from it all the time!”
“You should have steered by the stars,” said Daddy Eróshka.
“That’s what I say,” interjected Ergushóv.
“Yes, steer when all is black; I tried and tried all about... and at last I put
the bridle on one of the mares and let my own horse go free—thinking he’ll
lead us out, and what do you think! he just gave a snort or two with his nose
to the ground, galloped ahead, and led us straight to our village. Thank

goodness! It was getting quite light. We barely had time to hide them in the
forest. Nagím came across the river and took them away.”
Ergushóv shook his head. “It’s just what I said. Smart. Did you get much
for them?”
“It’s all here,” said Lukáshka, slapping his pocket.
Just then his mother came into the room, and Lukáshka did not finish
what he was saying.
“Drink!” he shouted.
“We too, Gírich and I, rode out late one night...” began Eróshka.
“Oh bother, we’ll never hear the end of you!” said Lukáshka. “I am
going.” And having emptied his cup and tightened the strap of his belt he
went out.

Chapter XXXVIII

It was already dark when Lukáshka went out into the street. The autumn
night was fresh and calm. The full golden moon floated up behind the tall
dark poplars that grew on one side of the square. From the chimneys of the
outhouses smoke rose and spread above the village, mingling with the mist.
Here and there lights shone through the windows, and the air was laden
with the smell of kisyak, grape-pulp, and mist. The sounds of voices,
laughter, songs, and the cracking of seeds mingled just as they had done in
the daytime, but were now more distinct. Clusters of white kerchiefs and
caps gleamed through the darkness near the houses and by the fences.
In the square, before the shop door which was lit up and open, the black
and white figures of Cossack men and maids showed through the darkness,
and one heard from afar their loud songs and laughter and talk. The girls,
hand in hand, went round and round in a circle stepping lightly in the dusty
square. A skinny girl, the plainest of them all, set the tune:
“From beyond the wood, from the forest dark,
From the garden green and the shady park,
There came out one day two young lads so gay.
Young bachelors, hey! brave and smart were they!
And they walked and walked, then stood still, each man,
And they talked and soon to dispute began!
Then a maid came out; as she came along,
Said, ‘To one of you I shall soon belong!’
’Twas the fair-faced lad got the maiden fair,
Yes, the fair-faced lad with the golden hair!
Her right hand so white in his own took he,
And he led her round for his mates to see!
And said, ‘Have you ever in all your life,
Met a lass as fair as my sweet little wife?’”

The old women stood round listening to the songs. The little boys and
girls ran about chasing one another in the dark. The men stood by, catching
at the girls as the latter moved round, and sometimes breaking the ring and

entering it. On the dark side of the doorway stood Belétski and Olénin, in
their Circassian coats and sheepskin caps, and talked together in a style of
speech unlike that of the Cossacks, in low but distinct tones, conscious that
they were attracting attention.
Next to one another in the khorovód circle moved plump little Ústenka in
her red beshmet and the stately Maryánka in her new smock and beshmet.
Olénin and Belétski were discussing how to snatch Ústenka and Maryánka
out of the ring. Belétski thought that Olénin wished only to amuse himself,
but Olénin was expecting his fate to be decided. He wanted at any cost to
see Maryánka alone that very day and to tell her everything, and ask her
whether she could and would be his wife. Although that question had long
been answered in the negative in his own mind, he hoped he would be able
to tell her all he felt, and that she would understand him.
“Why did you not tell me sooner?” said Belétski. “I would have got
Ústenka to arrange it for you. You are such a queer fellow! ...”
“What’s to be done! ... Some day, very soon, I’ll tell you all about it.
Only now, for Heaven’s sake, arrange so that she should come to
Ústenka’s.”
“All right, that’s easily done! Well, Maryánka, will you belong to the
‘fair-faced lad’, and not to Lukáshka?” said Belétski, speaking to Maryánka
first for propriety’s sake, but having received no reply he went up to
Ústenka and begged her to bring Maryánka home with her. He had hardly
time to finish what he was saying before the leader began another song and
the girls started pulling each other round in the ring by the hand.
They sang:
Past the garden, by the garden,
A young man came strolling down,
Up the street and through the town.
And the first time as he passed
He did wave his strong right hand.
As the second time he passed
Waved his hat with silken band.
But the third time as he went
He stood still: before her bent.

How is it that thou, my dear,
My reproaches dost not fear?
In the park don’t come to walk
That we there might have a talk?

Come now, answer me, my dear,
Dost thou hold me in contempt?
Later on, thou knowest, dear,
Thou’lt get sober and repent.
Soon to woo thee I will come,
And when we shall married be
Thou wilt weep because of me!

Though I knew what to reply,
Yet I dared not him deny,
No, I dared not him deny!
So into the park went I,
In the park my lad to meet,
There my dear one I did greet.

Maiden dear, I bow to thee!
Take this handkerchief from me.
In thy white hand take it, see!
Say I am beloved by thee.
I don’t know at all, I fear,
What I am to give thee, dear!
To my dear I think I will
Of a shawl a present make—
And five kisses for it take.

Lukáshka and Nazárka broke into the ring and started walking about
among the girls. Lukáshka joined in the singing, taking seconds in his clear
voice as he walked in the middle of the ring swinging his arms. “Well, come
in, one of you!” he said. The other girls pushed Maryánka, but she would
not enter the ring. The sound of shrill laughter, slaps, kisses, and whispers
mingled with the singing.
As he went past Olénin, Lukáshka gave a friendly nod.
“Dmítri Andréich! Have you too come to have a look?” he said.
“Yes,” answered Olénin dryly.
Belétski stooped and whispered something into Ústenka’s ear. She had
not time to reply till she came round again, when she said:
“All right, we’ll come.”
“And Maryánka too?”
Olénin stooped towards Maryánka. “You’ll come? Please do, if only for a
minute. I must speak to you.”
“If the other girls come, I will.”

“Will you answer my question?” said he, bending towards her. “You are
in good spirits today.”
She had already moved past him. He went after her.
“Will you answer?”
“Answer what?”
“The question I asked you the other day,” said Olénin, stooping to her
ear. “Will you marry me?”
Maryánka thought for a moment.
“I’ll tell you,” said she, “I’ll tell you tonight.”
And through the darkness her eyes gleamed brightly and kindly at the
young man.
He still followed her. He enjoyed stooping closer to her. But Lukáshka,
without ceasing to sing, suddenly seized her firmly by the hand and pulled
her from her place in the ring of girls into the middle. Olénin had only time
to say, “Come to Ústenka’s,” and stepped back to his companion.
The song came to an end. Lukáshka wiped his lips, Maryánka did the
same, and they kissed. “No, no, kisses five!” said Lukáshka. Chatter,
laughter, and running about, succeeded to the rhythmic movements and
sound. Lukáshka, who seemed to have drunk a great deal, began to
distribute sweetmeats to the girls.
“I offer them to everyone!” he said with proud, comically pathetic self-
admiration. “But anyone who goes after soldiers goes out of the ring!” he
suddenly added, with an angry glance at Olénin.
The girls grabbed his sweetmeats from him, and, laughing, struggled for
them among themselves. Belétski and Olénin stepped aside.
Lukáshka, as if ashamed of his generosity, took off his cap and wiping
his forehead with his sleeve came up to Maryánka and Ústenka.
“Answer me, my dear, dost thou hold me in contempt?” he said in the
words of the song they had just been singing, and turning to Maryánka he
angrily repeated the words: “Dost thou hold me in contempt? When we
shall married be thou wilt weep because of me!” he added, embracing
Ústenka and Maryánka both together.
Ústenka tore herself away, and swinging her arm gave him such a blow
on the back that she hurt her hand.

“Well, are you going to have another turn?” he asked.
“The other girls may if they like,” answered Ústenka, “but I am going
home and Maryánka was coming to our house too.”
With his arm still round her, Lukáshka led Maryánka away from the
crowd to the darker corner of a house.
“Don’t go, Maryánka,” he said, “let’s have some fun for the last time. Go
home and I will come to you!”
“What am I to do at home? Holidays are meant for merrymaking. I am
going to Ústenka’s,” replied Maryánka.
“I’ll marry you all the same, you know!”
“All right,” said Maryánka, “we shall see when the time comes.”
“So you are going,” said Lukáshka sternly, and, pressing her close, he
kissed her on the cheek.
“There, leave off! Don’t bother,” and Maryánka, wrenching herself from
his arms, moved away.
“Ah my girl, it will turn out badly,” said Lukáshka reproachfully and
stood still, shaking his head. “Thou wilt weep because of me...” and turning
away from her he shouted to the other girls:
“Now then! Play away!”
What he had said seemed to have frightened and vexed Maryánka. She
stopped, “What will turn out badly?”
“Why, that!”
“That what?”
“Why, that you keep company with a soldier-lodger and no longer care
for me!”
“I’ll care just as long as I choose. You’re not my father, nor my mother.
What do you want? I’ll care for whom I like!”
“Well, all right...” said Lukáshka, “but remember!” He moved towards
the shop. “Girls!” he shouted, “why have you stopped? Go on dancing.
Nazárka, fetch some more chikhir.”
“Well, will they come?” asked Olénin, addressing Belétski.
“They’ll come directly,” replied Belétski. “Come along, we must prepare
the ball.”

Chapter XXXIX

It was already late in the night when Olénin came out of Belétski’s hut
following Maryánka and Ústenka. He saw in the dark street before him the
gleam of the girl’s white kerchief. The golden moon was descending
towards the steppe. A silvery mist hung over the village. All was still; there
were no lights anywhere and one heard only the receding footsteps of the
young women. Olénin’s heart beat fast. The fresh moist atmosphere cooled
his burning face. He glanced at the sky and turned to look at the hut he had
just come out of: the candle was already out. Then he again peered through
the darkness at the girls’ retreating shadows. The white kerchief disappeared
in the mist. He was afraid to remain alone, he was so happy. He jumped
down from the porch and ran after the girls.
“Bother you, someone may see...” said Ústenka.
“Never mind!”
Olénin ran up to Maryánka and embraced her.
Maryánka did not resist.
“Haven’t you kissed enough yet?” said Ústenka. “Marry and then kiss,
but now you’d better wait.”
“Good-night, Maryánka. Tomorrow I will come to see your father and
tell him. Don’t you say anything.”
“Why should I!” answered Maryánka.
Both the girls started running. Olénin went on by himself thinking over
all that had happened. He had spent the whole evening alone with her in a
corner by the oven. Ústenka had not left the hut for a single moment, but
had romped about with the other girls and with Belétski all the time. Olénin
had talked in whispers to Maryánka.
“Will you marry me?” he had asked.
“You’d deceive me and not have me,” she replied cheerfully and calmly.

“But do you love me? Tell me for God’s sake!”
“Why shouldn’t I love you? You don’t squint,” answered Maryánka,
laughing and with her hard hands squeezing his....
“What whi-ite, whi-i-ite, soft hands you’ve got—so like clotted cream,”
she said.
“I am in earnest. Tell me, will you marry me?”
“Why not, if father gives me to you?”
“Well then remember, I shall go mad if you deceive me. Tomorrow I will
tell your mother and father. I shall come and propose.”
Maryánka suddenly burst out laughing.
“What’s the matter?”
“It seems so funny!”
“It’s true! I will buy a vineyard and a house and will enroll myself as a
Cossack.”
“Mind you don’t go after other women then. I am severe about that.”
Olénin joyfully repeated all these words to himself. The memory of them
now gave him pain and now such joy that it took away his breath. The pain
was because she had remained as calm as usual while talking to him. She
did not seem at all agitated by these new conditions. It was as if she did not
trust him and did not think of the future. It seemed to him that she only
loved him for the present moment, and that in her mind there was no future
with him. He was happy because her words sounded to him true, and she
had consented to be his. “Yes,” thought he to himself, “we shall only
understand one another when she is quite mine. For such love there are no
words. It needs life—the whole of life. Tomorrow everything will be
cleared up. I cannot live like this any longer; tomorrow I will tell everything
to her father, to Belétski, and to the whole village.”
Lukáshka, after two sleepless nights, had drunk so much at the fête that
for the first time in his life his feet would not carry him, and he slept in
Yámka’s house.

Chapter XL

The next day Olénin awoke earlier than usual, and immediately
remembered what lay before him, and he joyfully recalled her kisses, the
pressure of her hard hands, and her words, “What white hands you have!”
He jumped up and wished to go at once to his hosts’ hut to ask for their
consent to his marriage with Maryánka. The sun had not yet risen, but it
seemed that there was an unusual bustle in the street and side-street: people
were moving about on foot and on horseback, and talking. He threw on his
Circassian coat and hastened out into the porch. His hosts were not yet up.
Five Cossacks were riding past and talking loudly together. In front rode
Lukáshka on his broad-backed Kabardá horse.
The Cossacks were all speaking and shouting so that it was impossible to
make out exactly what they were saying.
“Ride to the Upper Post,” shouted one.
“Saddle and catch us up, be quick,” said another.
“It’s nearer through the other gate!”
“What are you talking about?” cried Lukáshka. “We must go through the
middle gates, of course.”
“So we must, it’s nearer that way,” said one of the Cossacks who was
covered with dust and rode a perspiring horse. Lukáshka’s face was red and
swollen after the drinking of the previous night and his cap was pushed to
the back of his head. He was calling out with authority as though he were
an officer.
“What is the matter? Where are you going?” asked Olénin, with difficulty
attracting the Cossacks’ attention.
“We are off to catch abreks. They’re hiding among the sand-drifts. We
are just off, but there are not enough of us yet.”

And the Cossacks continued to shout, more and more of them joining as
they rode down the street. It occurred to Olénin that it would not look well
for him to stay behind; besides he thought he could soon come back. He
dressed, loaded his gun with bullets, jumped onto his horse which Vanyúsha
had saddled more or less well, and overtook the Cossacks at the village
gates. The Cossacks had dismounted, and filling a wooden bowl with
chikhir from a little cask which they had brought with them, they passed the
bowl round to one another and drank to the success of their expedition.
Among them was a smartly dressed young cornet, who happened to be in
the village and who took command of the group of nine Cossacks who had
joined for the expedition. All these Cossacks were privates, and although
the cornet assumed the airs of a commanding officer, they only obeyed
Lukáshka. Of Olénin they took no notice at all, and when they had all
mounted and started, and Olénin rode up to the cornet and began asking
him what was taking place, the cornet, who was usually quite friendly,
treated him with marked condescension. It was with great difficulty that
Olénin managed to find out from him what was happening. Scouts who had
been sent out to search for abreks had come upon several hillsmen some six
miles from the village. These abreks had taken shelter in pits and had fired
at the scouts, declaring they would not surrender. A corporal who had been
scouting with two Cossacks had remained to watch the abreks, and had sent
one Cossack back to get help.
The sun was just rising. Three miles beyond the village the steppe spread
out and nothing was visible except the dry, monotonous, sandy, dismal plain
covered with the footmarks of cattle, and here and there with tufts of
withered grass, with low reeds in the flats, and rare, little-trodden footpaths,
and the camps of the nomad Nogáy tribe just visible far away. The absence
of shade and the austere aspect of the place were striking. The sun always
rises and sets red in the steppe. When it is windy whole hills of sand are
carried by the wind from place to place.
When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence, uninterrupted by any
movement or sound, is peculiarly striking. That morning in the steppe it was
quiet and dull, though the sun had already risen. It all seemed specially soft
and desolate. The air was hushed, the footfalls and the snorting of the
horses were the only sounds to be heard, and even they quickly died away.

The men rode almost silently. A Cossack always carries his weapons so
that they neither jingle nor rattle. Jingling weapons are a terrible disgrace to
a Cossack. Two other Cossacks from the village caught the party up and
exchanged a few words. Lukáshka’s horse either stumbled or caught its foot
in some grass, and became restive—which is a sign of bad luck among the
Cossacks, and at such a time was of special importance. The others
exchanged glances and turned away, trying not to notice what had
happened. Lukaskha pulled at the reins, frowned sternly, set his teeth, and
flourished his whip above his head. His good Kabardá horse, prancing from
one foot to another not knowing with which to start, seemed to wish to fly
upwards on wings. But Lukáshka hit its well-fed sides with his whip once,
then again, and a third time, and the horse, showing its teeth and spreading
out its tail, snorted and reared and stepped on its hind legs a few paces away
from the others.
“Ah, a good steed that!” said the cornet.
That he said steed instead of horse indicated special praise.
“A lion of a horse,” assented one of the others, an old Cossack.
The Cossacks rode forward silently, now at a footpace, then at a trot, and
these changes were the only incidents that interrupted for a moment the
stillness and solemnity of their movements.
Riding through the steppe for about six miles, they passed nothing but
one Nogáy tent, placed on a cart and moving slowly along at a distance of
about a mile from them. A Nogáy family was moving from one part of the
steppe to another. Afterwards they met two tattered Nogáy women with
high cheekbones, who with baskets on their backs were gathering dung left
by the cattle that wandered over the steppe. The cornet, who did not know
their language well, tried to question them, but they did not understand him
and, obviously frightened, looked at one another.
Lukáshka rode up to them both, stopped his horse, and promptly uttered
the usual greeting. The Nogáy women were evidently relieved, and began
speaking to him quite freely as to a brother.
“Ay-ay, kop abrek!” they said plaintively, pointing in the direction in
which the Cossacks were going. Olénin understood that they were saying,
“Many abreks.”

Never having seen an engagement of that kind, and having formed an
idea of them only from Daddy Eróshka’s tales, Olénin wished not to be left
behind by the Cossacks, but wanted to see it all. He admired the Cossacks,
and was on the watch, looking and listening and making his own
observations. Though he had brought his sword and a loaded gun with him,
when he noticed that the Cossacks avoided him he decided to take no part
in the action, as in his opinion his courage had already been sufficiently
proved when he was with his detachment, and also because he was very
happy.
Suddenly a shot was heard in the distance.
The cornet became excited, and began giving orders to the Cossacks as to
how they should divide and from which side they should approach. But the
Cossacks did not appear to pay any attention to these orders, listening only
to what Lukáshka said and looking to him alone. Lukáshka’s face and figure
were expressive of calm solemnity. He put his horse to a trot with which the
others were unable to keep pace, and screwing up his eyes kept looking
ahead.
“There’s a man on horseback,” he said, reining in his horse and keeping
in line with the others.
Olénin looked intently, but could not see anything. The Cossacks soon
distinguished two riders and quietly rode straight towards them.
“Are those the abreks?” asked Olénin.
The Cossacks did not answer his question, which appeared quite
meaningless to them. The abreks would have been fools to venture across
the river on horseback.
“That’s friend Ródka waving to us, I do believe,” said Lukáshka,
pointing to the two mounted men who were now clearly visible. “Look, he’s
coming to us.”
A few minutes later it became plain that the two horsemen were the
Cossack scouts. The corporal rode up to Lukáshka.

Chapter XLI

“Are they far?” was all Lukáshka said.
Just then they heard a sharp shot some thirty paces off. The corporal
smiled slightly.
“Our Gúrka is having shots at them,” he said, nodding in the direction of
the shot.
Having gone a few paces farther they saw Gúrka sitting behind a sand-
hillock and loading his gun. To while away the time he was exchanging
shots with the abreks, who were behind another sand-heap. A bullet came
whistling from their side.
The cornet was pale and grew confused. Lukáshka dismounted from his
horse, threw the reins to one of the other Cossacks, and went up to Gúrka.
Olénin also dismounted and, bending down, followed Lukáshka. They had
hardly reached Gúrka when two bullets whistled above them.
Lukáshka looked around laughing at Olénin and stooped a little.
“Look out or they will kill you, Dmítri Andréich,” he said. “You’d better
go away—you have no business here.” But Olénin wanted absolutely to see
the abreks.
From behind the mound he saw caps and muskets some two hundred
paces off. Suddenly a little cloud of smoke appeared from thence, and again
a bullet whistled past. The abreks were hiding in a marsh at the foot of the
hill. Olénin was much impressed by the place in which they sat. In reality it
was very much like the rest of the steppe, but because the abreks sat there it
seemed to detach itself from all the rest and to have become distinguished.
Indeed it appeared to Olénin that it was the very spot for abreks to occupy.
Lukáshka went back to his horse and Olénin followed him.
“We must get a hay-cart,” said Lukáshka, “or they will be killing some of
us. There behind that mound is a Nogáy cart with a load of hay.”

The cornet listened to him and the corporal agreed. The cart of hay was
fetched, and the Cossacks, hiding behind it, pushed it forward. Olénin rode
up a hillock from whence he could see everything. The hay-cart moved on
and the Cossacks crowded together behind it. The Cossacks advanced, but
the Chéchens, of whom there were nine, sat with their knees in a row and
did not fire.
All was quiet. Suddenly from the Chéchens arose the sound of a
mournful song, something like Daddy Eróshka’s “Ay day, dalalay.” The
Chéchens knew that they could not escape, and to prevent themselves from
being tempted to take to flight they had strapped themselves together, knee
to knee, had got their guns ready, and were singing their death-song.
The Cossacks with their hay-cart drew closer and closer, and Olénin
expected the firing to begin at any moment, but the silence was only broken
by the abreks’ mournful song. Suddenly the song ceased; there was a sharp
report, a bullet struck the front of the cart, and Chéchen curses and yells
broke the silence and shot followed on shot and one bullet after another
struck the cart. The Cossacks did not fire and were now only five paces
distant.
Another moment passed and the Cossacks with a whoop rushed out on
both sides from behind the cart—Lukáshka in front of them. Olénin heard
only a few shots, then shouting and moans. He thought he saw smoke and
blood, and abandoning his horse and quite beside himself he ran towards
the Cossacks. Horror seemed to blind him. He could not make out anything,
but understood that all was over. Lukáshka, pale as death, was holding a
wounded Chéchen by the arms and shouting, “Don’t kill him. I’ll take him
alive!” The Chéchen was the red-haired man who had fetched his brother’s
body away after Lukáshka had killed him. Lukáshka was twisting his arms.
Suddenly the Chéchen wrenched himself free and fired his pistol. Lukáshka
fell, and blood began to flow from his stomach. He jumped up, but fell
again, swearing in Russian and in Tartar. More and more blood appeared on
his clothes and under him. Some Cossacks approached him and began
loosening his girdle. One of them, Nazárka, before beginning to help,
fumbled for some time, unable to put his sword in its sheath: it would not
go the right way. The blade of the sword was blood-stained.
The Chéchens with their red hair and clipped moustaches lay dead and
hacked about. Only the one we know of, who had fired at Lukáshka, though

wounded in many places was still alive. Like a wounded hawk all covered
with blood (blood was flowing from a wound under his right eye), pale and
gloomy, he looked about him with wide-open excited eyes and clenched
teeth as he crouched, dagger in hand, still prepared to defend himself. The
cornet went up to him as if intending to pass by, and with a quick
movement shot him in the ear. The Chéchen started up, but it was too late,
and he fell.
The Cossacks, quite out of breath, dragged the bodies aside and took the
weapons from them. Each of the red-haired Chéchens had been a man, and
each one had his own individual expression. Lukáshka was carried to the
cart. He continued to swear in Russian and in Tartar.
“No fear, I’ll strangle him with my hands. Anna seni!” he cried,
struggling. But he soon became quiet from weakness.
Olénin rode home. In the evening he was told that Lukáshka was at
death’s door, but that a Tartar from beyond the river had undertaken to cure
him with herbs.
The bodies were brought to the village office. The women and the little
boys hastened to look at them.
It was growing dark when Olénin returned, and he could not collect
himself after what he had seen. But towards night memories of the evening
before came rushing to his mind. He looked out of the window, Maryánka
was passing to and fro from the house to the cowshed, putting things
straight. Her mother had gone to the vineyard and her father to the office.
Olénin could not wait till she had quite finished her work, but went out to
meet her. She was in the hut standing with her back towards him. Olénin
thought she felt shy.
“Maryánka,” said he, “I say, Maryánka! May I come in?”
She suddenly turned. There was a scarcely perceptible trace of tears in
her eyes and her face was beautiful in its sadness. She looked at him in
silent dignity.
Olénin again said:
“Maryánka, I have come—”
“Leave me alone!” she said. Her face did not change but the tears ran
down her cheeks.
“What are you crying for? What is it?”

“What?” she repeated in a rough voice. “Cossacks have been killed,
that’s what for.”
“Lukáshka?” said Olénin.
“Go away! What do you want?”
“Maryánka!” said Olénin, approaching her.
“You will never get anything from me!”
“Maryánka, don’t speak like that,” Olénin entreated.
“Get away. I’m sick of you!” shouted the girl, stamping her foot, and
moved threateningly towards him. And her face expressed such abhorrence,
such contempt, and such anger that Olénin suddenly understood that there
was no hope for him, and that his first impression of this woman’s
inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.
Olénin said nothing more, but ran out of the hut.

Chapter XLII

For two hours after returning home he lay on his bed motionless. Then he
went to his company commander and obtained leave to visit the staff.
Without taking leave of anyone, and sending Vanyúsha to settle his
accounts with his landlord, he prepared to leave for the fort where his
regiment was stationed. Daddy Eróshka was the only one to see him off.
They had a drink, and then a second, and then yet another. Again as on the
night of his departure from Moscow, a three-horsed conveyance stood
waiting at the door. But Olénin did not confer with himself as he had done
then, and did not say to himself that all he had thought and done here was
“not it”. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved Maryánka more
than ever, and knew that he could never be loved by her.
“Well, good-bye, my lad!” said Daddy Eróshka. “When you go on an
expedition, be wise and listen to my words—the words of an old man.
When you are out on a raid or the like (you know I’m an old wolf and have
seen things), and when they begin firing, don’t get into a crowd where there
are many men. When you fellows get frightened you always try to get close
together with a lot of others. You think it is merrier to be with others, but
that’s where it is worst of all! They always aim at a crowd. Now I used to
keep farther away from the others and went alone, and I’ve never been
wounded. Yet what things haven’t I seen in my day?”
“But you’ve got a bullet in your back,” remarked Vanyúsha, who was
clearing up the room.
“That was the Cossacks fooling about,” answered Eróshka.
“Cossacks? How was that?” asked Olénin.
“Oh, just so. We were drinking. Vánka Sítkin, one of the Cossacks, got
merry, and puff! he gave me one from his pistol just here.”
“Yes, and did it hurt?” asked Olénin. “Vanyúsha, will you soon be
ready?” he added.

“Ah, where’s the hurry! Let me tell you. When he banged into me, the
bullet did not break the bone but remained here. And I say: ‘You’ve killed
me, brother. Eh! What have you done to me? I won’t let you off! You’ll
have to stand me a pailful!’”
“Well, but did it hurt?” Olénin asked again, scarcely listening to the tale.
“Let me finish. He stood a pailful, and we drank it, but the blood went on
flowing. The whole room was drenched and covered with blood. Grandad
Burlák, he says, ‘The lad will give up the ghost. Stand a bottle of the sweet
sort, or we shall have you taken up!’ They bought more drink, and boozed
and boozed—”
“Yes, but did it hurt you much?” Olénin asked once more.
“Hurt, indeed! Don’t interrupt: I don’t like it. Let me finish. We boozed
and boozed till morning, and I fell asleep on the top of the oven, drunk.
When I woke in the morning I could not unbend myself anyhow—”
“Was it very painful?” repeated Olénin, thinking that now he would at
last get an answer to his question.
“Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but I could not
bend and could not walk.”
“And then it healed up?” said Olénin, not even laughing, so heavy was
his heart.
“It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!” And lifting his shirt
he showed his powerful back, where just near the bone a bullet could be felt
and rolled about.
“Feel how it rolls,” he said, evidently amusing himself with the bullet as
with a toy. “There now, it has rolled to the back.”
“And Lukáshka, will he recover?” asked Olénin.
“Heaven only knows! There’s no doctor. They’ve gone for one.”
“Where will they get one? From Gróznoe?” asked Olénin.
“No, my lad. Were I the Tsar I’d have hung all your Russian doctors long
ago. Cutting is all they know! There’s our Cossack Bakláshka, no longer a
real man now that they’ve cut off his leg! That shows they’re fools. What’s
Bakláshka good for now? No, my lad, in the mountains there are real
doctors. There was my chum, Vórchik, he was on an expedition and was
wounded just here in the chest. Well, your doctors gave him up, but one of

theirs came from the mountains and cured him! They understand herbs, my
lad!”
“Come, stop talking rubbish,” said Olénin. “I’d better send a doctor from
head-quarters.”
“Rubbish!” the old man said mockingly. “Fool, fool! Rubbish. You’ll
send a doctor!—If yours cured people, Cossacks and Chéchens would go to
you for treatment, but as it is your officers and colonels send to the
mountains for doctors. Yours are all humbugs, all humbugs.”
Olénin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was humbug in
the world in which he had lived and to which he was now returning.
“How is Lukáshka? You’ve been to see him?” he asked.
“He just lies as if he were dead. He does not eat nor drink. Vodka is the
only thing his soul accepts. But as long as he drinks vodka it’s well. I’d be
sorry to lose the lad. A fine lad—a brave, like me. I too lay dying like that
once. The old women were already wailing. My head was burning. They
had already laid me out under the holy icons. So I lay there, and above me
on the oven little drummers, no bigger than this, beat the tattoo. I shout at
them and they drum all the harder.” (The old man laughed.) “The women
brought our church elder. They were getting ready to bury me. They said,
‘He defiled himself with worldly unbelievers; he made merry with women;
he ruined people; he did not fast, and he played the balaláyka. Confess,’
they said. So I began to confess. ‘I’ve sinned!’ I said. Whatever the priest
said, I always answered ‘I’ve sinned.’ He began to ask me about the
balaláyka. ‘Where is the accursed thing,’ he says. ‘Show it me and smash
it.’ But I say, ‘I’ve not got it.’ I’d hidden it myself in a net in the outhouse. I
knew they could not find it. So they left me. Yet after all I recovered. When
I went for my balaláyka—What was I saying?” he continued. “Listen to
me, and keep farther away from the other men or you’ll get killed foolishly.
I feel for you, truly: you are a drinker—I love you! And fellows like you
like riding up the mounds. There was one who lived here who had come
from Russia, he always would ride up the mounds (he called the mounds so
funnily, ‘hillocks’). Whenever he saw a mound, off he’d gallop. Once he
galloped off that way and rode to the top quite pleased, but a Chéchen fired
at him and killed him! Ah, how well they shoot from their gun-rests, those
Chéchens! Some of them shoot even better than I do. I don’t like it when a
fellow gets killed so foolishly! Sometimes I used to look at your soldiers

and wonder at them. There’s foolishness for you! They go, the poor fellows,
all in a clump, and even sew red collars to their coats! How can they help
being hit! One gets killed, they drag him away and another takes his place!
What foolishness!” the old man repeated, shaking his head. “Why not
scatter, and go one by one? So you just go like that and they won’t notice
you. That’s what you must do.”
“Well, thank you! Good-bye, Daddy. God willing we may meet again,”
said Olénin, getting up and moving towards the passage.
The old man, who was sitting on the floor, did not rise.
“Is that the way one says ‘Good-bye’? Fool, fool!” he began. “Oh dear,
what has come to people? We’ve kept company, kept company for well-
nigh a year, and now ‘Good-bye!’ and off he goes! Why, I love you, and
how I pity you! You are so forlorn, always alone, always alone. You’re
somehow so unsociable. At times I can’t sleep for thinking about you. I am
so sorry for you. As the song has it:
It is very hard, dear brother,
In a foreign land to live.

So it is with you.”
“Well, good-bye,” said Olénin again.
The old man rose and held out his hand. Olénin pressed it and turned to
go.
“Give us your mug, your mug!”
And the old man took Olénin by the head with both hands and kissed him
three times with wet moustaches and lips, and began to cry.
“I love you, good-bye!”
Olénin got into the cart.
“Well, is that how you’re going? You might give me something for a
remembrance. Give me a gun! What do you want two for?” said the old
man, sobbing quite sincerely.
Olénin got out a musket and gave it to him.
“What a lot you’ve given the old fellow,” murmured Vanyúsha, “he’ll
never have enough! A regular old beggar. They are all such irregular
people,” he remarked, as he wrapped himself in his overcoat and took his
seat on the box.

“Hold your tongue, swine!” exclaimed the old man, laughing. “What a
stingy fellow!”
Maryánka came out of the cowshed, glanced indifferently at the cart,
bowed and went towards the hut.
“La fille!” said Vanyúsha, with a wink, and burst out into a silly laugh.
“Drive on!” shouted Olénin, angrily.
“Good-bye, my lad! Good-bye. I won’t forget you!” shouted Eróshka.
Olénin turned round. Daddy Eróshka was talking to Maryánka, evidently
about his own affairs, and neither the old man nor the girl looked at Olénin.

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