And quiet flows the Don; a novel Read online

  the white fence with a feeling of relief. From the forge in the corner of the mill-yard, the cheerful tapping of a hammer could be heard, now soft and muffled as it struck the iron, now a hard and ringing double tap on the anvil.

  "What did you want to say that for?" Knave's deep voice reached his ears. "Don't stir dung, and it won't stink."

  "The swine!" Vladimir thought indignantly. "So he answers back. . . , Shall I tell Father or not?" Glancing back, he saw David wearing his everlasting smile, and decided: "I'll tell!"

  A horse and wagon stood hitched to a post outside the shop. Children were chasing a twittering grey cloud of sparrows off the roof of the fire-house. From the verandah came the sonorous baritone of the student Boyarishkin, and another voice-cracked and husky.

  Vladimir went up the steps of the house. The leaves of the wild vine grew thickly over the porch and verandah and hung in foaming green bunches from the carved blue-painted eaves.

  Boyarishkin was shaking his blue-shaven head and addressing the teacher Balanda, a young man but already bearded.

  "When I read him, despite the fact that I'm the son of a toiling Cossack and naturally hate all privileged classes, just imagine it, I feel an

  acute pity for that moribund section of society. I nearly turn into a nobleman and landlord myself, I study their ideal woman with rapture. I even take their interests to heart, damn it! Yes, my friend, that's what a genius can do. He can even make you change your creed."

  Balanda toyed with the tassel of his silk sash and examined the red embroidery on the hem of his shirt, smiling ironically. Liza lay back in the armchair. The conversation evidently did not interest her in the least. With eyes that always seemed to be looking for something they had lost she was staring aimlessly at Boyarishkin's blue, razor-scratched head.

  Bowing to them, Vladimir went to his father's private room and knocked. Sergei Plato-novich was sitting on a cool leather couch, turning over the pages of the June issue of Rus-skoye Bogatstvo. A yellowed bone paper-knife lay at his feet.

  "Well, what do you want?"

  Vladimir hunched his shoulders slightly and straightened the folds of his shirt.

  "As I was coming back from the mill," Vladimir began uncertainly. But then he recalled David's dazzling smile, and gazing at his father's corpulent belly in its tussore waist-

  m

  coat, he resolutely continued: "I heard David, the mill-hand, say. . . ."

  Sergei Platonovich listened attentively to his son's story, and said: "I'll sack him. You may go." Then he bent with a groan to pick up the paper-knife.

  In the evenings the intelligentsia of the village were in the habit of gathering at Sergei Mokhov's house. There was Boyarishkin, a student of the Moscow Technical School; the puny teacher Balanda, eaten up with conceit and tuberculosis; his cohabitant the teacher Marfa, a shapely girl whose petticoat always showed indecently, and who never seemed to grow any older; and the postmaster, an eccentric, rather musty bachelor smelling of sealing-wax and cheap scent. Occasionally the young lieutenant, Yevgeny Listnitsky, rode over from his father's estate. The company would sit drinking tea on the verandah, carrying on a pointless conversation, and when there was a lull in the talk one of the guests would get up and set going the host's expensive inlaid gramophone.

  On rare occasions, during the great holidays, Sergei Platonovich liked to cut a dash: he invited guests and regaled them with expensive wines, fresh caviare, ordered from Bataisk for the occasion, and the finest of hors-d'oeuvres. At other times he lived frugally. The one thing

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  in regard to which he exercised no self-restraint was the purchase of books. He loved reading, and liked to get to the bottom of things with his own mind, which was tenacious as bindweed.

  His partner, Yemelyan Konstantinovich Atyopin, a fair-haired man with a pointed beard and hidden slits of eyes, rarely visited Mokhov. He was married to a former nun, had had eight children by her in fifteen years of married life, and stayed at home most of the time. He had begun his career as a regimental clerk, and the fusty spirit of cringing and in-gratiation brought from there permeated his family also. His children walked on tiptoe in his presence, and talked in whispers. Every morning after washing, they lined up in the dining-room under the black hanging coffin of the huge clock. Their mother stood behind them, and as soon as the dry cough was heard from the bedroom, they would begin discordantly "Our Father" and other prayers.

  Yemelyan Konstantinovich would be dressed and emerge from the bedroom by the time the prayers were ended. Screwing up his tiny green eyes, he would extend his fleshy hand as though he were a bishop, while the children approached him in single file to kiss it. Then Yeme-

  lyan Konstantinovich would kiss his wife on the cheek and ask, lisping:

  "Polya, is the tea ready?"

  "It is, Yemelyan Konstantinovich."

  "Pour me some strong tea."

  He was the shop's accountant. He covered the pages under their bold-faced headings, "Debit" and "Credit," with his flowery clerk's handwriting. He read the Stock Exchange News, adorning his lumpy nose with a gold-rimmed pince-nez for which he had no need. He treated his employees politely.

  "Ivan Petrovich, please show the Taurida calico to the customer."

  His wife called him Yemelyan Konstantinovich, his children-Papa, his shop assistants-blah-blah.

  The two village priests. Father Vissarion and the pious Father Pankraty, were not on friendly terms with Sergei Platonovich. They had a long-standing quarrel with him. Nor were they on very amicable terms with each other. The fractious, intriguing Father Pankraty was clever at making trouble for his neighbours, and the widower Father Vissarion with a syphilitic twang in his voice that belied his affable nature, who lived with a Ukrainian housekeeper, held himself aloof, and had no love for Father

  Pankraty because of his inordinate pride and intriguing character.

  All except the teacher Balanda owned their own houses. Mokhov's big house, faced with match-board and painted blue, stood in the square; right opposite, in the centre of the square squatted his shop with its glass door and faded signboard. Attached to the shop was a long, low shed with a cellar, and a hundred paces farther on rose the brick wall of the church yard and the church itself with a cupola that looked like a ripe green onion. Beyond the church were the whitewashed, officially severe walls of the school, and two smart-looking houses, one blue, with blue-painted fences, belonging to Father Pankraty; the other brown (to avoid any resemblance) with carved fencing and a broad balcony, belonging to Father Vis-sarion. Then came Atyopin's strangely narrow two-storied house, the post office, the thatched and iron-roofed houses of the Cossacks and finally the sloping back of the mill, with rusty tin cocks on its roof.

  The inhabitants of the village lived behind their barred and bolted double shutters, cut off from all the rest of the world. Every evening, unless they were paying a visit to a neighbour, each family shot the bolts of their doors,

  unchained their dogs in the yards, and only the sound of the wooden tongue of the night watchman's clapper disturbed the silence.

  II

  One day towards the end of August Mitka Korshunov happened to meet Liza Mokhova down by the river. He had just rowed across from the other side, and as he was fastening up his boat he saw a light gaily-painted skiff skimming the stream. It was being rowed by the student Boyarishkin. His shaven head glistened with perspiration, and the veins stood out on his forehead.

  Mitka did not recognize Liza in the skiff at first, for her straw hat threw her face into shadow. Her sunburnt hands were pressing a bunch of yellow water-lilies to her breast.

  "Korshunov!" she called, shaking her head at Mitka. "You've deceived me."

  "Deceived you?"

  "Don't you remember, you promised to take me fishing?"

  Boyarishkin dropped the oars and straightened his back. The skiff thrust its nose into the shore with a scrunch.

  "Do you remember?" Liza laughed, as she jumped out.<
br />
  "I haven't had the time. Too much work to do," Mitka said apologetically, catching his breath as the girl approached him.

  "No, it's impossible," Boyarishkin interrupted. "I've had enough, Yelizaveta. You have had all the service you will get from me! The distance we have covered over this confounded v/ater! My hands are all blisters. Give me dry land."

  Boyarishkin planted a long bare foot on the gravelly shore and mopped his forehead with the top of his crumpled student's cap. Without replying, Liza went up to Mitka. He clumsily shook the hand she offered him.

  "Well, then, when shall we go fishing?" she asked with a toss of her head, narrowing her eyes.

  "Tomorrow if you like. We've done the threshing and I've got more time now."

  "You're not deceiving me this time?"

  "No, I'm not!"

  "Will you come early?"

  "At dawn."

  "I'll be waiting for you."

  "I'll come, honestly I will."

  "You haven't forgotten the window?"

  "I'll find it."

  "I am going away soon, I expect. And I'd like to go fishing first."

  Mitka toyed silently with the rusty key for locking up the boat, and looked straight at her lips.

  "Will you be through soon?" asked Boyarish-kin, examining a shell lying in his palm.

  "In a minute."

  She was silent a moment, then, smiling to herself, she asked:

  "You've had a wedding in your family, haven't you?"

  "Yes, my sister's."

  "Whom did she marry?" Then, without waiting for an answer, she smiled again mysteriously and fleetingly. "Do come, won't you?" Once again, as it had on the verandah of Mokhov's house her smile stung Mitka like a nettle.

  He watched her to the boat. Boyarishkin pushed off clumsily and rowed away, while Liza smiled over his head at Mitka, who was still toying with the key, and nodded farewell.

  When the boat was well out, Mitka heard Boyarishkin quietly ask: "Who is that fellow?"

  "Just an acquaintance."

  "Not an affair of the heart?"

  Mitka did not catch her answer above the creak of the rowlocks. He saw Boyarishkin throw himself back with a laugh, but could not see Liza's face. The lilac ribbon on her hat, stirring gently in the breeze, caressed the slope

  of her bare shoulder with a melting softness that teased Mitka's misty glance.

  Mitka, who rarely went fishing with rod and line, had never prepared for the occasion with such zeal as on that evening. He chopped some dung straw and boiled up the millet over a fire on the vegetable patch, then sorted out his hooks, renewing the lines that were rotten.

  Mikhei, who was watching his preparations, asked: "Take me with you, Mitka. You won't be able to manage alone,"

  "I'll manage."

  Mikhei sighed.

  "It's a long time since we went out together. I'd just like the feel of a twenty-pounder pulling on the line."

  Mitka frowned into the hot column of steam rising from the pot and said nothing. When he had finished he went into the back room. Grandfather Grishaka was sitting by the window, with round, copper-rimmed spectacles on his nose, studying the Gospels.

  "Grandad!" Mitka said, leaning his back against the door-frame.

  The old man looked at him over his spectacles.

  "Eh?"

  "Wake me up at the first cock."

  "Where are you off to so early?"

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  "Fishing."

  The old man had a weakness for fish but he made a pretence of opposing Mitka's designs.

  "Your father said the hemp must be beaten tomorrow. There's no time to laze about."

  Mitka stirred from the door and tried strategy-

  "Oh, all right then. I wanted to give you a treat but as there's the hemp to be done, I won't

  go."

  "Stop, where are you off to?" the old man took alarm and pulled off his spectacles. "I'll speak to your father about it, you can go. Tomorrow's Wednesday, I could just do with a bit of fish. All right, I'll wake you up. Go on, you young ass, what are you grinning at?"

  At midnight the old man, holding up his linen trousers with one hand and gripping his stick in the other, floated like a trembling white shadow across the yard to the barn, entered the bam and jabbed his crutch into Mitka's sleeping body. In the barn the smell of newly-threshed grain and mice droppings mingled with the stale cobweb-choked air of a place that is never lived in.

  Mitka was sleeping on a rug by the corn-bin. Grishaka poked at him with his stick, but could not rouse him for some time. At first he poked lightly, whispering:

  "Mitka! Mitka! Hey, Mitka!"

  But Mitka only sighed and drew his legs up. Grishaka grew more ruthless and began to bore the stick into Mitka's stomach. With a gasp Mitka seized the end of the stick and woke up suddenly.

  "How you sleep!" grumbled the old man.

  "Quiet, Grandad. Don't bumble," Mitka muttered sleepily, groping for his boots.

  The lad made his way to the square. The village cocks were already crowing for the second time. As he passed Father Vissarion's house he heard a cock flap its wings in the hen-coop and give a mighty bellow worthy of the head deacon, while the hens clucked in alarm,

  A night watchman was asleep on the steps of the shop, his nose tucked into the sheepskin warmth of his collar.

  Mitka reached Mokhov's fence, set down his fishing tackle, and on tiptoe, so as not to disturb the dogs, crept into the porch. He tried the cold iron latch. The door was shut fast. He clambered across the banister of the verandah and went up to the window. It was half-closed. Through the black gap came the sweet scent of a girl's warm, sleeping body and the mysteriously sweet smell of perfume.

  "Yelizaveta Sergeyevna!"

  Mitka thought he had called very loudly. He

  waited. Silence. "Suppose I'm at the wrong window! Suppose Mokhov's asleep in there! I'll be for it then. He'll use a gun!"

  "Yelizaveta Sergeyevna, coming fishing?"

  If he'd mistaken the window there'd be some fish caught all right!

  "Are you getting up?" he said in irritation, and thrust his head through the window opening.

  "Who's there?" a low startled voice sounded in the darkness.

  "It's me, Korshunov. Coming fishing?"

  "Oh! Just a minute."

  There was a sound of movement inside. Her warm, sleepy voice seemed to smell of mint. Mitka saw something white and rustling moving about the room.

  "I'd rather sleep with her than get cold fishing," he thought vaguely with the smell of the bedroom in his nostrils.

  After a while her smiling face, framed in a white kerchief, appeared at the window.

  "I'm coming out this way. Give me your hand." As he helped her down, she looked closely into his eyes.

  "I didn't take long, did I?"

  "It's all right, we'll be in time."

  They went down to the Don. She rubbed her sleep-swollen eyes with a pink hand.

  "I was sleeping so sweetly. I could have slept on. It's too early to go yet."

  "We'll be just in time."

  They followed the first lane from the square leading down to the river. During the night the river had risen, and the boat, which had been left high and dry the evening before, was now rocking on the water a little way out.

  "I'll have to take off my shoes," she sighed, measuring the distance to the boat with her eyes.

  "Let me carry you," Mitka proposed.

  "No, I'd better take my shoes off."

  "Carrying you would be easier."

  "I'd rather not," she said, with embarrassment in her voice.

  Mitka embraced her legs above the knees with his left arm, and, lifting her easily, splashed through the water. She clutched involuntarily at the finn, dark column of his neck and laughed with a cooing softness.

  If Mitka had not stumbled over a stone used by the village women when washing clothes, there would not have been a brief, accidental kiss. She gasped and pressed he
r face against Mitka's hard cracked lips, and he came to a halt two paces away from the boat. The water swirled over the tops of his boots and chilled his feet.

  Unfastening the boat, he pushed it off and jumped in. He rowed standing. The water rustled and wept under the stern. The boat gently breasted the stream, making for the opposite bank. The fishing rods jumped and clattered at the bottom of the boat.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked, glancing back.

  "To the other side."

  The keel grated on the sandy shore. Without asking permission he picked the girl up in his arms, and carried her into a clump of hawthorn. She bit at his face, scratched, gave one or two stifled screams, and feeling her strength ebbing, she wept angrily, but without tears.

  They returned about nine o'clock. The sky was wrapped in a ruddy yellow haze. A strong breeze danced over the river, maning the waves. The boat danced over the waves, and the cold frothy spray sprinkled on Liza's pallid face and clung to her lashes and the strands of her hair. She wearily closed her vacant eyes, twisting in her fingers a flower that had fallen into the boat. Mitka rowed without looking at her. A small carp and a bream lay goggle-eyed at his feet, their mouths twisted in death; Mit-ka's face wore an expression of mingled guilt, content and anxiety.

  "I'll take you to Semyonov's landing stage.

  It will be nearer for you," he told her, as he turned the boat into the stream.

  "All right/' she whispered.

  Along the deserted shore the dusty wattle fences pined in the hot wind, drenching the air with the smell of burnt brushwood. The heavy over-ripe caps of the sunflowers, pecked by sparrows, drooped low, scattering fluffy seeds over the ground. The meadowland was emerald with the young aftermath. Colts were frisking about in the distance; and the hot southerly wind wafted up the echoing laughter of the bells tied round their necks.

  As Liza was getting out of the boat Mitka picked up a fish and held it out to her.

  "Here, take the catch."