And quiet flows the Don; a novel Read online

"What did you say?"

  "Were you born there?"

  "Er, yes."

  Fedot wrinkled his bronzed cheeks and peered at the distant clumps of steppe grass. The road began to climb and half a verst from the road, in the grey-brown brushwood on top of the ridge Fedot's practised eye spotted the scarcely visible movements of bustards' heads.

  "Pity I haven't got a gun, or Fd be out after the bustards. There they go," he sighed, pointing with his thumb.

  "I don't see anything," his passenger replied, blinking shortsightedly.

  Fedot watched the bustards flutter into a gully and twisted himself round to study his passengers more closely. The man was of average height, but thin; his close-set eyes had a sly twinkle in them. He smiled frequently as he talked. His wife, wrapped in a knitted shawl, was dozing and Fedot couldn't see her face.

  "What are you coming to live in our village for?"

  "Fm a mechanic. Fm thinking of starting a workshop. I can do carpentry too."

  Fedot stared suspiciously at the man's big hands, and catching his gaze, the stranger add-

  ed: "I'm also an agent for the Singer Sewing-Machine Company."

  "What's your name?" Fedot asked.

  "Stockman."

  "So you're not Russian, then?"

  "Yes, I'm a Russian. But my grandfather was a Lett by birth."

  In a short while Fedot had learned that Osip Davydovich Stockman had formerly worked at a factory, then somev/here in the Kuban, then in the South-Eastern Railway workshops. And a great number of other facts the inquisitive Fedot elicited concerning the stranger's life.

  After a while the conversation flagged. Fedot watered his sweating horse at a wayside spring, and drowsy with the journey and the jolting of the cart, he began to doze. It was another five versts to the village. He fastened the reins to the wagon and lay back comfortably. But he was not allowed to go to sleep.

  "How's life in your parts?" Stockman asked him bouncing and swaying with the motion of the cart.

  "Not so bad, we get our bread."

  "And the Cossacks generally, are they satisfied with life?"

  "Some are, some aren't. You can't please everybody,"

  "That's true," the man assented, and went on asking his tricky probing questions.

  "You live pretty well, you say?"

  "Pretty well."

  "The annual army training must be a nuisance? Eh?"

  "Army training? We're used to it. Nothing to worry about when you're in the army."

  "But it's hard on you Cossacks to have to supply all the equipment."

  "Yes, the sons of swine!" Fedot said with sudden animation and glanced sidelong at the woman. She averted her eyes.

  "Our authorities are a bad lot. . . . When I went to do my service I sold my bullocks and bought a horse and they rejected him."

  "Rejected him?" Stockman said with assumed amazement.

  "Right out. His legs were no good, they said. I argued with them, I tried everything. 'He's got legs like a prize stallion,' I said, 'it's just his funny way of stepping, that's all.' But no, they wouldn't pass him. It's enough to ruin you!"

  The conversation went on briskly. Fedot jumped off the wagon and began to talk freely of the village life. He cursed the village ataman for his unjust division of the meadowland, and praised the way things were run in Poland,

  where his regiment had been stationed. Stockman, casting sharp glances at Fedot from his narrowed eyes, smoked mild cigarettes in a ringed bone holder and smiled frequently, but the frown furrow in his white sloping forehead stirred slowly and heavily, as though driven from within by hidden thoughts.

  They reached the village in the early evening. On Fedot's advice Stockman went to the widow Lukeshka and rented two rooms from her.

  "Who is that you brought back with you?" Fedot's neighbours asked him as he drove past their gates.

  "An agent."

  "What kind of angel?"

  "You're fools, that's what you are. An agent, I said. He sells machines. He gives them away free to the handsome ones, but to such as you. Auntie Marya, he sells them."

  "Look at yourself, you devil. Your Kalmyk snout is ugly enough to frighten a horse!"

  "Kalmyks and Tatars come first in the steppe, so don't you joke about them," Fedot parried.

  Mechanic Stockman lodged at the cross-eyed, long-tongued Lukeshka's. And the night had scarcely passed before all the women's tongues in the village were wagging.

  "Have you heard the news, neighbour?"

  "What news?"

  "Fedot the Kalmyk has brought a foreigner down."

  "Really?"

  "So help me God. He wears a hat and his name is Shtopel or Shtokal. . . ."

  "He's not from the police?"

  "No, he's an exciseman."

  "It's all lies, my dears. He's a book-keeper, they say, just like Father Pankraty's son."

  "Pashka, my dove, run to Lukeshka and ask her quietly: 'Who's that living with you, auntie?' "

  "Run quickly, child!"

  Next day Stockman reported to the village ataman.

  Fyodor Manitskov, who was in his third year as ataman, turned the newcomer's passport over and over, then handed it to the clerk, who also turned it over and over. They exchanged glances, and the ataman, once a sergeant-major, authoritatively waved his hand.

  "You can stay."

  The newcomer bowed and left the room. For a week he did not put his nose outside Lukesh-ka's house keeping like a suslik to his burrow. He could be heard tapping with an axe, preparing a workshop in the tumble-down outdoor

  kitchen. The women's interest in him died away; only the children spent all day peeping over the fence and watching the stranger with unabashed curiosity.

  V

  Three days before Intercession Grigory and his wife drove out to the steppe to plough. Pan-telei was unwell; he leaned heavily on his stick and wheezed with pain as he stood in the yard seeing them off.

  "Plough up the two strips on the other side of the common, by Red Dell, Grisha."

  "All right. What about the one up by Willow Bank?" Grigory asked in a hoarse whisper; he had caught a cold while fishing and had a cloth round his throat.

  "That can wait till after the holiday. You'll have enough to do as it is, so don't be greedy. There must be fifteen acres up there."

  "Will Pyotr be coming to help?"

  "He's going to the mill with Darya. We want to get our milling done before the crowds begin."

  As Ilyinichna put some freshly-baked buns in Natalya's jacket she whispered: "Perhaps you'll take Dunya with you, to lead the bullocks?"

  "Two people are enough."

  "All right, my dear. Christ be with you."

  Arching her slender figure under the weight of a load of damp washing, Dunya went past on her way to the Don to rinse the clothes. As she went by she called to Natalya:

  "Natalya, there's lots of sorrel in Red Dell. Pull some up and bring it home."

  "Now then, be off with you, chatterbox!" Pantelei said shaking his stick at Dunya.

  The three pairs of bullocks dragged the upturned plough out of the yard, gouging the drought-hardened earth. Grigory kept adjusting the kerchief bound round his neck as he v/alked along at the roadside, coughing. Natalya walked at his side, a bag with their food in it swinging on her back.

  A crystal stillness enveloped the steppe. Beyond the common, on the other side of the humpbacked hill the earth was being combed with ploughs, and the drivers were whistling; but here along the high-road there was only the blue-grey of stunted wormwood, the roadside clover nibbled by sheep, and the ringing glassy cool of the sky above, criss-crossed with flying threads of jewelled gossamer.

  After seeing the ploughmen on their way, Pyotr and Darya made ready to drive to the mill. Pyotr winnowed the wheat in the granary, Darya sacked it and carried it to the cart.

  Pantelei harnessed the horses carefully adjusting the traces.

  "Going to be long?"

  "Coming," Pyotr answered
from the granary.

  When they arrived at the mill they found the yard crowded with wagons. The scales were surrounded by a dense throng. Pyotr threw the reins to Darya and jumped down from the cart.

  "My turn soon?" he asked Knave the scales-man.

  "You'll get there."

  "Who's being served now?"

  "Number thirty-eight."

  Pyotr turned to fetch his sacks. As he did so he heard cursing behind him. A hoarse, ill-tempered voice barked: "You oversleep yourself, and then you want to go out of your turn. Get away, khokhol*, or I'll give you one."

  Pyotr recognized the voice of Horseshoe Yakov. He stopped to listen. The sound of shouting swelled in the weighing-room. Then came the sharp smack of a blow and an elderly, bearded Ukrainian with his cap crushed on the back of his head came tumbling out through the doorway.

  "What's that for?" he shouted, holding his cheek.

  * Khokhol-a derogatory term for a Ukrainian. 223

  "I'll wring your neck!"

  "But look here. . , ,"

  "Mikifor, help!"

  Horseshoe Yakov, a spirited, stocky artilleryman, who had earned his nickname because of the horseshoe marks left on his face by the kick of a horse, came running out of the weighing-room, rolling up his sleeves. A tall Ukrainian in a pink shirt struck hard at him from behind. But Yakov stayed on his feet.

  "Brothers, they're beating up the Cossacks!" he cried.

  Cossacks and Ukrainians, who were at the mill in large numbers, came running from all sides into the wagon-filled yard. A fight began round the main entrance. The door gave way under the pressure of the struggling bodies. Pyotr threw down his sack and with a grunt ran lightly towards the melee. Standing up on the cart, Darya saw him press into the middle of the crowd, knocking the others aside. She groaned as she saw him carried to the mill wall, flung down and trampled underfoot.

  Mitka Korshunov came skipping round the corner from the machine-room, brandishing an iron bar. The same Ukrainian who had struck at Yakov from behind burst out of the struggling crowd, a torn pink sleeve fluttering out behind him like a bird's broken wing. Bent dou-

  ble, his hands touching the ground, he ran to the nearest cart and pulled out a shaft as if it were a match-stick. Hoarse cries rang out over the yard. A crunching sound. Blows. Groaning. A steady roar of shouting. The three Shamil brothers came running out of their house. One-armed Alexei caught his feet in a pair of reins left lying on the ground and sprawled at the gate. He jumped up and went bounding across the lined-up cart-shafts, pressing his armless left sleeve to his stomach. His brother Martin bent down to tuck in the trouser leg, which had come out of his white sock. The shouting at the mill rose to a crescendo. Somebody let out a cry that floated high over the mill roof like a wind-blown thread of cobweb, and Martin straightened up and dashed after his brothers.

  Darya stood watching from the cart, panting and wringing her hands. Around her, women were squealing and wailing, horses pricked up their ears restlessly, bullocks bellowed and pressed against the carts. Pursing his lips Mo-khov stalked past pale-faced, his belly bobbing up and down like an egg under his waistcoat. Darya saw the Ukrainian with the tattered shirt cut Mitka Korshunov down with the shaft, the next moment he himself was sent headlong by one-armed Alexei's iron fist. Scenes from the

  fight passed before Darya's eyes like scraps of coloured rag. Without surprise she saw Mitka, on his knees, sweep Mokhov's legs from under him with the iron bar. Mokhov threw out his arms and crawled like a crab to the weighing-shed, there to be kicked and trodden underfoot. Darya laughed hysterically, the black arches of her painted brows cracked with her laughter. But she stopped abruptly as she saw Pyotr; swaying, he had made his way out of the heaving, yelling mob, and was lying under a cart, spitting blood. Darya ran to him with a shriek. Cossacks came hurrying from the village with stakes; one of them flourished a crowbar. The fighting was taking on fantastic proportions. It was no mere tavern brawl or Shrovetide fisticuffs between villages. At the door of the weighing-shed a young Ukrainian lay with a broken head in a pool of blood; bloody strands of hair fell over his face. It looked as though he was departing his pleasant life.

  Herded together like sheep, the Ukrainians were slowly being driven towards the unload-ing-shed. Things would have taken a bad turn, had not an old Ukrainian had an inspiration. Darting into the shed, he pulled a flaming brand out of the furnace and ran towards the shed where the milled grain was stored: a thousand poods and more of flour. Smoke streamed over

  his shoulder like muslin and sparks, daylight-dimmed, scattered about.

  "I'll set it afire!" he screamed, raising the crackling brand towards the thatched roof.

  The Cossacks wavered and came to a halt. A dry, blustering wind was blowing from the east, carrying the smoke away from the roof of the shed towards the group of Ukrainians. One goodly spark in the dry rush thatch, and the whole village would go up in flames.

  A low murmur arose from the Cossacks. Some of them began to back away towards the mill, while the Ukrainian, waving the brand above his head and scattering fiery rain, shouted:

  "I'll burn it! I'll burn it! Out of the yard!"

  With fresh red-blue bruises on his scarred face Horseshoe Yakov, the man who had started the fight, was the first to leave the yard. The other Cossacks streamed hurriedly after him. Throwing their sacks hastily on to their wagons, the Ukrainians harnessed their horses, then, standing up in their wagons, waving the ends of the leather reins around their heads, and whipping up their horses frantically, they tore out of the yard and away from the village.

  One-armed Alexei stood in the middle of the yard, his empty knotted sleeve jerking on his hard flat belly, his eye and cheek twitching as usual.

  "To horse, Cossacks!"

  "After them!"

  "They'll not go far."

  Mitka Korshunov, the worse for wear, made as if to dash out of the yard. A fresh ripple of disturbance passed over the crowd of Cossacks round the mill. But at that moment an unfamiliar figure in a black hat appeared from the engine room and approached the group with hasty steps; his piercing eyes narrowed into slits darted over the crowd as he raised his hand and shouted:

  "Stop!"

  "Who are you?" Yakov demanded, scowling.

  "Where'd you spring from?"

  "Bash him!"

  "Stop, villagers!"

  "Who are you calling villagers, you bobtail?"

  "Muzhik. Give him one, Yakov!"

  "The dirty bumpkin!"

  "That's right, black his eyes for him!"

  The man smiled diffidently, but without a sign of fear. He took off his hat and wiped his brow with a gesture of complete simplicity; his smile was utterly disarming.

  "What's the matter?" he asked, waving his hat at the blood by the door of the weighing-shed.

  "We've been beating up the khokhols," one-armed Alexei replied peaceably, eye and cheek twitching.

  "But what for?"

  "They wanted to go out of turn/' Yakov explained, stepping forward and wiping a clot of blood from his nose with a sweep of the arm.

  "We gave 'em something to remember us by."

  "Pity we didn't go after them. . .. Nothing to burn in the steppe."

  "We got scared, he wouldn't have dared set fire to it."

  "He'd have done it all right, he was desperate."

  "The khokhols are a mighty bad-tempered lot," Afonka Ozerov said with a grin.

  The m.an waved his hat in Ozerov's direction. "And who are you?"

  Ozerov spat contemptuously through his widely-spaced teeth, and, watching the flight of the spittle, planted his feet apart.

  "I'm Cossack. But you . . . what are you, a

  gypsy?"

  "You and I are both Russians."

  "You're lying," Afonka declared deliberately.

  "The Cossacks are descended from the Russians. Do you know that?"

  "And I tell you the Cossacks are the sons of Cossacks."

  "Long ago," the man expl
ained, "serfs ran away from the landowners and settled along the Don, They came to be known as Cossacks."

  "Go your own way, man!" Alexei said with restrained anger, clenching his ■ heavy fist and blinking hard.

  "The swine wants to make muzhiks out of us! Who is he?"

  "He's the new fellow living with cross-eyed Lukeshka," another explained.

  But the moment for pursuit of the Ukrainians was past. The Cossacks dispersed, animatedly discussing the fight.

  That night, in the steppe some eight versts from the village, as Grigory wrapped himself in his thick prickly sheepskin, he said wistfully to Natalya:

  "You're a stranger, somehow! You're like that moon, you neither chill a man, nor warm him. I don't love you, Natalya; you mustn't be angry, I didn't want to say anything about it, but there it is; we can't go on like this. I'm sorry for you; it looked as if we were coming closer lately, but I can't feel anything in my heart. It's just empty. Like the steppe tonight."

  Natalya stared up at the inaccessible starry pastures, at the shadowy, ghost-like cloak of the clouds floating above her, and was silent.

  From somewhere in the bluish-black wilderness above a belated flight of cranes called to each other with voices like little silver bells.

  The withered grass had a sad, dead smell about it. On a hillock flickered the ruddy glow of a ploughman's camp-fire.

  Grigory awoke just before dawn. A three-inch layer of snow covered his sheepskin. The steppe was hidden beneath the shimmering, virginal blue of the fresh fall; the clearly-marked tracks of a hare that had lost its way on the first snow ran close by the spot where he lay.

  VI

  For many years past, if a Cossack travelled alone along the road to Millerovo and fell in with Ukrainians (the Ukrainian villages began at Lower Yablonovsky and stretched for seventy-five versts, as far as Millerovo), he had been obliged to yield them the road, or they would set about him. So the Cossacks were in the habit of driving to the railway station in groups, and then they were not afraid of falling in with Ukrainians out in the steppe and exchanging invective: