And quiet flows the Don; a novel Read online

  Meanwhile, under the painted iron roof of the Korshunovs' house burning dissension had arisen. After the Melekhovs' departure Natalya declared to her mother:

  "I like Grigory, I'll never wed another."

  "She's found herself a bridegroom, the idiot," her father replied. "The only good thing about him is that he's as black as a gypsy. My little berry, I could find you a much better husband."

  "1 don't want any other. Father." The girl

  flushed and began to weep. "You can take me to the convent otherwise."

  "He's a woman-chaser, he runs after soldiers' wives. The whole village knows it," her father played his last card.

  "Well, and let him!"

  "Well, if it's 'let him' for you, then it's all the same to me."

  Natalya, the eldest daughter, was her father's favourite, and he had not pressed her into a marriage. Proposals for her hand had been plentiful, some coming from distant villages, from rich, old-believer Cossacks. But Natalya had not taken to any of the prospective bridegrooms, and nothing had come of their efforts.

  In his heart, Miron liked Grigory for his Cossack ardour, his love of farming and hard work. He had picked him out among the crowd of village youths when Grigory had won the first prize in the horse races, but he thought it a little humiliating to give his daughter to a man who was not rich, especially one who had a bad reputation.

  "A hard-working lad and good-looking," his wife would whisper to him at night, stroking his freckled, hairy hand. "And Natalya is really gone on him. .. ."

  Miron turned his back on his wife's cold, withered breast, and shouted angrily:

  "Get off, you burr! Marry her off to an idiot, what do I care? God has taken away your reason. Good-looking!" he mimicked. "Will you reap a harvest off his face?"

  "Harvests aren't everything. . . ."

  "What does it matter about his looks? If only he had some standing. I must admit it's a bit of a come-down for me to give my daughter to the Turks."

  "They're a hard-working family and comfortably off," his wife whispered, and moving closer to her husband's broad back, stroked his hand soothingly.

  "Hey, the devil! Get away, can't you? Leave me a little room! Why are you stroking me as if I were a cow with calf? And do as you please with Natalya. Marry her to a close-cropped girl if that suits you."

  "You should have some feeling for your child," she murmured into his ear. But Miron kicked, pressed himself against the wall and began to snore as though he had fallen asleep.

  The Melekhovs' arrival for an answer took the Korshunovs by surprise. They came just after matins. As Ilyinichna set her foot on the step of the wagonette she nearly overturned it, but Pantelei jumped down from the seat like a young cockerel.

  "There they are! What devil brought them here today?" Miron groaned, as he looked out of the window.

  "Oh dear, here I am just out of the kitchen. Haven't even had a chance to change my everyday skirt."

  "You'll do as you are. Nobody's thinking of marrying you, who wants you, you horse mange!"

  "You're a born ruffian and you've completely lost your senses in your old age."

  "Hold your tongue, woman!"

  "You might put on a clean shirt, your backbone's showing through that one. Aren't you ashamed, you old devil?" his wife scolded, surveying her husband as the visitors walked across the yard.

  "Don't worry, they'll recognize me in what I'm wearing. They wouldn't refuse if I put on sackcloth."

  "Good health!" Pantelei crowed, stumbling over the door-step. He was at once abashed by the loudness of his own voice, and tried to mend matters by crossing himself twice over before the icon.

  "Good-day," Miron replied, staring at them grimly.

  "God is giving us good weather."

  "Praise be, and it's lasting."

  "The people will be a little better off for it."

  "That's so."

  "Ye-e-es."

  "Ahem."

  "And so we've come, Miron Grigoryevich, to find out what you have decided among your-selves-whether we are to make a match of it or not."

  "Come in, please. Sit down, please," the mistress of the house welcomed them, bowing and sweeping the floor with the edge of her long, pleated skirt.

  Ilyinichna sat down, her poplin dress rustling. Miron Grigoryevich rested his elbows on the new oilcloth on the table, and was silent. An unpleasant smell of damp rubber and something else came from the oilcloth. Its corners were adorned with pictures of the last tsar and tsaritsa, while in the centre were the august imperial princesses in white hats, and the fly-blown Tsar Nicholas II.

  Miron broke the silence.

  "Well. . . we've decided to give our daughter. So we shall be kinsmen if we can agree on the dowry."

  At this point, from somewhere in the mysterious depths of her glossy, puff-sleeved jacket, as if from behind her back, Ilyinichna drew out a great loaf of white bread and placed

  it on the table. For some unknown reason Pantelei wanted to cross himself, but his gnarled claw-like fingers, though set to the appropriate sign and raised half the requisite distance, suddenly changed their form. Against its master's will the great black thumb slipped unexpectedly between the index and middle fingers, and this shameless bunch of fingers stealthily slipped behind the open edge of his blue overcoat and drev/ out a red-topped bottle.

  Blinking excitedly, Pantelei glanced at Miron's freckled face and caressingly slapped the bottom of the bottle with his broad, hooflike palm.

  "And now, dear friends, we'll offer up a prayer to God and drink and talk of our children and the marriage agreement," he proposed.

  Within an hour the two men were sitting so close together that the tar-black rings of Melek-hov's beard were mingled with the straight red strands of Korshunov's. Pantelei's breath smelt of pickled cucumbers as he argued over the amount of the marriage settlement.

  "My dear kinsman," he began in a hoarse whisper. "My dearest kinsman," he repeated, raising his voice to a shout. "Kinsman," he roared, baring his great, blunt teeth. "Your demands are far too heavy for me to stand.

  Ml

  Think, dear kinsman, think how you are trying to rob me. Gaiters and goloshes, one; a fur coat, two; two woollen dresses, three; a silk kerchief, four. Why, it's ruination!"

  Pantelei stretched his arms wide till the seams of his tunic split. Miron lowered his head and stared at the oilcloth, flooded with spilt vodka and pickle. He read the inscription on the flowery scroll at the top. "The Russian Royal Family." He brought his eyes lower. "His Imperial Majesty and Sire, Emperor Nicholas...." A potato-skin lay over the rest. He stared at the picture. The emperor's features were invisible under an empty vodka bottle. Blinking reverently, Miron attempted to make out the style of the rich uniform with its white belt, but it was thickly covered with slippery cucumber seeds. The empress in a broad-brimmed hat stared up at him complacently, surrounded by the circle of insipid daughters. Miron felt so affronted that tears almost came to his eyes. "You look very proud now, like a goose staring out of a basket, but wait till you have to give your daughters away to be married, then I shall stare, and you'll flutter," he thought.

  Pantelei droned on into his ear like a great black bumble-bee. Korshunov raised his tearfully misty eyes, and listened.

  "In order to make such a gift in exchange for your, and now we can say our, daughter-these gaiters and goloshes and fur coats-we shall have to drive a cow to the market and sell it."

  "And do you begrudge it?" Miron struck the table with his fist.

  "It isn't that I begrudge it.. . ."

  "Do you begrudge it?"

  "Wait, kinsman!"

  "And if you do begrudge it . . . the devil take you!" Miron swept his perspiring hand over the table and sent the glasses to the floor.

  "It will be your daughter who'll work for it."

  "Let her! But you must give the proper presents, otherwise there'll be no marriage!"

  "A cow sold from the yard!" Pantelei shook his head.

>   "There has to be a gift. She's got plenty of clothes of her own, it's me you've got to show respect for if you've taken a fancy to her. That's our Cossack custom. That's how it was of old, and we stick to the old ways."

  "I will show my respect!"

  "Show your respect!"

  "I will show it!"

  "And let the youngsters work. We've worked, and we live as well as anybody. Let them do the same!"

  The two men's beards wove together colour-fully. They kissed and Pantelei began to eat a juiceless, shrivelled cucumber and wept with mixed, conflicting feelings.

  The women were sitting locked in an embrace on the chest, deafening each other with the cackle of their voices. Ilyinichna glowed with a cherry-coloured flush, Marya had turned green from the vodka, like a winter pear nipped by the frost.

  "You won't find a child like her anywhere else in the world. She'll be dutiful and obedient, and will never say a word to contradict you," said Marya.

  "My dear," Ilyinichna interrupted her, supporting her cheek with her left hand and holding her left elbow in her right hand, "so I've told him, I don't know how many times, the son of a bitch. He was getting ready to go out the other Sunday evening, putting some tobacco in his pouch, and I said to him, 'When will you throw her over, you accursed heathen? How long have I got to go on standing this shame in my old age? That Stepan will stop your little game one fine day!' "

  Mitka stared into the room through the door crack, and below him Natalya's two younger sisters whispered to each other. Natalya herself was sitting in the farther room,

  wiping her tears on the tight sleeve of her blouse. She was afraid of the new life opening before her, oppressed by the unknown.

  In the front room the third bottle of vodka was finished; it was decided to bring the bride and bridegroom together on the first of August.

  XIX

  The Korshunovs' house hummed like a beehive with the bustle of preparations for the wedding. Underclothes were hurriedly sewn for the bride. Natalya sat every evening knitting her bridegroom the traditional gloves and scarf of goat's wool. Her mother sat till dusk bent over a sev/ing-machine, helping the hired seamstress. When Mitka returned with his father and the farm-hands from the fields he did not stop to wash or pull off his heavy farming boots, but went to keep Natalya company. He found great satisfaction in teasing his sister.

  "Knitting?" he would ask briefly, nodding at the scarf.

  "Yes, what of it?"

  "Knit away, you idiot. Instead of being grateful to you, he'll break your jaw."

  "What for?"

  10—1933 tdfi

  "Oh, I know Grisha, he's a friend of mine. He's that sort, he'll bite and not say what it's for."

  "Don't tell lies. You think I don't know him."

  "But I know him better. We went to school together." Mitka would simulate a deep sigh, look at his scratched hands and bend his long back.

  "You'll be lost, Natalya, if you marry him. Better stay an old maid. What do you see in him anyhow? He's ugly enough to scare a horse. Stupid too. Just look at him a bit closer: he's a lousy fellow."

  Natalya would grow angry, choke back her tears, and bend a miserable face over the scarf.

  "But worst of all he's in love," Mitka went on mercilessly. "What are you grizzling for? You're a fool, Natalya! Throw him over! I'll saddle the horse and ride over and tell them. . . ."

  Natalya was rescued from Mitka by Grandfather Grishaka, who would come into the room, groping over the floor with his knobbly stick and stroking his hempen-yellow beard. Poking his stick into Mitka's side, he would ask:

  "What are you doing here, you good-for-nothing, huh?"

  "I came to pay a visit. Grandad/' Mitka would reply apologetically.

  "To pay a visit? Well, I tell you to get out of here. Quick march!" The old man would lift his stick and approach Mitka on his shaky withered legs.

  Grandad Grishaka had walked the earth for sixty-nine years. He had taken part in the Turkish campaign of 1877, had been orderly to General Gurko, but had fallen into disfavour and been sent back to his regiment. He had been awarded two crosses and the medal of St. George for distinction under fire at Plevna and Rossitz. And now, living with his son, enjoying the universal respect of the village for his lucidity of mind, his incorruptible honesty and his hospitable ways, he was spending his few remaining years in reminiscences.

  In the summer he sat from dawn till dusk on the earthen bank round the house, his head bowed, drawing his stick over the ground, while vague images and scraps of thought floated through his mind, dull gleams of memory amid the shadows of forgetfulness. The broken peak of his cap threw a dark shade over his closed eyes. The black blood flowed sluggishly through the fingers curved over his stick, through the swollen veins on his hands.

  His blood seemed to grow colder every year. He would complain to Natalya, his favourite grand-daughter:

  "These socks are woollen, but they're not warm enough. You'd better crochet a pair for me, child."

  "But it's summer. Grandad!" Natalya would laugh, and, seating herself on the bank by his side, would look at his big wrinkled yellow ear.

  "What of it, child? It's summer, but my blood is as cold as the earth deep below."

  Natalya looked at the network of veins on his hand and her mind flashed back to a day in her childhood. A well was being sunk in their yard, and she-still only a little girl-was taking clay out of the bucket and making heavy dolls, and cows with crumbling horns. She vividly recalled the feel of the lifeless icy earth, lifted up from a depth of thirty-five feet. And now, frightened, she stared at her grandfather's hands, covered with the brown clay-coloured freckles of old age. It seemed to her that dark, clayey earth was flowing in his veins instead of bright scarlet blood.

  "Are you afraid to die. Grandad?" Natalya would ask.

  The old man twisted his withered neck as though working it free of the stiff collar of his

  uniform coat, and shook his greenish-grey whiskers.

  "I wait for death as I would for a dear guest. It's time-I've lived my days, I've served my tsars, and drunk vodka enough in my day," he replied showing his white teeth in a smile, his withered lids quivering.

  Natalya would stroke her grandfather's hand and leave him, still bowed, sitting hunched on the bank in his patched grey uniform, scraping the earth with his stick, while the bright red tabs twinkled gaily and youthfully in his stiff upright collar.

  He took the news of Natalya's approaching marriage with outward calm, but inwardly he grieved and was furious. At table Natalya always gave him the choicest pieces; she washed his linen, mended and knitted his stockings, his sharouari and shirts. And so, when the old man heard the news he gave her harsh, stern looks for a couple of days.

  "The Melekhovs are good Cossacks. The late Prokofy, a fine Cossack he was. But what are his grandsons like? Huh?" he asked Miron.

  "They're not so bad," Miron replied evasively.

  "That Grigory's a disrespectful lad. I was coming from church the other day and he passed me without a word of greeting. The old men don't get much respect these days. , .."

  "He's a nice lad," Lukinichna put in a word for her future son-in-law.

  "Nice, you say? Oh well, so long as Nata-lya likes him. . . ."

  He took almost no part in the negotiations; he came out of the kitchen and sat down at the table for a moment or two, drank a glass of vodka, and then, feeling himself getting drunk, went off again. For two days he silently watched the happy Natalya, then seemed to soften in his attitude.

  "Natalya!" he called to her. "Well, my little grand-daughter, so you're very happy, huh?"

  "I don't rightly know myself. Grandad," Natalya confided.

  "Well, well! Christ be with you. God grant... ." And then he bitterly upbraided her. "Couldn't you have waited till I was dead, you little brat . . . my life will be bitter without you."

  Mitka was listening to their talk, and he remarked:

  "You're likely to live another hundred y
ears. Grandfather. Is she to wait all that time? You're a fine one!"

  The old man turned almost purple with anger. He rapped on the ground with his stick and feet:

  "Clear off, you son of a bitch! Clear off, I say! You devil's demon! Who told you to listen?"

  Mitka ran out into the yard laughing.

  Old Grishaka raged for a long time after, cursing Mitka; his legs in their short woollen stockings trembled at the knees.

  Natalya's two little sisters-Marisha, a girl of twelve, and Grippa, an eight-year-old imp-waited impatiently for the wedding.

  The farm-hands employed by Korshunov were also quite pleased. They expected a lavish treat from their master and several days off.

  One of them-tall as a crane-a Ukrainian with the outlandish name of Het-Baba-went on a drinking spree about once every six months. He would drink away all his clothes as well as his wages. Although he had felt the familiar urge for a long time already, he had forced himself to delay the start of the drinking bout until the wedding.

  The second farm-hand-a thin swarthy Cossack, named Mikhei, had been with the Kor-shunovs only a short time. Ruined by a fire, he had become a labourer. Having struck up a friendship with Het-Baba he gradually took to drink. He was a great lover of horses. When he was drunk he would weep, his angular, browless face smeared with tears, and pester Miron Grigoryevich:

  "Master! Dear master! When you give your daughter away let me drive her horses. I'll show them some driving! I'll drive her through fire, and not a single hair on the horses will be burned. I myself once had horses. Oh. . . ."

  The grim, unsociable Het-Baba for some reason or other became attached to Mikhei and constantly tormented him with the same old joke about the name of his native village. He would always laugh hoarsely at his own stale joke and slap his long, dry shanks. Mikhei would look disgustedly at Het-Baba's clean-shaven face and quivering Adam's apple, and curse him.