Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy - The Complete Novels and Novellas (Active TOC) (A to Z Classics)

‘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, Lukashka, 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 Lukashka. ‘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 Nazarka.

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 Lukashka 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. Nazarka 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 Terek 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.

Lukashka 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 Nazarka 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 Terek 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 Yamka too,’ said the devoted Nazarka. ‘We’ll have a spree, shall we?’

‘When should we have one if not to-day?’ replied Luke.

When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to sleep till evening.

On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of Novomlinsk. 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 Mikhaylovich, 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.

Olenin, 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 Vasilich — that is to say at Granny Ulitka’s.

‘Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmitri Andreich,’ said the panting Vanyusha to Olenin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and mounted on a Kabarda horse which he had bought in Groznoe, 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 Vanyusha, who had arrived with the baggage wagons and was unpacking.

Olenin 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.