And Quiet Flows the Don Read online

  Mikhail Sholokhov

  * * *

  AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON

  Translated from the Russian by Stephen Garry

  Contents

  Part 1: Peace

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part 2: War

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part 3: Revolution

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part 4: Civil War

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

  AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON

  Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984) was born in Russia in the land of the Cossacks. During the Russian civil war he fought on the side of the revolutionaries, and in 1922 he moved to Moscow to become a journalist. In 1926, Sholokhov began writing And Quiet Flows the Don, and he published the first volume in 1928. Three more volumes followed with the last one published in 1940. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people’.

  ‘Not with the plough is our dear, glorious earth furrowed,

  Our earth is furrowed with the hoofs of horses;

  And our dear, glorious earth is sown with the heads of cossacks:

  Our gentle Don is adorned with youthful widows:

  Our gentle father Don is blossomed with orphans;

  The waves of the gentle Don are rich with fathers’ and mothers’ tears.

  “O thou, our father, gentle Don!

  Oh why dost thou, gentle Don, flow so troubledly?”

  “Ah, how should I, the gentle Don, not flow troubledly?

  From my depths, the depths of the Don, the cold springs beat;

  Amid me, the gentle Don, the white fish leap.”’

  Old Cossack Songs

  Key to Principal Characters

  Melekhov, Prokoffey. A cossack.

  Melekhov, Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch. Son of Prokoffey.

  Melekhova, Ilinichna. Wife of Pantaleimon.

  Melekhov, Piotra Pantalievitch. Son of Pantaleimon and Ilinichna.

  Melekhov, Gregor (also Grishka). Son of Pantaleimon and Ilinichna.

  Melekhova, Dunia. Daughter of Pantaleimon and Ilinichna.

  Melekhova, Daria. Wife of Piotra.

  Korshunov, Grishaka. A cossack.

  Korshunov, Miron Gregorievitch. Son of Grishaka.

  Korshunova, Maria Lukinichna. Wife of Miron.

  Korshunov, Mitka Mironovitch. Son of Miron and Maria.

  Korshunova, Natalia. Daughter of Miron and Maria, afterwards Gregor’s wife.

  Astakhov, Stepan. A cossack.

  Astakhova, Aksinia. Wife of Stepan.

  Bodovskov, Fiodot. A cossack.

  Koshevoi, Misha. A cossack.

  Koshevoia, Mashutka. Misha’s sister.

  Shamil, Alexei, Martin and Prokhor. Three cossack brothers.

  Tokin, Christonia, also Christan. A cossack.

  Tomilin, Ivan. A cossack.

  Kotliarov, Ivan Alexievitch. Engineer at Mokhov’s mill. A landless cossack.

  David. Worker at Mokhov’s mill.

  Filka. A shoemaker.

  Stockman, Osip Davidovitch. A locksmith and Bolshevik.

  Valet. Scalesman at Mokhov’s mill.

  Mokhov, Sergei Platonovitch. Merchant and mill-owner.

  Mokhov, Elizabieta. Mokhov’s daughter.

  Mokhov, Vladimir. Mokhov’s son.

  Listnitsky, Nikolai Alexievitch. Landowner, and retired general.

  Listnitsky, Eugene Nikolaivitch. Son of Nikolai Listnitsky.

  Bunchuk, Ilia. A soldier volunteer, Bolshevik, and machine-gunner.

  Garanzha. An Ukrainian conscript.

  Groshev, Yemelian. A cossack.

  Ivankov, Mikhail. A cossack.

  Kruchkov, Kozma. A cossack.

  Zharkov, Yegor. A cossack.

  Zikov, Prokhor. A cossack.

  Shchegolkov. A cossack.

  Uriupin, Alexei. Nicknamed ‘Tufty’. A cossack.

  Anikushka. A cossack.

  Bogatiriev. A cossack.

  Senilin, Ivan Avdeitch. Nicknamed ‘Bragger’. A cossack.

  Griaznov, Maksim. A cossack.

  Koroliov, Zakhar. A cossack.

  Krivoshlikov, Mikhail. Secretary of Don Revolutionary Committee.

  Lagutin, Ivan. A cossack. Member of Don Revolutionary Committee.

  Podtielkov, Fiodor. Chairman of Don Revolutionary Committee.

  Pogoodko, Anna. Jewish student and Bolshevik.

  Bogovoi, Gievorkiantz, Khvilichko, Krutogorov, Mikhalidze, Rebinder, Stepanov: Members of Bunchuk’s revolutionary machine-gun detachment.

  Abramson. A Bolshevik organizer.

  Golubov. A captain and commander of Don revolutionary forces.

  Alexeev. Tsarist general.

  Kornilov. Tsarist general.

  Atarshchikov. Lieutenant in cossack regiment.

  Izvarin. Captain in cossack regiment.

  Kalmikov. Captain in cossack regiment.

  Merkulov. Lieutenant in cossack regiment.

  Chubov. Lieutenant in cossack regiment.

  Part One

  * * *

  PEACE

  Chapter One

  The Melekhov farm was right at the end of Tatarsk village. The gate of the cattle-yard opened northward towards the Don. A steep, sixty-foot slope between chalky, grassgrown banks, and there was the shore. A pearly drift of mussel-shells, a grey, broken edging of shingle, and then – the steely-blue, rippling surface of the Don, seething beneath the wind. To the east, beyond the willow-wattle fence of the threshing-floor, was the Hetman’s highway, greyish wormwood scrub, vivid brown, hoof-trodden knotgrass, a shrine standing at the fork of the road, and then the steppe, enveloped in a shifting mirage. To the south a chalky range of hills. On the west the street, crossing the square and running towards the leas.

  The cossack Prokoffey Melekhov returned to the village during the last war with Turkey. He brought back a wife – a little woman wrapped from head to foot in a shawl. She kept her face covered, and rarely revealed her yearning eyes. The silken shawl was redolent of strange, aromatic perfumes; its rainbow-hued patterns aroused the jealousy of the peasant women. The captive Turkish woman did not get on well with Prokoffey’s relations, and ere long old Melekhov gave his son his portion. The old man never got over the disgrace of the separation, and all his life he refused to set foot inside his son’s hut.

  Prokoffey speedily made shift for himself; carpenters built him a
hut, he himself fenced in the cattle-yard, and in the early autumn he took his bowed, foreign wife to her new home. He walked with her through the village, behind the cart laden with their worldly goods. Everybody from the oldest to the youngest rushed into the street. The cossacks laughed discreetly into their beards, the women passed vociferous remarks to one another, a swarm of unwashed cossack lads called after Prokoffey. But, with overcoat unbuttoned, he walked slowly along as though over newly ploughed furrows, squeezing his wife’s fragile wrist in his own enormous swarthy palm, defiantly bearing his lint-white, unkempt head. Only the wens below his cheekbones swelled and quivered, and the sweat stood out between his stony brows.

  Thenceforth he went but rarely into the village, and was never to be seen even at the market. He lived a secluded life in his solitary hut by the Don. Strange stories began to be told of him in the village. The boys who pastured the calves beyond the meadow-road declared that of an evening, as the light was dying, they had seen Prokoffey carrying his wife in his arms as far as the Tartar mound. He would seat her, with her back to an ancient, weatherbeaten, porous rock, on the crest of the mound; he would sit down at her side, and they would gaze fixedly across the steppe. They would gaze until the sunset had faded, and then Prokoffey would wrap his wife in his coat and carry her back home. The village was lost in conjecture, seeking an explanation for such astonishing behaviour. The women gossiped so much that they had no time to hunt for their fleas. Rumour was rife about Prokoffey’s wife also; some declared that she was of entrancing beauty; others maintained the contrary. The matter was set at rest when one of the most venturesome of the women, the soldier’s wife Maura, ran along to Prokoffey on the pretext of getting some leaven; Prokoffey crawled into the cellar for the leaven, and Maura had time to notice that Prokoffey’s Turkish conquest was a perfect fright.

  A few minutes later Maura, her face flushed and her kerchief awry, was entertaining a crowd of women in a by-lane:

  ‘And what could he have seen in her, my dears? If she’d only been a woman now, but she’s got no bottom or belly; it’s a disgrace. We’ve got better-looking girls going begging for a husband. You could cut through her waist, she’s just like a wasp. Little eyes, black and strong, she flashes with them like Satan, God forgive me. She must be near her time, God’s truth.’

  ‘Near her time?’ the women marvelled.

  ‘I’m no babe! I’ve reared three myself.’

  ‘But what’s her face like?’

  ‘Her face? Yellow. Unhappy eyes – it’s no easy life for a woman in a strange land. And what is more, women, she wears … Prokoffey’s trousers!’

  ‘No!’ the women drew their breath in abrupt alarm.

  ‘I saw them myself; she wears trousers, only without stripes. It must be his everyday trousers she has. She wears a long shift, and below it you see the trousers, stuffed into socks. When I saw them my blood ran cold.’

  The whisper went round the village that Prokoffey’s wife was a witch. Astakhov’s daughter-in-law (the Astakhovs lived in the hut next to Prokoffey’s) swore that on the second day of Trinity, before dawn, she saw Prokoffey’s wife, straight-haired and barefoot, milking the Astakhov’s cow. From that day the cow’s udder withered to the size of a child’s fist, she gave no more milk and died soon after.

  That year there was unusual mortality among the cattle. By the shallows of the Don the carcasses of cows and young bulls littered the sandy shore every day. Then the horses were affected. The droves grazing on the village pasture-lands melted away. And through the lanes and streets of the village crept an evil rumour.

  The cossacks held a village meeting and went to Prokoffey. He came out on to the steps of his hut and bowed.

  ‘What good does your visit bring, worthy elders?’ he asked.

  Dumbly silent, the crowd drew nearer to the steps. One drunken old man was the first to cry:

  ‘Drag your witch out here! We’re going to try her …’

  Prokoffey flung himself back into the hut, but they caught him in the porch. A sturdy cossack nicknamed Lushnia knocked Prokoffey’s head against the wall and exhorted him:

  ‘Don’t make a sound, not a sound, you’re all right. We shan’t touch you, but we’re going to trample your wife into the ground. Better to destroy her than have all the village die for want of cattle. But don’t you make a sound, or I’ll smash your head against the wall!’

  ‘Drag the bitch into the yard!’ came a roar from the steps. A regimental comrade of Prokoffey’s wound the Turkish woman’s hair around one hand, pressed his other hand over her screaming mouth, dragged her at a run through the porch and flung her beneath the feet of the crowd. A thin shriek rose above the howl of voices. Prokoffey sent half a dozen cossacks flying, burst into the hut, and snatched a sabre from the wall. Jostling against one another, the cossacks rushed out of the porch. Swinging the gleaming whistling sabre around his head, Prokoffey ran down the steps. The crowd shuddered and scattered over the yard.

  Lushnia was heavy of gait, and by the threshing-floor Prokoffey caught up with him; with a diagonal sweep down across the left shoulder from behind he clave the cossack’s body to the belt. Tearing out the stakes of the wattle fence, the crowd poured across the threshing-floor into the steppe.

  Some half-hour later the crowd ventured to approach Prokoffey’s farm again. Two of them crept cautiously into the porch. On the kitchen threshold, in a pool of blood, her head flung back awkwardly, lay Prokoffey’s wife; her lips writhed tormentedly back from her teeth, her gnawed tongue protruded. Prokoffey, with shaking head and glassy stare, was wrapping a squealing, crimson, slippery little ball – the prematurely born infant – in a sheepskin.

  Prokoffey’s wife died the same evening. His old mother had pity on the child and took charge of it. They plastered it with bran-mash, fed it with mare’s milk, and after a month, assured that the swarthy, Turkish-looking boy would survive, they carried him to church and christened him. They named him Pantaleimon after his grandfather. Prokoffey came back from penal servitude twelve years later. With his clipped, ruddy beard streaked with grey and his Russian clothing he did not look like a cossack. He took his son and returned to his farm.

  Pantaleimon grew up darkly swarthy, and ungovernable. In face and figure he was like his mother. Prokoffey married him to the daughter of a cossack neighbour.

  Thenceforth Turkish blood began to mingle with that of the cossacks. That was how the hook-nosed, savagely handsome cossack family of Melekhovs, nicknamed ‘Turks’, came into the village.

  When his father died Pantaleimon took over the farm; he had the hut rethatched, added an acre of common land to the farmyard, built new barns, and a granary with a sheet-iron roof. He ordered the tinsmith to cut a couple of cocks from the odd remnants, and had them fastened to the roof. They brightened the Melekhov farmyard with their carefree air, giving it a self-satisfied and prosperous appearance.

  Under the weight of the passing years Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch grew stouter; he broadened and stooped somewhat, but still looked a well-built old man. He was dry of bone, and lame (in his youth he had broken his leg whilst hurdling at an Imperial review of troops), he wore a silver half-moon ear-ring in his left ear, and retained the vivid raven hue of his beard and hair until old age. When angry he completely lost control of himself, and undoubtedly this had prematurely aged his corpulent wife Ilinichna, whose face, once beautiful, was now a perfect spiderweb of furrows.

  Piotra, his elder, married son, took after his mother: stocky and snub-nosed, a luxuriant shock of corn-coloured hair, hazel eyes. But the younger, Gregor, was like his father: half a head taller than Piotra, some six years younger, the same hanging hook-nose as his father’s, bluish almonds of burning irises in slightly oblique slits, brown, ruddy skin drawn over angular cheek-bones. Gregor stooped slightly, just like his father; even in their smile there was a common, rather savage quality.

  Dunia – her father’s favourite – a long-boned, large-eyed lass, and Piotra’s wife Dari
a, with her small child, completed the Melekhov household.

  Chapter Two

  Here and there stars were still piercing through the ashen, early morning sky. A wind was blowing from under a bank of cloud. Over the Don a mist was rolling high, piling against the slope of a chalky hill, and crawling into the cliff like a grey headless serpent. The left bank of the river, the sands, the backwaters, stony shoals, the dewy weed, quivered with the ecstatic, chilly dawn. Beyond the horizon the sun yawned, and rose not.

  In the Melekhov hut Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch was the first to awake. Buttoning the collar of his cross-stitched shirt as he went, he walked out on to the steps. The grassgrown yard was coated with a dewy silver. He let the cattle out into the street. Daria ran past in her undergarments to milk the cows. The dew sprinkled over the calves of her bare, white legs, and she left a smoking, beaten trail behind her over the grass of the yard. Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch stood for a moment watching the grass rising from the pressure of Daria’s feet, then turned back into the kitchen.

  On the sill of the wide-open window lay the dead-rose petals of the cherry blossoming in the front garden. Gregor was asleep face-downward, his hand flung out back uppermost.

  ‘Gregor, coming fishing?’ his father called him.

  ‘What?’ he asked in a whisper, dropping one leg off the bed.

  ‘We’ll row out and fish till sunrise,’ Pantaleimon proposed.

  Breathing heavily through his nose, Gregor pulled his everyday trousers down from a peg, drew them on, tucked the legs into his white woollen socks, and slowly drew on his shoes, turning out the infolded flaps.

  ‘But has mother boiled the bait?’ he hoarsely asked, as he followed his father into the porch.

  ‘Yes. Go to the boat. I’ll be after you in a minute.’

  The old man poured the strong-smelling, boiled rye into a jug, carefully swept up the fallen grains into his palm, and limped down to the beach. He found his son sitting restively in the boat.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ Gregor asked.