And Quiet Flows the Don Page 5

  Gazing straight before him, Gregor almost rode her down, then suddenly touched up the peacefully ambling mare with his whip. She sat back on her hind legs and sent a shower of mud over Aksinia.

  ‘Oh, you stupid devil!’ she exclaimed.

  Turning sharply and riding his excited horse at her Gregor asked:

  ‘Why don’t you pass the time of day?’

  ‘You’re not worth it!’

  ‘And that’s why I sent the mud over you. Don’t hold your head so high!’

  ‘Let me pass!’ Aksinia shouted, waving her arms in front of the horse’s nose. ‘What are you trampling me with your horse for?’

  ‘She’s a mare, not a horse.’

  ‘I don’t care; let me pass.’

  ‘What are you getting angry for, Aksinia? Surely not for the other day, in the meadow?’

  Gregor gazed into her eyes. Aksinia tried to say something, but abruptly a little tear hung in the corner of her black eye, her lips quivered pitifully. Shudderingly choking, she whispered:

  ‘Go away, Gregor … I’m not angry … I …’ and she went.

  The astonished Gregor overtook Mitka at the gate.

  ‘Coming out for the evening?’ Mitka asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why, what’s on? Or did she invite you to spend the night with her?’

  Gregor wiped his brow with his palm and made no reply.

  All that was left of Trinity in the village farms was the dry thyme scattered over the floors, the dust of crumpled leaves, and the shrivelled, withered green of broken oak and ash branches fastened to the gates and stairs.

  The haymaking began immediately after Trinity. From early morning the meadow blossomed with women’s holiday skirts, the bright embroidery of aprons, and coloured kerchiefs. The whole village turned out for the mowing. The mowers and rakers attired themselves as though for an annual holiday. So it had been from of old. From the Don to the distant alder clumps the ravaged meadowland stirred and pulsed.

  The Melekhovs were late in starting. They set out when all but half the village were already in the meadow.

  ‘You sleep late, Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch,’ the perspiring haymakers clamoured.

  ‘Not my fault … the women again!’ the old man laughed, and urged on the bullocks with his knout of raw hide.

  At the back of the cart sat Aksinia, her face completely wrapped up to protect it from the sun. From the narrow slits left for her eyes she calmly and severely stared at Gregor seated opposite her. Daria, also wrapped up and dressed in her Sunday best, her legs hanging between the rungs of the wagon-side, was giving her breast to the child dozing in her arms. Dunia danced alongside, her happy eyes scanning the meadow and the people met along the road.

  Drawing the sleeve of his cotton shirt over his fists, Pantaleimon wiped away the sweat running down from under the peak of his cap. His bent back, with the shirt stretched tightly across it, darkened with moist patches. The sun pierced slantingly through a grey scrawl of cloud, and dropped a fan of misty, refracted rays over the meadow, the village, and the distant, silvery hills of the Don.

  The day was sultry. The little clouds crept along drowsily, not even overtaking Pantaleimon’s bullocks dragging along the road. The old man himself lifted and waved the knout heavily, as though in doubt whether to strike their bony flanks or not. Evidently realizing this, the bullocks did not hasten their pace, and slowly, gropingly set forward their cloven hoofs. A dusty gold and orange-tinged horsefly circled above them.

  ‘There’s our strip.’ Pantaleimon waved his knout.

  Gregor unharnessed the weary bullocks. His ear-ring glittering, the old man went to look for the mark he had made at the end of the strip.

  ‘Bring the scythes,’ he called out after a moment, waving his hand.

  Gregor went to him, treading down the grass, and leaving an undulating track behind him. Pantaleimon faced towards the distant bell-tower and crossed himself. His hook-nose shone as though freshly varnished, the sweat lingered in the hollows of his swarthy cheeks. He smiled, baring his white, gleaming teeth in his raven beard, and, with his wrinkled neck bent to the right, swept the scythe through the grass. A seven-foot half-circle of mown grass lay at his feet.

  Gregor followed in his steps, laying the grass low with the scythe. The women’s aprons blossomed in an outstretched rainbow before him, but his eyes sought only one, white with an embroidered border; he glanced at Aksinia and renewed his mowing, adjusting his own to his father’s pace.

  Aksinia was continually in his thoughts. Half-closing his eyes, in imagination he kissed her shamelessly and tenderly, spoke to her in burning and speechless words that came to his tongue he knew not whence. Then he dropped this line of thought, stepped out again methodically, one … two … three; his memory urged up fragments of the past … sitting under the damp hayrick … the moon over the meadow … rare drops falling from the bush into the puddle … one … two … three … Good! Ah, that had been good!

  He heard laughter behind him. He looked back: Daria was lying under the cart and Aksinia was bent over her, telling her something. Daria waved her arms, and again they both laughed.

  ‘I’ll get to that bush, and then I’ll drop my scythe,’ Gregor thought. At that moment he felt the scythe pass through something soft and yielding. He bent down: a little wild duckling went scurrying into the grass with a squawk. By the hole where the nest had been another was huddled, cut into two by the scythe. He lay the dead bird on his palm. It had evidently only come from the egg a few days previously; a living warmth was still to be felt in the down. With a sudden feeling of keen compassion he stared at the inert little ball lying in his hand.

  ‘What have you found, Grishka?’

  Dunia came dancing along the mown alley, her pigtails tossing on her breast. Frowning, Gregor threw away the duckling and angrily renewed his mowing.

  After dinner the women began to rake the hay. The cut grass sunned and dried, giving off a heavy, stupefying scent. Dinner was eaten in haste. Fat meat and the cossacks’ standby, sour milk: such was the entire repast.

  ‘No point in going home!’ Pantaleimon said after dinner; ‘we’ll turn the bullocks to graze in the forest, and tomorrow as soon as the dew is off the grass we’ll finish the mowing.’

  Dusk had fallen when they stopped for the day. Aksinia raked the last rows together, and went to the cart to cook some millet mash. All day she had laughed evilly at Gregor, gazing at him with eyes full of hatred, as though in revenge for some great, unforgettable injury. Gregor, gloomy and brooding, drove the bullocks down to the Don for water. His father had watched him and Aksinia all day. Staring unpleasantly after Gregor, he said:

  ‘Have your supper, and then guard the bullocks. See they don’t get into the grass! Take my coat.’

  Daria lay the child under the cart and went into the forest with Dunia for brushwood.

  Over the meadow the waning moon mounted the dark, inaccessible heaven. Moths sprinkled around the fire like early snow. The millet boiled in the smoky field-pot. Wiping a spoon with the edge of her underskirt, Daria called to Gregor:

  ‘Come and have your supper.’

  His father’s coat flung around his shoulders, Gregor emerged from the darkness and approached the fire.

  ‘What has made you so bad-tempered?’ Daria smiled.

  ‘He doesn’t want to watch the bullocks,’ Dunia laughed, and sitting down by her brother she tried to start a conversation. But somehow her efforts were unsuccessful. Pantaleimon sipped his soup, and crunched the under-cooked millet between his teeth. Aksinia ate without lifting her eyes, smiling half-heartedly at Daria’s jokes. Her burning cheeks were flushed troubledly.

  Gregor was the first to rise: he went off to the bullocks.

  The fire burnt low. The smouldering brushwood wrapped the little group in the honey scent of burning leaves.

  At midnight Gregor stole up to the camp, and halted some ten paces away. His father was snoring tunefully on the cart. Th
e unquenched embers stared out from the ash with golden peacock’s eyes.

  A grey, shrouded figure broke away from the cart and came slowly towards Gregor. When two or three paces away it halted. Aksinia! Gregor’s heart thumped fast and heavily; he stepped forward crouchingly, flinging back the edge of his coat, and pressed the compliant, fervently burning woman to himself. Her legs bowed at the knees; she trembled, her teeth chattering. Gregor suddenly flung her over his arm as a wolf throws a slaughtered sheep across its back, and stumbling over the trailing edges of his open coat, ran pantingly off.

  ‘Oh, Grishka, Grishka! Your father …’

  ‘Quiet!’

  Tearing herself away, gasping for breath in the sour sheeps’ wool of the coat, abandoning herself to the bitterness of regret, Aksinia almost shouted:

  ‘Put me down, what matter now? … I’ll go of my own accord.’

  Not like an azure and blood-red blossom, but like wayside henbane is a woman’s belated love.

  After the mowing Aksinia was a changed woman, as though someone had set a mark, burnt a brand on her face. When other women met her they snarled spitefully, and nodded their heads after her. The maidens were envious, but she carried her happy, shameful head proudly and high.

  Soon everybody knew of her liaison with Gregor Melekhov. At first it was talked about in whispers – only half-believed – but after the village shepherd had seen them in the early dawn close to the windmill, lying under the moon in the low-growing rye, the rumour spread like a turbid tidal wave.

  It reached Pantaleimon’s ears also. One Sunday he happened to go along to Mokhov’s shop. The throng was so great that no more could have crowded through the door. He entered, and everybody seemed to be making way for him. He pushed towards the counter where the textiles were sold. The master, Mokhov, took it upon himself to attend to the old man.

  ‘Where have you been all this long while, Prokoffitch?’ he asked.

  ‘Too much to do. Troubles with the farm.’

  ‘What? Sons like yours, and troubles?’

  ‘What of my sons? I’ve seen Piotra off to camp, and I and Grishka do everything.’

  Mokhov divided his stiff, ruddy beard into two with his fingers and significantly glanced out of the corners of his eyes at the crowd of cossacks.

  ‘Oh, yes, old lad, and why haven’t you told us anything about it?’ he asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘How d’you mean, what? Thinking of marrying your son, and not one word to anybody!’

  ‘Which son?’

  ‘Why, your son Gregor isn’t married.’

  ‘And at present he doesn’t show any sign of marrying.’

  ‘But I’ve heard that your daughter-in-law’s going to be … Stepan Astakhov’s Aksinia.’

  ‘What? With her husband alive … Why, Platonitch, surely you’re joking? Aren’t you?’ Pantaleimon stuttered.

  ‘Joking? But I’ve had it from others.’

  Pantaleimon smoothed out the piece of material spread over the counter, then, turning sharply, limped towards the door. He made straight for home. He walked with his head bowed as usual, pressing his fingers into his fist, hobbling more obviously on his lame leg. As he passed the Astakhovs’ hut he glanced through the wattle fence: Aksinia, swaying from the hips, spruce and looking younger than ever, was going into the hut with an empty bucket.

  ‘Hey, wait!’ he called, and pushed through the wicket gate. Aksinia halted and waited for him. They went into the hut. The cleanly swept earthen floor was sprinkled with red sand; on the bench in the corner were pasties fresh from the oven. From the kitchen came the smell of fusty clothes and sweet apples.

  A large-headed tabby cat came up to make a fuss of Pantaleimon’s legs. It arched its back and rubbed itself against his boots. He sent it flying against the bench and shouted:

  ‘What’s all this I hear? Ah? Your husband’s traces not yet cold, and you already setting your cap at other men! I’ll make Grishka’s blood flow for this, and I’ll write to your Stepan! Let him hear of it …! You whore, your bitch of a mother didn’t beat you enough. Don’t set your foot inside my yard from this day on. Carrying on with a young man, and when Stepan comes, and me, too …’

  Aksinia listened with eyes contracted. And suddenly she shamelessly swept up the edge of her skirt, enveloped Pantaleimon in the smell of women’s clothes, and came breasting at him with writhing lips and bared teeth.

  ‘What are you to me, old man? Ah? Who are you, to teach me? Go and teach your own fat-bottomed woman! Keep order in your own yard! You limping, stump-footed devil! Clear out of here, don’t foam at me like a wild boar, you won’t frighten me!’

  ‘Wait, you fool!’

  ‘There’s nothing to wait for! Get back where you came from! And if I want your Grishka, I’ll eat him, bones and all …! Chew that over! What if Grishka does love me? You’ll punish him …? You’ll write to my husband …? Write to the Ataman if you like, but Grishka belongs to me! He’s mine! Mine! I have him and I shall keep him …’

  Aksinia pressed against the quailing Pantaleimon with her breast (it beat against her thin jacket like a bustard in a noose), burnt him with the flame of her black eyes, overwhelmed him with more and more terrible and shameless words. His eyebrows quivering, the old man retreated to the door, groped for the stick he had left in the corner, and waving his hand, pushed open the door with his bottom. Aksinia pressed him out of the porch, pantingly, frenziedly shouting:

  ‘All my life I’ll love him! Kill him if you like! He’s my Grishka! Mine!’

  Gurgling something into his beard, Pantaleimon limped off to his hut.

  He found Gregor in the kitchen. Without saying a word, he brought his stick down over his son’s back. Doubling up, Gregor hung on his father’s arm.

  ‘What’s that for, father?’ he demanded.

  ‘For your goings-on, you son of a bitch!’

  ‘What goings-on?’

  ‘Don’t soil your neighbour! Don’t disgrace your father! Don’t run after women, you hound!’ Pantaleimon snorted, dragging Gregor around the kitchen as his son tried to snatch away the stick.

  ‘I’m not going to let you beat me!’ Gregor cried hoarsely, and setting his teeth, he tore the stick out of his father’s hand. Across his knee it went, and – snap!

  ‘I’ll whip you publicly. You accursed son of the devil! I’ll wed you to the village idiot! I’ll geld you!’ his father roared.

  At the sound of fighting the old mother came running. ‘Pantaleimon, Pantaleimon! Cool down a little! Wait!’ she exclaimed.

  But the old man had lost his temper in earnest. He sent his wife flying, overthrew the table with the sewing-machine on it, and victoriously flew out into the yard. Gregor, whose shirt had been torn in the struggle, had not had time to fling it off when the door banged open, and his father appeared once more like a storm-cloud on the threshold.

  ‘I’ll marry him off, the son of a bitch!’ He stamped his foot like a horse and fixed his gaze on Gregor’s muscular back. ‘I’ll drive tomorrow to arrange the match. To think that I should live to see my son laugh in my face!’

  ‘Let me get my shirt on, and get me married after,’ Gregor retorted.

  ‘I’ll marry you! I’ll marry you to the village idiot!’ The door slammed, the old man’s steps clattered down the stairs and died away.

  Beyond the village of Sietrakov the carts with tarpaulin covers stretched in rows across the steppe. At unbelievable speed a white-roofed and neat little town grew up, with straight streets and a small square in the centre where sentries kept guard.

  The men lived the usual monotonous life of a training camp. In the morning the detachment of cossacks guarding the grazing horses drove them into the camp. Then followed cleaning, grooming, saddling, the roll-call, and muster. The staff officer in command of the camp bawled stentoriously; the military commissary bustled around; the sergeants training the young cossacks shouted their orders. They were assembled behind a hill for the attack
, they cunningly encircled the ‘enemy’. They fired at targets. The younger cossacks eagerly vied with one another in the sabre exercises, the old hands dodged the fatigues.

  About a week before the break-up of the camp Ivan Tomilin’s wife came to visit him. She brought him some home-made cracknel, an assortment of dainties and a sheaf of village news.

  She left again very early in the morning, taking the cossacks’ greetings and instructions to their families and relations in the village. Only Stepan Astakhov sent no message back by her. He had fallen ill the evening before, had taken vodka to cure himself and was incapable of seeing anything in the whole wide world, including Tomilin’s wife. He did not turn up on parade; at his request the doctor’s assistant let his blood, setting a dozen leeches on his chest. Stepan sat in his undershirt against one wheel of his cart (making the white linen casing of his cap oily with cart grease) and with gaping mouth watched the leeches sucking at his swollen breasts and distending with dark blood.

  Tomilin approached. He winked:

  ‘Stepan, I’d like a word with you,’ he said.

  ‘Well, get on with it.’

  ‘My wife’s been here on a visit. She left this morning.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘There’s a lot of talk about your wife in the village …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not pleasant talk, either.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s playing about with Gregor Melekhov. Quite openly.’

  Turning pale, Stepan tore the leeches from his chest and crushed them underfoot. He crushed them to the very last one, buttoned up his shirt, and then, as though suddenly afraid, unbuttoned it again. His blenched lips moved incessantly. They trembled, slipped into an awkward smile, shrivelled and gathered into a livid pucker. Tomilin thought Stepan must be chewing something hard and solid. Gradually the colour returned to his face, the lips, caught by his teeth, froze into immobility. He took off his cap, smeared the grease over the white casing with his sleeve, and said aloud:

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’