And Quiet Flows the Don Read online

  ‘I just wanted to warn you … You won’t mind …’

  Tomilin commiserately clapped his hands against his trousers, and went off to his horse. Stepan stood for a moment staring fixedly and sternly at the black smear on his cap. A half-crushed, dying leech crawled up his boot.

  In ten more days the cossacks would be returning from camp.

  Aksinia lived in a frenzy of belated, bitter love. Despite his father’s threats, Gregor slipped off and went to her at night, coming home at dawn.

  For two weeks he had strained like a horse striving beyond its powers. With lack of sleep his brown face was suffused with a blue tinge, his tired eyes gazed wearily out of their sunken sockets. Aksinia went about with her face completely uncovered, the deep pits under her eyes darkened funereally, her swollen, slightly pouting, avid lips smiled troubledly and challengingly.

  So extraordinary and open was their mad association, so ecstatically did they burn with a single, shameless flame, neither conscience-stricken nor hiding their love from the world, that people began to be ashamed to meet them in the street. Gregor’s comrades, who previously had chaffed him about Aksinia, now silently avoided him, or felt awkward and constrained in his company. In their hearts the women envied Aksinia, yet they condemned her, malevolently exulting at the prospect of Stepan’s return, and pining with bestial curiosity.

  If Gregor had made some show of hiding the liaison from the world, and if Aksinia had kept her relations with Gregor comparatively secret, the world would have seen nothing unusual in it. The village would have gossiped a little and then forgotten all about it. But they lived together almost openly, they were bound by a mighty feeling which had no likeness to any temporary association, and the villagers held their breath in filthy expectation. Stepan would return and cut the knot.

  Over the bed in the Astakhovs’ bedroom ran a string threaded with decorative empty white and black cotton-reels. The flies spent their night on the reels, and spiders’ webs stretched from them to the ceiling. Gregor was lying on Aksinia’s bare, cold arm and gazing up at the chain of reels. Aksinia’s other hand was playing with the thick strands of hair on his head. Her fingers smelt of warm milk; when Gregor turned his head, pressing his nose into Aksinia’s armpit, the pungent, sweetish scent of woman’s sweat flooded his nostrils.

  In addition to the wooden, painted bedstead with pointed pine cones at the corners, the room contained, close to the door, an iron-bound, capacious chest holding Aksinia’s dowry and finery. In the corner was a table, an oleograph with General Skoboliov riding at a flapping banner dipped before him, two chairs, and above them ikons in miserable paper aureoles. Along the side wall were hung fly-blown photographs. One was of a group of cossacks, with tousled heads, swelling chests decorated with watch-chains, and drawn sabres: Stepan with his comrades in army service. On a hook hung Stepan’s uniform. The moon stared through the window and uncertainly fingered the two ornamental white knots on the shoulder-straps.

  With a sigh Aksinia kissed Gregor on his brow between the eyes.

  ‘Grishka, my love,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Only nine days left …’

  ‘That’s not so soon.’

  ‘What am I to do, Grishka?’

  ‘How am I to know?’

  Aksinia restrained a sigh and again smoothed and parted Gregor’s matted hair.

  ‘Stepan will kill me,’ she half-asked, half-declared.

  Gregor was silent. He wanted to sleep. With difficulty he forced open his clinging eyelids and saw right above him the bluish depths of Aksinia’s eyes.

  ‘When my husband returns, I suppose you will give me up. Are you afraid?’ she asked.

  ‘Why should I be afraid of him? You’re his wife, it’s for you to be afraid.’

  ‘When I’m with you I’m not afraid, but when I think about it in the daytime I’m frightened.’

  Gregor yawned and said:

  ‘It isn’t Stepan’s return that matters. My father is talking of getting me married off.’

  He smiled and was going to add something, but beneath his head he felt Aksinia’s hand suddenly wilt and soften, bury itself in the pillow, and after a moment harden again.

  ‘Who has he spoken to?’ she asked in a stifled voice.

  ‘He’s only talking about it. Mother said he’s thinking of Korshunov’s Natalia.’

  ‘Natalia … She’s a beautiful girl. Too beautiful … Well, and you’ll marry her. I saw her in church the other day. Dressed up she was …’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about her beauty. I want to marry you.’

  Aksinia sharply pulled her arm away from under Gregor’s head and stared with dry eyes at the window. A frosty, yellow mist was in the yard. The shed cast a heavy shadow. The crickets were chirruping. Down by the Don the bitterns boomed; their deep bass tones came throught the window.

  ‘Grishka!’ she said.

  ‘Thought of something?’

  Aksinia seized Gregor’s rough, unyielding hands, pressed them to her breast, to her cold, deathly cheeks, and cried:

  ‘What did you take up with me for, curse you! What shall I do? Grishka! … I am lost … Stepan is coming, and what answer shall I give him? … Who is there to look after me?’

  Gregor was silent. Aksinia gazed mournfully at his handsome eagle nose, his shadowed eyes, his dumb lips … And suddenly a flood of feeling swept away the dam of restraint. She madly kissed his face, his neck, his arms, the rough, curly black hair on his chest, and whilst gathering her breath, whispered (and Gregor felt her body trembling):

  ‘Grishka … my dearest … beloved … let us go away. My dear! We’ll throw up everything and go. I’ll leave my husband and all else, so long as you are with me … We’ll go far away to the mines. I shall love you and care for you. I have an uncle who is a watchman at the Paromonov mines: he’ll help me … Grishka! Say just one little word!’

  Gregor lay thinking, then unexpectedly opened his burning Asiatic eyes. They were laughing, blinding with derision.

  ‘You’re a fool, Aksinia, a fool! You talk away, but you say nothing worth listening to. Where shall I go to away from the farm? I’ve got to do my military service next year … I’ll never stir anywhere away from the land. Here there is the steppe, and something to breathe – but there? Last summer I went with father to the station. I almost died. Engines roaring, the air heavy with burning coal. How the people live, I don’t know; perhaps they’re used to it!’ Gregor spat out and said again: ‘I’ll never leave the village.’

  The night grew darker outside the window, a cloud passed over the moon. The frosty, yellow mist vanished from the yard, the shadows were washed away, and it was no longer possible to tell whether it was last year’s brushwood or some old bush that loomed darkly beyond the fence outside the window.

  In the room also the shadows gathered. The knots on Stepan’s uniform faded, and in the grey, stagnant impenetrability Gregor failed to see the fine shiver that shook Aksinia’s shoulders, nor her head pressed between her hands and silently shaking on the pillow.

  After the visit of Tomilin’s wife Stepan’s features noticeably darkened. His brows hung over his eyes, a deep and harsh frown puckered his forehead. In his sullen, seething rage Stepan carried his burden of sorrow like a horse bearing a rider. He talked but little with his comrades, began to quarrel over trifles, and would hardly look at Piotra Melekhov. The threads of friendship which had previously united them were snapped. They returned home enemies.

  They set out for their village in the same group as before. Piotra’s and Stepan’s horses were harnessed into the wagon. Christonia rode behind on his own horse. Tomilin was suffering with a fever, and lay covered with his coat in the wagon. Fiodot Bodovskov was too lazy to drive, so Piotra took the reins. Stepan walked along at the side of the wagon, lashing off the purple heads of the roadside thistles with his whip. Rain was falling. The rich black earth stuck to the wheels like grease. The sky was an autumnal blue, ashy
with cloud. Night fell. No lights of any village were to be seen. Piotra belaboured the horses liberally with the knout. And suddenly Stepan shouted in the darkness:

  ‘You, what the … you …! You spare your own horse, and keep the knout on mine all the time.’

  ‘Watch more carefully! The one that doesn’t pull is the one I whip up.’

  Stepan did not reply. They rode on for another half-hour in silence. The mud squelched beneath the wheels. The rain pattered noisily against the tarpaulin. Piotra dropped the reins and smoked, mentally reviewing all the insulting words he would use in the next quarrel with Stepan.

  The wagon suddenly jolted and stopped. Slipping in the mud, the horses pawed the earth.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Stepan took alarm.

  ‘Give us a light,’ Piotra demanded.

  In front the horses struggled and snorted. Someone struck a match. A tiny orange ring of light, then darkness again. With trembling hands Piotra held the fallen horse down by the bridle.

  The horse sighed and rolled over, the centre-shaft groaned. Stepan struck a bundle of matches. His own horse lay with one foreleg thrust to the knee in a marmot’s hole.

  Christonia unfastened the traces.

  ‘Unharness Piotra’s horse, quickly,’ he ordered.

  At last Stepan’s horse was lifted with difficulty to its feet. While Piotra held it by the bridle, Christonia crawled on his knees in the mud, feeling the helplessly hanging leg.

  ‘Seems to be broken,’ he boomed. ‘But see if he can walk.’

  Piotra pulled at the bridle. The horse hopped a step or two, not putting its left foreleg to the ground, and whinnied. Drawing on his greatcoat, Tomilin stamped about bitterly.

  ‘Broken, is it? A horse lost!’ he fumed.

  Stepan, who all this while had not spoken a word, almost seemed to have been awaiting such a remark. Thrusting Christonia aside he flung himself on Piotra. He aimed at his head, but missed and struck his shoulder. They grappled together and fell into the mud. There was the sound of a tearing shirt. Stepan got Piotra beneath him, and holding his head down with one knee, pounded away with his fists. Christonia dragged him off.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Piotra shouted, spitting out blood.

  ‘Don’t drive off the road, you serpent!’

  Piotra tore himself out of Christonia’s hands.

  ‘Now, now! You try fighting me!’ Christonia roared, with one hand holding Piotra against the wagon.

  They harnessed Bodovskov’s small but sturdy horse with Piotra’s. Christonia ordered Stepan to ride his horse, and himself crawled into the cart with Piotra. It was midnight when they arrived at a village. They stopped at the first hut, and Christonia begged a night’s shelter.

  Bodovskov led the horses in. He stumbled over a pig’s trough thrown down in the middle of the yard, and cursed vigorously. They led the horses under the roof of the shed. Tomilin, his teeth chattering, went into the hut. Piotra and Christonia remained in the cart.

  At dawn they made ready to set out again. Stepan came out of the hut, an ancient, bowed woman, hobbling after him. She followed him under the shed.

  ‘Which one is it?’ she asked.

  ‘The black,’ sighed Stepan.

  The woman lay her stick on the ground, and with an unusually strong, masculine movement raised the horse’s damaged leg. She felt the knee-cap carefully with her fine, crooked fingers. The horse set back its ears and reared on to its hind legs with the pain.

  ‘No, there’s no break there, cossack. Leave him and I’ll heal him.’

  Stepan waved his hand and went to the cart.

  ‘Leave him or not?’ the old woman blinked after him.

  ‘Let him stop,’ he replied.

  ‘I yearn after him, old woman! I’m pining away in my own eyes. I can’t put tucks into my skirt fast enough. When he goes past the yard my heart burns. I’d fall to the ground and kiss his footprints. Help me! They’re going to wed him off … Help me, dear … Whatever it costs, I’ll give you … My last shirt I’ll give you, only help me!’

  With luminous eyes set in a lacework of furrows the old crone Drozhdikha looked at Aksinia, shaking her head at the girl’s bitter story.

  ‘Whose is the young man?’

  ‘Pantaleimon Melekhov’s.’

  ‘That’s the Turk, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The old woman chewed away with her withered mouth, and dallied with her answer.

  ‘Come to me very early tomorrow, child, as soon as it is lightening. We’ll go down to the Don, to the water. We’ll wash away your yearning. Bring a pinch of salt with you.’

  Aksinia wrapped her face in her yellow shawl and crept cautiously out through the gate. Her dark figure was swallowed up in the night. Her steps died away. From somewhere at the end of the village came the sound of singing.

  At dawn Aksinia, who had not slept a wink all night, was at Drozhdikha’s window.

  ‘Old woman!’ she called.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me, Aksinia! Get up!’

  They made their way by side-turnings down to the river. By the waterside the sand stung icily. A damp, chilly mist crept up from the Don.

  Drozhdikha took Aksinia’s hand in her own bony hand and drew her toward the river.

  ‘Give me the salt. Cross yourself to the sunrise,’ she told her.

  Aksinia crossed herself, staring spitefully at the happy rosiness of the east.

  ‘Take up some water in your palm and drink. Hurry!’

  Aksinia drank. Like a black spider the old woman straddled over a lazily rolling wave, squatted down, and whispered.

  ‘Prickly chilliness, flowing from the bottom … Burning flesh … A beast in the heart … Yearning and fever … By the holy cross, most holy, most immaculate Mother … The slave of God, Gregor …’ reached Aksinia’s ears.

  Drozhdikha sprinkled some salt over the damp sand at her feet and some more into the water, then gave the rest to Aksinia.

  ‘Sprinkle some water over your shoulder. Quickly!’

  Aksinia did so. She stared sadly and spitefully at Drozhdikha’s russet cheeks.

  ‘That’s all, surely?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s all.’

  Aksinia ran breathlessly home. The cows were lowing in the yard. Daria, sleepy-eyed and flushed, was driving her cows off to join the village herd. She smiled as she saw Aksinia run past.

  ‘Slept well, neighbour?’ she asked.

  ‘Praise be!’

  ‘And where have you been so early?’

  ‘I had a call to make in the village.’

  The church bells were ringing for matins. The copper-tongued clapping rang out brokenly. The village herdsman cracked his stockwhip in the side-street. Aksinia hurriedly drove out the cows, then carried the milk into the porch to strain it. She wiped her hands on her apron, and, lost in thought, poured the milk into the strainer.

  A heavy rattle of wheels and snorting of horses in the street. Aksinia set down the pail and went to look out of the front window. Holding his sabre pommel, Stepan was coming through the wicket gate. Aksinia crumpled her apron in her fingers and sat down on the bench. Steps up the stairs … Steps in the porch … Steps at the very door …

  Stepan stood on the threshold, gaunt and estranged.

  ‘Well …’ he said.

  Aksinia, all her full, buxom body reeling, went to meet him.

  ‘Beat me,’ she said slowly, and stood sideways to him.

  ‘Well, Aksinia …’

  ‘I shan’t hide. Beat me, Stepan!’

  Her head sunk on her breast, huddled into a heap, protecting only her belly with her arms, she faced him. Her eyes stared unwinkingly from their dark rings, out of her dumb, fear-distorted face. Stepan swayed and passed by her. The scent of male sweat and the bitter pungency of road-travel came from his unwashed shirt. He dropped on to the bed without removing his cap. He lay shrugging his shoulders, throwing off his sword-belt. His blond moust
aches hung limply down. Not turning her head, Aksinia glanced sidelong at him. Stepan put his feet on the foot of the bed. The mud slowly slipped from his boots. He stared at the ceiling and played with the leather tassel of his sword.

  ‘Had breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘No …’

  ‘Get me something to eat.’

  He sipped some milk, wetting his moustache. He chewed slowly at the bread. Aksinia stood by the stove. In a burning terror she watched her husband’s little gristly ears rising and falling as he ate.

  Stepan slipped away from the table, and crossed himself.

  ‘Tell me all, dear,’ he curtly demanded.

  With bowed head Aksinia cleared the table. She was silent.

  ‘Tell me how you waited for your husband, how you defended a man’s honour. Well?’

  A terrible blow on the head tore the ground from Aksinia’s feet and flung her towards the door. Her back struck against the door-post, and she groaned heavily.

  Not only a limp and feeble woman, but lusty and sturdy men could Stepan send flying with a well-aimed blow on the head. Whether fear lifted Aksinia or whether she was moved by a woman’s vital nature – she lay a moment, rested, then scrambled on to all fours.

  Stepan had lit a cigarette, and was standing in the middle of the room yawning as she rose to her feet. He threw his tobacco pouch on to the table, but Aksinia was already slamming the door behind her. He chased after her.

  Streaming with blood, Aksinia ran towards the fence separating their yard from the Melekhovs’. Stepan overtook her at the fence. His black hand fell like a hawk on her head. The hair slipped between his fingers. He tore at it and threw her to the ground.

  What if a husband does trample his own wife with his boots? Armless Alexei Shamil walked past the gate, looked in, winked, and split his bushy little beard with a smile; after all, it was very understandable that Stepan should be punishing his lawfully wedded wife. Shamil wanted to stop to see whether he would beat her to death or not, but his conscience would not allow him. After all, he wasn’t a woman.

  Watching Stepan from afar, you would have thought someone was doing the Cossack dance. And so Gregor thought, as through the kitchen window he saw Stepan jumping up and down. But he looked again, and flew out of the hut. Pressing his fists against his chest, he ran on his toes to the fence. Piotra followed him.