And Quiet Flows the Don Page 8

  ‘What’s the matter? Have I offended you …? Aksinia! Now, wait! Stop, I want to say something.’

  She tore her hands from her face. ‘I came here to get advice. What did you come for? It’s bitter enough as it is. And you … I didn’t come to fasten myself on you. Don’t be afraid,’ she panted.

  At that moment she really believed that she had not come to fasten herself on Gregor, but as she had run along by the Don she had vaguely thought: ‘I’ll talk him over! Who else am I to live with?’ Then she had remembered Stepan and had obstinately shaken her head, driving away the troublesome thought.

  ‘So our love is done with?’ Gregor asked, and turned on to his stomach, supporting himself on one elbow and spitting out the rosy petals of the flower he had been chewing.

  ‘How, done with?’ Aksinia took alarm. ‘How?’ she insisted, trying to look into his eyes.

  He turned his eyes away.

  The dry, exhausted earth smelt of moisture and sun. The wind rustled among the sunflower leaves. For a moment the sun was darkened, overcast with a fleeting cloud; and over the steppe, over the village, over Aksinia’s moody head, fell a smoky shadow.

  Gregor sighed – his sigh was like that of a horse with a sore throat – and lay on his back, warming his shoulders against the hot soil.

  ‘Listen, Aksinia!’ he began slowly. ‘I’ve … got … an idea … I’ve been thinking …’

  Through the garden came the creaking sound of a cart, and a woman’s voice: ‘Gee up, baldhead!’

  To Aksinia the call seemed so close that she dropped full length to the ground. Raising his head, Gregor whispered:

  ‘Take your kerchief off. It shows up … They mayn’t have seen us.’

  She removed her kerchief. The burning breeze wandering among the sunflowers played with the wisps of golden down on her neck. The noise of the cart slowly died away.

  ‘And this is what I’ve been thinking,’ Gregor began again. Then, more animatedly: ‘What’s done can’t be undone. Why try to fix the blame? Somehow we’ve got to go on living …’

  Aksinia listened anxiously, breaking a stalk in her hand as she waited. She looked into Gregor’s face and caught the dry and sober glitter of his eyes.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, let us put an end to …’

  Aksinia swayed. Her fingers contorted and her nostrils distended as she awaited the end of the sentence. A fire of terror and impatience avidly licked her face, her mouth went dry. She thought he was about to say: ‘put an end to Stepan,’ but he vexatiously licked his writhing lips and said:

  ‘… put an end to the story. Ah?’

  Aksinia stood up, and pressing through the swaying, yellow heads of the sunflowers, went towards the gate.

  ‘Aksinia!’ Gregor called in a strangled voice. The gate scraped.

  He threw off his cap so that the crimson band should not be seen, and stared after Aksinia. It was not she that he saw – it was not her usual virile, swinging walk – another, an unknown and a stranger.

  Immediately after the rye was cut, and before it could be carried to the barns, the wheat ripened. In the clayey fields and on the slopes the parching leaves turned yellow and wilted into tubes, and the stalks withered.

  The harvest was good, everybody joyfully remarked. The ears were full, the grain heavy and large. But since the spring the corn had been affected by a drought coming from the east, so the stalks were short and the straw worthless.

  After talking the matter over with Ilinichna, Pantaleimon decided that if the Korshunovs agreed to the match, the wedding would have to be postponed until the 1st of August. He had not yet called on the Korshunovs for an answer: first the harvesting had to be done, and then he had waited for a convenient holiday.

  The Melekhovs set out to begin reaping on a Friday. Pantaleimon stripped a wagon and prepared the underframe for carrying the sheaves. Piotra and Gregor went to the fields to reap. Piotra rode and Gregor walked alongside. Gregor was moody, and knobs of flesh went quivering up from the lower jaw to his cheekbones. Piotra knew this to be a sure sign that his brother was seething and ready for a quarrel, but, smiling behind his wheaten moustache, he set to work to tease Gregor.

  ‘God’s truth, she told me herself!’ he declared.

  ‘Well, what if she did?’ Gregor muttered, chewing the down of his moustache.

  ‘“As I’m on my way back from town,” she says, “I hear voices in the Melekhovs’ sunflower patch.”’

  ‘Piotra, stop it!’

  ‘“Yes, voices. And I glance through the fence …”’

  Gregor blinked and he went grey. ‘Will you stop it, or won’t you?’ he demanded.

  ‘You’re a queer lad! Let me finish!’

  ‘I warn you, Piotra, we shall come to blows,’ Gregor threatened, falling behind.

  Piotra raised his eyebrows and turned round in his seat to face Gregor.

  ‘“… I glance through the fence, and there I see them, the two lovers, lying in each other’s arms!” she says. “Who?” I asked, and she answers: “Why, Aksinia and your brother.” I say …’

  Seizing the handle of a pitchfork lying at the back of the reaping machine, Gregor flung himself at his brother. Piotra dropped the reins, leapt from his seat, and sprang in front of the horses.

  ‘Pah, the devil!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s gone barmy! Pah! Just look at him …’

  Baring his teeth like a wolf, Gregor threw the pitchfork at his brother. Piotra dropped to his hands and knees, and flying over him the pitchfork buried its points a couple of inches into the earth and stuck upright, whanging and quivering.

  Scowling, Piotra caught at the bridles of the startled horses and swore lustily: ‘You might have killed me, you swine!’

  ‘Yes, and I would have killed you!’

  ‘You’re a fool, a mad devil. You’re your father’s son all right, you true Turk.’

  Gregor pulled the pitchfork out of the ground and followed after the reaping machine. Piotra beckoned to him with his finger.

  ‘Come here! Give me that pitchfork,’ he ordered.

  He passed the reins into his left hand, and took the pitchfork by the prongs. Then with the handle he struck Gregor across the spine.

  ‘A strap would have been better,’ he grumbled, keeping his eyes on Gregor, who had leapt away. After a moment or two they lit cigarettes, stared into each other’s eyes and burst into peals of laughter.

  Christonia’s wife, who was driving home along another road, had seen Gregor attack his brother. She stood up in her wagon, balancing precariously on the rye sheaves; but she could not see what happened, as the Melekhovs’ reaping machine and horses were between her and the brothers. Hardly had she reached the village street when she cried to a neighbour:

  ‘Klimovna! Run and tell Prokoffievitch the Turk that his boys have been fighting with pitchforks close to the Tartar mound. Gregor jabbed Piotra in the side with the fork, and then Piotra gave him … The blood poured out. It was horrible!’

  Meantime the brothers had begun reaping. Piotra was growing hoarse with bawling at the tired horses, and Gregor, his dusty foot resting on the transom, was pitchforking the swathes off the reaper. Reaping was in progress all over the steppe. The blades of the machines rattled and groaned, the steppe was spotted with swathes of corn. Mimicking the drivers, the marmots whistled in the hollows.

  ‘Two more lengths, and we’ll stop for a smoke!’ Piotra shouted above the noise of the machine. Gregor nodded. He could hardly open his parched lips. He gripped his pitchfork closer to the prongs in order to get a better leverage on the heavy swathes, and breathed spasmodically. A bitter perspiration poured down his face and stung in his eyes like soap. Halting the horses, they had a drink and a smoke.

  ‘There’s someone riding a horse pretty hard along the road,’ Piotra remarked, shading his eyes with his palm.

  Gregor stared, and raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

  ‘It’s father, surely?’

  ‘You’re mad! What coul
d he be riding? We’ve got both horses here.’

  ‘It’s him! God’s truth, it’s father.’

  The rider drew nearer, and after a moment he could be seen clearly. ‘Yes, it’s father!’ Piotra began to dance in anxious surprise.

  ‘Something happened at home,’ Gregor gave expression to the thought troubling them both.

  When still a hundred yards away, Pantaleimon reined his horse in. ‘I’ll thrash you, you sons of a bitch!’ he yelled, waving his leather whip above his head.

  ‘What on earth …!’ Piotra was completely flabbergasted, and thrust half his moustache into his mouth.

  ‘Get the other side of the reaper! By God, he’ll lash us with that knout; while we’re getting to the bottom of it he’ll whip our guts out,’ Gregor smiled, putting the machine between himself and his father.

  The foaming horse came over the swathes of corn at a trot. His feet knocking against the horse’s sides (for he was riding bareback), Pantaleimon shook his whip: ‘What have you been up to out here, you children of the devil?’ he demanded.

  ‘We’ve been reaping, as you can see,’ Piotra swept his arms around, nervously eyeing the whip.

  ‘Who’s been sticking which with the fork? What have you been fighting about?’

  Turning his back on his father, Gregor began in a loud whisper to count the clouds.

  ‘What fork? Who’s been fighting?’ Piotra looked his father up and down.

  ‘Why, she came running, the daughter of a hen, and shrieking: “Your boys have stuck each other with pitchforks.” Ah? What do you say to that?’ Pantaleimon shook his head ecstatically, and dropping the reins, jumped off his horse. ‘I borrowed a horse and came out at a gallop. Ah?’

  ‘Who told you all this?’ Piotra asked.

  ‘A woman!’

  ‘She was lying, father. She must have been asleep in her wagon and dreamt it.’

  ‘A petticoat again!’ Pantaleimon half-shouted, half-whistled, slobbering down his beard. ‘That hen, Klimovna! My God! Ah? I’ll whip the bitch!’ he danced with rage.

  Shaking with silent laughter, Gregor kept his eyes fixed on the ground. Piotra did not remove his eyes from his father, who was stroking his perspiring brow.

  Pantaleimon danced to his heart’s content, and then calmed down. He took the seat of the reaping machine and reaped a couple of lengths, then mounted his horse and rode back to the village. He left his forgotten whip lying on the ground. Piotra picked it up and swung it appraisingly, remarking to his brother:

  ‘We’d have had a bad time, young man. This isn’t a whip! It would have maimed you, brother. It could cut your head clean off.’

  The Korshunovs had the reputation of being the richest family in the village of Tatarsk. They had fourteen pairs of bullocks, horses, mares from stud farms, fifteen cows, innumerable other cattle, a flock of several hundred sheep. Their iron-roofed house was as good as that of Mokhov the merchant: it had six panelled rooms. The yard was paved with new and handsome tiles. The garden covered a good three acres. What more could man want?

  So it was rather timidly and with secret reluctance that Pantaleimon had paid his first visit to the Korshunovs to propose the match. The Korshunovs could find a much richer husband than Gregor for their daughter. Pantaleimon knew this and was afraid of a refusal. He did not like to go begging to Korshunov, but Ilinichna ate into him like rust into iron, and at last she overcame the old man’s obstinacy. So he drove one day to the Korshunovs for an answer, heartily cursing Gregor, and Ilinichna, and the whole wide world.

  Meantime, beneath the painted iron roof of the Korshunovs’ hut a burning dissension had arisen. After the Melekhovs’ departure Natalia declared to her father and mother:

  ‘If Gregor loves me, I’ll never wed another.’

  ‘She’s found herself a bridegroom, the idiot,’ her father replied. ‘Only he’s as black as a gipsy. My little berry, I didn’t want you to have a husband like that.’

  ‘I want no other, father,’ the girl flushed and began to weep. ‘You can take me to the convent otherwise.’

  ‘He’s too fond of walking the streets, he’s a woman-chaser, he runs after grass-widows,’ her father played his last card.

  ‘Well, and let him!’

  Natalia, 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 Natalia had not taken to any of the prospective bridegrooms, and nothing had come of them.

  In his heart, Miron liked Gregor for his cossack skill, his love of farming and hard work. He had picked him out among the crowd of village youths when Gregor had won the first prize in the horse races, but he thought it a little humiliating to give his daughter to a poor man, one, moreover, who had gained a bad notoriety.

  ‘A hard-working lad and good-looking,’ his wife whispered to him at night, stroking his freckled, hairy hand. ‘And Natalia has quite lost her heart to him …’

  Miron turned his back to his wife’s cold, withered breast, and snorted angrily:

  ‘Dry up, you turnip! God has taken away your reason. Good-looking!’ he stuttered. ‘Will you reap a harvest off his mug? It’s 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 back, pacifyingly stroked his hand.

  ‘Hey, the devil! Get away, can’t you? Leave me a little room! What are you stroking me for as if I was a cow with calf? And you know what Natalia is! She’d fall for anything in trousers.’

  ‘You should have some feeling for your child,’ she murmured right into his hairy ear. But Miron pressed himself against the wall and began to snore as though falling off to sleep.

  The Melekhovs’ arrival for an answer caught the Korshunovs in confusion. They came just after matins. As Ilinichna set her foot on the step of the wagonette she nearly overturned it, but Pantaleimon 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.

  ‘Good health!’ Pantaleimon crowed, stumbling over the doorstep. He was at once abashed by the loudness of his own voice, and attempted to amend matters by stuffing a good half-pound of his black beard into his mouth, and crossing himself unnecessarily before the ikon.

  ‘Good day,’ Miron replied, staring at them askance.

  ‘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 Gregorievitch, to find out what you have come to among yourselves – whether we are to make a match of it or not.’

  ‘Come in, please; sit down, please,’ Maria welcomed them, bowing and sweeping the floor with the edge of her long, pleated skirt.

  Ilinichna sat down, her poplin coat rustling. Miron Gregorievitch rested his elbows on the new French cloth of the table, and was silent. The French cloth was adorned with pictures of the late Tsar and Tsarina in the corners, whilst in the centre were the August Imperial Princesses in white hats, and the fly-blown Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovitch.

  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, and apparently from behind her back, Ilinichna drew out a great loaf of white bread and smacked it down on the table. For some unknown reason Pantaleimon wanted to cross himself, but his withered talon fingers, 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 st
ealthily slipped behind the open edge of his blue overcoat and drew out a red-headed bottle.

  Blinking excitedly, Pantaleimon glanced at Miron’s freckled face and caressingly slapped the bottle’s broad bottom.

  ‘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 greasy rings of Melekhov’s beard were groping among the straight red strands of Korshunov’s. Pantaleimon’s breath smelt sweetly 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. Think, dear kinsman, think how you are trying to shame me. Gaiters with goloshes, one; a fur coat, two; two woollen dresses, three; a silk kerchief, four. That means ruin to me.’

  Pantaleimon opened his arms wide. Miron drooped his head and stared at the French cloth, flooded with spilt vodka and pickled cucumber water. He read the inscription written in a sportive scroll at the top: ‘The Russian Autocrats’. 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 not visible, an empty vodka bottle stood on them. 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 stared self-satisfiedly out of a broad-brimmed hat, 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 husbands, then I shall stare, and you’ll flutter,’ he thought.

  Pantaleimon droned on into his ear like a great black bumble-bee. He 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.’