The Cossacks (26 page)

Olenin returned to the village. That evening he heard that Lukashka was dying, and that a Tatar from across the river was trying to heal him with herbs.

The bodies had been brought to the village council, and women and children had hurried over to look at them.

Olenin had returned around dusk and for a long time could not recover from what he had seen. But with nightfall, the memories of the previous evening with Maryanka came rushing back. He looked out the window. Maryanka was doing chores, going from the house to the storeroom and back. Her mother had gone to the vineyard, and her father was at the village council. Olenin, unable to wait until she finished her chores, went over to speak to her. As he entered the room, she turned away, which he took to be out of shyness.

“Maryanka,” he said. “You don’t mind if I come in, do you?”

She turned around abruptly. There was a trace of tears in her eyes. Her face was touched by a beautiful sadness. She looked at him silently and imperiously.

“Maryanka, I’ve come …,” he began.

“Leave me alone,” she said, her expression not changing, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“Why are you crying? What happened?”

“What happened?” she asked in a rough, harsh voice. “Cossacks have been killed, that’s what’s happened!”

“You’re worried about Lukashka?”

“Go away!”

“Maryanka!” Olenin said, approaching her.

“You’ll never get anything from me!”

“Don’t say such things,” Olenin begged.

“Go away, I hate you!” she shouted, stamping her foot and coming toward him threateningly. Her face expressed such contempt, hatred, and disgust that Olenin suddenly knew he had nothing to hope for, and that his original impression that she was inaccessible to him had been right. He ran out of the house.

Back in his room he lay motionless on his bed for two hours, then he went to his company commander to ask for a transfer to headquarters. Without bidding anyone farewell, and settling his accounts with the cornet through Vanyusha, he prepared to set out to the fort where the regiment was stationed. Only Uncle Eroshka came to see him off. They drank a glass, then another, and then another. Just as when he left Moscow, a troika stood waiting outside the door. But Olenin did not deliberate with himself, as he had back then, nor did he tell himself that everything here he had thought and done was “not quite right.” He no longer promised himself that he was embarking on a new life. He loved Maryanka more than ever but knew that she would never love him.

“Farewell, my dear friend,” Uncle Eroshka said. “When you’re on your expedition, be more clever than I was! Listen to the words of an old man! When you are out on a sortie—I am an old wolf and have seen it all—and they start shooting, don’t go running to huddle with the other soldiers in a group. When you Russian soldiers get frightened,
you all crowd together, thinking you’re hog-free when there’s a lot of you. But it’s the worst thing you can do! The first thing the enemy always does is shoot at a crowd. In my day, I always saw to it that I got as far away from the others as I could, and I wasn’t hit even once! Ah, the things I’ve seen in my time!”

“But you’ve got a bullet in your back,” Vanyusha said, packing up Olenin’s last things.

“Ah well, that was just us Cossacks messing around,” Eroshka replied.

“Cossacks? What do you mean?” Olenin asked.

“Simple enough. We were all drinking, and Vanka Sitkin, one of our Cossacks, was roaring drunk, and suddenly, bang, right here in the back.”

“Did it hurt?” Olenin asked and turning to Vanyusha added, “Is everything ready yet?”

“What’s the rush? I’ll tell you all about it. When he shot me, the bullet didn’t cut through the bone but stayed right there. And I said to Vanka, ‘You’ve killed me, my friend! Is that what you’re trying to do? But don’t think I’m going to let you off so easily: You have to stand me a bucket of Chikhir.’”

“But did it hurt?” Olenin asked again, not really listening to Eroshka’s tale.

“Let me finish. So he stood me a bucket. We drank it. And all the time, the blood was oozing out. The whole room was full of blood. So Uncle Burlak says to Vanka, ‘As the boy’s going to croak, you’d better stand us a jug of vodka too, or we’ll drag you to court.’ So vodka was brought out, and we drank and drank …”

“Yes, but did it hurt?” Olenin asked again.

“What do you mean did it hurt? Don’t interrupt me! I don’t like being interrupted. Let me finish. So, we drank and drank till morning, until I fell asleep on the bench above the stove, completely drunk. When I woke up I couldn’t straighten up.”

“Did it hurt a lot?” Olenin repeated, imagining that this time he would finally get an answer.

“Did I say that it hurt? It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t straighten up, I couldn’t walk.”

“So did it heal?” Olenin asked, so miserable that he didn’t even laugh.

“It did, but the bullet’s still there. Go on, feel it,” Eroshka said, rolling up his shirt to reveal his robust back, where the bullet was lodged near his spine. “See how it rolls?” he added, playfully rolling the bullet like a toy. “Look how far it can roll.”

“Do you think Lukashka will live?” Olenin asked.

“Only God knows. There’s no doctors here. They went to get one.”

“Where from, Grozny?”

“No, my friend,” Eroshka said. “If I was the Czar I would have hung all your Russian doctors long ago. All they know how to do is cut a man to pieces. You should see what they did to poor old Baklashev: they cut off his leg and left him half a man. That’s the kind of fools they are. Baklashev is worth nothing now. No, my friend, in the mountains there’s some real doctors. Like with my blood brother Girchik: on one of the campaigns he was injured right here, in the chest. Your doctors said they could do nothing for him, and so Saib came down from the mountains and cured him. Those doctors know their herbs, my friend!”

“That’s all nonsense!” Olenin said. “I’ll send a doctor from headquarters.”

“That’s all nonsense, I’ll send a doctor from headquarters,” Eroshka mimicked. “What a fool! What a fool! If your doctors could heal anyone, wouldn’t all the Cossacks and Chechens go running to them for cures? But as you yourself can see, even your own officers and colonels keep calling in mountain healers. All your doctors are frauds, all of them!”

Olenin said nothing. He agreed only too well that everything in the past world to which he was now returning was a fraud. “What about Lukashka, did you go see him?” he asked.

“He’s just lying there like a dead man,” Eroshka replied. “He won’t eat, won’t drink, only vodka. But as long as he’s drinking vodka, there’s hope. It would be a pity to lose him. He was a good boy, a real fighter, just like me. I was dying like him once—the old women were already wailing over my body. My head was in a fever. They laid me out under the holy icons. So I am lying there, and above me on the stove I see
rows of little drummers, tiny ones, all of them drumming the tattoo. I shout at them, but the more I shout, the harder they drum.” Eroshka laughed. “The women brought in the priest, they were getting ready to bury me. They said, ‘You were a worldly sinner, had fun with women, killed men, ate meat on fasting days, played the balalaika. Confess your sins!’ So I began to confess. ’I have sinned,’ I said. Whatever the priest asked, I always answered, ‘Yes, I have sinned.’ He asked me about the balalaika. ‘Yes, I have sinned,’ I replied. ‘Where is the accursed instrument?’ the priest shouted. ‘Where is it? Give it to me and I will hack it to pieces!’ And I said to him, ‘I don’t have it anymore.’ But it was right outside in the shed, hidden under some nets. I knew they wouldn’t be able to find it. So they left, and I got well again. But when I went to find the balalaika, I … But what was I talking about before? Ah yes, you must stay away from the crowd during skirmishes, or they’ll shoot you like a fool! I’d hate to see that happen to you. You hold your liquor well and I love you. But you Russians always like riding up onto hillocks. There was a fellow here, he’d also come down from Russia, like you, and he kept riding up onto whatever hillock he could find. He always called them ‘knolls,’ or something strange. No sooner did he clap eyes on a hillock than up he rode! So one day he went galloping up a hillock, very pleased with himself. But a Chechen picked him off and killed him. Ah, how those Chechens can shoot from their rifle rests! They’re better than I am. But I don’t like it when a fellow gets killed for nothing. I used to watch your soldiers in amazement. What fools! There they’d be, marching away all huddled together with their red collars! How could they not be shot down? One soldier would get killed, fall, get dragged off, and another one would take his place right away. What fools!” the old man repeated, shaking his head. “Why not spread out, and go one by one? That way you can march in an attack, and no one will hit you. That’s what you must do!”

“Thank you, Uncle Eroshka. Farewell. God grant that we meet again!” Olenin said, getting up and heading to the door.

The old man remained seated on the floor.

“Is that how friends say good-bye? You fool!” Eroshka shouted. “What is the world coming to! A whole year we drank together, and now it’s just good-bye and off you go? And here I am, who love you
and feel for you! You who are so sad and alone, always alone. Unloved by anyone! So many nights I couldn’t sleep feeling sorry for you! As the song goes: ‘It is hard, my brother, to live alone, in distant lands so far from home.’ That’s just how it’s been with you.”

“Well, farewell,” Olenin repeated.

The old man stood up and gave him his hand. Olenin shook it and turned to go.

“Give me your cheek! Your cheek!” the old man said. He grabbed Olenin’s head with his large hands, kissed him three times with his wet mustache and lips, and began to cry. “I love you! Good-bye!”

Olenin climbed onto the cart.

“What? You’re leaving just like that? You must give me something to remember you by! Give me your rifle! What do you need two for?” the old man said, sobbing with genuine tears.

Olenin took his rifle and handed it to him.

“The things you’ve given that old man!” Vanyusha growled. “And he still wants more, the old beggar! These people here are all so grasping,” he added, wrapping himself in his coat and sitting down on the box.

“Quiet, you swine!” the old man shouted with a guffaw. “What a miser!”

Maryanka came out of the shed, glanced indifferently at the troika, bowed, and went into the house.

“La fille!”
Vanyusha said with a wink and laughed foolishly.

“Let’s go!” Olenin shouted angrily.

“Good-bye, my friend! Good-bye! I won’t forget you!” Eroshka called out.

Olenin looked back. Uncle Eroshka was chatting with Maryanka, and neither he nor she turned to look at him.

I am grateful to my Russian editor, Katya Ilina, for her scholarly input and for checking my translations. At Random House, I would like to thank my editor, Judy Sternlight; production editor Vincent La Scala; and copy editor Susan M. S. Brown for their invaluable help. My warmest thanks to my agent, Jessica Wainwright, for her unflagging encouragement and interest in Russian literature, and Burton Pike, whose advice and translation expertise were a great help throughout the project.

1. “The great Russians have the secret of simplicity,” wrote the American novelist and literary critic William Dean Howells. “Tolstoy is, of course, the first of them in this supreme grace … [his novels] are alike in their single endeavor to get the persons living before you, both in their action and in the peculiarly dramatic interpretation of their emotion and cogitation.” Do you agree? If you have read other novels by Tolstoy, such as
Anna Karenina
and
War and Peace
, do you think this opinion of Howells holds up?

2. According to the scholar of Russian literature Ernest J. Simmons, “The natural beauty of Cossack existence transforms Olenin into a philosophical reasoner searching for personal happiness, a kind of Rousseauistic ‘natural man.’ … Olenin’s conception of the romantic existence of the Cossacks is shattered by the reality of it.” Discuss.

3. “Three months have passed from the first time I saw a young Cossack woman by the name of Maryanka,” writes Olenin in a letter he will never send. “The ideas and prejudices of the world I had left behind were still fresh within me. In those days I did not believe that I could love this woman” (p. 130). How do Olenin’s feelings for Maryanka change over the course of the novel? Can you imagine them ending up together? Would it be a happy marriage?

4. “You and I are blood brothers, just like I am with Girei Khan across the river,” Lukashka tells Olenin (p. 111). How would you describe the evolving relationship between these two young men? What draws
them together, and how do they feel about each other, beneath the surface?