And quiet flows the Don; a novel (10 page)

headland, the grey tops of ancient poplars rose haughtily and sternly. As Aksinya was drawing water she dropped her pail. She pulled up her skirt and waded in up to her knees. The water tickled her calves, and for the first time since Stepan's return she laughed quietly and uncertainly.

She glanced back at Grigory. Still waving his switch, he was slowly climbing the slope. With eyes that were misty with tears Aksinya caressed his strong legs as they confidently trod the ground. His broad sharovari tucked into white woollen stockings were gay with crimson stripes. On his back, over his shoulder-blade, fluttered a strip of freshly-torn shirt, and a triangle of swarthy flesh showed through the hole. With her eyes Aksinya kissed this tiny scrap of the beloved body which once had been hers; and tears fell on her pallid, smiling lips.

She set her pails down on the sand to hook them on to the yoke, and noticed the imprints of Grigory's shoes. She looked stealthily around: no one in sight except some boys bathing from the distant jetty. She squatted down and covered the footprint with her palm; then rose, swung the yoke across her shoulders, and hastened home, smiling to herself.

Caught in a muslin mistiness, the sun was passing over the village. Beyond the curly flock

of small white clouds spread a deep, cool, azure pasture. Over the burning iron roofs, over the deserted dusty streets, over the farmyards with their parched, yellow grass, hung a deathly sultriness.

When Aksinya approached the steps Stepan, in a broad-brimmed straw hat, was harnessing the horses to the reaping machine. "Pour some water into the pitcher."

Aksinya poured a pail of water into the pitcher and burned her fingers on the hot iron rim,

"You ought to have some ice or the water will get warm soon," she said, looking at her husband's perspiring back.

"Go and borrow some from the Melekhovs. No, don't go," Stepan shouted, remembering.

Aksinya went to shut the wicket-gate. Stepan lowered his eyes and snatched up the knout.

"Where are you going?"

"To shut the gate."

"Come back, you bitch. I told you not to

go."

She hurriedly returned to the steps and tried to hang her yoke on the rails, but her hands were trembling too much. The yoke clattered down the steps.

Stepan flung his tarpaulin coat over the front seat, and took up the reins,

"Open the gate."

As she did so, she ventured to ask: "When will you be back?"

"By evening. I've agreed to reap with Ani-kushka. Take the food along to him. He'll be coming out to the fields when he's finished at the smith's."

The wheels of the reaper squeaked as they carved into the grey plush of the dust. Aksinya went into the house and stood a moment with her hand pressed to her head, then, flinging a kerchief over her hair, ran down to the river.

"But suppose he comes back? What then?" the thought suddenly burned into her mind. She stopped as though she saw a deep pit at her feet, glanced back, and sped almost at a run along the river bank to the meadows.

Fences. Vegetable patches. A yellow sea of sunflowers outstaring the sun. The pale green of potato plants. There were the Shamil women hoeing their potato patch; bowed backs in pink shifts, hoes rising and falling sharply on the grey earth. Reaching the Melekhovs' garden Aksinya glanced around, then lifted the wattle hasp and opened the gate. She followed the path to the green stockade of sunflower stems. Stooping, she pressed into the midst of them,

smothering her face with golden pollen, then gathered her skirt and sat down on the weed-woven ground.

She listened: the silence rang in her ears. From somewhere above her came the lonely drone of a bee. For perhaps half an hour she sat thus, torturing herself with doubt. Would he come? She was about to go, and was adjusting her kerchief, when the gate scraped heavily.

"Aksinya!"

"This way."

"So you've come!" Rustling the leaves, Gri-gory approached and sat down at her side.

"What's that on your cheek?"

Aksinya smeared the fragrant golden dust with her sleeve.

"Must be from the sunflowers."

"There too, under your eye."

She brushed it off.

Their eyes met. And in reply to Grigory's mute inquiry, she broke into weeping.

"I can't stand it. . .. I'm lost, Grisha."

"What does he do?"

Fiercely she tore open the collar of her blouse. The pink, girlishly swelling breasts were covered with cherry-blue bruises.

"Don't you know? He beats me every day. He's sucking my blood.. . . And you're a fine

one. . . . Soiled me like a dog, and off you go. . . . You're all... ." She buttoned her blouse with trembling fingers, and, frightened that he might be offended, glanced at his averted face.

"So you're trying to put the blame on me?" he said slowly, biting a blade of grass.

"And aren't you to blame?" she cried fiercely.

"A dog doesn't worry an unwilling bitch." Aksinya hid her face in her hands. The insult struck home like a hard, calculated blow.

Grigory frowned and glanced sidelong at her. A tear was trickling between her first and middle fingers. A broken dusty sunray gleamed on the transparent drop, and dried its damp trace on her skin.

Grigory could not endure tears. He fidgeted impatiently, ruthlessly brushed a brown ant from his trousers, and glanced again at Aksinya. She hadn't moved; but three runnels of tears were now chasing down the back of her hand.

"What's the matter? Have I offended you? Aksinya! Now, wait! Stop, I want to say something."

She tore her hands from her face. "I came here to get advice. What did you do it for? It's bitter enough as it is. And you... /'

Grigory flushed with remorse. "Aksinya . . . I didn't mean to say that, don't take on,"

"I haven't come to fasten myself on you. You needn't be afraid."

At that moment she really believed that she had not come to fasten herself on Grigory, but as she had run along by the Don she had vaguely thought: "I'll talk him round! He won't get married. Who else am I to live with?" Then she had remembered Stepan and had obstinately shaken her head to drive away the troublesome thought.

"So our love is over?" Grigory asked, and turned on to his stomach, resting on one elbow and spitting out the rosy petals of the bindweed flower he had been chewing.

"What do you mean-over?" Aksinya took alarm. "What do you mean?" she insisted, trying to look into his eyes. There was a gleam of bluish white as he turned them away.

The dry, exhausted earth smelled of dust and sun. The wind rustled among the big green leaves. For a moment the sun was darkened, overcast with a fleeting cloud; and over the steppe, over the village, over Aksinya's moody head, over the pink cup of the bindweed flower, there fell a smoky shadow.

Grigory sighed abruptly and lay on his back, pressing his shoulder-blades into the hot soil.

"Listen, Aksinya!" he began slowly. "This is rotten somehow. . . . I've been thinking. . . ."

From the vegetable patch came the creaking sound of a cart, and a woman's voice: "Gee up, baldhead!"

To Aksinya the call seemed so close that she dropped flat on the ground. Raising his head, Grigory whispered:

"Take your kerchief off. It shows up. ... They might see us."

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

"Well, this is what I've been thinking," Grigory 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."

Aksinya listened anxiously, breaking a stalk in her hand as she waited. She looked into Gri-gory's face and caught the dry and sober glitter of his eyes.

"I've been thinking, let us put an end to . . ."

Aksinya swayed. Her fingers clawed into the tough bindweed as she waited for 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

impatiently he licked his dry lips (they were working fiercely) and said:

". . . put an end to this affair. Eh?"

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

"Aksinya!" Grigory called chokingly.

The gate creaked heavily in reply.

XVII

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 parched leaves turned yellow and curled up into tubes, and the stalks, having served their purpose, withered.

Everybody boasted of the good harvest. The ears were full, the grain heavy and large.

After talking the matter over with Ilyinichna, Pantelei decided that if the Korshunovs agreed to the match, the wedding could not take place before the 6th 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 holiday.

The Melekhovs began reaping on a Friday. Pantelei stripped the wagon and prepared the

underframe for carrying the sheaves. Pyotr and Grigory went to the fields to reap. Pyotr rode and Grigory walked alongside. Grigory was moody, and the muscles worked between his lower jaw and his cheek-bones. Pyotr knew this to be a sure sign that his brother was seething and ready for a quarrel, but smiling under his wheaten moustache, he set to work to tease Grigory.

"God's truth, she told me herself!"

"Well, what if she did?" Grigory muttered, chewing a hair of his moustache.

" 'As I'm on my way back from town,' she says, 'I hear voices in the Melekhovs' sunflower patch.' "

"Pyotr, stop it!"

"Yes, voices. 'And I glance through the fence, . . .' "

Grigory's eyelids quivered. "Will you stop it, or won't you?"

"You're a queer lad! Let me finish!"

"I warn you, Pyotr, we'll be fighting each other in a minute," Grigory threatened, falling behind.

Pyotr raised his eyebrows and turned round in his seat to face Grigory.

"'. . .1 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 an-

swers: "Why, Aksinya and your brother.' I

say "

Seizing the handle of a pitchfork lying at the back of the reaper, Grigory flung himself at his brother, Pyotr dropped the reins, leapt from his seat, and dodged in front of the horses.

"Pah, the devil!" he exclaimed. "He's gone mad! Pah! Just look at him. . .."

Baring his teeth like a wolf, Grigory threw the pitchfork at his brother. Pyotr dropped tc 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, Pyotr 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, a true Turk."

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

"Come here! Give me that pitchfork."

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

"Ought to have taken a better swing," he grumbled, keeping his eyes on Grigory, who

had leaped away. After a moment or two they lit cigarettes, stared into each other's eyes and burst out laughing.

Christonya's wife, who was driving home along another road, had seen Grigory attack his brother. She stood up in her wagon but could not see what happened, for the Mele-khovs' 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 Prokofyevich the Turk that his boys have been fighting with pitchforks close to the Tatar mound. Grigory jabbed Pyotr in the side with the fork, and then Pyotr gave him. . .. The blood poured out. It was horrible!"

Pyotr had grown hoarse with bawling at the tired horses and was whistling instead, Grigory, his dust-blackened foot resting on the transom, was pitchforking the swathes off the reaper. The horses, bitten raw by the flies, swished their tails and pulled unwillingly. Reaping was in progress all over the steppe. The blades of the machines rattled and groaned, the steppe was dotted with swathes of corn. Mimicking the drivers, the marmots whistled on the hillocks. "Two more lengths, and we'll stop for a smoke!" Pyotr shouted above the noise of the

machine. Grigory 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. His dripping chest itched from sweat. From under his hat it poured down his face and stung 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," Pyotr remarked, shading his eyes with his palm.

Grigory stared, and raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

"It looks like Father."

"You're mad! What could 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!" Pyotr stamped about in anxious surprise.

"Something's happened at home," Grigory gave expression to the thought troubling them both.

When still a hundred yards away, Pantelei 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...!" Pyotr was completely

flabbergasted, and thrust half his moustache into his mouth.

"Get on the other side of the reaper! By God, he'll lash us with that knout. While we're getting to the bottom of this business, he'll whip our guts out," Grigory said with a grin, putting the machine between himself and his father.

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

"We've been reaping," Pyotr swept his arms around, nervously eyeing the whip.

"Who's been sticking who with the fork? What have you been fighting about?"

Turning his back on his father, Grigory began counting the clouds in a whisper.

"What fork? Who's been fighting?" Pyotr looked his father up and down.

"Why, she came running to me, the daughter of a hen, shrieking: 'Your boys have stuck each other with pitchforks.' What do you say to that?" Pantelei shook his head excitedly and, dropping the reins, jumped off his horse. "I grabbed a horse and came out at a gallop. Well?"

"Who told you all this?"

"A woman!"

"She was lying. Father. She must have been asleep in her wagon and dreamed it."

"Women!" Pantelei half-shouted, half-whistled, slobbering down his beard. "That whore of Klimov's! My God! I'll whip the bitch!" he danced with rage.

Shaking with silent laughter, Grigory stared at the ground. Pyotr, keeping his eyes fixed on his father, stroked his perspiring brow.

Pantelei 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, leaving his whip forgotten on the ground. Pyotr picked it up and swung it ap-praisingly 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."

XVIII

The Korshunovs had the reputation of being the richest family in the village of Tatarsky. They had fourteen pairs of bullocks, as well as horses, mares from the Provalsk stud farm, fifteen cows, innumerable other cattle, and a

flock of several hundred sheep. Their house with its six rooms and iron roof was as good as that of Mokhov the merchant. The outhouses were roofed with new and handsome tiles. The garden and meadow covered a good three acres. What more could a man want?

So it was rather timidly and with secret reluctance that Pantelei had paid his first visit to the Korshunovs to propose the match. The Korshunovs could find a much richer husband than Grigory for their daughter. Pantelei knew this and was afraid of a refusal. He did not like to go begging to Korshunov, but Ilyinichna gnawed into him like rust into iron, and at last she overcame the old man's obstinacy. So finally he had visited the Korshunovs, heartily cursing Grigory and Ilyinichna and the whole wide world. Now it was time to go for an answer. They were only waiting for Sunday.

Meanwhile, under the painted iron roof of the Korshunovs' house burning dissension had arisen. After the Melekhovs' departure Natalya declared to her mother:

"I like Grigory, I'll never wed another."

"She's found herself a bridegroom, the idiot," her father replied. "The only good thing about him is that he's as black as a gypsy. My little berry, I could find you a much better husband."

"1 don't want any other. Father." The girl

flushed and began to weep. "You can take me to the convent otherwise."

"He's a woman-chaser, he runs after soldiers' wives. The whole village knows it," her father played his last card.

"Well, and let him!"

"Well, if it's 'let him' for you, then it's all the same to me."

Natalya, 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 Natalya had not taken to any of the prospective bridegrooms, and nothing had come of their efforts.

In his heart, Miron liked Grigory for his Cossack ardour, his love of farming and hard work. He had picked him out among the crowd of village youths when Grigory had won the first prize in the horse races, but he thought it a little humiliating to give his daughter to a man who was not rich, especially one who had a bad reputation.

"A hard-working lad and good-looking," his wife would whisper to him at night, stroking his freckled, hairy hand. "And Natalya is really gone on him. .. ."

Miron turned his back on his wife's cold, withered breast, and shouted angrily:

"Get off, you burr! Marry her off to an idiot, what do I care? God has taken away your reason. Good-looking!" he mimicked. "Will you reap a harvest off his face?"

"Harvests aren't everything. . . ."

"What does it matter about his looks? If only he had some standing. I must admit it's a bit of 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 broad back, stroked his hand soothingly.

"Hey, the devil! Get away, can't you? Leave me a little room! Why are you stroking me as if I were a cow with calf? And do as you please with Natalya. Marry her to a close-cropped girl if that suits you."

"You should have some feeling for your child," she murmured into his ear. But Miron kicked, pressed himself against the wall and began to snore as though he had fallen asleep.

The Melekhovs' arrival for an answer took the Korshunovs by surprise. They came just after matins. As Ilyinichna set her foot on the step of the wagonette she nearly overturned it, but Pantelei 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.

"Oh dear, here I am just out of the kitchen. Haven't even had a chance to change my everyday skirt."

"You'll do as you are. Nobody's thinking of marrying you, who wants you, you horse mange!"

"You're a born ruffian and you've completely lost your senses in your old age."

"Hold your tongue, woman!"

"You might put on a clean shirt, your backbone's showing through that one. Aren't you ashamed, you old devil?" his wife scolded, surveying her husband as the visitors walked across the yard.

"Don't worry, they'll recognize me in what I'm wearing. They wouldn't refuse if I put on sackcloth."

"Good health!" Pantelei crowed, stumbling over the door-step. He was at once abashed by the loudness of his own voice, and tried to mend matters by crossing himself twice over before the icon.

"Good-day," Miron replied, staring at them grimly.

"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 Grigoryevich, to find out what you have decided among your-selves-whether we are to make a match of it or not."

"Come in, please. Sit down, please," the mistress of the house welcomed them, bowing and sweeping the floor with the edge of her long, pleated skirt.

Ilyinichna sat down, her poplin dress rustling. Miron Grigoryevich rested his elbows on the new oilcloth on the table, and was silent. An unpleasant smell of damp rubber and something else came from the oilcloth. Its corners were adorned with pictures of the last tsar and tsaritsa, while in the centre were the august imperial princesses in white hats, and the fly-blown Tsar Nicholas II.

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, as if from behind her back, Ilyinichna drew out a great loaf of white bread and placed

it on the table. For some unknown reason Pantelei wanted to cross himself, but his gnarled claw-like fingers, though 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 stealthily slipped behind the open edge of his blue overcoat and drev/ out a red-topped bottle.

Blinking excitedly, Pantelei glanced at Miron's freckled face and caressingly slapped the bottom of the bottle with his broad, hooflike palm.

"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 tar-black rings of Melek-hov's beard were mingled with the straight red strands of Korshunov's. Pantelei's breath smelt 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.

Ml

Think, dear kinsman, think how you are trying to rob me. Gaiters and goloshes, one; a fur coat, two; two woollen dresses, three; a silk kerchief, four. Why, it's ruination!"

Pantelei stretched his arms wide till the seams of his tunic split. Miron lowered his head and stared at the oilcloth, flooded with spilt vodka and pickle. He read the inscription on the flowery scroll at the top. "The Russian Royal Family." 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 invisible under an empty vodka bottle. 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 in a broad-brimmed hat stared up at him complacently, 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 be married, then I shall stare, and you'll flutter," he thought.

Pantelei droned on into his ear like a great black bumble-bee. Korshunov 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."

"And do you begrudge it?" Miron struck the table with his fist.

"It isn't that I begrudge it.. . ."

"Do you begrudge it?"

"Wait, kinsman!"

"And if you do begrudge it . . . the devil take you!" Miron swept his perspiring hand over the table and sent the glasses to the floor.

"It will be your daughter who'll work for it."

"Let her! But you must give the proper presents, otherwise there'll be no marriage!"

"A cow sold from the yard!" Pantelei shook his head.

"There has to be a gift. She's got plenty of clothes of her own, it's me you've got to show respect for if you've taken a fancy to her. That's our Cossack custom. That's how it was of old, and we stick to the old ways."

"I will show my respect!"

"Show your respect!"

"I will show it!"

"And let the youngsters work. We've worked, and we live as well as anybody. Let them do the same!"

The two men's beards wove together colour-fully. They kissed and Pantelei began to eat a juiceless, shrivelled cucumber and wept with mixed, conflicting feelings.

The women were sitting locked in an embrace on the chest, deafening each other with the cackle of their voices. Ilyinichna glowed with a cherry-coloured flush, Marya had turned green from the vodka, like a winter pear nipped by the frost.

"You won't find a child like her anywhere else in the world. She'll be dutiful and obedient, and will never say a word to contradict you," said Marya.

"My dear," Ilyinichna interrupted her, supporting her cheek with her left hand and holding her left elbow in her right hand, "so I've told him, I don't know how many times, the son of a bitch. He was getting ready to go out the other Sunday evening, putting some tobacco in his pouch, and I said to him, 'When will you throw her over, you accursed heathen? How long have I got to go on standing this shame in my old age? That Stepan will stop your little game one fine day!' "

Mitka stared into the room through the door crack, and below him Natalya's two younger sisters whispered to each other. Natalya herself was sitting in the farther room,

wiping her tears on the tight sleeve of her blouse. She was afraid of the new life opening before her, oppressed by the unknown.

In the front room the third bottle of vodka was finished; it was decided to bring the bride and bridegroom together on the first of August.

XIX

The Korshunovs' house hummed like a beehive with the bustle of preparations for the wedding. Underclothes were hurriedly sewn for the bride. Natalya sat every evening knitting her bridegroom the traditional gloves and scarf of goat's wool. Her mother sat till dusk bent over a sev/ing-machine, helping the hired seamstress. When Mitka returned with his father and the farm-hands from the fields he did not stop to wash or pull off his heavy farming boots, but went to keep Natalya company. He found great satisfaction in teasing his sister.