And Quiet Flows the Don

  It was late when they went to bed. As she lay pressed against Gregor Aksinia wetted his shirt with her tears.

  ‘I shall die of pining for you. How shall I be able to live without you? The long nights … the child awake … Just think, Grishka! Four years!’

  ‘In the old days service lasted twenty-five years, they say.’

  ‘What do I care about the old days? Curse your army service, say I.’

  ‘I shall come home on furlough.’

  ‘On furlough!’ Aksinia groaned, blowing her nose on her shift. ‘Much water will flow down the Don before then.’

  ‘Don’t whine so! You’re like rain in autumn: one continual drizzle.’

  ‘You should be in my skin,’ she retorted.

  Gregor fell asleep a little before dawn. Aksinia got up and fed the child, then lay down again. Leaning on her elbows and gazing unwinkingly into Gregor’s face, she took a long farewell of him. She recalled the night when she had tried to persuade him to go with her to the Kuban: once more the yard outside the window was flooded with the white light of the moon. So they had lain then, and Gregor was still the same, yet not the same. Behind them both lay a long track trodden out by the passing days.

  He turned over, muttered something about Olshansky village, and then was silent. Aksinia tried to sleep, but her thoughts drove all sleep away like wind a haycock. Until daybreak she lay thinking over his disconnected phrase, seeking its meaning. Pantaleimon awoke as soon as the faintest glimmer of daylight peered through the window.

  ‘Gregor, get up!’ he cried.

  By the time they had breakfasted and packed dawn had fully come. Pantaleimon went to harness his horses, whilst Gregor tore himself away from Aksinia’s passionate kisses and went to say good-bye to Sashka and the other servants.

  Wrapping the child up warmly, Aksinia took her out with her to take a last farewell. Gregor lightly touched his daughter’s damp little forehead with his lips, and went to his horse.

  ‘Come in the sledge,’ his father called, as he touched up his horses.

  ‘No, I’ll ride my horse.’

  With calculated deliberation Gregor fastened the saddle girths, mounted his horse, gathered the reins in his hand. More than once Aksinia repeated:

  ‘Grishka, wait … There’s something I wanted to say …’ and puckering her brow, she tried to remember what it was.

  ‘Well, good-bye … Look after the child … I must be off; see how far father’s got already.’

  ‘Wait, dear!’ With her left hand Aksinia seized the icy iron stirrup; her right arm pressed the baby to her breast; and she had no free hand with which to wipe away the tears streaming from her staring, unwinking eyes.

  Benyamin came to the steps of the house.

  ‘Gregor, the master wants you!’ he called.

  Gregor cursed, waved his whip, and dashed out of the yard. Aksinia ran after him, stumbling in the drifted snow.

  He overtook his father at the top of the hill. Then he turned and looked back. Aksinia was standing at the gate, the child still pressed to her breast, the ends of her crimson shawl fluttering in the wind.

  He rode his horse alongside his father’s sledge. After a few moments the old man turned his back to his horses and asked:

  ‘So you’re not thinking of living with your wife?’

  ‘That old story again? I’ve already told you …’

  ‘So you’re not thinking …’

  ‘No, I’m not!’

  ‘You haven’t heard that she laid hands on herself?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard. I happened to meet a man from the village.’

  ‘And in the sight of God?’

  ‘Why, father, after all … what falls from the wagon is lost.’

  ‘Don’t use that devil’s talk to me. What I’m saying to you, I’m saying for your good,’ Pantaleimon flared up.

  ‘You see I have a child. What is there to talk about? You can’t push the other on to me now …’

  ‘Take care you’re not feeding another man’s child.’

  Gregor turned pale; his father had touched a sore spot. Ever since the child was born he had tormentedly nursed the suspicion in his mind, whilst concealing it from Aksinia. At night, when Aksinia was asleep, he had more than once gone to the cradle and stared down at the child, seeking his own features in its swarthily rosy face, and had turned back to bed as uncertain as before. Stepan also was dark red, almost black of complexion, and how was he to know whose blood flowed in the child’s veins? At times he thought the child resembled him; at other times she was painfully like Stepan. Gregor had no feeling for her, except perhaps of hostility as he recalled the moments he had lived through as he drove Aksinia back from the steppe. Only once Aksinia was busy elsewhere, and he had had to change the child’s wet napkin. As he did so he had felt a sharp, pinching agitation. Afterwards he had bent stealthily over the cradle and pressed the baby’s great toe between his teeth.

  His father probed mercilessly at the wound, and Gregor, his palm resting on the saddle-bow, numbly replied:

  ‘Whose ever it is, I won’t leave the child.’

  Pantaleimon waved his whip at the horses without turning round:

  ‘Natalia’s spoilt her good looks. She carries her head on one side like a paralytic. It seems she cut a large tendon.’ He lapsed into silence.

  ‘And how is she now?’ Gregor asked, studiously picking a burr out of his horse’s mane.

  ‘She’s got over it somehow or other. She lay seven months. On Trinity Sunday she was all but gone. Father Pankraty performed the last rites. Then she got better, rose, and walked. She thrust the scythe at her heart, but her hand trembled, and it missed.’

  ‘Quicker up the hill!’ Gregor proposed, and waved his whip and outdistanced his father, sending a shower of snow from his horse’s hoofs over the sledge. He broke into a trot, standing in his stirrups.

  ‘We’re taking Natalia back into our home,’ Pantaleimon shouted, chasing after him. ‘The woman doesn’t want to live with her own folk. I saw her the other day and told her to come to us.’

  Gregor made no reply. They drove as far as the first village without exchanging a word, and his father made no further reference to the subject.

  That day they covered forty-five miles. They arrived at Mankovo as dusk was falling the next day and spent the night in the quarters allotted to the Vieshenska recruits.

  Next morning the district ataman conducted the Vieshenska recruits before the medical commission. Gregor fell in with the other lads from his own village. In the morning Mitka Korshunov, riding a high bay horse equipped with a new and gaily ornamented saddle, had passed Gregor standing at the door of his quarters, but had gone by without a word of greeting.

  The men undressed in turn in the cold room of the local civil administration. Military clerks bustled around, and the adjutant to the provincial ataman hurried past. From an inner room came the sound of the doctors’ orders, and snatches of remarks.

  A clerk came out and curtly called Gregor and another into the examination room. Gregor went in, his back all gooseflesh with the cold. His swarthy body was the colour of oak. He was embarrassed as he glanced down at his hairy legs. The humiliating procedure of the medical examination irritated him. A grey-haired doctor in white overalls sounded him with the aid of a stethoscope. A younger doctor turned up his eyelids, and looked at his tongue. Behind him a third in horn-rimmed spectacles bustled about, rubbing his hands.

  ‘On the scales!’ an officer ordered.

  Gregor stepped on to the cold platform.

  ‘Thirteen … three and a half.’

  ‘Wha-a-at? He’s not particularly tall, either,’ the grey-haired doctor drawled turning Gregor round by the arm.

  ‘Astonishing!’ the younger man coughed.

  ‘How much?’ an officer sitting at the table asked in surprise.

  ‘Thirteen stone, three and a half pounds,’ the grey-haired doctor replied.

  ‘How about the Lifeguards for h
im?’ the district military commissary asked, bending towards his neighbour at the table.

  ‘He has a brigand’s face … Very savage-looking …’

  ‘Hey, turn round! What’s that on your back?’ an official wearing colonel’s epaulettes shouted, impatiently tapping his finger on the table. Turning to face the colonel, trying to restrain the trembling of his body, Gregor replied:

  ‘I got frozen in the spring. They’re the marks.’

  Towards the end of the examination the officials at the table decided that Gregor would have to be drafted into an ordinary regiment.

  ‘The twelfth regiment, Melekhov. D’you hear?’ he was told. And as he went towards the door he heard a whispered:

  ‘It’s impossible. Just consider; the Emperor would see a face like that, and then what? His eyes alone …’

  ‘He’s a crossbreed. From the East undoubtedly.’

  ‘And his body isn’t clean. Those marks …’

  Buttoning up his coat as he went, he ran down the steps. Horses were being mustered on the square. The warm wind breathed of thaw; the road was bare in places, and steaming. Clucking hens fluttered down the street, geese were splashing in a puddle.

  The examination of the horses took place the following day. A long line of mounts was drawn up on the square against the church wall. A veterinary surgeon and his assistant passed along the line. The Vieshenska ataman went running from the scales to the table in the middle of the square, where the results of the examination were being entered. The military commissary went by, deep in conversation with a young captain.

  When his turn came, Gregor led his horse to the scales. The surgeon and his assistant measured every part of the animal’s body, and weighed it. Before it could be led from the platform the surgeon had deftly taken it by the upper lip, looked down its throat, felt its chest muscles, and running his fine fingers like spiders’ legs over its body, turned to its legs. He felt the knee joints, tapped the tendons, squeezed the bone above the fetlocks. When he had finished his examination he passed on, his white overalls flapping in the wind and scattering the scent of carbolic acid.

  Gregor’s horse was rejected. Sashka’s hopes proved unjustified, and the experienced surgeon discovered the secret blemish of which the old man had spoken. Gregor at once held an agitated consultation with his father, and before half an hour had elapsed he led Piotra’s horse on to the scales. The surgeon passed it almost without an examination.

  Gregor led the horse a little way off, found a comparatively dry spot, and spread out his saddlecloth on the ground. His father held his horse. Past them strode a tall, grey-haired general in a light grey cloak and a silver Astrakhan-fur cap, followed by a group of officers.

  ‘That’s the provincial ataman,’ Pantaleimon whispered, digging Gregor from behind.

  Gregor stared inquisitively at the unfamiliar features of the officers and officials. An adjutant fixed a bored gaze on him, and turned away as he met Gregor’s attentive eyes. An old captain went by almost at a run, agitated by something and biting his upper lip with his yellow teeth.

  On his saddlecloth Gregor had set out his saddle, adorned with a green ribbon, with its saddlebags at the pommel and the back; two army coats, two pairs of trousers, a tunic, two pairs of leg-boots, a pound and half of biscuit, a tin of corned beef, groats, and other food in the regulation quantities. In the open saddlebags were four horseshoes, shoe-nails wrapped in a greasy rag, a soldier’s hussif with a couple of needles and thread, and towels.

  He gave a last glance over his accoutrements, and squatted down to rub some mud off the ends of the pack-strings with his sleeve. From the end of the square the army commission slowly passed along the rows of cossacks drawn up behind their saddlecloths. The officers and the ataman closely examined the equipment, stooping and feeling the edges of the greatcoats, fumbling in the saddlebags, turning out the contents of the hussifs, and weighing the bags of biscuit in their hands.

  The talk gradually died away as the commission approached. Gregor drew himself up. Behind him his father coughed. The wind carried the scent of horses’ urine and melted snow over the square. The sun looked unhappy, as though after a drinking bout.

  The group of officers halted by the man next to Gregor, then came on to him one by one.

  ‘Your surname, Christian name?’

  ‘Melekhov, Gregor.’

  The commissary picked up the greatcoat by its edge, smelt at the lining, and hurriedly counted the fastenings; another officer, wearing a cornet’s epaulettes, felt the good cloth of the trousers between his fingers. A third stooped and rummaged in the saddle-bags. With his thumb and forefinger the commissary cautiously poked at the rag of shoe-nails as though afraid it might be hot, and counted the nails with whispering lips.

  ‘Why are there only twenty-three nails? What is this?’ he angrily pulled at the corner of the rag.

  ‘Not at all, your Excellency. Twenty-four.’

  ‘What, am I blind?’

  Gregor hastily turned back a folded corner and revealed the twenty-fourth nail. As he did so his hairy black fingers lightly touched the officer’s white hand. The commissary snatched his hand away as though struck, rubbed it on the edge of his greatcoat, frowning fastidiously, and drew on his glove.

  Gregor noticed his action and smiled evilly. Their eyes met, and the commissary flushed and raised his voice.

  ‘What’s all this, what’s all this, cossack? Why aren’t your pack-strings in order? Why aren’t your snaffles right? And what does this mean? Are you a cossack or a peasant? Where’s your father?’

  Pantaleimon pulled on the horse’s rein and stepped forward a pace, his lame leg dragging.

  ‘Don’t you know the cossack regulations?’ the commissary poured out the vials of his wrath upon him.

  The provincial ataman came up, and the commissary quietened down. The ataman thrust the toe of his boot into the padding of the saddle, and passed on to the next man. The draft officer of the regiment to which Gregor had been drafted politely turned out all his belongings down to the contents of the hussif, and passed on last of all.

  A day later a train of red wagons loaded with horses, cossacks and forage left for Voronezh. In one of them stood Gregor. Past the open door crawled an unfamiliar, flat landscape; in the distance a blue and tender thread of forest whirled by. Behind him the horses were munching hay and stepping from hoof to hoof as they felt the unstable floor beneath them. The wagon smelt of wormwood, horses’ sweat, the spring thaw; and on the horizon lurked the distant thread of forest, blue, pensive, and as inaccessible as the faintly shining Evening star.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was on a warm and cheerful spring day of March, 1914, that Natalia returned to her father-in-law’s hut. Pantaleimon was mending the broken wattle fence with puffy dove-coloured twigs. The silvery icicles hanging from the roofs were dripping, and the traces of former runnels showed as black scratches on the cornices. The warm sun caressed the melting hills, and the earth was swelling; an early grass showed a green malachite on the chalky headlands that swept in promontories from the Donside hills.

  Natalia approached her father-in-law from behind, bending her mutilated, crooked neck:

  ‘Good health, father!’ she said.

  ‘Natiushka! Welcome, my dear, welcome!’ Pantaleimon fussed around her. The twigs dropped out of his hand. ‘Why haven’t you been to see us? Come in; mother will be right glad to see you.’

  ‘Father, I’ve come …’ Natalia stretched out her hand uncertainly, and turned away. ‘If you don’t drive me away, I’d like to stay with you always,’ she added.

  ‘What then, what then, my dear? Are you a stranger to us? Look, Gregor has written about you in his letter. He’s told us to ask about you.’

  They went into the kitchen. Ilinichna wept as she embraced Natalia. Wiping her nose on the end of her kerchief, she whispered:

  ‘You want a child. That would win him. Sit down. I’ll get you some pancakes, shall I?’

/>   Dunia, flushed and smiling, came running into the kitchen, and embraced Natalia around the knees. ‘You shameless one! You forgot all about us!’ she reproached her.

  They all talked together, interrupting one another. Ilinichna, supporting her cheek on her palm, grieved as she looked at Natalia, so changed from what she had been.

  ‘You’ve come for good?’ Dunia asked as she rubbed Natalia’s hands.

  ‘Who knows …?’

  ‘Why, where else should she live? You’ll stop with us,’ Ilinichna decided, as she pushed a platter of pancakes across the table.

  Natalia went to her husband’s parents only after long vacillation. At first her father would not let her go. He shouted at her in indignation when she suggested it, and attempted to persuade her against such a step. But it was difficult for her to look her folk in the face; she felt that with her own family she was almost a stranger. For his part, after he had seen Gregor off to the army Pantaleimon was continually wheedling her to come, for he was determined to have her back and to reconcile Gregor to her.

  From that day of March Natalia lived with the Melekhovs. Piotra was friendly and brotherly; Daria gave little outward sign of her dissatisfaction, and her occasional hostile glances were more than compensated by Dunia’s attachment and the parental attitude of the old people.

  The very day after Natalia came to them Pantaleimon ordered Dunia to write a letter to Gregor:

  Greetings, our own son, Gregor Pantalievitch! We send you a deep bow, and from all my fatherly heart, with your mother Vasilisa Ilinichna, a parental blessing. Your brother Piotra Pantalievitch and his wife Daria Matvievna greet you and wish you health and well-being; also your sister Dunia and all at home greet you. We received your letter, sent in February, the fifth day, and heartily thank you for it. And as you wrote that the horse is knocking his legs smear him with some lard, you know how, and don’t shoe his hind hoofs so long as there is no slipperiness or bare ice about. Your wife Natalia Mironovna is living with us and is well and comfortable. Your mother sends you some dried cherries and a pair of woollen socks, and some dripping and other things. We are all alive and well, but Daria’s baby died. The other day I and Piotra roofed the shed, and he orders you to look after the horse and keep it well. The cows have calved, the old mare seems to be in foal, we put a stallion from the district stables to her. We are glad to hear about your service and that your officers are pleased with you. Serve as you should. Service for the Tsar will not be in vain. And Natalia will live with us now, and you think that over. And one other trouble, just before Lent an animal killed three sheep. Now, keep well, and in God’s keeping. Don’t forget your wife, that is my order to you. She is a good woman and your legal wife. Don’t break the furrow, and listen to your father.