Your father, senior sergeant,
Pantaleimon Melekhov.
Gregor’s regiment was stationed at a little place called Radzivillovo some three miles from the Russo–Austrian frontier. He rarely wrote home. To the letter informing him that Natalia was living with his father he wrote a cautiously worded reply, and asked his father to greet her in his name. All his letters were noncommittal and obscure in their meaning. Pantaleimon required Dunia or Piotra to read them to him several times, pondering over the thought concealed between the lines. Just before Easter he wrote and asked Gregor definitely whether on his return from the army he would live with his wife or with Aksinia as before.
Gregor delayed with his reply. Only after Trinity Sunday did they receive a brief letter from him. Dunia read it quickly, swallowing the ends of her words, and Pantaleimon had difficulty in grasping the essential thought among the numerous greetings and inquiries. At the end of the letter Gregor dealt with the question of Natalia:
You asked me to say whether I shall live with Natalia or not, but I tell you, father, you can’t stick on again what has been cut off. And how shall I make up to Natalia, when you know yourself that I have a child. And I can’t promise anything, it is painful for me to talk about it. The other day a Jew was caught smuggling goods across the frontier and we happened to see him. He said there would be war with the Austrians soon and that their Tsar has come to the frontier to see where to begin the war from and which land to seize for himself. When war begins maybe I shan’t be left alive, and nothing can be settled beforehand.
Natalia worked for her foster-parents and lived in continual hope of her husband’s return. She never wrote to Gregor, but nobody in the family yearned with more pain and desire to receive a letter from him.
Life in the village continued in its inviolable order; on workdays the grey labour imperceptibly consumed the time, on Sunday mornings the village poured in family droves into the church: the cossacks in tunics and holiday trousers, the women in long, vari-coloured skirts that swept the dust, and little jackets with puff sleeves. On the square the empty wagon shafts stuck high into the air, the horses whinnied; by the fireshed the Bulgar settlers traded in fruit set out in long rows; behind them the children ran about in bands, staring at the unharnessed camels superciliously surveying the market square. Everywhere were crowds of men wearing red-banded caps, and women in bright kerchiefs.
In the evening the streets groaned with the tramp of feet, with song, and dancing to the accordions; and only late at night did the last voices die away in the outskirts of the village.
Natalia never went visiting neighbours on Sunday evenings, but sat listening gladly to Dunia’s artless stories. Imperceptibly Dunia was growing into a shapely and in her way a beautiful girl. She matured early, like an early apple. This year her elder girl friends forgot that they had reached adolescence before her and took her back into their circle. She was fifteen now, and her figure was still girlish and angular. She was a painful and naïve mixture of childhood and blossoming youth; her little breasts grew and pressed noticeably against her jacket, and in her long, rather slanting eye-sockets her black eyes still sparkled bashfully and mischievously. She would come back after an evening out and tell only Natalia her innocent secrets.
‘Natalia, I want to tell you something …’
‘Well, tell on!’
‘Yesterday Misha Koshevoi sat the whole evening with me on the stump by the village granaries.’
‘Why are you blushing?’
‘Oh, I’m not!’
‘Look in the glass; you’re all one great flame.’
Dunia rubbed her burning cheeks with her swarthy palms, and her young, artless laugh rang out.
‘He said I was like a little azure flower.’
‘Well, go on!’ Natalia encouraged her, rejoicing in another’s joy, and forgetting her own past and downtrodden happiness.
‘And I said: “Don’t tell lies, Misha!” And he swore …’
Shaking her head, Natalia sent her laughter pealing through the room. The black, heavy plaits of her hair slipped like newts over her shoulders and back.
‘What else did he say?’
‘He asked me to give him my handkerchief for a keepsake.’
‘And did you?’
‘No. I said I wouldn’t. “Go and ask your woman,” I told him. He’s been seen with Yerofievna’s daughter-in-law, and she’s a bad woman, she plays about with the men.’
‘You’d better keep away from him.’
‘I’m going to!’ Dunia continued her story. ‘And then, as the three of us, two other girls and me, were coming home, drunken old father Mikhy came after us. “Kiss me, my dears!” he shouted. And Nura hit him on the face with a twig and we ran away.’
The summer was dry. By the village the Don grew shallow, and where the surging current had run swiftly a ford was made, and bullocks could cross to the other bank without wetting their backs. At night a heavy, hot exhalation flowed from the range of hills into the village, and the wind filled the air with the strong scent of burning grass. The dry growth of the steppe was afire, and a sickly-smelling haze hung over the Donside slopes. At night the clouds deepened over the Don, ominous peals of thunder were to be heard; but no rain came to refresh the parched earth, although the lightning tore the sky into jagged, livid fragments.
Night after night an owl screeched from the belfry. The cries surged terrifyingly over the village, and the owl flew from the belfry to the cemetery and groaned over the brown and grass-grown mounds of the graves.
‘There’s trouble brewing,’ the old men prophesied, as they listened to the owl screeching from the cemetery.
‘There’s war coming. An owl called just like that before the Turkish campaign.’
‘Expect no good when it flies from the church to the dead.’
As he talked with the old men in the marketplace Pantaleimon solemnly announced:
‘Our Gregor writes that the Austrian Tsar has come to the frontier, and has given orders to collect all his troops in one place and to march on Moscow and Petersburg.’
The old men remembered past wars, and shared their apprehensions with one another.
‘But there won’t be any war,’ one objected. ‘Look at the harvest.’
‘The harvest has nothing to do with it, It’s the students giving trouble, I expect.’
‘In any case we shall be the last to hear of it. But who will the war be with?’
‘With the Turks across the sea. Depend on it, the water won’t keep them apart.’
The talk turned to jest, and the old men went about their business.
For two nights Martin Shamil, who lived close to the cemetery, watched by the cemetery palisade for the accursed owl, but the invisible, mysterious bird flew noiselessly over him, alighted on a cross at the other end of the cemetery, and sent its alarming cries over the sleepy village. Martin swore unbecomingly, shot at the black, hanging belly of a cloud, and went home. On his return to the hut his wife, a timorous, ailing woman as fruitful as a doe rabbit, welcomed him with reproaches.
‘You’re a fool, a hopeless fool!’ she declared. ‘The bird doesn’t interfere with you, does it? What if God should punish you? Here am I just up from my bed with my last, and supposing I get pregnant again through you?’
‘Shut up, woman!’ Martin ordered her. ‘You’ll get pregnant all right, never fear! What is the bird doing here, giving us all the cold shivers? It’s calling down woe on us, the devil! If war breaks out they’ll take me off, and look at the litter you’ve got!’ He waved at the corner where the children were sleeping.
Guards were set to watch over the meadow hay. The grass beyond the Don was inferior to the hay of the steppe, and was sickly and scentless. It was the same earth, yet the grass drank in different juices. In the steppe there was a splendid black soil, so heavy and firm that the herd left no traces where they passed over it. On it grew a strong-scented grass standing as high as a horse’s belly. But along
the Don banks the soil was damp and rotten, growing a joyless and worthless grass which even the cattle would not always look at.
Haymaking was in full swing when an event occurred which shook the village from one end to the other. The district commissary arrived with an investigator and an officer in a uniform never seen before in the village. They sent for the ataman, collected witnesses, and then went straight to cross-eyed Lukieshka’s hut. They walked along the path on the sunny side of the street, the village ataman running ahead like a cockerel. The investigator questioned him:
‘Is Stockman at home?’
‘Yes, your Excellency.’
‘What does he do for a living?’
‘He’s a master locksmith.’
‘You haven’t noticed anything suspicious about him?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Does he ever have visitors?’ the investigator asked, pulling the ataman back.
‘Yes; they play at cards sometimes.’
‘But who?’
‘Chiefly labourers from the mill.’
‘But who exactly?’
‘The engineer, the scalesman, David, and sometimes some of our cossacks.’
The investigator halted and waited for the officer, who had lagged behind. He said something to him, twisting the button of his tunic with his fingers, then beckoned to the ataman. The ataman ran up on tiptoe, with bated breath.
‘Take two militia-men and go and arrest the men you mentioned. Bring them to the administration, and we’ll be along in a minute or two. Do you understand?’
The ataman drew himself up and turned back to execute his instructions.
Stockman was sitting in his unbuttoned vest, his back to the door, filing a design on veneer. He glanced round as the officials entered, and bit his lip.
‘Please to get up; you’re under arrest,’ the investigator ordered.
‘What’s this for?’
‘You occupy two rooms?’
‘Yes.’
‘We shall search them.’
The officer walked across to the table and with a frown picked up the first book to hand. ‘I want the key of that trunk,’ he said.
‘To what do I owe this visit?’
‘There’ll be time to talk to you after.’
Stockman’s wife looked through the doorway from the other room and drew back. The investigator’s secretary followed her in.
‘What is this?’ the officer quietly asked Stockman, holding up a book in a yellow cover.
‘A book,’ Stockman replied with a shrug of his shoulder.
‘You can keep your witticisms for a more suitable occasion. Answer the question properly.’
With a wry smile Stockman leaned his back against the stove. The commissary glanced over the officer’s shoulder at the book, and then turned to Stockman:
‘You’re studying?’
‘I’m interested in the subject,’ Stockman drily replied.
‘So!’
The officer glanced through the pages of the book and threw it back on the table. He looked through a second, put it on one side, and having read the cover of the third, turned to Stockman again.
‘Where do you keep the rest of this type of literature?’
Stockman screwed up one eye as though taking aim at the officer, and replied:
‘You see all that I have.’
‘You’re lying,’ the officer retorted, waving the book at him.
‘I demand …’
‘Search the rooms!’
Holding his sabre in his hand the commissary went across to the trunk, where a pockmarked cossack militia-man, obviously terrified by the circumstances in which he found himself, had begun to rummage among the clothing and linen. The man turned out everything that it was possible to turn out. The search was conducted in the workshop also. The zealous commissary even knocked on the walls with his finger-knuckle.
When the search was ended Stockman was taken to the administration office. He walked along the middle of the road in front of the militia-men, one arm folded across his old coat, the other waving as though he were shaking mud off it. The others walked along the path by the walls.
Stockman was the last of the prisoners to be examined. Ivan Alexievitch, with hands still oily, guiltily smiling David, Valet with his jacket across his shoulders, and Misha Koshevoi were herded together in the ante-room, guarded by militia-men.
Rummaging in his portfolio, the investigator questioned Stockman:
‘When I examined you in regard to the murder at the mill why did you conceal the fact that you are a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party?’
Stockman stared silently over the investigator’s head.
‘That much is established. You will receive a suitable reward for your work,’ the investigator shouted, annoyed by the prisoner’s silence.
‘Please begin your examination,’ Stockman said in a bored tone, and glancing at a stool, he asked for permission to sit down. The investigator did not reply, but glared as Stockman calmly seated himself.
‘When did you come here?’ he asked.
‘Last year.’
‘On the instruction of your organization?’
‘Without any instructions.’
‘How long have you been a member of your party?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I ask you, how long have you been a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party?’
‘I think that …’
‘I don’t care what you think. Answer the question. Denial is useless, even dangerous.’ The investigator drew a document out of his portfolio and pinned it to the table with his forefinger. ‘I have here a report from Rostov, confirming your membership of the party I mentioned.’
Stockman turned his eyes quickly to the document, rested his gaze on it for a moment, and then, stroking his knee, replied firmly:
‘Since 1907.’
‘So! You deny that you have been sent here by your party?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case why did you come here?’
‘They needed a locksmith.’
‘But why did you choose this particular district?’
‘For the same reason.’
‘Have you now, or have you at any time had any contact with your organization during the period of your stay here?’
‘No.’
‘Do they know you have come here?’
‘I expect so.’
The investigator sharpened his pencil with a pearl-handled penknife, and pursed his lips:
‘Are you in correspondence with any members of your party?’
‘No.’
‘Then what about the letter which was discovered during the search?’
‘That is from a friend who has no connexion whatever with any revolutionary organization.’
‘Have you received any instructions from Rostov?’
‘No.’
‘What did the labourers at the mill gather in your rooms for?’
Stockman shrugged his shoulders as though astonished at the stupidity of the question.
‘They used to come along in the winter evenings, to pass the time away. We played at cards …’
‘And read books prohibited by law?’ the investigator suggested.
‘No. Every one of them was almost illiterate.’
‘None the less the engineer from the mill, and the others also do not deny this fact.’
‘That is untrue.’
‘It seems to me you haven’t the most elementary understanding of …’ Stockman smiled at this, and the investigator concluded: ‘You simply do not possess a sound intelligence. You persist in denials to your own harm. It is quite clear that you have been sent here by your party in order to carry on demoralizing activities among the cossacks, in order to turn them against the government. I fail to understand why you are playing this game of pretence. It cannot diminish your offence …’
‘Those are all guesses on your part. May I smo
ke? Thank you. And they are guesses entirely without foundation.’
‘Did you read this book to the workers who visited your rooms?’ The investigator put his hand on a small book and covered the title. Above his hand the name ‘Plekhanov’ was visible.
‘We read poetry,’ Stockman replied, and puffed at his cigarette, gripping the bone holder tightly between his fingers.
The next morning the postal tarantass drove out of the village with Stockman dozing on the back seat, his beard buried in his coat collar. On each side of him a militia-man armed with a drawn sabre was squeezed on the seat. One of them, the pockmarked man who had made the search, gripped Stockman’s elbow firmly in his knotty, dirty fingers, casting timorous sidelong glances at him. The tarantass rattled briskly down the street. By the Melekhovs’ farmyard a little woman wrapped in a shawl stood waiting for it, her back against the wattle fence. Her grey face was wet with the tears that filled her eyes.
The tarantass sped past, and the woman, pressing her hands to her breast, flung herself after it.
‘Osip! Osip Davidovitch! Oh, how could they …’
Stockman wanted to wave his hand to her, but the pockmarked militia-man jumped up and clutched his arm, and in a hoarse, savage voice shouted:
‘Sit down, or I’ll cut you down!’
For the first time in all his simple life he had seen a man who dared to act against the Tsar himself.