Until late at night the square was alive and noisy with excited crowds.
The first reserve cossacks from Tatarsk and the neighbouring villages spent the second night after their departure from home in a little village. The cossacks from the lower end of Tatarsk drew into a separate group from those of the upper end, so Piotra Melekhov, Anikushka, Christonia, Stepan Astakhov, Ivan Tomilin and others were all billeted in one hut. The cossacks had lain down to sleep, spreading out their horse-blankets in the kitchen and the front room, and were having a last smoke for the night. The master of the house, a tall, decrepit old man who had served in the Turkish war, sat talking with them.
‘So you’re off to war, soldiers?’
‘Yes, grandad, off to war.’
‘It won’t be anything like the Turkish war was, I don’t suppose. They’ve got different weapons now!’
‘It’ll be just the same. Just as devilish. Just as they killed the Turks off then, so we’ll have to now,’ Tomilin barked, angry with no one knew whom.
‘My sons, I ask you one thing. I ask you seriously, and you mark what I say,’ the old man said. ‘Remember one thing! If you want to come back from the mortal struggle alive and with a whole skin, you must keep the law of humanity.’
‘Which one?’ Stepan Astakhov asked, smiling uncertainly. He had begun to smile again from the day he heard of the war. The war called him, and the general anxiety and pain assuaged his own.
‘This one: don’t take other men’s goods. That’s one. As you fear God, don’t do wrong to any woman. That’s the second. And then you must know certain prayers.’
The cossacks sat up, and all spoke at once:
‘If only we didn’t have to lose our own goods – not to speak of taking other people’s!’
‘And why mustn’t we touch a woman? How are we to stand that?’
The old man fixed his eyes sternly on them and answered:
‘You must not touch a woman. Never! If you can’t stand that you’ll lose your heads, or you’ll be wounded. You’ll be sorry after, but then it will be too late. I’ll tell you the prayers. I went right through the Turkish war, death on my shoulders like a saddle-bag, but I came through alive because of these prayers.’
He went into the other room, rummaged beneath the ikon and brought back a crumbling, faded brown scrap of paper.
‘Get up and write them down!’ he commanded. ‘You’ll be off again before dawn tomorrow, won’t you?’
He spread the paper out on the table and left it. Anikushka was the first to get up; on his smooth, womanish face the shadows cast by the flickering light played nervously. All except Stepan sat and wrote down the prayers. Anikushka rolled up the paper he had used and fastened it to the string of the cross at his breast. Stepan jeered at him:
‘That’s a nice home you’ve made for the lice.’
‘Young man, if you don’t believe, hold your tongue!’ the old man interrupted him sternly. ‘Don’t be a stone of offence to others and don’t laugh at faith. It’s a sin.’
Stepan smiled, but he lapsed into silence.
The prayers which the cossacks wrote down were three, and each could choose which he wished. The Prayer in Time of Attack read:
Supreme Ruler, Holy Mother of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Bless, Lord, thy slave of God entering battle, and my comrades who are with me. Wrap them in cloud, with thy heavenly, stony hail protect them. Holy Dmitry Soslutsky, defend me the slave of God and my comrades on all four sides; permit not evil men to shoot, nor with spear to pierce, nor with pole-axe to strike, nor with butt-end of axe to smite, nor with axe to hew down, nor with sword to cut down or pierce, nor with knife to pierce or cut; neither old nor young, swarthy nor black; neither heretic nor wizard nor any magic-worker. All is before me now, the slave of God, orphaned and judged. In the sea, in the ocean, on the island of Buyan stands an iron post; on the post is an iron man resting on an iron staff, and he charms iron, steel, lead, zinc and all weapons. ‘Go, iron, into your mother-earth away from the slave of God and past my comrades and my horse. The arrow-shafts into the forest, and the feather to its mother-bird, and the glue to the fish.’ Defend me, the slave of God, with a golden buckler from steel and from bullet, cannon-fire and ball, spear and knife. May my body be stronger than armour. Amen.
Very similar were all the prayers which the cossacks wrote down and concealed under their shirts, tying them to the strings of the little ikons blessed by their mothers, and to the little bundles of their native earth. But death came upon all alike, upon those who wrote down the prayers also. Their bodies rotted on the fields of Galicia and Eastern Prussia, in the Carpathians and Roumania, wherever the ruddy flames of war flickered and the traces of cossack horses were imprinted in the earth.
Some four days later the red wagons of the troop trains were carrying the cossacks in their regiments and batteries towards the Russo-Austrian frontier.
‘War …’
The wagons hummed with talk and song. At the stations the cossacks were eyed with inquisitive, benevolent looks. The crowds felt the stripes on the cossacks’ trousers.
‘War …’
At the stations the women waved their handkerchiefs, smiled, threw cigarettes and sweets. Only once, just before the train reached Voronezh, did an old railway worker thrust his head into the wagon where Piotra Melekhov was crowded with twenty-nine other cossacks, and ask:
‘You going?’
‘Yes. Get in and come with us, grandad,’ one of the cossacks replied.
‘My boy … Bullocks for slaughter!’ the old man shook his head reproachfully.
Chapter Two
During the second week of July, 1914, the divisional staff transferred Gregor Melekhov’s regiment to the town of Rovno in Volhynia, to take part in manoeuvres. A fortnight later, tired out with continual manoeuvring, Gregor and the other cossacks of the fourth company were lying in their tents, when the company commander, lieutenant Polkovnikov, galloped furiously back from the regimental staff.
‘Another attack I suppose,’ Prokhor Zikov suggested tentatively, and waited for someone to agree.
The troop-sergeant thrust the needle with which he had been mending his trousers into the lining of his cap, and remarked:
‘I expect so; they won’t let us rest for a moment.’
A minute or two later the bugler sounded the alarm. The cossacks jumped to their feet. They had their horses saddled well within regulation time. As Gregor was tearing up the tent-pegs the sergeant managed to mutter to him:
‘It’s war this time, my lad!’
‘You’re lying!’ Gregor expressed his disbelief.
‘God’s truth! The sergeant-major told me.’
The company formed up in the street, the commander at its head. ‘In troop columns!’ his command flew over the ranks.
The horses’ hoofs clattered as they went at a trot out of the village on to the highway. From a neighbouring village the first and fifth companies could be seen riding towards the station.
A day later the regiment was detrained at a station some twenty miles from the Austrian frontier. Dawn was breaking beyond a group of birch trees. The morning promised to be fine. The engine fussed and rumbled over the tracks. The lines glittered with dew. The cossacks of the fourth company led their horses by the bridles out of the wagons and over the level-crossing, mounted, and moved off in a column formation. Their voices sounded eerily in the crumbling, lilac darkness. Faces and the contours of horses emerged uncertainly out of the gloom.
‘What company is that?’ came a challenge.
‘And who are you? Are you lost?’ one of the cossacks replied.
‘I’ll show you who I am! How dare you speak to an officer in that way?’
‘Sorry, your Excellency, I didn’t recognize you.’
‘Ride on! Ride on!’
A little farther on the fourth company was held up for a while by the first, which had detrained before it. As they sat the cossacks sang quietly under their breath. Aga
inst the bluish grey of the sky the silhouettes of the horsemen ahead stood out clearly, as though drawn with Indian ink. The lances swung like bare sunflower stalks. Occasionally a stirrup jingled or a saddle creaked.
Prokhor Zikov was riding at Gregor’s side. Prokhor stared into his face and whispered:
‘Melekhov, you’re not afraid, are you?’
‘What is there to be afraid of?’
‘We may take part in a battle today.’
‘Well, what about it?’
‘But I’m afraid,’ Prokhor admitted, his fingers playing nervously with the reins. ‘I didn’t sleep a wink all night.’
Once more the company advanced; the horses moved at a measured pace, the lances swayed and flowed rhythmically. Dropping the reins, Gregor dozed. And it seemed to him that it was not the horse that put its legs forward springily, rocking him in the saddle, but he himself who was passing along a warm, dark road, and walking with unusual ease, with irresistible joy. Prokhor chattered away at his side, but the voice mingled with the creak of the saddle and the clatter of hoofs, and did not disturb his thoughtless doze.
The company turned into a by-road. The silence rang in their ears. Ripe oats hung over the wayside, their heads smoking with dew. The horses tried to reach the low ears and dragged the reins out of their riders’ hands. The gracious daylight crept under Gregor’s eyelids. He raised his head and heard Prokhor’s monotonous voice, like the creak of a cartwheel.
He was abruptly aroused by a heavy, rumbling howl that billowed across the oatfields.
‘Gunfire!’ Zikov almost shouted, and tears filled his calfish eyes. Gregor lifted his head. In front of him the troop-sergeant’s grey greatcoat rose and fell in unison with the horse’s back; on each side stretched fields of uncut corn; a skylark danced in the sky at the height of a telegraph pole. The entire company was aroused. The sound of the firing ran through it like an electric current. Lashed into activity, lieutenant Polkovnikov put the company into a fast trot. Beyond a crossroad, where a deserted tavern stood, they began to fall in with the carts of refugees. A squadron of smart-looking dragoons went by. Their captain, riding a sorrel thoroughbred, stared at the cossacks ironically and spurred up his horse. They passed a great, pockmarked artilleryman carrying an armful of boards probably torn from the fence of the tavern, and came upon a howitzer battery stranded in a muddy and swampy hollow. The riders were lashing at their horses, whilst the gunners struggled with the carriage wheels.
A little farther on they overtook an infantry regiment. The soldiers were marching swiftly, their overcoats flung back. The sun glittered on their polished helmets and streamed from their bayonets. A corporal in the last company threw a lump of mud at Gregor:
‘Here, catch! Chuck it at the Austrians!’
‘Don’t play about, grasshopper!’ Gregor replied, and cut the lump of mud in its flight with his whip.
From now on they were continually passing foot regiments crawling like caterpillars, batteries, baggage-wagons, red-cross wagons. The deathly breath of imminent battle was in the air.
A little later, as it was entering a village, the fourth company was overtaken by the commander of the regiment, colonel Kaledin, accompanied by his second in command. As they passed Gregor heard the latter say agitatedly to Kaledin:
‘This village isn’t marked on the ordnance map, Vasily Maximovitch! We may find ourselves in an awkward situation.’
Gregor did not catch the colonel’s reply.
The regiment was continually changing its pace, and the horses began to sweat. In the distance appeared the huts of a little village lying under a steep slope. On the other side of the village was a wood, its green tree-tops piercing the azure dome of the sky. From beyond the wood came the sound of gunfire, mingled with the frequent rattle of rifle-shots. The horses pricked up their ears. The smoke of bursting shrapnel hovered in the sky a long way off; the rifle-fire came from the right of the company.
Gregor listened tensely to every sound, his nerves tautened into little bundles of sensation. Prokhor Zikov fidgeted in his saddle, talking incessantly:
‘Gregor, those shots sound just like boys rattling sticks along railings, don’t they?’ he remarked.
‘Shut up, magpie!’
The company entered the village. Russian soldiers were over-running the yards. The inhabitants of the huts were packing their belongings to flee, their faces impressed with alarm and confusion. As Gregor passed he noticed that soldiers were firing the roof of a shed, but its owner, a tall, grey-haired White Russian, crushed by his sudden misfortune, went past them without paying the slightest attention. Gregor saw the man’s family loading a cart with red-covered pillows and ramshackle furniture, and the man himself was carefully carrying a broken wheel-rim, which was of no value to anybody, and had probably lain in the yard for years. Gregor was amazed at the stupidity of the women, who were piling the carts with painted pots and ikons and were leaving necessary and valuable articles behind in the huts. Down the street the feathers from a feather-bed blew like a miniature snowstorm.
The company crossed the Austrian frontier at noon. The horses jumped across the overthrown frontier post. From the right came the sound of rifle-fire. In the distance the brick walls of a farm were visible. The sun’s rays fell perpendicularly. A bitter-tasting cloud of dust settled on everything. The regimental commander issued orders for advance patrols to be detached and sent ahead. From the fourth company went the fourth troop under the troop officer Semionov. The regiment, dissected into its companies, was left behind in a grey haze. The troop of some twenty cossacks rode past the farm along the rutted road.
The officer led the reconnaissance patrol a couple of miles, then halted to study his map. The cossacks gathered in a group to smoke. Gregor dismounted to ease his saddle-girth, but the sergeant shouted:
‘What are you up to? Get back on your horse!’
The officer lit a cigarette, and diligently swept the country ahead with his binoculars. To the right rose the serrated outline of a wood. Just over a mile away was a little village, beyond it a deep-running rivulet and the glassy surface of water. The officer stared intently through his binoculars, studying the deathly stillness of the village streets, but it was as deserted as a cemetery. Only the blue ribbon of water beckoned challengingly.
‘That must be Korolevka!’ the officer indicated the village with his eyes.
The sergeant took his horse nearer the officer. He made no reply, but the expression of his face said eloquently:
‘You know better than I! I’m concerned only with minor questions.’
‘We’ll ride to it,’ the officer said irresolutely, putting away his binoculars and frowning as though he had toothache.
‘Mightn’t we run into them, your Excellency?’
‘We’ll go cautiously.’
They rode fearfully down into the deserted street. Every window suggested an ambush, every open cellar door evoked a feeling of savage isolation and sent an unpleasant shudder down the back. All eyes were drawn as though by magnets to the fences and ditches. They rode in like a band of robbers – or as wolves approach human habitations in the blue winter night – but the streets were empty. The silence howled stupefyingly. From the open window of one house came the naïve striking of a clock. The sounds cut like pistol shots, and Gregor saw the officer tremble and his hand spasmodically grip his revolver.
There was not a soul in the village. The patrol forded the river; the water reached the horses’ bellies. They entered willingly and drank it as they went, while their riders pulled at the reins and urged them on. Gregor stared thirstily down at the turbid water, close yet inaccessible; it drew him almost irresistibly towards itself. If it had been possible he would have jumped out of his saddle and lain without undressing under the drowsy murmur of the stream, so that its coolness could freshen his back and his chest.
From the rise beyond the village they saw a town in the distance: square rows of houses, brick buildings, gardens, and church s
pires. The officer rode to the top of the rise and put his binoculars to his eyes.
‘There they are,’ he shouted, the fingers of his left hand playing nervously.
The sergeant rode to the sunbaked crest and gazed. He was followed by the other cossacks in single file. Along the streets they saw people swarming. Wagons dammed up the side streets, horsemen were galloping furiously. With eyes screwed up, gazing from under his palm, Gregor was able even to distinguish the grey, unfamiliar colour of the uniforms. Before the town stretched the freshly dug, brown lines of trenches, with men swarming about them.
The sergeant drove the cossacks hurriedly back down the rise. The officer made some pencil notes in his field notebook, and then beckoned to Gregor:
‘Melekhov!’
‘Sir!’
Gregor dismounted and went to the officer, his legs feeling like stone after the long ride. The officer handed him a folded paper.
‘You’ve got the best horse. Deliver this to the regimental commander. At the gallop!’ he ordered.
Gregor hid the paper in his breast-pocket and went back to his horse, slipping the chin strap under his chin as he went. The officer watched him until he had mounted, then glanced at his wrist-watch.
The regiment had nearly reached the village of Korolevka when Gregor rode up with the report. After reading it the colonel gave an order to his adjutant, who galloped off to the first company.
The fourth company rode through Korolevka, and as quickly as though on the parade ground extended over the country beyond, straightening out its horse-shoe formation. The horses tossed their heads to shake off the horseflies, and there was a continual jingle of snaffles. In the mid-day silence the noise of the first company passing through the village sounded heavily.
Lieutenant Polkovnikov rode on his prancing horse to the front of the ranks. Gathering the reins tightly in one hand, he dropped the other to his sword-knot. With bated breath Gregor awaited the word of command.
The officer drew his sabre from its sheath; the blade gleamed like blue light.