And Quiet Flows the Don

  ‘I want five men to go on a reconnaissance with me. Have my horse got ready. Quickly!’

  While he was waiting for the men to assemble, a stocky cossack came to the door of the hut.

  ‘Your Excellency,’ the man said, ‘the sergeant will not let me go with you because it isn’t my turn. Will you give me permission to go?’

  ‘Are you out for promotion, or what have you done?’ Eugene asked, trying to recognize the man’s face in the darkness.

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘All right, you can come,’ Eugene decided. As the cossack turned to go, he shouted after him:

  ‘Hey! Tell the sergeant …’

  ‘Bunchuk is my name,’ the cossack interrupted.

  ‘A volunteer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Recovering from his confusion, Listnitsky corrected his style of address: ‘Well, Bunchuk, please tell the sergeant to … Oh, all right, I’ll tell him myself.’

  Listnitsky led his men out of the village. When they had ridden some distance he called:

  ‘Volunteer Bunchuk!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Please to bring your horse alongside me.’

  Bunchuk brought his commonplace mount alongside Eugene’s thoroughbred.

  ‘What district are you from?’ Listnitsky asked him, studying the man’s profile.

  ‘Novo-Cherkass.’

  ‘May I be informed of the reason that compelled you to join up as a volunteer?’

  ‘Certainly!’ Bunchuk replied with the slightest trace of a smile. The unwinking gaze of his greenish eyes was harsh and fixed. ‘I’m interested in the art of war. I want to master it.’

  ‘There are military schools established for that purpose.’

  ‘I want to study it in practice first. I can get the theory after.’

  ‘What were you before the war broke out?’

  ‘A worker.’

  ‘Where were you working?’

  ‘In Petersburg, Rostov, and the armament works at Tula. I’m thinking of applying to be transferred to a machine-gun section.’

  ‘Do you know anything about machine-guns?’

  ‘I can handle the Bertier, Madsen, Maxim, Hotchkiss, Vickers, Lewis, and several other makes.’

  ‘Oho! I’ll have a word with the regimental commander about it.’

  ‘If you will.’

  Listnitsky glanced again at Bunchuk’s sturdy, stocky figure. It reminded him of the Donside cork-elm. There was nothing remarkable about the man, not one line indicating distinction; all was ordinary, grey, commonplace. Only the firmly pressed jaws and the eyes meeting his, distinguished him from the mass of other rank and file cossacks around him. He smiled but rarely, his lips twisting into a bow; but his eyes grew no softer, and they retained their uncertain gleam. Coldly restrained, he was exactly like the cork-elm, the tree of a stern, iron hardness that grows on the grey, loose soil of the inhospitable Don earth.

  They rode in silence for a while. Bunchuk rested his broad palms on his ironshod saddle-bow. Listnitsky selected a cigarette, and as he lit it from Bunchuk’s match he smelt the pungent scent of horse’s sweat on the man’s hand. The back of his hand was thickly covered like a horse’s skin with brown hair, and Eugene felt an involuntary desire to stroke it.

  At a turn of the road into the forest stood a clump of friendly birches. Beyond them the eye was wearied with the joyless yellow of stunted pines, the straggling forest undergrowth and bushes crushed by Austrian transports. On the right the artillery were thundering in the distance, but by the birches it was inexpressibly quiet. The earth was drinking in a rich dew; the grasses were turning rosy, flooded with autumnal colours that cried of the speedy death of colour. Listnitsky halted by the birches, and taking out his binoculars, studied the rise beyond the forest. A bee settled on the honey-coloured hilt of his sabre.

  ‘Stupid!’ Bunchuk remarked quietly and compassionately.

  ‘What is?’ Eugene turned to him.

  With his eyes Bunchuk indicated the bee, and Listnitsky smiled:

  ‘Its honey will be bitter, don’t you think?’ he observed.

  It was not Bunchuk that answered him. From a distant clump of pines a piercing magpie stutter shattered the silence, and a spurt of bullets sped through the birches, sending a branch crashing on to the neck of Listnitsky’s horse.

  They turned and galloped back towards the village, urging on their horses with shout and whip. The Austrian machine-gun rattled without intermission through its belt of bullets.

  After this first encounter Listnitsky had more than one talk with the volunteer Bunchuk. On each occasion he was struck by the inflexible will that gleamed in the man’s eyes, and could not discover what lay behind the intangible secrecy that veiled the face of one so ordinary-looking. Bunchuk always spoke with a smile compressed in his firm lips, and he gave Eugene the impression that he was applying a definite rule to the tracking of a tortuous path. As he wished, he was transferred to a machine-gun detachment. A few days later, whilst the regiment was resting behind the front, Listnitsky overtook him walking along by the wall of a burnt-out shed.

  ‘Ah! Volunteer Bunchuk!’ he called.

  The cossack turned his head and saluted.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Eugene asked.

  ‘To the chief command.’

  ‘Then we’re going the same way.’

  For some time they walked along the street of the ruined village in silence.

  ‘Well, are you learning the art of war?’ Listnitsky asked, glancing sidelong at Bunchuk, who was slightly behind him.

  ‘Yes, I’m learning it.’

  ‘What do you propose to do after the war?’

  ‘Some will reap what is sown … but I shall see,’ Bunchuk replied.

  ‘How am I to interpret that remark?’

  ‘You know the proverb, “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”? Well, that’s how.’

  ‘But dropping the riddles?’

  ‘It’s quite clear as it is. Excuse me, I’m turning to the left here.’

  He put his fingers to the peak of his cap and turned off the road. Shrugging his shoulders, Listnitsky stood staring after him.

  ‘Is the fellow trying to be original, or is he just someone with a bee in his bonnet?’ he wondered irritatedly, as he stepped into the company-commander’s earth-hut.

  Chapter Six

  The second and third lines of reserves were called up together. The districts and villages of the Don were depopulated, as though everybody had gone out to mow or reap the harvest.

  But a bitter harvest was reaped along the frontiers that year; death caught away the labourers, and more than one straight-haired cossack’s wife sang of the departed one: ‘Beloved mine, for whom have you deserted me?’ The darling heads were laid low on all sides, the ruddy cossack blood was poured out, and glassy-eyed, unawakable they rotted beneath the artillery dirge in Austria, in Poland, in Prussia … So the eastern wind did not carry the weeping of their wives and mothers to their ears.

  One pleasant September day a milky gossamer web, fine and cottony, was floating over the village of Tatarsk. The anaemic sun was smiling like a widower, the stern, virginal blue sky was repellently clean and proud. Beyond the Don the forest pined a jaundiced yellow, the ash gleamed pallidly, the oak dropped rare figured leaves; only the fir remained screamingly green, gladdening the sight with its vitality.

  That day Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch received a letter from the army on active service. Dunia brought it back from the post. As the postmaster handed it to her he bowed, shook his old bald pate, and deprecatingly opened his arms:

  ‘Forgive me for the love of God for opening the letter. Tell your father I opened it. I badly wanted to know how the war was going … Forgive me and tell Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch what I said.’ He seemed confused, and came out of his office with Dunia, muttering something unintelligible. Filled with foreboding, she agitatedly returned home, and fumbled at her breast a long time f
or the letter. As she drew it out she said breathlessly:

  ‘The postmaster told me he had read the letter and that you musn’t be angry with him.’

  ‘The devil take him! Is it from Gregor?’ the old man asked, breathing asthmatically into her face. ‘From Gregor? Or from Piotra?’

  ‘No, father … I don’t know the writing.’

  ‘Read it!’ Ilinichna cried, tottering heavily to the bench. Her legs were giving her much trouble these days. Natalia ran in from the yard and stood by the stove with her head on one side, her elbows pressed into her breasts. A smile trembled on her lips. She was continually hoping for a message from Gregor or the slightest reference to her in his letters, in reward for her doglike devotion and fidelity.

  ‘Where’s Daria?’ Ilinichna whispered.

  ‘Shut up!’ Pantaleimon shouted. ‘Read it!’ he added to Dunia.

  ‘“I have to inform you,”’ she began, then, slipping off the bench where she was sitting, she screamed:

  ‘Father! Mother …! Oh, mama … Our Grishka …! Oh, oh …! Grishka’s … been killed.’

  Entangled among the leaves of a half-dead geranium, a wasp beat against the window, buzzing furiously. In the yard a chicken clucked contentedly; through the open door came the sound of ringing, childish laughter.

  A shudder ran across Natalia’s face, though her lips still wore her quivering smile. Rising, his head twitching paralytically, Pantaleimon stared in a frenetic perplexity at Dunia, who was rolling spasmodically on the floor.

  The communication read:

  I have to inform you that your son Gregor Pantalievitch Melekhov, a cossack in the Twelfth Don Cossack Regiment, was killed on the twenty-ninth of August near the town of Kamenka-Strumilovo. Your son died the death of the brave; may that be your consolation in your irreplaceable loss. His personal effects will be handed to his brother, Piotra Melekhov. His horse will remain with the regiment.

  Commander of the Fourth Company, Lieutenant POLKOVNIKOV. Field Army, 31st August, 1914.

  After the arrival of the letter Pantaleimon seemed suddenly to wilt. He grew visibly older every day. His memory began to go and his mind lost its clarity. He walked about with bowed back, his face an iron hue; and the feverish oily gleam in his eyes betrayed his mental stress. He began to go grey, and the dazzling grey hairs swiftly patched his head and wove threads into his beard. He grew gluttonous, too, and ate much and ravenously.

  He hid the letter among the books under the ikon. Several times a day he went into the porch to beckon to Dunia. When she came in he would order her to get the letter and read it to him, fearfully glancing the while at the door of the kitchen where his wife was working. ‘Read it quietly, to yourself like,’ he would wink cunningly. Choking down her tears, Dunia would read the first sentence, and then Pantaleimon, squatting on his heels, would raise his brown hand:

  ‘All right. I know the rest. Take the letter back and put it where you found it. Quickly, or mother …’ and he would wink repulsively, his whole face contorted like burnt tree-bark.

  Nine days after the requiem mass, the Melekhovs invited father Vissarion and their relations to the repast in memory of the fallen Gregor. Pantaleimon ate fast and ravenously, and the vermicelli hung on his beard in ringlets. Ilinichna, who had been anxiously watching him during the past few days, burst into tears.

  ‘Father, what’s the matter with you?’ she whispered.

  ‘Eh?’ the old man fidgeted, raising his filmy eyes from his plate. Ilinichna waved her hand and turned away, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.

  ‘Father, you eat as though you had fasted for three days,’ Daria said angrily, her eyes glittering.

  ‘I eat …? All right, I won’t,’ Pantaleimon replied, overcome with embarrassment. He glanced around the table, then, pressing his lips together, sitting with knitted brows, he lapsed into silence, not even replying to questions.

  ‘You’re torturing yourself needlessly, Prokoffievitch! What’s the good of grieving so much?’ Father Vissarion attempted to rally him when the meal was ended. ‘Gregor’s death was a holy one; don’t be angry with God, old man. Your son has received a crown of thorns for his Tsar and his Fatherland. And you … it’s a sin, and God won’t pardon you.’

  ‘That’s just it, holy father! That’s my torture. “Died the death of the brave.” That’s what his commander said.’

  Kissing the priest’s hand, the old man fumbled for the door latch, and for the first time since the arrival of the letter he burst into tears, his body shaking violently.

  From that day he regained his self-control and recovered a little from the blow.

  Each licked the wound in her own way. When Natalia heard Dunia scream that Gregor was dead she ran into the yard. ‘I’ll lay hands on myself. It’s the finish of all things for me,’ her thought drove her on like fire. She struggled in Daria’s arms, and gladly swooned, as an alleviation and postponement of the moment when consciousness would return and violently remind her of what had happened. She passed a week in dull oblivion, and returned to the world of reality changed, quieter, gnawed by a black impotence.

  An invisible corpse haunted the Melekhovs’ hut, and the living breathed in its mouldering scent.

  On the twelfth day after the news of Gregor’s death the Melekhovs received two letters from Piotra by the same post. Dunia read them at the post office, and sped like a stalk caught up by the wind, then swayed and stopped, leaning against a fence. She caused no little excitement in the village, and carried an indescribable feeling of agitation into the hut.

  ‘Grishka’s alive! Our dear’s alive!’ she sobbed and cried when still some distance away. ‘Piotra’s written. Grishka’s wounded, but he isn’t dead. He’s alive, alive!’

  In his letter dated September 2nd, Piotra had written:

  Greetings, dear family. I must tell you that our Grishka all but gave up his soul to God, but now, glory be, he’s alive and well, as we wish you in the name of the Lord God, health and well-being. Close to the town of Kamenka-Strumilovo his regiment was in battle, and in the attack the cossacks of his troop saw him cut down by a Hungarian hussar, and Gregor fell from his horse and after that nobody knew anything, and when I asked them they could tell me nothing. But afterwards I learnt from Misha Koshevoi that Gregor lay till night, but that in the night he came round and started crawling away. He crawled along making his way by the stars, and came across one of our officers wounded. He picked him up and dragged him for four miles. And for this Gregor has been given the Cross of St George and has been raised to the rank of corporal. His wound isn’t serious, and Misha told me he would be back at the front soon. You must excuse this letter, I am writing in the saddle.

  In his second letter Piotra asked his family to send him some dried cherries from their own orchard, and told them not to forget him but to write more often. In the same letter he upbraided Gregor because, so he had been told, he was not looking after his horse properly, and Piotra was ashamed, as the horse was really his. He asked his father to write to Gregor, and said he had sent a message to him that if he did not look after the horse he would give him one on the nose that would draw blood, even if he had got the Cross of St George.

  Old Pantaleimon was a pitiful sight to see. He was scalded with joy. He seized both letters and went into the village with them, stopping all who could read and forcing them to read the letters. In his belated joy he bragged all through the village.

  ‘Aha! What do you think of my Grishka?’ he raised his hand when the reader came to the passage where Piotra described Gregor’s exploit. ‘He’s the first to get the cross in our village,’ he declared proudly. Jealously taking the letter, he thrust it into the lining of his cap and went off in search of another reader.

  Even Sergei Mokhov, who saw him through his shop window, came out, taking off his cap.

  ‘Come in for a minute, Prokoffievitch!’ he invited him.

  Inside, he squeezed the old man’s fist in his own puffy white hand and said: br />
  ‘Well, I congratulate you; I congratulate you. You must be proud to have such a son. I’ve just been reading about his exploit in the newspapers.’

  ‘Is it in the papers?’ Pantaleimon’s face twisted spasmodically.

  ‘Yes, I’ve just read it.’

  Mokhov took a packet of the finest Turkish tobacco down from a shelf, and poured out some expensive chocolates into a bag without troubling to weigh them. Handing the tobacco and sweets to Pantaleimon, he said:

  ‘When you send Gregor Pantalievitch a parcel send him a greeting and these from me.’

  ‘My God! What an honour for Grishka! All the village is talking about him. I’ve lived to see …’ the old man muttered, as he went down the steps of the shop. He blew his nose violently and wiped the tears from his cheek with his sleeve, thinking:

  ‘I’m getting old. Tears come too easily. Ah, Pantaleimon Prokoffievitch, what has life done with you? You were as hard as a flint once, you could carry two and a half hundred weight on your back as easily as a feather, but now … Grishka’s business has upset you a little!’

  As he limped along the street, pressing the bag of chocolates to his chest, again his thought fluttered around Gregor like a lapwing over a marsh, and the words of Piotra’s letter wandered through his mind. Gregor’s father-in-law, Korshunov, was coming along the road, and he called to Pantaleimon:

  ‘Hey, Pantaleimon, stop a minute!’

  The two men had not met since the day war was declared. A cold, constrained relationship had arisen between them after Gregor left home. Miron was annoyed with Natalia for humbling herself to Gregor, and for forcing her father to endure a similar humiliation.

  Miron went right up to Pantaleimon and thrust out his oak-coloured hand:

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Thanks be to God …’

  ‘Been shopping?’

  Pantaleimon shook his head. ‘These are gifts to our hero. Sergei Platonovitch read about his deed in the papers and has sent him some chocolates and tobacco. Do you know, the tears came to his eyes,’ the old man boasted, staring fixedly into Miron’s face in the attempt to discover what impression his words had made.