The court-martial chairman arrived, smoking and chewing his cigarette. He hoarsely ordered the cossack guard:
‘Drive the people back from the hole. Tell Spiridonov to send along the first batch.’ He glanced at his watch and stood on one side, looking at the crowd, driven back by the guards, surrounding him in a colourful half-circle.
Spiridonov led a squad of cossacks swiftly towards the shop. On the road he met Piotra Melekhov.
‘Any volunteers from your village?’ he asked.
‘Volunteers for what?’ Piotra inquired.
‘To act as a firing party.’
‘No, there aren’t, and there won’t be!’ Piotra roughly answered, passing round Spiridonov as he barred the road.
But there were volunteers from Tatarsk: Mitka Korshunov, stroking the hair falling below the peak of his cap, went awkwardly up to Piotra and said, screwing up his green eyes:
‘I’ll volunteer. What did you say “no” for? I’ll be one. Give me some cartridges. I’ve only got one round.’
He was joined by Andrei Kashulin, an evil expression on his pale face, and Fiodot Bodovskov.
A roar and muffled howl went up from the closely packed crowd when the first party of ten condemned prisoners, surrounded by a cossack escort, set out from the shop. Podtielkov walked in front, barefoot, dressed in broad black cloth breeches and his leather jerkin, flung wide open. He set his great feet confidently in the mud, and when he slipped flung out his left arm to keep his balance. At his side Krivoshlikov, deathly pale, could hardly drag himself along. His eyes gleamed feverishly, his mouth twitched with suffering. He adjusted the greatcoat hanging around his back, and shrugged his shoulders as though terribly cold. For some reason these two were left their clothes, but the others had been stripped down to their underlinen. Lagutin walked at the side of Bunchuk. Both of them were barefoot and wearing little more than their shirts. Lagutin’s ragged drawers revealed his hairy shanks, and he sheepishly drew them around him. Bunchuk stared over the heads of the guards at the grey shroud of clouds in the distance. His cold, sober eyes twinkled expectantly and tensely; his broad palm stroked his chest beneath the open collar of his shirt. One would have thought he was looking forward to something unattainable, yet pleasant to think upon. Some of the others maintained expressions of stolid indifference; one man scornfully waved his hand and spat at the feet of the cossack guards. But two or three had such a dumb yearning in their eyes, such boundless terror in their distorted faces, that even the guards turned their eyes away as they met their gaze.
They strode along swiftly. Podtielkov gave his arm to the stumbling Krivoshlikov. They drew near to the white kerchiefs and red and blue caps of the crowd. As he stared at them Podtielkov cursed aloud. Catching Lagutin’s eyes fixed on him, he abruptly asked:
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’ve gone grey during these last few days …’
‘Isn’t it enough to make you?’ Podtielkov breathed heavily, wiped the sweat from his narrow brow, and repeated: ‘Isn’t it enough to make you? Even a wolf goes grey in a cage; and I’m a man.’
Not another word did they say. The crowd surged forward in a solid mass. To the right stretched the long dark scar of the grave. Spiridonov commanded:
‘Halt!’
Podtielkov immediately took a step forward, and wearily ran his eyes over the foremost ranks of the people. Most of them were greyhaired. The frontline men were somewhere at the back, pricked with conscience. Podtielkov’s drooping moustaches stirred but the slightest, as he said ponderously, yet distinctly:
‘Elders! Allow me and Krivoshlikov to watch how our comrades will face their deaths. Hang us afterwards, but now we should like to see our friends and comrades, and to strengthen those who are weak of spirit.’
The crowd was so quiet that the rain pattered audibly on their caps.
Behind him the captain smiled, baring his tobacco-stained teeth, but made no objection. The elders raggedly shouted their consent. Krivoshlikov and Podtielkov stepped through the crowd, which divided and opened a narrow lane before them. A little way off from the pit they halted, hemmed in on all sides, watched by hundreds of eyes. They gazed as the cossacks drew up the Red Guards in a line with their backs to the pit. Podtielkov could see perfectly, but Krivoshlikov had to stretch his lean neck and rise to his toes.
They recognized Bunchuk on the extreme left, standing with huddled shoulders, breathing heavily, not raising his eyes from the ground. At his side stood Lagutin, still fumbling with his drawers. The man next in the line was changed almost beyond recognition, and had aged at least twenty years. Two more approached the pit and turned round. One of them was smiling challengingly and impudently, furiously cursing and threatening the silent crowd with his fist. The last of the eight had to be carried. He threw himself back, dragged his feet lifelessly over the ground, clung to the cossack guards, then, shaking his tear-stained face, started up and bellowed:
‘Let me go, brothers! Let me go, for the love of God! Brothers! Little brothers! What are you doing? I won four crosses in the German war. I have children. God, I’m innocent. Oh, why are you doing this …?’
A tall cossack thrust his knee into the man’s chest and drove him towards the pit. Only then did Podtielkov recognize him, and his heart turned cold: it was one of the most fearless of his Red Guards, a man who had won all four stages of the Cross of St George, a handsome, fair-haired youth. The cossacks raised him upright; but he fell again and scrabbled at their feet, pressing his lips to their boots – to the boots which were kicking him in the face – and bellowing in a fearful, choking voice:
‘Don’t kill me! Have mercy! I have three little children, one of them a girl … my brothers, my friends!’
He embraced the tall cossack’s knees, but the man tore himself away, leapt back, and gave him a swinging kick with his iron-shod heel on the ear. Blood poured from the other ear and ran down his white collar.
‘Stand him up!’ Spiridonov shouted furiously.
Somehow they raised him, set him up and ran back. In the opposite rank the firing-party brought their rifles to the ready. The crowd groaned and froze into stillness. Some woman whined stupidly.
Bunchuk wanted once more and yet once more to look at the grey pall of the sky, at the mournful earth over which he had wandered twenty-nine years. He raised his eyes, and saw the close rank of cossacks some fifteen paces away. He saw one man, tall, with screwed-up green eyes, a lovelock falling over his narrow white brow, his lips compressed, his body leaning forward, aiming straight at Bunchuk’s breast, just before the volley rang out Bunchuk’s ears were pierced by a protracted shriek. He turned his head: a young, freckled woman ran out of the crowd and fled towards the village, one arm clutching a baby to her breast, the other hand covering its eyes.
After the irregular volley, when the eight men standing at the pit had fallen in a ragged line, the firing party ran towards the hole. Seeing that the Red Guard he had aimed at was still writhing and gnawing at his shoulder, Mitka Korshunov put another shot into him, and whispered to Andrei Kashulin:
‘Look at that devil! He’s bitten his shoulder until it’s bleeding, and died like a wolf, without a groan.’
Ten more of the condemned approached the hole, urged on by butt-ends.
After the second volley the women in the crowd screamed and fled, jostling one another and dragging their children behind them. The cossacks also began to disperse. The loathsome scene of extermination, the shouts and groans of the dying, the howling of those awaiting their turn were overwhelmingly oppressive, and the moving spectacle was too much for the crowd. There remained only the frontline men, who had looked on death to their fill, and the most hardened of the elders.
Fresh groups of barefoot and unclothed Red Guards were brought up, new lines of volunteers confronted them, volleys spurted out, and single shots drily shook the air as the half-dead were finished off. Hurriedly earth was shovelled over the first group of bodies in the trench. Podtiel
kov and Krivoshlikov went across to those awaiting their turn and endeavoured to encourage them. But their words had lost all their significance: another power dominated these men whose lives in a minute or two were to be broken off like ripe fruit from a tree.
Gregor Melekhov pushed through the crowd to go back to the village, and came face to face with Podtielkov. His former leader stepped back and stared at him:
‘You here too, Melekhov?’
A bluish pallor overspread Gregor’s cheeks, and he halted.
‘Here. As you see …’
‘I see …’ Podtielkov smiled wrily, staring with explosive hatred at Gregor’s face. ‘Well, so you’re shooting down your brothers? You’ve turned your coat? What a …’ He strode closer to Gregor and whispered: ‘So you serve us and them too, whoever pays most? Pah, you …’
Gregor seized his sleeve and pantingly asked:
‘Do you remember the battle at Gluboka? Do you remember how they shot down the officers? Shot them down by your order? Ah? And now it’s your turn. Don’t cry! You’re not the only one allowed to tan others’ hides! You’re finished, chairman of the Muscovite commissars! You filthy swine, you sold the cossacks to the Jews! Need I say any more?’
Christonia put his arm around the raging Gregor and led him away. ‘Let’s get back to the horses,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here. God, what is coming over the people?’
But they halted as they heard Podtielkov’s voice raised passionately. Surrounded by old and frontline men, he was shouting:
‘You’re blind … ignorant! The officers have tricked you, have forced you to kill your blood brothers. Do you think it will end with our death? No! Today you are on top, but tomorrow it will be your turn to be shot. The Soviet government will be established all over Russia. Remember my words! In vain are you shedding our blood! You’re a lot of fools!’
‘We’ll manage any others who come!’ an old man retorted.
‘You won’t shoot them all, daddy!’ Podtielkov smiled. ‘You won’t hang all Russia on the gallows! Look after your own head. You’ll think better of it some day, but it will be too late.’
Gregor did not stop to listen to any more, but almost ran to the yard where his horse was tethered. Tightening the saddle-girths, he and Christonia galloped out of the village and rode over the hill without a backward glance.
By the time all the Red Guards had been executed the trench was filled with bodies. Earth was heaped over them and stamped down with feet. Two officers in black masks took Podtielkov and Krivoshlikov and led them to the gallows. Bravely, proudly lifting his head, Podtielkov mounted the stool beneath the noose, unbuttoned the collar around his stout, swarthy neck, and without the tremor of a muscle, himself set the soapy rope around his throat. One of the officers helped Krivoshlikov to mount his stool, and put the rope over his head.
‘Allow us to say a last word before our deaths,’ Podtielkov requested.
‘Speak up! Go ahead!’ the frontline men shouted.
He stretched his hands towards the little group that remained.
‘See how few are left who wish to look on at our death!’ Podtielkov began. ‘Their consciences have pricked them. On behalf of the toiling people, in their interests we have struggled against the rats of generals, not sparing our lives. And now we are perishing at your hands! But we do not curse you! You have been bitterly deceived. The revolutionary government will come, and you will realize on whose side was the truth. The finest sons of the gentle Don have you laid in that hole …’
There was an increasing roar of voices, and his words were lost in the hubbub. Taking advantage of this, one of the officers kicked the stool from under his feet. His great body fell and dangled, but his feet touched the ground. The knot gripping his throat choked him and forced him to draw himself upward. He rose on tiptoe, the toes of his bare feet digging into the damp earth, and gasped for air. Running his protruding eyes over the crowd, he said quietly:
‘And you haven’t even learnt how to hang a man properly … If I had the job, you wouldn’t touch the ground, Spiridonov …!’
The spittle dribbled freely from his mouth. The masked officers and the nearest men raised the helpless, heavy body with difficulty on to the stool.
Krivoshlikov was not allowed to finish his speech. The stool flew from under his feet and crashed against an abandoned shovel. The lean, muscular body swung to and fro for a long time, contracting into a huddled mass until the knees touched his chin, then stretching again with a convulsive shudder. He was still struggling, his black, protruding tongue was still writhing, when the stool was kicked a second time from under Podtielkov. Again the body fell heavily, the seam of the leather jerkin burst on the shoulder; but again the ends of the toes reached the ground. The crowd of cossacks groaned; some of them crossed themselves and hurried away. So great were the dismay and confusion that for a minute all stood as though rooted to the spot, staring fearfully at Podtielkov’s stone-stiff body.
But he was speechless; the knot gripped his throat too tightly. He only rolled his eyes, from which streams of tears were falling, and writhed his mouth. Striving to lighten his suffering, his entire body stretched terribly and torturously upward.
Someone at last bethought himself of a solution, and began with a shovel to dig away the earth beneath him. With each swing the body hung more stiffly, the neck lengthened and lengthened, and the head fell back on to his shoulders. The rope could hardly bear his great weight; it swung gently, creaking at the crossbeam. Yielding to its rhythmic movement, Podtielkov swung also, turning in all directions as though showing his murderers his livid, blackening face and his chest, flooded with burning streams of spittle and tears.
Chapter Ten
Misha Koshevoi and Valet left Kargin the second night after they had fled from Tatarsk. A mist enveloped the steppe, gathering in the ravines and crawling over the spurs of the hills. The quails were calling in the young grass. But in the crepe of the sky the moon was floating like the fully opened blossom of a water-lily in a lake overgrown with reeds and sedges.
They kept on until the dawn. The Milky Way began to fade in the sky. A dew rose. They drew near to a village. But a couple of miles from the village they were overtaken by six cossack horsemen. Misha and Valet would have turned off the road, but the grass was short, the moon was shining.
The cossacks caught them and drove them back towards Kargin. They went some three hundred yards without speaking. Then a shot rang out. Valet stumbled over his feet and went sideways, like a horse afraid of its own shadow. He did not fall, but awkwardly crumpled to the ground, with his face against the grey wormwood.
For five minutes Misha walked on, no feeling in his body, but a ringing in his ears. Then he asked:
‘Why don’t you shoot, you swines? Why pile on the agony?’
‘Get on, get on! Hold your tongue!’ one of the cossacks said kindly enough. ‘We killed the peasant, but we’ve had pity on you. You were in the twelfth regiment during the German war, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you’ll serve again in the twelfth. You’re young yet. You’ve gone wrong a bit, but that’s no great sin. We’ll cure you.’
Misha was cured three days later by a field court-martial held at Kargin. During those times the court had two forms of punishment: shooting, and the birch. Those sentenced to be shot were driven out into the steppe at night. But those for whom there was hope of correction were birched publicly on the square.
On the Sunday morning the people began to assemble, filling all the square and climbing on to benches, sheds, roofs of houses and shops.
The first to be punished was the son of a priest. The man was an ardent Bolshevik and they would have shot him; but his father was a good priest, respected by all, and they decided to give his son a score of strokes. They pulled down his trousers, laid him bare over a bench, tied his hands together underneath it, a cossack sat on his legs, and two others with bunches of willow switches stood at his
side. They laid on. When they had finished the man rose, shook himself, pulled up his trousers, and bowed in all four directions. He was very glad to have escaped being shot, so he bowed and expressed his gratitude:
‘Thank you, elders!’
‘May it do you good!’ someone answered.
And such a roar of laughter broke over the square that even the prisoners sitting a little way off under a shed also smiled.
In accordance with the sentence, they gave Misha twenty strokes good and hot. But still hotter was his burning shame. All the district, old and young, had assembled to watch. Misha pulled up his trousers, and all but weeping, said to the cossack who had birched him:
‘It isn’t right!’
‘What isn’t?’
‘It was my head that thought of it, and my arse has had to pay for it. I’m shamed for the rest of my life.’
‘Don’t worry, shame isn’t smoke; it won’t eat out your eyes,’ the cossack consoled him, and in the desire to cheer his victim, he added:
‘You’re strong, my boy! Two of the strokes I gave you were real good ones. I wanted to see whether you would cry out, but I couldn’t make you. Now the other day they were birching a man and he couldn’t hold himself. He must have had weak bowels.’
The next day Misha was marched off to the front.
Valet was not buried until two days later. A couple of cossacks from the nearest village were sent out by the ataman to dig a shallow grave. They sat smoking, their legs dangling in the hole.
‘The earth’s hard here,’ one said.
‘Like iron. It’s never been ploughed in my time. It’s been set hard like this these many years.’
‘Yes, the lad will be lying in good earth, on a hill. There’s wind here, and sun. It’s dry. He won’t rot quickly.’
They glanced at Valet’s body huddled over the grass, and rose.
‘Undress him?’
‘Of course. He’s got good boots on his feet.’
They laid him in the grave Christian fashion, with his head to the east, and shovelled the rich black earth on top of him.