On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a
Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of
Novomlínsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies’ wagons
were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs
gathered from various yards (where they had not been sufficiently
securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were
settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service Corps men were driving
piles in the ground to which to tie the horses, and the quartermasters
were going about the streets just as if they were at home, showing
officers and men to their quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in
a line, the company’s carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat
porridge was being cooked.
Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the sergeant-major, Onisim
Mikháylovich, and all this was in the Cossack village where it was
reported that the companies were ordered to take up their quarters:
therefore they were at home here.
But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether
they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they were Old Believers
or not—was all quite immaterial. Having received their pay and been
dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in
disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares
and streets.
Quite regardless of the Cossacks’ ill will, chattering merrily and with
their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and
hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the
women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large
group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between their teeth
they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming
visible when it thickened into white clouds as it rose, and now at the
camp fires which were quivering in the pure air like molten glass, and
bantered and made fun of the Cossack men and women because they do not
live at all like Russians. In all the yards one could see soldiers and
hear their laughter and the exasperated and shrill cries of Cossack
women defending their houses and refusing to give the soldiers water or
cooking utensils. Little boys and girls, clinging to their mothers and
to each other, followed all the movements of the troopers (never before
seen by them) with frightened curiosity, or ran after them at a
respectful distance.
The old Cossacks came out silently and dismally and sat on the earthen
embankments of their huts, and watched the soldiers’ activity with an
air of leaving it all to the will of God without understanding what
would come of it.
Olénin, who had joined the Caucasian Army as a cadet three months
before, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village, the
house of the cornet, Elias Vasílich—that is to say at Granny Ulítka’s.
“Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmítri Andréich,” said the
panting Vanyúsha to Olénin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and
mounted on a Kabardá horse which he had bought in Gróznoe, was after a
five-hours’ march gaily entering the yard of the quarters assigned to
him.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked, caressing his horse and looking
merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried Vanyúsha, who had
arrived with the baggage wagons and was unpacking.
Olénin looked quite a different man. In place of his clean-shaven lips
and chin he had a youthful moustache and a small beard. Instead of a
sallow complexion, the result of nights turned into day, his cheeks,
his forehead, and the skin behind his ears were now red with healthy
sunburn. In place of a clean new black suit he wore a dirty white
Circassian coat with a deeply pleated skirt, and he bore arms. Instead
of a freshly starched collar, his neck was tightly clasped by the red
band of his silk _beshmet_. He wore Circassian dress but did not wear
it well, and anyone would have known him for a Russian and not a Tartar
brave. It was the thing—but not the real thing. But for all that, his
whole person breathed health, joy, and satisfaction.
“Yes, it seems funny to you,” said Vanyúsha, “but just try to talk to
these people yourself: they set themselves against one and there’s an
end of it. You can’t get as much as a word out of them.” Vanyúsha
angrily threw down a pail on the threshold. “Somehow they don’t seem
like Russians.”
“You should speak to the Chief of the Village!”
“But I don’t know where he lives,” said Vanyúsha in an offended tone.
“Who has upset you so?” asked Olénin, looking round.
“The devil only knows. Faugh! There is no real master here. They say he
has gone to some kind of _kriga_, and the old woman is a real devil.
God preserve us!” answered Vanyúsha, putting his hands to his head.
“How we shall live here I don’t know. They are worse than Tartars, I do
declare—though they consider themselves Christians! A Tartar is bad
enough, but all the same he is more noble. Gone to the _kriga_ indeed!
What this _kriga_ they have invented is, I don’t know!” concluded
Vanyúsha, and turned aside.
“It’s not as it is in the serfs’ quarters at home, eh?” chaffed Olénin
without dismounting.
“Please sir, may I have your horse?” said Vanyúsha, evidently perplexed
by this new order of things but resigning himself to his fate.
“So a Tartar is more noble, eh, Vanyúsha?” repeated Olénin, dismounting
and slapping the saddle.
“Yes, you’re laughing! You think it funny,” muttered Vanyúsha angrily.
“Come, don’t be angry, Vanyúsha,” replied Olénin, still smiling. “Wait
a minute, I’ll go and speak to the people of the house; you’ll see I
shall arrange everything. You don’t know what a jolly life we shall
have here. Only don’t get upset.”
Vanyúsha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked contemptuously
after his master, and shook his head. Vanyúsha regarded Olénin as only
his master, and Olénin regarded Vanyúsha as only his servant; and they
would both have been much surprised if anyone had told them that they
were friends, as they really were without knowing it themselves.
Vanyúsha had been taken into his proprietor’s house when he was only
eleven and when Olénin was the same age. When Olénin was fifteen he
gave Vanyúsha lessons for a time and taught him to read French, of
which the latter was inordinately proud; and when in specially good
spirits he still let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he
did so.
Olénin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the
hut. Maryánka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women
do in the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing
herself against the wall covered the lower part of her face with the
broad sleeve of her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olénin
in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure
of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth
he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine
print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike
terror and wild curiosity.
“This is _she_,” thought Olénin. “But there will be many others like
her” came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door.
Old Granny Ulítka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her
back turned to him, sweeping the floor.
“Good-day to you. Mother! I’ve come about my lodgings,” he began.
The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still
handsome face towards him.
“What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I’ll teach you to
mock; may the black plague seize you!” she shouted, looking askance
from under her frowning brow at the new-comer.
Olénin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian Army
(of which he was a member) would be everywhere received joyfully, and
especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore
felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing presence of mind
however he tried to explain that he meant to pay for his lodgings, but
the old woman would not give him a hearing.
“What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your scraped
face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he’ll show you your
place. I don’t want your dirty money! A likely thing—just as if we had
never seen any! You’ll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco
and want to put it right with money! Think we’ve never seen a pest! May
you be shot in your bowels and your heart!” shrieked the old woman in a
piercing voice, interrupting Olénin.
“It seems Vanyúsha was right!” thought Olénin. “‘A Tartar would be
nobler’,” and followed by Granny Ulítka’s abuse he went out of the hut.
As he was leaving, Maryánka, still wearing only her pink smock, but
with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief,
suddenly slipped out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidly down
the steps with her bare feet she ran from the porch, stopped, and
looking round hastily with laughing eyes at the young man, vanished
round the corner of the hut.
Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening from
under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the young
beauty, struck Olénin even more powerfully than before. “Yes, it must
be _she_,” he thought, and troubling his head still less about the
lodgings, he kept looking round at Maryánka as he approached Vanyúsha.
“There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild filly!”
said Vanyúsha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now
cheered up a bit. “_La fame!_” he added in a loud triumphant voice and
burst out laughing.