Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing, and
having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging, pacified the
old woman and satisfied Vanyúsha’s demands.
Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved into the
winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for three rubles a
month. Olénin had something to eat and went to sleep. Towards evening
he woke up, washed and made himself tidy, dined, and having lit a
cigarette sat down by the window that looked onto the street. It was
cooler. The slanting shadow of the hut with its ornamental gables fell
across the dusty road and even bent upwards at the base of the wall of
the house opposite. The steep reed-thatched roof of that house shone in
the rays of the setting sun. The air grew fresher. Everything was
peaceful in the village. The soldiers had settled down and become
quiet. The herds had not yet been driven home and the people had not
returned from their work.
Olénin’s lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At rare
intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Térek in those parts whence
Olénin had just come (the Chéchen or the Kumýtsk plain), came muffled
sounds of firing. Olénin was feeling very well contented after three
months of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his
powerful body clean (an unaccustomed sensation after the campaign) and
in all his rested limbs he was conscious of a feeling of tranquillity
and strength. His mind, too, felt fresh and clear. He thought of the
campaign and of past dangers. He remembered that he had faced them no
worse than other men, and that he was accepted as a comrade among
valiant Caucasians. His Moscow recollections were left behind Heaven
knows how far! The old life was wiped out and a quite new life had
begun in which there were as yet no mistakes. Here as a new man among
new men he could gain a new and good reputation. He was conscious of a
youthful and unreasoning joy of life. Looking now out of the window at
the boys spinning their tops in the shadow of the house, now round his
neat new lodging, he thought how pleasantly he would settle down to
this new Cossack village life. Now and then he glanced at the mountains
and the blue sky, and an appreciation of the solemn grandeur of nature
mingled with his reminiscences and dreams. His new life had begun, not
as he imagined it would when he left Moscow, but unexpectedly well.
“The mountains, the mountains, the mountains!” they permeated all his
thoughts and feelings.
“He’s kissed his dog and licked the jug! ... Daddy Eróshka has kissed
his dog!” suddenly the little Cossacks who had been spinning their tops
under the window shouted, looking towards the side street. “He’s drunk
his bitch, and his dagger!” shouted the boys, crowding together and
stepping backwards.
These shouts were addressed to Daddy Eróshka, who with his gun on his
shoulder and some pheasants hanging at his girdle was returning from
his shooting expedition.
“I have done wrong, lads, I have!” he said, vigorously swinging his
arms and looking up at the windows on both sides of the street. “I have
drunk the bitch; it was wrong,” he repeated, evidently vexed but
pretending not to care.
Olénin was surprised by the boys’ behavior towards the old hunter, but
was still more struck by the expressive, intelligent face and the
powerful build of the man whom they called Daddy Eróshka.
“Here Daddy, here Cossack!” he called. “Come here!”
The old man looked into the window and stopped.
“Good evening, good man,” he said, lifting his little cap off his
cropped head.
“Good evening, good man,” replied Olénin. “What is it the youngsters
are shouting at you?”
Daddy Eróshka came up to the window. “Why, they’re teasing the old man.
No matter, I like it. Let them joke about their old daddy,” he said
with those firm musical intonations with which old and venerable people
speak. “Are you an army commander?” he added.
“No, I am a cadet. But where did you kill those pheasants?” asked
Olénin.
“I dispatched these three hens in the forest,” answered the old man,
turning his broad back towards the window to show the hen pheasants
which were hanging with their heads tucked into his belt and staining
his coat with blood. “Haven’t you seen any?” he asked. “Take a brace if
you like! Here you are,” and he handed two of the pheasants in at the
window. “Are you a sportsman yourself?” he asked.
“I am. During the campaign I killed four myself.”
“Four? What a lot!” said the old man sarcastically. “And are you a
drinker? Do you drink _chikhir?_”
“Why not? I like a drink.”
“Ah, I see you are a trump! We shall be _kunaks_, you and I,” said
Daddy Eróshka.
“Step in,” said Olénin. “We’ll have a drop of _chikhir_.”
“I might as well,” said the old man, “but take the pheasants.” The old
man’s face showed that he liked the cadet. He had seen at once that he
could get free drinks from him, and that therefore it would be all
right to give him a brace of pheasants.
Soon Daddy Eróshka’s figure appeared in the doorway of the hut, and it
was only then that Olénin became fully conscious of the enormous size
and sturdy build of this man, whose red-brown face with its perfectly
white broad beard was all furrowed by deep lines produced by age and
toil. For an old man, the muscles of his legs, arms, and shoulders were
quite exceptionally large and prominent. There were deep scars on his
head under the short-cropped hair. His thick sinewy neck was covered
with deep intersecting folds like a bull’s. His horny hands were
bruised and scratched. He stepped lightly and easily over the
threshold, unslung his gun and placed it in a corner, and casting a
rapid glance round the room noted the value of the goods and chattels
deposited in the hut, and with out-turned toes stepped softly, in his
sandals of raw hide, into the middle of the room. He brought with him a
penetrating but not unpleasant smell of _chikhir_ wine, vodka,
gunpowder, and congealed blood.
Daddy Eróshka bowed down before the icons, smoothed his beard, and
approaching Olénin held out his thick brown hand. “_Koshkildy_,” said
he; “That is Tartar for ‘Good-day’—‘Peace be unto you,’ it means in
their tongue.”
“_Koshkildy_, I know,” answered Olénin, shaking hands.
“Eh, but you don’t, you won’t know the right order! Fool!” said Daddy
Eróshka, shaking his head reproachfully. “If anyone says ‘_Koshkildy_’
to you, you must say ‘_Allah rasi bo sun_,’ that is, ‘God save you.’
That’s the way, my dear fellow, and not ‘_Koshkildy_.’ But I’ll teach
you all about it. We had a fellow here, Elias Mósevich, one of your
Russians, he and I were _kunaks_. He was a trump, a drunkard, a thief,
a sportsman—and what a sportsman! I taught him everything.”
“And what will you teach me?” asked Olénin, who was becoming more and
more interested in the old man.
“I’ll take you hunting and teach you to fish. I’ll show you Chéchens
and find a girl for you, if you like—even that! That’s the sort I am!
I’m a wag!”—and the old man laughed. “I’ll sit down. I’m tired.
_Karga?_” he added inquiringly.
“And what does ‘_Karga_’ mean?” asked Olénin.
“Why, that means ‘All right’ in Georgian. But I say it just so. It is a
way I have, it’s my favourite word. _Karga_, _Karga_. I say it just so;
in fun I mean. Well, lad, won’t you order the _chikhir?_ You’ve got an
orderly, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, Iván!” shouted the old man. “All your soldiers are Iváns. Is
yours Iván?”
“True enough, his name is Iván—Vanyúsha. Here Vanyúsha! Please get some
_chikhir_ from our landlady and bring it here.”
“Iván or Vanyúsha, that’s all one. Why are all your soldiers Iváns?
Iván, old fellow,” said the old man, “you tell them to give you some
from the barrel they have begun. They have the best _chikhir_ in the
village. But don’t give more than thirty kopeks for the quart, mind,
because that witch would be only too glad.... Our people are anathema
people; stupid people,” Daddy Eróshka continued in a confidential tone
after Vanyúsha had gone out. “They do not look upon you as on men, you
are worse than a Tartar in their eyes. ‘Worldly Russians’ they say. But
as for me, though you are a soldier you are still a man, and have a
soul in you. Isn’t that right? Elias Mósevich was a soldier, yet what a
treasure of a man he was! Isn’t that so, my dear fellow? That’s why our
people don’t like me; but I don’t care! I’m a merry fellow, and I like
everybody. I’m Eróshka; yes, my dear fellow.”
And the old Cossack patted the young man affectionately on the
shoulder.