Olénin’s life went on with monotonous regularity. He had little
intercourse with the commanding officers or with his equals. The
position of a rich cadet in the Caucasus was peculiarly advantageous in
this respect. He was not sent out to work, or for training. As a reward
for going on an expedition he was recommended for a commission, and
meanwhile he was left in peace. The officers regarded him as an
aristocrat and behaved towards him with dignity. Cardplaying and the
officers’ carousals accompanied by the soldier-singers, of which he had
had experience when he was with the detachment, did not seem to him
attractive, and he also avoided the society and life of the officers in
the village. The life of officers stationed in a Cossack village has
long had its own definite form. Just as every cadet or officer when in
a fort regularly drinks porter, plays cards, and discusses the rewards
given for taking part in the expeditions, so in the Cossack villages he
regularly drinks _chikhir_ with his hosts, treats the girls to
sweet-meats and honey, dangles after the Cossack women, and falls in
love, and occasionally marries there. Olénin always took his own path
and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks. And here, too,
he did not follow the ruts of a Caucasian officer’s life.
It came quite naturally to him to wake up at daybreak. After drinking
tea and admiring from his porch the mountains, the morning, and
Maryánka, he would put on a tattered ox-hide coat, sandals of soaked
raw hide, buckle on a dagger, take a gun, put cigarettes and some lunch
in a little bag, call his dog, and soon after five o’clock would start
for the forest beyond the village. Towards seven in the evening he
would return tired and hungry with five or six pheasants hanging from
his belt (sometimes with some other animal) and with his bag of food
and cigarettes untouched. If the thoughts in his head had lain like the
lunch and cigarettes in the bag, one might have seen that during all
those fourteen hours not a single thought had moved in it. He returned
morally fresh, strong, and perfectly happy, and he could not tell what
he had been thinking about all the time. Were they ideas, memories, or
dreams that had been flitting through his mind? They were frequently
all three. He would rouse himself and ask what he had been thinking
about; and would see himself as a Cossack working in a vineyard with
his Cossack wife, or an _abrek_ in the mountains, or a boar running
away from himself. And all the time he kept peering and watching for a
pheasant, a boar, or a deer.
In the evening Daddy Eróshka would be sure to be sitting with him.
Vanyúsha would bring a jug of _chikhir_, and they would converse
quietly, drink, and separate to go quite contentedly to bed. The next
day he would again go shooting, again be healthily weary, again they
would sit conversing and drink their fill, and again be happy.
Sometimes on a holiday or day of rest Olénin spent the whole day at
home. Then his chief occupation was watching Maryánka, whose every
movement, without realizing it himself, he followed greedily from his
window or his porch. He regarded Maryánka and loved her (so he thought)
just as he loved the beauty of the mountains and the sky, and he had no
thought of entering into any relations with her. It seemed to him that
between him and her such relations as there were between her and the
Cossack Lukáshka could not exist, and still less such as often existed
between rich officers and other Cossack girls. It seemed to him that if
he tried to do as his fellow officers did, he would exchange his
complete enjoyment of contemplation for an abyss of suffering,
disillusionment, and remorse. Besides, he had already achieved a
triumph of self-sacrifice in connexion with her which had given him
great pleasure, and above all he was in a way afraid of Maryánka and
would not for anything have ventured to utter a word of love to her
lightly.
Once during the summer, when Olénin had not gone out shooting but was
sitting at home, quite unexpectedly a Moscow acquaintance, a very young
man whom he had met in society, came in.
“Ah, _mon cher_, my dear fellow, how glad I was when I heard that you
were here!” he began in his Moscow French, and he went on intermingling
French words in his remarks. “They said, ‘Olénin’. What Olénin? and I
was so pleased.... Fancy fate bringing us together here! Well, and how
are you? How? Why?” and Prince Belétski told his whole story: how he
had temporarily entered the regiment, how the Commander-in-Chief had
offered to take him as an adjutant, and how he would take up the post
after this campaign although personally he felt quite indifferent about
it.
“Living here in this hole one must at least make a career—get a
cross—or a rank—be transferred to the Guards. That is quite
indispensable, not for myself but for the sake of my relations and
friends. The prince received me very well; he is a very decent fellow,”
said Belétski, and went on unceasingly. “I have been recommended for
the St. Anna Cross for the expedition. Now I shall stay here a bit
until we start on the campaign. It’s capital here. What women! Well,
and how are you getting on? I was told by our captain, Stártsev you
know, a kind-hearted stupid creature.... Well, he said you were living
like an awful savage, seeing no one! I quite understand you don’t want
to be mixed up with the set of officers we have here. I am so glad now
you and I will be able to see something of one another. I have put up
at the Cossack corporal’s house. There is such a girl there. Ústenka! I
tell you she’s just charming.”
And more and more French and Russian words came pouring forth from that
world which Olénin thought he had left for ever. The general opinion
about Belétski was that he was a nice, good-natured fellow. Perhaps he
really was; but in spite of his pretty, good-natured face, Olénin
thought him extremely unpleasant. He seemed just to exhale that
filthiness which Olénin had forsworn. What vexed him most was that he
could not—had not the strength—abruptly to repulse this man who came
from that world: as if that old world he used to belong to had an
irresistible claim on him. Olénin felt angry with Belétski and with
himself, yet against his wish he introduced French phrases into his own
conversation, was interested in the Commander-in-Chief and in their
Moscow acquaintances, and because in this Cossack village he and
Belétski both spoke French, he spoke contemptuously of their fellow
officers and of the Cossacks, and was friendly with Belétski, promising
to visit him and inviting him to drop in to see him. Olénin however did
not himself go to see Belétski. Vanyúsha for his part approved of
Belétski, remarking that he was a real gentleman.
Belétski at once adopted the customary life of a rich officer in a
Cossack village. Before Olénin’s eyes, in one month he came to be like
an old resident of the village; he made the old men drunk, arranged
evening parties, and himself went to parties arranged by the
girls—bragged of his conquests, and even got so far that, for some
unknown reason, the women and girls began calling him grandad, and the
Cossacks, to whom a man who loved wine and women was clearly
understandable, got used to him and even liked him better than they did
Olénin, who was a puzzle to them.