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Read books online » Fiction » The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (leveled readers .txt) 📖

Book online «The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (leveled readers .txt) 📖». Author graf Tolstoy Leo



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Do come!’

 

Maryanka shook her head, but did so with a smile.

 

‘Nursey Maryanka! Hallo Nursey! Mammy is calling! Supper time!’

shouted Maryanka’s little brother, running towards the group.

 

‘I’m coming,’ replied the girl. ‘Go, my dear, go alone—I’ll come

in a minute.’

 

Lukashka rose and raised his cap.

 

‘I expect I had better go home too, that will be best,’ he said,

trying to appear unconcerned but hardly able to repress a smile,

and he disappeared behind the corner of the house.

 

Meanwhile night had entirely enveloped the village. Bright stars

were scattered over the dark sky. The streets became dark and

empty. Nazarka remained with the women on the earth-bank and their

laughter was still heard, but Lukashka, having slowly moved away

from the girls, crouched down like a cat and then suddenly started

running lightly, holding his dagger to steady it: not homeward,

however, but towards the cornet’s house. Having passed two streets

he turned into a lane and lifting the skirt of his coat sat down

on the ground in the shadow of a fence. ‘A regular cornet’s

daughter!’ he thought about Maryanka. ‘Won’t even have a lark—the

devil! But just wait a bit.’

 

The approaching footsteps of a woman attracted his attention. He

began listening, and laughed all by himself. Maryanka with bowed

head, striking the pales of the fences with a switch, was walking

with rapid regular strides straight towards him. Lukashka rose.

Maryanka started and stopped.

 

‘What an accursed devil! You frightened me! So you have not gone

home?’ she said, and laughed aloud.

 

Lukashka put one arm round her and with the other hand raised her

face. ‘What I wanted to tell you, by Heaven!’ his voice trembled

and broke.

 

‘What are you talking of, at night time!’ answered Maryanka.

‘Mother is waiting for me, and you’d better go to your

sweetheart.’

 

And freeing herself from his arms she ran away a few steps. When

she had reached the wattle fence of her home she stopped and

turned to the Cossack who was running beside her and still trying

to persuade her to stay a while with him.

 

‘Well, what do you want to say, midnight-gadabout?’ and she again

began laughing.

 

‘Don’t laugh at me, Maryanka! By the Heaven! Well, what if I have

a sweetheart? May the devil take her! Only say the word and now

I’ll love you—I’ll do anything you wish. Here they are!’ and he

jingled the money in his pocket. ‘Now we can live splendidly.

Others have pleasures, and I? I get no pleasure from you, Maryanka

dear!’

 

The girl did not answer. She stood before him breaking her switch

into little bits with a rapid movement other fingers.

 

Lukashka suddenly clenched his teeth and fists.

 

‘And why keep waiting and waiting? Don’t I love you, darling? You

can do what you like with me,’ said he suddenly, frowning angrily

and seizing both her hands.

 

The calm expression of Maryanka’s face and voice did not change.

 

‘Don’t bluster, Lukashka, but listen to me,’ she answered, not

pulling away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm’s length.

‘It’s true I am a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend

on me, but if you love me I’ll tell you this. Let go my hands,

I’ll tell you without.—I’ll marry you, but you’ll never get any

nonsense from me,’ said Maryanka without turning her face.

 

‘What, you’ll marry me? Marriage does not depend on us. Love me

yourself, Maryanka dear,’ said Lukashka, from sullen and furious

becoming again gentle, submissive, and tender, and smiling as he

looked closely into her eyes.

 

Maryanka clung to him and kissed him firmly on the lips.

 

‘Brother dear!’ she whispered, pressing him convulsively to her.

Then, suddenly tearing herself away, she ran into the gate of her

house without looking round.

 

In spite of the Cossack’s entreaties to wait another minute to

hear what he had to say, Maryanka did not stop.

 

‘Go,’ she cried, ‘you’ll be seen! I do believe that devil, our

lodger, is walking about the yard.’

 

‘Cornet’s daughter,’ thought Lukashka. ‘She will marry me.

Marriage is all very well, but you just love me!’

 

He found Nazarka at Yamka’s house, and after having a spree with

him went to Dunayka’s house, where, in spite of her not being

faithful to him, he spent the night.

Chapter XIV

It was quite true that Olenin had been walking about the yard when

Maryanka entered the gate, and had heard her say, ‘That devil, our

lodger, is walking about.’ He had spent that evening with Daddy

Eroshka in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a

samovar, wine, and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and

a cigar he listened to the tales the old man told seated on the

threshold at his feet. Though the air was still, the candle

dripped and flickered: now lighting up the post of the porch, now

the table and crockery, now the cropped white head of the old man.

Moths circled round the flame and, shedding the dust of their

wings, fluttered on the table and in the glasses, flew into the

candle flame, and disappeared in the black space beyond. Olenin

and Eroshka had emptied five bottles of chikhir. Eroshka filled

the glasses every time, offering one to Olenin, drinking his

health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old

days: of his rather, ‘The Broad’, who alone had carried on his

back a boar’s carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two

pails of chikhir at one sitting. He told of his own days and his

chum Girchik, with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt

cloaks across the Terek. He told how one morning he had killed two

deer, and about his ‘little soul’ who used to run to him at the

cordon at night. He told all this so eloquently and picturesquely

that Olenin did not notice how time passed. ‘Ah yes, my dear

fellow, you did not know me in my golden days; then I’d have shown

you things. Today it’s “Eroshka licks the jug”, but then Eroshka

was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was the finest horse? Who

had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get a drink? With whom

go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountains to kill Ahmet

Khan? Why, always Eroshka! Whom did the girls love? Always Eroshka

had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: a drinker, a

thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), a

singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like

that nowadays. It’s disgusting to look at them. When they’re that

high [Eroshka held his hand three feet from the ground] they put

on idiotic boots and keep looking at them—that’s all the pleasure

they know. Or they’ll drink themselves foolish, not like men but

all wrong. And who was I? I was Eroshka, the thief; they knew me

not only in this village but up in the mountains. Tartar princes,

my kunaks, used to come to see me! I used to be everybody’s kunak.

If he was a Tartar—with a Tartar; an Armenian—with an Armenian;

a soldier—with a soldier; an officer—with an officer! I didn’t

care as long as he was a drinker. He says you should cleanse

yourself from intercourse with the world, not drink with soldiers,

not eat with a Tartar.’

 

‘Who says all that?’ asked Olenin.

 

‘Why, our teacher! But listen to a Mullah or a Tartar Cadi. He

says, “You unbelieving Giaours, why do you eat pig?” That shows

that everyone has his own law. But I think it’s all one. God has

made everything for the joy of man. There is no sin in any of it.

Take example from an animal. It lives in the Tartar’s reeds or in

ours. Wherever it happens to go, there is its home! Whatever God

gives it, that it eats! But our people say we have to lick red-hot

plates in hell for that. And I think it’s all a fraud,’ he added

after a pause.

 

‘What is a fraud?’ asked Olenin.

 

‘Why, what the preachers say. We had an army captain in Chervlena

who was my kunak: a fine fellow just like me. He was killed in

Chechnya. Well, he used to say that the preachers invent all that

out of their own heads. “When you die the grass will grow on your

grave and that’s all!”’ The old man laughed. ‘He was a desperate

fellow.’

 

‘And how old are you?’ asked Olenin.

 

‘The Lord only knows! I must be about seventy. When a Tsaritsa

reigned in Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it

out. I must be seventy.’

 

‘Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.’

 

‘Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a

woman, a witch, has harmed me….’

 

‘How?’

 

‘Oh, just harmed me.’

 

‘And so when you die the grass will grow?’ repeated Olenin.

 

Eroshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He

was silent for a while.

 

‘And what did you think? Drink!’ he shouted suddenly, smiling and

handing Olenin some wine.

Chapter XV

‘Well, what was I saying?’ he continued, trying to remember. ‘Yes,

that’s the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to

equal me in the whole army. I will find and show you any animal

and any bird, and what and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and

two guns, and nets, and a screen and a hawk. I have everything,

thank the Lord! If you are not bragging but are a real sportsman,

I’ll show you everything. Do you know what a man I am? When I have

found a track—I know the animal. I know where he will lie down

and where he’ll drink or wallow. I make myself a perch and sit

there all night watching. What’s the good of staying at home? One

only gets into mischief, gets drunk. And here women come and

chatter, and boys shout at me—enough to drive one mad. It’s a

different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself a

place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a

jolly fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One

looks up at the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out

from them how the time goes. One looks round—the wood is

rustling; one goes on waiting, now there comes a crackling—a boar

comes to rub himself; one listens to hear the young eaglets

screech and then the cocks give voice in the village, or the

geese. When you hear the geese you know it is not yet midnight.

And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired somewhere far

away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that firing? Is it

another Cossack like myself who has been watching for some animal?

And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the poor

thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for

nothing? I don’t like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a

beast? You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, “Maybe an abrek has

killed some silly little Cossack.” All this passes through one’s

mind. And once as I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle

floating down. It was sound except for one corner which was broken

off. Thoughts did come that

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