Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (leveled readers .txt) 📖
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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.
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.
‘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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