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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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>when trodden on. The water had long since subsided in the Terek

and rapidly vanished and dried up in the ditches. The slimy banks

of the pond near the village were trodden bare by the cattle and

all day long you could hear the splashing of water and the

shouting of girls and boys bathing. The sand-drifts and the reeds

were already drying up in the steppes, and the cattle, lowing, ran

into the fields in the daytime. The boars migrated into the

distant reed-beds and to the hills beyond the Terek. Mosquitoes

and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and villages.

The snow-peaks were hidden in grey mist. The air was rarefied and

smoky. It was said that abreks had crossed the now shallow river

and were prowling on this side of it. Every night the sun set in a

glowing red blaze. It was the busiest time of the year. The

villagers all swarmed in the melon-fields and the vineyards. The

vineyards thickly overgrown with twining verdure lay in cool, deep

shade. Everywhere between the broad translucent leaves, ripe,

heavy, black clusters peeped out. Along the dusty road from the

vineyards the creaking carts moved slowly, heaped up with black

grapes. Clusters of them, crushed by the wheels, lay in the dirt.

Boys and girls in smocks stained with grape-juice, with grapes in

their hands and mouths, ran after their mothers. On the road you

continually came across tattered labourers with baskets of grapes

on their powerful shoulders; Cossack maidens, veiled with

kerchiefs to their eyes, drove bullocks harnessed to carts laden

high with grapes. Soldiers who happened to meet these carts asked

for grapes, and the maidens, clambering up without stopping their

carts, would take an armful of grapes and drop them into the

skirts of the soldiers’ coats. In some homesteads they had already

begun pressing the grapes; and the smell of the emptied skins

filled the air. One saw the blood-red troughs in the pent-houses

in the yards and Nogay labourers with their trousers rolled up and

their legs stained with the juice. Grunting pigs gorged themselves

with the empty skins and rolled about in them. The flat roofs of

the outhouses were all spread over with the dark amber clusters

drying in the sun. Daws and magpies crowded round the roofs,

picking the seeds and fluttering from one place to another.

 

The fruits of the year’s labour were being merrily gathered in,

and this year the fruit was unusually fine and plentiful.

 

In the shady green vineyards amid a sea of vines, laughter, songs,

merriment, and the voices of women were to be heard on all sides,

and glimpses of their bright-coloured garments could be seen.

 

Just at noon Maryanka was sitting in their vineyard in the shade

of a peach-tree, getting out the family dinner from under an

unharnessed cart. Opposite her, on a spread-out horse-cloth, sat

the cornet (who had returned from the school) washing his hands by

pouring water on them from a little jug. Her little brother, who

had just come straight out of the pond, stood wiping his face with

his wide sleeves, and gazed anxiously at his sister and his mother

and breathed deeply, awaiting his dinner. The old mother, with her

sleeves rolled up over her strong sunburnt arms, was arranging

grapes, dried fish, and clotted cream on a little low, circular

Tartar table. The cornet wiped his hands, took off his cap,

crossed himself, and moved nearer to the table. The boy seized the

jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and daughter crossed

their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in the shade

it was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt

unpleasant: the strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought

no coolness, but only monotonously bent the tops of the pear,

peach, and mulberry trees with which the vineyard was sprinkled.

The comet, she felt unbearably hot. Her face was burning, and she

did not know where to put her feet, her eyes were moist with

sleepiness and weariness, her lips parted involuntarily, and her

chest heaved heavily and deeply.

 

The busy time of year had begun a fortnight ago and the continuous

heavy labour had filled the girl’s life. At dawn she jumped up,

washed her face with cold water, wrapped herself in a shawl, and

ran out barefoot to see to the cattle. Then she hurriedly put on

her shoes and her beshmet and, taking a small bundle of bread, she

harnessed the bullocks and drove away to the vineyards for the

whole day. There she cut the grapes and carried the baskets with

only an hour’s interval for rest, and in the evening she returned

to the village, bright and not tired, dragging the bullocks by a

rope or driving them with a long stick. After attending to the

cattle, she took some sunflower seeds in the wide sleeve of her

smock and went to the corner of the street to crack them and have

some fun with the other girls. But as soon as it was dusk she

returned home, and after having supper with her parents and her

brother in the dark outhouse, she went into the hut, healthy and

free from care, and climbed onto the oven, where half drowsing she

listened to their lodger’s conversation. As soon as he went away

she would throw herself down on her bed and sleep soundly and

quietly till morning. And so it went on day after day. She had not

seen Lukashka since the day of their betrothal, but calmly awaited

the wedding. She had got used to their lodger and felt his intent

looks with pleasure.

Chapter XXX

Although there was no escape from the heat and the mosquitoes

swarmed in the cool shadow of the wagons, and her little brother

tossing about beside her kept pushing her, Maryanka having drawn

her kerchief over her head was just falling asleep, when suddenly

their neighbour Ustenka came running towards her and, diving under

the wagon, lay down beside her.

 

‘Sleep, girls, sleep!’ said Ustenka, making herself comfortable

under the wagon. ‘Wait a bit,’ she exclaimed, ‘this won’t do!’

 

She jumped up, plucked some green branches, and stuck them through

the wheels on both sides of the wagon and hung her beshmet over

them.

 

‘Let me in,’ she shouted to the little boy as she again crept

under the wagon. ‘Is this the place for a Cossack—with the girls?

Go away!’

 

When alone under the wagon with her friend, Ustenka suddenly put

both her arms round her, and clinging close to her began kissing

her cheeks and neck.

 

‘Darling, sweetheart,’ she kept repeating, between bursts of

shrill, clear laughter.

 

‘Why, you’ve learnt it from Grandad,’ said Maryanka, struggling.

‘Stop it!’

 

And they both broke into such peals of laughter that Maryanka’s

mother shouted to them to be quiet.

 

‘Are you jealous?’ asked Ustenka in a whisper.

 

‘What humbug! Let me sleep. What have you come for?’

 

But Ustenka kept on, ‘I say! But I wanted to tell you such a

thing.’

 

Maryanka raised herself on her elbow and arranged the kerchief

which had slipped off.

 

‘Well, what is it?’

 

‘I know something about your lodger!’

 

‘There’s nothing to know,’ said Maryanka.

 

‘Oh, you rogue of a girl!’ said Ustenka, nudging her with her

elbow and laughing. ‘Won’t tell anything. Does he come to you?’

 

‘He does. What of that?’ said Maryanka with a sudden blush.

 

‘Now I’m a simple lass. I tell everybody. Why should I pretend?’

said Ustenka, and her bright rosy face suddenly became pensive.

‘Whom do I hurt? I love him, that’s all about it.’

 

‘Grandad, do you mean?’

 

‘Well, yes!’

 

‘And the sin?’

 

‘Ah, Maryanka! When is one to have a good time if not while one’s

still free? When I marry a Cossack I shall bear children and shall

have cares. There now, when you get married to Lukashka not even a

thought of joy will enter your head: children will come, and

work!’

 

‘Well? Some who are married live happily. It makes no difference!’

Maryanka replied quietly.

 

‘Do tell me just this once what has passed between you and

Lukishka?’

 

‘What has passed? A match was proposed. Father put it off for a

year, but now it’s been settled and they’ll marry us in autumn.’

 

‘But what did he say to you?’ Maryanka smiled.

 

‘What should he say? He said he loved me. He kept asking me to

come to the vineyards with him.’

 

‘Just see what pitch! But you didn’t go, did you? And what a dare-devil he has become: the first among the braves. He makes merry

out there in the army too! The other day our Kirka came home; he

says: “What a horse Lukashka’s got in exchange!” But all the same

I expect he frets after you. And what else did he say?’

 

‘Must you know everything?’ said Maryanka laughing. ‘One night he

came to my window tipsy, and asked me to let him in.’ ‘And you

didn’t let him?’

 

‘Let him, indeed! Once I have said a thing I keep to it firm as a

rock,’ answered Maryanka seriously.

 

‘A fine fellow! If he wanted her, no girl would refuse him.’

 

‘Well, let him go to the others,’ replied Maryanka proudly.

 

‘You don’t pity him?’

 

‘I do pity him, but I’ll have no nonsense. It is wrong.’ Ustenka

suddenly dropped her head on her friend’s breast, seized hold of

her, and shook with smothered laughter. ‘You silly fool!’ she

exclaimed, quite out of breath. ‘You don’t want to be happy,’ and

she began tickling Maryanka. ‘Oh, leave off!’ said Maryanka,

screaming and laughing. ‘You’ve crushed Lazutka.’

 

‘Hark at those young devils! Quite frisky! Not tired yet!’ came

the old woman’s sleepy voice from the wagon.

 

‘Don’t want happiness,’ repeated Ustenka in a whisper,

insistently. ‘But you are lucky, that you are! How they love you!

You are so crusty, and yet they love you. Ah, if I were in your

place I’d soon turn the lodger’s head! I noticed him when you were

at our house. He was ready to eat you with his eyes. What things

Grandad has given me! And yours they say is the richest of the

Russians. His orderly says they have serfs of their own.’

 

Maryanka raised herself, and after thinking a moment, smiled.

 

‘Do you know what he once told me: the lodger I mean?’ she said,

biting a bit of grass. ‘He said, “I’d like to be Lukashka the

Cossack, or your brother Lazutka—.” What do you think he meant?’

 

‘Oh, just chattering what came into his head,’ answered Ustenka.

‘What does mine not say! Just as if he was possessed!’

 

Maryanka dropped her hand on her folded beshmet, threw her arm

over Ustenka’s shoulder, and shut her eyes.

 

‘He wanted to come and work in the vineyard to-day: father invited

him,’ she said, and after a short silence she fell asleep.

Chapter XXXI

The sun had come out from behind the pear-tree that had shaded the

wagon, and even through the branches that Ustenka had fixed up it

scorched the faces of the sleeping girls. Maryanka woke up and

began arranging the kerchief on her head. Looking about her,

beyond the pear-tree she noticed their lodger, who with his gun on

his shoulder stood talking to her father. She nudged Ustenka and

smilingly pointed him out to her.

 

‘I went yesterday and didn’t find a single one,’ Olenin was saying

as he looked about uneasily, not seeing Maryanka through the

branches.

 

‘Ah, you should go out there in that direction,

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