The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (leveled readers .txt) 📖

>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.