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

Chapter XXXV

The next day was a holiday. In the evening all the villagers,

their holiday clothes shining in the sunset, were out in the

street. That season more wine than usual had been produced, and

the people were now free from their labours. In a month the

Cossacks were to start on a campaign and in many families

preparations were being made for weddings.

 

Most of the people were standing in the square in front of the

Cossack Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which

cakes and pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and

cotton prints. On the earth-embankment of the office-building sat

or stood the old men in sober grey, or black coats without gold

trimmings or any kind of ornament. They conversed among themselves

quietly in measured tones, about the harvest, about the young

folk, about village affairs, and about old times, looking with

dignified equanimity at the younger generation. Passing by them,

the women and girls stopped and bent their heads. The young

Cossacks respectfully slackened their pace and raised their caps,

holding them for a while over their heads. The old men then

stopped speaking. Some of them watched the passersby severely,

others kindly, and in their turn slowly took off their caps and

put them on again.

 

The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their khorovods, but

having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured beshmets with

white kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat

either on the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts

sheltered from the oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and

chattered in their ringing voices. Little boys and girls playing

in the square sent their balls high up into the clear sky, and ran

about squealing and shouting. The half-grown girls had started

dancing their khorovods, and were timidly singing in their thin

shrill voices. Clerks, lads not in the service, or home for the

holiday, bright-faced and wearing smart white or new red

Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in arm in twos or

threes from one group of women or girls to another, and stopped to

joke and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper, in

a gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door

through which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were

visible and, conscious of his own importance and with the pride of

an Oriental tradesman, waited for customers. Two red-bearded,

barefooted Chechens, who had come from beyond the Terek to see the

fete, sat on their heels outside the house of a friend,

negligently smoking their little pipes and occasionally spitting,

watching the villagers and exchanging remarks with one another in

their rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a workaday-looking

soldier in an old overcoat passed across the square among the

bright-clad girls. Here and there the songs of tipsy Cossacks who

were merrymaking could already be heard. All the huts were

closed; the porches had been scrubbed clean the day before. Even

the old women were out in the street, which was everywhere

sprinkled with pumpkin and melon seed-shells. The air was warm and

still, the sky deep and clear. Beyond the roofs the dead-white

mountain range, which seemed very near, was turning rosy in the

glow of the evening sun. Now and then from the other side of the

river came the distant roar of a cannon, but above the village,

mingling with one another, floated all sorts of merry holiday

sounds.

 

Olenin had been pacing the yard all that morning hoping to see

Maryanka. But she, having put on holiday clothes, went to Mass at

the chapel and afterwards sat with the other girls on an earth-embankment cracking seeds; sometimes again, together with her

companions, she ran home, and each time gave the lodger a bright

and kindly look. Olenin felt afraid to address her playfully or in

the presence of others. He wished to finish telling her what he

had begun to say the night before, and to get her to give him a

definite answer. He waited for another moment like that of

yesterday evening, but the moment did not come, and he felt that

he could not remain any longer in this uncertainty. She went out

into the street again, and after waiting awhile he too went out

and without knowing where he was going he followed her. He passed

by the corner where she was sitting in her shining blue satin

beshmet, and with an aching heart he heard behind him the girls

laughing.

 

Beletski’s hut looked out onto the square. As Olenin was passing

it he heard Beletski’s voice calling to him, ‘Come in,’ and in he

went.

 

After a short talk they both sat down by the window and were soon

joined by Eroshka, who entered dressed in a new beshmet and sat

down on the floor beside them.

 

‘There, that’s the aristocratic party,’ said Beletski, pointing

with his cigarette to a brightly coloured group at the corner.

‘Mine is there too. Do you see her? in red. That’s a new beshmet.

Why don’t you start the khorovod?’ he shouted, leaning out of the

window. ‘Wait a bit, and then when it grows dark let us go too.

Then we will invite them to Ustenka’s. We must arrange a ball for

them!’

 

‘And I will come to Ustenka’s,’ said Olenin in a decided tone.

‘Will Maryanka be there?’

 

‘Yes, she’ll be there. Do come!’ said Beletski, without the least

surprise. ‘But isn’t it a pretty picture?’ he added, pointing to

the motley crowds.

 

‘Yes, very!’ Olenin assented, trying to appear indifferent.

 

‘Holidays of this kind,’ he added, ‘always make me wonder why all

these people should suddenly be contented and jolly. To-day for

instance, just because it happens to be the fifteenth of the

month, everything is festive. Eyes and faces and voices and

movements and garments, and the air and the sun, are all in a

holiday mood. And we no longer have any holidays!’

 

‘Yes,’ said Beletski, who did not like such reflections.

 

‘And why are you not drinking, old fellow?’ he said, turning to

Eroshka.

 

Eroshka winked at Olenin, pointing to Beletski. ‘Eh, he’s a proud

one that kunak of yours,’ he said.

 

Beletski raised his glass. ALLAH BIRDY’ he said, emptying it.

(ALLAH BIRDY, ‘God has given!’—the usual greeting of Caucasians

when drinking together.)

 

‘Sau bul’ (‘Your health’), answered Eroshka smiling, and emptied

his glass.

 

‘Speaking of holidays!’ he said, turning to Olenin as he rose and

looked out of the window, ‘What sort of holiday is that! You

should have seen them make merry in the old days! The women used

to come out in their gold—trimmed sarafans. Two rows of gold

coins hanging round their necks and gold-cloth diadems on their

heads, and when they passed they made a noise, “flu, flu,” with

their dresses. Every woman looked like a princess. Sometimes

they’d come out, a whole herd of them, and begin singing songs so

that the