The Chechens with their red hair and clipped moustaches lay dead and hacked about. Only the one we know of, who had fired at Lukashka, though wounded in many places was still alive. Like a wounded hawk all covered with blood (blood was flowing from a wound under his right eye), pale and gloomy, he looked about him with wide — open excited eyes and clenched teeth as he crouched, dagger in hand, still prepared to defend himself. The cornet went up to him as if intending to pass by, and with a quick movement shot him in the ear. The Chechen started up, but it was too late, and he fell.
The Cossacks, quite out of breath, dragged the bodies aside and took the weapons from them. Each of the red-haired Chechens had been a man, and each one had his own individual expression. Lukashka was carried to the cart. He continued to swear in Russian and in Tartar.
‘No fear, I’ll strangle him with my hands. Anna seni!’ he cried, struggling. But he soon became quiet from weakness.
Olenin rode home. In the evening he was told that Lukashka was at death’s door, but that a Tartar from beyond the river had undertaken to cure him with herbs.
The bodies were brought to the village office. The women and the little boys hastened to look at them.
It was growing dark when Olenin returned, and he could not collect himself after what he had seen. But towards night memories of the evening before came rushing to his mind. He looked out of the window, Maryanka was passing to and fro from the house to the cowshed, putting things straight. Her mother had gone to the vineyard and her father to the office. Olenin could not wait till she had quite finished her work, but went out to meet her. She was in the hut standing with her back towards him. Olenin thought she felt shy.
‘Maryanka,’ said he, ‘I say, Maryanka! May I come in?’
She suddenly turned. There was a scarcely perceptible trace of tears in her eyes and her face was beautiful in its sadness. She looked at him in silent dignity.
Olenin again said:
‘Maryanka, I have come —’
‘Leave me alone!’ she said. Her face did not change but the tears ran down her cheeks.
‘What are you crying for? What is it?’
‘What?’ she repeated in a rough voice. ‘Cossacks have been killed, that’s what for.’
‘Lukashka?’ said Olenin.
‘Go away! What do you want?’
‘Maryanka!’ said Olenin, approaching her.
‘You will never get anything from me!’
‘Maryanka, don’t speak like that,’ Olenin entreated.
‘Get away. I’m sick of you!’ shouted the girl, stamping her foot, and moved threateningly towards him. And her face expressed such abhorrence, such contempt, and such anger that Olenin suddenly understood that there was no hope for him, and that his first impression of this woman’s inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.
Olenin said nothing more, but ran out of the hut.
Chapter 42
For two hours after returning home he lay on his bed motionless. Then he went to his company commander and obtained leave to visit the staff. Without taking leave of anyone, and sending Vanyusha to settle his accounts with his landlord, he prepared to leave for the fort where his regiment was stationed. Daddy Eroshka was the only one to see him off. They had a drink, and then a second, and then yet another. Again as on the night of his departure from Moscow, a three-horsed conveyance stood waiting at the door. But Olenin did not confer with himself as he had done then, and did not say to himself that all he had thought and done here was ‘not it’. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved Maryanka more than ever, and knew that he could never be loved by her.
‘Well, good-bye, my lad!’ said Daddy Eroshka. ‘When you go on an expedition, be wise and listen to my words — the words of an old man. When you are out on a raid or the like (you know I’m an old wolf and have seen things), and when they begin firing, don’t get into a crowd where there are many men. When you fellows get frightened you always try to get close together with a lot of others. You think it is merrier to be with others, but that’s where it is worst of all! They always aim at a crowd. Now I used to keep farther away from the others and went alone, and I’ve never been wounded. Yet what things haven’t I seen in my day?’
‘But you’ve got a bullet in your back,’ remarked Vanyusha, who was clearing up the room.
‘That was the Cossacks fooling about,’ answered Eroshka.
‘Cossacks? How was that?’ asked Olenin.
‘Oh, just so. We were drinking. Vanka Sitkin, one of the Cossacks, got merry, and puff! he gave me one from his pistol just here.’
‘Yes, and did it hurt?’ asked Olenin. ‘Vanyusha, will you soon be ready?’ he added.
‘Ah, where’s the hurry! Let me tell you. When he banged into me, the bullet did not break the bone but remained here. And I say: “You’ve killed me, brother. Eh! What have you done to me? I won’t let you off! You’ll have to stand me a pailful!”‘
‘Well, but did it hurt?’ Olenin asked again, scarcely listening to the tale.
‘Let me finish. He stood a pailful, and we drank it, but the blood went on flowing. The whole room was drenched and covered with blood. Grandad Burlak, he says, “The lad will give up the ghost. Stand a bottle of the sweet sort, or we shall have you taken up!” They bought more drink, and boozed and boozed —’
‘Yes, but did it hurt you much?’ Olenin asked once more.
‘Hurt, indeed! Don’t interrupt: I don’t like it. Let me finish. We boozed and boozed till morning, and I fell asleep on the top of the oven, drunk. When I woke in the morning I could not unbend myself anyhow —’
‘Was it very painful?’ repeated Olenin, thinking that now he would at last get an answer to his question.
‘Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but I could not bend and could not walk.’
‘And then it healed up?’ said Olenin, not even laughing, so heavy was his heart.
‘It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!’ And lifting his shirt he showed his powerful back, where just near the bone a bullet could be felt and rolled about.
‘Feel how it rolls,’ he said, evidently amusing himself with the bullet as with a toy. ‘There now, it has rolled to the back.’
‘And Lukashka, will he recover?’ asked Olenin.
‘Heaven only knows! There’s no doctor. They’ve gone for one.’
‘Where will they get one? From Groznoe?’ asked Olenin. ‘No, my lad. Were I the Tsar I’d have hung all your Russian doctors long ago. Cutting is all they know! There’s our Cossack Baklashka, no longer a real man now that they’ve cut off his leg! That shows they’re fools. What’s Baklashka good for now? No, my lad, in the mountains there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vorchik, he was on an expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well, your doctors gave him up, but one of theirs came from the mountains and cured him! They understand herbs, my lad!’
‘Come, stop talking rubbish,’ said Olenin. ‘I’d better send a doctor from head-quarters.’
‘Rubbish!’ the old man said mockingly. ‘Fool, fool! Rubbish. You’ll send a doctor! — If yours cured people, Cossacks and Chechens would go to you for treatment, but as it is your officers and colonels send to the mountains for doctors. Yours are all humbugs, all humbugs.’
Olenin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was humbug in the world in which he had lived and to which he was now returning.