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.
Chapter 14
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,