The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852 Read online

  Chapter XIV

  It was quite true that Olenin had been walking about the yard whenMaryanka entered the gate, and had heard her say, 'That devil, ourlodger, is walking about.' He had spent that evening with Daddy Eroshkain 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 listenedto the tales the old man told seated on the threshold at his feet.Though the air was still, the candle dripped and flickered: nowlighting up the post of the porch, now the table and crockery, now thecropped white head of the old man. Moths circled round the flame and,shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on the table and in theglasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in the black spacebeyond. Olenin and Eroshka had emptied five bottles of chikhir. Eroshkafilled the glasses every time, offering one to Olenin, drinking hishealth, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the olddays: of his father, 'The Broad', who alone had carried on his back aboar's carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two pails ofchikhir 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 theTerek. 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 toldall this so eloquently and picturesquely that Olenin did not notice howtime passed. 'Ah yes, my dear fellow, you did not know me in my goldendays; then I'd have shown you things. Today it's "Eroshka licks thejug", but then Eroshka was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was thefinest horse? Who had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get adrink? With whom go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountainsto kill Ahmet Khan? Why, always Eroshka! Whom did the girls love?Always Eroshka had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: adrinker, a thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), asinger; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like thatnowadays. It's disgusting to look at them. When they're that high[Eroshka held his hand three feet from the ground] they put on idioticboots and keep looking at them--that's all the pleasure they know. Orthey'll drink themselves foolish, not like men but all wrong. And whowas I? I was Eroshka, the thief; they knew me not only in this villagebut up in the mountains. Tartar princes, my kunaks, used to come to seeme! 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; anofficer--with an officer! I didn't care as long as he was a drinker. Hesays you should cleanse yourself from intercourse with the world, notdrink 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 everyonehas his own law. But I think it's all one. God has made everything forthe joy of man. There is no sin in any of it. Take example from ananimal. It lives in the Tartar's reeds or in ours. Wherever it happensto go, there is its home! Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But ourpeople say we have to lick red-hot plates in hell for that. And I thinkit'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 whowas 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 theirown heads. "When you die the grass will grow on your grave and that'sall!"' 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 reignedin Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it out. I mustbe seventy.'

  'Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.'

  'Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a woman, awitch, has harmed me....'

  'How?'

  'Oh, just harmed me.'

  'And so when you die the grass will grow?' repeated Olenin.

  Eroshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He wassilent for a while.

  'And what did you think? Drink!' he shouted suddenly, smiling andhanding Olenin some wine.