II.
Count Tolstoï’s literary life is divided very sharply into three periods; or, if the expression be preferred, his powerful talent, original from the very first, has passed through three phases. He began by writing works which are mainly the working up of reminiscences or illustrations of personal impressions. In the “War Sketches,” in “Childhood and Youth,” in “The Cossacks,” the writer confines himself to narration. Of these three writings, the one that best shows Tolstoï’s talent in the first part of his career is the romance entitled “Kazaki,” which, to use Turgénief’s words, is “an incomparable picture of men and things in the Caucasus.” In a detailed analysis of this masterpiece, we shall find the definition of Tolstoï’s manner at the time of his forceful youth.
The second period is that of ripe age; it is filled by the two great novels “War and Peace,” and “Anna Karénina.” The writer’s manner has singularly broadened; even the dimensions of the frame-work of the fiction have taken an almost exaggerated aspect. “War and Peace” makes not less than eighteen hundred pages. “Anna Karénina” appeared in the “Russki Vyestnik,” not in the course of months, but of years. It is true that between two parts of the work the author stopped, as though he had lost interest in its publication. But the public did not lose its interest by waiting; and when, after more than half a year, the narrator resumed the broken thread of his story, his readers found themselves, as it were, dazzled by the return of the brilliant characters of the romance, after this long and dismal eclipse.
In the novels of this second period, argument forces its way in under cover of fiction. Thus, in “Anna Karénina,” which is the story of an adultery, Tolstoï has not only tried to present us with a very accurate picture of aristocratic customs in Russia; he has not only wished to show as the centre and powerful fascination in this series of pictures, the very subtle, very penetrating, very accurate study of a soul wounded by love, the wound of which becomes more and more painful under the effect of the friction and worriments following her first fault: but he has also wished to attack, to settle in his own way, a problem in the social order; he wished to express his opinion about marriage, about separation, about divorce, about celibacy, about unions freely agreed upon and religiously maintained.
“War and Peace,” likewise, is a sort of semi-military, semi-domestic epos; or, if you like, it is a broad study of Russian life, and especially of aristocratic life, whether in the camps, whether in the parlors, whether in the residences of the proprietors during the first quarter of this century, and more especially at the time of the invasion. But within this ample scope the author expresses his theories on military art, his private opinions on the state of war and on the state of peace, his philosophic doctrine of destiny, or his religious fatalism. Some of the characters in “War and Peace” seem at certain times to give a prophetic hint of the dogma which Count Tolstoï will adopt a little later. In Pierre Bezukhof are seen the aspirations towards the ideal which the author of “My Religion” will soon be preaching to men.
If his teaching at this time encroaches on the romance, still it understood how to use marvellously well that vehicle for dissemination wherever the Russian language is spoken; and we shall see, in analyzing them, that the two works of Tolstoï’s second manner show a power and a brilliancy that are truly Shaksperian. But the mysticism, traces of which are found in these works, will develop in their author to such a degree as to make him look upon a novel as an object of scandal, as a “flood of oil thrown on the fire of erotic sensuality.” He will therefore renounce the inventions of romance; he will sacrifice fiction, which now he calls “licentious;” he will not take up the pen, except to perform the work of a doctor or an evangelist; he will write “My Confession,” “My Religion,” the “Commentary on the Gospels.” Of these three works which illustrate Count Lyof Tolstoï’s third manner, the reader will be interested especially in knowing about the first two. He will even find that we have already said enough about “My Confession,” and he will take it kindly if we reserve merely “My Religion” for analysis. In return, he will allow us to dwell upon it, and to speak of it entirely at our ease.
Before entering upon the study of “The Cossacks,” it will not be idle to run quickly over a little story which might serve in place of an introduction to a translation of this romance. This story, consisting of only a few pages, is entitled “Recollections of a Scorer.”[47] It is the story of a rich young man, who, having full control of his fortune, is led by laziness in a short time to degradation and ruin. Nekliudof falls into the society of debauchees and professional gamblers. They pluck him, and ruin him. At his first appearance in this society, he has a feeble nature, but not vulgar. He had some honor: disgusted by the lowness of one of the gamblers, he demands reparation, calls him a coward when he refuses to fight, and compels him to leave the club forever. He had a sense of shame: on the day following a most debasing night, when he had been made intoxicated and initiated into all the depths of debauchery, he bursts into tears, declaring that he will never forgive either himself or his companions in the orgie. Passion for gambling keeps him bound to them; he sinks so low that soon he plays, not only with his habitual partners, but with the servant who fills the functions of scorer. One by one he descends all the steps of a sickening and abject degradation. He is ruined, and disappears.[48]
He returns one fine day, enters the club, asks for writing materials, and, having finished his letter, summons the scorer: “I would like to try one more game with you.” He gains. “Haven’t I learned to play well? Hey?”—“Very well.”—“Now go and order my carriage.” “He started to walk up and down the room. Not suspecting any thing, I went down to call his carriage; but there was no carriage there. I went up-stairs again; and, as I approached the billiard-room, I thought I heard a slight noise, like a knock with a cue. I went in. I noticed a strange smell. I looked around: what did I see? He was stretched out on the floor, bathed in his own blood ... a pistol near him. I was so terror-struck that I could not make a sound. He gave a few signs of life; he stretched out his legs, gave the death-rattle, and all was over.”
If this young Russian had possessed a stronger nature or less enfeebled elasticity, he would have done like Olénin, the hero of “The Cossacks,” or like Tolstoï, who is himself represented under that name. He would have torn himself from his habits; he would have started for the Far East: he would have been certain to find there enough new impressions to refresh his weary brain; enough manly occupations or vivifying pleasures to strengthen his nerves, and build up his muscles; enough perils and accidents or proofs of every kind to regenerate his soul, purify it from the tares of vice, and again raise the wheat of more than one virtue.
Tolstoï was not the first of these superficially blasé emigrants who went off to Asia to find a powerful diversion from irksomeness, from the disgust of an idle and disorderly existence. Pushkin had pointed out the road for him; and the author of “The Gypsies” had himself followed the traces already marked through the desert by the britchka which carried Griboyédof, and the ox-cart which brought him back.[49]
“On the high river bank,” says Pushkin, “I saw before me the fortress of Herhera. Three torrents, with roar and foam, come tumbling down the banks. I had just crossed the river. Two oxen, hitched to an arba, were climbing the steep road. A few Georgians accompanied the arba. ‘Where from?’ I asked them. ‘From Teheran.’—‘What are you carrying?’—‘Griboyéd.’ It was the body of the assassinated Griboyédof, which they were taking back to Tiflis.”
More fortunate than Griboyédof, Tolstoï will come back alive, and, like Pushkin, will be able to describe this adventurous existence; but he will describe it without embellishments, above all without exalting it. He will let the people whom he finds there, and whom he studies entirely at his leisure, appear in all the bold relief of their natures. He will not take away the strange grace and the perfume of the wildflower from this nature in which he feels a voluptuous delight.
The evolution of the romance is rapid and fascinating. We are at Moscow. The night is done. The busy city is waking little by little. The indolent youth are finishing their evenings. At the Hotel Chevallier a light, the presence of which is against the rules, filters through the blinds. A carriage, sledges, and a travelling troïka, are before the door, near which the porter, muffled in his shuba, and a grumbling lackey with pale, drawn features, are waiting.
In the dining-room three young men are finishing a farewell supper. One of them, in short shuba, strides up and down the room, cracking almonds in his strong, thick, but well-cared-for hands. At first glance we feel moved by sympathy for him: there is such an expression of life in his smile, in his heated cheeks, in his brilliant eyes, in his fiery gestures, and in his animated voice. He is off for the Caucasus, in the capacity of yunker.[50]
Olénin found himself, without family and without curb, at the head of a great fortune, which at twenty-four he has already half wasted. The dominant trait of his character is scorn for all authority. Yet he remains capable of every impulse, even of the most generous. He has experimented with social relations, with service of the State, with farming occupations, with music, with love. He feels that he is blasé, but he believes that he is capable of beginning life anew. He is not one of those men “who, born for the bridle, put it on once, and never take it off till the day of their death.” He has the spirit and the vivacity which impel him to pick up and cast far from him all the weight of servitude.
After having followed a whole net-work of unknown and obscure streets, after having felt a softening of the heart during this drive, not about his friends, not about his mistresses, but about himself, as though his tears were homage rendered to all that he felt that was still good and beautiful and strong and hopeful in him, Olénin suddenly finds himself before the wide, snow-bound plain. He turns his mind to the past. He thinks about his farming, about his debts, about his follies; and he comes to the conclusion that he is, “in spite of all, a very, very clever young man.” Having made the first relay, he endeavors to bring about equilibrium in his budget, so as to pay up his creditors in the briefest possible time; and, his conscience being now eased, he falls asleep. He dreams of Circassian beauties, of battles, of glory, of passionate love, of some wild beauty tamed, civilized, and freed by his hand. His tailor Capelli, whom he owes nearly seven hundred rubles, comes across this gilded dream, which is rudely interrupted by the second relay. His journey is broken or filled only by these halts, by tea served at the station, by watching the rumps of the horses, by a few words with his valet Vanya, by a certain number of indefinite dreams, and, most of all, by the nights of sound sleep, such as is granted to youth alone.
According as Olénin advances towards the Caucasus, calm takes possession of his soul. The evidences of civilization which he sees on the route are a trial to him. At Stavropol he is disagreeably impressed to find fashionable attire, cabs, and round hats. But as soon as he is beyond the city the country assumes and retains a wild and warlike character. In the territory of the Don the air becomes already so mild that he has to ride without his furs. Nothing is so delightful as this unexpected spring. But here is something better: danger begins. At any moment they may be attacked by bandits. Then the mountains rise on the horizon. The first impression, at twilight, and from the distance, and through the clouds, is disappointing; but the next morning at early dawn, in the clearness of the sky, they take a new and superb aspect. “From this moment, all that he saw, all that he thought, all that he felt, took on the new and sternly majestic character of the mountains. All his recollections of Moscow, his shame and his regret, all his idle dreams about the Caucasus, departed, never to return.”
It is on the banks of the Terek that Olénin is going to dwell, to struggle, to love, to hate,—in a word, to live,—for a number of seasons. It is this river, therefore, that Tolstoï begins to describe for us, with its heaps of grayish sand, and its border of reeds on the right bank, with its low, steep left bank, gullied and crowned with oaks or “rotten plane-trees.” On the right are the villages of the Tcherkes, on the left the stanitsas (stations) of the Kazaki. “In old times the majority of these stanitsas were on the very bank; but the Terek, moving annually north of the mountain, has washed them away, and now only the traces can be seen of thickly-overgrown ancient ruins, abandoned gardens, pear-trees, lindens, and poplars, woven together with mulberries and wild vines. No one dwells there now; and on the sand only the tracks of stags, wolves, hares, and pheasants, which love these places, can be seen.”
A delicious impression of buoyant air and joyous light fills Olénin’s heart as soon as he sets foot in the Novomlinskaïa stanitsa, in the midst of the Kazak tribe of Grebna. His arrival in the clear twilight, when the whitish mass of the mountains stood out distinctly against the brilliant rays of the setting sun, is described with a vivacity of coloring which deliciously translates emotions never to be forgotten. “Young girls in tucked-up petticoats, with switches in their hands, ran, merrily chattering, to meet the cattle hurrying home in a cloud of dust and gnats from the steppe. The satiated cows and buffaloes scatter through the streets, followed by the Kazak children in their variegated Tatar tunics. Their loud conversation, merry bursts of laughter, and shouts are commingled with the lowing of the cattle. Here an armed Kazak on horseback, having leave of absence from his outpost, rides up to a cottage, and, leaning down from his horse, raps at the window; and in a moment the pretty young head of the Kazak girl appears, and one hears their gay, affectionate talk. Here comes a ragged, high-cheeked Nogai laborer back with reeds from the steppe. He turns his creaking arba into the captain’s broad, clean dvor, and throws off the yokes from the shaking heads of the oxen, and talks in Tatar with the esaul. Around the puddle which fills nearly the whole street, and by which people, all these years, have forced their way, crowding against the fence, a bare-legged Kazak girl is picking her way, bending under a bundle of fagots, and lifting her skirt high above her white ankles; and a Kazak horseman, returning from the chase, laughingly shouts out, ‘Lift it higher, wench!’ and he aims at her. The Kazak girl drops her skirt, throws down her wood. An old Kazak, with turned-up trousers and bare gray breast, on his way home from fishing, carries his silvery fish, still flopping in the net, and, in order to take a shorter path, crawls through his neighbor’s broken hedge, and tears a rent in his coat on the thorns. Here comes an old woman dragging a dry branch, and the blows of an axe are heard around the corner. Kazak children shout as they whip their tops wherever there are level places in the streets; women crawl through the fences so as to save going round. The pungent smoke of burning dung rises from all the chimneys. In every dvor is heard the sound of the increased bustle that precedes the silence of the night.”
Amid these new faces, there is one whom Olénin catches a glimpse of the very first thing: it is the girl to whom he is going to lose his heart. How she comes upon the scene, this wild young maiden, with her noble features, her statuesque form, her gloomy and burning eyes, with her red lips, her golden complexion, her supple and nervous muscles, her turbulent blood, her savage heart! She comes in with her cattle, which break their way through the open wicket, following a huge buffalo-cow driven wild by the gnats of the steppe. “Marianka’s face is half concealed by a kerchief tied round her head: she wears a pink shirt, and a green beshmet, or petticoat.” She hides under the pent-house of the dvor; and her voice is heard as she gently wheedles the buffalo-cow, which she is about to milk: “Now stand still! Here now! Come now, mátushka!” How could Olénin escape the impression of “the tall and stately figure, ... her strong and virginal form, outlined by the thin calico shirt,” of those beautiful black eyes, which at first will shun him, but which later will gaze at him “with childish fright and savage curiosity.” Love will be born all the more easily from the fact that Marianka is the daughter of the people with whom Olénin is quartered, and that he will find her in his path at every step.
But this feeling is not destined to be met with return. If Marianka is Olénin’s ideal of maidenly beauty, this civilized Russian cannot arouse in the young girl’s heart any feeling of admiration, and, in consequence, no love. He is not ill-favored, or a weakling, or foolish, stupid, or cowardly; but he has not the triumphant beauty, or the marvellous vigor, or the ever-watchful shrewdness, or the pitiless courage, of the young Kazak, Lukashka. What woman would not love the latter? He is so tall and so well shaped; he wears his soldier’s rig so proudly, his torn kaftan, his woollen cap knocked in behind; he has such elegant weapons, and such unrivalled skill in the use of them! There is nothing sweet, nothing tender about him; but the ardor and the life of all the passions show on his face, with its black brows, with its falcon eyes, with teeth of dazzling whiteness. He appears to us for the first time at the Kazak post, near the Terek. His great hands are laying snares and traps for the pheasants, and he is whistling. His comrade (Nazarka), brings him a live pheasant, not daring to kill it. “‘Give it here!’ Lukashka took a small knife from under his dagger, and quickly cut the pheasant’s throat. The bird struggled, but did not have time to spread its wings before its bleeding head bent over and fell.”
Whatever character Tolstoï gave these young figures of Marianka and Lukashka, he does not find that they express all that ideal of strength and power with which at this time infatuated. Accordingly he calls up the image of a more striking savagery, in the person of the old Yeroshka, the colossal huntsman with his voice of thunder, his animal habits, his ogre-like appetites, and his childlike character. “Over his shoulders was thrown a ragged woven zipún, and his feet were shod in buck-skin porshni, or sandals, fastened by cords, which were twisted about his legs. On his head was a rumpled white fur cap. On his back, over one shoulder, he carried a kobuilka [an instrument to catch pheasants], and a sack with pullets and dried meat, to bring back the falcon; over the other shoulder a dead wild-cat was swinging by a strap; behind him, fastened to his belt, were a bag containing bullets, powder, and bread, a horse-tail for keeping off the gnats, a big dagger in a torn sheath, stained with blood, and two dead pheasants. This giant has, for distinctive traits, the discreet and silent way in which he walks in his soft sandals, and the odor which he exhales, “a strong, but not unpleasant odor mingled of fresh wine, of vodka, of powder, and of dried blood.” He has an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes, about his past life, his hunting, his exploits, his horse-thefts. Yet he is only a child, compared to what his father was, who carried on his back a four-hundred-pound wild boar, and drank at a draught two buckets of vodka. He likes to repeat this saw of a Western man, whom he knew: “We shall all die, the grass will grow on our grave, and that is all.” He is stout and hearty for his seventy years, although a witch had ruined him a little with her spell. On the chase, in the woods, he does not cease to whisper, God knows what mysterious monologue. When he returns, if he finds some host at whose table he can sit, and if he can only have wine furnished according to the measure of his thirst, he gets drunk, until he falls stiff on the floor. Hunting scenes, scenes of love, scenes of ambuscade or of combat, go to make up almost exclusively the matter of all this work. But all these scenes are so variously true, and so profoundly the result of experience, that the romantic thread designed to connect them seems almost needless. What reader, however, would have the courage to disengage it? I should like, for my part, to give by way of analysis, and by short quotations, an idea of the most powerful scenes here pictured. I will present them in the order in which they come.
Here we are in ambush, on the banks of the river: “They were hourly expecting the Abreks—as the hostile Tchetchens were called—to cross and attack them, from the Tatar side, especially during the month of May, when the woods along the Terek are so dense, that a man on foot has difficulty in breaking through, and when the river is so low that it can in many places be forded.” The Kazak Lukashka is gazing at the sky, with its flashing of heat lightning. He spreads down his kaftan at the foot of the reeds. “Occasionally the reeds, without any apparent reason, would all begin to wave and to whisper to each other. From below, the waving feathers of the sedge looked like the downy branches of trees, against the bright background of the sky.” He listens to all the noises of the night, the murmur of the reeds, the snoring of the three Kazaks who have come with him to keep his secret guard, the buzzing of the gnats, and the rippling of the water, from time to time a far-off shot, the fall of a part of the bank washed away, the splash of some big fish, the crashing of the underbrush as some animal forced its way through. “Once an owl, slowly flapping its wings, flew down the Terek; over the heads of the Kazaks, it turned and flew towards the forest, with faster flapping wings, and then fluttering settled down in the branches of an old tchinar (plane tree). At every such unusual sound the young Kazak pricked up his ears eagerly, snapped his eyes, and slowly examined his gun.”
Suddenly (it is now almost daybreak) a log with a dry branch floating in the river attracts his attention. He immediately notices that the log, instead of going according to the will of the current, and floating down stream, is crossing the river. Here follows several minutes of strange excitement: the whole inner drama which is enacting in this young savage’s soul is expressed with so much truth and force, that you come to follow with him the voice of the ferocious instinct which controls him. He puts his gun to his shoulder and waits, while his heart is violently beating at the thought that he may miss his human game; finally he draws a long breath and shoots, muttering, according to the Kazak custom, the “In the name of the Father and the Son.” The tree trunk, rocking and rolling over and over, swiftly floats down the stream, freed from the weight which it carried.
And when the Kazaks come hurrying down, both on foot and on horseback (the first thing, in case of a surprise, was to send for re-enforcements), what a scene is that where the lucky marksman plunges into the water to go and bring his fish from the sandbank, and flings the corpse on the bank “like a carp”! What barbarous coloring in the exclamations of the spectators! “How yellow he is!” says one. “He was evidently one of their best jigits,” says Lukashka: “his beard is dyed and trimmed.” While they are on the spot, the chief claims the jigit’s gun, one Kazak buys the kaftan for a ruble, another promises two gallons of vodka for the dagger.
But the marvellous fragment of this broad, animated, boldly lighted canvas is this group, this contrast between the living man triumphant in his nakedness, and the corpse lying on the ground, naked also, but rigid and terrible to see under the strange coloration and the disconcerting expression of death. “The cinnamon colored body, with nothing on but wet, dark-blue cotton drawers, girdled tightly about the fallen belly, was handsome and well built; the muscular arms lay stiffly along the sides; the livid, freshly shaven round head, with the clotted wound on one side, was thrown back; the smooth sunburned forehead made a sharp contrast with the shaven head; the glassy eyes were still open, showing their pupils, and seemed to look up beyond them all; a good-natured and shrewd smile seemed to hover on the thin and half-open lips under the reddish, half-cut mustache. The small bony hands were covered with hair; the fingers were clinched, and the nails had a red tinge. Lukashka was not yet dressed; he was still wet; his neck was redder, and his eyes were brighter, than usual; his broad cheeks trembled; and from his white and healthy body there seemed to rise into the cool morning air a visible vapor.”
As a reward for this expedition, the Kazaks who took part in it are permitted to go and spend the day at the village. The victorious Lukashka steps up to Marianka with the same feeling of faith in his strength and in his skill as he had had the evening before while lying in wait for the enemy. He asks her for some of the sunflower seeds which she has; she offers him her apron. He comes close to her, and whispers a request of her: she replies, “I shall not go! I have said so.” He follows her by the house, and there he urges her to love him. She laughs, and sends him off to his married mistress. He cries, “Suppose I have a sweetheart, the Devil take her.” She does not reply, but breaks the switch which she has in her hands. At last, “I will marry certainly, but don’t expect me to commit any follies for you, never!” He tenderly woos her. She leans against him, kisses him on the lips, calls him a sweet name, and, after pressing him warmly to her, suddenly tears herself from his arms and runs away. “You will marry,” he says to himself, “but the only thing that I want is that you love me!” He went off to find Nazarka at Yamka’s; “and, after drinking a while with him, he went to Duniashka’s, where he spent the night.”
In this struggle for existence, and in this battle for the possession of the beauty whom both love, why should not Olénin be worsted by Lukashka? The principal obstacle to the triumph of the son of civilization comes from I his intellectual advantages and from his moral perfection. Do the best he can, he can never get rid of all his prejudices. He will be able only to approach that barbaric ideal which his rival without effort realizes by his natural gifts. In Marianka’s eyes he could have only borrowed virtues, only the graces of a plagiarist.
Olénin cannot change his nature by changing his habits; still more he cannot succeed by formulating a theory of life, in conforming to it in all respects the practical facts of existence. The contradictions which result from this conflict between the past and the present, between long-settled ideas and present convictions, is strongly brought out by Tolstoï in many passages in the novel. Here is one example: The first time that the young Russian goes alone pheasant-hunting, he gets tired, and lies down on the ground in the midst of the forest. Myriads of gnats settle down upon him. The torment of it nettles him, discourages him. He is on the point of retracing his steps; an effort of the will keeps him where he is. Finally the feeling of pain is diminished, and at length it seems to him almost agreeable. “It even seemed to him that if this atmosphere of gnats surrounding him on all sides, this paste of gnats which rolled up under his hand when he wiped his sweaty face, and this itching over his whole body were missing, the forest would have lost for him its wild character and its charm.”
From this reflection he passes to others; and, lying “in the old stag’s bed,” he thinks about his whole surrounding,—the trees, the wild vine, the frightened pheasants, the complaining jackals, the gnats buzzing and dancing amid the leaves. “About me, flying among the leaves, which seem to them immense islands, the gnats are dancing in the air and humming,—one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million gnats; and all these, for some reason or other, are buzzing around me, and each one of them is just as much a separate existence from all the rest as I am.” It began to seem clear to him what the gnats said in their humming. “Here, here, children, here is some one to eat,” they sing, and settle down upon him. And now this taught him that he was not a Russian nobleman, a person in Moscow society, a friend or a relative to this and that person. It came to him that he was just a mere gnat, a mere pheasant, a mere stag, like those around him. The conclusion which he draws from this is quite different from what would be expected. Instead of saying, “Let us struggle like these beings, and like them let us live to triumph, or let us triumph to live,” Olénin throws himself down on his knees, and beseeches God to let him live to accomplish some great deed of devotion; for “happiness,” he says, “consists in living for others.”
What did Tolstoï mean to insinuate? That Olénin was illogical, or that he lacked sincerity? It will be enough for him to find himself in Marianka’s presence to forget his vow, and to sacrifice his morals to his instincts.
How much happier the Kazak Lukashka is in having only instincts, and in not entangling them, in not fastening them down in this bird-lime of moral considerations! This is what Tolstoï seems to have wished to be understood in a marvellous scene, an analysis of which cannot give either the bold design or the sombre coloring or the proportions worthy of an epos. It is the wholly Homeric parley about the ransom of the corpse. The brother of the dead man and his murderer are face to face: the former tall, stalwart, with reddish trimmed beard, with an air of royalty under his ragged kaftan, honoring no one with a glance, not even looking at the corpse, and sitting on his crossed legs, with a short pipe in his mouth, doing nothing except occasionally giving an order in a guttural voice to his companion the interpreter; the latter with difficulty restraining the exultation into which he is thrown by the promise which has just been made of giving him the cross, and, in spite of his face reddened with pleasure, striving to preserve an impassive attitude, and whittling a stick of wood, out of which he will make a ramrod.
The Tchetchenets has merely asked, as he takes his departure, where the murderer is; and the interpreter points out Lukashka. “The Tchetchenets looked at him for a moment, and then, slowly turning away, fixed his eyes on the other bank. His eyes expressed, not hatred, but cold disdain.” They get into the boat; they rapidly push through the stream. Horsemen are waiting for them; they put the dead body across a saddle on a horse, which shies. Lukashka is told what a curt threat the Tchetchenets made as he went away. “You have killed us, but we will crush you.” Lukashka bursts out laughing. “Why do you laugh?” asked Olénin. “If they had killed your brother, would you be glad?” The Kazak looked at Olénin, and laughed. He seemed to have comprehended his idea, but he was above all prejudice. “Well, now, mayn’t that happen? Isn’t this necessary? Haven’t they sometimes killed some of our men?”
The time passes. Instead of drinking, of playing cards, of flirting with the Kazak women, of all the time calculating his chances of promotion, like the majority of the Russian yunkers in the Caucasus, Olénin plunges into the solitudes of the woods, and gathers indelible impressions. His love for Marianka has imperceptibly developed until it presents all the phenomena of a genuine passion. He has even blurted out a few hints of his affection, which a strange timidity or a scruple of candor keeps him from putting into more direct form; but at night he comes to the door of the room where the young girl is sleeping, in order to listen to her breathing.[51] What shall he do? To take her for his mistress would be “horrible; it would be murder.” To marry her would be worse.
“Ah! if I could become a Kazak like Lukashka, could steal horses, could drink tchikhir wine, could sing songs, shoot people, creep under her window at night when drunk, without any thought of what I am, or why I exist, that would be another matter. Then we might understand each other; then I might be happy.... What is the most terrible and the most delightful thing in my position is the feeling that I understand her, and that she will never understand me. It is not because she is below me that she does not understand me: no, she could not possibly understand me. She is happy. She, like nature itself, is beautiful, calm, and absolutely self-contained.” What is to be done, then? Give her up? Sacrifice himself? What folly! Live for others? Why? It is the fate of men to love only the ego; that is to say, in this case, to conquer Marianka, “and live her life.” Olénin then makes himself drunk like a Kazak; and, in the madness of intoxication, he offers to marry the young girl. She perceives clearly that that is only the wine that speaks: she drives the wooer away, and escapes him.
Yet she feels somewhat moved in consequence of this offer; and on the day of the stanitsa festival she is rude to Lukashka, though she has already become his acknowledged “bride.” But a tragic event is about to bring forth abundantly the feeling which fills this young soul to overflowing. All Marianka’s deep love for Lukashka will suddenly gleam out with unexpected brilliancy, like the gloomy sheet of the Terek in the flashes of the storm.
The Kazaks have started out on an expedition against the Abreks. Olénin follows the band which is directed, but not commanded, by Lukashka. The engagement takes place. The Abreks are sitting in a swamp at the foot of a hillock of sand. The Kazaks approach them behind a cart loaded with hay. At first they do not reply to the enemy’s shots. They wait till they are within five paces from the Abreks, then they rush upon them. Olénin joins them. “Horror came over his eyes. He did not see any thing distinctly, but perceived that all was over. Lukashka, white as a sheet, had caught a wounded Tchetchenets, and was crying, ‘Do not kill him. I will take him alive.’ The Tchetchenets was the red-bearded Abrek, the brother of the one whom he had killed, he who had come to ransom his body. Lukashka was twisting his arms. Suddenly the Tchetchenets tore himself away, and his pistol went off. Lukashka fell. Blood showed on his abdomen. He leaped to his feet, but fell back again, swearing in Russian and Tatar. Still more blood appeared on him and under him. The Kazaks hurried up to him, and began to loosen his belt. One of them—it was Nazarka—for some time before coming to him could not sheathe his shashka. The blade of the shashka was covered with blood.”
“When Olénin came back to Marianka, and wanted to speak of his love for her, he found her grieving. She looked at him silently and defiantly.
“Olénin said, ‘Mariana, I have come.’...
“‘Stop,’ she said. Her face did not change in the least, but the tears poured from her eyes.
“‘What is the matter? What are you crying for?’
“‘Why?’ she repeated in a hoarse, deep voice. ‘They have been killing Kazaks, and that’s what the matter is!’
“‘Lukashka?’ asked Olénin.
“‘Go away. I don’t want to see you.’
“‘Mariana,’ said Olénin, coming nearer to her.
“‘You will never get any thing from me!”
“‘Mariana, don’t say so!’
“‘Go away, you hateful man!’ cried the young girl, stamping angrily, and starting towards him with a threatening gesture. Such anger, scorn, hatred, were expressed in her face that Olénin instantly saw that he had nothing more to hope for.”
He therefore goes away. The scene of his farewell with the old uncle Yeroshka has that exquisite pathos where smiles are mingled with tears. As a friendly gift at this solemn moment of separation, the old Kazak gives the young Russian some advice which will save his life in battles. He casts ridicule on the customs of the orthodox soldiers. “When you have to go into battle, or everywhere,—I am an old wolf, you see, who has seen every thing,—when they fire at you, don’t go into a crowd where there are many men. You see, when your fellows are a bit afraid, they all crowd together; and though it’s more sociable in a crowd, it is more dangerous, because a crowd gives a good mark.... I say sometimes, when I look at your soldiers, “I wonder at ’em. How stupid! They go straight on, all in a mass; and, what is worse, they wear red. How can they help getting killed?” And he breaks into tears as he kisses this young, “ever-wandering fool;” but he manages to extort from him a gun, to keep as a remembrance of him.
“Olénin looked round. Dyadya Yeroshka and Marianka were talking, evidently about their own affairs; and neither the old Kazak nor the young girl were looking at him.” (With these simple but pathetic words, the story ends.)