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?”