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.