Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  Having obtained leave of absence from his fort, Butler came to the camp to visit some old messmates from the cadet corps and fellow officers of the Kurín regiment who were serving as adjutants and orderly officers. When he first arrived he had a very good time. He put up in Poltorátsky’s tent and there met many acquaintances who gave him a hearty welcome. He also called on Vorontsóv, whom he knew slightly, having once served in the same regiment with him. Vorontsóv received him very kindly, introduced him to Prince Baryátinsky, and invited him to the farewell dinner he was giving in honour of General Kozlóvsky, who until Baryátinsky’s arrival had been in command of the left flank.

  The dinner was magnificent. Special tents were erected in a line, and along the whole length of them a table was spread as for a dinner-party, with dinner-services and bottles. Everything recalled life in the Guards in Petersburg. Dinner was served at two o’clock. Kozlóvsky sat in the middle on one side, Baryátinsky on the other. At Kozlóvsky’s right and left hand sat the Vorontsóvs, husband and wife. All along the table on both sides sat the officers of the Kabardá and Kurín regiments. Butler sat next to Poltorátsky and they both chatted merrily and drank with the officers around them. When the roast was served and the orderlies had gone round and filled the champagne glasses, Poltorátsky said to Butler, with real anxiety:

  ‘Our Kozlóvsky will disgrace himself!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why, he’ll have to make a speech, and what good is he at that?… It’s not as easy as capturing entrenchments under fire! And with a lady beside him too, and these aristocrats!’

  ‘Really it’s painful to look at him,’ said the officers to one another. And now the solemn moment had arrived. Baryátinsky rose and lifting his glass, addressed a short speech to Kozlóvsky. When he had finished, Kozlóvsky – who always had a trick of using the word ‘how’ superfluously – rose and stammeringly began:

  ‘In compliance with the august will of his Majesty I am leaving you – parting from you, gentlemen,’ said he. ‘But consider me as always remaining among you. The truth of the proverb, how “One man in the field is no warrior”, is well known to you, gentlemen.… Therefore, how every reward I have received … how all the benefits showered on me by the great generosity of our sovereign the Emperor … how all my position – how my good name … how everything decidedly … how …’ (here his voice trembled) ‘… how I am indebted to you for it, to you alone, my friends!’ The wrinkled face puckered up still more, he gave a sob and tears came into his eyes. ‘How from my heart I offer you my sincerest, heartfelt gratitude!’

  Kozlóvsky could not go on but turned round and began to embrace the officers. The princess hid her face in her handkerchief. The prince blinked, with his mouth drawn awry. Many of the officers’ eyes grew moist and Butler, who had hardly known Kozlóvsky, could also not restrain his tears. He liked all this very much.

  Then followed other toasts. Healths were drunk to Baryátinsky, Vorontsóv, the officers, and the soldiers, and the visitors left the table intoxicated with wine and with the military elation to which they were always so prone. The weather was wonderful, sunny and calm, and the air fresh and bracing. Bonfires crackled and songs resounded on all sides. It might have been thought that everybody was celebrating some joyful event. Butler went to Poltorátsky’s in the happiest, most emotional mood. Several officers had gathered there and a card-table was set. An adjutant started a bank with a hundred rubles. Two or three times Butler left the tent with his hand gripping the purse in his trousers-pocket, but at last he could resist the temptation no longer, and despite the promise he had given to his brother and to himself not to play, he began to do so. Before an hour was past, very red, perspiring, and soiled with chalk, he was sitting with both elbows on the table and writing on it – under cards bent for ‘corners’ and ‘transports’27 – the figures of his stakes. He had already lost so much that he was afraid to count up what was scored against him. But he knew without counting that all the pay he could draw in advance, added to the value of his horse, would not suffice to pay what the adjutant, a stranger to him, had written down against him. He would still have gone on playing, but the adjutant sternly laid down the cards he held in his large clean hands and added up the chalked figures of the score of Butler’s losses. Butler, in confusion, began to make excuses for being unable to pay the whole of his debt at once, and said he would send it from home. When he said this he noticed that everybody pitied him and that they all – even Poltorátsky – avoided meeting his eye. That was his last evening there. He reflected that he need only have refrained from playing and gone to the Vorontsóvs who had invited him, and all would have been well, but now it was not only not well – it was terrible.

  Having taken leave of his comrades and acquaintances he rode home and went to bed, and slept for eighteen hours as people usually sleep after losing heavily. From the fact that he asked her to lend him fifty kopeks to tip the Cossack who had escorted him, and from his sorrowful looks and short answers, Márya Dmítrievna guessed that he had lost at cards and she reproached the major for having given him leave of absence.

  When he woke up at noon next day and remembered the situation he was in he longed again to plunge into the oblivion from which he had just emerged, but it was impossible. Steps had to be taken to repay the four hundred and seventy rubles he owed to the stranger. The first step he took was to write to his brother, confessing his sin and imploring him, for the last time, to lend him five hundred rubles on the security of the mill they still owned in common. Then he wrote to a stingy relative asking her to lend him five hundred rubles at whatever rate of interest she liked. Finally he went to the major, knowing that he – or rather Márya Dmítrievna – had some money, and asked him to lend him five hundred rubles.

  ‘I’d let you have them at once,’ said the major, ‘but Másha won’t! These women are so close-fisted – who the devil can understand them?… And yet you must get out of it somehow, devil take him!… Hasn’t that brute the canteen-keeper got something?’

  But it was no use trying to borrow from the canteen-keeper, so Butler’s salvation could only come from his brother or his stingy relative.

  XXII

  NOT having attained his aim in Chechnya, Hadji Murád returned to Tiflis and went every day to Vorontsóv’s, and whenever he could obtain audience he implored the Viceroy to gather together the mountaineer prisoners and exchange them for his family. He said that unless that were done his hands were tied and he could not serve the Russians and destroy Shamil as he desired to do. Vorontsóv vaguely promised to do what he could, but put it off, saying that he would decide when General Argutínski reached Tiflis and he could talk the matter over with him.

  Then Hadji Murád asked Vorontsóv to allow him to go to live for a while in Nukhá, a small town in Transcaucasia where he thought he could better carry on negotiations about his family with Shamil and with the people who were attached to himself. Moreover Nukhá, being a Mohammedan town, had a mosque where he could more conveniently perform the rites of prayer demanded by the Mohammedan law. Vorontsóv wrote to Petersburg about it but meanwhile gave Hadji Murád permission to go to Nukhá.

  For Vorontsóv and the authorities in Petersburg, as well as for most Russians acquainted with Hadji Murád’s history, the whole episode presented itself as a lucky turn in the Caucasian war, or simply as an interesting event. For Hadji Murád it was a terrible crisis in his life – especially latterly. He had escaped from the mountains partly to save himself and partly out of hatred of Shamil, and difficult as this flight had been he had attained his object, and for a time was glad of his success and really devised a plan to attack Shamil, but the rescue of his family – which he had thought would be easy to arrange – had proved more difficult than he expected.

  Shamil had seized the family and kept them prisoners, threatening to hand the women over to the different aouls and to blind or kill the son. Now Hadji Murád had gone to Nukhá intending to try by the aid of his adherents
in Daghestan to rescue his family from Shamil by force or by cunning. The last spy who had come to see him in Nukhá informed him that the Avars, who were devoted to him, were preparing to capture his family and themselves bring them over to the Russians, but that there were not enough of them and they could not risk making the attempt in Vedenó, where the family was at present imprisoned, but could do so only if the family were moved from Vedenó to some other place – in which case they promised to rescue them on the way.

  Hadji Murád sent word to his friends that he would give three thousand rubles for the liberation of his family.

  At Nukhá a small house of five rooms was assigned to Hadji Murád near the mosque and the Khan’s palace. The officers in charge of him, his interpreter, and his henchmen, stayed in the same house. Hadji Murád’s life was spent in the expectation and reception of messengers from the mountains and in rides he was allowed to take in the neighbourhood.

  On 24th April, returning from one of these rides, Hadji Murád learnt that during his absence an official sent by Vorontsóv had arrived from Tiflis. In spite of his longing to know what message the official had brought him he went to his bedroom and repeated his noonday prayer before going into the room where the officer in charge and the official were waiting. This room served him both as drawing- and reception-room. The official who had come from Tiflis, Councillor Kiríllov, informed Hadji Murád of Vorontsóv’s wish that he should come to Tiflis on the 12th to meet General Argutínski.

  ‘Yakshi!’ said Hadji Murád angrily. The councillor did not please him. ‘Have you brought money?’

  ‘I have,’ answered Kiríllov.

  ‘For two weeks now,’ said Hadji Murád, holding up first both hands and then four fingers. ‘Give here!’

  ‘We’ll give it you at once,’ said the official, getting his purse out of his travelling-bag. ‘What does he want with the money?’ he went on in Russian, thinking that Hadji Murád would not understand. But Hadji Murád had understood, and glanced angrily at him. While getting out the money the councillor, wishing to begin a conversation with Hadji Murád in order to have something to tell Prince Vorontsóv on his return, asked through the interpreter whether he was not feeling dull there. Hadji Murád glanced contemptuously out of the corner of his eye at the fat, unarmed little man dressed as a civilian, and did not reply. The interpreter repeated the question.

  ‘Tell him that I cannot talk with him! Let him give me the money!’ and having said this, Hadji Murád sat down at the table ready to count it.

  Hadji Murád had an allowance of five gold pieces a day, and when Kiríllov had got out the money and arranged it in seven piles of ten gold pieces each and pushed them towards Hadji Murád, the latter poured the gold into the sleeve of his Circassian coat, rose, quite unexpectedly smacked Councillor Kiríllov on his bald pate, and turned to go.

  The councillor jumped up and ordered the interpreter to tell Hadji Murád that he must not dare to behave like that to him who held a rank equal to that of colonel! The officer in charge confirmed this, but Hadji Murád only nodded to signify that he knew, and left the room.

  ‘What is one to do with him?’ said the officer in charge. ‘He’ll stick his dagger into you, that’s all! One cannot talk with those devils! I see that he is getting exasperated.’

  As soon as it began to grow dusk two spies with hoods covering their faces up to their eyes, came to him from the hills. The officer in charge led them to Hadji Murád’s room. One of them was a fleshy, swarthy Tavlinian, the other a thin old man. The news they brought was not cheering. Hadji Murád’s friends who had undertaken to rescue his family now definitely refused to do so, being afraid of Shamil, who threatened to punish with most terrible tortures anyone who helped Hadji Murád. Having heard the messengers he sat with his elbows on his crossed legs, and bowing his turbaned head remained silent a long time.

  He was thinking and thinking resolutely. He knew that he was now considering the matter for the last time and that it was necessary to come to a decision. At last he raised his head, gave each of the messengers a gold piece, and said: ‘Go!’

  ‘What answer will there be?’

  ‘The answer will be as God pleases.… Go!’

  The messengers rose and went away, and Hadji Murád continued to sit on the carpet leaning his elbows on his knees. He sat thus a long time and pondered.

  ‘What am I to do? To take Shamil at his word and return to him?’ he thought. ‘He is a fox and will deceive me. Even if he did not deceive me it would still be impossible to submit to that red liar. It is impossible … because now that I have been with the Russians he will not trust me,’ thought Hadji Murád; and he remembered a Tavlinian fable about a falcon who had been caught and lived among men and afterwards returned to his own kind in the hills. He returned, wearing jesses with bells, and the other falcons would not receive him. ‘Fly back to where they hung those silver bells on thee!’ said they. ‘We have no bells and no jesses.’ The falcon did not want to leave his home and remained, but the other falcons did not wish to let him stay there and pecked him to death.

  ‘And they would peck me to death in the same way,’ thought Hadji Murád. ‘Shall I remain here and conquer Caucasia for the Russian Tsar and earn renown, titles, riches?’

  ‘That could be done,’ thought he, recalling his interviews with Vorontsóv and the flattering things the prince had said; ‘but I must decide at once, or Shamil will destroy my family.’

  That night he remained awake, thinking.

  XXIII

  BY midnight his decision had been formed. He had decided that he must fly to the mountains, and break into Vedenó with the Avars still devoted to him, and either die or rescue his family. Whether after rescuing them he would return to the Russians or escape to Khunzákh and fight Shamil, he had not made up his mind. All he knew was that first of all he must escape from the Russians into the mountains, and he at once began to carry out his plan.

  He drew his black wadded beshmét from under his pillow and went into his henchmen’s room. They lived on the other side of the hall. As soon as he entered the hall, the outer door of which stood open, he was at once enveloped by the dewy freshness of the moonlit night and his ears were filled by the whistling and trilling of several nightingales in the garden by the house.

  Having crossed the hall he opened the door of his henchmen’s room. There was no light there, but the moon in its first quarter shone in at the window. A table and two chairs were standing on one side of the room, and four of his henchmen were lying on carpets or on búrkas on the floor. Khanéfi slept outside with the horses. Gamzálo heard the door creak, rose, turned round, and saw him. On recognizing him he lay down again, but Eldár, who lay beside him, jumped up and began putting on his beshmét, expecting his master’s orders. Khan Mahomá and Bata slept on. Hadji Murád put down the beshmét he had brought on the table, which it hit with a dull sound, caused by the gold sewn up in it.

  ‘Sew these in too,’ said Hadji Murád, handing Eldár the gold pieces he had received that day. Eldár took them and at once went into the moonlight, drew a small knife from under his dagger and started unstitching the lining of the beshmét. Gamzálo raised himself and sat up with his legs crossed.

  ‘And you, Gamzálo, tell the men to examine the rifles and pistols and get the ammunition ready. To-morrow we shall go far,’ said Hadji Murád.

  ‘We have bullets and powder, everything shall be ready,’ replied Gamzálo, and roared out something incomprehensible. He understood why Hadji Murád had ordered the rifles to be loaded. From the first he had desired only one thing – to slay and stab as many Russians as possible and to escape to the hills – and this desire had increased day by day. Now at last he saw that Hadji Murád also wanted this and he was satisfied.

  When Hadji Murád went away Gamzálo roused his comrades, and all four spent the rest of the night examining their rifles, pistols, flints, and accoutrements; replacing what was damaged, sprinkling fresh powder onto the pans, and sto
ppering with bullets wrapped in oiled rags packets filled with the right amount of powder for each charge, sharpening their swords and daggers and greasing the blades with tallow.

  Before daybreak Hadji Murád again came out into the hall to get water for his ablutions. The songs of the nightingales that had burst into ecstasy at dawn were now even louder and more incessant, while from his henchmen’s room, where the daggers were being sharpened, came the regular screech and rasp of iron against stone.

  Hadji Murád got himself some water from a tub, and was already at his own door when above the sound of the grinding he heard from his murids’ room the high tones of Khanéfi’s voice singing a familiar song. He stopped to listen. The song told of how a dzhigít, Hamzád, with his brave followers captured a herd of white horses from the Russians, and how a Russian prince followed him beyond the Térek and surrounded him with an army as large as a forest; and then the song went on to tell how Hamzád killed the horses, entrenched his men behind this gory bulwark, and fought the Russians as long as they had bullets in their rifles, daggers in their belts, and blood in their veins. But before he died Hamzád saw some birds flying in the sky and cried to them: