The Cossacks (5 page)

“Ah, sheer nonsense!” Olenin said to himself. They had arrived at a post stage, and he had to climb into a new sleigh and pay a tip. But he quickly fell back into his nonsensical dreams, and again imagined Circassian maidens, glory, a return to Russia, the rank of colonel, a beautiful wife.

“But there’s no such thing as love, and honors are sheer nonsense!” he said to himself. “And what about the 678 rubles? But the conquered lands of the Caucasus will give me all the wealth I need! Though now I think of it, it wouldn’t really be proper to keep it all for myself. No, I will have to distribute it. But to whom? I’ll start off by giving Cappelle 678 rubles, and then we’ll see.” The images that clouded his thoughts became hazier, and only Vanyusha’s voice and the sleigh stopping interrupted his healthy, sound sleep. In a drowsy stupor he changed sleighs at a new post stage, and they drove on.

The following morning brought the same stages, the same tea, the same bouncing horse cruppers, the same short conversations with Vanyusha, the same vague dreams and evening slumber, followed by a night of tired, healthy sleep.

The further Olenin traveled from the heart of Russia, the more distant all his memories seemed, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus, the lighter his heart became. “I don’t ever want to go back or show my face in society again!” he thought. “Here the people are not really
people
—I mean, none of them know me or will ever move in my circles in Moscow or hear anything about my past. Nor is it likely that anyone in Moscow will ever find out anything I do here.” A new sense of being free of his past overcame Olenin among the rough and simple men he met along the road, whom he did not acknowledge as “people” on the level of his Moscow acquaintances. The rougher the people and the fewer the signs of civilization, the freer he felt. He hated Stavropol, through which he had to travel: There were signboards everywhere, some even in French, ladies in carriages, cabbies waiting in squares, a boulevard, and a gentleman in a hat and coat eyeing all who drove by. “It wouldn’t surprise me if these people knew some of
my acquaintances,” he muttered to himself, and again thought of the club, the tailor, the cards, and Moscow society. But beyond Stavropol everything was most satisfactory—wild and, above all, beautiful and dangerous. Olenin became more and more cheerful. He regarded the Cossacks, coachmen, and innkeepers as simple men with whom he could chat and joke without having to think about what class they belonged. They were all part of mankind, toward which Olenin felt an unconscious natural warmth, and they were all friendly to him.

While still in the land of the Cossacks of the river Don, he changed from sleigh to cart, and beyond Stavropol the weather was so warm that he rode without his coat. It was suddenly spring—an unexpected, joyful spring for Olenin. At night he was warned not to venture out of the fortified Cossack villages, for they said it was dangerous after dark. Vanyusha was becoming anxious, and a loaded gun lay beside him in the cart. Olenin became increasingly cheerful. At one of the post stages, he was told that there had been a terrible murder on the road not too long ago. He now saw armed men by the wayside. “It’s beginning!” Olenin said to himself, eager to see the snow-covered mountains about which he had been told so much. One afternoon a Nogai
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driver pointed his whip at some mountains shrouded in clouds. Olenin peered at them avidly, but the light was fading and they were hidden by the clouds. He saw something white, something gray, but try as he would, he could not find anything attractive in these mountains about which he had heard and read so much. He thought the mountains and clouds looked alike, and the extraordinary beauty of snow-covered peaks that everyone went on about was as much an invention as Bach’s music or love, neither of which he believed in.

His enthusiasm for the mountains faded. The following day, as he rode in the troika early in the morning, he was awakened by a chilly breeze and looked around indifferently. The morning air was completely clear. Suddenly, not more than twenty paces away, as he first thought, he saw massive mountains, clean and white in their gentle contours, the intricate, distinct line of the peaks and the sky. He suddenly grasped the great distance between himself, the mountains, and
the sky, the immensity of the mountains, and the boundlessness of this beauty, and was afraid that this might be only an illusion, a dream. He shook himself to wake up—but the mountains were still there.

“What are they? Can you tell me what they are?” he asked the driver.

“Mountains,” the Nogai answered indifferently.

“I’ve been looking at them too,” Vanyusha said. “What a sight! No one back home would believe it!”

As the troika sped over the smooth road, the mountains looked as if they were running along the horizon, the rose-colored peaks sparkling in the rising sun. At first the mountains merely took Olenin aback, then they filled him with joy; but then, the more he looked at the chain of mountains that rose not from behind other mountains but straight out of the steppe, the more he
felt
them. At that moment everything he saw, everything he thought, everything he sensed, took on the stern and majestic character of the mountains. All his Moscow memories, the shame and repentance, all his foolish and trivial dreams about the Caucasus, disappeared forever. It was as if a solemn voice told him: “Now it has begun!” The road, the outline of the river Terek visible in the distance, the Cossack villages, and the people—all this now seemed to him no longer trivial. He looks at the sky and sees the mountains. He looks at himself, at Vanyusha—again the mountains. Two Cossacks ride by, their rifles in slings bouncing lightly on their backs, and the brown and gray legs of their horses blur—again the mountains…. Across the Terek smoke rises from a village—again the mountains…. The sun rises and sparkles on the Terek shimmering through the reeds—the mountains…. A bullock cart rolls out of a Cossack village, the women are walking, beautiful young women—the mountains…. Chechen marauders roam the steppes, I am riding along the road, but I am not frightened of them, I have a gun, strength, youth—the mountains….

The stretch of the Terek along which the Greben Cossack villages lie, about eighty versts in length, unifies the terrain and the people. The
river flows swift, turbid, and broad, eternally washing gray sand onto the flat right bank, overgrown with reeds, while eroding the steep, low-lying left bank with its tangled roots of century-old oak trees, rotting plane trees, and young brushwood. The Terek separates the lands of the Cossacks from those of the hill tribes: peaceful but restless Chechen villages lie on the right bank, while on the left bank, half a verst or so from the water, are the Cossack villages, seven or eight versts from one another. In the old days, most of these villages had been built on the riverbank, but every year the Terek shifted northward and washed over them, and now nothing remains of them but overgrown ruins, kitchen gardens, and pear, plum, and poplar trees entwined with wild brambles and grapevines. No one lives there anymore, and the sandbanks are dotted only by the tracks of deer, wolves, hares, and pheasants. A road runs through the forest linking the Cossack villages that are just over a cannon shot distant from one another, and along the road are watchtowers, with sentinels and military checkpoints manned by Cossacks. Only a thin strip of fertile, wooded land about half a mile wide is under Cossack control. Beyond it lie the rolling dunes of the Nogai and Mozdok steppes that stretch far into the north, emptying God knows where into the Turkmen, Astrakhan, and Kyrgyz-Kaisak steppes. South of the Terek lie Chechnya, the Kochkalykov Range, the Black Mountains, another range, and then the snow-covered massifs whose peaks have been seen but never climbed.

From time out of mind a handsome, warriorlike Russian population of Old Believers,
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called the Greben Cossacks, have lived on this wooded strip of land by the river. A long time ago their forefathers had fled Russia and settled among the Chechens by the banks of the Terek on the Greben, the first ridge of the forest-covered mountains of Chechnya. The Cossacks intermarried with the Chechens and adopted their customs and way of life, but they retained both the Russian language and the Old Beliefs in all their purity. A legend prevails among the Cossacks that Czar Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, called the Greben elders into his presence, and granted them
the land on the Russian side of the river. He urged them to live in friendship with Russia and promised not to force his rule upon them or to compel them to change their faith. To this day, the Greben Cossacks claim kinship with the Chechens. At the core of their character lies love of freedom, idleness, plunder, and war. Russia’s influence expresses itself only in negative ways: the disallowing of elections, the removal of bells, the army stationed there or constantly marching through. A Cossack bears less hatred for a Chechen warrior who has killed his brother than for a Russian soldier billeted with him to defend his village, and who has blackened the walls of his hut with tobacco smoke. A Cossack will respect an enemy tribesman but despise the Russian soldier, whom he sees as an oppressor with strange and alien ways. In fact, to the Cossack the Russian peasants are foreign, wild, and contemptible. The only ones he has met are itinerant peddlers or settlers from the Ukraine, whom the Cossacks scornfully call
shapovali
, “hat pounders.” To the Cossack, the epitome of style is dressing in Circassian fashion. The best weapons are bought or stolen from the hill tribes, as are the best horses. A dashing young Cossack will flaunt his knowledge of Tatar, and will even speak it with his brother Cossacks when he drinks and carouses with them. And yet this small group of Christians, cast off on a distant corner of the earth, surrounded by Russian soldiers and half-savage Mohammedan tribes, regard themselves as superior and acknowledge only other Cossacks as their equals.

A Cossack spends most of his time at the checkpoints, on campaigns, or hunting and fishing. He almost never works at home. Even his presence in the village is an exception; he will return there only for the feasts of the holy days, and then he carouses. All Cossacks make their own wine, and drunkenness is not so much a general tendency as a ritual, neglecting which would be considered apostasy. A Cossack regards a woman as an instrument of his well-being: A girl might be allowed to enjoy herself, but a married woman, from her youngest years to advanced old age, has to work hard and fulfill the requirements of obedience and labor prevalent in the East. As a result, women, notwithstanding their apparent subjugation, are well-developed both physically and morally, and have far more authority in the home
than do women in the West. A Cossack woman’s seclusion and habituation to heavy work give her all the more power within the home. A Cossack considers it unseemly to speak to his wife needlessly or with tenderness in front of others, but when he is alone with her he is aware that she is superior to him. His house, all he owns, his entire property, are amassed and maintained through her work. A Cossack lives in the firm conviction that manual labor is demeaning and appropriate only for a woman or a Nogai workman. But he does have a vague sense that everything he calls his own is a product of women’s work, and that it is in the power of women—mothers and wives—whom he considers his slaves, to deprive him of everything. Furthermore, the constant heavy work the Greben women do has given them a uniquely independent and masculine character, and has developed in them physical strength, healthy understanding, decisiveness, and firmness of character. Most of the women are stronger, cleverer, and better looking than the men. The beauty of the Greben women is particularly striking, as it combines the purest features of a Circassian face with a strong and robust Russian body. The Cossack women dress in Circassian fashion—in a Tatar tunic, a quilted jacket, and slippers—but tie their head scarves as Russian women do. They insist on style, cleanliness, and elegance, both in dress and in the decoration of their homes. The women, particularly unmarried girls, enjoy freedom in their dealings with men.

The village of Novomlinskaya has preserved more than any other place the customs of the old Greben, and the women of this village have always been renowned throughout the Caucasus for their beauty. The Cossacks live off their vineyards, orchards, and watermelon and pumpkin fields, from the planting of corn and millet, from fishing and hunting, and from the spoils of war. Novomlinskaya lies three versts from the Terek and is separated from it by a stretch of dense woodland. On one side of the road through the village lies the river, while on the other lie the vineyards and orchards, beyond which stretch the dunes of the Nogai steppe. The village is surrounded by an earthen rampart and prickly blackthorn bushes, and one can enter or leave only through a tall gate covered by a small, reed-thatched roof. Next to it stands a monstrous cannon on a wooden cart, captured in the distant past by the Cossacks
and not fired in over a hundred years. A Cossack in uniform, armed with saber and rifle, sometimes stands guard at the gate, and sometimes not. Sometimes he presents arms to a passing officer, and sometimes not. A white board with black painted letters hangs below the gate’s thatched roof: 266 houses, 897 male souls, 1,012 female souls.

The Cossacks’ houses stand on posts about two or three feet off the ground, have tall gables, and roofs neatly thatched with reeds. All the houses, even the older ones, are solid, clean, and have high porches in front of them varying in shape. They are not huddled against each other but scattered along broad streets and lanes. Boldly shining sunflowers and climbing vines and creepers grow outside the houses next to dark green poplars and tender, pale-leafed acacias with fragrant white blossoms towering above the roofs. On the broad village square, three little stores sell bales of cloth, sunflower seeds, pea pods, and gingerbread. And beyond a tall fence and a row of old poplars lies the house of the commander of the regiment, a house with casement windows that is bigger and taller than any of the other houses. On weekdays there are few people in the streets, particularly in summer. The young men are on duty at the checkpoints or away on campaigns, while the old men are out hunting, fishing, or working with the women in the vineyards and orchards. Only the very old, the very young, and the sick remain at home.