The Cossacks (7 page)

“Heel, Lyam!” he shouted to his dog, in such a sonorous bass that the echo resounded deep into the woods. He slung the large percussion musket that the Cossacks call a
flinta
onto his shoulder and raised his hat.

“A good day to you!” he called to the Cossacks in the same strong, cheerful bass, completely effortless but loud, as if he were calling to the opposite bank of the river.

“And a good day to you, Uncle! A good day to you!” the voices of the young Cossacks called back from all directions.

“Tell me if you’ve seen any game!” Uncle Eroshka shouted, wiping the sweat off his broad, handsome face with the sleeve of his jacket.

“There’s a fine hawk nesting in that plane tree over there! The moment the sun sets he starts hovering right overhead,” Nazarka said with a wink, clownishly jerking his shoulders.

“Tall tales!” the old man said incredulously.

“No, it’s true, Uncle! If you lie in wait here for the next few hours, you’ll see!” Nazarka replied with a chuckle.

The Cossacks began to laugh. Nazarka had never seen a hawk hovering above the checkpoint, but the young men stationed there liked to tease Uncle Eroshka whenever they saw him.

“You fool, you’re always lying!” Lukashka called down from the tower to Nazarka, who immediately fell silent.

“If you think I should lie in wait, then I’ll lie in wait!” the old man said, to the great amusement of the Cossacks. “Have you seen any boars?”

“Boars? Do you think we’re keeping a lookout for boars here?” the sergeant said, leaning forward and scratching his back with both hands, pleased at the opportunity for some distraction. “It’s Chechen marauders we’re hunting, not wild boars!
You’ve
not heard anything, have you?” he added, narrowing his eyes and showing his white, close-set teeth.

“Chechen marauders?” the old man repeated. “No, I haven’t heard anything. Do you have any good Chikhir wine? Give me a drink, I’m all worn out! When I get a chance, I’ll bring you some nice fresh meat. Give me a drink!”

“So what are you going to do, lie in wait for game?” the sergeant asked, as if he had not heard what the old man had said.

“I was going to lie in wait all night,” Uncle Eroshka replied. “I was thinking that I might, God willing, bag some game for the festival—then I’ll give you some too, I swear!”

“Hey, Uncle Eroshka!” Lukashka called from the tower, and all the Cossacks looked up. “Head over to the runlet upstream—I see a big litter of boars there! I’m not joking, I swear! The other day one of our men shot a beast there. I swear I’m not joking!” he added in a serious tone, slinging his rifle behind his back.

“Ah, Lukashka the Snatcher is here!” the old man said, looking up at the tower. “Where was it that your friend shot the beast?”

“Didn’t you see me? I suppose I’m too high up,” Lukashka said. “He shot it right by the runlet,” he added. “We were walking along there when we heard a crackling sound, but my rifle was in its sling. So Ilyaska shot it. I’ll show you where it was—it’s not that far. Just wait a moment, I know all the paths here!”

Lukashka looked over to the sergeant and with a decisive, almost commanding tone, called down from the watchtower, “Uncle Mosyev!
It’s time to change shifts!” He grabbed his rifle and began climbing down without waiting for the sergeant’s response.

“You can come down!” the sergeant called and looked around at the other men. “It’s your turn, Gurka, isn’t it? Get up there!” He turned back to the old man and said, “That Lukashka of yours has turned into quite a good hunter. He’s just like you, roaming the woods, never staying in his quarters! You should have seen the beast he bagged the other day!”

The sun had set, and the shadows of night were spreading from the woods. The Cossacks finished what they were doing around the checkpoint and gathered in the hut to eat supper. Only the old man remained beneath the plane tree, holding his falcon by a string tied to its leg as he waited for the hawk to appear. There was a hawk in one of the trees, but it did not swoop down upon the chicken that the old man was using as bait. Lukashka was humming tunes as he set out nooses to catch pheasants in the thickest brambles. Though he was tall and had big hands, it was clear that anything he put his mind to, whether fine or rough, responded to his touch.

“Hey, Luka!” Nazarka’s shrill voice came from nearby in the underbrush. “The men have all headed back for supper!”

Nazarka pushed his way through the brambles out onto the path, holding a live pheasant under his arm.

“Where did you get that bird?” Lukashka asked him. “From one of my traps?”

Nazarka was the same age as Lukashka, was his friend and neighbor in the village, and like him had only joined the company that spring. He was an ugly young man, thin and sickly, with a piercing voice that rang in one’s ears. Lukashka was sitting cross-legged like a Tatar among the weeds, setting out the traps.

“I don’t know whose bird this is, it must be yours.”

“If it was behind the pit by the plane tree, then it’s mine. I set the trap yesterday.”

Lukashka got up and looked at the pheasant. He stroked the bird’s dark blue head, which it stretched out in terror, its eyes rolling.

“Let’s make a pilaf with it. Go kill and pluck it,” he said.

“Should we eat it ourselves or give it to the sergeant?”

“Why give it to him?”

“I don’t know how to butcher these things,” Nazarka said apprehensively.

“Then give it to me!”

Lukashka drew a knife. The bird fluttered up, but before it could spread its wings, its blood-drenched head slumped and quivered.

“That’s how it’s done!” Lukashka said, dropping the bird on the ground. “It’ll make a good pilaf!”

Nazarka looked at the bird and shuddered.

“Just watch that devil send us out again tonight to lie in ambush!” he said, picking up the pheasant. (The devil he was referring to was the sergeant.) “He sent Fomushkin to get some Chikhir wine the night it was his turn, and so we always end up being sent out there! It’s us every night!”

Lukashka walked toward the checkpoint whistling a tune. “Here, take that noose trap with you!” he shouted. Nazarka took it.

“I’ll give him a piece of my mind, I swear!” Nazarka continued. “We should tell him we won’t go, that we’re tired out, and that’s that! Though I guess maybe you should tell him, he listens to you.”

“That’s enough,” Lukashka said absently. “Who cares, anyway? If we were being sent out of the village, I’d be the first to speak up. In the village you can drink and have fun! But out here? If you ask me, being inside the hut all night or lying out in ambush is all the same! You’re just—”

“Will you be coming back to the village with us?” Nazarka asked.

“I’ll be going back for the festival.”

“Gurka says that your Dunaika has started seeing Fomushkin,” Nazarka said suddenly.

“She can go to the Devil!” Lukashka replied, his white teeth flashing, but not in a smile. “You think I can’t find another girl?”

“Gurka said he went to her house and her husband was out, but that he found Fomushkin there, eating a pie. He stayed for a bit, but as he left he passed by the window and heard her say, ‘Thank God that idiot is gone! Won’t you finish the pie, darling? You can stay the night, if you
like.’ And Gurka, outside the window, said to himself, ’Well, how about that!’”

“You’re lying!”

“I swear it’s true!”

Lukashka said nothing for a few moments. “Well, if she’s with someone else, then she can go to Hell! The village is full of girls! I was getting tired of her anyway.”

“You’re a fool. You should go for the cornet’s daughter, Maryanka. Surely she’s the kind who’ll look twice at a man.”

Lukashka frowned. “Maryanka? Well, I don’t care.”

“So try her.”

“Why, do you think there aren’t enough girls in the village?”

Lukashka began whistling again and walked to the checkpoint, plucking leaves off twigs. He came to some bushes and, seeing a smooth sapling, stopped, drew his knife, and cut it off.

“That’ll make a nice cleaning rod for my rifle,” he said, whipping the sapling through the air so it whistled.

The Cossacks were sitting on the dirt floor in the clay-walled front room of the hut, eating their supper around a low Tatar table, when the question of whose turn it was to lie in ambush that night came up.

“Well, who’s got to go tonight?” one of the Cossacks called through the open door to the sergeant in the other room.

“Yes, whose turn is it?” the sergeant called back. “Uncle Burlak has been, Fomushkin has been,” he added, hesitating. “Will the two of you go—you and Nazarka?” the sergeant said to Lukashka. “And Ergushov too—that is, if he’s slept off his liquor.”

“You never sleep off your liquor, why should he?” Nazarka muttered, and everyone laughed. Ergushov was the man who had been lying drunk outside the hut. He had just come staggering into the room, rubbing his eyes. Lukashka was already up, cleaning his rifle.

“Well then, get a move on! Eat your supper and go!” the sergeant said, coming into the room and closing the door without waiting for an answer, as he evidently did not expect Lukashka and the two others to agree. “I wouldn’t be sending you out if I hadn’t been ordered to,” he
continued. “But the captain could turn up here any moment, and we all know word has it that eight Chechens have crossed the river!”

“Of course we have to go!” Ergushov said. “An order’s an order! We have to be out there at times like this! I say we go!”

Lukashka had picked up a large chunk of pheasant meat in both hands and was holding it in front of his mouth. His eyes darted from the sergeant to Nazarka. He laughed, apparently indifferent to the mounting tension between the two men. Suddenly Uncle Eroshka, who had been waiting in vain for the hawk under the plane tree, came into the darkening room. “Well, boys!” his bass voice thundered, drowning out all the others. “I’m coming along! You lie in wait for Chechens, and I’ll lie in wait for boars!”

Darkness had fallen by the time the three Cossacks, wrapped in their cloaks, their rifles slung over their shoulders, left the checkpoint with Uncle Eroshka and walked along the Terek to where they were to lie in wait. Nazarka had not wanted to go, but Lukashka spoke some sharp words to him, and they all set out. They walked along a runlet in silence, then headed toward the riverbank on a path that was barely visible among the reeds. A thick, black log had washed onto the bank, flattening the reeds around it.

“Why don’t we hide here?” Nazarka asked.

“Good!” Lukashka replied. “Stay here, and I’ll be right back. I want to show Uncle Eroshka where I saw the boar.”

“Yes, this is a very good place!” Ergushov agreed. “The Chechens won’t be able to see us, but we’ll see them. Let’s stay here—it’s the best place!”

Nazarka and Ergushov spread their cloaks on the ground and settled down behind the log, while Lukashka continued along the path with Uncle Eroshka.

“It’s near here,” Lukashka whispered, walking noiselessly a few steps ahead of the old man. “I’ll show you where that boar is hiding. I’m the only one who knows.”

“Yes, show me!” the old man whispered back. “You’re a good lad, Snatcher!”

Lukashka stopped, crouched down by a pool of water, and whistled softly. “You see this? It stopped here to drink,” he said barely audibly, pointing at a fresh print.

“God bless you!” the old man said. “The boar will be holed up beyond that ditch! I’ll stay here, you go back now!”

Lukashka wrapped himself in his cloak and headed back toward the river, eyeing the wall of reeds to his left and the Terek, seething in its banks, to his right. “Those Chechens must be creeping around here somewhere!” he thought. Suddenly a loud rustling noise and a splash made him shudder and reach for his rifle. A boar leapt panting over the embankment, and its black shape, outlined for an instant against the gleaming surface of the water, disappeared into the reeds. Lukashka quickly took aim, but the boar was gone before he could shoot. He spat in fury and walked on. When he came to the log where Nazarka and Ergushov were lying in wait, he stopped and whistled softly. His whistle was returned, and he joined his comrades.

Nazarka lay asleep, curled up in his cloak. Ergushov was sitting cross-legged and moved a little to the side to make room for Lukashka.

“This is fun! And it’s a great hideout!” Ergushov whispered. “Did you show Uncle Eroshka the place?”

“Yes,” Lukashka replied, spreading his cloak on the ground. “You should have seen the boar I just shied up from the riverbank! It must have been the one we were looking for. You heard all the crackling, no?”

“Yes, I thought right away you must have flushed out something,” Ergushov said, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders. “I’ll get some sleep now. Wake me when the first cock crows,” he added. “We have to do this right: I’ll catch a few winks now while you’re on watch, and then you can get some sleep while I watch.”

“As it is, I don’t feel like sleeping,” Lukashka replied.

The night was dark and warm. Stars shone in one part of the sky, the larger part by the mountain was overcast. A single, large black cloud that blended with the peaks in the windless night slowly spread further and further, standing out starkly from the deep, starry sky. All Lukashka could see was the Terek and the distance beyond. Behind
him and to his sides was a wall of reeds. At times they began to sway and rustle against one another for no apparent reason. Seen from below, their swaying tops looked like tender, leafy branches against the light part of the sky. At his feet lay the riverbank, beyond which the torrent was seething. Further out, the glossy mass of brown water rippled monotonously past banks and shoals, and further still the water, the opposite bank, and the clouds faded into the impenetrable darkness. Black shadows, which Lukashka’s sharp eye recognized as driftwood that the current was carrying downstream, were drifting along the surface of the river. Rare flashes of summer lightning sparked in the water as in a black mirror, revealing the outline of the sloping bank on the other side. The even sounds of the night, the rustling of the reeds, the snoring of the Cossacks, the humming of the mosquitoes, and the flowing water were interrupted from time to time by a distant gunshot, the gurgling of a chunk of the riverbank falling into the water, the splash of a big fish, and the crackling of an animal in the wild undergrowth. An owl flew along the river, its wings flapping together with every second beat, and right above the Cossacks’ heads it turned and flew toward the forest, its wings now touching at every beat. It hovered over a gnarled plane tree and then settled in its branches. At every unexpected sound Lukashka listened intently, narrowing his eyes, and slowly reached for his rifle.