The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (best book series to read TXT) 📕

he climbed over the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and

before he had had time to pull out the thorns that had caught in

his coat, his dog, which had run on in front, started two

pheasants. He had hardly stepped among the briers when the

pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man had not shown

him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for shooting

from behind the screen). Olenin fired twelve times and killed five

pheasants, but clambering after them through the briers he got so

fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration. He called off his

dog, uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above the small shot, and

brushing away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his

Circassian coat he went slowly to the spot where they had been the

day before. It was however impossible to keep back the dog, who

found trails on the very path, and Olenin killed two more

pheasants, so that after being detained by this it was getting

towards noon before he began to find the place he was looking for.

The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture

had dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes

literally covered his face, his back, and his arms. His dog had

turned from black to grey, its back being covered with mosquitoes,

and so had Olenin’s coat through which the insects thrust their

stings. Olenin was ready to run away from them and it seemed to

him that it was impossible to live in this country in the summer.

He was about to go home, but remembering that other people managed

to endure such pain he resolved to bear it and gave himself up to

be devoured. And strange to say, by noontime the feeling became

actually pleasant. He even felt that without this mosquito-filled

atmosphere around him, and that mosquito-paste mingled with

perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that

unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for

him some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were

so well suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these

multitudes of birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark

foliage, this hot scented air, these runlets filled with turbid

water which everywhere soaked through from the Terek and gurgled

here and there under the overhanging leaves, that the very thing

which had at first seemed to him dreadful and intolerable now

seemed pleasant. After going round the place where yesterday they

had found the animal and not finding anything, he felt inclined to

rest. The sun stood right above the forest and poured its

perpendicular rays down on his back and head whenever he came out

into a glade or onto the road. The seven heavy pheasants dragged

painfully at his waist. Having found the traces of yesterday’s

stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the stag

had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the dark foliage

around him, the place marked by the stag’s perspiration and

yesterday’s dung, the imprint of the stag’s knees, the bit of

black earth it had kicked up, and his own footprints of the day

before. He felt cool and comfortable and did not think of or wish

for anything. And suddenly he was overcome by such a strange

feeling of causeless joy and of love for everything, that from an

old habit of his childhood he began crossing himself and thanking

someone. Suddenly, with extraordinary clearness, he thought: ‘Here

am I, Dmitri Olenin, a being quite distinct from every other

being, now lying all alone Heaven only knows where—where a stag

used to live—an old stag, a beautiful stag who perhaps had never

seen a man, and in a place where no human being has ever sat or

thought these thoughts. Here I sit, and around me stand old and

young trees, one of them festooned with wild grape vines, and

pheasants are fluttering, driving one another about and perhaps

scenting their murdered brothers.’ He felt his pheasants, examined

them, and wiped the warm blood off his hand onto his coat.

‘Perhaps the jackals scent them and with dissatisfied faces go off

in another direction: above me, flying in among the leaves which

to them seem enormous islands, mosquitoes hang in the air and

buzz: one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million

mosquitoes, and all of them buzz something or other and each one

of them is separate from all else and is just such a separate

Dmitri Olenin as I am myself.’ He vividly imagined what the

mosquitoes buzzed: ‘This way, this way, lads! Here’s some one we

can eat!’ They buzzed and stuck to him. And it was clear to him

that he was not a Russian nobleman, a member of Moscow society,

the friend and relation of so-and-so and so-and-so, but just such

a mosquito, or pheasant, or deer, as those that were now living

all around him. ‘Just as they, just as Daddy Eroshka, I shall live

awhile and die, and as he says truly:

“grass will grow and nothing more”.

‘But what though the grass does grow?’ he continued thinking.

‘Still I must live and be happy, because happiness is all I

desire. Never mind what I am—an animal like all the rest, above

whom the grass will grow and nothing more; or a frame in which a

bit of the one God has been set,—still I must live in the very

best way. How then must I live to be happy, and why was I not

happy before?’ And he began to recall his former life and he felt

disgusted with himself. He appeared to himself to have been

terribly exacting and selfish, though he now saw that all the

while he really needed nothing for himself. And he looked round at

the foliage with the light shining through it, at the setting sun

and the clear sky, and he felt just as happy as before. ‘Why am I

happy, and what used I to live for?’ thought he. ‘How much I

exacted for myself; how I schemed and did not manage to gain

anything but shame and sorrow! and, there now, I require nothing

to be happy;’ and suddenly a new light seemed to reveal itself to

him. ‘Happiness is this!’ he said to himself. ‘Happiness lies in

living for others. That is evident. The desire for happiness is

innate in every man; therefore it is legitimate. When trying to

satisfy it selfishly—that is, by seeking for oneself riches,

fame, comforts, or love—it may happen that circumstances arise

which make it impossible to satisfy these desires. It follows that

it is these desires that are illegitimate, but not the need for

happiness. But what desires can always be satisfied despite

external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.’ He

was so glad and excited when he had discovered this, as it seemed

to him, new truth, that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking

some one to sacrifice himself for, to do good to and to love.

‘Since one wants nothing for oneself,’ he kept thinking, ‘why not

live for others?’ He took up his gun with the intention of

returning home quickly to think this out and to find an

opportunity of doing good. He made his way out of the thicket.

When he had come out into the glade he looked around him; the sun

was no longer visible above the tree-tops. It had grown cooler and

the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the country

round the village. Everything seemed changed—the weather and the

character of the forest; the sky was wrapped in clouds, the wind

was rustling in the tree-tops, and all around nothing was visible

but reeds and dying broken-down trees. He called to his dog who

had run away to follow some animal, and his voice came back as in

a desert. And suddenly he was seized with a terrible sense of

weirdness. He grew frightened. He remembered the abreks and the

murders he had been told about, and he expected every moment that

an abrek would spring from behind every bush and he would have to

defend his life and die, or be a coward. He thought of God and of

the future life as for long he had not thought about them. And all

around was that same gloomy stern wild nature. ‘And is it worth

while living for oneself,’ thought he, ‘when at any moment you may

die, and die without having done any good, and so that no one will

know of it?’ He went in the direction where he fancied the village

lay. Of his shooting he had no further thought; but he felt tired

to death and peered round at every bush and tree with particular

attention and almost with terror, expecting every moment to be

called to account for his life. After having wandered about for a

considerable time he came upon a ditch down which was flowing cold

sandy water from the Terek, and, not to go astray any longer, he

decided to follow it. He went on without knowing where the ditch

would lead him. Suddenly the reeds behind him crackled. He

shuddered and seized his gun, and then felt ashamed of himself:

the over-excited dog, panting hard, had thrown itself into the

cold water of the ditch and was lapping it!

He too had a drink, and then followed the dog in the direction it

wished to go, thinking it would lead him to the village. But

despite the dog’s company everything around him seemed still more

dreary. The forest grew darker and the wind grew stronger and

stronger in the tops of the broken old trees. Some large birds

circled screeching round their nests in those trees. The

vegetation grew poorer and he came oftener and oftener upon

rustling reeds and bare sandy spaces covered with animal

footprints. To the howling of the wind was added another kind of

cheerless monotonous roar. Altogether his spirits became gloomy.

Putting his hand behind him he felt his pheasants, and found one

missing. It had broken off and was lost, and only the bleeding

head and beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more

frightened than he had ever done before. He began to pray to God,

and feared above all that he might die without having done

anything good or kind; and he so wanted to live, and to live so as

to perform a feat of self-sacrifice.