The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (best book series to read TXT) 📕
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interest of that future. Now, with unprecedented courage and a
strength that amazed everyone, he slew and subdued an innumerable
host of hillsmen; now he was himself a hillsman and with them was
maintaining their independence against the Russians. As soon as he
pictured anything definite, familiar Moscow figures always
appeared on the scene. Sashka B–fights with the Russians or the
hillsmen against him. Even the tailor Cappele in some strange way
takes part in the conqueror’s triumph. Amid all this he remembered
his former humiliations, weaknesses, and mistakes, and the
recollection was not disagreeable. It was clear that there among
the mountains, waterfalls, fair Circassians, and dangers, such
mistakes could not recur. Having once made full confession to
himself there was an end of it all. One other vision, the sweetest
of them all, mingled with the young man’s every thought of the
future—the vision of a woman.
And there, among the mountains, she appeared to his imagination as
a Circassian slave, a fine figure with a long plait of hair and
deep submissive eyes. He pictured a lonely hut in the mountains,
and on the threshold she stands awaiting him when, tired and
covered with dust, blood, and fame, he returns to her. He is
conscious of her kisses, her shoulders, her sweet voice, and her
submissiveness. She is enchanting, but uneducated, wild, and
rough. In the long winter evenings he begins her education. She is
clever and gifted and quickly acquires all the knowledge
essential. Why not? She can quite easily learn foreign languages,
read the French masterpieces and understand them: Notre Dame de
Paris, for instance, is sure to please her. She can also speak
French. In a drawing-room she can show more innate dignity than a
lady of the highest society. She can sing, simply, powerfully, and
passionately…. ‘Oh, what nonsense!’ said he to himself. But here
they reached a post-station and he had to change into another
sledge and give some tips. But his fancy again began searching for
the ‘nonsense’ he had relinquished, and again fair Circassians,
glory, and his return to Russia with an appointment as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose before his imagination. ‘But there’s
no such thing as love,’ said he to himself. ‘Fame is all rubbish.
But the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles? … And the
conquered land that will bring me more wealth than I need for a
lifetime? It will not be right though to keep all that wealth for
myself. I shall have to distribute it. But to whom? Well, six
hundred and seventy-eight rubles to Cappele and then we’ll see.’
… Quite vague visions now cloud his mind, and only Vanyusha’s
voice and the interrupted motion of the sledge break his healthy
youthful slumber. Scarcely conscious, he changes into another
sledge at the next stage and continues his journey.
Next morning everything goes on just the same: the same kind of
post-stations and tea-drinking, the same moving horses’ cruppers,
the same short talks with Vanyusha, the same vague dreams and
drowsiness, and the same tired, healthy, youthful sleep at night.
The farther Olenin travelled from Central Russia the farther he
left his memories behind, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus
the lighter his heart became. “I’ll stay away for good and never
return to show myself in society,” was a thought that sometimes
occurred to him. “These people whom I see here are NOT people.
None of them know me and none of them can ever enter the Moscow
society I was in or find out about my past. And no one in that
society will ever know what I am doing, living among these
people.” And quite a new feeling of freedom from his whole past
came over him among the rough beings he met on the road whom he
did not consider to be PEOPLE in the sense that his Moscow
acquaintances were. The rougher the people and the fewer the signs
of civilization the freer he felt. Stavropol, through which he had
to pass, irked him. The signboards, some of them even in French,
ladies in carriages, cabs in the marketplace, and a gentleman
wearing a fur cloak and tall hat who was walking along the
boulevard and staring at the passersby, quite upset him. “Perhaps
these people know some of my acquaintances,” he thought; and the
club, his tailor, cards, society … came back to his mind. But
after Stavropol everything was satisfactory—wild and also
beautiful and warlike, and Olenin felt happier and happier. All
the Cossacks, post-boys, and post-station masters seemed to him
simple folk with whom he could jest and converse simply, without
having to consider to what class they belonged. They all belonged
to the human race which, without his thinking about it, all
appeared dear to Olenin, and they all treated him in a friendly
way.
Already in the province of the Don Cossacks his sledge had been
exchanged for a cart, and beyond Stavropol it became so warm that
Olenin travelled without wearing his fur coat. It was already
spring—an unexpected joyous spring for Olenin. At night he was no
longer allowed to leave the Cossack villages, and they said it was
dangerous to travel in the evening. Vanyusha began to be uneasy,
and they carried a loaded gun in the cart. Olenin became still
happier. At one of the post-stations the post-master told of a
terrible murder that had been committed recently on the high road.
They began to meet armed men. “So this is where it begins!”
thought Olenin, and kept expecting to see the snowy mountains of
which mention was so often made. Once, towards evening, the Nogay
driver pointed with his whip to the mountains shrouded in clouds.
Olenin looked eagerly, but it was dull and the mountains were
almost hidden by the clouds. Olenin made out something grey and
white and fleecy, but try as he would he could find nothing
beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and
heard. The mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike,
and he thought the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he
had so often been told, was as much an invention as Bach’s music
and the love of women, in which he did not believe. So he gave up
looking forward to seeing the mountains. But early next morning,
being awakened in his cart by the freshness of the air, he glanced
carelessly to the right. The morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly
he saw, about twenty paces away as it seemed to him at first
glance, pure white gigantic masses with delicate contours, the
distinct fantastic outlines of their summits showing sharply
against the far-off sky. When he had realized the distance between
himself and them and the sky and the whole immensity of the
mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty, he became
afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself a
shake to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.
“What’s that! What is it?” he said to the driver.
“Why, the mountains,” answered the Nogay driver with indifference.
“And I too have been looking at them for a long while,” said
Vanyusha. “Aren’t they fine? They won’t believe it at home.”
The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road
caused the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon,
while their rosy crests glittered in the light of the rising sun.
At first Olenin was only astonished at the sight, then gladdened
by it; but later on, gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain that seemed to rise not from among other black
mountains, but straight out of the plain, and to glide away into
the distance, he began by slow degrees to be penetrated by their
beauty and at length to FEEL the mountains. From that moment all
he saw, all he thought, and all he felt, acquired for him a new
character, sternly majestic like the mountains! All his Moscow
reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his trivial dreams about
the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. ‘Now it has begun,’ a
solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the Terek, just
becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages and the
people, all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at
himself or Vanyusha, and again thought of the mountains. … Two
Cossacks ride by, their guns in their cases swinging rhythmically
behind their backs, the white and bay legs of their horses
mingling confusedly … and the mountains! Beyond the Terek rises
the smoke from a Tartar village… and the mountains! The sun has
risen and glitters on the Terek, now visible beyond the reeds …
and the mountains! From the village comes a Tartar wagon, and
women, beautiful young women, pass by… and the mountains!
‘Abreks canter about the plain, and here am I driving along and do
not fear them! I have a gun, and strength, and youth… and the
mountains!’
That whole part of the Terek line (about fifty miles) along which
lie the villages of the Grebensk Cossacks is uniform in character
both as to country and inhabitants. The Terek, which separates the
Cossacks from the mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid
though already broad and smooth, always depositing greyish sand on
its low reedy right bank and washing away the steep, though not
high, left bank, with its roots of century-old oaks, its rotting
plane trees, and young brushwood. On the right bank lie the
villages of pro-Russian, though still somewhat restless, Tartars.
Along the left bank, back half a mile from the river and standing
five or six miles apart from one another, are Cossack villages. In
olden times most of these villages were situated on the banks of
the river; but the Terek, shifting northward from the mountains
year by year, washed away those banks, and now there remain only
the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear and plum
trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and wild
vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the
deer, the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned
to love these places. From village to village runs a road cut
through the forest as a cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are
cordons of Cossacks and watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only
a narrow strip about seven hundred yards wide of fertile wooded
soil belongs to the Cossacks. To the north of it begin the sand-drifts of the Nogay or Mozdok steppes, which fetch far to the
north and run, Heaven knows where, into the Trukhmen, Astrakhan,
and Kirghiz-Kaisatsk steppes. To the south, beyond the Terek, are
the Great Chechnya river, the Kochkalov range, the Black
Mountains, yet another range, and at last the snowy mountains,
which can just be seen but have never yet been scaled. In this
fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has dwelt as far back as
memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian tribe
belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebensk
Cossacks.
Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and
settled beyond the Terek among the Chechens on the Greben, the
first range of wooded mountains of Chechnya. Living among the
Chechens the Cossacks intermarried with them and adopted the
manners and customs of the hill tribes, though they still retained
the Russian language in all its purity, as well as their Old
Faith. A tradition, still fresh among them, declares that Tsar
Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, sent for their Elders, and
gave them the land on this side of the river, exhorting them to
remain friendly to Russia and promising
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