LITMIR.BIZ

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reed-beds and to the hills beyond the Terek. Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and villages. The snow-peaks were hidden in grey mist. The air was rarefied and smoky. It was said that abreks had crossed the now shallow river and were prowling on this side of it. Every night the sun set in a glowing red blaze. It was the busiest time of the year. The villagers all swarmed in the melon-fields and the vineyards. The vineyards thickly overgrown with twining verdure lay in cool, deep shade. Everywhere between the broad translucent leaves, ripe, heavy, black clusters peeped out. Along the dusty road from the vineyards the creaking carts moved slowly, heaped up with black grapes. Clusters of them, crushed by the wheels, lay in the dirt. Boys and girls in smocks stained with grape-juice, with grapes in their hands and mouths, ran after their mothers. On the road you continually came across tattered labourers with baskets of grapes on their powerful shoulders; Cossack maidens, veiled with kerchiefs to their eyes, drove bullocks harnessed to carts laden high with grapes. Soldiers who happened to meet these carts asked for grapes, and the maidens, clambering up without stopping their carts, would take an armful of grapes and drop them into the skirts of the soldiers’ coats. In some homesteads they had already begun pressing the grapes; and the smell of the emptied skins filled the air. One saw the blood-red troughs in the pent-houses in the yards and Nogay labourers with their trousers rolled up and their legs stained with the juice. Grunting pigs gorged themselves with the empty skins and rolled about in them. The flat roofs of the outhouses were all spread over with the dark amber clusters drying in the sun. Daws and magpies crowded round the roofs, picking the seeds and fluttering from one place to another.

      The fruits of the year’s labour were being merrily gathered in, and this year the fruit was unusually fine and plentiful.

      In the shady green vineyards amid a sea of vines, laughter, songs, merriment, and the voices of women were to be heard on all sides, and glimpses of their bright-coloured garments could be seen.

      Just at noon Maryanka was sitting in their vineyard in the shade of a peach-tree, getting out the family dinner from under an unharnessed cart. Opposite her, on a spread-out horse-cloth, sat the cornet (who had returned from the school) washing his hands by pouring water on them from a little jug. Her little brother, who had just come straight out of the pond, stood wiping his face with his wide sleeves, and gazed anxiously at his sister and his mother and breathed deeply, awaiting his dinner. The old mother, with her sleeves rolled up over her strong sunburnt arms, was arranging grapes, dried fish, and clotted cream on a little low, circular Tartar table. The cornet wiped his hands, took off his cap, crossed himself, and moved nearer to the table. The boy seized the jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and daughter crossed their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in the shade it was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt unpleasant: the strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought no coolness, but only monotonously bent the tops of the pear, peach, and mulberry trees with which the vineyard was sprinkled. The comet, she felt unbearably hot. Her face was burning, and she did not know where to put her feet, her eyes were moist with sleepiness and weariness, her lips parted involuntarily, and her chest heaved heavily and deeply.

      The busy time of year had begun a fortnight ago and the continuous heavy labour had filled the girl’s life. At dawn she jumped up, washed her face with cold water, wrapped herself in a shawl, and ran out barefoot to see to the cattle. Then she hurriedly put on her shoes and her beshmet and, taking a small bundle of bread, she harnessed the bullocks and drove away to the vineyards for the whole day. There she cut the grapes and carried the baskets with only an hour’s interval for rest, and in the evening she returned to the village, bright and not tired, dragging the bullocks by a rope or driving them with a long stick. After attending to the cattle, she took some sunflower seeds in the wide sleeve of her smock and went to the corner of the street to crack them and have some fun with the other girls. But as soon as it was dusk she returned home, and after having supper with her parents and her brother in the dark outhouse, she went into the hut, healthy and free from care, and climbed onto the oven, where half drowsing she listened to their lodger’s conversation. As soon as he went away she would throw herself down on her bed and sleep soundly and quietly till morning. And so it went on day after day. She had not seen Lukashka since the day of their betrothal, but calmly awaited the wedding. She had got used to their lodger and felt his intent looks with pleasure.

Chapter 30

      Although there was no escape from the heat and the mosquitoes swarmed in the cool shadow of the wagons, and her little brother tossing about beside her kept pushing her, Maryanka having drawn her kerchief over her head was just falling asleep, when suddenly their neighbour Ustenka came running towards her and, diving under the wagon, lay down beside her.

      ‘Sleep, girls, sleep!’ said Ustenka, making herself comfortable under the wagon. ‘Wait a bit,’ she exclaimed, ‘this won’t do!’

      She jumped up, plucked some green branches, and stuck them through the wheels on both sides of the wagon and hung her beshmet over them.

      ‘Let me in,’ she shouted to the little boy as she again crept under the wagon. ‘Is this the place for a Cossack — with the girls? Go away!’

      When alone under the wagon with her friend, Ustenka suddenly put both her arms round her, and clinging close to her began kissing her cheeks and neck.

      ‘Darling, sweetheart,’ she kept repeating, between bursts of shrill, clear laughter.

      ‘Why, you’ve learnt it from Grandad,’ said Maryanka, struggling. ‘Stop it!’

      And they both broke into such peals of laughter that Maryanka’s mother shouted to them to be quiet.

      ‘Are you jealous?’ asked Ustenka in a whisper.

      ‘What humbug! Let me sleep. What have you come for?’

      But Ustenka kept on, ‘I say! But I wanted to tell you such a thing.’

      Maryanka raised herself on her elbow and arranged the kerchief which had slipped off.

      ‘Well, what is it?’

      ‘I know something about your lodger!’

      ‘There’s nothing to know,’ said Maryanka.

      ‘Oh, you rogue of a girl!’ said Ustenka, nudging her with her elbow and laughing. ‘Won’t tell anything. Does he come to you?’

      ‘He does. What of that?’ said Maryanka with a sudden blush.

      ‘Now I’m a simple lass. I tell everybody. Why should I pretend?’ said Ustenka, and her bright rosy face suddenly became pensive. ‘Whom do I hurt? I love him, that’s all about it.’

      ‘Grandad, do you mean?’

      ‘Well, yes!’

      ‘And the sin?’

      ‘Ah, Maryanka! When is one to have a good time if not while one’s still free? When I marry a Cossack I shall bear children and shall have cares. There now, when you get married to Lukashka not even a thought of joy will enter your head: children will come, and work!’

      ‘Well? Some who are married live happily. It makes no difference!’ Maryanka replied quietly.

      ‘Do tell me just this once what has passed between you and Lukishka?’

      ‘What has passed? A match was proposed. Father put it off for a year, but now it’s been settled and they’ll marry us in autumn.’

      ‘But what did he say to you?’ Maryanka smiled.

      ‘What should he say? He said he loved me. He kept asking me to come to the vineyards with him.’

      ‘Just see what pitch! But you didn’t go, did you? And what a dare-devil he has become: the first among the braves. He makes merry out there in the army too! The other day our Kirka came home; he says: “What a horse Lukashka’s got in exchange!” But all the same I expect he frets after you. And what else did he say?’

      ‘Must you know everything?’

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