Hadji Murád, Leo Tolstoy [romantic books to read txt] 📗

Strange to say, his imagination never pictured the other aspect of war: the death and wounds of the soldiers, officers, and mountaineers. To retain this poetic conception he even unconsciously avoided looking at the dead and wounded. So that day, when we had three dead and twelve wounded, he passed by a corpse lying on its back, and only saw with one eye the strange position of the waxen hand and a dark red spot on the head, and did not stop to look. The hillsmen appeared to him only as mounted dzhigíts, from whom one had to defend oneself.

“You see, my dear sir,” said his Major in an interval between two songs, “it’s not as it is with you in Petersburg⁠—‘Eyes right! Eyes left!’ Here we have done our job; and now we go home, and Másha will set a pie and some nice cabbage soup before us. That’s life; don’t you think so?⁠—Now then! ‘As the Dawn Was Breaking’!” he called for his favorite song.

There was no wind, the air was fresh and clear, and so transparent that the snow hills nearly a hundred miles away seemed quite near, and in the intervals between the songs the regular sound of the footsteps and the jingle of the guns was heard as a background on which each song began and ended. The song that was being sung in Butler’s company was composed by a cadet in honor of the regiment, and went to a dance tune. The chorus was: “Very diff’rent, very diff’rent, Jägers are, Jägers are!”

Butler rode beside the officer next in rank above him, Major Petróv, with whom he lived; and he felt he could not be thankful enough to have exchanged from the Guards and come to the Caucasus. His chief reason for exchanging was that he had lost all he had at cards, and was afraid that if he remained there he would be unable to resist playing, though he had nothing more to lose. Now all that was over, his life was quite changed, and was such a pleasant and brave one! He forgot that he was ruined, and forgot his unpaid debts. The Caucasus, the war, the soldiers, the officers⁠—those tipsy, brave, good-natured fellows⁠—and Major Petróv himself, all seemed so delightful that sometimes it appeared too good to be true that he was not in Petersburg⁠—in a room filled with tobacco smoke, turning down the corners of cards41 and gambling, hating the holder of the bank, and feeling a dull pain in his head⁠—but was really here in this glorious region among these brave Caucasians.

The Major and the daughter of a surgeon’s orderly, formerly known as Másha, but now generally called by the more respectful name of Márya Dmítrievna, lived together as man and wife. Márya Dmítrievna was a handsome, fair-haired, very freckled, childless woman of thirty. Whatever her past may have been, she was now the Major’s faithful companion, and looked after him like a nurse⁠—a very necessary matter, since he often drank himself into oblivion.

When they reached the fort everything happened as the Major had foreseen. Márya Dmítrievna gave him, Butler, and two other officers of the detachment who had been invited, a nourishing and tasty dinner, and the Major ate and drank till he was unable to speak, and then went off to his room to sleep.

Butler, having drunk rather more Chikhír wine than was good for him, went to his bedroom, and hardly had time to undress before, placing his hand under his handsome curly head, he fell into a sound, dreamless, and unbroken sleep.

XVII

The aoul which had been destroyed was that in which Hadji Murád had spent the night before he went over to the Russians. Sado, with his family, had left the aoul on the approach of the Russian detachment; and when he returned he found his sáklya in ruins⁠—the roof fallen in, the door and the posts supporting the penthouse burned, and the interior filthy. His son, the handsome, bright-eyed boy who had gazed with such ecstasy at Hadji Murád, was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered with a burka. He had been stabbed in the back with a bayonet. The dignified woman who had served Hadji Murád when he was at the house now stood over her son’s body, her smock torn in front, her withered old breasts exposed, her hair down; and she dug her nails into her face till it bled, and wailed incessantly. Sado, taking a pickaxe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a grave for his son. The old grandfather sat by the wall of the ruined sáklya, cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of him. He had only just returned from the apiary. The two stacks of hay there had been burnt; the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched; and worse still, all the beehives and bees were burnt. The wailing of the women and the little children who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle, for whom there was no food. The bigger children, did not play, but followed their elders with frightened eyes. The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water could not be used. The mosque was polluted in the same way, and the Mullah and his assistants were cleaning it out. No one spoke of hatred of the Russians. The feeling experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate. It was not hatred, for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings; but it was such repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them⁠—like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves⁠—was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.

The inhabitants