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

the vodka and taken a bite of rye bread. “Yesterday I drank a little Chikhír, and now I have a headache.⁠ ⁠… Well, I’m ready,” said he, and went to the parlor, into which Butler had already shown Hadji Murád and the officer who accompanied him.

The officer handed the Major orders from the commander of the Left Flank, to the effect that he should receive Hadji Murád, and should allow him to have intercourse with the mountaineers through spies, but was on no account to allow him to leave the fort without a convoy of Cossacks.

Having read the order, the Major looked intently at Hadji Murád, and again scrutinized the paper. After passing his eyes several times from one to the other in this manner, he at last fixed them on Hadji Murád and said:

“Yakshí, Bek; yakshi! (‘very well, sir, very well!’) Let him stay here, and tell him I have orders not to let him out⁠—and what is commanded is sacred! Well, Butler, where do you think we’d better lodge him? Shall we put him in the office?”

Butler had not time to answer before Márya Dmítrievna⁠—who had come from the kitchen and was standing in the doorway⁠—said to the Major:

“Why? Keep him here! We will give him the guest-chamber and the storeroom. Then at any rate he will be within sight,” said she, glancing at Hadji Murád; but meeting his eyes she turned quickly away.

“Well, you know, I think Márya Dmítrievna is right,” said Butler.

“Now then, now then, get away! Women have no business here,” said the Major frowning.

During the whole of this discussion, Hadji Murád sat with his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and a faint smile of contempt on his lips. He said it was all the same to him where he lodged, and that he wanted nothing but what the Sirdar had permitted⁠—namely, to have communication with the mountaineers; and that he therefore wished they should be allowed to come to him.

The Major said this should be done, and asked Butler to entertain the visitors till something could be got for them to eat, and their rooms prepared. Meanwhile he himself would go across to the office, to write what was necessary, and to give some orders.

Hadji Murád’s relations with his new acquaintances were at once very clearly defined. From the first he was repelled by, and contemptuous of, the Major, to whom he always behaved very haughtily. Márya Dmítrievna, who prepared and served up his food, pleased him particularly. He liked her simplicity, and especially the⁠—to him⁠—foreign type of her beauty, and he was influenced by the attraction she felt towards him and unconsciously conveyed. He tried not to look at her or speak to her; but his eyes involuntarily turned towards her and followed her movements. With Butler, from their first acquaintance, he immediately made friends, and talked much and willingly with him, questioning him about his life, telling him of his own, and communicating to him the news the spies brought him of his family’s condition; and even consulting him as to how he ought to act.

The news he received through the spies was not good. During the first four days of his stay in the fort they came to see him twice, and both times brought bad news.

XIX

Hadji Murád’s family had been removed to Vedenó soon after his desertion to the Russians, and were there kept under guard awaiting Shamil’s decision. The women⁠—his old mother Patimát, and his two wives with their five little children⁠—were kept under guard in the sáklya of the officer Ibrahim Raschid; while Hadji Murád’s son, Yusúf, a youth of eighteen, was put in prison⁠—that is, into a pit more than seven feet deep, together with seven criminals who like himself were awaiting a decision as to their fate.

The decision was delayed, because Shamil was away on a campaign against the Russians.

On January 6, 1852, he returned to Vedenó after a battle in which, according to the Russians, he had been vanquished, and had fled to Vedenó; but in which, according to him and all the murids, he had been victorious, and had repulsed the Russians. In this battle he himself fired his rifle⁠—a thing he seldom did⁠—and, drawing his sword, would have charged straight at the Russians had not the murids who accompanied him held him back. Two of them were killed on the spot, at Shamil’s side.

It was noon when Shamil⁠—surrounded by a party of murids who caracoled around him, firing their rifles and pistols and continually singing “Lya illya il Allah!”⁠—rode up to his place of residence.

All the inhabitants of the large aoul were in the street or on their roofs to meet their ruler; and as a sign of triumph they also fired off rifles and pistols. Shamil rode a white Arab steed, which pulled at its bit as it approached the house. The horse’s equipment was of the simplest, without gold or silver ornaments, a delicately worked red leather bridle with a stripe down the middle, metal cup-shaped stirrups, and a red saddlecloth showing a little from under the saddle. The Imam wore a brown cloth cloak, lined with black fur showing at the neck and sleeves, and was tightly girded round his long thin waist with a black strap which held a dagger. On his head he wore a tall cap with flat crown and black tassel; and round it was wound a white turban, one end of which hung down on his neck. He wore green slippers and black leggings, trimmed with plain braid.

In fact, the Imam wore nothing bright⁠—no gold or silver⁠—and his tall, erect, powerful figure, clothed in garments without any ornaments, surrounded by murids with gold and silver on their clothes and weapons, produced on the people just the impression and influence he desired and knew how to produce. His pale face, framed by a