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

with his sleeves rolled up, did the duty of a servant even here. He loaded the guns which Hadji Murád and Khan Mahomá passed to him, carefully driving home with a ramrod the bullets wrapped in greasy rags, and pouring dry powder out of the powder flask onto the pans. Bata did not remain in the ditch as the others did, but kept running to the horses, driving them away to a safer place and shrieking incessantly, fired without using a prop for his gun. He was the first to be wounded. A bullet entered his neck, and he sat down spitting blood and swearing. Then Hadji Murád was wounded, the bullet piercing his shoulder. He tore some cotton wool from the lining of his beshmét, plugged the wound with it, and went on firing.

“Let us fly at them with our swords!” said Eldár for the third time, and he looked out from behind the bank of earth ready to rush at the enemy; but at that instant a bullet struck him, and he reeled and fell backwards onto Hadji Murád’s leg. Hadji Murád glanced at him. His beautiful ram’s eyes gazed intently and seriously at Hadji Murád. His mouth, the upper lip pouting like a child’s, twitched without opening. Hadji Murád drew his leg away from under him and continued firing.

Khanéfi bent over the dead Eldár and began taking the unused ammunition out of the cartridge cases of his coat.

Khan Mahomá meanwhile continued to sing, loading leisurely and firing. The enemy ran from shrub to shrub, hallooing and shrieking, and drawing ever nearer and nearer.

Another bullet hit Hadji Murád in the left side. He lay down in the ditch, and again pulled some cotton wool out of his beshmét and plugged the wound. This wound in the side was fatal, and he felt that he was dying. Memories and pictures succeeded one another with extraordinary rapidity in his imagination. Now he saw the powerful Abu Nutsal Khan as, dagger in hand and holding up his severed cheek, he rushed at his foe; then he saw the weak, bloodless old Vorontsóv, with his cunning white face, and heard his soft voice; and then he saw his son Yusúf, his wife Sofiát, and then the pale, red-bearded face of his enemy Shamil with half-closed eyes. All these images passed through his mind without evoking any feeling within him: neither pity nor anger nor any kind of desire; everything seemed so insignificant in comparison with what was beginning, or had already begun, within him.

Yet his strong body continued the thing that he had commenced. Gathering together his last strength, he rose from behind the bank, fired his pistol at a man who was just running towards him, and hit him. The man fell. Then Hadji Murád got quite out of the ditch, and, limping heavily, went dagger in hand straight at the foe.

Some shots cracked, and he reeled and fell. Several militiamen with triumphant shrieks rushed towards the fallen body. But the body that seemed to be dead, suddenly moved. First the uncovered, bleeding, shaven head rose; then, with hands holding to the trunk of a tree, the body rose. He seemed so terrible that those who were running towards him stopped short. But suddenly a shudder passed through him; he staggered away from the tree and fell on his face, stretched out at full length, like a thistle that had been mown down, and he moved no more.

He did not move, but still he felt.

When Hadji Aga, who was the first to reach him, struck him on the head with a large dagger, it seemed to Hadji Murád that someone was striking him with a hammer, and he could not understand who was doing it, or why. That was his last consciousness of any connection with his body. He felt nothing more, and his enemies kicked and hacked at what had no longer anything in common with him.

Hadji Aga placed his foot on the back of the corpse, and with two blows cut off the head, and carefully⁠—not to soil his shoes with blood⁠—rolled it away with his foot. Crimson blood spurted from the arteries of the neck, and black blood flowed from the head, soaking the grass.

Kargánov and Hadji Aga and Akhmet Khan and all the militiamen gathered together⁠—like sportsmen round a slaughtered animal⁠—near the bodies of Hadji Murád and his men (Khanéfi, Khan Mahomá, and Gamzálo were bound), and amid the powder-smoke which hung over the bushes, they triumphed in their victory.

The nightingales, that had hushed their songs while the firing lasted, now started their trills once more: first one quite close, then others in the distance.

It was of this death that I was reminded by the crushed thistle in the midst of the ploughed field.

Endnotes

Writing my Life of Tolstoy before I knew the full story of Hadji Murád, I confused him, in the first edition, with someone else, and stated that Tolstoy met him at Karalýk in 1871. On reading my book the Countess Tolstoy warned me of this mistake, but her warning did not reach me soon enough, and I was only able to put the matter right in a later edition. ↩

Aoul: Tartar village. ↩

Kizyák: fuel made of straw and manure. ↩

Sáklya: a Caucasian house, clay-plastered and often built of earth. ↩

Naïb: lieutenant or governor. ↩

Burka: a long, round felt cape. ↩

Beshmét: a Tartar undergarment with sleeves. ↩

Kunák: sworn friend, brother by adoption. ↩

About £1, for at that time the ruble was worth about three shillings. —⁠A. M. ↩

Yok: no, not. ↩

Bar: have. ↩