![]() Taras Bulba ![]() And here, above all, did our young Kozaks, disgusted with pillage,
greed, and a feeble foe, and burning with the desire to distinguish
themselves in presence of their chiefs, seek to measure themselves in single
combat with the warlike and boastful Lyakhs, prancing on their spirited
horses, with the sleeves of their jackets thrown back and streaming in the
wind. This game was inspiriting; they won at it many costly sets of
horse-trappings and valuable weapons. In a month the scarcely fledged birds
attained their full growth, were completely transformed, and became men;
their features, in which hitherto a trace of youthful softness had been
visible, grew strong and grim. But it was pleasant to old Taras to see his
sons among the foremost. It seemed as though Ostap were designed by nature
for the game of war and the difficult science of command. Never once losing
his head or becoming confused under any circumstances, he could, with a cool
audacity almost supernatural in a youth of two-and-twenty, in an instant
gauge the danger and the whole scope of the matter, could at once devise a
means of escaping, but of escaping only that he might the more surely
conquer. His movements now began to be marked by the assurance which comes
from experience, and in them could be detected the germ of the future
leader. His person strengthened, and his bearing grew majestically leonine.
"What a fine leader he will make one of these days!" said old Taras. "He
will make a splendid leader, far surpassing even his father!"
Andríi gave himself up wholly to the enchanting music of blades and
bullets. He knew not what it was to consider, or calculate, or to measure
his own as against the enemy's strength. He gazed on battle with mad delight
and intoxication: he found something festal in the moments when a man's
brain burns, when all things wave and flutter before his eyes, when heads
are stricken off, horses fall to the earth with a sound of thunder, and he
rides on like a drunken man, amid the whistling of bullets and the flashing
of swords, dealing blows to all, and heeding not those aimed at himself.
More than once their father marvelled too at Andríi, seeing him, stirred
only by a flash of impulse, dash at something which a sensible man in cold
blood never would have attempted, and, by the sheer force of his mad attack,
accomplish such wonders as could not but amaze even men grown old in battle.
Old Taras admired and said, "And he too will make a good warrior if the
enemy does not capture him meanwhile. He is not Ostap, but he is a dashing
warrior, nevertheless." The army decided to march straight on the city of Dubno, which, rumour
said, contained much wealth and many rich inhabitants. The journey was
accomplished in a day and a half, and the Zaporozhtzi appeared before the
city. The inhabitants resolved to defend themselves to the utmost extent of
their power, and to fight to the last extremity, preferring to die in their
squares and streets, and on their thresholds, rather than admit the enemy to
their houses. A high rampart of earth surrounded the city; and in places
where it was low or weak, it was strengthened by a wall of stone, or a house
which served as a redoubt, or even an oaken stockade. The garrison was
strong and aware of the importance of their position. The Zaporozhtzi
attacked the wall fiercely, but were met with a shower of grapeshot. The
citizens and residents of the town evidently did not wish to remain idle,
but gathered on the ramparts; in their eyes could be read desperate
resistance. The women too were determined to take part in the fray, and upon
the heads of the Zaporozhians rained down stones, casks of boiling water,
and sacks of lime which blinded them. The Zaporozhtzi were not fond of
having anything to do with fortified places: sieges were not in their line.
The Koschevoi ordered them to retreat, saying, "It is useless, brother
gentles; we will retire: but may I be a heathen Tatar, and not a Christian,
if we do not clear them out of that town! may they all perish of hunger, the
dogs!" The army retreated, surrounded the town, and, for lack of something
to do, busied themselves with devastating the surrounding country, burning
the neighbouring villages and the ricks of unthreshed grain, and turning
their droves of horses loose in the cornfields, as yet untouched by the
reaping-hook, where the plump ears waved, fruit, as luck would have it, of
an unusually good harvest which should have liberally rewarded all tillers
of the soil that season.
With horror those in the city beheld their means of subsistence
destroyed. Meanwhile the Zaporozhtzi, having formed a double ring of their
wagons around the city, disposed themselves as in the Sich in kuréns,
smoked their pipes, bartered their booty for weapons, played at leapfrog and
odd-and-even, and gazed at the city with deadly cold-bloodedness. At night
they lighted their camp fires, and the cooks boiled the porridge for each
kurén in huge copper cauldrons; whilst an alert sentinel watched all night
beside the blazing fire. But the Zaporozhtzi soon began to tire of
inactivity and prolonged sobriety, unaccompanied by any fighting. The
Koschevoi even ordered the allowance of wine to be doubled, which was
sometimes done in the army when no difficult enterprises or movements were
on hand. The young men, and Taras Bulba's sons in particular, did not like
this life. Andríi was visibly bored. "You silly fellow!" said Taras to him,
"be patient, you will be hetman one day. He is not a good warrior who loses
heart in an important enterprise; but he who is not tired even of
inactivity, who endures all, and who even if he likes a thing can give it
up." But hot youth cannot agree with age; the two have different natures,
and look at the same thing with different eyes.
But in the meantime Taras's band, led by Tovkatch, arrived; with him were
also two osauls, the secretary, and other regimental officers: the Kozaks
numbered over four thousand in all. There were among them many volunteers,
who had risen of their own free will, without any summons, as soon as they
had heard what the matter was. The osauls brought to Taras's sons the
blessing of their aged mother, and to each a picture in a cypress-wood frame
from the Mezhigorski monastery at Kyiv. The two brothers hung the pictures
round their necks, and involuntarily grew pensive as they remembered their
old mother. What did this blessing prophecy? Was it a blessing for their
victory over the enemy, and then a joyous return to their home with booty
and glory, to be everlastingly commemorated in the songs of guitar-players?
or was it . . . ? But the future is unknown, and stands before a man like
autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it
with flapping wings, never recognising each other, the dove seeing not the
vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be
flying from destruction.
Ostap had long since attended to his duties and gone to the kurén.
Andríi, without knowing why, felt a kind of oppression at his heart. The
Kozaks had finished their evening meal; the wonderful July night had
completely fallen; still he did not go to the kurén, nor lie down to sleep,
but gazed unconsciously at the whole scene before him. In the sky
innumerable stars twinkled brightly. The plain was covered far and wide with
scattered wagons with swinging tar-buckets, smeared with tar, and loaded
with every description of goods and provisions captured from the foe. Beside
the wagons, under the wagons, and far beyond the wagons, Zaporozhtzi were
everywhere visible, stretched upon the grass. They all slumbered in
picturesque attitudes; one had thrust a sack under his head, another his
cap, and another simply made use of his comrade's side. Swords, guns,
matchlocks, short pipe-stems with copper mountings, iron awls, and a flint
and steel were inseparable from every Kozak. The heavy oxen lay with their
feet doubled under them like huge whitish masses, and at a distance looked
like gray stones scattered on the slopes of the plain. On all sides the
heavy snores of sleeping warriors began to arise from the grass, and were
answered from the plain by the ringing neighs of their steeds, chafing at
their hobbled feet. Meanwhile a certain threatening magnificence had mingled
with the beauty of the July night. It was the distant glare of the burning
district afar. In one place the flames spread quietly and grandly over the
sky; in another, suddenly bursting into a whirlwind, they hissed and flew
upwards to the very stars, and floating fragments died away in the most
distant quarter of the heavens. Here the black, burned monastery like a grim
Carthusian monk stood threatening, and displaying its dark magnificence at
every flash; there blazed the monastery garden. It seemed as though the
trees could be heard hissing as they stood wrapped in smoke; and when the
fire burst forth, it suddenly lighted up the ripe plums with a phosphoric
lilac-coloured gleam, or turned the yellowing pears here and there to pure
gold. In the midst of them hung black against the wall of the building, or
the trunk of a tree, the body of some poor Jew or monk who had perished in
the flames with the structure. Above the distant fires hovered a flock of
birds, like a cluster of tiny black crosses upon a fiery field. The town
thus laid bare seemed to sleep; the spires and roofs, and its palisade and
walls, gleamed quietly in the glare of the distant conflagrations. Andríi
went the rounds of the Kozak ranks. The campfires, beside which the
sentinels sat, were ready to go out at any moment; and even the sentinels
slept, having devoured oatmeal and dumplings with true Kozak appetites. He
was astonished at such carelessness, thinking, "It is well that there is no
strong enemy at hand and nothing to fear." Finally he went to one of the
wagons, climbed into it, and lay down upon his back, putting his clasped
hands under his head; but he could not sleep, and gazed long at the sky. It
was all open before him; the air was pure and transparent; the dense
clusters of stars in the Milky Way, crossing the sky like a belt, were
flooded with light. From time to time Andríi in some degree lost
consciousness, and a light mist of dream veiled the heavens from him for a
moment; but then he awoke, and they became visible again.
During one of these intervals it seemed to him that some strange human
figure flitted before him. Thinking it to be merely a vision which would
vanish at once, he opened his eyes, and beheld a withered, emaciated face
bending over him, and gazing straight into his own. Long coal-black hair,
unkempt, dishevelled, fell from beneath a dark veil which had been thrown
over the head; whilst the strange gleam of the eyes, and the death-like tone
of the sharp-cut features, inclined him to think that it was an apparition.
His hand involuntarily grasped his gun; and he exclaimed almost
convulsively: "Who are you? If you are an evil spirit, avaunt! If you are a
living being, you have chosen an ill time for your jest. I will kill you
with one shot."
In answer to this, the apparition laid its finger upon its lips and
seemed to entreat silence. He dropped his hands and began to look more
attentively. He recognised it to be a woman from the long hair, the brown
neck, and the half-concealed bosom. But she was not a native of those
regions: her wide cheek-bones stood out prominently over her hollow cheeks;
her small eyes were obliquely set. The more he gazed at her features, the
more he found them familiar. Finally he could restrain himself no longer,
and said, "Tell me, who are you? It seems to me that I know you, or have
seen you somewhere."
"Two years ago in Kyiv."
"Two years ago in Kyiv!" repeated Andríi, endeavouring to collect in his
mind all that lingered in his memory of his former student life. He looked
intently at her once more, and suddenly exclaimed at the top of his voice,
"You are the Tatar! the servant of the lady, the Waiwode's daughter!"
"Shhhh!" cried the Tatar, clasping her hands with a supplicating glance,
trembling all over, and turning her head round in order to see whether any
one had been awakened by Andríi's loud exclamation.
"Tell me, tell me, why are you here?" said Andríi almost breathlessly, in
a whisper, interrupted every moment by inward emotion. "Where is the lady?
is she alive?"
"She is now in the city."
"In the city!" he exclaimed, again almost in a shriek, and feeling all
the blood suddenly rush to his heart. "Why is she in the city?"
"Because the old lord himself is in the city: he has been Waiwode of
Dubno for the last year and a half."
"Is she married? How strange you are! Tell me about her."
"She has eaten nothing for two days."
"What!"
"And not one of the inhabitants has had a morsel of bread for a long
while; all have long been eating earth."
Andríi was astounded.
"The lady saw you from the city wall, among the Zaporozhtzi. She said to
me, 'Go tell the warrior: if he remembers me, let him come to me; and do not
forget to make him give you a bit of bread for my aged mother, for I do not
wish to see my mother die before my very eyes. Better that I should die
first, and she afterwards! BeSich him; clasp his knees, his feet: he also
has an aged mother, let him give you the bread for her sake!'"
Many feelings awoke in the young Kozak's breast.
"But how came you here? how did you get here?"
"By an underground passage."
"Is there an underground passage?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"You will not betray it, warrior?"
"I swear it by the holy cross!"
"You descend into a hole, and cross the brook, yonder among the reeds."
"And it leads into the city?"
"Straight into the monastery."
"Let us go, let us go at once."
"A bit of bread, in the name of Christ!"
"Good, so be it. Stand here beside the wagon, or, better still, lie down
in it: no one will see you, all are asleep. I will return at once."
And he set off for the baggage wagons, which contained the provisions
belonging to their kurén. His heart beat. All the past, all that had been
extinguished by the Kozak bivouacks, and by the stern battle of life,
flamed out at once on the surface and drowned the present in its turn.
Again, as from the dark depths of the sea, the noble lady rose before him:
again there gleamed in his memory her beautiful arms, her eyes, her laughing
mouth, her thick dark-chestnut hair, falling in curls upon her shoulders,
and the firm, well-rounded limbs of her maiden form. No, they had not been
extinguished in his breast, they had not vanished, they had simply been laid
aside, in order, for a time, to make way for other strong emotions; but
often, very often, the young Kozak's deep slumber had been troubled by
them, and often he had lain sleepless on his couch, without being able to
explain the cause.
His heart beat more violently at the thought of seeing her again, and his
young knees shook. On reaching the baggage wagons, he had quite forgotten
what he had come for; he raised his hand to his brow and rubbed it long,
trying to recollect what he was to do. At length he shuddered, and was
filled with terror as the thought suddenly occurred to him that she was
dying of hunger. He jumped upon the wagon and seized several large loaves
of black bread; but then he thought, "Is this not food, suited to a robust
and easily satisfied Zaporozhetz, too coarse and unfit for her delicate
frame?" Then he recollected that the Koschevoi, on the previous evening, had
reproved the cooks for having cooked up all the oatmeal into porridge at
once, when there was plenty for three times. Sure that he would find plenty
of porridge in the kettles, he drew out his father's travelling kettle and
went with it to the cook of their kurén, who was sleeping beside two big
cauldrons, holding about ten pailfuls, under which the ashes still glowed.
Glancing into them, he was amazed to find them empty. It must have required
supernatural powers to eat it all; the more so, as their kurén numbered
fewer than the others. He looked into the cauldron of the other
kuréns--nothing anywhere. Involuntarily the saying recurred to his mind,
"The Zaporozhtzi are like children: if there is little they eat it, if there
is much they leave nothing." What was to be done? There was, somewhere in
the wagon belonging to his father's band, a sack of white bread, which they
had found when they pillaged the bakery of the monastery. He went straight
to his father's wagon, but it was not there. Ostap had taken it and put it
under his head; and there he lay, stretched out on the ground, snoring so
that the whole plain rang again. Andríi seized the sack abruptly with one
hand and gave it a jerk, so that Ostap's head fell to the ground. The elder
brother sprang up in his sleep, and, sitting there with closed eyes, shouted
at the top of his lungs, "Stop them! Stop the cursed Lyakhs! Catch the
horses! catch the horses!"----"Silence! I'll kill you," shouted Andríi in
terror, flourishing the sack over him. But Ostap did not continue his
speech, sank down again, and gave such a snore that the grass on which he
lay waved with his breath.
Andríi glanced timidly on all sides to see if Ostap's talking in his
sleep had waked any of the Kozaks. Only one long-locked head was raised in
the adjoining kurén, and after glancing about, was dropped back on the
ground. After waiting a couple of minutes he set out with his load. The
Tatar woman was lying where he had left her, scarcely breathing. "Come, rise
up. Fear not, all are sleeping. Can you take one of these loaves if I cannot
carry all?" So saying, he swung the sack on to his back, pulled out another
sack of millet as he passed the wagon, took in his hands the loaves he had
wanted to give the Tatar woman to carry, and, bending somewhat under the
load, went boldly through the ranks of sleeping Zaporozhtzi.
"Andríi," said old Bulba, as he passed. His heart died within him. He
halted, trembling, and said softly, "What is it?"
"There's a woman with you. When I get up I'll give you a sound thrashing.
Women will lead you to no good." So saying, he leaned his hand upon his hand
and gazed intently at the muffled form of the Tatar.
Andríi stood there, more dead than alive, not daring to look in his
father's face. When he did raise his eyes and glance at him, old Bulba was
asleep, with his head still resting in the palm of his hand.
Andríi crossed himself. Fear fled from his heart even more rapidly than
it had assailed it. When he turned to look at the Tatar woman, she stood
before him, muffled in her mantle, like a dark granite statue, and the gleam
of the distant dawn lighted up only her eyes, dull as those of a corpse. He
plucked her by the sleeve, and both went on together, glancing back
continually. At length they descended the slope of a small ravine, almost a
hole, along the bottom of which a brook flowed lazily, overgrown with sedge,
and strewed with mossy boulders. Descending into this ravine, they were
completely concealed from the view of all the plain occupied by the
Zaporovian camp. At least Andríi, glancing back, saw that the steep slope
rose behind him higher than a man. On its summit appeared a few blades of
steppe-grass; and behind them, in the sky, hung the moon, like a golden
sickle. The breeze rising on the steppe warned them that the dawn was not
far off. But nowhere was the crow of the cock heard. Neither in the city nor
in the devastated neighbourhood had there been a cock for a long time past.
They crossed the brook on a small plank, beyond which rose the opposite
bank, which appeared higher than the one behind them and rose steeply. It
seemed as though this were the strong point of the citadel upon which the
besieged could rely; at all events, the earthen wall was lower there, and no
garrison appeared behind it. But farther on rose the thick monastery walls.
The steep bank was overgrown with steppe-grass, and in the narrow ravine
between it and the brook grew tall reeds almost as high as a man. At the
summit of the bank were the remains of a wattled fence, which had formerly
surrounded some garden, and in front of it were visible the wide leaves of
the burdock, from among which rose blackthorn, and sunflowers lifting their
heads high above all the rest. Here the Tatar flung off her slippers and
went barefoot, gathering her clothes up carefully, for the spot was marshy
and full of water. Forcing their way among the reeds, they stopped before a
ruined outwork. Skirting this outwork, they found a sort of earthen arch--an
opening not much larger than the opening of an oven. The Tatar woman bent
her head and went first. Andríi followed, bending low as he could, in order
to pass with his sacks; and both soon found themselves in total darkness.
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