Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

The Cossack Danilo Lifanov came from Strelyetski Outpost¹⁰ in the highlands between the Volga and Ural rivers. He was thirty-four years old and he was just completing the final month of his term of Cossack service. His family consisted of an old grandfather of ninety who still remembered the time of Pugachov, two brothers, the daughter-in-law of the elder brother (sentenced to exile with hard labour in Siberia for being an Old Believer), Danilo’s wife and his two daughters. His father had been killed in the war against the French. Danilo was the head of the household. On the farm they had sixteen horses, two ploughing teams of oxen, and fifteen hundred sazhens of private land, all ploughed and sown with their own wheat. He, Danilo, had done his military service in Orenburg and Kazan and was now getting to the end of his period of duty. He kept firmly to the Old Faith: he did not smoke or drink, did not use dishes in common with worldly people, and also kept strictly to his word. In all his undertakings he was slow, steady and reliable and he carried out everything his commander instructed him to do with his complete attention, not forgetting his purpose for a single moment until the job was properly finished. Now he was under orders to escort these two Polish women with the coffins to Saratov, to see that nothing bad befell them on the journey, to ensure that they travelled quietly and did not get up to any mischief, and on reaching Saratov to hand them over decently and in order to the authorities. So he had delivered them to Saratov with their little dog and their coffins and all. These women were charming and well-behaved despite being Polish and they had done nothing bad. But here at the Pokrovskaya settlement last evening he had seen how the little dog had jumped up into the tarantass and begun yelping and wagging his tail, and from under the seat in the tarantass he had heard somebody’s voice. One of the Polish women – the older one – seeing the little dog in the tarantass had looked very scared for some reason, and grabbed hold of the dog and carried it away.

‘There’s something in there,’ thought the Cossack, and he started to keep his eyes open. When the younger Polish woman had come out to the tarantass in the night he had pretended to be asleep, and he had distinctly heard a man’s voice coming from the box. Early in the morning he had gone to the police station and reported that the Polish women such as were entrusted to him and not travelling of their own free will, instead of dead bodies were carrying some live man or other in their box.

When Albina, in her mood of jubilant happiness, convinced that now it was all over and that in a few days they would be free, approached the coaching inn she was surprised to see in the gateway a fashionable-looking carriage and pair with a third trace horse and two Cossacks. A crowd of people thronged round the gateway, staring into the yard.

She was so full of hope and vitality that it never entered her head that this carriage and pair and the people clustering round might have anything to do with her. She walked into the inn yard and at once, looking under the canopy where the tarantass was standing, saw that a crowd of people were gathered round it, and at the same moment heard the anguished barking of Trezorka. The most dreadful thing that could have happened had happened. In front of the tarantass, his spotless uniform with its bright buttons, shoulder-straps and lacquered boots shining in the sun, stood a portly man with black side-whiskers, saying something in a loud imperious voice. Before him, between two soldiers, in peasant clothes and with wisps of hay in his tousled hair, stood her Juzio, raising and lowering his powerful shoulders, as if perplexed by what was going on around him. Trezorka, unaware that he was the cause of the whole disaster, stood with bristling coat, barking with carefree dislike at the chief of police. On seeing Albina Migurski winced and made to go towards her, but the soldiers held him back.

‘Never mind, Albina, never mind,’ said Migurski, smiling at her with his gentle smile.

‘And here is the little lady in person!’ said the chief of police. ‘Welcome to you, madam. And are these the coffins of your babies? Eh?’ he said, pointing to Migurski.

Albina made no reply, but simply crossed her arms on her breast and gazed in open-mouthed horror at her husband.