HADJI MURAT

Lev Tolstoi

(translated and annotated by Thomas Sanders and Gary Hamburg)

I was returning home by way of the fields. It was the very middle of summer. The meadows had been harvested, and the peasants were just beginning to mow the rye. In that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers: red, white, and pink, scented tufty clover; milk-white “he loves me-he loves me not” daisies with bright yellow centers and a pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented canola blossoms; tall standing lilacs with white, tulip-shaped little bells; creeping sweet peas; yellow, red and pink scabious; plantains with their faintly but pleasantly scented, pink-tinged blossoms; cornflowers, bright blue in the sunshine and while still young, but growing paler and redder towards evening and as they age; and delicate, almond-scented dodder with its quickly fading blossoms.

I gathered a large bouquet of flowers and was heading home when I noticed a beautiful raspberry thistle in full flower—the kind our folk call “Tatar” and carefully avoid when mowing, but when they do unintentionally cut it down, the balers remove it from the straw so as not to prick their hands. It occurred to me to pick this thistle and place it in the middle of my bouquet. I climbed down into the ditch, and, after driving away a velvety bumblebee that had gotten itself deep into the flower and had there fallen into a sweet, lazy slumber, I set to work picking the flower. But this proved a very difficult task. Not only did the stalk prick me even through the handkerchief I had wrapped around my hand, it was so terribly sturdy that I fought with it nearly five minutes, as I broke its long fibers one by one. After I had finally torn off the bloom, the stalk was all in shreds, and the flower itself no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Moreover, because of its coarse, primitive features, it did not go with the delicate blossoms of my bouquet. I regretted needlessly destroying a flower that had looked beautiful in its proper place, and I threw it away “But what energy and life force!” I thought to myself, recalling the effort it had cost me to pick the flower. “How intensely it defended itself and how dearly it sold its life!”

The way home led through bare, freshly ploughed black-earth fields. I meandered at my own pace along the dusty, black-soil path. The ploughed field was a nobleman’s, so vast that on either side and ahead of me to the top of a hill nothing could be seen except black, evenly furrowed, still unsown earth. The land was well tilled, and nowhere was there a single plant—not so much as a blade of grass—to be seen; it was entirely barren. “Ah, what a destructive creature is man… How many different animals, how many plants, he annihilates to support his own existence!” I thought, involuntarily searching for some living thing in this lifeless black field. In front of me, to the right of the road, a familiar-looking little bush made itself visible. On approaching, I recognized it as the same kind of “Tatar” thistle as that whose flower I had vainly plucked and thrown away.

This particular plant had three stalks. One had been torn, and, like the stump of an amputated arm, its remains protruded from the plant. The other two stalks each bore a flower. At one time these flowers had been red, but now were black. One stalk had been broken; half of it hung down with a dirty flower at its tip. The other, though also covered with black mud, still stood erect. Evidently, a cartwheel had run over it, and then the stalk had righted itself and now stood twisted to one side, yet still upright. It looked to me as if a piece of the bush’s body had been torn away, as if its bowels had been ripped out, an arm had been wrenched off, and one of its eyes plucked out. And yet it still stands firm and will not surrender to man, who has destroyed all its brothers around it.

“What energy!” I thought. “Man has conquered everything, he has annihilated millions of plants, and this one still won’t submit.”

Then I remembered an incident in the Caucasus of long ago, an incident part of which I myself had seen, part of which I had heard from other witnesses, and part of which I myself had imagined. That story as it took shape in my recollections and my imagination follows.

I

It was late in the year 1851. On a cold November evening Hadji Murat rode into Makhket, an unpacified Chechen awul, that exhaled the pungent smoke of burning dung. The strained singing of the muezzin had just faded away, and through the clear mountain air that had become saturated by the odor of dung smoke there could clearly be heard—above the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep that were dispersing among saklyas, nearly conjoining yet still separate from one another like the cells of a honeycomb—the guttural voices of arguing men, and women’s and children’s voices from down near the fountain.

This Hadji Murat was Shamil’s deputy, famous for his exploits, who formerly never rode out without his banner and in the company of some dozens of murids, caracoling and cavorting around him. Now, wrapped in a hood and felt cloak from under which protruded a rifle, he rode with only a single murid, trying to attract as little attention as possible and peering with his quick black eyes into the faces of the inhabitants he met along the road.

Having entered into the center of the awul, Hadji Murat did not take the road leading to the square, but turned to the left down a narrow lane. On reaching the second saklya, which was cut into the side of a foothill, he stopped and looked around. There was no one beneath the overhang in front of the saklya; but on the roof itself, behind the freshly plastered clay chimney there lay a man covered with a sheepskin coat. Hadji Murat touched the man with the handle of his whip and clicked his tongue. From under the sheepskin, there rose an old man, wearing a nightcap and a torn, threadbare cotton dressing gown shiny from wear. The old man’s lashless eyes were moist and red, and he blinked to get them unstuck. Hadji Murat said the customary “Seliam aleikum!” [“Peace be upon you!”] and uncovered his face.

“Aleikum seliam!” [“Upon you be peace!”] said the old man, smiling with toothless mouth. Having recognized Hadji Murat, he rose on his thin legs and began to lower them into the wooden-heeled shoes that were standing by the chimney. Once his shoes were on, he unhurriedly slipped his arms into the sleeves of the worn, wrinkled sheepskin and climbed backward down the ladder that leaned against the roof. Both while dressing and descending, the old man kept shaking his head on his thin, wrinkled, sunburnt neck and didn’t stop mumbling with his toothless mouth. Reaching the ground, he hospitably grasped the reins and right stirrup of Hadji Murat’s horse. But, swiftly dismounting his horse, Hadji Murat’s strong, agile murid motioned the old man aside and took his place.

Hadji Murat got off his mount and, limping slightly, walked under the overhang. Out of the door to meet him quickly strode a fifteen-year-old boy who fixed on the arrivals glittering eyes, dark as ripe currants.

“Run to the mosque and call your father,” ordered the old man, and, moving ahead of Hadji Murat, opened for him the light, creaking door of the saklya. Just as Hadji Murat entered the outer door, there exited a thin, spare, middle-aged woman wearing a red blouse, yellow cotton dressing gown and light blue wide-legged pants, and carrying pillows.

“May your arrival bring good fortune!” she said and, bending over double, began arranging along the front wall pillows for the guests to sit on.

“May your sons live long!” answered Hadji Murat, who, having taken off his felt cloak, rifle and sword, handed them to the old man.

The old man carefully hung the rifle and sword on a nail next to the master of the house’s weapons, which were suspended between two large washbasins that stood out against the smoothly plastered, carefully whitewashed wall.

Hadji Murat adjusted the pistol behind his back, went up to the pillows spread out on the floor and, wrapping his Circassian coat more tightly about him, sat down on them. The old man squatted alongside on bare heels, closed his eyes, and raised his hands, palms upward. Hadji Murat did the same. Having prayed, each man then stroked his face, passing his hands downward till the palms met at the end of his beard.

“Ne habar?” [“What’s the news?”] Hadji Murat asked the old man.

“Habar yok,” [“No news,”] replied the old man, looking with his red, lifeless eyes not at Hadji Murat’s face, but at his chest. “I live at the apiary and only came here today to see my son. He will know.”

Hadji Murat understood that the old man did not want to relate what he knew and what Hadji Murat needed to know, and, slightly nodding his head in assent, did not ask him any more questions.

The old man started to speak again. “There is no good news. The only thing new is that all the rabbits are conferring with each other about how to drive the eagles away. But the eagles ravage first one, then another of them. Last week the Russian dogs burned the hay over in the village of Michit. May their faces be torn apart,” he added, hoarsely and angrily.

Hadji Murat’s murid entered the room and, treading softly on the earthen floor with the long strides of his strong legs, he took off his felt cloak, rifle and sword, just as Hadji Murat had done. Keeping with him only dagger and pistol, he hung them on the very same nail from which Hadji Murat’s rifle hung.

“Who’s he?” the old man asked Hadji Murat, indicating the newcomer.

“He’s my murid. Eldar’s his name,” said Hadji Murat.

“Good,” said the old man, indicating to Eldar a spot on the strip of felt next to Hadji Murat.

Eldar sat down, crossed his legs, and silently fixed his handsome, ram-like eyes on the face of the old man, who was talking. The old man related how two local boys had trapped two Russian soldiers the week before; one they had killed and the other they had sent to Shamil in Vedeno. Hadji Murat listened absent-mindedly, glancing at the door and listening to the sounds coming from outside. Under the overhang in front of the saklya steps sounded, the door creaked, and the master of the house came in.

The master of the house, Sado, was around forty with a small beard, long nose, and eyes as dark, though not quite so shining, as those of the fifteen-year-old boy, his son, who had run after him and who had entered the saklya together with his father and sat down by the door. Taking his wooden shoes off by the door, the master nudged to the back of his unshaven head, with its abundant black hair, a worn old Caucasian fur cap, and then he immediately squatted on his haunches in front of Hadji Murat.

Exactly as the old man had done, he closed his eyes, lifted his hands, palms upward, recited a prayer, stroked his face with his hands, and only then began to speak. He told Hadji Murat that Shamil had ordered him captured, dead or alive, that Shamil’s messengers had only left the day before, that the people were afraid to disobey Shamil, and that therefore it was necessary to be careful.

“In my house,” Sado said, “while I’m alive, no one will do harm to my friend. But how will it be out in the open fields? This we must think about.”

Hadji Murat listened attentively and nodded his head approvingly When Sado had finished speaking, he said: “Good. Now I must send a man to the Russians with a letter. My murid will go, only he needs a guide.”

“I will send brother Bata,” said Sado. He turned to his son: “Call Bata.”

The boy, as if on springs, leapt to his nimble feet and, swinging his arms, quickly left the saklya. Some ten minutes later he returned with a dark, sunburnt, wiry, short-legged Chechen wearing a tattered yellow Circassian coat with torn, fringed sleeves and with black leggings dragging at half-mast. Hadji Murat greeted the newcomer and immediately, again without wasting a single word, asked, “Can you lead my murid to the Russians?”

“I can,” Bata answered cheerfully. “I can do anything. Other than me not a single Chechen can get through. Another might try, promising everything, but he won’t succeed. I can do it.”

“All right,” said Hadji Murat. “For your trouble you’ll get three,” holding up three fingers.

Bata nodded his head to show that he understood, but added that it was not the rubles he valued: for honor’s sake alone he was ready to serve Hadji Murat. Everyone in the mountains knew of Hadji Murat, how he had fought the Russian pigs.

“Good,” said Hadji Murat. “A rope is good when long, a speech when short.”

“Well, then I’ll shut up,” Bata said.

“Where the Argun River turns, opposite the cliff, there is a glade in the woods with two haystacks. Do you know the place?”

“I know it.”

“My three horsemen wait for me there,” said Hadji Murat.

“Aiya,” said Bata, nodding his head.

“Ask for Khan-Mahoma. Khan-Mahoma knows what to do and what to say. Lead him to the Russian commander, to Vorontsov, the prince. Can you do it?”

“I’ll lead him there.”

“Lead him there and bring him back. Can you do that?”

“I can.”

“you’ll lead him there, you’ll bring him back to the forest. And I will be there.”

“I will do it all,” said Bata, who rose, placed hands on his chest, then left.

“Another man must be sent to Gekhi,” Hadji Murat said to his host, when Bata had left. “In Gekhi, here’s what must…” he started to say, grabbing one of his cartridge pouches, but, on seeing two women enter the saklya, he immediately dropped his hand and fell silent.

One was Sado’s wife, that same thin, middle-aged woman who had arranged the pillows. The other was a very young girl in red, wide-legged trousers and green cotton dressing gown, with a necklace made of silver coins covering her whole chest. At the end of the medium-length, thick, black braid resting between the shoulder blades on her slender back, a silver ruble was suspended; the very same currant-black eyes as those of her father and brother gaily glittered in her young, would-be stern face. She did not look at the guests, but it was obvious that she felt their presence.

Sado’s wife brought in a low, round little table, on which were tea, stuffed pastries, pancakes in butter, cheese, thin, rolled-out bread, and honey. The young girl brought in a basin, ewer, and towel.

Sado and Hadji Murat both kept silent the whole time, while the women, who moved quietly in their red, soft, thin-soled slippers, arranged the items they had brought the guests. Eldar, having fixed his ram-like eyes on his own crossed legs, was motionless as a statue the whole time that the women were in the saklya. Only when the women had left and their soft steps had completely died out beyond the door did Eldar begin to breathe easily, and then Hadji Murat grabbed one of the cartridge pouches, pulled out a shell-casing, removed from it the bullet, and from under the bullet pulled out a rolled note.

“Give this to my son,” he said, indicating the note.

“Where should the reply be sent?” asked Sado.

“To you, then you will convey it to me.”

“It will be done,” Sado said, placing the note in his own cartridge pouch. Then, taking the ewer in his hand, he moved the basin toward Hadji Murat. Hadji Murat rolled the sleeves of his dressing gown onto his muscular arms, which were white above the wrists, and he held them under the stream of cold, clear water that Sado poured from the ewer. Wiping his hands on the clean, brown towel, Hadji Murat turned to the food. Eldar did exactly the same. While his guests ate, Sado sat opposite them and several times thanked them for the visit. Seated by the door, the boy, never taking his eyes off Hadji Murat, smiled as if confirming with his smile his father’s words.

Although it had been over twenty-four hours since Hadji Murat had eaten, he ate only a little bread and cheese, and, having pulled a small knife out from under his dagger, he got some honey and spread it on bread.

“Our honey is good. This year above all other years the honey is abundant and good,” said the old man, obviously gratified that Hadji Murat was eating his honey.

“Thanks,” said Hadji Murat and turned away from the food. Eldar wanted to eat more, but he, following his murshid’s example, moved away from the table and passed Hadji Murat the basin and ewer.

By receiving Hadji Murat, Sado knew he had risked his life, for, after Shamil’s quarrel with Hadji Murat, it had been announced to all inhabitants of Chechnia that, on pain of death, they were not to receive Hadji Murat. Sado knew that any minute the inhabitants of the awul might discover the presence of Hadji Murat in his house and might demand his surrender. Yet this did not bother Sado, it actually pleased him. Sado considered it a sacred obligation to defend his guest, even though it should cost him his life, and he was pleased with himself, proud of himself, for behaving as he was supposed to.

“While you are in my house and my head is on my shoulders, no one will harm you,” he repeated to Hadji Murat.

Hadji Murat looked into Sado’s glittering eyes and, understanding that this was true, declared rather ceremoniously, “May you receive joy and long life!”

Sado silently laid his hands upon his breast as a sign of gratitude for these kind words.

Having closed the shutters and prepared kindling in the fireplace, Sado in an exceptionally happy and animated mood left the guestroom where his friend was staying and entered the portion of the saklya where the entire family lived. The women were still not asleep and were talking about the dangerous guests spending the night in the other room.

II

That same night fifteen versts from the awul in which Hadji Murat was spending the night, three soldiers, and a non-commissioned officer marched out of the advance fort Vozdvizhensk through the Shahgirinskii Gates. After the fashion of Russian soldiers in the Caucasus in those days, the men wore thigh-length sheepskin coats, fur hats, woolen cloaks rolled across their shoulders, and tall boots reaching above their knees. Shouldering their arms, the soldiers first walked along the road, then, after having gone about five hundred paces, they turned off it and, rustling the dry leaves with their boots, moved about twenty paces to the right, then stopped at a fallen sycamore whose black trunk was visible even in the darkness. This sycamore was the usual station for ambush parties.

The bright stars that had seemed to run along the tops of the trees as the soldiers walked through the woods, now stood still, shining brightly through the bare branches of the trees.

“Thanks a lot,” Sergeant Panov said dryly, as he slipped from his shoulders a long bayonet rifle and leaned it, with a clatter, against the tree trunk. The three soldiers did the same.

“Looks like I lost it!” Panov muttered angrily. “Either I forgot it or it popped out of my pack along the way.”

“What are you looking for?” asked one of the soldiers in a bright, cheery voice.

“My pipe. The devil knows where it’s gone.”

“The stem there?” asked the bright voice.

“The stem’s right here.”

“Why not stick it right into the ground?”

“What you mean? Where?”

“We’ll make it work great in no time.”

It was forbidden to smoke on ambush, but this ambush hardly deserved the name: it was more like an advance guard sent out to prevent the mountaineers from approaching unobserved with cannon the way they used to, and firing on the fort, so Panov did not feel it necessary to deny himself tobacco and therefore went along with the suggestion of the cheerful soldier. The cheerful soldier took a penknife out of his pocket and began to dig at the ground. Having dug a hole, he smoothed it, fit the stem into it, then filled it with tobacco, packed the tobacco down, and the pipe was ready. A sulfur match flared illuminating for an instant the high-cheeked face of the soldier lying on his belly. The pipe stem whistled, and Panov savored the pleasant odor of burning rough tobacco.

“Did I get it to work or what?” he said, rising to his feet.

“And how!”

“Terrific, Avdeev! Let someone else have a puff. How ‘bout it?”

Avdeev pushed himself over on his side, making room for Panov and letting smoke escape from his mouth.

When they had finished their smoke, the soldiers started to talk.

“They say the company commander has dipped into the till again,” one of them said in a lazy voice. “He’s lost at cards again, see.”

“He’ll pay it back,” said Panov.

“Everyone knows he’s a good officer,” Avdeev affirmed.

“A good one, a good one,” the soldier who had begun the conversation repeated gloomily. “If you ask me, the company oughtta talk to him—‘lf you took money, tell us how much and when you’ll pay it back.’”

“The company should be the judge,” said Panov, tearing himself away from his pipe.

“Of course. The group should decide,” Avdeev agreed.

“Yeah, but there’ll be oats to buy and boots to get towards spring. We’ll need the money, and what if he swiped it?” insisted the dissatisfied soldier.

“I’m saying the company should decide,” Panov repeated. “This isn’t the first time: he borrows money; he pays it back.”

At that time in the Caucasus, each company was practically self-supporting. It received money from the state treasury at the rate of 6 rubles 50 kopecks per man and supplied its own provisions: it planted cabbages, mowed hay, maintained its own wagons, and showed off its well-fed horses. Company money was kept in a chest, the key to which was held by the commander, and it often happened that the company commander borrowed from the chest. The sullen soldier Nikitin wanted an accounting from the commander, but Panov and Avdeev thought it wasn’t necessary.

After Panov had his smoke, Nikitin had one too and then, having spread out his cloak, sat down on it, leaning against the tree. The soldiers fell silent. The only sound was the wind rustling through the crowns of the trees above their heads. Suddenly, above this incessant low rustling, there rose the howling, squealing, weeping, and laughing of jackals.

“Listen! Those damned creatures, what a racket they make!” said Avdeev.

“They’re laughing at you, ‘cause your mug’s crooked,” said the thin, Ukrainian peasant voice of the fourth soldier.

Once again everything quieted down, with only the wind swaying the branches of the trees, now revealing the stars, now covering them up again.

“Hey, Antonych,” the cheerful Avdeev suddenly asked Panov. “You ever get bored?”

“What you mean ‘bored?’” Panov asked reluctantly.

“Sometimes I get really bored, so bored I can’t control myself.”

“Listen to you!” Panov responded.

“That time I drank up all the money, that was all from boredom. It came over me, just came over me. I thought to myself: ‘I’ll get good and stinking drunk!’”

“That happens, but it’s even worse with wine.”

“I’ve got drunk on wine, too. Can’t help myself.”

“How come you’re bored?”

“Me? I miss home.”

“Why? Your folk rich?”

“Not rich, but we lived alright.”

And Avdeev began to recount what he had already related many times to this same Panov.

“See, I took my brother’s place as a soldier,” Avdeev related. “He’s got five kids, and my folks had just married me off. My mother started begging. I think, what’s it matter to me, maybe they’ll remember me well. I went to our barin. We have a good barin. And he says, ‘Good man! Off you go, then!’ So I went in my brother’s place.”

“Well, that’s good.” Panov said.

“Yeah, but can you believe it, Antonych, now I’m bored. And mostly I’m bored because of that. I say to myself, ‘Why’d you go instead of your brother?’ ‘He lives like a king now, and here you’re suffering.’ And the more I think, the worse it gets. It’s a sin, right?”

Avdeev fell silent.

“Want to smoke again?” Avdeev asked.

“Okay, set it up.”

But the soldiers were not to have their smoke. No sooner had Avdeev begun to set up the pipe again, when, above the rustling of the trees, footsteps sounded on the road. Panov grabbed his rifle and nudged Nikitin with his foot. Nikitin got to his feet and picked up his cloak. The third soldier, Bondarenko, also stood up, saying “What a dream I was just having, brothers…”

Avdeev shushed Bondarenko, and the soldiers froze in place, listening. The soft footsteps of men not wearing boots approached. Ever more clearly the crackle of leaves and dead branches could be heard through the darkness. Then conversation in that special, guttural language which the Chechens speak could be heard. Now the soldiers not only heard but saw two shadows passing through the space between the trees. One shadow was shorter, the other taller. When the shadows drew even with the soldiers, Panov, rifle in hand, stepped with his two comrades onto the road.

“Who goes there?” he yelled.

“Chechen, unarmed,” said the one who was a bit shorter. This was Bata. “Rifle yok, sword yok!” [“No rifle, no sword!”] he said, pointing to himself. “Need parince.”

The taller one silently stood alongside his comrade. He didn’t have a rifle either.

“A go-between,” Panov said, explaining things to his comrades. “He wants to see the colonel.”

“Parince Vorontsov much need! ‘portant business!” Bata said.

“Ok, Ok! We’ll lead you there,” Panov said. “You take him,” he turned to Avdeev, “You and Bondarenko. Hand them over to the duty officer, then come back here. And look,” he said to Avdeev, “be careful. Make them walk in front of you. If they’re shaveheads, they’re tricky.”

“And what’s this?” Avdeev said, making a move with his rifle and bayonet, as if stabbing someone. “I’ll just stick ‘em a time or two and let the air out of them.”

“What good’ll he be, if you run him through?” said Bondarenko.

“Alright, march!”

When the footsteps of the two soldiers and the go-betweens had died away, Panov and Nikitin return to their post.

“It’s the devil brings them out at night,” Bondarenko remarked.

“I guess so, Panov said. “It’s got nippy,” he added and, unrolling his cloak, put it on and then sat down against a tree.

After about two hours Avdeev and Bondarenko came back.

“Well, d’you hand ‘em over?” Panov asked.

“Yeah. They were still up at the colonel’s. We took ‘em straight to him. Listen, brother, those shaveheads are great guys,” Avdeev continued. “Lord! I had quite a talk with them!”

“You sure love to talk,” Nikitin remarked disapprovingly.

“Really, they’re just like Russians. One’s married. ‘You hitched?’ I say ‘Yeah,’ he says. “Got a kid?’ I go. ‘Kids.’ A couple?’ A couple,’ he goes. That’s how we talked. Great guys.”

“Right, great guys.” said Nikitin. “Just get caught alone with him, he’ll slit your gut.”

“It’ll be light soon,” said Panov.

“Yeah, the little stars are fading,” Avdeev said, sitting down and getting comfortable.

And the soldiers again fell silent.

III

The windows of the barracks and soldiers’ houses had long been dark, but in one of the best houses of the fortress lights still shone through all the windows. The house was occupied by the Kurinskii Regiment’s commander, son of the army commander-in-chief, imperial aide-de-camp Semyon Mikhailovich Vorontsov. Vorontsov lived with his wife, Mar’ia Vasil’evna, the famous St. Petersburg beauty, and he lived in the small, Caucasian fortress more luxuriously than anyone had ever lived there before. Vorontsov and especially his wife thought their lifestyle modest, even deprived, whereas local inhabitants were stunned by its unexampled opulence.

Now, at midnight, in the large drawing room where a carpet covered the entire floor and heavy curtains hung across the doorways, around a formal wooden game table lit by four candles, hosts and guests sat playing cards. One of the card players was the master of the house himself, a long-faced, fair-haired colonel, wearing the monogram and gold shoulder knots of an imperial aide-de-camp. His partner, a graduate student from St. Petersburg University whom the princess had recently enlisted to tutor her young son by her first husband, was a shaggy-headed youth of gloomy appearance. They played against two officers: the first was company commander Poltoratskii, a broad-faced, ruddy-complexioned transfer from the imperial guard; the other was the regimental adjutant, who sat bolt upright on his chair with a cold expression on his handsome face. The princess herself, Mar’ia Vasil’evna, a large-boned, black-browed beauty, sat alongside Poltoratskii, touching his leg with her crinoline and peeking at his cards. In her words, in her glances and smile, in the movements of her body and in the scent of perfume emanating from her, there was something that rendered Poltoratskii oblivious to everything except an awareness of her proximity, so he made mistake after mistake, each error irritating his partner more than the preceding one.

“No! That can’t be! Again, you’ve wasted your ace,” the adjutant muttered, flushing all over when Poltoratskii threw down his ace.

As if just awakened from slumber, Poltoratskii uncomprehendingly turned his kind, wide-set, dark eyes toward the dissatisfied adjutant.

“Do forgive him!” Mar’ia Vasil’evna said, smiling. “See, I told you,” she continued, turning to Poltoratskii.

“But that’s not what you said at all,” Poltoratskii said, smiling too.

“Oh, wasn’t it?” she asked and smiled back. And that answering smile so terribly agitated and delighted Poltoratskii that he blushed a deep red and, gathering up the cards, began to shuffle them.

“It’s not your deal!” the adjutant said sternly, and with his white, pearl-ringed hand he began to deal the cards as if he wanted only to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

The prince’s valet entered the drawing room and announced that the prince was being summoned by the duty officer.

“You will excuse me, gentlemen,” the prince said, speaking British-accented Russian. “You play for me, Marie. Sit in.”

“Everyone agreed?” the princess asked, quickly and lightly rising to her full, imposing height, rustling her silks, and smiling the radiant smile of a happy woman.

“As always, I’ll agree to anything,” said the adjutant, very glad that the princess, who could not play at all, would now be on the other team. Poltoratskii simply spread his hands out, smiling helplessly

The rubber had ended by the time the prince came back to the drawing room. He returned especially happy and animated.

“Do you know what I shall propose?”

“Well?”

“Let us drink some champagne.”

“For that I’m always ready,” Poltoratskii said.

“Excellent. That would be lovely!” the adjutant added.

“Vasilii! You deal!” the prince said.

“Who summoned you?” the princess asked.

“The duty officer and someone else.”

“Who? On what business?” Mar’ia Vasil’evna asked in a rush.

“I musn’t say,” Vorontsov said, shrugging his shoulders.

“You musn’t say?” Mar’ia Vasil’evna repeated. “We’ll see about that.”

Servants brought in the champagne. The guests drank it by the glassful, and, having finished gambling and settling their debts, they began to take their leave.

“Isn’t your company on duty tomorrow in the forest?” the prince asked Poltoratskii.

“Yes, mine… Why?”

“Then we shall be seeing each other tomorrow,” the prince said, smiling slightly.

“I’m very glad, sir,” said Poltoratskii, not fully understanding what Vorontsov was saying to him and concerned only that he would soon be pressing Mar’ia Vasil’evna’s large white hand.

As always, Mar’ia Vasil’evna firmly grasped Poltoratskii’s hand and vigorously shook it. Then, having reminded him once more of his mistake when he led with diamonds, she—or so it seemed to Poltoratskii—graced him with a radiant, tender, and meaningful smile.

Poltoratskii went home in the kind of ecstatic mood that can only be understood by people like him, people raised and educated in high society who suddenly, after months of isolated military life, meet a woman from their former social circle, particularly a woman like Princess Vorontsova.

When he got to the little house where he lived with a fellow officer, he pushed on the front door, but the door was locked. He knocked; the door didn’t open. He grew irritated, then began to drum on the locked door with his foot and his sword. From the other side of the door footsteps became audible, and finally Vavilo, Poltoratskii’s house serf, undid the little hook that held the door closed.

“Where did you get the bright idea to lock the door? Moron!”

“How can you say that, Aleksei Vladimir…”

“Again, you’re drunk. Here, let me show you how I can say…” Poltoratskii wanted to hit Vavilo, but changed his mind.

“Oh, the hell with you! Light a candle!”

“Right away.”

In fact, Vavilo had been drinking, but he drank because he had attended a name-day party at the sergeant quartermaster’s. Once home, he fell to thinking about his life compared to that of Ivan Matveevich, the sergeant quartermaster. Ivan Matveevich had a good income, was married, and hoped in a year to retire from military service. Vavilo had still been a boy when he had been “taken upstairs,” that is, taken into the service of the masters. Now he was nearly forty he hadn’t married and was living on the road with his slovenly master. The master was good enough, he didn’t beat Vavilo much, but what kind of a life was this? “He has promised to free me when we return from the Caucasus, but where will I go with my freedom? A dog’s life!” thought Vavilo. And he had wanted to sleep so badly that, fearing someone might break in and steal something, he had latched the door and dozed off.

Poltoratskii entered the bedroom he was sharing with his comrade Tikhonov.

“Well, how did it go? Did you lose?” Tikhonov asked, waking up.

“No, in fact, I won seventeen rubles, and we drank a bottle of Cliquot.”

“And you gazed at at Mar’ia Vasil’evna?”

“Yes, I gazed at Mar’ia Vasil’evna.” Poltoratskii repeated.

“Soon we have to get up,” Tikhonov said. “We take the field at 6 o’clock.”

“Vavilo!” Poltoratskii shouted. “See that you wake me up promptly at 5 a.m.”

“How can anyone wake you, when you’re so drunk?”

“I’m telling you, wake me up! Hear?”

“I hear.”

Vavilo carried away Poltoratskii’s boots and clothes.

Then Poltoratskii lay in his bed smiling, smoked a cigarette, and extinguished the candle. In the darkness before him he saw the smiling face of Mar’ia Vasil’evna.

The Vorontsovs did not sleep right away either. After the guests had left, Mar’ia Vasil’evna went up to her husband and, stopping right in front of him, said sternly:

“Eh bien, vous allez me dire ce que c’est?”

“Mais, ma chère…”

“Pas de ma chère! C’est un émissaire, n’est ce pas?”

“Quand même je ne puis pas vous le dire.”

“Vous ne pouvez-pas? Alors c’est moi qui vais vous le dire.”

“Vous?”

[“Very well, now, are you going to tell me what happened?”

“But, my dear…”

“‘My dear’ nothing! It’s an emissary isn’t it?”

“Even if there were an emissary, I cannot tell you so.”

“You can’t? Well, then I’ll tell you.”

“You?”]

“It was Hadji Murat, wasn’t it?” said the princess, having heard for several days already about negotiations with Hadji Murat and having presumed that the man her husband had met was Hadji Murat himself.

Vorontsov could not deny this, but he disappointed his wife by telling her that the man was not Hadji Murat himself, just a messenger announcing that Hadji Murat would come tomorrow to the place where an expedition had been sent out to fell the forest.

Mired in the monotonous life of the fortress, the young Vorontsovs, husband and wife, were delighted over this event. Having discussed how pleasant the news would be to his father, husband and wife went to bed after two o’clock in the morning.

IV

After three sleepless nights spent fleeing Shamil’s murids, Hadji Murat dozed off as soon as Sado left the saklya, scarcely having wished him a good night. He slept clothes on, head on hand, elbow sinking into the red feather pillow Sado had laid out for him. Close by, next to the wall, slept Eldar who lay on his back, his strong, young limbs extended, so that his muscular chest, covered by black cartridge pouches and white Circassian coat, was higher than his freshly-shaven, blue-shadowed head which had fallen from the pillow. His child-like, protruding, lightly down-covered upper lip made sipping sounds as it contracted and expanded. He slept just like Hadji Murat: fully clothed, with pistol and dagger in his belt. In the saklya’s hearth the fire had burned down and in a niche above the stove a night candle guttered faintly.

In the middle of the night the door of the guest quarters squeaked, and Hadji Murat immediately sprang up and grabbed his pistol. Stepping lightly on the earthen floor, Sado entered the room.

“What’s wrong?” Hadji Murat asked, as if he had not been to sleep at all.

“There’s a problem,” Sado said, sitting down in front of Hadji Murat. “A woman watching from her rooftop saw you ride into town,” he said. “She told her husband, so now the whole awul knows. The neighbor just rushed up to my wife; she says the elders have gathered in the mosque, and they want to detain you.”

“We must ride,” Hadji Murat said.

“The horses are ready,” Sado said and quickly left the saklya.

“Eldar,” Hadji Murat whispered, and Eldar, on hearing his name and—the main thing—his master’s voice, leapt to his strong legs and straightened his fur hat. Hadji Murat put on his rifle and felt coat. Eldar did the same, and both quietly left the saklya, exiting from beneath the overhang.

The dark-eyed boy brought up the horses. At the sound of hooves on the hard-beaten surface of the street, someone’s head popped out of the door of the neighboring saklya and, his wooden shoes clattering, a man ran up the hill toward the mosque.

There was no moon, only the stars shone brightly in the black sky; in the darkness hovered the outlines of the saklya roofs and, on the awul’s promontory, above the other buildings stood the mosque with its minaret. From the mosque the rumbling of voices echoed ominously down the village lanes.

Hadji Murat, quickly seizing his rifle, put his foot in the narrow stirrup and, soundlessly, in a flash, vaulted onto his mount, landing in the high cushion of the saddle.

“May God reward you,” he said to his host, his right foot feeling instinctively for the other stirrup, and then, ever so lightly, he touched the shoulder of the boy holding his horse, thereby signalling the lad to step aside. The boy stepped aside, and the horse, as if she already knew what to do, trotted briskly out of the narrow lane onto the main road. Eldar rode behind him. Sado, clad in a sheepskin coat and rapidly waving his arms, moved rapidly behind them, almost running, crossing first to one side and then to the other of the narrow lane. Blocking the village exit, in the center of the road, there suddenly appeared a moving shadow, then another as well.

“Halt! Who goes there? Stop!” shouted a voice, as several men obstructed the path.

Instead of stopping, Hadji Murat drew a pistol from beneath his belt and, spurring on his horse, rode directly at the knot of people trying to block the road. The people standing in the road scattered, and Hadji Murat, without looking back, briskly descended from the village. Eldar followed at a sharp trot. Two shots cracked behind them; two bullets whistled by without hitting either Hadji Murat or Eldar. Hadji Murat continued riding at the same pace. Having covered about three hundred paces, he stopped his lightly panting horse and listened. From ahead of him down the hill came the sound of rapidly flowing water. Behind him from the awul, roosters called to each other. Over these sounds, clattering hooves and men’s voices drew near from behind. Hadji Murat touched his horse and rode on at the same steady pace.

The galloping pursuit soon overtook Hadji Murat. There were about twenty men on horseback. They were inhabitants of the awul who had decided to capture Hadji Murat or at least to clear themselves with Shamil by making a show of trying to capture him. When they had gotten close enough to be seen in the darkness, Hadji Murat stopped, dropped the reins, and, with a practiced motion, undid his rifle case and with his right hand pulled out a rifle. Eldar did the same.

“What do you want?” Hadji Murat cried, “To capture me? Just try!”

And he raised his rifle. The men from the awul came to a halt. Rifle in hand, Hadji Murat left the road, descending into a nearby ravine. Without coming any closer, the horsemen rode after him. When Hadji Murat had crossed over to the other side of the ravine, the riders following him shouted that he should hear what they had to say. In response, he fired his rifle and spurred his horse into a gallop. By the time he reined her in, his pursuers could no longer be heard; nor could the roosters of the awul be heard, whereas the murmuring of running water and the sporadic cries of a large owl struck his ears more clearly than ever. The black wall of the forest was quite near. This was the very wood where his murids awaited. On reaching the outskirts of the woods, Hadji Murat stopped, and, filling his lungs with air, he whistled once, then fell silent to listen. After a minute an identical whistle sounded from inside the forest. Hadji Murat turned off the path and rode into the woods. When he had gone about a hundred paces, through tree trunks he spied a campfire, shadows of people sitting around the fire and, half-illuminated by the campfire, a horse, hobbled but still saddled. Three men sat near the fire.

One of the men sitting around the fire sprang up and walked toward Hadji Murat, taking hold of his horse’s bridle and stirrup. The man was Hadji Murat’s blood brother, the person who managed his household affairs.

“Put out the fire,” Hadji Murat said, getting down off his horse.

The men began scattering the fire and stomping out the burning branches.

“Has Bata been here?” Hadji Murat asked, going over to a felt cloak that had been spread out on the ground.

“Yes. He left long ago with Khan-Mahoma.”

“By what road?”

“That one,” answered Khanefi, pointing in the opposite direction from the one Hadji Murat had come.

“Alright,” Hadji Murat said and, unslinging his rifle, began reloading it. “We have to keep watch. They’re chasing me,” he said to the man who was putting out the fire.

That man was the Chechen Gamzalo. Moving toward the felt cloak, Gamzalo took a rifle from its case and quietly walked to the edge of the clearing near the spot where Hadji Murat had ridden in. Eldar, after dismounting his own horse, took Hadji Murat’s horse and, stretching high each horse’s head, tied them to a tree. Then, as Gamzalo had done, rifle on shoulder, he took a position on the far side of the clearing. The fire was extinguished, the forest no longer seemed as dark as it had earlier, and in the sky stars still shone, albeit faintly.

Glancing up at the stars, at the hundred-fired Pleaides, which had already ascended halfway to the zenith, Hadji Murat calculated that it was well past midnight, long since time for his evening prayers. He asked Khanefi for the ewer that they always carried in one of their packs and, putting on his felt cloak walked down to the nearby stream.

Having removed his shoes and performed his ritual ablution, Hadji Murat stepped barefooted onto his felt cloak, knelt down, sat back on his calves, and then, having first covered his ears with his fingers and closed his eyes, he recited his customary prayers, facing to the east.

When he had finished his prayers, he returned to the spot where his saddlebags lay, and, sitting down on his felt cloak, he rested his elbows on his knees, cleared his head and fell deep into thought.

Hadji Murat had always trusted in his own destiny. In any undertaking, he was firmly convinced of success from the outset, and up to now fate had smiled on him. This was how it had been, with rare exceptions, throughout the course of his stormy military life. Now, he hoped, things would also turn out well. He pictured to himself how, with the army that Vorontsov would give him, he would march against Shamil, take him prisoner, take revenge on him; then Hadji Murat pictured how the Russian tsar would reward him, and how he would once again rule Avaria, and how all Chechnia would submit to him. With these thoughts in his head, he did not notice when he fell asleep.

In a dream he saw himself and his brave men singing a religious song and crying, “Hadji Murat is coming!”, then flying at Shamil, seizing him and his wives, and listening to Shamil’s wives crying and sobbing. Then he awoke. The song “There is no God but God,” the shouts “Hadji Murat is coming!” and the cries of Shamil’s wives turned out to be the howling, crying, and laughter of jackals that had awakened him. Hadji Murat raised his head, glanced at the eastern sky, which through tree trunks was already showing light, and asked one of his murids about Khan-Mahoma. Learning that Khan-Mahoma had not yet returned, Hadji Murat cleared his head of all thoughts and instantly nodded off again.

He was awakened by the bright voice of Khan-Mahoma, returning with Bata from their mission. Khan-Mahoma immediately sat down next to Hadji Murat and began to tell him how the soldiers had met them and escorted them straight to the prince, how he had spoken with the prince himself, how pleased the prince had been, and how the prince had promised to meet them that very morning at the site where the Russians would be cutting down the forest—on the other side of Michik in the Shalin clearing. Bata interrupted the speech of his companion from time to time, adding his own details.

Hadji Murat questioned them carefully concerning the precise words with which the prince had responded to his offer to defect to the Russians. Khan-Mahoma and Bata answered with one voice that the prince had promised to receive Hadji Murat as a guest and to make sure that he was well treated. Hadji Murat asked next about the route to the clearing, and, when Khan-Mahoma assured him that he knew the route well and would lead him straight there, Hadji Murat got out his money and gave Bata the promised three rubles. Then he ordered his murids to take from his saddlebags his gold-embossed weapons, fur cap and turban, and to clean them so that he would arrive among the Russians in excellent form. By the time they had polished the weapons, cleaned saddles and harnesses, and brushed down the horses, the stars had faded, it had become quite light, and there was a gentle draft from an early morning breeze.

V

Early in the morning, while it was still dark, two companies under Poltoratskii’s command marched out carrying axes to a spot ten versts beyond the Shahgirinskii Gates and, having positioned a perimeter line of sharpshooters, began at dawn’s light to fell trees. By eight o’clock, the fog, which had mingled with the thick smoke from hissing and crackling green branches in the bonfires, had begun to lift, and the loggers, who before then had not been able to see five paces in front of themselves and had only heard each other working, began to discern both the bonfire and the road through the forest made by felled trees; the sun alternately appeared as a bright spot in the fog, then hid itself again. In a clearing not far from the road, on top of signal drums sat Poltoratskii, his subordinate Tikhonov, two officers of the 3rd Company, and Baron Friese, a friend of Poltoratskii’s from the Corps of Pages and former officer of the Horse Guards who had been reduced to the ranks for dueling. Scattered around the drums were cigarette butts, bottles, and scraps of the paper used to wrap small snacks. The officers had drunk vodka, eaten breakfast, and were now drinking porter ale. The drummer was opening their eighth bottle. Although he had not had enough sleep, Poltoratskii was in that state of heightened mental acuity and good, carefree gaiety that he always felt among his troops and fellow officers, even when there was the possibility of danger.

The officers carried on a lively conversation over the latest news, the death of General Sleptsov. No one saw this death as the most important moment in the general’s life, the moment of its ending and return to the source from which it sprang; instead they saw in it the valor of a dashing officer who had hurled himself with his sword drawn at the mountaineers and had desperately cut them down in swaths.

Although everyone, particularly officers who had been in action, knew if they opened their eyes that, neither in the current Caucasus war, nor for that matter in any war anytime or anywhere, had there occurred that sort of cutting down the enemy in hand-to-hand combat that is always assumed to have occurred and is actually described as having taken place (indeed, if such slashing with swords and bayonets does happen, then those being slashed and stabbed are only helpless runaways), this fiction of hand-to-hand combat was nevertheless avowed as truth by those very officers and lent them the quiet pride with which they—one in a dashing, the other in a very modest pose—sat on the drums, smoked, drank, and joked, not worrying about death, which could take any one of them at any moment, just as it had Sleptsov. Indeed, as if in confirmation of their expectations, in the middle of their conversation they heard to the left of the road the brisk, pleasing sound of a sharply snapping rifle shot, then somewhere in the fog a bullet flew past, whistling merrily, and crashed into a tree. Several low-pitched thunderous retorts from the soldiers’ weapons answered the unfriendly fire.

“Aha!” Poltoratskii shouted in a merry voice. “Our boys are returning fire. Say, brother Kostia,” he said, turning to Friese, “here’s your chance to redeem yourself. Join the company. We’ll arrange a charming little battle here, then we’ll concoct a flattering report for you.”

The demoted baron jumped to his feet and went at a quick pace to that place in the smoke where he had left his company. Poltoratskii’s little Kabarda bay was brought to him. He mounted and, having formed up his company, led it to the line in the direction of the shots. The line of sharpshooters stood at the edge of the forest in front of a treeless, downward-sloping ravine. The wind was blowing toward the forest, and not only the near slope of the ravine was clearly visible, but the other side of it as well.

As Poltoratskii approached the line, the sun broke through the mist, and, about two hundred yards away, on the opposite side of the ravine where new forest was cropping up, several riders became visible. These Chechens were the ones who had followed Hadji Murat, wanting to witness his arrival among the Russians. One of them fired on the line. Several soldiers from the line fired back. The Chechens retreated, and the firing ceased. But when Poltoratskii arrived with his company, he ordered them to fire, and scarcely had the word been passed, when up and down the whole line there erupted a continuous, cheerful, invigorating crackle of arms, accompanied by pretty little bursts of smoke that dissolved into the air. The troops, glad for the diversion, hurried to reload and fired off round after round. The Chechens evidently felt the sense of excitement, too, and one after another dashed forward on his horse and fired several rounds at the soldiers. One of those rounds wounded a soldier. He was the same Avdeev who had been on ambush duty the night before. When his comrades came up to him, he was lying on his back, face upward, holding a wound in his stomach with both hands, rocking himself rhythmically and moaning softly.

“I’d just started to reload my gun. I hear—’click,’” said a soldier who had been on the line with him. “I look, and he’d dropped his gun.”

Avdeev was a member of Poltoratskii’s company. Seeing a small knot of soldiers gathered together, Poltoratskii rode up to them.

“What is it, brother? You hit? Where?” he asked.

Avdeev did not answer.

“I’d just started to reload, Your Honor,” said the soldier who was Avdeev’s line mate. “I hear something—a click. I look, and he’d dropped his gun.”

“Tse, tse,” Poltoratskii clicked his tongue. “Does it hurt much, Avdeev?”

“Doesn’t hurt, but I can’t walk. A little shot of vodka, please, Your Honor.”

Vodka, or rather the grain alcohol drunk by the soldiers in the Caucasus, was found, and Panov, frowning severely, brought Avdeev some in a canteen lid. Avdeev started to sip, but immediately pushed the lid away with his hand.

“My soul won’t accept it,” he said. “You drink it.”

Panov drank down the alcohol. Avdeev tried to raise himself again, and again he sank back. The soldiers spread out a cloak and laid Avdeev on it.

“Your Honor, the colonel is coming,” the sergeant-major said to Poltoratskii.

“Well, then, you boys deal with the wounded man,” Poltoratskii said, and, flicking his whip, he set off at a brisk trot to meet Vorontsov.

Vorontsov rode a chestnut-colored thoroughbred English stallion; he was accompanied by the regimental adjutant, a Cossack, and a Chechen interpreter.

“What’s going on here?” he asked Poltoratskii.

“From over there a raiding party attacked our advance line,” Poltoratskii answered.

“Come, come, now. You started the whole thing yourself.”

“Oh, no. Not me, prince,” Poltoratskii said, smiling. “They snuck down on their own.”

“I heard they wounded a soldier?”

“Yes, a shame. A good soldier.”

“A serious wound?”

“Apparently, serious. In the stomach.”

“And I, do you know where I am heading?” Vorontsov asked.

“No idea.”

“You can’t even guess?”

“No.”

“Hadji Murat is defecting, and we are going to meet him right now.”

“That can’t be!”

“His emissary came to my house yesterday,” Vorontsov said, with difficulty holding back a smile of joy “Right now he should be waiting for me at Shalin glade; so spread sharpshooters out from here to the glade, then come along with me.”

“Understood, sir!” Poltoratskii said, lifting his hand to his cap; then he rode off to his company. He himself led a column of troops on the right side; he ordered the sergeant-major to watch the left side. Meanwhile, four soldiers transported the wounded man to the fortress.

Poltoratskii was already on his way back to rejoin Vorontsov, when he noticed several horsemen overtaking him. He stopped and waited for them.

In front was an imposing man riding a white-maned horse and wearing a white Circassian coat, a turban, and bearing weapons with gold work on them. This man was Hadji Murat. He rode up to Poltoratskii and said something to him in Tatar. Raising his eyebrows, Poltoratskii spread his hands as a sign that he did not understand, then he smiled. Hadji Murat answered with a smile of his own, and this smile struck Poltoratskii with its childlike geniality Poltoratskii never expected to see such geniality from a fearsome mountaineer. He had expected to see a dark, cold, alien character, yet there was before him the simplest of men, smiling such a good-natured smile that he seemed like a friend of long acquaintance. Only one thing about him was exceptional: the wide-set eyes which looked attentively, penetratingly yet calmly into the eyes of others.

Hadji Murat’s retinue was composed of four men. Among them was that same Khan-Mahoma who had been to Vorontsov’s the night before. He had a round, ruddy face with lively, dark, almost lidless eyes, whose beaming expression was full of the joy of life. There was also a thickset, hairy man whose eyebrows grew together. He was the Tavlinian Khanefi, who took care of Hadji Murat’s belongings. He led a pack horse bearing tightly packed saddle bags. Two members of the retinue particularly stood out. One of them was young, thin as a woman in the waist, but broad-shouldered, his face sporting a short, light-brown beard, a handsome young man with ram-like eyes: this was Eldar. The other man was blind in one eye and lacking both eyebrows and lashes; he had a trim reddish beard and a scar across his nose and face. This was the Chechen Gamzalo.

Poltoratskii pointed Hadji Murat toward Vorontsov, who had just come into view on the road. Hadji Murat headed over to the prince, pulled his horse up, placed his right hand on his breast, said something in Tatar, then waited for an answer. The Chechen interpreter translated:

“He says: ‘I surrender to the will of the Russian tsar. I want,’ he says, ‘to serve him. I have wanted to for a long time, but Shamil wouldn’t allow it.’”

Having heard out the interpreter, Vorontsov extended his hand in its suede glove to Hadji Murat. Hadji Murat looked at this hand, hesitated for a second, then firmly grasped it and once again said something, glancing now at the interpreter, now at Vorontsov.

“He says, he did not wish to surrender to anyone but you, because you are the son of the Sardar, the commander. He has respected you greatly.”

Vorontsov inclined his head to indicate gratitude. Hadji Murat said something else, pointing to his suite.

“He says that these men, his murids, will do as he does; they will also serve the Russians.”

Vorontsov glanced at them and bowed his head to them as well.

The happy, dark-eyed, lidless Chechen, Khan-Mahoma, also bowing his head, must have said something funny to Vorontsov, because the hairy Avar bared his teeth in an ivory-white smile. The red-headed Gamzalo briefly flashed his good eye at Vorontsov, then returned his gaze to the ears of his horse.

While Vorontsov, Hadji Murat and his retinue rode back to the fortress, the Russian soldiers, called back from their lines, gathered in groups and made their own comments:

“How many good folk that damned moutaineer has killed! Now they’ll probably give him a medal,” said one.

“Yeah, probably. He was Shamil’s right-hand man. Now, all of a sudden…”

“But he’s a helluva fighter. What they call a ‘dzjhigit.’”

“But the red-haired one. That red-haired one’s an animal, he’d cut you to pieces.”

“A real bastard! Has to be.”

Everyone took special notice of the red-haired one.

Where the woodcutting was going on, the soldiers along the road ran up to take a peek. An officer yelled at them, but Vorontsov stopped him.

“Let them look at their old acquaintance. Son, do you know who this is?” Vorontsov asked a soldier who was standing nearby, pronouncing the words slowly with his English accent.

“Haven’t a clue, Your Excellency.”

“Hadji Murat…Heard of him?”

“How could a person not hear of him, Your Excellency. We’ve beaten him many times.”

“Yes, well, and we’ve got it from him, too.”

“Exactly right, Your Excellency,” the soldier answered, pleased with his luck at getting to talk with the chief.

Hadji Murat understood that they were talking about him, and a bright smile shone in his eyes. In the sunniest of moods Vorontsov returned to the fortress.

VI

Vorontsov was very pleased that he and no one else had succeeded in arranging the defection to the Russian side of a powerful adversary, second in importance only to Shamil. The one unpleasant aspect of the affair was that General Meller-Zakomel’skii was the designated army commander in Vozdvizhensk, so the entire business ought to have been handled through him. Vorontsov had acted outside of channels, so he might face a reprimand. And the thought rather soured his pleasure.

When they reached the fortress, Vorontsov turned Hadji Murat’s murids over to the regimental adjutant; he himself escorted Hadji Murat home.

Princess Mar’ia Vasil’evna, elegantly attired and smiling, together with her son, a handsome, curly-haired six-year-old boy, met Hadji Murat in the drawing room; Hadji Murat pressed his hand to his chest and, through the accompanying interpreter, he declared somewhat solemnly that he considered himself the prince’s friend, since the prince had welcomed him into his own home; further- more, the prince’s entire family was just as sacred to him as the prince himself. Mar’ia Vasil’evna liked both Hadji Murat’s appearance and his manners. That he blushed red when she extended to him her large, white hand inclined her all the more in his favor. She suggested he have a seat, asked him whether or not he drank coffee, and then ordered some brought. Hadji Murat, however, declined the coffee when they brought it to him. He understood a little Russian but could not speak it, so, when he didn’t understand, he smiled, and his smile pleased Mar’ia Vasil’evna just as it had Poltoratskii. Mar’ia Vasil’evna’s curly-headed, bright-eyed little son, whom she had affectionately nicknamed Bul’ka, did not take his eyes off of Hadji Murat, whom he had always heard described as a great warrior.

Leaving Hadji Murat with his wife, Vorontsov went to his office to draft a report notifying the general command of Hadji Murat’s defection. Having duly notified the commander of the left flank, General Kozlovskii, in Groznyi, and having sent a letter to his father, Vorontsov hurried home, fearing the displeasure of his wife for having imposed on her this strange, terrifying man with whom one had to deal gingerly, so as neither to give offense nor show favoritism. But his anxiety was misplaced. Hadji Murat was sitting in an armchair, holding Bul’ka on his knee, his head inclined, listened attentively to the interpreter’s translation of the laughing Mar’ia Vasil’evna’s remarks. Mar’ia Vasil’evna was saying that, if Hadji Murat gave to every friend the things that the friend praised, then he would soon be walking around naked as Adam.

When the prince entered the room, Hadji Murat took the surprised and now offended Bul’ka off his knee and stood up, immediately replacing the playful expression on his face with one that was stern and serious. He sat down only after Vorontsov had taken a seat. Continuing the conversation, he answered Mar’ia Vasil’evna that it was the mountaineers’ custom to give to a friend whatever the friend likes.

“Your son, kunak,” he said, patting the curly head of the boy, whom he had seated once again on his knee.

“He’s charming, your brigand,” Mar’ia Vasil’evna said in French to her husband. “Bul’ka admired his dagger, so he gave it to him.”

Bul’ka showed the dagger to his father.

“C’est un objet de prix,” said Mar’ia Vasil’evna

“Il faudra trouver l’occasion de lui faire cadeau,” Vorontsov replied.

[“That’s a valuable object.”

“We will have to find an occasion to give him a gift.”]

Hadji Murat sat with lowered eyes and, patting the boy on the head, kept repeating, “Dzhigit, dzhigit.”

“A marvelous dagger, marvelous,” Vorontsov said, pulling the sharpened, rippled steel blade half way out of its scabbard. “I thank you.”

“Ask him how I may be of service to him,” Vorontsov said to the interpreter.

The interpreter conveyed the question, and Hadji Murat immediately answered that he needed nothing, but then asked to be taken to a place where he could pray. Vorontsov summoned a valet and ordered him to carry out Hadji Murat’s instructions.

As soon as Hadji Murat was alone in the room to which they led him, his face changed: the expression of pleasure, tenderness, and solemnity disappeared and a worried look came over him.

The reception that Vorontsov had given him was much better than he had expected. But the better that reception, the less Hadji Murat trusted Vorontsov and his officers. He feared everything: that they would seize him, shackle him, and banish him to Siberia or simply kill him, and therefore he was on his guard.

When Eldar entered the room, Hadji Murat asked him where the murids had been quartered, where the horses were, and whether the murids’ weapons had been taken from them.

Eldar reported that the horses were in the prince’s stables, that the men had been quartered in the barn, that they still had their weapons, and that the interpreter was providing them with food and tea.

Puzzled by this, Hadji Murat shook his head and, taking off his things, began his prayers. When he had finished, he ordered his silver dagger brought to him, and, having put his things back on and fastened his belt around his waist, he sat with his feet on an ottoman to await what was to be.

Shortly after four o’clock he was summoned to dine with the prince.

At dinner, Hadji Murat ate nothing except pilaf, which he served himself from the very same part of the dish where Mar’ia Vasil’evna had taken her serving.

“He is afraid that we are going to poison him,” Mar’ia Vasil’evna said to her husband. “He takes his food from the place I took mine.” And she immediately asked Hadji Murat through the interpreter, when he would pray again. Hadji Murat held up five fingers and pointed to the sun.

“That means soon.”

Vorontsov pulled out his pocket watch and pressed a lever on it. The watch struck 4.15. The chimes obviously surprised Hadji Murat, so he asked the prince to ring it again and to show him the watch.

“Voila l’occasion! Donnez-lui la montre,” Mar’ia Vasil’evna said to her husband.

[“Here’s the occasion! Give him the watch.”]

Vorontsov immediately offered the watch to Hadji Murat. Pressing his hand to his chest, Hadji Murat took the watch. Several times he pressed the lever, listened, and nodded his head approvingly.

After dinner a valet announced the arrival of General Meller-Zakomel’skii’s adjutant.

The adjutant informed the prince, that the general, having heard about Hadji Murat’s defection, was very displeased that it had not been reported to him, and he demanded that Hadji Murat be delivered to him immediately. Vorontsov said that the general’s order would be carried out at once; then, through the interpreter, he informed Hadji Murat of the general’s demand and requested that he accompany him to see Meller.

When she found out why the adjutant had come, Mar’ia Vasil’evna immediately understood that some unpleasantness might take place between the general and her husband and, despite all her husband’s attempts to dissuade her, insisted on accompanying him and Hadji Murat to the general’s.

“Vous feriez bien mieux de rester; c’est mon affaire, non pas la vôtre.”

“Vous ne pouvez pas m’empêcher d’aller voir madame la generale.”

[“It would be much better for you to stay here. This is my business, not yours.”

“You can’t stop me from visiting the general’s wife.”]

“You could do it another time.”

“But I want to go now.”

There was nothing to be done about it. Vorontsov agreed, so all three of them went to the general’s.

When they arrived, Meller with morose civility conducted Mar’ia Vasil’evna to his wife and ordered his adjutant to show Hadji Murat into the waiting room and not to let him go anywhere without orders.

“Please,” he said to Vorontsov, opening the door to his study and letting the prince enter first. Entering the study, he stopped in front of the prince and, without asking him to sit down, said: “I am the military commander here and therefore all negotiations with hostile elements must be conducted through me. Why did you not notify me of Hadji Murat’s defection?”

“An emissary came to me and announced Hadji Murat’s desire to surrender to me,” the prince answered, growing pale with excitement and expecting a rude outburst from the enraged general and at the same time becoming infected with the same rage.

“I am asking why you did not notify me.”

“I intended to do so, baron, but…”

“I am not ‘baron’ to you. My title is ‘Your Excellency.’”

And here the baron’s pent-up resentment suddenly erupted. He now gave vent to long-accumulated frustrations.

“I have not served my sovereign for twenty-seven years so that people who entered the service yesterday, taking advantage of their family connections, should give orders under my very nose about matters that do not concern them.”

“Your Excellency, I beg you not to speak unjustly,” Vorontsov interrupted him.

“I’m speaking the truth, and I will not allow…” the general said even more angrily.

At that moment, her skirts rustling, in came Mar’ia Vasil’evna followed by a slight, modest woman, Mrs. Meller-Zakomel’skii.

“Oh, come, come, General. Simon did not intend to cause you difficulties,” Mar’ia Vasil’evna began.

“Princess, I was discussing a business matter…”

“Well, you know, it’s best to leave it at that. You know: a few harsh words are preferable to genuine bad blood. That’s what I say,” and she began to laugh.

Then the angry general succumbed to the enchanting smile of the beautiful woman. Beneath his mustache a smile was briefly visible.

“I admit that I was out of line,” said Vorontsov,” but…”

“And I got myself worked up,” Meller said, and gave his hand to the prince.

A truce was concluded, and it was decided to leave Hadji Murat with Meller, then to send him to the commander of the left flank.

Hadji Murat sat in the next room and, although he did not understand what was being said, he did understand what he needed to understand: that they were quarreling about him; that his defection from Shamil was a matter of enormous importance to the Russians; that, if only they did not banish him or kill him, he could demand a lot from them. Hadji Murat also grasped that although Meller-Zakomel’skii was the army commander, he did not have as much influence as his subordinate Vorontsov, so Vorontsov was important and Meller-Zakomel’skii was not. Therefore, when Meller-Zakomel’skii summoned Hadji Murat for an interview, Hadji Murat behaved in a proud and dignified manner, saying that he had left the mountains to serve the White Tsar and he would give an account about everything only to his Sardar, that is, to the commander-in-chief, Prince Vorontsov senior, in Tbilisi.

VII

They took the wounded soldier Avdeev to the hospital, which was located in a small house with plank roofing at the entrance to the fortress, and put him in one of the empty beds in the common ward. There were four patients in the ward: one was tossing about with typhoid fever; another—pale-faced, with blue circles beneath his eyes, feverish—gasped for air between paroxysms of coughing. The other two had been wounded in a raid three weeks earlier: one, hit in the arm, was up and walking around, the other had a shoulder wound and was sitting on a bed. Everyone except the typhus victim gathered around the newly arrived patient and asked questions of those who had brought him in.

“Sometimes they fire as if they are sprinkling peas over you, and nothing happens. And here they fired five shots total,” one of those bringing him in commented.

“Each man gets what’s ordained to him.”

“Ow!” Avdeev cried loudly, as they began to put him on the bed, trying to hold in the pain. When they had laid him on the bed, he frowned and stopped groaning, but continued moving his feet around. He clasped both hands over his wound and stared fixedly straight ahead.

The doctor came in and ordered the wounded man turned over so that he could see whether the bullet had gone out the other side.

“What are these?” the doctor asked, pointing at the large, crisscrossed white scars on his back and buttocks.

“Those are old, Your Honor,” mumbled Avdeev with a groan.

They were the marks of his punishment for drinking up the company’s money.

The orderlies turned Avdeev back over, and for a long time the doctor rummaged with a probe in Avdeev’s stomach, finally found the bullet but couldn’t remove it. After closing up the wound and plastering on a bandage, the doctor left. Throughout the whole process of probing and bandaging the wound, Avdeev lay with his teeth clenched and his eyes closed. When the doctor had gone, he opened his eyes and looked around in astonishment. His glance was directed at the patients and the orderly, but it was as if he didn’t see them but saw something else that surprised him.

Avdeev’s comrades Panov and Seregin came in. Avdeev lay in the same position, staring straight ahead. For a long time, he failed to recognize his comrades, even though his eyes looked right at them.

“Hey, Pyotr, would you like word or something sent home?” Panov asked.

Avdeev didn’t answer, although he was looking right at Panov’s face.

“I said, would you like word or something sent home?” Panov asked again, touching Avdeev’s cold, big-boned hand.

Avdeev seemed to come to. “Ah, Antonych has come.”

“Yes, I’m here… I’ve come. Do you want to send a letter home? Seregin will write it.”

“Seregin,” Avdeev said, with difficulty shifting his gaze. “Seregin will write it? Good. Write this: ‘Your son, your Petrukha,’ tell them, ‘orders you to live a long life.’…Til now I always envied my brother. I was just now talking to you about that. No more. I’m happy. Happy he’s still alive. God grant him long life. I’m happy. Write that!”

Having spoken, he was silent for a long time, his eyes still fixed on Panov.

“Hey, you find your pipe?” he asked suddenly

Panov didn’t answer.

“Your pipe, your pipe, I say. You find it?” Avdeev repeated.

“It was in my bag.”

“There you are. See? Could you pass me a candle? I’ll die soon,” Avdeev said.

At that moment, Poltoratskii came in to check on his soldier.

“How’s it going, son? Bad?” he asked.

Avdeev closed his eyes and shook his head “no.” His face with its high cheekbones was pale and severe. He didn’t answer at all, just repeated to Panov: “The little candle; I’m going to die.”

They put a candle in his hand. But his fingers wouldn’t close around it, so they put it between his fingers and held his hands together for him. Poltoratskii left, and five minutes after his departure the orderly put his ear to Avdeev’s chest and said that he was dead.

The report to Tbilisi described Avdeev’s death in the following manner: “On November 23 two companies of the Kurinskii Regiment went out from the fortress to fell trees. At mid-morning a large gang of mountaineers suddenly attacked the woodcutters. The line began to fall back, but at that moment the Second Company attacked with bayonets and threw back the mountaineers. In this skirmish, two privates were lightly wounded and one was killed. The mountaineers themselves lost about one hundred men, killed and wounded.”

VIII

On the same day that Petrukha Avdeev lay dying in the hospital in Vozdvizhensk, his old father, the wife of the brother for whose sake he went off to be a soldier, and the daughter of the oldest brother—an unmarried maiden—were threshing oats on the hard-frozen threshing room floor. The day before a deep snow had fallen, and toward morning the temperature had plunged far below zero. The old man awakened only with the roosters’ third crowing. After seeing the bright light of the moon in the frozen window, he had crawled off the stove shelf, drawn on his shoes, put on his fur coat and hat, and gone to the barn. Having worked there for two hours, the old man went back into the izba, then woke his son and the women. When his wife and the teenage girl entered the barn, the threshing floor had been cleaned. In the shifting white snow a wooden shovel stood straight up; a broom, its bristles pointing up, stood alongside it; meanwhile, sheaves of oats were spread out in two rows, laid ear to ear on the threshing floor, so that together they resembled a long thick rope. Each person chose a flail and began to thresh, carefully timing their three blows. The old man struck hard with his heavy flail, breaking the straw, the young maiden struck the tops of the sheaves with measured blows, while the daughter-in-law turned the oats over with her flail.

The moon had set, dawn’s light had to begun to break, and they had already finished one line of sheaves when the older son, Akim, in sheepskin coat and hat, came out to the threshers.

“What are you loafing about for?” shouted his father, pausing in his work and leaning on his flail.

“The horses had to be seen to.”

“The horses had to be seen to,” mimicked his father. “The old woman will see to that. Grab a flail. You’ve gotten awfully fat, you drunk!”

“What? Have you ever given me anything to drink?” the son mumbled.

“What’s that?” the father, frowning and missing a beat with his flail, asked threateningly.

Without saying anything, the son picked up a flail, and the work went on, now with four flails.

“Trup, ta-ta-TRUP. Trup, ta-ta-TRUP!” the old man’s flail came down hard after the three lighter blows.

“The back of your neck is clean and white, just like a fine gentleman’s! Meantime, I’m working so hard my pants won’t even stay up on me,” the old man grumbled, skipping his stroke and just swinging the flail in the air, so as to not break his rhythm.

They finished that line of sheaves, and the women began to separate the straw with rakes.

“Petrukha was a fool to go in your place. They’d a beat the nonsense out of you in the army, and he was worth five of the likes of you here at home.”

“There now, Papa, why don’t you let it be,” the daughter-in-law said, removing the broken sheaf bindings.

“Yes, it takes six to feed you, but you don’t do one man’s share of work. Petrukha, now, he did the work of two men, and not this…”

Along the narrow tamped-down snow path from the farmyard came the old man’s wife, her new bast shoes tied over thick-wrapped leggings. The men raked the unwinnowed grain into piles; the married women and young girl swept up.

“The village elder came by. As our labor dues for the master, everyone is to haul bricks,” the old woman said. “I got breakfast together. You’re going, right?”

“Harness the roan and ride it,” the old man said to Akim. “And watch out so that I don’t have to answer for you like the other day. Think how Petrukha would have done it.”

“When he was here, you used to swear at him,” Akim snapped back at his father. “Now, he’s not here, you chew me out.”

“Means you deserve it,” his mother retorted just as angrily “We’d never trade Petrukha for you.”

“Oh, alright,” said the son.

“Some ‘alright.’ You drank up all the grain, now you say ‘alright.’”

“You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” said the daughter-in-law, then, after storing the flails, everyone walked back toward the house.

The trouble between father and son had begun a long time earlier, almost from the time Peter went into the army. Even then the old man felt that he was trading a hawk for a cuckoo. Of course, the law, as the old man understood it, specified that a childless man had to go in place of one with children. At the time Akim had four children, Peter none. Still, Peter was the same kind of worker as the old man: skilled, quick on the uptake, strong, durable, and, most importantly, industrious. He was always working. If he happened to pass by where people were working, then, just like his father would have done, he immediately jumped in and helped—he’d take a turn or two with a scythe, or load a wagon, or cut down a tree, or chop some wood. The old man regretted his absence, but there was nothing to be done about it. Being a soldier was like being dead. A soldier was cut off from his family for good, and remembering him just tore at the heart to no purpose. Only rarely, to take a dig at the older son, did the old man recall Peter, as he had just now. The mother, though, often thought of her younger son and long ago, the second year he’d been gone, had asked the old man to send dear Petrukha a little money. But the old man had made no reply

The Avdeevs’ household was wealthy by peasant standards, so the old man had managed to stash some money away, but until now he would never have even considered touching his savings. When the old woman heard him mention his younger son that day, she decided to ask him again, after the oats had been sold, to send her boy something—if only a ruble or two. And she did just that. When she was alone with her husband after the young people had gone to the master’s to perform their labor obligations, she talked her husband into sending Petrukha a ruble from the oat money. So when from the piles of winnowed oats twelve chetverts had been loaded onto sacking in three carts and the sacking had been securely fastened with pins, she gave the old man a letter dictated by her to the church sacristan; the old man promised to put a ruble in the letter in town and to mail it off.

Dressed in a new fur coat and kaftan and in warm, white, woolen leg wrappings, the old man took the letter, put it in his bag, and, having said a prayer, got into the lead cart and drove to town. His grandson rode in the last cart. In town, the old man ordered the caretaker of the inn to read it to him, and he listened attentively and approvingly

In the letter, Petrukha’s mother sent him first of all her blessing, secondly greetings from everyone else, word of the death of his godfather, and only at the end the news that Pyotr’s wife Aksinia “didn’t want to stay with them and had gone to town to work. People say she lives well and honestly.” The letter referred to the inn, to the ruble, and then there was added, word for word and straight from her heart, what the old woman, overcome with sadness and with tears in her eyes, had ordered the sacristan to write: “And one more thing, my darling child, my little dove, my Petrushenka. I’ve cried my eyes out over you. I miss you so much. Light of my eyes, will I never see you again? Why have you left me?” At that point, the old woman began to sob and cry and she said: “Leave it at that!”

And it was left like that in the letter, but Pyotr was not fated to get the news that his wife had left home, nor the ruble, nor his mother’s last words. The letter and the money came back with the news that Pyotr had been killed in the war, “defending tsar, fatherland and the Orthodox faith.” That was what the army clerk wrote.

When this news reached her, the old woman wailed aloud for as long as time permitted, and then she went back to work. The very next Sunday, she went to church, had the requiem service performed, entered Peter’s name in the list of deceased to be remembered in prayers, and she distributed pieces of specially blessed communion bread to “good people in the memory of God’s servant, Pyotr.”

The soldier’s wife, Aksinia, also wailed when she learned about the death of her “beloved husband” with whom she “had lived only one short year.” She mourned both her husband and her own wasted life. As she wailed, she remembered “Pyotr Mikhailovich’s brown locks and his love, and her bitter life with her orphaned son Van’ka”; and she bitterly reproached “Petrusha for taking pity on his brother and not on her with her bitter wandering life among strangers.”

But in the depths of her soul, Aksinia was glad about Pyotr’s death. She had gotten pregnant by the assistant in the shop where she lived and worked, and now no one could curse her, and the assistant could marry her the way he said he would when inclining her to make love with him.

IX

Vorontsov, Mikhail Semyonovich, educated in England as the son of the Russian ambassador there, was a rarity among the Russian higher officials at the time by virtue of this European education: he was ambitious, gentle, and affectionate in dealing with his subordinates and a refined courtier in relations with his superiors. He could not understand life without power and submission. He owned all the higher ranks and decorations and considered himself an accomplished soldier, the victor over Napoleon in the battle of Krasnoe. In 1851, he was over seventy but was still quite spry and physically vigorous. Most importantly he was still in full possession of a subtle and agreeable intellect, which he dedicated wholly to maintaining his own authority and to shoring up and spreading his own popularity He controlled vast wealth—both his own and that of his wife (née Countess Branitskaia), in addition to the enormous salary he received as imperial viceroy, and he spent a large part of his means on the construction of a palace and gardens on the southern coast of the Crimea.

On the evening of December 4, 1851 a courier’s troika drove up to his palace in Tbilisi. Weary and black with dust, an officer, who brought news from General Kozlovskii about Hadji Murat’s defection to the Russians, stretched his legs, then walked past the guards stationed on the wide front steps of the viceroy’s palace. It was six o’clock in the evening, and Vorontsov was going to dinner when they announced to him the courier’s arrival. Vorontsov received the courier without delay and therefore was several minutes late for dinner. When he entered the drawing room, the dinner guests, some thirty in all, who were either seated around Princess Elizaveta Ksaver’evna or standing in groups by the windows, now rose and turned toward him. Vorontsov was in his usual black military frock-coat, with half-shoulder straps but without epaulettes, and with the white cross around his neck. His clean-shaven volpine face smiled pleasantly, and his eyes narrowed as he glanced at those gathered around.

Entering the drawing room with soft, hurried steps, he apologized to the women for being late, greeted the men, and, going up to the Georgian Princess Manana Orbeliani, a tall, full-figured, beautiful forty-five-year-old woman of Oriental type, gave her his arm so that he could escort her to the table. Princess Elizaveta Ksaver’evena for her part offered an arm to a newly-arrived ruddy-complected general with a bristly mustache. A Georgian prince gave his arm to Countess Choiseuil, a friend of the hostess. Doctor Andreevskii, the adjutants and others—some with ladies, some without—followed behind these first couples. Footmen in kaftans, knee-breeches, and dress shoes pulled out chairs, then pushed them in for the guests as they took their seats. With a flourish the maître d’hôtel ladled steaming soup out of a silver tureen.

Vorontsov sat at the middle of a long table. Opposite him sat his wife alongside the general. To his right sat the beauty, Princess Orbeliani; to his left was a shapely, dark, rosy-cheeked daughter of a Georgian prince, brilliantly adorned and continuously smiling.

“Excellentes, chère amie,” [“Excellent, my dear,”] he answered to his wife’s question about what kind of news he had gotten from the courier. “Simon a eu de la chance.” [“Our son Semyon has had a stroke of luck.”]

And he began to relate, in such a way that all those sitting at the table could hear, the stunning news—for him alone it wasn’t completely news, since the negotiations had already been going on for some time—that the famous Hadji Murat, Shamil’s bravest lieutenant, had handed himself over to the Russians and would be brought to Tbilisi in two days.

All the guests, even the young adjutants and officials seated at the far end of the table who till then had been laughing to themselves about something, grew quiet and listened.

After the prince had finished speaking, the princess asked of her neighbor, the ruddy-faced general with the bristly moustache, “And you, general. Have you ever encountered this Hadji Murat?”

“More than once, princess.”

And the general related how in 1843, after the mountaineers had captured Gergebil’e, Hadji Murat had stumbled upon General Passek’s detachment and how he had almost killed Colonel Zolotukhin before their very eyes.

With a pleasant smile on his face Vorontsov listened to the general’s story, evidently pleased that the general had involved himself in the conversation. But suddenly Vorontsov’s face took on a vacant, dejected expression.

The general, having warmed to the topic, had begun to tell how he had run up against Hadji Murat on another occasion.

“Why, he was the same one,” the general said, “if it will please Your Excellency to remember, who ambushed the biscuit expedition, just before the rescue.”

“Where?” asked the count, narrowing his eyes.

What the brave general called the “rescue” was the unfortunate Dargo campaign, in which Prince Vorontsov’s entire detachment would surely have perished had suddenly approaching troops not rescued them. Everyone knew that, under Vorontsov’s command, the entire Dargo campaign, in which the Russians lost many men killed and wounded and several pieces of artillery, had been an embarrassment, and, therefore, if anyone spoke at all of that campaign under Vorontsov, they spoke of it only in the way that Vorontsov had characterized it in his report to the tsar—namely, as a brilliant feat of Russian arms. The very word “rescue” indicated that it was not a brilliant achievement, but a mistake that cost many lives. Everyone understood this, so some acted as if they didn’t understand the significance of the general’s words, while others nervously waited to see what would happen next; still others, smiling, exchanged glances. Only the ruddy-faced general with the bristly mustache noticed nothing and, carried away by his story, calmly answered, “Before the ‘rescue,’ Your Excellency.”

And once launched on his favorite subject, the general related in detail how “this Hadji Murat so deftly cut the detachment in two that, had the rescue unit not arrived”—he seemed to take special relish in repeating the word “rescue”—“the entire detachment would have perished on that very spot, because…”

The general did not manage to finish his story, because Manana Orbeliani, having grasped what was happening, interrupted him, asking him about the comfort of his quarters in Tbilisi. The general, astonished, looked at everyone around the table and at his aide-de-camp at the end of the table, who was looking back at him with a fixed and meaningful stare—and suddenly he understood. Without answering the princess, he frowned, fell silent, and began hurriedly eating, without chewing, the delicacy that lay on his plate, the appearance and even the taste of which were incomprehensible to him.

The situation had become awkward for everyone, but the awkward situation was relieved by the Georgian prince seated on the other side of Princess Vorontsova. A very stupid man but an exceptionally delicate and artful flatterer and courtier, he began, as if noticing nothing, loudly to relate the tale of Hadji Murat’s abduction of the widow of Akhmet Khan of Mekhtulina: “He entered the village at night, grabbed what he wanted, and galloped off along with his entire party.”

“What exactly did he want with that particular woman?” the princess asked.

“Well, he was an enemy of her husband; he tracked him but never caught him, so when the khan himself died, he took vengeance on the widow.”

The princess translated this into French for her old friend Countess Choiseul, who was seated beside the Georgian prince.

“Quelle horreur!” [“How terrible!”] said the countess, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

“Oh, no,” Vorontsov said, smiling, “They tell me that he treated his prisoner with chivalrous respect and later freed her.”

“Yes, for a ransom.”

“Well, of course, but nevertheless he acted nobly.”

These words of the prince set the tone for further stories about Hadji Murat. The courtiers understood that the more significance they attributed to Hadji Murat, the more pleasant it would be for the prince.

“The astounding daring of the man! A remarkable fellow!”

“I’ll say! In ‘49, in broad daylight, he burst into Temir-Khan-Shura and plundered the shops.”

Sitting at the end of the table, an Armenian who had been in Temir-Khan-Shura at the time, related that exploit of Hadji Murat in detail.

Almost the entire dinner passed in conversation about Hadji Murat. Everyone without exception praised his bravery, his intellect, his magnanimity. Someone told how he had ordered the execution of twenty-six prisoners; even that elicited the same reaction: “What’s to be done? À la guerre, comme à la guerre.” [“War is war.”]

“He is a great man.”

“Had he been born in Europe, he perhaps might have been a new Napoleon,” said the stupid Georgian prince who had the gift of flattery.

He knew that every reference to Napoleon, for victory over whom Vorontsov wore the white cross of St. George on his neck, was pleasant to Vorontsov.

“Well, perhaps not Napoleon, but a dashing cavalry general, at any rate,” said Vorontsov.

“If not Napoleon, then Murat.”

“And look: his name is Hadji Murat.”

“Hadji Murat has defected; this is the end for Shamil,” someone said.

“They feel that now” (that “now” meant “under Vorontsov”) “they can’t hold out,” someone else said.

“Tout cela est grâce a vous,” [“All of this is thanks to you,”] Manana Orbeliani said to Vorontsov.

Prince Vorontsov tried to moderate the waves of flattery, which had already begun to flood over him. But it was pleasing to him, and in the very best of moods he led his wife to the drawing room.

After dinner, when coffee was brought to the drawing room, the prince was particularly amiable with everyone and approached the general with the bristly red mustache to try to show him that he had not noticed the general’s faux pas.

Having made a round of all the guests, the prince sat down to play cards. He played only the old-fashioned game of bridge. The prince’s partners were: the Georgian prince; the Armenian general, who had learned his bridge from the prince’s valet; and Doctor Andreevskii, a first-rate player.

Laying beside him a gold snuff box with a portrait of Alexander I, Vorontsov tore open a pack of satin-surfaced playing cards and was about to shuffle them, when his valet, the Italian Giovanni, entered with a letter on a silver tray.

“Another courier, Your Excellency.”

Vorontsov put down the cards and, having excused himself, broke the seal on the letter and began to read.

The letter was from his son. He described the surrender of Hadji Murat and the conflict with Meller-Zakomel’skii.

The princess approached and asked what their son had written.

“It’s all about this same business. Il a eu quelques désagréments avec le commandant de la place. Simon a eu tort. But all is well that ends well,” [“He had some disagreements with the commandant of the place. Simon was at fault. But all is well that ends well,”] he said, handing the letter to his wife, then, turning to his partners who were waiting deferentially, asked them to draw their cards.

When the first hand had been dealt, Vorontsov opened the snuff box and did that which he was in the habit of doing when he was in a particularly good mood: taking a pinch of French snuff in his aged, wrinkled white fingers, he lifted it to his nose and released it.

X

The next day, when Hadji Murat arrived at the Vorontsovs’ palace, the waiting room was full of people. Here, in full dress uniform and medals, was yesterday’s old, bristly-moustached general, who had come to take his leave; here too was a regimental commander, who faced the threat of court-martial over misuse of the regimental mess fund; here was a wealthy Armenian, a protégé of Doctor Andreevskii, who held a state license to sell vodka in the region and was now petitioning for renewal of his contract; also here, dressed in black, was a slain officer’s widow who had come to request a pension for housing her children at public expense; here in magnificent Georgian attire was a penniless Georgian prince who was trying to obtain for himself an estate that had been confiscated from the church; here was a police official holding a bulky file containing a new plan for subjugating the Caucasus; here finally was a khan who had shown up only so that he could tell the people at home that he had been at the prince’s palace.

They all waited their turn, and one after the other were shown into the prince’s office by the handsome, fair-haired young aide-de-camp.

When Hadji Murat entered the room striding briskly despite his limp, all eyes turned to him, and he heard his name pronounced in whispers from various parts of the room.

Hadji Murat was dressed in a long, white Circassian coat over a brown cotton dressing gown with a delicate, silver lace around the collar. He wore black leggings and soft shoes of the same color, which were stretched like gloves over his instep. On his head was a Caucasian fur cap and a turban, the very same turban for which he, after being denounced by Akhmet-Khan, had been arrested by General Klugenau and which had been the reason he joined Shamil. Hadji Murat walked quickly across the parquet floor of the anteroom, his entire thin figure swaying from the slight lameness in one leg, which was slightly shorter than the other. His widely-spaced eyes calmly looked straight ahead and, it seemed, saw no one.

Having greeted him, the handsome aide-de-camp asked Hadji Murat to have a seat, while he announced his arrival to the prince. But Hadji Murat declined to sit down and, placing his hand on his dagger and moving one foot back a bit, disdainfully looked around at all those present. The interpreter, Prince Tarkhanov, went up to Hadji Murat and struck up a conversation. Hadji Murat responded reluctantly and tersely A Ghumuq prince came out of the office, where he had lodged a complaint against a police official, and behind him came the aide-de-camp who summoned Hadji Murat, led him to the office door and showed him in.

Vorontsov received Hadji Murat standing at the corner of his desk. The old white face of the commander-in-chief was not the smiling face of the day before, but a rather stern and solemn one.

Entering into the large room with its enormous desk, large windows, and green Venetian blinds, Hadji Murat placed his small, sunburned hands on his chest at the spot where the lapels of his white Circassian coat overlapped, and, using the Ghumuq dialect that he spoke well, he declared unhurriedly, distinctly, and respectfully: “I surrender to the exalted protection of the great Tsar and yourself. I sincerely pledge to serve the White Tsar to the last drop of my blood, and I hope to be useful in the war against Shamil, my enemy and yours.”

Having heard out the interpreter, Vorontsov looked at Hadji Murat and Hadji Murat looked into the face of Vorontsov.

The eyes of the two men met and said to each other much that was inexpressible by words, something entirely different from what the translator said. Directly and without words, the eyes communicated to the other party the whole truth. Vorontsov’s eyes said that he did not believe a single word that Hadji Murat had spoken, that he knew Hadji Murat was the enemy of every Russian and always would be, and that Hadji Murat was submitting to them now only because he had been forced to do so. Hadji Murat grasped this and nevertheless made assurances of his loyalty Meanwhile, Hadji Murat’s eyes were saying that an old man ought to be thinking about death, not about war; and that he, although aging, was still cunning, and so must be dealt with cautiously Vorontsov understood this and, in spite of it, related to Hadji Murat his conditions for concluding the war successfully

“Tell him, son,” Vorontsov said to the interpreter (he used the informal “you” with the young officer), “that our sovereign is as gracious as he is mighty and that, most likely, if I so request, the tsar will pardon him and take him into his service. Did you tell him that?” he asked, looking at Hadji Murat. “Until such time as I shall receive the gracious decision of my sovereign, tell him that I take it on myself to receive him and to make his stay with us pleasant.”

Hadji Murat once again placed his hands on the center of his breast and then spoke with animation.

He said through the translator that even before this occasion, in 1839 when he governed Avaria, he had faithfully served the Russians and never would have betrayed them had his enemy, Akhmet-Khan, who wanted to destroy him, not slandered him to General Klugenau.

“I know, I know,” said Vorontsov (although if he ever had known this, he had long since forgotten it). “I know,” he said, sitting down and gesturing toward the ottoman that stood by the wall. But Hadji Murat did not sit down, shrugging his powerful shoulders as a sign that he could not bring himself to sit in the presence of such an important man.

“Akhmet-Khan and Shamil, both are my enemies,” he continued, turning to the interpreter. “Tell the prince that Akhmet-Khan is dead, so I cannot revenge myself on him, but Shamil is still alive, and I will not die without having paid him back,” he said, knitting his brows and clenching his jaws tightly.

“Yes, yes,” Vorontsov said calmly “How exactly does he want to pay Shamil back?” he said to the interpreter. “And tell him that he can sit down.”

Hadji Murat again declined to sit and, in answer to the question, said that he had gone over to the Russians precisely to help them destroy Shamil.

“Fine. Fine,” said Vorontsov. “What exactly does he want to do? Sit down, boy Sit down.”

Hadji Murat sat down and said, that if they would only send him to the Lezgian front and give him some troops, that he would guarantee to raise the whole of Daghestan and Shamil would not be able to hold out.

“That’s good. That could be done,” Vorontsov said. “I’ll need to think a little about it.”

The interpreter translated Vorontsov’s words for Hadji Murat. Hadji Murat pondered them for a moment.

“Tell the Sardar,” he added, “that my family is in the hands of my enemy; and as long as my family is in the mountains, my hands are tied and I cannot serve him. Shamil will kill my wife, kill my mother, kill my children, if I come out openly against him. If the prince will only rescue my family, exchange some prisoners for them, then I shall die or destroy Shamil.”

“Good, good,” Vorontsov said. “We will think about it. Right now have him go to the chief of staff and lay out in detail to him his situation, intentions, and requests.”

Thus ended the first meeting between Hadji Murat and Vorontsov.

Later on that same day, in the evening, in the new theater that had been decorated in the Oriental style, there was an Italian opera. Vorontsov was in his loge, while in the parterre there appeared the striking figure of the limping Hadji Murat replete with turban. He entered with Vorontsov’s aide-de-camp, Loris-Melikov, who had been assigned to accompany him, and he took a seat in the front row. With Oriental, Muslim dignity that expressed not wonder but studied indifference, Hadji Murat sat through the first act, then rose to his feet and, calmly glancing over the audience, left the theater, attracting to himself the attention of the entire audience.

The next day was a Monday, the day of the Vorontsovs’ weekly dinner party. In the large, brightly-lit hall, music carried discreetly from an artificial winter garden. Young and not so young women in dresses that revealed their necks and arms and nearly bared their bosoms twirled in the embrace of men in colorful uniforms. At the mountainous buffet footmen in red frock coats, knee breeches, and polished shoes poured out champagne and carried around candies for the ladies. The “Sardar’s” wife who, despite her advanced years, was also half-naked, circulated among the guests, smiling warmly; she even said through the interpreter several kind words of welcome to Hadji Murat, who looked around at the guests with the same indifference that he had exhibited the evening before at the theater. Following the hostess’s example, other women in revealing attire also approached Hadji Murat, and each of them stood in front of him without feeling any shame and smilingly asked him the very same question: How did he like what he saw? Vorontsov himself, in gold epaulettes and gold aiguillettes and with his white cross and ribbon around his neck, went up to him and asked him the same question, evidently certain, as were all those who asked, that Hadji Murat could not help but like what he saw. And Hadji Murat responded to Vorontsov the same way he responded to all the others: that among his people there was nothing like this, but without indicating whether it was good or bad that they did not have this among his people.

Hadji Murat made an effort right there at the ball to start a conversation with Vorontsov about the business of ransoming his family but Vorontsov, acting as if he did not hear the words, walked away from him. Loris-Melikov himself later told Hadji Murat that a ball was no place to discuss business.

When it struck 11 o’clock and Hadji Murat had checked the time on the watch given to him by Mar’ia Vasilievena, he asked Loris-Melikov if he could leave. Loris-Melikov said that he could, but that it would be better to stay. In spite of this, Hadji Murat did not stay and drove off in the carriage placed at his disposal to his assigned quarters.

XI

On the fifth day of Hadji Murat’s stay in Tbilisi, Loris-Melikov, the viceroy’s aide-de-camp, came to see him at the commander-in-chief’s direction.

“With my head and my hands, I am happy to serve the Sardar,” Hadji Murat said, with his usual diplomatic expression, bowing his head and placing his hands on his breast. “I await your command, young man,” he said, looking gently into Loris-Melikov’s face.

Loris-Melikov sat down in the armchair next to the desk. Hadji Murat lowered himself onto a low ottoman opposite the armchair and, propping his arms on his knees, inclined his head and began attentively to listen to what Loris-Melikov was telling him. Loris-Melikov, speaking in fluent Tatar, said that the prince, although he already knew about Hadji Murat’s past, wanted to hear the whole story from Hadji Murat himself.

“Kindly tell it to me,” Loris-Melikov said, “and I’ll write it down, translate it into Russian later, and the prince will send it to the tsar.”

Hadji Murat sat silent for a moment. (He not only never interrupted another’s conversation, but also always waited to see whether his interlocutor had something further to say.) Then he raised his head, and having pushed the turban back on his head, he smiled that peculiar, childlike smile that had captivated Mar’ia Vasil’evna.

“That I can do,” he said, evidently gratified by the thought that his story would be read by the emperor.

“You tell it to me,” Loris-Melikov said, using the informal “you,” since Tatar does not have the formal “you,” “from the beginning without hurrying.” Meanwhile, he produced a notebook from his pocket.

“I can do that, only there is a great deal, a very great deal, to tell. Many things have happened,” said Hadji Murat.

“If you don’t manage it all in one day, you may finish the story another day,” Loris-Melikov said.

“Start from the beginning?”

“Yes, from the very beginning. Where were you born? Where did you live?”

Hadji Murat lowered his head and sat like that for a long time. Then he took a stick that was laying on the couch, drew from beneath his dagger an ivory-handled knife decorated with gold and having a razor-sharp damask steel blade, and began to whittle the stick with it and at the same time to tell his story.

“I was born in Tsel’mes, a small awul, ‘the size of an ass’s head,’ as we say in the mountains. Not far from us, about the distance of two rifle shots, was Khunzakh, where the khans lived. And our family was close to theirs. My mother nursed the oldest khan, Abununtsal-Khan, and for that reason I also became close to the khans. There were three khans: Abununtsal-Khan, who was ‘milk brother’ of my brother Osman; Umma-Khan, my blood brother; and Bulach-Khan, the one Shamil threw off the cliff. But that was later.

“I was about fifteen when the murids began coming around the awuls. They beat on stones with wooden sabers and cried: ‘Muslims, a holy war!’ All the Chechens had joined the murids, even the Avars were beginning to join them. At that point I was living in the palace. I was like a brother to the khans: what I wanted to do, I did, and I had become rich. I had horses, and weapons and money. I lived a life of pleasure, not a thought in my head. That was how I lived until Kazi-Mula was killed and Hamza took his place. Hamza sent the khans emissaries to say that, if they did not accept the holy war, he would destroy Khunzakh. Now for the first time I was forced to think. The khans were afraid of the Russians, they were afraid to join the holy war, so the khansha sent me and her second son, Umma-Khan, to Tbilisi to request help against Hamza from the Russian chief commander. The chief commander was Rozen, a baron. He wouldn’t see me or Umma-Khan. He passed word that he would help us, but he did nothing. Only his officers started visiting us and playing cards with Umma-Khan. They got him drunk on wine, they took him to sinful places, he lost to them at cards everything he owned. He was strong in body, like a bull, and brave as a lion, but in soul he was weak as water. He would have lost his last horses and his own weapon if I had not led him away. After Tbilisi my thinking changed, so I tried to persuade the khansha and the young khans to join the holy war.”

“Why did your thinking change?” asked Loris-Melikov. “Did you not like the Russians?”

Hadji Murat fell silent for a moment.

“No, I did not like them,” he said forcefully and then closed his eyes. “And then there was an incident that made me want to accept the holy war.”

“What sort of incident?”

“Near Tsel’mes the khan and I ran across three murids: two escaped, but I killed the third with my pistol. When I went to take away his weapon, he was still alive. He looked at me. ‘You,’ he says, ‘have killed me. All is well with me. But you are a Muslim, you are young and strong, so join the holy war. God commands it.’”

“So then you joined it?”

“No, I didn’t join it, but I began to think,” said Hadji Murat, and he continued his account. “When Hamza approached Khunzakh, we sent him old men as emissaries and commanded them to say that we would agree to the holy war if only he would send us a learned young man to explain how we should undertake it. Hamza commanded his forces to shave the old men’s moustaches, to pierce their nostrils, affix to their noses tablets of submission, and send them back. The old men said that Hamza was prepared to send us a spiritual instructor to teach us how to undertake the holy war, but only if the khansha would send her younger son to him as a hostage. The khansha trusted Hamza and sent him Bulach-Khan. Hamza received Bulach-Khan with respect and then asked us to send him the older brothers as well. He commanded the emissaries to say that he wished to serve the khans just as his father had served their father. The khansha was a woman—weak, stupid and impulsive, like all women are when they live without a man’s guidance. She was afraid to send both her older sons and sent only Umma-Khan. I rode with him. A verst outside of the village we were met by murids who sang, shot their weapons, and cavorted around us. And when we rode up, Hamza came out of this tent, walked up to the side of his horse and welcomed Umma-Khan as royalty. He said: ‘I have not done your house any harm and do not wish to do any in future. You have only not to attack me and not to hinder my effort to lead the people on a holy war. Then I shall serve you with all my forces, just as my father served yours. Permit me to live in your house. I shall offer you my counsel, and you may do what you wish.’ Umma-Khan was obtuse in speech. He did not know what to say, so he remained silent. Then I said that if that were Hamza’s intention, we should permit him to ride to Khunzakh. The khansha and khan would receive him with honor. But they did not allow me to finish speaking, and here for the first time I encountered Shamil. He was there also, next to the imam. ‘They do not ask you, but the khan,’ he said to me. I fell silent. While Hamza escorted Umma-Khan to the tent I rode off for Khunzakh. Then emissaries began to implore the khansha to send the eldest son to Hamza. I saw the treachery and warned the khansha not to send her remaining son. But a woman has as much intelligence as an egg has hair. The khansha trusted Hamza and commanded her son to go. Abununtsal did not want to go. Then she said; ‘It is clear that you are afraid.’ Like a bee, she knew where to sting him. Abununtsal lost his temper, stopped speaking with her, and commanded his horse to be saddled. I rode with him. Hamza received us even more warmly than Umma-Khan. He himself rode out to meet us with two rifle shots from the mountain. Behind him rode mounted cavalry with banners; they sang, ‘There is no god but God!’; they shot their rifles and cavorted. When we rode up to camp, Hamza led the khan into the tent. Meanwhile, I stayed with the horses. I was at the foot of the mountain when the shooting began in Hamza’s tent. I rushed toward the tent. Umma-Khan lay on the ground in a pool of blood, while Abununtsal fought with the murids. Half his face had been cut off and hung suspended by the remaining skin. He held it with one hand, and with the other used his dagger to slash anyone who came near him. After I arrived, he cut down one of Hamza’s brothers and had lunged toward another before the murids shot him, and then he fell.”

Hadji Murat stopped talking, his sunburned face flushed angrily, and his eyes filled with blood.

“Terror seized me, and I ran away”

“Can that be?” said Loris-Melikov. “I thought you have never been afraid of anything.”

“After that, never; from that moment I have always remembered my shame, and when I have remembered it, then I am no longer afraid.”

XII

“Enough for now! I must pray,” Hadji Murat said. From the inside pocket of his Circassian coat he pulled the Breguet watch Vorontsov had given him, carefully pressed the spring and, having tilted his head to the side while repressing a childlike smile, he listened. The watch chimed out twelve and a quarter.

“A present from Kunak Vorontsov,” he said, smiling. “Good man.”

“Yes, he is a good man,” Loris-Melikov said. “The watch is also good. Now, you pray I’ll wait until you’re finished.”

“Iakshi.” [“Good.”] Hadji Murat said and went to his bedroom.

Left alone, Loris-Melikov transcribed into his notebook the most important points of Hadji Murat’s narrative, then lit a cigarette and began to pace back and forth across the room. When he reached the door opposite Hadji Murat’s bedroom, Loris-Melikov heard the animated voices of people rapidly speaking in Tatar. He guessed that the voices belonged to Hadji Murat’s murids and, opening the door, he entered their room.

In the room hung that sour, leathery smell peculiar to mountain folk. On a burka on the floor next to the window sat one-eyed, red-haired Gamzalo in a torn, dirty beshmet plaiting a bridle. He was speaking heatedly in his hoarse voice, but on Loris-Melikov’s entry, he immediately fell silent and, taking no notice of the interloper, continued what he was doing. Opposite him stood the merry Khan-Mahoma; baring his white teeth and flashing his black lashless eyes, he was repeating the same phrase over and over. Handsome Eldar, sleeves rolled up on his powerful arms, was rubbing down the girths of a saddle suspended from a nail. Khanefi, the chief worker and the manager of the household, was not in the room. He was cooking dinner in the kitchen.

“What were you arguing about?” Loris-Melikov asked Khan-Mahoma, after he had greeted them.

“Oh, he keeps praising Shamil,” Khan-Mahoma said, offering his hand to Loris. “He says Shamil is a great man. He’s learned, a man of God, and a dzhigit.”

“How is it he left Shamil but still praises him?”

“Left, but praises,” muttered Khan-Mahoma, baring his teeth and flashing his eyes.

“What about you, lad? Do you think Shamil is a man of God?” Loris-Melikov asked.

“If he wasn’t a man of God, the people would not listen to him,” said Gamzalo quickly

“Shamil is no man of God, but Mansur was,” Khan-Mahoma said. “He was a true man of God. When he was imam, the whole people was different. He rode on horseback from awul to awul, everyone came out to kiss the hem of his Circassian coat, they repented their sins and vowed to live right. Old men claim that in those days everybody lived as God intended—nobody smoked, nobody drank, nobody skipped prayers, everyone forgave insults even when blood had been spilled. In those days, lost money and belongings, as soon as they had been found, were tied to a staff and left by the side of the road. In those days, God smiled on the entire people; things were different then,” Khan-Mahoma said.

“But today in the mountains people still don’t drink or smoke,” Gamzalo said.

“Your Shamil is a lamora,” Khan-Mahoma said, winking at Loris-Melikov.

“Lamora” was a contemptuous epithet, meaning “rock dweller.”

“A ‘rock dweller’ is a true mountain man,” Gamzalo replied, “And mountains are the eagles’ home.”

“Well said, youngster! You cut me to the quick!” Khan-Mahoma said, baring his teeth and enjoying his opponent’s skillful retort.

Eyeing the silver cigarette case in Loris-Melikov’s hand, Khan-Mahoma asked for a smoke. When Loris-Melikov said that a Muslim shouldn’t smoke, Khan-Mahoma winked, nodded toward Hadji Murat’s bedroom, and said that it was all right, so long as the authorities didn’t notice. At once he lit up without puffing, awkwardly pursing his red lips while releasing the smoke.

“That is wrong!” Gamzalo said sternly and left the room. Khan-Mahoma winked again and, cigarette in mouth, began to question Loris-Melikov about the best place to buy a silk beshmet and a white Causcasian fur cap.

“What, lad? You think you’ve got enough money?”

“‘Course I do,” Khan-Mahoma answered, winking.

“Ask him where he got the money,” Eldar said, turning his handsome smiling face toward Loris.

“I won it gambling,” Khan-Mahoma quickly replied, relating how yesterday, walking around Tbilisi, he had happened on a small cluster of men—Russian day laborers and Armenians—pitching coins. The pot was big: three gold coins and a pile of silver ones. Khan-Mahoma immediately got the game’s drift, and, jingling the copper coins in his pocket, stepped into the middle of the circle and said that he’d bet the whole pot.

“The whole pot? You have that much?” Loris-Melikov asked.

“All I had on me was twenty kopecks, total,” Khan-Mahoma said, showing his teeth.

“What if you’d lost?”

“Then, this.” And Khan-Mahoma indicated his pistol.

“You’d have traded your gun?”

“Why trade? I’d have run for it; anyone tried to stop me, I’d ‘ve killed him. I’d have done it, too.”

“But you won.”

“Yep! I grabbed the stakes and took off.”

Loris-Melikov understood Khan-Mahoma and Eldar completely. Khan-Mahoma was a happy-go-lucky type living fast and loose, not knowing what to do with his high spirits, always cheerful but heedless, someone gambling with his own life and the lives of others, a man willing to risk his life today by defecting to the Russians and just as willing to risk it again tomorrow by going back to Shamil. Eldar was also an open book: a man completely devoted to his murshid, a man calm, strong, and firm. The only one Loris-Melikov couldn’t understand was red-headed Gamzalo. He could see that this man was not only devoted to Shamil, but felt an insurmountable repugnance, contempt, disgust, and hatred toward all Russians; for this reason Loris-Melikov could not grasp why Gamzalo had defected to the Russians. Loris-Melikov had been wondering, as had several other leading officials, whether the desertion of Hadji Murat and his stories of enmity with Shamil were deceptions, whether he had defected only to scout out the Russians’ weaknesses and whether, after escaping into the mountains, he would then direct Chechen forces against the Russians’ vulnerable spots. With every fiber of his being Gamzalo seemed to confirm this hypothesis. “Hadji Murat and the others know how to conceal their true intentions,” Loris-Melikov thought to himself, “but this one betrays himself by his unconcealed hatred.”

Loris-Melikov tried to engage Gamzalo in conversation. He asked whether he was bored. Without putting down his work, Gamzalo glanced sideways out of his one good eye at Loris—Melikov and growled: “No, I’m not bored.”

He answered all Loris-Melikov’s other questions the same way.

While Loris Melikov was in the bodyguards’ room, there entered Hadji Murat’s fourth murid, the Avar Khanefi, a man with a hirsute face and neck, his barrel chest shaggy, as if overgrown with moss. A robust, uncomplaining worker who was always engrossed in some activity he was, like Eldar, unconditionally obedient to his master.

When Khanefi entered the bodyguards’ room looking for some rice, Loris-Melikov stopped him and asked where he was from and whether he had been with Hadji Murat a long time.

“Five years,” Khanefi replied to Loris-Melikov’s question. “We are from the same awul. My father killed his uncle, so his family plotted to kill me,” he said, looking calmly into Loris-Melikov’s face from beneath his thick eyebrows. “That was when I asked him to accept me as a brother.”

What does that mean: ‘to accept as a brother?’”

“I didn’t shave my head for two months, didn’t cut my nails, and I went to them. They let me in to see Patimat, his mother. Patimat received me with open arms, so I became his brother.”

Hadji Murat’s voice sounded in the next room. Eldar immediately recognized his master’s summons; having wiped his hands, he briskly strode into the drawing room.

“He is asking for you,” he said on returning. Having passed a cigarette to the happy-go-lucky Khan-Mahoma, Loris-Melikov went to the drawing room.

XIII

When Loris-Melikov entered the drawing room, Hadji Murat greeted him with a smiling face.

“So, to continue?” he said, taking a seat on the low divan.

“Yes. Absolutely,” Loris-Melikov said. “I just went to see your bodyguards and had a nice talk with them. The one is a cheerful fellow,” he added.

“Yes, Khan-Mahoma, he’s friendly,” Hadji Murat said.

“But I liked the young, handsome one.”

“Ah, Eldar. That one’s young, but tough as nails.”

They fell silent.

“So, to go on?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“I told you how they murdered the khans. After killing them, Hamza entered Khunzakh and settled in the khans’ palace,” Hadji Murat began. “The khansha was still alive. Hamza summoned her. She began telling him off. He motioned to his murid

Asel’der, and he struck her from behind, killed her.”

“Why did he have to kill her, too?”

“Why do you think? You start something, you finish it. They had to finish off the whole clan. So they did. Shamil killed the youngest son, threw him off a cliff.”

“All Avaria was submitting to Hamza; only my brother and I decided not to submit. We had to have his blood to avenge the khans. So we pretended to submit but thought only how to spill his blood. We talked it over with grandfather and decided to wait until Hamza came out of his palace, then we’d ambush him and kill him. Someone overheard us, told Hamza, so he summoned grandfather and said: ‘See here, if it’s true your grandsons are plotting to do me harm, I’ll hang you and them together from the same rafter. I’m doing God’s work, so it’s wrong to get in my way. Go home, old man, and remember what I said.’

“Grandfather came home and gave us the message. Then we decided not to wait, but to move on the first day of holiday at the mosque. Our comrades refused to help; that left me and my brother. We each took two pistols, put on our felt cloaks, and went to the mosque. Hamza came in with thirty murids. They were all carrying drawn swords. Next to Hamza was Asel’der, his favorite murid, the same one who’d cut off the khansha’s head. When he spotted us, he shouted at us to remove our felt cloaks, then he came at me. I had my dagger in my hand, so I killed him and threw myself at Hamza. But my brother, Osman, had already shot him. Hamza was still alive, he lunged toward my brother, but I cut off his head. There were thirty murids against us two. They killed my brother Osman, but I beat them back, jumped out a window and escaped.

“When people learned that Hamza had been killed, the whole population rose up, the murids fled, and those that didn’t were killed.”

Hadji Murat stopped and took a deep breath.

“That was all good,” he continued, “later it all went bad. Shamil took Hamza’s place. He sent envoys to me to say that I should join him against the Russians; if I refused, he would destroy Khunzakh and kill me. I told him I wouldn’t join him and wouldn’t let him near me.”

“Why didn’t you join him?” Loris-Melikov asked.

Hadji Murat frowned and didn’t answer immediately.

“It would have been wrong. The blood of my brother Osman and of Abununtsal-Khan was on Shamil. I didn’t join him. Rozen, the general, sent me an officer’s commission and ordered me to take command of Avaria. That would have been alright, but Rozen had already appointed Kazi-Ghumuq Khan Mahomet-Murzu and Akhmet-Khan. That one hated me. He had promised his son to the khansha’s daughter, Saltanet. The khansha’s family would not give Saltanet to him, and he thought I was to blame for this. He came to hate me and sent his men to kill me, but I evaded them. Then he lied about me to General Klugenau, saying that I refused to order the Avars to give firewood to the soldiers. He also said that I wore a turban, this very one,” Hadji Murat said, indicating the turban on his Circassian cap, “and said this meant I had joined Shamil. The general did not believe this lie, so he did not arrest me. But after the general left for Tbilisi, Akhmet-Khan did what he pleased; a company of his soldiers seized me, put me in irons and tied me to a cannon.

“Six days and nights they kept me like that. On the seventh day they untied me and took me to Temir-Khan-Shura. Forty soldiers with loaded rifles escorted me. My hands were bound, the soldiers had orders to kill me if I tried to escape. I knew that. When we began our approach, alongside the Moksokh River the path was narrow, on the right was a cliff that dropped over a hundred feet. I moved to the right, away from my escort toward the edge of the cliff. A soldier tried to stop me, but I jumped over the edge and pulled him along with me. The soldier died in the fall, but I survived. My ribs, arms, legs—all were broken and my skull was cracked. I tried to crawl, but couldn’t. My head began to spin, I passed out. Woke up soaked, in a pool of my own blood. A shepherd spotted me. He called for help, people carried me into the awul. My ribs and head mended; my leg mended too, only shorter.”

And Hadji Murat extended his crooked leg.

“Still serves me well,” he said. “When people found out what happened, they visited me. I healed up, moved to Tsel’mes. Again, the Avars asked me to rule them,” said Hadji Murat with calm, assured pride. “I agreed.”

Hadji Murat rose quickly; taking a letter pouch out of his saddlebag, he pulled out two yellowed letters and handed them to Loris-Melikov. The letters were from General Klugenau. Loris-Melikov read them through. In the first letter, Klugenau wrote:

“Ensign Hadji Murat. You served under me. I was satisfied with you and considered you a good man. Not long ago Major-General Akhmet-Khan informed me that you are a traitor, that you have donned the turban, that you are in communication with Shamil, that you have instructed the people not to obey Russian authorities. I ordered you arrested and brought to me. You fled. I don’t know whether this is for the best or not, because I don’t know whether you are guilty or not. Listen to me now. If your conscience is clean before the great tsar, if you are innocent, come to me. Fear nothing; I am your defender. The khan will not harm you; he is under my command. Therefore, you have nothing to fear.”

Klugenau added that he always keeps his word and is just; again he exhorted Hadji Murat to come to him.

After Loris-Melikov had finished the first letter, Hadji Murat opened the second letter, but before handing it to Loris-Melikov, he related how he had answered the first letter.

“I wrote him that I wear the turban not for Shamil, but to save my soul; that I don’t want to join and cannot join Shamil, because my father, brothers, and other relatives were killed through him; I wrote I couldn’t come over to the Russians either, because they had dishonored me. In Khunzakh, when I was tied up, some bastard sp…spit on me. So I can’t join you until this man has been killed. Mainly, though, I fear that liar Akhmet-Khan. Then the general sent me this letter,” said Hadji Murat, handing Loris-Melikov the other yellowed piece of paper.

“You answered my letter. Thank you,” Loris-Melikov read. “You write that you are not afraid to change your allegiance, but the dishonor inflicted on you by an infidel forbids it. I assure you Russian law is just, and with your own eyes you will see the punishment of the man who dared to insult you. I have already ordered an investigation. Listen, Hadji Murat. I have the right to be dissatisfied with you, because you doubt me and my honor, but I forgive you, knowing the mistrustful character of most mountain folk. If your conscience is clean, if you really donned the turban to save your soul, then you are a righteous man and can look the Russian government and me in the eye; those who disgraced you, I assure you, will be punished, your property will be returned to you, and you will see for yourself what Russian justice can do. Anyway, Russians look at things differently; in their eyes it does you no discredit that some pig disgraced you. I myself have permitted the Gimrintsy to wear the turban and judge their actions as appropriate; consequently I repeat, you have nothing to fear. Come to me with my envoy; he is loyal to me, he is not a slave of your enemies, but the friend of a man who enjoys the government’s special trust.”

In closing, Klugenau again urged Hadji Murat to join him.

“I did not trust the letter,” Hadji Murat said, when Loris-Melikov had finished reading, “so I did not join Klugenau. For me, the main thing was to take revenge on Akhmet-Khan, and I couldn’t do that through the Russians. Around then, Akhmet-Khan had surrounded Tsel’mes and wanted to capture or kill me. I didn’t have enough men; I couldn’t beat him back. Just then, an envoy from Shamil brought me a letter. Shamil promised to help me beat back Akhmet-Khan, to kill him, and to give me all Avaria to oversee. I thought it over for a long time and joined Shamil. Since then I have not stopped fighting the Russians.”

Here Hadji Murat related all his military exploits. There were very many of them, and Loris-Melikov knew them in part. All his campaigns and raids were striking for the exceptional speed of his marches and the daring of his attacks, which were always crowned with success.

“There was never friendship between Shamil and me,” Hadji Murat concluded his tale. “He feared me and needed me. Then somebody asked me who would be imam after Shamil. I said that the imam would be the one who had the sharpest sword. They reported this to Shamil, so he decided to get rid of me. He sent me to Tabasaran. I went and carried off a thousand sheep and three hundred horses. Then he said that I had not followed orders, he took away my rank of naib, and demanded that I turn over all my money. I send him a thousand gold pieces. He sent his murids and took all my property from me. He demanded I come to him; I knew he wanted to kill me, so I did not go. He sent men to take me; I fought them off, then joined Vorontsov. Only I didn’t bring along my family. My mother, my wife, and my son are in Shamil’s hands. Tell the Sardar. as long as my family is there, I can do nothing.”

“I shall tell him,” Loris-Melikov said.

“Do everything you can. Try. What’s mine is yours, only help me with the prince. My hands are tied, and the end of the rope is in Shamil’s hands.”

With those words, Hadji Murat ended his story to Loris-Melikov.

XIV

On December 20, Vorontsov wrote the following to War Minister Chernyshev. The letter was in French.

“I did not write you at once, esteemed prince, since I wanted first to decide what we should do with Hadji Murat, and since I have felt indisposed for two or three days. In my last letter I notified you of Hadji Murat’s arrival here; he came to Tbilisi on the 8th; I met him the next day; then over the next eight or nine days I entered into talks with him and pondered what he might do for us in the future, but especially I pondered how we should treat him now, since he is distraught over his family’s fate and says, with every appearance of candor, that so long as his family is in Shamil’s hands, he is paralyzed, powerless to help us and to show his gratitude for the kind reception and pardon afforded him. Anxiety over his dear ones has put him in a feverish state; the personnel designated by me to live with him here assure me that he does not sleep nights, eats almost nothing, prays constantly, and only requests permission to go riding with a guard of several Cossacks—this is his only mode of recreation and exercise, something essential to him after years of routine. Every day he has come to me to find out whether I have any news about his family, and he has begged me to order that all the prisoners at our disposal on the various fronts be gathered together for exchange to Shamil, to which exchange he would add a little money. There are people who will give him money for this purpose. Over and over he has implored me: ‘Rescue my family, then give me the chance to serve you (the best place would be on the Lezgian front, in his opinion), and, if I have not rendered you great service in a month, punish me as you wish.’

“I have answered him that to me all this seems quite fair, and that among us are very many people who will never trust him so long as his family remains in the mountains rather than with us as hostages; I said that I shall do everything in my power to collect the prisoners along our frontiers and that, not having the right, according to our regulations, to provide him with additional money for the ransom, I may nevertheless find another way to help him. Having said this, I frankly stated my opinion that under no circumstances will Shamil return his family, that he probably will say as much, then promise him a complete pardon and restoration of his previous offices, but will threaten, if he does not return, to kill his mother, wife, and six children. I asked him if he can say in all honesty what he will do if he receives such a declaration from Shamil. Hadji Murat raised his eyes and arms toward heaven and said to me that all is in the God’s hands, but he will never surrender himself to his enemy, because he is certain that Shamil will not pardon him and so he will not long remain among the living. As regards the extermination of his family, he did not think that Shamil would behave so thoughtlessly: 1) so as to not make his enemy even more desperate and dangerous; and 2) because there are many people in Daghestan, even some very influential ones, who would dissuade him from that. Finally, he repeated to me several times, that, no matter what God’s will for the future might be, at this moment he thinks only about ransoming his family; he implores me, in the name of God, to help him and allow him to return to the Chechnia region where, through our commanders and with their permission, he might communicate with his family, learn their whereabouts, and discover how to liberate them; he says that many people and even several naibs in that hostile region are obliged to him to a greater or lesser degree, and that living among the whole population of people under Russian control or neutral to it, he will easily be able, with our help, to make arrangements to achieve the objective that haunts him day and night, the fulfillment of which will relieve his anxiety and will enable him to act in our interest and to earn our trust. He requests that we send him back to Groznyi with a convoy of twenty to thirty brave Cossacks, who will serve him as a defense against his enemies and serve us as guarantee of the truth of his stated intentions.

“You will grasp at once, esteemed prince, why all this has so preoccupied me, for no matter what I do, a heavy responsibility rests on my shoulders. It would be in the highest degree naïve to trust him completely; but if we had wished to deny him the means to flee, then we would have had to lock him up; however, in my opinion, that would be both unfair and impolitic. Such a step, news of which would quickly spread throughout Daghestan, would do us great harm there by discouraging all those—and they are many—disposed to move overtly or covertly against Shamil and who are keenly watching how we treat the imam’s bravest and most enterprising lieutenant, a man who saw himself forced to place himself into our hands. If we begin to treat Hadji Murat as a prisoner, then the favorable impact of his desertion from Shamil will be immediately dissipated.

“Therefore, I think that I could not have acted differently than I have, and yet I sense that I may be accused of a great blunder if Hadji Murat should take it into his head to desert us anew. In the field and particularly in such tangled affairs, it is difficult if not impossible to find a straight path toward one’s objective without risking mistakes and without exercising one’s discretion; but once the road seems straight, it must be taken, come what may.

“I ask you, esteemed prince, to turn this matter over to His Majesty, the Emperor, for consideration; I shall be grateful if our August Sovereign deigns to approve my action. Everything that I have written to you above I have also written to Generals Zavadovskii and Kozlovskii, to guide Kozlovskii in dealing with Hadji Murat; the latter I have warned to do nothing without prior approval and I have forbidden him to travel anywhere at all. I told him that it will be better for us if he rides with one of our convoys, but I also said he must be aware that Shamil will begin to put out the story that we are keeping Hadji Murat under guard; I also extracted from him a promise that he will not ride to Vozdvizhenskoe, since my son, to whom he first surrendered and whom he considers his kunak, is not the commander of that place, so misunderstandings might result. By the way, Vozdvizhenskoe is too close to numerous hostile villages; and in any case, for the communications he desires with his compatriots, Groznyi is suitable in every respect.

“Besides the twenty hand-picked Cossacks who, by his own request, do not move so much as a step away from him, I have sent with him Captain Loris-Melikov—a worthy excellent and very intelligent Tatar-speaking officer who knows Hadji Murat well and who, it seems, also possesses his complete confidence. During the ten days that Hadji Murat has spent here, by the way he has lived in a house with Lieutenant-Colonel Tarkhanovyi, the commander of Shushinskii military district, who is here on official business. He is a thoroughly reliable man, and I trust him completely He, too, has earned Hadji Murat’s trust, and through him alone, as he speaks excellent Tatar, we have discussed the most delicate and secret matters.

“I consulted with Tarkhanovyi concerning Hadji Murat, and he completely agrees with me that either we should act as I have been doing or we must lock Hadji Murat in prison and guard him under the strictest regime possible, because once we treat him badly, he will not be easy to guard—either that or we must remove him completely from his native territory. But these last two measures would not only forfeit every advantage accruing to us as a result of the falling out between Hadji Murat and Shamil, but would also inevitably put a halt to any development of disaffection among the mountaineers and would obviate the possibility of a revolt by them against Shamil’s government. Prince Tarkhanovyi told me he thinks Hadji Murat has been telling us the truth and that Hadji Murat has no doubt that Shamil will never forgive him and will order him executed, despite any promised pardon. The only thing that bothered Tarkhanovyi in his dealings with Hadji Murat is his attachment to his religion, and Tarkhanovyi does not hide that Shamil may work on him from that angle. But, as I said above, Shamil will never convince Hadji Murat that he will not take his life, either immediately on his return or after some time has elapsed.

“That is all, esteemed prince, that I wish to say to you concerning this episode in our local affairs.”

XV

This report was dispatched from Tbilisi on December 24. On New Year’s Eve, a military courier, having exhausted ten horses and bloodied ten drivers, delivered it to then Minister of War Prince Chernyshev.

On January 1, 1852 Chernyshev carried Vorontsov’s report, along with a number of other items, to a briefing of Emperor Nicholas.

Chernyshev envied Vorontsov because of the universal respect Vorontsov enjoyed, because of his enormous wealth, because Vorontsov was a real aristocrat while Chernyshev was only a parvenu, and, most importantly, because of the special favor the emperor showed Vorontsov. For these reasons, Chernyshev took every opportunity to do Vorontsov harm. In his last report on affairs in the Caucasus, Chernyshev had succeeded in eliciting Nicholas’s dissatisfaction with Vorontsov on the ground that, owing to the high command’s carelessness, a small Russian army detachment had been virtually wiped out by the mountaineers. Now he intended to present in an unfavorable light Vorontsov’s orders concerning Hadji Murat. He intended to insinuate to the sovereign that Vorontsov, who was always protecting and even indulging the locals at the Russians’ expense, had acted imprudently by leaving Hadji Murat in the Caucasus; that Hadji Murat in all likelihood had defected only to observe the Russian defenses, and so it would be better to transfer Hadji Murat into central Russia and to make use of him only after his family had been rescued from the mountaineers and his loyalty could therefore be assured.

Chernyshev’s plan misfired because, on that New Year’s morning, Nicholas was especially irritable and, out of contrariness, was disinclined to listen to any suggestion whatsoever, regardless of the source. He was even less inclined to heed Chernyshev, whom he tolerated only because he considered him temporarily indispensable, but whom he considered an absolute scoundrel, because of Chernyshev’s efforts to discredit Zakhar Chernyshev by implicating him during the investigation of the Decembrist uprising so as to confiscate his estate. So, thanks to Nicholas’s foul mood, Hadji Murat remained in the Caucasus and his fate was not altered as it might have been had Chernyshev delivered his report at another time.

It was 9.30 when, through the impenetrable twenty-degree-below zero chill, Chernyshev’s fat, bearded coachman, wearing a sharp-cornered, sky-blue velvet cap and sitting on the coach seat of a little sleigh identical to the one Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich rode, drove up to the entrance of the Winter Palace and gave a genial nod to his friend, Prince Dolgorukii’s driver, who, having dropped off the prince some time ago, was waiting at the palace entrance with the reins stuffed up under his fat, padded bottom and was rubbing his frozen hands together.

Chernyshev wore an overcoat with a fluffy, gray beaverskin collar and a tricornered hat with gamecock feathers as if it were part of his uniform. Removing a bearskin cover, he slowly extricated from the sleigh his frozen feet which were not covered by overshoes (he was proud that he didn’t wear overshoes) and then, taking courage and shuffling awkwardly, he crossed the welcome carpet to the door, which was respectfully opened for him by a doorkeeper. In the entranceway, after dropping his overcoat into the arms of an old court lackey who had come scurrying up, Chernyshev approached the mirror and carefully lifted the hat off his curled wig. Having glanced at himself in the mirror, he twisted the curls at the temples and on the top of his head with an accustomed movement of his aged hands, then straightened his service cross, shoulder-braids, and large, monogrammed epaulettes, and, scarcely controlling his recalcitrant old man’s legs, he undertook to climb the sloping, carpeted stairs.

Passing by the ceremonially-uniformed footmen who were standing at the door and who bowed obsequiously to him, Chernyshev entered a reception room. The duty officer—a newly appointed aide-de-camp, resplendent in a new uniform, epaulettes and shoulder braids, with a reddish, not-yet wrinkled face, a thin dark mustache and hair combed forward on the sides just like Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich wore it—deferentially greeted him. Prince Vasilii Dolgorukii, assistant minister of war, with a bored expression on his vacant face, also adorned with exactly the same sideburns, mustache, and hairstyle as Nicholas, rose to greet Chernyshev.

“L’Empereur?” Chernyshev addressed the aide-de-camp, indicating the study door with a questioning glance.

“Sa Majesté vient de rentrer,” [“His Majesty has just returned,”] the aide-decamp said, obviously enjoying the sound of own voice, and then, stepping so smoothly that a full glass of water placed on his head would not have spilled, he pressed on the soundlessly opening door and, indicating with his whole being respect for the place he was entering, disappeared behind it.

During this interval, Dolgorukii opened his brief case and checked the papers inside it.

Chernyshev himself, frowning, paced back and forth stretching his legs and remembering everything that he needed to report to the emperor. Chernyshev was right beside the door when it opened again and through it came once again, even more resplendent and solicitous than before, the aide-de-camp, who with a gesture invited the minister and his assistant into see the emperor.

After a terrible fire, the Winter Palace had long ago been reconstructed, but Nicholas was still living on its upper floor. The study, in which he received reports from ministers and other high officials, was a very tall room with four huge windows. A large portrait of Emperor Alexander I was hanging on the main wall. Two desks stood between the windows. Along the walls there were several chairs, in the middle of the room an enormous writing table, by the table Nicholas’s armchair and chairs for those he was receiving.

Behind the writing table Nicholas sat in a black frock coat without epaulettes, clad in narrow suspenders, his massive torso thrown back in the chair, his skin distended over his considerable paunch, his lifeless, immobile eyes studying everyone who entered. His long, white face—with its enormous receding fore-head showing itself from beneath tufts of hair artfully smoothed forward and joined with his wig to cover the bald spot—was today especially cold and immobile. His eyes, always lackluster, looked even more lackluster than usual, his compressed lips visible beneath his upturned mustache, his fat oily cheeks, set off by a high collar and freshly shaved without touching his symmetrical, baby-sausage-shaped sideburns, his fat chin squeezed down toward the collar—gave his face an expression of dissatisfaction, and even anger. The cause of his bad mood was fatigue. The cause of the fatigue was that, the night before, he had been at a masquerade ball where, as he strolled the floor in his horseguard’s uniform and feathered helmet among the public that first crowded up to him, then timidly made way for his massive, self-assured figure, he had again encountered a masked woman, who at the previous masquerade had aroused his aging desires by the whiteness of her skin, her marvelous figure, and her tender voice, and who had promised to meet him again at the next masquerade. At last night’s masquerade she had come up to him, and this time he had not let her go. He had taken her to the special loge kept ready so that he might be alone with his lady. Going silently up to the door of the loge, Nicholas looked around, seeking to catch his orderly’s attention, but the orderly was nowhere to be seen. Nicholas frowned, then he himself pushed open the door of the loge, letting the lady enter in front of him.

“Il y a quelqu’un!” [“There’s someone here!”] she said, stopping. The loge was in fact occupied: on a small velvet couch sitting side by side were a cavalry officer and a rather young, rather pretty, fair-skinned, curly-haired woman in a hooded cape with her mask off. Seeing the angry figure of Nicholas drawn up to his full height, the white-skinned woman hurriedly covered her face with her mask. The cavalry officer himself, struck dumb with horror, stared fixedly at Nicholas without getting off the couch.

No matter how accustomed he was to the terror he inspired in people, that terror was still pleasant to Nicholas, and he liked sometimes to impress those he had terrified by addressing them in gentle words. That is what he did on this occasion.

“Well, brother, since you are younger than me,” he said to the officer, who was rigid with fear, “you can yield your spot to me.”

The officer jumped up and, blanching and blushing at the same time, bowed and scraped his way silently out of the loge with his young woman, so that Nicholas was left alone with his lady

The masked woman turned out to be an attractive, twenty-year-old, innocent girl, the daughter of a Swedish governess. This girl told Nicholas how, already as a young child, she had fallen in love with him from his portraits, how she had adored him and had decided to get his attention, no matter what it took. Well, now she had gotten it, and, as she said, she did not need anything more. The young maiden was then taken to the place where Nicholas usually had his rendezvous with women, and Nicholas spent more than an hour with her.

When he had returned to his room that night and had lain down on the hard, narrow bed of which he was so proud and had covered himself with the cloak that he regarded (and even publicly described) as being as famous as Napoleon’s hat, he couldn’t sleep for a long time. He would visualize the frightened and rapturous expression on the white face of the young maiden, he would contemplate the full, powerful shoulders of his long-time lover Nelidova, then he would compare the one with the other. That such dissipation on the part of a married man is morally wrong never entered his mind; indeed, he would have been very surprised had anyone condemned him for it. Even though he was sure that he had comported himself properly, a certain moral uneasiness remained; to stifle that uneasiness he turned to an idea that never failed to calm his nerves: the idea of his own greatness.

Although he had gone to bed late, he rose, as always, at 8.00 and, having performed his morning toilet, having rubbed down with ice his large, well-fed body, and having prayed to God (he recited the same prayers he had been saying since childhood—the Hail Mary, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer—without attributing any significance whatsoever to the words he was uttering), he exited the palace through a small portico emerging onto the embankment. He was wearing an overcoat and military hat. In the middle of the embankment he ran into a student who was just as tall as he was and who wore the full uniform and hat of the School of Jurisprudence. Recognizing the uniform of that school, which he disliked for its freethinking ways, Nicholas Pavlovich frowned, but the height and the painstaking nature of the student’s coming-to-attention and the exaggeratedly extended elbow of his salute softened the emperor’s displeasure.

“Your family name?” he asked.

“Polosatov, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Good man!”

The student still stood with his hand raised to his hat in salute. Nicholas stopped.

“Lad, do you want to enter the army?’

“By no means, your Imperial Majesty.”

“Moron!” With that, turning on his heels, Nicholas walked on, exclaiming loudly the first words that came to him, “Koperwein, Koperwein.” Several times he repeated the name of yesterday’s young maiden. “Foul, foul.” He was not thinking about what he was saying, but he managed to master his emotions by suddenly paying attention to the words he was muttering. “Yes, what would Russia be without me?” he asked himself. Then, sensing the return of his dissatisfaction, he asked again: “Yes, not just Russia alone, but Europe too, what would they be without me?” He then remembered his brother-in-law, the Prussian king, and on recalling the king’s weakness and stupidity, shook his head.

Walking back toward the portico, he caught sight of Elena Pavlovna’s carriage, which with its red-liveried footman was approaching the Saltykov entrance. Elena Pavlovna was to him the personification of those empty people who render judgments not only about the sciences and poetry but also about politics, in the mistaken belief that they might be able to govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, could govern them. He knew that, no matter how many times he had suppressed these people, they had resurfaced. Then he remembered his recently deceased brother Mikhail Pavlovich. A feeling of depression and sadness enveloped him again. He frowned darkly and again began to whisper the first words that came to him. He stopped whispering only when he had entered the palace. On entering his rooms, he looked into the mirror, smoothed down his sideburns and the hair over his temples and set his wig over his bald spot; he then curled the ends of his mustache and went directly into his study, where briefings were delivered.

First, he received Chernyshev. Chernyshev immediately understood from the emperor’s face and especially from his eyes that the tsar was particularly out of sorts today and, knowing about the previous evening’s liaison, understood whence came that mood. Having coldly greeted Chernyshev and invited him to be seated, Nicholas fixed his lifeless eyes upon the minister.

The first point in Chernyshev’s briefing was a case of theft by army quartermasters; next was the issue of re-deploying troops on the Prussian border; next was the selection of several people who had been nominated to receive service awards at New Year but who had been passed over on the original list; next came Vorontsov’s report on Hadji Murat; and finally there was the unpleasant case of a student from the medical academy who had tried to kill a professor.

Silently pursing his lips, Nicholas ran his large white hands, one bearing a wedding band on the fourth finger, over a stack of papers, and he listened to the report on the theft without ever dropping his eyes from Chernyshev’s forehead and the tuft of hair above it.

Nicholas was certain that everyone steals. He knew that he would have to punish the quartermasters and had decided to send them all to serve in the ranks, yet he also knew that this punishment would not hinder those who would replace the cashiered officers from doing the same thing. It was the very nature of officials to steal, his duty was to punish them, and, no matter how fed up with it he was, he conscientiously did his duty.

“Apparently, there is only one honest man in Russia,” he said.

Chernyshev immediately grasped that this single honest man in Russia was Nicholas himself, so he smiled approvingly.

“It must be so, Your Majesty,” he said.

“Leave it; I’ll write down my decision later,” Nicholas said, taking the paper and placing it on the left side of the table. Next, Chernyshev began to report on the awards and the troop relocation. Nicholas read through the list, crossed out several names, then tersely and decisively he gave orders to move two divisions toward the Prussian border.

In no way could Nicholas forgive the king of Prussia for granting a constitution during the period after 1848 and, therefore, while conveying to his brother-in-law the most amicable feelings in letters and in conversations, he deemed it essential to station troops on the Prussian border just in case. These troops might be needed to defend the throne of his brother-in-law, should there be popular unrest in Prussia (Nicholas saw everywhere an inclination to revolt), just as he had used troops to defend Austria against the Hungarians. Besides, these troops on the border were needed to lend more weight and significance to advice he offered the Prussian king.

“Yes, what would have happened with Russia by now, if not for me,” he thought again.

“Well, what else?”

“A courier from the Caucasus,” Chernyshev said, and he began to summarize Vorontsov’s despatch about Hadji Murat’s surrender.

“There, see!” Nicholas said. “A good start.”

“Obviously, the plan put together by Your Majesty is beginning to bear fruit,” said Chernyshev. Such praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to Nicholas, because, even though he had boasted publicly of his strategic acumen, in the depths of his soul he had always known he had none. So now he wanted to hear in greater detail this praise.

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that if we had long ago adopted Your Majesty’s plan of gradually, painstakingly, moving forward, cutting down the forests and destroying the enemy’s reserves, the Caucasus would long ago have been subjugated. Hadji Murat’s defection I attribute solely to your plan. He understood that they can no longer hold out.”

“True,” Nicholas said.

Even though the plan of slow encroachment into enemy territory by felling forests and destroying food supplies was the brain child of Ermolov and Vel’iaminov, a plan diametrically opposed to Nicholas’s own, which had aimed simultaneously to capture Shamil’s stronghold and to extirpate that nest of bandits and which had been implemented in the 1845 Dargo campaign that had cost so many lives, nonetheless Nicholas still regarded himself as originator of the plan of slow movement, systematic felling of woods, and destruction of food supplies. Perhaps if Nicholas meant to claim credit for the plan of slow movement, felling of forests, and destruction of food supplies, he should have hidden his role in the completely contradictory military operation of ‘45. Yet he made no effort to hide that role, choosing to pride himself on the plan for the 1845 expedition as well as on the plan of slow movement forward, even though these plans plainly contradicted each other. His entourage’s flattery—constant, brazen, and flying in the face of all empirical evidence—had led him to the point where he no longer saw his own contradictions, where he made no effort to match his words and deeds to reality, to logic or even to simple common sense, but was completely sure that all his orders, no matter how senseless, unfair and inconsistent, became sensible, fair, and consistent simply because he had issued them.

An example was his decision concerning the student from the Medical-Surgical Academy, the subject of the next report after the one on the Caucasus.

The facts were the following: a young medical student, having twice failed an exam, took it a third time, and, when the examiner again failed him, the neurotic student, perceiving in this an injustice, grabbed from the table a penknife and, in an apparent fit of frenzy, threw himself on the professor and inflicted on him several trifling wounds.

“What’s his family name?” asked Nicholas.

“Brzezowski.”

“A Pole?”

“Of Polish descent and a Catholic,” Chernyshev answered.

Nicholas frowned.

He had done much harm to the Poles. To justify that harm, he had to be certain that all Poles were worthless villains. Nicholas deemed them such, and he hated them in direct proportion to the harm he had done them.

“Wait a moment,” he said and, closing his eyes, lowered his head.

Having heard this expression more than once from Nicholas, Chernyshev knew that, when the emperor had to decide some kind of important question, all he had to do was to concentrate for a few moments and an inspiration would come to him, a suitable decision would take shape of its own accord, as if some inner voice was whispering to him what to do. Nicholas took the report and at the bottom of it wrote in his large handwriting:

“He deserves the death penalty. But, thank God, we don’t have the death penalty in Russia. And it is not for me to introduce it. Make him run twelve times a gauntlet of a thousand men… Nicholas.” He signed with his unnaturally large flourish.

Nicholas knew that twelve thousand blows of the rod were not only certain, excruciating death but also cruel and unusual punishment, since five thousand blows would suffice to kill the strongest of men. He enjoyed being implacably cruel but still found it pleasant to imagine that we have no death penalty in Russia.

Having signed his decision concerning the student, he pushed it across the table to Chernyshev. “Here,” he said. “Read it.”

Chernyshev read it and, to betoken respectful awe over the decision’s wisdom, he bowed his head.

“And bring all the students onto the parade ground to be present at the execution,” added Nicholas.

“It will do them good. I shall exterminate this revolutionary spirit, extirpate it by the roots,” he thought.

“I hear and obey,” Chernyshev said and, pausing a bit and adjusting his wig, he returned to the report on the Caucusus.

“What orders do you wish me to convey to Mikhail Semyonovich?”

“Adhere strictly to my system of destroying villages, of wiping out food supplies in Chechnia, and of harassing them with raids,” said Nicholas.

“And Hadji Murat? What are your orders concerning him?” asked Chernyshev.

“Well, Vorontsov writes that he wants to make use of him in the Caucasus.”

“Isn’t that risky?” Chernyshev said, avoiding Nicholas’s gaze. “Mikhail Semyonovich is, I fear, too trusting.”

“What do you think, then?” Nicholas asked sharply, having taken note of Chernyshev’s intention to put Vorontsov’s decision in an unfavorable light.

“Well, I would have thought it safer to send him to central Russia.”

“You would have thought,” Nicholas said sarcastically. “Well, I don’t think so. I agree with Vorontsov. Inform him.”

“I hear and obey,” said Chernyshev and, having risen to his feet, the minister started to take his leave.

Also taking his leave was Dolgorukii, who during the briefing had said only a few words in response to questions from Nicholas about the redeployment of troops to the Prussian border.

After Chernyshev Nicholas received Bibikov, the governor-general of the Western district, who had come for instructions before returning to his post. Approving the measures Bibikov had already taken against rebellious peasants who had refused to convert to Orthodoxy, Nicholas ordered him to try in military courts all those who had disobeyed. This would mean sentencing peasants to run the gauntlet. In addition, the emperor ordered Bibikov to conscript into the army a newspaper editor who had disclosed the news that several thousand state peasants would soon be reclassified as crown peasants.

“I do this, because I regard it as necessary,” the emperor said. “I shall not permit any public discussion of it.”

Bibikov understood the profound cruelty of the decision affecting the Uniate peasants and the deep injustice in transferring state peasants, the country’s only free men and women, to the status of crown peasants—that is, making them into serfs of the royal family Yet he could not bring himself to object. To refuse an order from Nicholas would be to forfeit the brilliant position that had taken him forty years to acquire and that he now so much enjoyed. So Bibikov humbly bowed his dark, graying head to signify his submission and willingness to carry out His Majesty’s cruel, senseless, and dishonorable will.

After dismissing Bibikov, Nicholas rose to his feet feeling well satisfied over having done his duty, then glanced at his watch and went to change into his parade uniform. Having put on the uniform replete with epaulettes, medals, and a ribbon, he walked into the reception hall where more than a hundred people—men in uniforms and women in elegant, low-cut dresses, all standing in their appointed places—tremblingly awaited his entrance. With lifeless gaze, puffedout chest, and stomach so tightly girded by a waist-sash that it bulged out above and below it, he went out to meet the expectant group and, on feeling all faces turn to him with quivering servility, he assumed an even more triumphant air. On encountering the eyes of his acquaintances, he remembered who was who, stopped and spoke to them a few words—sometimes in Russian, sometimes in French—then, as he pierced them with his cold, lifeless gaze, he listened to their responses.

Having received their congratulations, Nicholas entered the chapel.

God greeted and praised Nicholas through His clergy, just as the laity had done, and although he was sick of it, the emperor accepted these congratulations and this praise as his due. Everything was as it should be, because on him depended the welfare and happiness of the entire world, and, although he was growing weary of it, he could not deny the world his help. When, at the end of the service, the majestic, immaculately clad deacon intoned “Many Years,” and the choir with its wondrous voices warmly seized on and repeated these words, Nicholas glanced around and spied near the window his mistress Nelidova and her splendid shoulders, he resolved in her favor the comparison with last night’s young woman.

After the service, he went to the empress’s chambers and spent several minutes in the family circle, joking with his children and his wife. Then he went through the Hermitage to meet Court Minister Volkonskii, and, among other things, he instructed the minister to pay out of his special fund an annual pension to the mother of last night’s Swedish girl. Leaving Volkonskii, he departed on his customary carriage drive.

Dinner that day was in the Pompei Hall; aside from his younger sons Nikolai and Mikhail, the guests included Baron Lieven, Count Rzhevskii, Dolgorukii, the Prussian ambassador, and the aide-de-camp of the Prussian king.

While they waited for the emperor and empress to make their entrance, an interesting conversation arose between the Prussian ambassador and Baron Lieven concerning the latest disturbing news from Poland.

“La Pologne et le Caucase, ce sont les deux cautères de la Russie,” [“Poland and the Caucasus, those are Russia’s two sore spots,”] Liewen said. “Il nous faut cent milles hommes à peu près dans chacun de ces deux pays.” [“We need close to 100,000 men in each of those countries.”]

The ambassador feigned surprise that it should be so.

“Vous dites, la Pologne,” [“You say, Poland.”]

“O, oui, c’était un coup de maître de Metternich de nous en avoir laissé l’embarras.” [“Oh, yes. It was a master stroke by Metternich to have left us that problem.”].

At that point in the conversation the empress entered with her trembling head and frozen smile, and Nicholas entered behind her.

At dinner Nicholas spoke of Hadji Murat’s defection and asserted that the war in the Caucasus would soon be coming to an end as a result of his orders to hem in the mountaineers by felling trees and building a system of fortresses.

The ambassador, having glanced at and immediately broken eye contact with the Prussian aide-de-camp, with whom only that morning he had spoken about Nicholas’s unfortunate proclivity to consider himself a great strategist, now warmly applauded that plan on the ground that it proved again Nicholas’s great strategic abilities.

After dinner, Nicholas went to the ballet, where hundreds of scantily-dressed women paraded about in tights. One in particular caught his fancy, and, having summoned the ballet master, Nicholas thanked him and ordered he receive in reward a diamond ring.

The next day during Chernyshev’s briefing, Nicholas again confirmed his orders to Vorontsov that, since Hadji Murat had defected, now was the time to intensify the harassment of Chechnia and to tighten the cordon around it.

Chernyshev drafted a despatch to Vorontsov, then another military courier, riding horses into the ground and pummeling his drivers’ faces, galloped off toward Tbilisi.

XVI

In January 1852, in immediate response to Nicholas Pavlovich’s instructions, the authorities organized a raid deep into Chechnia.

The detachment detailed for the raid consisted of four infantry battalions, two companies of Cossacks, and eight cannon. The column proceeded along a road. On both sides of the column, in an unbroken chain moving first up, then down gullies, marched riflemen in high boots, sheepskin coats, and Caucasian fur hats, their rifles on their shoulders and cartridges in their bandoliers.

As always, the detachment moved through enemy territory observing strict silence. Only occasionally, as they bumped across ditches, their guns jingled, or an artillery horse, not understanding the order for silence, snorted or neighed, or an angry commander in hoarse but restrained voice shouted at his men that the line was too extended or was too close to or too far from the column. Only once was the silence broken when there bounded out of a small briar patch that fell between the line and column a white-bellied, gray-backed female goat and an identically-colored ram with small horns sweeping back toward his spine. The beautiful, startled creatures, curling their front legs up against their chests, flew in huge bounds so close by the column that several soldiers, shouting and laughing, ran after them intending to stick them with their bayonets, but the goats reversed directions, bounded back across the line, then, followed by several cavalrymen and company dogs, hurtled themselves away into the mountains.

Although it was still winter, the sun had already begun to climb higher in the sky; by noon, when the company, which had set out early in the morning, had already covered about three miles, the air had warmed up considerably, and the sun’s rays were so bright that it hurt one’s eyes to look at the steel of the bayonets or at the bright spots that suddenly flared up, like little suns, on the bronze of the cannons.

Behind the troops was the clear, rapid stream the detatchment had just crossed, ahead were tilled fields and meadows intersected by shallow gullies, even further ahead were mysterious black mountains covered with forest, while beyond the black mountains were jutting rock faces, and on the lofty horizon were eternally wondrous, eternally changing snow-capped peaks dancing in the shifting light like uncut diamonds.

Leading the Fifth Company, in a black uniform and Caucasian fur cap, with his sword slung across his shoulder marched a recent transferee from the Guards Regiment, the tall and handsome officer Butler, who at that moment was feeling acutely the joy of life but also the proximity of death, the desire for action and the consciousness of belonging to an enormous whole directed by a single will. Now going out on his second mission, Butler rejoiced to think that any minute now the enemy would open fire and that he would neither duck his head to avoid the incoming cannon-ball nor pay attention to the whistle of the bullets, but rather, as he had previously done, would raise his head higher and with a smile in his eyes would glance around at his fellow officers and soldiers and would start talking about something unrelated.

The detachment had turned off the good road onto a little-used path running through a field of corn stubble, then began to approach a wood when, from whence it could not be determined, an ominously whistling cannon-ball flew past and landed near the middle of the wagon train, next to the road in the corn field, its detonation showering him with dirt.

“It’s starting,” Butler said to his fellow officers, smiling happily.

And sure enough, right after the cannon shot, there appeared from the forest a thick crowd of mounted Chechens with colors unfurled. In the middle of the group there was a large green banner, and the old sergeant-major of the company, who had very good eyes, informed the near-sighted Butler that this must be Shamil himself. The party rode down the hill, appeared on the high bank of the nearest gully on the right, then began to descend into the gully. A little general clad in a warm, black uniform and wearing a white high-peaked Caucasian fur cap rode on his ambler toward Butler’s company and ordered him to move to the right against the descending cavalry. Butler quickly led his company in the direction ordered, but he had not managed to reach the gully before he heard two cannon shots, one after the other, behind him. He looked around: two clouds of blue-gray smoke rose over two guns and drifted along the small gully. The Chechen horsemen, evidently not expecting artillery fire, rode back up the hill. Butler’s company opened fire on and gave chase to the mountaineers; meanwhile, the entire hollow was hidden in gun smoke. Only above the hollow could it be seen how the mountaineers hastily retreated, firing back at the pursuing Cossacks. The detachment continued to pursue the mountaineers, and on reaching the high bank of the second gully an awul opened up before them.

Butler and his company entered the awul on the run, following the Cossack cavalry. None of the inhabitants were there. The soldiers were ordered to burn the grain, the hay, and the saklyas. Acrid smoke spread across the entire awul, and through this smoke soldiers darted about, dragging from the saklyas whatever they found inside; mainly, they caught and shot chickens that the mountaineers had not managed to carry away. The officers sat at a distance from the smoke, ate breakfast and had a drink. The sergeant-major brought them a board laden with several honeycombs. There was no sign of the Chechens. A little after noon the order was given to move out. Outside the awul the company formed up in a column, and Butler took his assigned place in the rear guard. As soon as they set out, some Chechens appeared and, moving behind the detachment, they escorted it down the mountain with rifle shots.

When the detachment came out onto a clearing, the mountaineers fell back. None of Butler’s men had been wounded, so he returned in the happiest, brightest frame of mind.

When the detachment, having forded the little stream it had crossed in the morning, had spread itself out over the corn fields and meadows, the company singers came forward and songs rang out. There was no wind, the air was fresh, clean and so transparent that the snow-capped mountains standing hundreds of miles away seemed quite close, and, when the singers fell silent between songs, the regular tramp of feet and the rattle of weapons sounded like a background against which the songs sprang up and died down. The song they sang in Butler’s Fifth Company had been composed by a cadet in the regiment’s honor and was sung to a dance tune with the refrain “Better by far, better by far, the marksmen are! The marksmen are!”

Butler was riding alongside his immediate commander, Major Petrov, with whom he shared quarters, and he couldn’t help but rejoice over his decision to leave the guards and come to the Caucasus. The main reason for his transfer from the guards was that he had lost so much at cards in Petersburg that he had nothing left. He was afraid that, if he stayed in the guards, he would be unable to resist gambling, yet he had no more money left to lose. Now all that was behind him; there was a different life after all, one both fine and dashing. He now forgot both his ruin and his unpaid debts. And the Caucasus, the war, the soldiers, the officers, the drunken, but good-hearted and brave Major Petrov—all seemed to him so fine that sometimes he could not bring himself to believe that he was not in Petersburg, not in a smoke-filled room thumbing cards and laying bets, hating the banker and feeling an oppressive ache in his head, but here in this marvelous country, among these brave Caucasians.

“Better by far, better by far, the marksmen are! The marksmen are!” the singers chimed. His horse stepped a happy pace to the music. The company’s shaggy, gray dog Trezorka, swaggering like an officer, with tail tucked tight and a preoccupied air ran in front of Butler’s company Butler’s spirit was invigorated, calm, and cheerful. To him war represented only the opportunity to subject himself to danger, to the possibility of death and, by doing so, the chance to earn awards and the respect of his Caucasian comrades and his Russian friends. The other side of war—the killing and maiming of soldiers, of officers, of mountaineers—strangely never entered his imagination. In order to preserve his poetic image of war, he had never, even accidentally, looked at dead or wounded men. So it was now: we had sustained three dead and twelve wounded. He passed by a corpse lying on its back, and only out of the corner of one eye did he spy the somehow contorted position of the waxy arm and the dark red spot in the head, but he did not stop to examine the body more carefully. He regarded the mountaineers only as dashing horsemen against whom he had to defend himself.

“This’s how to live, old man,” said the major during a pause in the singing. “It’s not like you live in Piter: ‘Dress, right dress!’ ‘Dress, left dress!’ Here we’ve done a little work, then we’re home. Mashurka will serve us some pirogis now, and good cabbage soup. Real life! Isn’t it? You bet!” Then he called for his favorite tune, “As the Sun Was Rising.”

The major lived as man and wife with a paramedic’s daughter, at first known as Mashka, but later as Mar’ia Dmitrievna. Mar’ia Dmitrievna was a beautiful, fair-haired, freckle-covered, thirty-year-old, childless woman. Whatever her past had been, she was now the major’s faithful companion, looking after him like a nanny, and the major needed her care since he often drank himself unconscious.

When they arrived at the fort, everything was as the major had foreseen. Mar’ia Dmitrievna fed her tasty, satisfying dishes to him, Butler, and two other officers he invited from the detachment, and the major ate and drank till he couldn’t talk, then went to his room to sleep. Butler, also tired, but feeling contented and a bit too full of the chikhir wine, went to his little room and had scarcely managed to get undressed before, palm under his handsome, curly head, he fell into a deep sleep, dreamless and untroubled.

XVII

The awul destroyed in the raid was the same one in which Hadji Murat had spent the night before defecting to the Russians.

Sado, at whose house Hadji Murat had stayed, had gone with his family into the hills as the Russians approached the awul. Returning to the awul, Sado found his saklya in ruins: the roof had caved in, the door and the posts supporting the balcony had been burned, the interior had been fouled. His son, that same handsome sparkling-eyed boy who had gazed so reverently at Hadji Murat, had been carried dead to the mosque on a cloak-covered horse. He had been run through by a bayonet in the back. The fine-looking woman who had waited on Hadji Murat during his visit, now in torn blouse ripped open at the front and revealing her old sagging breasts, her hair wildly disheveled, stood over her son scratching her face till it bled and wailing ceaselessly. Sado and some relatives took pick and shovel to dig a grave for his son. Old grandfather sat on the saklya’s collapsed wall sharpening a stick and staring vacantly straight ahead. He had just returned from his beehives. Two stacks of hay there had been burned; the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and nursed had been broken and set to the torch; most importantly, all the hives and their bees had also been burned. The wail of women could be heard in all the houses and in the square, where two more bodies had been deposited. Little children howled along with their mothers. Howling too were the hungry cattle, to whom there was nothing to give. The older children were not playing; instead they looked with frightened eyes at their elders.

The soldiers had fouled the fountain, obviously deliberately, so that water could not be taken from it. The mosque had also been defiled in the same way, so the mullah and his young pupils were cleaning it. The old men who were heads of household gathered on the square and, squatting down, discussed their situation. About hating the Russians no one said even a single word. The feeling gripping every Chechen from the youngest to the oldest was stronger than hatred. The feeling was not hatred but a refusal to recognize these Russian dogs as human beings, a feeling of such revulsion, disgust, and incomprehension in the face of these creatures’ senseless cruelty that the desire to exterminate them, like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, and wolves, was just as natural a feeling as the instinct for self-preservation.

The inhabitants had a choice: to stay there and restore by dint of terrible effort all that had been built up by great labor and that had been so easily and senselessly destroyed, meanwhile expecting at any minute a repetition of the same destruction, or, contrary to the laws of their religion and to their sense of revulsion toward and suspicion of the Russians, to submit to their adversaries. After praying, the elders unanimously agreed to send Shamil a messenger asking for his help, then they immediately set about rebuilding the destroyed village.

XVIII

Not early in the morning on the third day after the raid, Butler went out the back porch onto the street, intending to go for a walk and get some fresh air before taking the breakfast tea he usually had with Petrov. The sun had come out from behind the mountains, so it hurt to look at the brightly illuminated white adobe walls on the right side of the street, but, as always, it cheered and relaxed him to look left at the forest-covered black mountains receding into the distance and growing ever taller as they did so, and to look across the ravine at the opaque chain of snow-covered peaks that now, as always, strove to assume the guise of clouds.

Butler looked at these mountains, filled his lungs with air, and rejoiced that he was alive and alive in this beautiful place. In addition, he rejoiced that he had conducted himself so impeccably yesterday both during the assault and especially during the retreat when things were a bit hot; he also rejoiced on remembering how yesterday, on their return from the expedition, Masha, rather Mar’ia Dmitrievna, Petrov’s mistress, had fussed over everyone and had treated everyone so simply and sweetly but had been, he thought, especially affectionate toward him. Mar’ia Dmietrievna with her thick braid of hair, her wide shoulders, her high bosom and with the radiant smile on her kind, freckled-covered face magnetically attracted the strong, young single male in Butler, and it even seemed to him that she desired him. But he supposed that reciprocating that desire would offend his kind, simple-hearted comrade at arms, so he observed with Mar’ia Dmitrievna the simplest, most respectful relations and was pleased with himself for doing so. At the moment this feeling of self-satisfaction was what occupied him.

He was distracted from these thoughts by many horses’ hooves rapidly clattering on the road in front of him, the clatter suggesting that several men were approaching at a gallop. He raised his head and spied at street’s end an approaching group of horsemen. In front of twenty or so Cossacks rode two men: one in a white Circassian coat and high Circassian hat with a turban; the other an officer in the Russian forces, dark, hook-nosed, clad in blue uniform with an abundance of silver on his clothes and weapons. Under the rider in the turban was a handsome, chestnut paint horse with a small head and beautiful eyes; under the officer was a tall, dandified Karabakh horse. Butler, a horse-lover, immediately appreciated the vigorous strength of the first horse and stopped to find out who these people were. The officer spoke to Butler.

“This commanding officer home?” he asked, betraying by ungrammatical speech and accent his non-Russian origins, and gesturing with his whip toward Ivan Matveevich’s house.

“The very one,” Butler said.

“And who is that?” Butler asked, coming closer to the officer and indicating with his eyes the man in the turban.

“Hadji Murat that. Here came, here guest will be at military commander,” the officer said.

Butler knew about Hadji Murat and about his defection to the Russians, but he had never expected to see him here, in this tiny fort.

Hadji Murat looked at him amiably.

“Greetings, koshkol’dy,” Butler said, repeating a Tatar greeting he had learned.

“Saubul,” Hadji Murat answered, nodding his head. He rode up to Butler and offered his hand, whip dangling from two fingers.

“Commander?” he asked.

“No, the commander’s in there. I’ll go call him,” Butler said, addressing the officer, then mounting the porch and pushing on the door.

But the door of the “parade entrance,” as Mar’ia Dmitrievna called it, was locked. Butler knocked, but, not getting an answer, he went around to the other side. Having called his orderly and having received no answer and not finding either of the other two orderlies, he went into the kitchen. Mar’ia Dmitrievna, hair wrapped up in a scarf, face flushed, sleeves rolled up on her plump white arms, was slicing rolled-out dough that was just as white as her arms, into small pieces for pirogis.

“Where’ve the orderlies gone?” Butler asked.

“Gone to get drunk,” Mar’ia Dmitrievna said. “What’s it to you?”

“Unlock the door; you’ve got a whole crowd of mountaineers at the door. Hadji Murat’s here.”

“Tell me another fib,” Mar’ia Dmitrievna said, smiling.

“I’m not kidding, it’s the truth. They’re by the porch.”

“You’re joking, right?” said Mar’ia Dmitrievna.

“Why would I make it up? Go look for yourself, they’re by the porch.”

“Well, that’s something!” said Mar’ia Dmitrievna, rolling down her sleeves and fumbling for the hairpin in her thick plait. “I’ll go wake up Ivan Matveevich,” she said.

“No, I’ll go,” Butler said. “Hey Bondarenko, go unlatch the door.”

“Fine by me,” said Mar’ia Dmitrievna, returning to her work.

Having been informed that Hadji Murat was on the way to the fort and having heard earlier that Hadji Murat had come as far as Groznyi, Ivan Matveevich was not at all surprised to learn of the arrival, so, propping himself up a bit, he rolled a cigarette, lit up, then started to dress, hacking loudly and grumbling at his superiors for sending him “this devil.” After he had finished dressing, he demanded some “medicine” from his orderly. The orderly, knowing that “medicine” meant “vodka,” gave him a drink.

“There’s nothing worse than mixing,” Ivan Matveevich muttered, drinking down the vodka and then chewing some black bread. “Yesterday I drank some chikhir, so my head aches. Okay, ready now,” he stood up and entered the sitting-room into which Butler had already shown Hadji Murat and the officer escort.

The officer accompanying Hadji Murat conveyed to Ivan Matveevich the left flank commander’s orders to accommodate Hadji Murat and, while permitting him to have contact with the mountaineers through envoys, to prohibit him from leaving the fort without an escort of Cossacks.

Having read the written order, Ivan Matveevich stared intently at Hadji Murat and then thoroughly studied the order again. After several times moving his glance from the papers to Hadji Murat and back, he finally rested his eyes on Hadji Murat and said, “Iakshi, bek, iakshi. Let him stay here. Tell him I have orders not to let him out alone. Orders are holy writ. So we’ll put him—what do you think, Butler?—We’ll put him up in the office?”

Butler did not manage to answer before Mar’ia Dmitrievna, coming in from the kitchen and standing in the doorway, said to Ivan Matveevich:

“Why there? Put him up here. We’ll give him the kunak room and pantry, too. That way we can keep our eyes on him,” she said, and having glanced at Hadji Murat and caught his eyes, she quickly looked away.

“Know what? Maybe Mar’ia Dmitrievna is right,” Butler said.

“You crazy? Leave the woman out of it!” Ivan Matveevich said, frowning.

During the entire conversation Hadji Murat sat still, hand tucked behind the handle of his dagger, a faintly contemptuous smile on his face. He said he didn’t care where he lived. The only thing he needed was what the Sardar had promised—that he be in contact with the mountaineers, so he insisted they be allowed to visit him. Ivan Matveevich said it would be done, then asked Butler to entertain the guest while they brought him something to eat and prepared his rooms; he himself would go to the office to fill out the necessary papers and to issue the necessary orders.

Hadji Murat’s relations with his new acquaintances immediately took very clear shape. From the first, Hadji Murat felt disgust and contempt for Ivan Matveevich and always behaved haughtily toward him. To Mar’ia Dmitrievna, who prepared and brought his food to him, he took a special liking. Her liked her for her simplicity, for what to him was her exotic foreign beauty, and for her attraction to him, which she unconsciously transmitted to him. He tried not to look at her, not to speak to her, but his eyes involuntarily turned toward her and followed her movements.

With Butler himself, Hadji Murat became friendly from their very first meeting; he willingly chatted with him a great deal, asking him about his life and relating his own story reporting to him the news that his messengers brought concerning his family, and even asking Butler’s advice about what he should do.

The news the messengers brought him was not good. In the course of the four days he spent in the fort, the messengers came to him twice, and both times the news was bad.

XIX

Soon after his desertion to the Russians, Hadji Murat’s family was taken to the awul of Vedeno and detained there to await Shamil’s decision. The women—his aged mother Patimat, his two wives—in addition to their five little children, lived under guard in the saklya of headman Ibrahim Rashid. Hadji Murat’s son, eighteen-year-old Yusuf, had been placed in a “dungeon”—that is, in a pit more than seven feet deep, along with four criminals who were also awaiting a decision on their fates.

No decision had been forthcoming because Shamil had been away. He was on campaign against the Russians.

On January 6, 1852 Shamil was returning home to Vedeno after a battle with the Russians in which, according to the Russians, he had been defeated and forced to flee to Vedeno but in which, according to Shamil and all his murids, he had achieved victory and had routed the Russians. In this battle, he himself fired his rifle, which rarely occurred, and, snatching out his sword, would have launched his horse straight at the Russians but had been restrained from doing so by his accompanying murids. Two of them were killed right next to Shamil.

It was midday when Shamil approached his residence surrounded by a party of murids who caracoled around him, fired their rifles and pistols and sang out ceaselessly “La ilaha illa Allah!” [‘There is no god but God!”]

The entire population of the large awul of Vedeno stood in front of their houses and on the roofs to greet their master, and, in a sign of triumphant celebration, they fired a salute from their guns and pistols. Shamil rode a white Arab steed that pulled happily at the reins as it neared home. The horse had the plainest of gear without gold or silver ornamentation: a finely-worked red bridle with a stripe down the middle; metallic, cup-shaped stirrups; a red blanket that was visible from under the saddle. The imam wore a full-length sheep-skin coat covered on the outside with brown cloth and with black fur fringes showing at the collar and at the sleeves; meanwhile, stretched across his long, thin torso was a black leather halter holding a dagger. On his head he wore a tall Circassian fur cap, flat on the top with a black tassel; around his head was a white turban the end of which hung down his neck. He wore green leather slippers on his feet, and his calves were wrapped in black leggings, edged with plain braid.

In fact, the imam wore nothing glittering, no gold nor silver, yet his tall, ramrod-straight, powerful, simply-clothed figure, surrounded by murids whose clothes and weapons were festooned with gold and silver decorations, conveyed the very aura of majesty that he so desired to foster and that he had contrived to purvey among the people. His cement-colored face, set off by the red close-cropped beard and bordering the beady constantly-squinting eyes, was completely motionless, as if made of stone. As he rode through the awul, he felt thousands of eyes fixed on him, but his own eyes never rested on any man. Hadji Murat’s wives and children, like all the other residents of his saklya, went out onto the balcony to watch the imam’s arrival. Only the aged Patimat, Hadji Murat’s mother, did not go out but remained sitting on the floor of the saklya, her gray hair loosened and unkept, her long arms clasping her thin knees, her fiery black eyes blinking as she stared at the smoldering branches in the fireplace. Like her son, she had always hated Shamil; now even more than formerly, so she had no desire to see him.

Nor did Hadji Murat’s son witness Shamil’s triumphant entrance. From his dark, fetid pit all he could do was listen to the shots and to the singing, so he suffered as only a vital young man deprived of freedom can suffer. Sitting in the stinking pit and seeing the familiar faces of his unfortunate, dirty, emaciated fellow prisoners who mostly hated one another, he passionately envied those murids who, enjoying fresh air, light, and freedom, caracoled on dashing mounts around the leader, firing their weapons and happily singing “La ilaha illa Allah.”

Having passed through the awul, Shamil entered a large courtyard that communicated with the inner courtyard where his seraglio was located. Two armed Lezgians greeted Shamil at the first courtyard’s open gates. The courtyard was packed with people. Here were people who had come on business from distant places; here were petitioners; here, too, were those summoned by Shamil himself for trial and sentencing. As Shamil entered on horseback, everyone in the courtyard stood and respectfully greeted the imam, placing their hands to their breasts. Some knelt down and stayed on their knees the whole time that Shamil was crossing the courtyard from the outer gates to the inner ones. Although Shamil recognized among those waiting both many people he disliked and many boring petitioners who would demand his attention to their concerns, he rode past them with the same, stony expression, and, after entering the inner gates, he dismounted near the balcony of his residence, to the left of the gates.

After the tension of the campaign, which was taxing not so much physically as emotionally since Shamil, in spite of his public claim that the campaign had brought victory knew well that the expedition had been a failure, that many Chechen awuls had been burned and destroyed, that this fickle, superficial people, the Chechens, were wavering, and that some of them, closest to the Russian-held territory, were on the verge of defecting to the Russians—all of which was depressing and would require counter-measures, Shamil felt momentarily that he wished neither to do nor to think about anything. He wanted only one thing now: relaxation and delight in the conubial caresses of his favorite wife, the eighteen-year-old, dark-eyed, quick-footed Christian, Aminet.

But it was not only impossible even to think about seeing Aminet, who was just on the other side of the fence running through the inner courtyard and separating the wives’ quarters from the men’s areas (Shamil was sure that even now, as he got down from his horse, Aminet and the other wives were watching through a chink in the fence), not only could he not go to her, he could not even lie down on a mattress and rest from his labors. He would first have to perform the midday prayer ritual, something he had not the slightest inclination to do now, but that was inconceivable not to perform, given his role as his people’s religious leader, and that for Shamil himself had become as essential as his daily bread. So he completed his ablutions and prayers. After having finished his prayers, he summoned those who had awaited him.

The first to come to him was his father-in-law and teacher, a tall, gray-haired, immaculate old man with a beard white as snow and a flushed red face, Jamal Edin, who, after praying quickly, started to question Shamil about the events of the campaign and to report to him what had transpired in the mountains during his absence.

Among all kinds of matters—murders prompted by bloodfeuds, thefts of livestock, accusations of failure to observe the sharia’s prohibitions against smoking and drinking alcohol—Jamal Edin reported that Hadji Murat had despatched men to carry off his family to the Russians, but that this plot had been exposed and the family brought to Vedeno where its members now lived under guard, awaiting the imam’s decision. In the adjoining guest room the elders had been assembled to discuss all these matters; Jamal Edin advised Shamil to dismiss them that same day, since they had already been waiting for him for three days.

After he had eaten the dinner brought to him by Zaidet, a sharp-nosed, dark-complexioned, unpleasant-looking woman whom he did not love yet was his first wife, he walked into the guest room.

Six men comprising his council stood to greet him: elders with grizzled gray and red beards, some heads in turbans and some not but all surmounted by high Circassian fur caps, torsos clad in new beshmets and Circassian coats girded by leather belts holding daggers. Shamil was a head taller than the others. Just as he did, they all raised their hands, palms upward, and, closing their eyes, they prayed, then moved their hands down their faces to the points of their beards until their palms met. After this, they all sat down, Shamil in the middle on a higher pillow, and they began to discuss all the current business.

Cases involving those accused of crimes were decided according to the sharia: for stealing two men were condemned to having a hand severed; another was sentenced to beheading for murder; three were pardoned. Then the elders came to the main item on the agenda: consideration of measures to combat Chechen defections to the Russians. To counteract such defections, Jamal Edin had composed the following proclamation:

“I wish you the eternal peace of Almighty God. I hear that the Russians sweet-talk you and call on you to submit to them. Do not trust them; do not submit: hold out. If you are not rewarded in this life, then you will receive your reward in the next life. Remember what happened before when they confiscated your weapons. If God had not brought you to your senses then, in 1840, you would long ago have become imperial soldiers and would have been walking about with muskets instead of your daggers, and your wives would have been walking about without veils and would have been dishonored. Judge the future by the past. It is better to die in enmity with the Russians than to live with the infidels. Hold out a bit longer, then, with Quran and saber, I shall come to lead you against the Russians. Right now I sternly command you to entertain neither the intention nor even the thought of surrendering to the Russians.”

Shamil approved the proclamation and, having signed it, ordered it sent out.

After these issues had been disposed of, the case of Hadji Murat was discussed too. This matter was very important to Shamil. Although he did not want to admit it, he understood that if Hadji Murat, with all of his cunning, daring, and bravery, had been on his side, then things would not have gone the way they were going now in Chechnia. To make peace with Hadji Murat and enjoy his services again would have been good; since that was out of the question, however, Shamil could not afford to permit Hadji Murat to assist the Russians. Hence, in any case, it would be necessary to entice him back to Chechnia, and, having enticed him, to kill him. The way to kill him was either to send a man to Tbilisi who would kill him there or to entice him to Vedeno and murder him here. The bait to lure him back was his family, principally his son whom, Shamil knew, Hadji Murat passionately loved. Therefore, Shamil would have to work through the son.

When the councilors discussed this, Shamil closed his eyes and fell silent.

The councilors knew this meant that he was listening to the Prophet’s voice speaking to him and indicating what had to be done. After a solemn, five-minute silence, Shamil opened his eyes and, squinting harder than usual, said: “Bring me Hadji Murat’s son.”

“He is here,” Jamal Edin said.

And, in fact, Yusuf, Hadji Murat’s son, thin, pale, tattered, and fetid, but still handsome in face and figure, with the same fiery, black eyes as his grandmother Patimat, was already standing at the gates of the outer courtyard awaiting a summons.

Yusuf did not share his father’s feelings toward Shamil. He did not know the whole past history, or knowing it but not having lived through it, did not understand why his father so stubbornly opposed Shamil. To him who only wanted one thing—namely, the continuation of that wild and easy life that he, as the son of the naib, had lived in Khunzakh—it seemed completely unnecessary to be at odds with Shamil. As a rebuff to his father and to contradict him, he loudly praised Shamil and manifested toward him the exultant submissiveness that was widespread in the mountains. Yusuf entered the kunak room with a peculiar sense of anxious reverence for the imam and, stopping at the door, met Shamil’s unyielding, flint-eyed gaze. He hesitated several moments, then went up to Shamil and kissed his large, long-fingered white hand.

“Boy, you are Hadji Murat’s son?”

“I am, imam.”

“You know what he has done, boy?”

“I know, imam, and I regret it.”

“Can you write?”

“I studied to be a mullah.”

“Then write your father that, if he returns to me now, before Bairam, I shall pardon him and all will be as before. If not and he stays with the Russians, then,” Shamil frowned threateningly “I shall send your grandmother and your mother to different awuls; as for you, boy, I shall cut off your head.”

Not a muscle in Yusuf’s face quivered, and he bowed his head to signify that he understood Shamil’s words.

“Write it down and give it to my envoy.”

Shamil fell silent and looked at Yusuf for a long time.

“Write that I have taken pity on you and shall not kill you, but shall put out your eyes, as I do the eyes of all traitors. Go.”

Yusuf appeared calm in Shamil’s presence, but when they had led him out of the kunak room, he threw himself on his escort and, having pulled the escort’s dagger out of its sheath, tried to slit his own throat; but they grabbed him by the arms, tied him up, and carried him back to the pit.

That evening when prayers had been said and it had grown dark, Shamil donned his white full-length coat, walked behind the fence to that part of the courtyard quartering his wives, and headed for Aminet’s room. But Aminet was not there. She was with the older wives. Then Shamil, trying not to be noticed, stood by the door of her room, waiting for her. But Aminet was angry at Shamil, because he had given silken fabric not to her but to Zaidet. She had seen him come out of his quarters and enter her room in search of her, so she deliberately stayed away from her room. She stood for a long time in the doorway of Zaidet’s room and, smiling quietly, she glanced at the white figure, now entering, now exiting her room. Having waited for Aminet in vain, Shamil returned to his own room in time for midnight prayer.

XX

Hadji Murat had spent a week at the fortress in the home of Ivan Matveevich. Although Mar’ia Dmitrievna had quarreled with the hirsute Khanefi (Hadji Murat had only brought two men with him, Khanefi and Eldar) and had once shoved him out of the kitchen for which he had nearly knifed her, she obviously nurtured special feelings of respect and sympathy for Hadji Murat. She now no longer served him his meals, having handed that concern over to Eldar, but she took advantage of every opportunity to see him and to please him. She also participated in the liveliest manner in his parlays about his family; she knew how many wives he had, how many children and what their ages were; and after every visit by emissaries she quizzed everyone she could about the results of the discussions.

Butler himself became friends with Hadji Murat during that week. Sometimes Hadji Murat came to his room, sometimes he came to Hadji Murat’s. Sometimes they spoke through an interpreter, sometimes through their own devices, through hand signals and most of all through smiles. That Hadji Murat liked Butler was evident from the way Eldar treated Butler. When Butler entered Hadji Murat’s room, Eldar greeted Butler, baring his brilliant teeth in a joyous smile, hastily putting down cushions for him to sit on, and taking his sword, if he had it with him.

Butler also got to know and befriend the shaggy Khanefi, Hadji Murat’s blood-brother. Khanefi knew many mountain songs and sang them well. For Butler’s entertainment Hadji Murat would call Khanefi and order him to sing, naming those songs he considered the best. Khanefi’s voice was a high tenor, his singing was extraordinarily clear and expressive. One of the songs, a favorite of Hadji Murat’s, affected Butler with its majestically sad melody Butler asked the interpreter to relate its gist, then he copied it down.

The song dealt with a blood-feud, such as the feud that had existed at one time between Hadji Murat and Khanefi.

The song went as follows:

The earth on my grave will dry,
You will forget me, mother of mine.
Grass will overgrow my grave, father of mine,
The grass will smother your grief.
Tears will dry in your eyes, sister of mine.
Out of your heart will fly your grief.
But don’t you forget me, elder brother of mine.
Till you avenge my death.
Don’t you forget me, second brother of mine.
Till you, too, lie under earth.
Hot-blooded bullet, you bring me death.
Were you once my faithful slave in need?
You cover me over now, black earth,
Didn’t I trample you with my steed?
Cold, cold you are, death.
My faithful slave you were of nigh.
Now my body belongs to the earth,
My soul to the vaulting sky.

Hadji Murat always listened to this song with his eyes closed and, when it ended on a drawn-out, dying note, always said: “A good song, a wise song.”

The poetry of the exotic, vigorous mountain life captivated Butler more profoundly than ever after Hadji Murat’s arrival, so Butler naturally grew close to him and the murids. He started wearing beshmet, Circassian coat and leggings; he imagined himself as a mountaineer living life just as the mountaineers live it.

On the day of Hadji Murat’s departure, Ivan Matveevich gathered several officers to see him off. The officers were sitting—some at a table where Mar’ia Dmitrievna was pouring tea, others at another table with vodka, chikhir brandy and snacks—when Hadji Murat, dressed for the road and bearing arms, came limping into the room with quick, soft steps.

They all stood and shook hands with him in turn. Ivan Matveevich invited him to sit on the sofa, but Hadji Murat, thanking him, sat instead on a chair near the window. The silence that reigned during his entrance evidently did not bother him in the least. He glanced attentively at all the faces and looked indifferently at the table laden with samovar and hors d’oeuvres. Petrovskii, a lively officer who was seeing Hadji Murat for the first time, asked him through the interpreter whether he liked Tbilisi.

“Aiya!” he said.

“He says ‘yes,’” said the interpreter.

“What did he like in particular?”

Hadji Murat answered something.

“He liked the theater best of all.”

“And did he like the ball at the commander-in-chief’s?”

Hadji Murat frowned.

“Each people has its own ways. Our women do not dress like that,” he said, glancing at Mar’ia Dmitrievna.

“So, he didn’t like it?”

“We have a saying,” he said to the interpreter. “A dog fed meat to a donkey, and the donkey fed hay to the dog: both went hungry.” He smiled. “To each people its own customs are good.”

The conversation went no further. Some officers began to drink tea, others to eat hors d’oeuvres. Hadji Murat took the cup of tea offered to him and set it on the table in front of him.

“Like cream? Or a roll?” Mar’ia Dmitrievna asked, offering them to him.

Hadji Murat bowed his head.

“So, it’s good-bye!” Butler said, touching him on the knee. “When will we meet again?”

“Good-bye, good-bye!” Hadji Murat said in Russian, smiling. “Butler—kunak. Strong kunak. Time—I go!” he said, motioning with his head in the direction he had to travel.

At the doors of the room Eldar appeared, carrying something large and white across his shoulder and holding a saber in his hand. When Hadji Murat beckoned, Eldar strode with his long strides up to Hadji Murat and gave him a white burka and the saber. Hadji Murat stood up, took the burka and, draping it across his arm, gave it to Mar’ia Dmitrievna, saying something to the interpreter. The interpreter said:

“He said, ‘You praised the burka; take it’”

“Oh, but why?” Mar’ia Dmitrievna said, blushing.

“It must be so. Our custom,” said Hadji Murat.

“Well, thank you,” said Mar’ia Dmitrievna, taking the burka. “May God grant that your son be rescued,” she added. “Ulan iakshi,” [“The son is good,”] she said. “Tell him I want him to rescue his family.”

Hadji Murat looked at Mar’ia Dmitrievna and approvingly nodded his head. He then took the saber from Eldar’s hands and gave it to Ivan Matveevich. Ivan Matveevich took the saber and said to the interpreter:

“Tell him to take my brown gelding; I have nothing else to give him.”

Hadji Murat waved his hand in front of his face to indicate that he did not need anything and that he wouldn’t accept the gelding, and then, pointing first to the mountains and then toward his heart, he moved toward the exit. Everyone followed him. The officers, who stayed inside, took the saber out of its scabbard, examined the blade and decided that it was a real Gurda.

Butler walked out with Hadji Murat onto the porch. But here something happened that no one had expected and that might have ended in Hadji Murat’s death were it not for his fast reflexes, decisiveness, and agility

The common residents of the Ghumuq awul Tash-Kichu, who nurtured a deep respect for Hadji Murat and who had visited the fortress many times just to catch a glimpse of the famous naib, had sent representatives to Hadji Murat three days before his departure, inviting him to their mosque for the Friday prayer service. On learning of this invitation, the Ghumuq princes from Tash-Kichu who hated Hadji Murat and had a blood feud with him, announced to the people that they would not admit Hadji Murat into the mosque. At this, the common people grew agitated, and a pitched battle broke out between them and the princes’ supporters. The Russian authorities pacified the villagers and sent word to Hadji Murat that he could not visit the mosque. Hadji Murat did not go to the mosque, and everyone thought that that was the end of the matter.

Now, at the very moment of Hadji Murat’s departure, as he came out onto the porch and as the horses stood at the steps, there rode up to Ivan Matveevich’s home an acquaintance of Butler and Ivan Matveevich, the Ghumuq prince Arslan-Khan.

Catching sight of Hadji Murat, he snatched a pistol from his belt and pointed it at him. But before Arslan-Khan had managed to pull the trigger, Hadji Murat, despite his lameness, sprang cat-like off the porch at Arslan-Khan. Arslan-Khan fired but missed. Meanwhile, with one hand Hadji Murat had grabbed Arslan-Khan’s horse by the reins, and the other hand had drawn his dagger, shouting something at him in Tatar.

Butler and Eldar dashed up to the enemies at the very same moment and grabbed them both by the arms. At the shot Ivan Matveevich rushed out, too.

“Arslan, how dare you start this crap at my house!” he said, when he learned what had happened. “You lost your mind? Outside the fortress you two ‘re free to go at it, but at my place there’ll be no killing.”

Arslan-Khan, a small man with a black mustache, his face all pale and quivering, dismounted his horse, sent a spiteful glance at Hadji Murat, and went with Ivan Matveevich into his quarters. For his part, Hadji Murat went back to the horses, breathing heavily and smiling.

“Why’d he try to kill you?” Butler asked through the interpreter.

“He says it is our law,” the interpreter translated the words of Hadji Murat. “Arslan-Khan has to revenge himself on Hadji Murat for spilt blood. That’s why he tried to kill him.”

“And what if he overtakes him on the road?” Butler asked.

Hadji Murat smiled.

“If he kills me, that is Allah’s will. So, good-bye,” he said again in Russian and, grasping the horse by the mane, he took in with his eyes all those who were accompanying him and tenderly met the glance of Mar’ia Dmitrievna.

“Good-bye, little mother,” he said, addressing her. “Thanks.”

“God bless you and grant your family be rescued,” Mar’ia Dmitrievna repeated.

He did not understand the words, but he understood her concern for him and nodded his head in reply.

“Look, don’t forget your kunak,” Butler said.

“Tell him, I am a true friend to him. I shall never forget,” he answered through the interpreter. And, despite his crooked leg which barely touched the stirrup, he quickly and lightly raised his body into the high saddle and, having adjusted his saber and pistol with a practiced movement, he assumed that peculiar, proud military bearing characteristic of mountaineers on horseback and rode off from Ivan Matveevich’s house. Khanefi and Eldar also mounted their horses and, bidding friendly farewells to their hosts and to the officers, trotted after their murid.

As always, talk flew about the man who had just departed.

“What a man!”

“He threw himself at Arslan-Khan like a wolf. His whole face changed.”

“Yeah, but he’s a liar. A real schemer, has to be,” Petrovskii said.

“God grant us a few Russian schemers just like him,” Mar’ia Dmitrievna suddenly interrupted with annoyance. “He stayed with us for a week, and we saw nothing but good from him,” she said. “He’s polite, smart, fair.”

“How d’you know?”

“Guess I just do.”

“Fallen for him, eh?” Ivan Matveevich said as he left. “That’s the story.”

“So I fell for him. What’s it to you? Only why put down a good man. He’s a Tatar, but he’s a good man.”

“You’re right, Mar’ia Dmitrievna,” said Butler. “Good you stood up for him.”

XXI

For the inhabitants of the forward forts on the Chechen line life had returned to normal. There had been two more alarms against which the infantry companies had mustered out at a run and the militiamen had galloped out, but on neither occasion had they managed to catch the tribesmen. The mountaineers had melted away into the hills, and, once, near Vozdvizhensk the mountaineers had driven off eight Cossack horses from a watering hole and had killed a Cossack. There had been no more raids since the last one when the awul was destroyed. Action was suspended in expectation of a major expedition into Chechnia following the appointment of Prince Bariatinskii as the new commander on the left flank.

As soon as he had arrived in Groznyi, the new left flank commander Prince Bariatinskii, a friend of the heir to the throne and a former commander of the Kabardinskii Regiment, put together a detachment to continue executing the imperial strategy laid out by Chernyshev in his order to Vorontsov. Having assembled in Vozdvizhensk, the detachment departed the fortress to assume a position near that of the Kurinskii Regiment. On finding its post, the troops halted and started cutting trees.

The younger Vorontsov was quartered in a magnificent linen tent; his wife, Mar’ia Vasil’evna, visited the camp and often stayed the night. The relations between Bariatinskii and Mar’ia Vasil’evna were an open secret, so those officers and soldiers having no attachment to the court cursed her crudely because, owing to her presence in camp, they were sent out on night watches. The mountain tribesmen routinely brought up artillery and fired shells into the camp. The shots generally missed, and ordinarily the Russians took no measures against the bombardment; yet in order to stop the tribesmen from moving up guns and scaring Mar’ia Vasil’evna, soldiers were sent out on night watches. To go out on watch every night to prevent a lady being frightened was insulting and offensive, so the soldiers and officers who were not accepted into high society honored Mar’ia Vasil’evna with coarse words.

Butler came on leave from his outpost in order to visit with his classmates and regimental comrades-in-arms from the Corps of Pages who served in the Kurinskii regiment as the commander’s adjutants and staffers. From the outset he enjoyed his visit immensely. He stopped by Poltoratskii’s tent and there he found many acquaintances who greeted him joyously. He also visited Vorontsov whom he knew slightly, since they had once served in the same regiment. Vorontsov received him warmly, introduced him to Prince Bariatinskii, and invited him to a farewell dinner he was giving Bariatinskii’s predecessor as left flank commander, General Kozlovskii.

The dinner was magnificent. Six tents were carted in and set up in a row. Down their whole length ran a table covered with place settings and bottles of wine. Everything was reminiscent of life in the St. Petersburg guards regiments. At two o’clock the guests were seated. At the center of the table sat Kozlovskii on one side and Bariatinskii on the other. To the right of Kozlovskii sat Prince Vorontsov, to the left Princess Vorontsova. The whole length of the table on both sides sat officers of the Kabardinskii and Kurinskii regiments. Butler sat next to Poltoratskii; they chattered merrily and drank with the officers around them. When it came time to eat the roasted meat and the orderlies had started to pour champagne by the bottle, Poltoratskii said to Butler, with genuine anxiety and regret:

“He’ll disgrace himself, our ‘you know.’”

“What d’you mean?”

“He has to make a speech, right? How’ll he manage?”

“Look, it’s not the same as taking a rampart under hostile fire.”

“But he’s got the lady beside him and these society people.”

“True, it is painful to watch him,” the officers agreed among themselves.

But here came the solemn moment. Bariatinskii rose to his feet, lifted his goblet, and addressed a short speech to Kozlovskii. When Bariatinskii had finished, Kozlovskii rose and in a fairly firm voice began speaking:

“By the supreme will of His Majesty I leave you, part with you, fellow officers,” he said. “But consider me always—you know—with you. You, gentlemen, are familiar—you know—with the truth that an individual alone in battle is not a real soldier. Therefore, everything that in my service—you know—I have been awarded, everything—you know—that has been showered on me by the great generosity of our Sovereign the Emperor—you know—all of my position—you know—and my good name, everything, literally everything—you know,” here his voice began to quiver, “for everything I am obliged to you and you alone, my friends!” And his heavily-lined face wrinkled even more. He sobbed, and tears sprang to his eyes. “From the bottom of my heart I give you—you know—my sincere, heartfelt gratitude…”

Kozlovskii could say no more and, since he remained standing, he began to embrace his fellow officers as they came up to him one by one. Everyone was touched. The princess covered her face with her handkerchief. Prince Semyon Mikhailovich, his mouth twisted, blinked his eyes. Tears came to the eyes of several officers. Butler, who scarcely knew Kozlovskii, couldn’t hold back the tears either. He found all this very moving. At that point toasts were drunk to Bariatinskii, to Vorontsov, to the officers, to the soldiers, so when the guests finally left the dinner, they were drunk on wine and esprit de corps, to both of which they were so susceptible.

The weather was splendid, sunny, calm; the fresh air was invigorating. All around bonfires crackled and singing resounded. Everybody seemed to be celebrating something. In the happiest, most exhilarated of moods Butler went to Poltoratskii’s. There officers had gathered, a card table had been opened up, and the aide-de-camp had laid down a hundred rubles as the bank. Twice Butler left the tent, his hand in his pants pocket gripping his wallet, but in the end he couldn’t hold himself back and, despite the promise he had made to himself and to his brother not to play cards, he began to gamble.

Less than an hour had passed before Butler, red-faced, sweating, hands messy with chalk dust, sat, elbows on the table, recording his wagers from crumpled ledger cards. He had lost so heavily that he was afraid to add up his total. Without adding, he knew that, even if he signed over in advance his pay and the value of his horse, he nevertheless could not pay the sum that the unknown aide-de-camp had written down next to his name. He would have continued to play but the stern-faced aide-de-camp with the clean, white hands had laid down his cards and begun to tote up the chalk columns recorded by Butler. The embarrassed Butler asked to be excused, because he could not immediately pay his losses in full, and he said that he would have it sent from home, and, when he had said that, he noticed that everyone began to feel sorry for him and that everyone, even Poltoratskii, avoided his gaze. This was his last night on leave. He ought not to have played but should have gone to the Vorontsovs, where he had been invited, and “everything would have been alright,” he thought. But now it was not only not alright, it was horrible.

Having taken leave of his comrades and acquaintances, he went home, and, arriving there, he immediately lay down and slept eighteen hours straight, as people generally do after losing heavily Because he had asked her for a fifty-kopeck piece to tip the Cossack who had accompanied him home, and judging by his sad expression and curt answers, Mar’ia Dmitrievna guessed that he had lost at cards, and she had jumped all over Ivan Matveevich for letting him go on leave.

The next day Butler woke up at noon and, on remembering his situation, he would have liked to plunge back into the oblivion from which he had just emerged, but he couldn’t do so. Steps had to be taken to repay 470 rubles that he owed to a complete stranger. One of those steps consisted of writing to his brother, confessing his sin, and begging him for the last time to send him 500 rubles against the mill, which they still jointly owned. Then he wrote a misedy female relative, asking her to lend him at whatever rate of interest she wanted that same 500 rubles. Next, he went to Ivan Matveevich, knowing that he—or rather, Mar’ia Dmitrievna—had money, to ask him for a loan of 500 rubles.

“I’d give it to you,” Ivan Matveevich said. “I’d give it to you right away but Mashka won’t. These women are so damn tight-fisted, the devil alone can figure them out. But you’ve got to get out of this fix, damn it. What about that bastard storeowner, doesn’t he have money?”

But there was no point trying the storeowner. So Butler’s salvation could only come from his brother or his stingy female relative.

XXII

Not having achieved his goal in Chechnia, Hadji Murat returned to Tbilisi, where every day he visited Vorontsov’s office, and, when he was admitted, implored the general to collect all imprisoned mountain tribesmen and to exchange them for his family. He said again that, without his family, his hands were tied and he couldn’t serve the Russians and annihilate Shamil, as he wanted to do. Vorontsov vaguely promised to do what he could, but he was delaying action until General Argutinskii had come to Tbilisi and they had discussed the matter. Then Hadji Murat started to implore Vorontsov to permit him to go for a time to live in Nukha, a small settlement in the Transcaucasus where, he claimed, it would be easier for him to carry on negotiations over his family with Shamil and Shamil’s loyalists. Besides, Nukha was a Moslem town with a mosque where he could more readily perform the prayers required by Islamic law. Vorontsov wrote to St. Petersburg about this, and in the meantime he allowed Hadji Murat to go to Nukha.

For Vorontsov, for the St. Petersburg authorities, and for most Russians familiar with the Hadji Murat affair, that affair represented either a happy turn in the Caucasian wars or simply an interesting incident; but for Hadji Murat himself it was, especially in recent days, a terrible turn in his life. He had fled the mountains partly to save himself, partly out of hatred of Shamil, and, despite a difficult flight, he had achieved his goal, and, at first, he had rejoiced over his success and had actually devised a plan of attack on Shamil. But it turned out that his family’s rescue, which he had thought would be easily arranged, was more complicated than expected. Shamil had seized his family and, keeping them prisoner, had threatened to send the women to different awuls and to blind or kill his son. Now Hadji Murat was riding to Nukha to try, with the aid of his supporters in Daghestan, to rescue his family by guile or by force. The last emissary to visit him in Nukha had reported that Avars loyal to him were promising to abduct his family and come over to the Russians with them, but that the number of people ready to participate in the abduction was too few to carry out the plot at the family’s place of imprisonment in Vedeno, so they would attempt the rescue only if the family were moved from Vedeno elsewhere. In that case, they resolved to seize the family during transit. Hadji Murat ordered his friends to be notified that he was pledging 3000 rubles for his family’s rescue.

In Nukha Hadji Murat was allotted a small, five-room house not far from the mosque and the khan’s palace. In that same house lived his officer escorts, an interpreter, and his bodyguards. Hadji Murat’s life was spent waiting for and receiving emissaries from the mountains and taking rides permitted him on the outskirts of Nukha.

Returning from an outing on 8 April, Hadji Murat learned that, in his absence, an official from Tbilisi had arrived. In spite of his desire to discover what news the official had brought, before going to the room where a police officer and the official awaited him, Hadji Murat first went to his own quarters where he said his midday prayers. When he had finished his prayers, he went into the adjoining room that served as living room and a reception area. The official who had come from Tbilisi, a rotund state councillor named Kirillov, transmitted to Hadji Murat Vorontsov’s request that he come to Tbilisi on April 12 for a meeting with Argutinskii.

“Iakshi,” said Hadji Murat angrily.

He did not like State Councillor Kirillov.

“Did you bring money?”

“I brought it.”

“It’s two weeks late now,” said Hadji Murat and showed ten fingers and then four more. “Give it here.”

“We’ll give it to you right away,” the official said, getting his money purse out of travelling bag. “And what does he need money for?” he asked in Russian, assuming that Hadji Murat didn’t understand, but Hadji Murat did understand and looked angrily at Kirillov. While fetching the money, Kirillov tried to strike up a conversation with Hadji Murat to have something to report to Prince Vorontsov on his return, so he asked Hadji Murat through the interpreter if living in Nukha wasn’t boring. Hadji Murat glanced scornfully out of the corner of his eye at the small, fat man dressed in civilian clothes and without a weapon, and made no response. The interpreter repeated the question.

“Tell him that I don’t want to talk with him. Let him give me the money.” And, having said this, Hadji Murat sat down again at the table intending to count the money

When Kirillov had drawn out the gold coins and arranged them in seven stacks of ten gold coins each (Hadji Murat received five gold coins a day), he pushed them toward Hadji Murat. Hadji Murat swept the gold into the sleeve of his Circassian coat, stood up, quite unexpectedly slapped the state councillor on his bald pate, and started to leave the room. The state councillor jumped to his feet and ordered the interpreter to tell Hadji Murat that he mustn’t dare strike a state councillor whose rank was equivalent to an army colonel’s. The police officer confirmed this. Hadji Murat nodded his head as a sign that he was aware of that, and left the room.

“What can you do with him,” the police official said. “He’ll stick a dagger in you, that’s all. With these devils you can’t reason. I see he’s already turning into a wild beast.”

As soon as dusk fell, two emissaries, hoods pulled down to their eyes, came in from the mountains. The police official led them inside to Hadji Murat. One of the emissaries was a fleshy dark Tavlinian, the other a gaunt old man. The news they brought Hadji Murat was not good. His friends, who earlier had promised to rescue his family now flatly refused the attempt, fearing Shamil, who had threatened the most severe punishments of those who helped Hadji Murat. Having heard the emissaries’ report, Hadji Murat propped his arms on his crossed legs and, bowing his turbaned head, remained silent for a long time. Hadji Murat was thinking and thinking decisively. He knew that he was thinking for the last time, and it was essential to make a decision. Hadji Murat raised his head and, getting out two gold pieces, gave one to each of the emissaries and said: “Go.”

“What will the answer be?”

“The answer will be what God wills. Go.”

The emissaries rose to their feet, then exited the room; meanwhile, Hadji Murat continued sitting on the rug, propping his elbows on his knees. He sat that way and thought a long time.

“What to do? Trust Shamil and return to him?” Hadji Murat thought. “He’s a fox, he’ll lie to me. Even if he weren’t lying, I can’t surrender to him, to a redheaded liar. I can’t, because now, after I’ve been with the Russians, he’ll never trust me,” Hadji Murat thought.

Then he recalled a Tavlinian tale about a falcon that had been captured, had lived with men, and had returned to its mountain home and to its own kind. The falcon returned but in fetters, fetters with small bells attached to them. The other falcons wouldn’t accept him as one of their own. “Fly,” they said to him, “to that place where they put the silver bells on you. We have no bells, no fetters.” The falcon didn’t want to abandon his homeland, so he stayed. But the other falcons refused to have him, and eventually they pecked him to death.

“They’ll peck me to death the same way,” thought Hadji Murat.

“Stay here? Conquer the Caucasus for the Russian tsar? Earn glory titles, wealth?”

“That’s possible,” he thought, remembering his meeting with Vorontsov and the prince’s flattering words.

“But I must decide immediately or Shamil will destroy my family.”

That entire night Hadji Murat stayed awake thinking.

XXIII

Toward the middle of the night his decision came together. He decided that he must flee to the mountains and, together with the Avars loyal to him, burst into Vedeno and either die or free his family. Whether to bring his liberated family back to the Russians or to flee with them to Khunzakh and fight Shamil from there, Hadji Murat had not resolved; he only knew that right away he would have to flee the Russians for the hills. So at once he began to put his decision into effect. He pulled his black, quilted beshmet from under his pillow and went to his retinue’s quarters. His men were staying just across the hall. As soon as he entered the hallway with its door open to the outdoors, he was enveloped by the dewy freshness of the moonlit night, and his ears were struck by the simultaneous whistling and trilling of several nightingales in the garden adjoining the house.

Crossing the hall, Hadji Murat opened the door to his retinue’s room. In the room there was no light, save from the new moon in its first quarter shining through the window. A table and two chairs stood to the side; four of his men lay on rugs and burkas on the floor. Khanefi was sleeping outside with the horses. Hearing the door squeak, Gamzalo got up, glanced at Hadji Murat and, recognizing him, lay back down. But Eldar, who was lying next to Gamzalo, jumped up and donned his beshmet in expectation of receiving orders. Kurban and Khan-Mahoma continued to sleep. Hadji Murat put his beshmet on the table, and the beshmet knocked on the wood of the table with the sound of something hard. The hard substance was gold rubles stitched into its lining.

“Sew these in, too,” Hadji Murat said, giving Eldar the gold he had received that day.

Eldar took the gold and, moving quickly to a place where he could see, drew a small knife from under his dagger and began to unstitch the beshmet’s lining. Gamzalo raised himself up and sat with his legs crossed.

“And you, Gamzalo, tell the boys to look after their rifles and pistols, to ready the ammunition. Tomorrow we’re going on a long ride,” said Hadji Murat.

“There’s bullets, there’s powder. It will be ready,” Gamzalo said and muttered something unintelligible.

Gamzalo understood why Hadji Murat had ordered the guns loaded. From the start—and the longer they stayed, the more the desire grew—he had wanted only to kill and slash as many Russian dogs as possible before fleeing to the hills. And now he saw that Hadji Murat wanted precisely that, so he was satisfied.

When Hadji Murat had left, Gamzalo woke his comrades, then all four spent the night looking over the rifles, pistols, gunpowder charges and flints, replacing the defective ones, sprinkling fresh powder on the pans, plugging up each firing packet with a bullet and a measured charge of gunpowder wrapped in a piece of oiled rag, sharpening sabers and daggers, and greasing the blades with fat.

Before dawn Hadji Murat went into the hallway again to get water for his ablutions. From the passageway, the nightingales, who burst into song at the coming light of dawn, could be heard even more distinctly than during the night. From his retinue’s room issued the regular hiss and whistle of iron on stone made by a dagger being sharpened. Hadji Murat had dipped some water out of the barrel and had gotten as far as the door to his room, when he heard from his murid’s room, alongside the sound of sharpenirig, Khanefi’s thin voice singing a familiar tune. Hadji Murat stopped and began to listen.

The song told how the dzhigit Hamza and his boys wrestled a herd of white horses from the Russians, how a Russian prince overtook them beyond the Terek river, and how the prince surrounded them with an army as great as a forest. Then the song told how Hamza had slaughtered the horses and, having entrenched himself with his men behind a bloody rampart of dead horses, how they had fought the Russians so as long as there were bullets in their rifles, daggers in their belts, and blood in their veins. But before he died, Hamza spied some birds flying in the sky and shouted to them: “You, migrating birds, fly to our homes and tell our sisters, our mothers and our fair maidens that we all died for the ghazwa. Tell them that our bodies won’t lie in graves, but savage wolves will drag our bones away and devour them, and black crows will pluck out our eyes.”

The song ended with these words, and to those last words sung in a mournful melody were added the brisk voice of the cheerful Khan-Mahoma, who shouted at the very end of the song “La ilaha illa Allah!” and let loose a piercing cry. Then everything quieted down, and again there could be heard nothing but the nightingales’ clucking and whistling from the garden and the regular hiss and occasional whistle of iron slipping quickly across whet stones on the other side of the door.

Hadji Murat was so lost in thought that he failed to notice that he had tipped over a pitcher and water had poured out of it. He shook his head at himself and went back into his room.

Having finished the morning prayer, Hadji Murat looked over his weapons and sat on his bed. There was nothing more to do. To ride out of town, he would still have to ask permission of the police official. But his courtyard was still dark, and the police official was still asleep.

Khanefi’s song reminded him of another song composed by his mother. The song told of things that had actually happened when Hadji Murat was born and which his mother used to recount to him.

The song went as follows:

Your damask steel dagger pierced my white bosom, but I pressed my little sunflower, my boy, against it; I washed him with my warm blood, and my wound healed over without grasses and roots. I was not afraid of death, and my dzhigit son will not fear it either.

The words of the song were addressed to Hadji Murat’s father, and the meaning of the song was that at the same time that Hadji Murat was born, the khansha also gave birth to her second son Bulat-Khan. The khansha demanded that Hadji Murat’s mother, Patimat, who had nursed her older son Abununtsal-Khan, come and serve as wet nurse. But Patimat did not want to leave her son and said that she would not go. Hadji Murat’s father got angry and ordered Patimat to obey. When she again refused, he struck her with a dagger and would have killed her if relatives had not dragged her away. In the end, she stayed with her son and nursed him: that incident was the subject of her song.

Hadji Murat remembered his mother as she put him down to sleep next to her under a fur cover on the saklya roof, as she sang him that song, and as she was when he had asked her to show him the place on her side where the mark of the wound still remained. He vividly pictured in front of himself his mother—not the wrinkled, gray-haired, gap-toothed woman he had recently left behind, but the one that was young, beautiful, and so strong that, when he was already five years old and heavy, she had carried him on her back in a basket over the mountains to his grandfather’s.

And he remembered his wrinkled, gray-bearded grandfather, the silversmith, how he had hammered silver with his sinewy hands and had made his grandson say prayers. He remembered a fountain down the mountain, where he, holding on to the leg of his mother’s wide trousers, had gone with her to get water. He remembered the skinny dog that licked his face, and the special smell of smoke and sour milk when he went with his mother to the barn, where she milked the cows and heated the milk. He remembered how it was the first time she had shaved his head, and how he had gazed wonderingly into the bright, bronze wash basin hanging on the wall at the image of his own round, blue-veined head.

And having remembered himself as a small child, he then remembered his beloved son Yusuf, whose head he himself had shaved for the first time. Now this Yusuf was already a young, handsome dzhigit. He remembered his son as he had seen him the last time. That had been on the very day he had ridden out of Tsel’mes. His son had brought him a horse and had asked permission to accompany him. Yusuf had been dressed and armed and had held his own horse by the reins. Yusuf’s handsome, young, ruddy face, his tall, thin figure—he was taller than his father—breathed the courage of youth and the joy of living. Yusuf’s shoulders, broad despite his youth, his very wide, youthful hips, his long, thin torso, his long, powerful arms, the strength, suppleness, and agility of his movements always gladdened his father, so the father had always taken pride in his son.

“It’s better that you stay. You are the only man in the house now. Protect your mother and your grandmother,” Hadji Murat had said.

And Hadji Murat remembered the expression of pride and spirit with which Yusuf had, blushing with pleasure, said that, as long as he lived, no one would harm his mother or grandmother. Nonetheless, Yusuf had mounted his horse and accompanied his father as far as the stream. At the stream, he had turned back, and since that moment Hadji Murat had not seen wife, mother or son again.

And this was the very son that Shamil wanted to blind! What Shamil would do to Hadji Murat’s wife—that he did not even want to think about.

These thoughts so agitated Hadji Murat, he couldn’t sit any longer. He jumped up and, limping quickly, went to the door, opened it, and shouted for Eldar. The sun had still not risen, but it was completely light. The nightingales had not stopped singing.

“Go tell the police official that I want to take a ride, then saddle the horses,” he said.

XXIV

Throughout this period Butler’s sole consolation was the poetry of military life to which he surrendered himself not only while on duty, but also in private life. Dressed in Circassian clothes, he rode his horse in the dzhigit manner and twice went out with Bogdanovich on ambush, although on neither occasion was anybody captured or killed. Such daring and his friendship with the brave Bogdanovich seemed to Butler somehow pleasant and stimulating. Meanwhile, he paid off his debt by borrowing money from a Jew on prohibitive interest—that is, he bought time and put off his day of financial reckoning. He tried not to think about his situation and, in addition to losing himself in combat, he sought oblivion in wine. He was drinking more and more, and so, from one day to the next, he fell deeper into moral decline. He no longer played the noble Joseph to Mar’ia Dmitrievna; on the contrary, he began to make vulgar advances to her, although, to his surprise, he was firmly rebuffed, which deeply embarrassed him.

In late April, there arrived at the fort a detachment designated by Bariatinskii to spearhead a new drive into what had previously been considered the impenetrable heart of Chechnia. Here were two companies of the Kabardinskii Regiment, and, according to the custom established in the Caucasus, these companies were received as guests by the companies already stationed in Kurinsk. Simple soldiers were assigned to various barracks where they were treated not only to a supper of cooked grain and boiled beef but also to vodka, while officers were billeted with their fellow officers, and again, following custom, the local officers hosted the new arrivals.

The partying ended in a drinking bout and ribald singing, and Ivan Matveevich—very drunk, no longer ruddy-cheeked but pale-gray—sat on a chair as if on a horse, and, having grabbed a sword, slashed at his imaginary foes with it, alternately swearing, laughing, embracing someone, and dancing to his favorite song: “Shamil started a revolt in years gone by, Try-rye-Ra-ta-tye, in years gone by.”

Butler was at the party, too. He kept unsuccessfully trying to see even in this the poetry of military life, yet, though he felt dreadfully sorry for Ivan Matveevich, he could do nothing to put an end to his antics. So Butler, feeling tipsy, quietly slipped away and set off for home.

The full moon shone on the little white houses and on stones in the road. It was so bright that every pebble, straw, and piece of dung on the road could be seen. On approaching home, he encountered Mar’ia Dmitrievna, a shawl covering her head and neck. After Mar’ia Dmitrievna’s rebuff, his conscience slightly pricked, Butler had been avoiding her. Now, intoxicated by moonlight and wine, he rejoiced to see her and felt the urge to wheedle himself into her affections again.

“Where’re you headed?” he asked.

“Just checking on my old man,” she answered genially She had sincerely and firmly rebuffed Butler’s advances, but it bothered her that recently he had been avoiding her.

“Why check up on him? He’ll be coming along.”

“Under his own power?”

“If not under his own power, they’ll carry him.”

“Either way it’s bad news,” said Mar’ia Dmitrievna. “So I shouldn’t go after him?”

“No, there’s no point. Let’s head home instead.”

Mar’ia Dmitrievna turned about and walked toward home alongside Butler. The moon was shining so brightly that, as their shadows danced on the roadside, there danced around their heads shimmering halos. Catching sight of the shimmering, Butler wanted to tell Mar’ia Dmitrievna that he still had feelings for her, but he didn’t know how to start. Meanwhile, she was waiting to hear what he would say. In silence they had walked almost all the way home, when from around the corner horsemen galloped. An officer was leading a convoy.

“Who in God’s name is that?” Mar’ia Dmitrievna said, jumping to the side.

The moon was shining from behind the approaching riders, so that Mar’ia Dmitrievna did not recognize the officer until he had almost drawn even with them. The officer, a man named Kamenev, had previously served with Ivan Matveevich, so Mar’ia Dmitrievna knew him.

“Pyotr Nikolaevich, is that you?” Mar’ia Dmitrievna asked him.

“The one and only,” said Kamenev. “Hey, Butler, hello. Not asleep yet? Strolling with Mar’ia Dmitrievna? Watch out, Ivan Matveevich’ll give you hell. Where is he?”

“Hear that?” said Mar’ia Dmitrievna, pointing in the direction from which came the sound of the music of a big, bass drum and singing. “The boys’re getting smashed.”

“Who is? Your unit?”

“No, troops just came in from Khasav-Iurt, so we’re throwing them a party.”

“Ah, that’s nice. Look, I’m in a hurry. I need to see him for just a minute.”

“What’s up? Something important?” Butler asked.

“A minor little matter.”

“Good or bad?”

“Depends. For us it’s good; for a certain somebody it’s pretty awful.” And Kamenev broke into laughter.

At that moment, the two on foot and Kamenev reached Ivan Matveevich’s house.

“Chikhirev!” Kamenev shouted to a Cossack, “Come on over here!”

A Don Cossack broke formation and rode up. He had the usual Don Cossack uniform, the high boots, the overcoat, and over his saddle were slung saddlebags.

“Well, get the thing out,” Kamenev said, sliding down off his horse.

The Cossack also dismounted, then grabbed out of his saddlebags a sack with something inside. Kamenev took the sack from the Cossack and plunged his hand inside it.

“So, shall I show you a surprise? Promise you won’t get scared?” he asked Mar’ia Dmitrievna.

“What’s to be afraid of?” Mar’ia Dmitrievna said.

“Here then,” said Kamenev, hauling out a man’s head and holding it up to the light of the moon. “Recognize it?”

The head was shaved on top; the eyes were sunk beneath protrusions of the bony forehead; the mouth was surrounded by a small, close-cropped dark beard and trimmed mustache; one eye was wide-open, the other half-closed; the shaven cranium was hacked open but not cut all the way through; the nose was covered with dark, dried, caked blood. The neck was wound about with a blood-soaked towel. Despite all the wounds to the head, a child-like kindness expressed itself on the blue lips.

Mar’ia Dmitrievna looked at the skull, and, saying nothing, averted her body and strode rapidly into the house.

Butler couldn’t tear his eyes away from the terrifying head. It was the head of that very same Hadji Murat with whom he had so recently spent several evenings in friendly conversation.

“How’d it happen? Who killed him? Where?” he asked.

“He tried to run off, we caught him,” Kamenev said, passing the head to the Cossack, then going inside the house with Butler.

“He died like a real man,” Kamenev said.

“But, how did this all happen?”

“Just wait a bit. When Ivan Matveevich comes back, I’ll give you all the details. Anyway, that’s why I’m here. I ride around to all the forts and awuls, and show it.”

They sent for Ivan Matveevich, and, when he finally returned home—drunk and accompanied by two other, extremely drunk officers—he roused himself to embrace Kamenev.

“I brought you Hadji Murat’s head,” Kamenev said.

“You’re lying! They killed him?”

“Yes. He tried to run away.”

“I said, he’d scam us. So where is it? The head? Show me.”

They yelled for the Cossack, and he brought the sack with the head in it. They took out the head, and Ivan Matveevich, with drunken eyes, looked at it for a long time.

“Well, all the same he was a fine fellow,” he said. “Give him here, I’ll give him a kiss.”

“Yes, it’s true, a devilish, dashing head,” said one of the officers.

When everyone had looked over the head, they gave it back to the Cossack. The Cossack put it in the sack, trying to set it on the floor so that it bumped as lightly as possible.

“So, Kamenev, you make a speech when you’re showing it?” asked one officer.

“No, let me kiss him, he gave me his saber,” Ivan Matveevich shouted.

Butler went out on the porch. Mar’ia Dmitrievna was sitting on the second step. She glanced at Butler and angrily turned away.

“What’s with you, Mar’ia Dmitrievna?” asked Butler.

“You’re all butchers. I can’t stand it. Butchers, that’s what,” she said, pulling herself erect.

“The same thing could happen to any of us,” Butler said, not knowing what to say. “That’s war.”

“War?” screamed Mar’ia Dmitrievna. “Some war! Butchers! That’s all you are. A dead body should be given back to the earth, instead you scoff at it. Butchers, really!” she repeated, then and she stepped down off the porch and walked away from him toward the house’s back door.

Butler returned to the living room and asked Kamenev to relate in detail how the whole affair had happened.

And Kamenev did as requested.

Here is what happened.