Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2 полностью

‘The Elders brought word that Hamzád was ready to send a sheik to teach us the Ghazavát, but only if the Khansha sent him her youngest son as a hostage. She took him at his word and sent her youngest son, Bulách Khan. Hamzád received him well and sent to invite the two elder brothers also. He sent word that he wished to serve the Khans as his father had served their father.… The Khansha was a weak, stupid, and conceited woman, as all women are when they are not under control. She was afraid to send away both sons and sent only Umma Khan. I went with him. We were met by murids about a mile before we arrived and they sang and shot and caracoled around us, and when we drew near, Hamzád came out of his tent and went up to Umma Khan’s stirrup and received him as a Khan. He said, “I have not done any harm to thy family and do not wish to do any. Only do not kill me and do not prevent my bringing the people over to the Ghazavát, and I will serve you with my whole army as my father served your father! Let me live in your house and I will help you with my advice, and you shall do as you like!”

‘Umma Khan was slow of speech. He did not know how to reply and remained silent. Then I said that if this was so, let Hamzád come to Khunzákh and the Khansha and the Khans would receive him with honour.… But I was not allowed to finish – and here I first encountered Shamil, who was beside the Imám. He said to me, “Thou hast not been asked.… It was the Khan!”

‘I was silent, and Hamzád led Umma Khan into his tent. Afterwards Hamzád called me and ordered me to go to Khunzákh with his envoys. I went. The envoys began persuading the Khansha to send her eldest son also to Hamzád. I saw there was treachery and told her not to send him; but a woman has as much sense in her head as an egg has hair. She ordered her son to go. Abu Nutsal Khan did not wish to. Then she said, “I see thou art afraid!” Like a bee she knew where to sting him most painfully. Abu Nutsal Khan flushed and did not speak to her any more, but ordered his horse to be saddled. I went with him.

‘Hamzád met us with even greater honour than he had shown Umma Khan. He himself rode out two rifle-shot lengths down the hill to meet us. A large party of horsemen with their banners followed him, and they too sang, shot, and caracoled.

‘When we reached the camp, Hamzád led the Khan into his tent and I remained with the horses.…

‘I was some way down the hill when I heard shots fired in Hamzád’s tent. I ran there and saw Umma Khan lying prone in a pool of blood, and Abu Nutsal was fighting the murids. One of his cheeks had been hacked off and hung down. He supported it with one hand and with the other stabbed with his dagger at all who came near him. I saw him strike down Hamzád’s brother and aim a blow at another man, but then the murids fired at him and he fell.’

Hadji Murád stopped and his sunburnt face flushed a dark red and his eyes became bloodshot.

‘I was seized with fear and ran away.’

‘Really?… I thought thou never wast afraid,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

‘Never after that.… Since then I have always remembered that shame, and when I recalled it I feared nothing!’

XII

‘BUT enough! It is time for me to pray,’ said Hadji Murád drawing from an inner breast-pocket of his Circassian coat Vorontsóv’s repeater watch and carefully pressing the spring. The repeater struck twelve and a quarter. Hadji Murád listened with his head on one side, repressing a childlike smile.

‘Kunák Vorontsóv’s present,’ he said, smiling.

‘It is a good watch,’ said Lóris-Mélikov. ‘Well then, go thou and pray, and I will wait.’

‘Yakshi. Very well,’ said Hadji Murád and went to his bedroom.

Left by himself, Lóris-Mélikov wrote down in his notebook the chief things Hadji Murád had related, and then lighting a cigarette began to pace up and down the room. On reaching the door opposite the bedroom he heard animated voices speaking rapidly in Tartar. He guessed that the speakers were Hadji Murád’s murids, and opening the door he went in to them.

The room was impregnated with that special leathery acid smell peculiar to the mountaineers. On a búrka spread out on the floor sat the one-eyed, red-haired Gamzálo, in a tattered greasy beshmét, plaiting a bridle. He was saying something excitedly, speaking in a hoarse voice, but when Lóris-Mélikov entered he immediately became silent and continued his work without paying any attention to him.

In front of Gamzálo stood the merry Khan Mahomá showing his white teeth, his black lashless eyes glittering, and saying something over and over again. The handsome Eldár, his sleeves turned up on his strong arms, was polishing the girths of a saddle suspended from a nail. Khanéfi, the principal worker and manager of the household, was not there, he was cooking their dinner in the kitchen.

‘What were you disputing about?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov after greeting them.