Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2 полностью

He was thinking and thinking resolutely. He knew that he was now considering the matter for the last time and that it was necessary to come to a decision. At last he raised his head, gave each of the messengers a gold piece, and said: ‘Go!’

‘What answer will there be?’

‘The answer will be as God pleases.… Go!’

The messengers rose and went away, and Hadji Murád continued to sit on the carpet leaning his elbows on his knees. He sat thus a long time and pondered.

‘What am I to do? To take Shamil at his word and return to him?’ he thought. ‘He is a fox and will deceive me. Even if he did not deceive me it would still be impossible to submit to that red liar. It is impossible … because now that I have been with the Russians he will not trust me,’ thought Hadji Murád; and he remembered a Tavlinian fable about a falcon who had been caught and lived among men and afterwards returned to his own kind in the hills. He returned, wearing jesses with bells, and the other falcons would not receive him. ‘Fly back to where they hung those silver bells on thee!’ said they. ‘We have no bells and no jesses.’ The falcon did not want to leave his home and remained, but the other falcons did not wish to let him stay there and pecked him to death.

‘And they would peck me to death in the same way,’ thought Hadji Murád. ‘Shall I remain here and conquer Caucasia for the Russian Tsar and earn renown, titles, riches?’

‘That could be done,’ thought he, recalling his interviews with Vorontsóv and the flattering things the prince had said; ‘but I must decide at once, or Shamil will destroy my family.’

That night he remained awake, thinking.

XXIII

BY midnight his decision had been formed. He had decided that he must fly to the mountains, and break into Vedenó with the Avars still devoted to him, and either die or rescue his family. Whether after rescuing them he would return to the Russians or escape to Khunzákh and fight Shamil, he had not made up his mind. All he knew was that first of all he must escape from the Russians into the mountains, and he at once began to carry out his plan.

He drew his black wadded beshmét from under his pillow and went into his henchmen’s room. They lived on the other side of the hall. As soon as he entered the hall, the outer door of which stood open, he was at once enveloped by the dewy freshness of the moonlit night and his ears were filled by the whistling and trilling of several nightingales in the garden by the house.

Having crossed the hall he opened the door of his henchmen’s room. There was no light there, but the moon in its first quarter shone in at the window. A table and two chairs were standing on one side of the room, and four of his henchmen were lying on carpets or on búrkas on the floor. Khanéfi slept outside with the horses. Gamzálo heard the door creak, rose, turned round, and saw him. On recognizing him he lay down again, but Eldár, who lay beside him, jumped up and began putting on his beshmét, expecting his master’s orders. Khan Mahomá and Bata slept on. Hadji Murád put down the beshmét he had brought on the table, which it hit with a dull sound, caused by the gold sewn up in it.

‘Sew these in too,’ said Hadji Murád, handing Eldár the gold pieces he had received that day. Eldár took them and at once went into the moonlight, drew a small knife from under his dagger and started unstitching the lining of the beshmét. Gamzálo raised himself and sat up with his legs crossed.

‘And you, Gamzálo, tell the men to examine the rifles and pistols and get the ammunition ready. To-morrow we shall go far,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘We have bullets and powder, everything shall be ready,’ replied Gamzálo, and roared out something incomprehensible. He understood why Hadji Murád had ordered the rifles to be loaded. From the first he had desired only one thing – to slay and stab as many Russians as possible and to escape to the hills – and this desire had increased day by day. Now at last he saw that Hadji Murád also wanted this and he was satisfied.

When Hadji Murád went away Gamzálo roused his comrades, and all four spent the rest of the night examining their rifles, pistols, flints, and accoutrements; replacing what was damaged, sprinkling fresh powder onto the pans, and stoppering with bullets wrapped in oiled rags packets filled with the right amount of powder for each charge, sharpening their swords and daggers and greasing the blades with tallow.

Before daybreak Hadji Murád again came out into the hall to get water for his ablutions. The songs of the nightingales that had burst into ecstasy at dawn were now even louder and more incessant, while from his henchmen’s room, where the daggers were being sharpened, came the regular screech and rasp of iron against stone.