HADJI MURAD
by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
First Published in 1904
Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine
CHAPTER I
I was returning home by the fields. It was midsummer, the hay
harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At
that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers red, white, and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye
daisies with their bright yellow centers and pleasant spicy smell;
yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and
lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow, red, and pink
scabious; faintly scented, neatly arranged purple plaintains with
blossoms slightly tinged with pink; cornflowers, the newly opened
blossoms bright blue in the sunshine but growing paler and redder
towards evening or when growing old; and delicate almond-scented
dodder flowers that withered quickly. I gathered myself a large
nosegay and was going home when I noticed in a ditch, in full
bloom, a beautiful thistle plant of the crimson variety, which in
our neighborhood they call "Tartar" and carefully avoid when mowing
-- or, if they do happen to cut it down, throw out from among the
grass for fear of pricking their hands. Thinking to pick this
thistle and put it in the center of my nosegay, I climbed down into
the ditch, and after driving away a velvety bumble-bee that had
penetrated deep into one of the flowers and had there fallen
sweetly asleep, I set to work to pluck the flower. But this proved
a very difficult task. Not only did the stalk prick on every side
-- even through the handkerchief I wrapped round my hand -- but it
was so tough that I had to struggle with it for nearly five
minutes, breaking the fibers one by one; and when I had at last
plucked it, the stalk was all frayed and the flower itself no
longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Moreover, owing to a
coarseness and stiffness, it did not seem in place among the
delicate blossoms of my nosegay. I threw it away feeling sorry to
have vainly destroyed a flower that looked beautiful in its proper
place.
"But what energy and tenacity! With what determination it
defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life!" thought I,
remembering the effort it had cost me to pluck the flower. The way
home led across black-earth fields that had just been ploughed up.
I ascended the dusty path. The ploughed field belonged to a landed
proprietor and was so large that on both sides and before me to the
top of the hill nothing was visible but evenly furrowed and moist
earth. The land was well tilled and nowhere was there a blade of
grass or any kind of plant to be seen, it was all black. "Ah, what
a destructive creature is man....How many different plant-lives he
destroys to support his own existence!" thought I, involuntarily
looking around for some living thing in this lifeless black field.
In front of me to the right of the road I saw some kind of little
clump, and drawing nearer I found it was the same kind of thistle
as that which I had vainly plucked and thrown away. This "Tartar"
plant had three branches. One was broken and stuck out like the
stump of a mutilated arm. Each of the other two bore a flower,
once red but now blackened. One stalk was broken, and half of it
hung down with a soiled flower at its tip. The other, though also
soiled with black mud, still stood erect. Evidently a cartwheel
had passed over the plant but it had risen again, and that was why,
though erect, it stood twisted to one side, as if a piece of its
body had been torn from it, its bowels drawn out, an arm torn off,
and one of its eyes plucked out. Yet it stood firm and did not
surrender to man who had destroyed all its brothers around it....
"What vitality!" I thought. "Man has conquered everything and
destroyed millions of plants, yet this one submit." And I
remembered a Caucasian episode of years ago, which I had partly
seen myself, partly heard of from eye-witnesses, and in part
imagined.
The episode, as it has taken shape in my memory and
imagination, was as follows.
* * *
It happened towards the end of 1851.
On a cold November evening Hadji Murad rode into Makhmet, a
hostile Chechen aoul that lay some fifteen miles from Russian
territory and was filled with the scented smoke of burning Kizyak.
The strained chant of the muezzin had just ceased, and though the
clear mountain air, impregnated with kizyak smoke, above the lowing
of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep that were dispersing
among the saklyas (which were crowded together like the cells of
honeycomb), could be clearly heard the guttural voices of disputing
men, and sounds of women's and children's voices rising from near
the fountain below.
This Hadji Murad was Shamil's naib, famous for his exploits,
who used never to ride out without his banner and some dozens of
murids, who caracoled and showed off before him. Now wrapped in a
hood and burka, from under which protruded a rifle, he rode, a
fugitive with one murid only, trying to attract as little attention
as possible and peering with his quick black eyes into the faces of
those he met on his way.
When he entered the aoul, instead of riding up the road
leading to the open square, he turned to the left into a narrow
side street, and on reaching the second saklya, which was cut into
the hill side, he stopped and looked round. There was no one under
the penthouse in front, but on the roof of the saklya itself,
behind the freshly plastered clay chimney, lay a man covered with
a sheepskin. Hadji Murad touched him with the handle of his
leather-plaited whip and clicked his tongue, and an old man,
wearing a greasy old beshmet and a nightcap, rose from under the
sheepskin. His moist red eyelids had no lashes, and he blinked to
get them unstuck. Hadji Murad, repeating the customary "Selaam
aleikum!" uncovered his face. "aleikum, selaam!" said the old man,
recognizing him, and smiling with his toothless mouth. And raising
himself on his thin legs he began thrusting his feet into the
wooden-heeled slippers that stood by the chimney. Then he
leisurely slipped his arms into the sleeves of his crumpled
sheepskin, and going to the ladder that leant against the roof he
descended backwards, while he dressed and as he climbed down he
kept shaking his head on its thin, shrivelled sunburnt neck and
mumbling something with his toothless mouth. As soon as he reached
the ground he hospitably seized Hadji Murad's bridle and right
stirrup; but the strong active murid had quickly dismounted and
motioning the old man aside, took his place. Hadji Murad also
dismounted, and walking with a slight limp, entered under the
penthouse. A boy of fifteen, coming quickly out of the door, met
him and wonderingly fixed his sparkling eyes, black as ripe sloes,
on the new arrivals.
"run to the mosque and call your father," ordered the old man
as he hurried forward to open the thin, creaking door into the
saklya.
As Hadji Murad entered the outer door, a slight, spare,
middle-aged woman in a yellow smock, red beshmet, and wide blue
trousers came through an inner door carrying cushions.
"May thy coming bring happiness!" said she, and bending nearly
double began arranging the cushions along the front wall for the
guest to sit on.
"May thy sons live!" answered Hadji Murad, taking off his
burka, his rifle, and his sword, and handing them to the old man
who carefully hung the rifle and sword on a nail beside the weapons
of the master of the house, which were suspended between two large
basins that glittered against the clean clay-plastered and
carefully whitewashed wall.
Hadji Murad adjusted the pistol at his back, came up to the
cushions, and wrapping his Circassian coat closer round him, sat
down. The old man squatted on his bare heels beside him, closed
his eyes, and lifted his hands palms upwards. Hadji Murad did the
same; then after repeating a prayer they both stroked their faces,
passing their hands downwards till the palms joined at the end of
their beards.
"Ne habar?" ("Is there anything new?") asked Hadji Murad,
addressing the old man.
"Habar yok" ("Nothing new"), replied the old man, looking with
his lifeless red eyes not at Hadji Murad's face but at his breast.
"I live at the apiary and have only today come to see my son....He
knows."
Hadji Murad, understanding that the old man did not wish to
say what he knew and what Hadji Murad wanted to know, slightly
nodded his head ...
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