Mikhail Sholokhov - Virgin Soil Upturned
Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov
Virgin soil upturned
Book one
Chapter I
At the end of January, surrounded by the first thaw, the cherry orchards smell good. At midday, somewhere in the calm (if the sun is warm), the sad, barely intelligible smell of cherry bark rises with the fresh dampness of melted snow, with a powerful and ancient spirit peeking out from under the snow, from under the dead foliage of the earth.
A subtle multi-colored aroma lingers steadily over the gardens until the blue darkness, until the green-covered horn of the month pokes through the bare branches, until the fattening hares throw downy speckled tracks onto the snow...
And then the wind will bring the finest breath of frost-scorched wormwood into the gardens from the steppe ridge, the daytime smells and sounds will die out, and through Chernobyl, through the weeds, over the britsa faded on the stubble, over the wavy mounds of plowland, silently, like a gray she-wolf, night will come from the east - like footprints , leaving trails of twilight shadows across the steppe.
* * *
On a January evening in 1930, a horseman rode into the village of Gremyachiy Log along the outermost alley in the steppe. Near the river, he stopped a tired horse, curly frosted in the groins, and dismounted. Above the rabble of gardens stretching on both sides of the narrow alley, above the islands of poplar levadas, the damaged moon stood high. The alley was dark and quiet. Somewhere across the river a dog was howling loudly, and a light was turning yellow. The rider greedily sniffed the frosty air with his nostrils, slowly took off his glove, lit a cigarette, then tightened the girth, put his fingers under the sweatshirt and, feeling the hot, sweaty back of the horse, deftly threw his large body into the saddle. The small river, which does not freeze even in winter, began to be forded. The horse, dully clinking its horseshoes on the pebbles that covered the bottom, stretched out to drink as it walked, but the rider hurried him, and the horse, shaking its spleen, jumped out onto the gentle bank.
Hearing a voice and the creaking of the runners, the rider stopped his horse again. He carefully moved his ears towards the sound and turned around. The silver breastplate and the silver-bound high pommel of the Cossack saddle, caught in the rays of the moon, suddenly flared up in the dark of the alley with a white, striking brilliance. The horseman threw the reins on his bow, hastily put on the Cossack camel hair cap that had previously been hanging on his shoulders, wrapped his face and galloped off at a sweeping trot. Having passed the cart, he still walked at a walk, but did not take off his cap.
Having already entered the farm, he asked the woman he met:
- Well, tell me, auntie, where does Yakov Ostrovnov live here?
- Yakov Lukich?
- Well, yes.
- But behind the poplar tree, you see his smoking area, covered with tiles?
- I see. Thank you.
Near the spacious kuren, covered with tiles, he dismounted, led his horse through the gate and, quietly knocking on the window with the handle of his whip, called:
- Master! Yakov Lukich, come out for an hour.[1]
Without a hat, his jacket untucked, the owner went out onto the porch; peering at the visitor, he stepped off the threshold.
- Whom did the difficult one bring? – he asked, smiling into his graying mustache.
– Can’t you guess, Lukich? Let him spend the night. Where can I put my horse in a warm place?
- No, dear comrade, I won’t admit it. You won't be from Rick? Not from the land department? I’m guessing something... Your voice seems familiar to me...
The newcomer, puckering his shaved lips with a smile, parted his head.
– Do you remember Polovtsev?
And Yakov Lukich suddenly looked around in fear, turned pale, and whispered:
- Your honor! Where are you from?.. Mister Yesaul!.. We will immediately identify the horse... We are in the stable... How many years have passed...
- Well, well, be quiet! A lot of time has passed... Do you have a blanket? Are there no strangers in your house?
The visitor handed over the occasion to the owner. The horse, lazily obeying the movement of someone else's hand, raising its head high on its outstretched neck and wearily dragging its hind legs, walked towards the stable. He loudly tapped his hoof on the wooden flooring and snored, sensing the lived-in smell of someone else’s horse. The stranger's hand lay on his snoring, his fingers skillfully and carefully freed his chafed gums from the unleavened iron bit, and the horse fell gratefully to the hay.
“I let him go with the girths, let him stand saddled, and if he gets a little cold, then I’ll unsaddle him,” said the owner, carefully throwing the cold blanket over the horse. And he himself, having felt the saddle, had already managed to determine by the way the cross-cushion girth was tightened, how the strap connecting the stirrup straps was loosely loosened, that the guest had come from afar and had done a considerable amount of mileage that day.
– Do you have any grain, Yakov Lukich?
- There’s a little bit. Let's drink and give some grain. Well, let’s go to the smoking room, I don’t know what to call you now... In the old way - I’m out of habit and it seems uncomfortable... - the owner smiled awkwardly in the darkness, although he knew that his smile was not visible.
- Call me by my first name and patronymic. Did not forget? - answered the guest, the first to leave the stable.
- How can you! The whole German army was destroyed together, and this time I had to... I often thought about you, Alexander Anisimovich. Ever since they broke up with you in Novorossiysk, they haven’t heard anything about you. I thought that you sailed to Turkey with the Cossacks.
We entered the hotly heated kitchen. The newcomer took off his hood and white fur coat, revealing a powerful angular skull covered with sparse whitish hair. From under his steep, wolfish, balding forehead, he glanced quickly around the room and, smilingly narrowing his light blue eyes, which glittered heavily from the deep recesses of his eye sockets, bowed to the women sitting on the bench - the hostess and daughter-in-law.
- Live well, butterflies!
“Thank God,” the hostess answered him restrainedly, looking expectantly and questioningly at her husband: “What kind of person are you bringing here and how should he be treated?”
“Get ready for dinner,” the owner briefly ordered, inviting the guest into the upper room to the table.
The guest, slurping cabbage soup with pork, talked in the presence of women about the weather and his colleagues. His huge lower jaw, as if hewn from stone, was difficult to move; He chewed slowly, tiredly, like a tired bull lying down. After dinner, he stood up, prayed to the images in dusty paper flowers, and, shaking off bread crumbs from his old sweatshirt, which was too tight at the shoulders, said:
– Thank you for the bread and salt, Yakov Lukich! Now let's talk.
The daughter-in-law and the hostess hurriedly took it from the table; Obeying the movement of the owner's eyebrows, they went into the kitchen.
Chapter II
The secretary of the district party committee, weak-sighted and sluggish in his movements, sat down at the table, looked sideways at Davydov, and, squinting, collecting baggy folds under his eyes, began to read his documents.
Outside the window, in the telephone wires, the wind was whistling, on the back of a horse tied with a halter to the front garden, a magpie was strolling askew across the kobarzhin itself - and pecking at something. The wind wrung her tail, lifted her onto the wing, but she again sat on the back of an emaciated, indifferent nag, victoriously leading around with her predatory eye. Torn flakes of clouds flew low over the station. From time to time, the sun's rays fell slantingly into the opening, a patch of sky flared up like a summer blue, and then the curve of the Don visible from the window, the forest behind it and the distant pass with a tiny windmill on the horizon acquired an exciting softness of design.
– So you stayed in Rostov due to illness? Well, well... The remaining eight twenty-five thousanders arrived three days ago. There was a rally. Representatives of collective farms met them. – The secretary chewed his lips thoughtfully. “We are in a particularly difficult situation right now.” The percentage of collectivization in the region is fourteen point eight. More and more TOZ.[3] The kulak-prosperous part still has tails left in terms of grain procurements. We need people. Very very! The collective farms sent applications for forty-three workers, but they only sent nine of you.
And from under his swollen eyelids, somehow in a new way, inquisitively and for a long time, he looked into Davydov’s pupils, as if assessing what a person was capable of.
- So, dear comrade, you are a mechanic? Very good! How long have you been working at Putilovsky? Smoke.
- Since demobilization. Nine years. “Davydov held out his hand for a cigarette, and the secretary, catching the dull blue of the tattoo at Davydov’s hands, smiled with the edges of his drooping lips.
– Beauty and pride? Were you in the navy?
- Yes.
- I see you have an anchor...
“He was young, you know... he was green and stupid, so he poisoned him...” Davydov annoyedly pulled his sleeve down, thinking: “Eh, you’re big-eyed, you don’t need anything.” But I almost missed the grain procurements!”
The secretary paused and somehow immediately removed the meaningless smile of hospitality from his painfully puffy face.
“You, comrade, will go today as an authorized representative of the district committee to carry out complete collectivization.” Have you read the latest directive from the regional committee? Do you know me? So, you will go to the Gremyachensky village council. You’ll have a rest later, there’s no time now. The emphasis is on 100% collectivization. There is a dwarf artel there, but we must create giant collective farms. As soon as we organize a campaign column, we will send it to you. In the meantime, go and create a collective farm on the basis of careful infringement of the kulaks. All poor and middle peasant farms should be on the collective farm. Then you will create a socialized seed fund for the entire area of collective farm crops in one thousand nine hundred and thirty. Tread carefully there. No middle man! In Gremyache there is a party cell of three communists. The secretary of the cell and the chairman of the village council are good guys, red partisans in the past,” and, again chewing his lips, added: “with all the ensuing consequences.” It's clear? Politically illiterate, they may make mistakes. If difficulties arise, go to the area. Eh, there’s no telephone connection yet, that’s what’s bad! Yes, one more thing: the secretary of the cell there is a Red Banner, abrasive, all corners, and... all sharp. The secretary drummed his fingers on the lock of the briefcase and, seeing that Davydov was getting up, said with liveliness:
