The Cossacks

by Leo Tolstoy

I have made a mess of my life, a complete mess! But you’re right, it’s all over now. I feel that I am about to embark on a new life!” “A new life that you’ll also make a mess of,” the man on the sofa cut in.

He felt that it was not only good friends and acquaintances who had rallied around him before his departure. Even men indifferent to him, who actually disliked him, or indeed were hostile to him, had somehow resolved to like him and to forgive him, as one is forgiven in the confessional or at the hour of one’s death.

Until now he had loved only himself and could not do otherwise, because he expected nothing but good. He had not yet had time to be disappointed in himself.

He saw something white, something gray, but try as he would, he could not find anything attractive in these mountains about which he had heard and read so much. He thought the mountains and clouds looked alike, and the extraordinary beauty of snow-covered peaks that everyone went on about was as much an invention as Bach’s music or love, neither of which he believed in.

A Cossack bears less hatred for a Chechen warrior who has killed his brother than for a Russian soldier billeted with him to defend his village, and who has blackened the walls of his hut with tobacco smoke. A Cossack will respect an enemy tribesman but despise the Russian soldier, whom he sees as an oppressor with strange and alien ways.

Most of the women are stronger, cleverer, and better looking than the men. The beauty of the Greben women is particularly striking, as it combines the purest features of a Circassian face with a strong and robust Russian body.

Maryanka, beautiful and lithe, follows the cattle into the yard, throws down her switch, closes the gate, and then hurries on nimble feet to drive the animals into their stalls.

You want to kill her, but she wants to roam through the forest. You have your law, she has hers. She’s a sow, but that does not make her baser than you—she too is a creature of God. Ha! Man is a fool, a fool, such a fool!”

“You’ll burn, you silly things! Here, fly this way, there’s so much space there!” he said tenderly, his fingers carefully trying to catch a moth by its wings and then release it away from the flame. “You’re flying to your own ruin, and I pity you.”

The wicker fences, the cattle shimmering in the yards, the roofs of the houses, and the stately poplar trees all seemed immersed in the healthy, quiet sleep of toil.

And he felt that he was not simply a Russian nobleman, a member of Moscow society, a relative of such-and-such, a friend of so-and-so, but that he was as much a mosquito, a pheasant, or a stag as the beings around him. “I shall live and I shall die, just like them, just like Uncle Eroshka. And he is right when he says that grass will grow and that will be that!

He looked at her and was in love with her (or thought he was), the way he was in love with the beauty of the mountains and the sky, and had no thought of trying to enter into any sort of rapport with her.

He kept looking up from his book to gaze at the strong young woman moving about before him. He was afraid that he might miss a single movement as she entered the damp morning shadows cast by the house, or walked into the middle of the yard, lit by the sun’s cheerful, young rays,

“The people here exist as nature does. They die, they are born, they copulate, again they are born, they fight, eat, drink, rejoice, and again die, without any terms except for the unchanging terms that nature imposes on sun, grass, beast, and tree. They have no other laws.”

She had grown used to Olenin, and felt his gaze upon her with pleasure.

The Cossacks, puffing and panting, dragged the dead bodies together and gathered the weapons. Each red-haired Chechen was a human being, each face had its own expression.