Mikhail Sholokhov: War’s bitter harvest

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Russian writers on war

Mikhail Sholokhov: Selections on war

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Mikhail Sholokhov
From And Quite Flows the Don (1928-32)
Translated by Stephen Garry

The second and third lines of reserves were called up together. The districts and villages of the Don were depopulated, as though everybody had gone out to mow or reap the harvest.

But a bitter harvest was reaped along the frontiers that year; death carried away the labourers, and more than one straight-haired Cossack’s wife sang of the departed one: “Beloved mine, for whom have you deserted me?” Darling heads were laid low on all sides, the ruddy Cossack blood was poured out, and glassy-eyed, unawakable, they rotted beneath the artillery dirge in Austria, in Poland, in Prussia…So the eastern wind did not carry the weeping of their wives and their mothers to their ears.

***

Six Hungarian hussars were busily occupied with the horses of the field-gun on the extreme right of the battery. One was dragging at the bits of the excited artillery horses, another was beating them with the flat of his sword, while the others were tugging and pulling at the spokes of the carriage-wheels. An officer on a dock-tailed chocolate mare was superintending the operations. At the sight of the Cossacks he gave an order, and the hussars leaped to their horses.

As Grigori galloped toward them one foot momentarily lost its stirrup, and feeling himself insecure in the saddle, with inward alarm he bent over and fished with his toe for the dangling iron. When he had recovered his foot-hold he looked up and saw the six horses of the field-gun in front of him. The outrider on the foremost, in a blood- and brain-spattered shirt, was lying over the animal’s neck, embracing it. Grigori’s horse brought its hoof down with a sickening scrunch on the body of the dead gunner. Two more were lying by an overturned case of shells. A fourth was stretched face-downward over the gun-carriage. A Cossack of Grigori’s troops was just in front of him. The Hungarian officer fired at almost point-blank range and the Cossack fell, his hands clutching and embracing the air. Grigori pulled on his reins and tried to approach the officer from the right, the better to use his sabre; but the officer saw through his manoeuvre and fired under his arm at him. He discharged the contents of his revolver and then drew his sword. Three smashing blows he parried dextrously. Grigori reached at him yet a fourth time, standing in his stirrups. Their horses were now galloping almost side by side, and he noticed the ashen-grey, clean-shaven cheek of the Hungarian and the regimental number sewn on his collar. With a feint he drew off the officer’s attention and, changing the direction of his stroke, thrust the point of his sabre between the Hungarian’s shoulder-blades. He aimed a second blow at the neck, just at the top of the spine. The officer dropped his sword and reins from his hands and straightened up, then toppled over his saddle-bow, Feeling a terrible relief, Grigori lashed at his head and saw the sabre smash into the bone above the ear.

A fearful blow at his head from behind tore consciousness away from Grigori. He felt a burning, salty taste of blood in his mouth and realized that he was falling; from one side the stubbled earth came whirling and flying up at him. The heavy crash of his body momentarily brought him back to reality. He opened his eyes; blood poured into them. A trample past his ear, and the heavy breathing of horses. For the last time he opened his eyes and saw the dilated nostrils of horses, and someone’s foot in a stirrup. “Finished!” the comforting thought crawled through his mind like a snake. A roar, and then black emptiness.

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So vivid that it was almost a blinding pain, the night after the battle remained for ever imprinted in Grigori’s memory. He returned to consciousness some time before dawn; his hands stirred among the prickly stubble, and he groaned with the pain that filled his head. With an effort he raised his hand, drew it to his brow, and felt his blood-clotted hair. He touched the flesh wound with his finger. Then, grating his teeth, he lay on his back. Above him the frost-nipped leaves of a tree rustled mournfully with a glassy tinkle. The black silhouettes of the branches were clearly outlined against the deep blue background of the sky, and stars glittered among them. Grigori gazed unwinkingly, and the stars seemed to him like strange bluish-yellow fruits hanging from the twigs.

Realizing what had happened to him, and conscious of an invincible, approaching horror, he crawled away on all fours, grinding his teeth. The pain played with him, threw him down headlong. He seemed to be crawling an immeasurably long time. He forced himself to look back; the tree stood out blackly some fifty paces away. Once he crawled across a corpse, resting his elbows on the dead man’s hard, sunken belly. He was sick with loss of blood, wept like a babe, and chewed the dewy grass to avoid losing consciousness…