Taras Bulba | Page 9

thing common
enough in those bold days. There were birch-wood benches all around
the room, a huge table under the holy pictures in one corner, and a huge
stove covered with particoloured patterns in relief, with spaces between
it and the wall. All this was quite familiar to the two young men, who
were wont to come home every year during the dog-days, since they
had no horses, and it was not customary to allow students to ride afield
on horseback. The only distinctive things permitted them were long
locks of hair on the temples, which every Cossack who bore weapons
was entitled to pull. It was only at the end of their course of study that
Bulba had sent them a couple of young stallions from his stud.
Bulba, on the occasion of his sons' arrival, ordered all the sotniks or
captains of hundreds, and all the officers of the band who were of any
consequence, to be summoned; and when two of them arrived with his
old comrade, the Osaul or sub-chief, Dmitro Tovkatch, he immediately
presented the lads, saying, "See what fine young fellows they are! I
shall send them to the Setch[2] shortly." The guests congratulated
Bulba and the young men, telling them they would do well and that
there was no better knowledge for a young man than a knowledge of
that same Zaporozhian Setch.
[2] The village or, rather, permanent camp of the Zaporozhian
Cossacks.
"Come, brothers, seat yourselves, each where he likes best, at the table;
come, my sons. First of all, let's take some corn-brandy," said Bulba.
"God bless you! Welcome, lads; you, Ostap, and you, Andrii. God
grant that you may always be successful in war, that you may beat the
Musselmans and the Turks and the Tatars; and that when the Poles
undertake any expedition against our faith, you may beat the Poles.
Come, clink your glasses. How now? Is the brandy good? What's
corn-brandy in Latin? The Latins were stupid: they did not know there
was such a thing in the world as corn-brandy. What was the name of
the man who wrote Latin verses? I don't know much about reading and
writing, so I don't quite know. Wasn't it Horace?"
"What a dad!" thought the elder son Ostap. "The old dog knows

everything, but he always pretends the contrary."
"I don't believe the archimandrite allowed you so much as a smell of
corn-brandy," continued Taras. "Confess, my boys, they thrashed you
well with fresh birch-twigs on your backs and all over your Cossack
bodies; and perhaps, when you grew too sharp, they beat you with
whips. And not on Saturday only, I fancy, but on Wednesday and
Thursday."
"What is past, father, need not be recalled; it is done with."
"Let them try it know," said Andrii. "Let anybody just touch me, let any
Tatar risk it now, and he'll soon learn what a Cossack's sword is like!"
"Good, my son, by heavens, good! And when it comes to that, I'll go
with you; by heavens, I'll go too! What should I wait here for? To
become a buckwheat-reaper and housekeeper, to look after the sheep
and swine, and loaf around with my wife? Away with such nonsense! I
am a Cossack; I'll have none of it! What's left but war? I'll go with you
to Zaporozhe to carouse; I'll go, by heavens!" And old Bulba, growing
warm by degrees and finally quite angry, rose from the table, and,
assuming a dignified attitude, stamped his foot. "We will go to-morrow!
Wherefore delay? What enemy can we besiege here? What is this hut to
us? What do we want with all these things? What are pots and pans to
us?" So saying, he began to knock over the pots and flasks, and to
throw them about.
The poor old woman, well used to such freaks on the part of her
husband, looked sadly on from her seat on the wall-bench. She did not
dare say a word; but when she heard the decision which was so terrible
for her, she could not refrain from tears. As she looked at her children,
from whom so speedy a separation was threatened, it is impossible to
describe the full force of her speechless grief, which seemed to quiver
in her eyes and on her lips convulsively pressed together.
Bulba was terribly headstrong. He was one of those characters which
could only exist in that fierce fifteenth century, and in that
half-nomadic corner of Europe, when the whole of Southern Russia,

deserted by its princes, was laid waste and burned to the quick by
pitiless troops of Mongolian robbers; when men deprived of house and
home grew brave there; when, amid conflagrations, threatening
neighbours, and eternal terrors, they settled down, and growing
accustomed to looking