So there
he sat, among these
armed bandits. They were dressed in sheepskins and warm materials, had
sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in
well-worn
grey trousers, his shirt
fastened
together at the
neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a
centipede,
without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly
blessed
this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The
Cossacks
looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This is very nice, very nice.'
To whom
would not a blazing
fire on a cold winter's night appeal?
They got
more and more talkative
and asked: 'Where are your wife and children?' They probably too had
wives
and children!
'My wife,'
he said, 'has
gone down to the village, she was afraid.' They laughed and tapped
their
chests: 'War is a bad thing, who would not be afraid?' Yakób
assented
all the more readily as he felt that for him the worst was over.
'Do you
know the way to the
village?' suddenly asked the captain. He was almost hidden in clouds of
tobacco-smoke, but in his eyes there was a gleam, hard and sinister,
like
a bullet in a puff of smoke.
Yakób
did not answer.
How should he not know the way?
They
started getting up,
buckled on their belts and swords.
Yakób
jumped up to
give them the rest of the sausages and food which had been left on the
plates. But they would only take the brandy, and left the tobacco and
the
broken meat.
'That will
be for you...afterwards,'
said the young Cossack, took a red muffler off his neck and put it
round
Yakob's shoulder.
'That will
keep you warm.'
Yakób
laughed back
at him, and submitted to having the muffler knotted tightly round his
throat.
The young soldier drew a pair of trousers from his kitbag: 'Those will
keep you warm, you are old.' He told him a long story about the
trousers;
they had belonged to his brother who had been killed.
'You know,
it's lucky to
wear things like that. Poor old fellow!'
Yakob stood
and looked at
the breeches. In the fire-light they seemed to be trembling like feeble
and stricken legs. He laid his hand on them and smiled, a little
defiant
and a little touched.
'You may
have them, you may
have them,' grunted the captain, and insisted on his putting them on at
once.
When he had
put them on in
the chimney-corner and showed himself, they were all doubled up with
laughter.
He looked appalling in the black trousers which were much too large for
him, a grey hood and the red muffler. His head wobbled above the red
line
as if it had been fixed on a bleeding neck. The rags on his chest
showed
the thin, hairy body, the stiff folds of the breeches produced an
effect
as if he were not walking on the ground but floating above it.
The captain
gave the command,
the soldiers jumped up and looked once more round the cottage; the
young
Cossack put the sausage and meat in a heap and covered it with a piece
of bread. 'For you,' he said once
more, and they
turned to
leave.
Yakob went
out with them
to bid them Godspeed. A vague presentiment seized him on the threshold,
when he looked out at the frozen world, the stars, like nails fixed
into
the sky, and the light of the moon on
everything. He
was afraid.
The men
went up to their
horses, and he saw that there were others outside. The wind ruffled the
shaggy little ponies' manes and threw snow upon them. The horses,
restless,
began to bite each other, and the Cossacks, scattered on the snow like
juniper-bushes, reined them in.
The
cottage-door remained
open. The lucky horseshoe, nailed to the threshold, glittered in the
light
of the hearth, which threw blood-red streaks between the legs of the
table,
across the door and beyond it on to the snow.
'I wonder
whether they will
ever return to their families?' he thought, and: 'How queer it is that
one should meet people like that.'
He was
sorry for them.
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