Chapter 52 Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One Mishka Koshevoi and Hook did not leave the town of Kalkinsk until the next night.The night mist rolled over the grasslands, hovered in the valleys, invaded the depressions, and licked the slopes of the cliffs.On the contrary, the mound filled with clouds and mist seemed much brighter.The quails squabbled in the young grass. The moon drifted high in the sky like a water lily in full bloom in a pond overgrown with reeds and hazelnuts. They went on till dawn.The stars of the Big Dipper have dimmed.The morning dew has fallen.Not far from the village of Nizhny Yablonovsky.But here, three versts from the village, the Cossacks overtook them both on the hill.Six knights followed in their footsteps and pursued them.Mishka and Hook could have crawled into the grass by the side of the road, but the grass was too shallow, and there was a moon... They were caught... and brought back.Everyone walked a hundred or so sand ropes in silence.Then a shot was fired... "Gou'er" staggered, like a horse afraid of his own shadow, and walked a few steps sideways.He didn't fall down, but lay down, awkwardly with his face on the gray wormwood.For five minutes Mishka walked blithely, with ringing in her ears, and her legs seemed to be gone.Then he asked:

"Why don't you shoot, you bastards? Why do you torture people?" "Go, go. Don't talk!" said one of the Cossacks kindly. "We killed the peasant, but we pity you. Were you in the Twelfth Regiment when you fought the Germans?" "It's in the twelfth regiment." "You can still serve in the Twelfth Regiment... You're still young. Get lost for a while, well, it's nothing. We'll cure you." Three days later, the court-martial in the town of Kalkinsk "cured" Mishka.In military courts at that time, there were only two punishments: shooting and spanking.Those who were sentenced to shooting were dragged to the sandy mound outside the town at night to be shot, while those who thought they could be saved were whipped in public in the square.

Early on Sunday morning, as soon as the benches had been placed in the square, people started pouring in.The square was crowded with people, people stood on the terraces, on the piles of boards next to the sheds, on the roofs of the houses and grocery stores.The first to be whipped was Alexandrov, the son of the Grachev priest.This was a fanatical Bolshevik, and he was supposed to be shot, but because his father was a good priest and respected by everyone, the court-martial sentenced the priest's son to twenty lashes.Alexandrov's trousers were pulled down, and several men pressed the naked criminal on the bench, a Cossack rode on his lap (arms were tied under the bench), and two Cossacks each held a wicker stick. on both sides.He smoked ten to one.When he had finished, Alexandrov stood up, swayed, pulled up his trousers, and bowed to all sides.The man was overjoyed because he was not shot, so he bowed and thanked again:

"Thank you, old folks!" "Put on your pants and go!" someone replied. There was a burst of friendly laughter in the square, and even the criminals sitting in the barracks not far from the square laughed. According to the sentence, Mishka was also given twenty lashes.But this public humiliation is more painful than twenty lashes.The whole town—old and young—was watching him get whipped.Mishka pulled up his trousers, and almost without crying, he said to the Cossack who beat him: "This approach is too unreasonable!" "Why doesn't it make sense?" "Whatever the head does, the ass must be responsible. This is a lifetime of shame!"

"It doesn't matter, shame is not smoke, which doesn't choke the eyes," the Cossack reassured him, and added, to please the tortured man, "You're strong enough, boy: I smoked a couple of times on purpose, trying to scream You cry twice... I saw it: it can't be done, there's no way to make this wolf howl. We smoked a man the day before yesterday, and this baby pooped a lot. It seems that his intestines are too delicate." The next day, according to the sentence, Mishka was sent to the front. It took two days and nights before someone buried the "hook": the village head of Yablonovsky sent two Cossacks to dig a shallow pit, with their legs hanging by the pit, smoking, Sit for a long time.

"The ground is so hard in the pastures here," said one. "It's like iron! Because it has never been cultivated, it will harden with time." "Yeah...the lad found a good place, on a high slope...it's windy, dry, and sunny...it won't rot anytime soon." They touched "Hook" lying on the grass and stood up. "Take off his boots?" "Of course, his boots are fine." According to Christian funeral rites, they put the dead into the grave: head facing west; buried with solid black earth. "Will you be more steady?" asked the younger Cossack when the grave had been filled up to the rim.

"No, that's it," said the other with a sigh. "When the angel blows the trumpet of the doomsday—so that he can stand up quickly..." After half a month, plantain and verdant wormwood have grown on the small grave, and wild oats have begun to grow. Headings, mustard greens with their bright yellow flowers beside the grave, sweet clover drooping their heads like velvet tassels, and thyme, euphorbia, and pearl fruit exuding an enticing aroma.Soon an old man came from the neighboring woods, and dug a hole in front of the grave, and planted a freshly planed oak post, with a small shrine on top of it.The sad little face of the Virgin reveals a kind and warm expression in the shadow under the triangular wooden eaves of the shrine.On the frame board under the eaves are written two lines in black Cyrillic script:

In the age of turmoil and shamelessness, Brothers, do not blame your own brothers. The old man left, but the shrine remained on the steppe, piercing the eyes of passers-by with its eternal desolation, causing infinite melancholy in their hearts. A few days later—in May, the wild geese flocked around the little shrine, fighting for a rendezvous among the bluish wormwood bushes, and ravaging a green, ripening ice grass nearby: they In order to compete for the female geese, they fight for survival, love and the right to breed offspring.A short time later, still here by the little shrine, in a mound under a clump of tangled old wormwood, the goose laid nine blue-gray eggs on which she lay, Its warmth hatches them, and protects them with its dazzling wings.