Bleak Morning

"...TO LIVE AS VICTORS, OR DIE GLORIOUSLY...."

Svyatoslav

There were two figures at the fire — that of a man and a woman.

The chill wind from over the top of a gully in the steppe blew at their backs, whistling through the stalks of wheat, which had long shed its grain.

The woman tucked her skirt over her feet, and thrust her hands into the sleeves of her coat.

The woollen shawl, which fell low over her eyes, allowed nothing to be seen but the straight nose and the stubbornly closed mouth.

It was not much of a fire — just a few handfuls of smouldering dung cakes picked up by the man round the cows' watering place in the gully.

And to make matters still worse, the wind was getting stronger.

"It is certainly a great deal easier to appreciate the beauties of nature when listening to the crackling of logs or looking pensively out of the window....

A great deal easier than in this dreary steppe — oh, God, the misery of it!"

It was the man speaking, in low tones which were not without a kind of bitter satisfaction.

The woman turned her chin in his direction, but did not open her lips. She was worn out by the long journey on an empty stomach, and by this man, who talked so much and guessed her inmost thoughts so smugly.

Tilting her head slightly backward, she gazed from beneath the overhanging shawl at the dim autumnal sunset behind the barely discernible hills — a mere slit in the clouds, casting no light over the lonely steppe.

"Now we'll bake some potatoes, Darya Dmitrevna, to gladden the inner man.... What you would have done without me, I can't imagine."

Bending down, he selected the firmest of the dung cakes from the heap at his side, turning them this way and that in his hand before placing them carefully on the fire.

Then he raked the embers a little to make room for some potatoes which he drew from the capacious pockets of his coat.

His reddish face with the fleshy nose flattened at the tip, the sparse beard, and the stringy moustache, wore an expression which was either extremely cunning or merely shrewd, and he never stopped smacking his lips.

"I keep thinking about you, Darya Dmitrevna," he said. "There's very little of the savage in you, and your hold on life is weak, even your civilization is only skin-deep, my dear.... You're just a rosy apple — sweet, but not ripe...."

All the time he was poking the potatoes about — potatoes which he had stolen from a vegetable plot in a steppe farmstead they had passed on their way.

His fleshy nostrils shining in the heat of the fire, twitched knowingly.

His name was Kuzma Kuzmich Nefedov.

Dasha was bored to death with his speechifying and mind reading.

Their acquaintance dated only a few days back, in a train running on a fantastic schedule and following a fantastic route, only to be derailed by White Cossacks.