THE FOAL

Мikhail Sholokhov

Stanitsa Popular Classics

stanitsa-kiev

Translated by Enya Lennon

&

Yuri Goroulko-Shestopalov

Cover and book artwork by

Kateryna Shevchenko

STANITSA-KIEV Ltd

160-a/87, Kharkovskoye shosse

Kiev, Ukraine 02091

e-mail: spt2109@gmail.com

www.stanitsa-kiev.com

ISBN 978-5-8218-0041-2 © Stanitsa-Kiev Ltd, 2025

In broad daylight, near a dung heap thickly covered with emerald flies, he came out of his mother’s womb, head-first and with his little front little legs outstretched, and saw directly above him a soft, blue-grey, dissipating cloud of bursting shrapnel as his small, wet body was thrown beneath his mother’s hooves by the howling roar. Terror was the first emotion he experienced here on Earth. A stinking hail of metal splinters clattered on the tiled stable roof, and the light sprinkle of it on the ground caused the foal’s mother—Trofim’s red mare—to start to her feet before falling back again with a short whinny, her sweating flank against the shielding heap.

In the sweltering stillness that followed, the flies began buzzing more distinctly, and a rooster, afraid to hop up onto the wattle fence due to the cannonade, flapped its wings once or twice somewhere in the shade of the burdocks and crowed in a relaxed but vague manner. From the hut, one could hear the tearful groaning of a wounded machine gunner. Now and then he would cry out in his rough, hoarse voice, interspersing his cries with furious cursing. In the front garden, bees buzzed amid the silky crimson of the poppies. In the meadow behind the village, a machine gun was finishing its belt, and to the sound of those cheerful cracking thumps, in between the first and second gunshots, the red mare lovingly licked over her firstborn while he, pressing against his mother’s swollen udder, experienced the fullness of life and the inescapable sweetness of maternal affection for the first time.

When the second projectile fell somewhere beyond the threshing floor, Trofim came out of the hut, slammed the door, and headed towards the stable. Walking around the dung heap and shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, he saw the foal, trembling with tension, was nursing from his red mare. He rummaged through his pockets distractedly, feeling around for a tobacco pouch with shaking fingers and rolling a smoke, he found his voice: “Well then… you’ve foaled, have you? You really chose your moment, I must say.” The last phrase was full of bitter resentment.

Blades of grass and dried dung were stuck to the mare’s sweat-roughened sides. She looked uncomfortably thin and somewhat feeble, but her eyes shone with proud joy that was seasoned with fatigue, and her silky upper lip curled up in a smile. Or so, at least, it seemed to Trofim. After the stabled mare began to snort and shake the feed bag full of grain, Trofim leant against the door frame and, throwing a hostile glance at the foal, asked dryly, “Had your fun then?”

Without waiting for an answer, he spoke again: “You could have at least picked Ignat’s stallion, but the devil knows whose this is… Now, what should I do with him?”

Grain crunched in the dim silence of the stable, and a crooked ray of sunshine poured in, its golden light spilling through a crack in the door. The light fell on Trofim’s left cheek, bringing out the copper in his red mustache and the stubble of his beard, and the lines around his mouth deepened into curved furrows. The foal stood like a wooden toy horse on its thin, fluffy legs.

“Shall I kill ’im?” Trofim said, his thumb, stained green by tobacco, curving towards the foal.

The mare turned her bloodshot eye towards him, blinking, and gave her owner an arch look.

* * *

That night, the following conversation took place in the squadron commander’s chamber: “I noticed my mare`s been cautious, she wouldn’t trot and flat-out refused to gallop, she’d be too out of breath. I’ve taken a closer look and it turns out she`s carrying a foal. Oh, how awful careful she was, she really was… And the foal’s a sort of bay colour… So…” Trofim said.

The squadron commander squeezed the copper mug of tea in his fist, clutching