Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

SEVASTOPOL IN MAY 1855

I

SIX months have passed since the first cannon-ball went whistling from the bastions of Sevastopol and threw up the earth of the enemy’s entrenchments. Since then bullets, balls, and bombs by the thousand have flown continually from the bastions to the entrenchments and from the entrenchments to the bastions, and above them the angel of death has hovered unceasingly.

Thousands of human ambitions have had time to be mortified, thousands to be gratified and extend, thousands to be lulled to rest in the arms of death. What numbers of pink coffins and linen palls! And still the same sounds from the bastions fill the air; the French still look from their camp with involuntary trepidation and fear at the yellowy earth of the bastions of Sevastopol and count the embrasures from which the iron cannon frown fiercely; as before, through the fixed telescope on the elevation of the signal-station the pilot still watches the bright-coloured figures of the French, their batteries, their tents, their columns on the green hill, and the puffs of smoke that rise from the entrenchments; and as before, crowds of different men, with a still greater variety of desires, stream with the same ardour from many parts of the world to this fatal spot. But the question the diplomatists did not settle still remains unsettled by powder and blood.

II

A REGIMENTAL band was playing on the boulevard near the pavilion in the besieged town of Sevastopol, and crowds of women and military men strolled along the paths making holiday. The bright spring sun had risen in the morning above the English entrenchments, had reached the bastions, then the town and the Nicholas Barracks, shining with equal joy on all, and was now sinking down to the distant blue sea which, rocking with an even motion, glittered with silvery light.

A tall infantry officer with a slight stoop, drawing on a presentable though not very white glove, passed out of the gate of one of the small sailors’ houses built on the left side of the Morskáya Street and gazing thoughtfully at the ground ascended the hill towards the boulevard. The expression of his plain face did not reveal much intellectual power, but rather good-nature, common sense, honesty, and an inclination to respectability. He was badly built, and seemed rather shy and awkward in his movements. His cap was nearly new, a gold watch-chain showed from under his thin cloak of a rather peculiar lilac shade, and he wore trousers with foot-straps, and clean, shiny calf-skin boots. He might have been a German (but that his features indicated his purely Russian origin), an adjutant, or a regimental quartermaster (but in that case he would have worn spurs), or an officer transferred from the cavalry or the Guards for the duration of the war. He was in fact an officer who had exchanged from the cavalry, and as he ascended the hill towards the boulevard he was thinking of a letter he had received from a former comrade now retired from the army, a landed proprietor in the government of T—, and of his great friend, the pale, blue-eyed Natásha, that comrade’s wife. He recalled a part of the letter where his comrade wrote:

‘When we receive the Invalide,¹ Púpka’ (so the retired Uhlan called his wife) ‘rushes headlong into the hall, seizes the paper, and runs with it to a seat in the arbour or the drawing-room – in which, you remember, we spent such jolly winter evenings when your regiment was stationed in our town – and reads of your heroic deeds with an ardour you cannot imagine. She often speaks of you. “There now,” she says, “Mikháylov is a darling. I am ready to cover him with kisses when I see him. He [is fighting on the bastions and] is certain to receive a St George’s Cross, and they’ll write about him in the papers,” &c., &c., so that I am beginning to be quite jealous of you.’

In another place he wrote: ‘The papers reach us awfully late, and though there are plenty of rumours one cannot believe them all. For instance, those musical young ladies you know of, were saying yesterday that Napoleon has been captured by our Cossacks and sent to St Petersburg, but you can imagine how much of this I believe. One fresh arrival from Petersburg tells us for certain (he is a capital fellow, sent by the Minister on special business – and now there is no one in the town you can’t think what a resource he is to us), that we have taken Eupatoria [so that the French are cut off from Balaclava], and that we lost two hundred in the affair and the French as many as fifteen thousand. My wife was in such raptures that she caroused all night and said that a presentiment assured her that you distinguished yourself in that affair.’

In spite of the words and expressions I have purposely italicized, and the whole tone of the letter, Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov thought with an inexpressibly melancholy pleasure about his pale-faced provincial friend and how he used to sit with her of an evening in the arbour, talking sentiment. He thought of his kind comrade the Uhlan: how the latter used to get angry and lose when they played cards in the study for kopek points and how his wife used to laugh at him. He recalled the friendship these people had for him (perhaps he thought there was something more on the side of the pale-faced friend): these people and their surroundings flitted through his memory in a wonderfully sweet, joyously rosy light and, smiling at the recollection, he put his hand to the pocket where this dear letter lay.

From these recollections Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov involuntarily passed to dreams and hopes. ‘How surprised and pleased Natásha will be,’ he thought as he passed along a narrow side-street, ‘when she reads in the Invalide of my being the first to climb on the cannon, and receiving the St George! I ought to be made full captain on that former recommendation. Then I may easily become a major this year by seniority, because so many of our fellows have been killed and no doubt many more will be killed this campaign. Then there’ll be more fighting and I, as a well-known man, shall be entrusted with a regiment … then a lieutenant-colonel, the order of St Anna … a colonel’ … and he was already a general, honouring with a visit Natásha, the widow of his comrade (who would be dead by that time according to his day-dream) – when the sounds of the music on the boulevard reached his ears more distinctly, a crowd of people appeared before his eyes, and he realized that he was on the boulevard and a lieutenant-captain of infantry as before.

III

HE went first to the pavilion, beside which stood the band with soldiers of the same regiment acting as music-stands and holding open the music books, while around them clerks, cadets, nursemaids, and children formed a circle, looking on rather than listening. Most of the people who were standing, sitting, and sauntering round the pavilion were naval officers, adjutants, and white-gloved army officers. Along the broad avenue of the boulevard walked officers of all sorts and women of all sorts – a few of the latter in hats, but the greater part with kerchiefs on their heads, and some with neither kerchiefs nor hats – but it was remarkable that there was not a single old woman amongst them – all were young. Lower down, in the scented alleys shaded by the white acacias, isolated groups sat or strolled.

No one was particularly glad to meet Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov on the boulevard, except perhaps Captain Obzhógov of his regiment and Captain Súslikov who pressed his hand warmly, but the first of these wore camel-hair trousers, no gloves, and a shabby overcoat, and his face was red and perspiring, and the second shouted so loud and was so free and easy that one felt ashamed to be seen walking with him, especially by those white-gloved officers – to one of whom, an adjutant, Mikháylov bowed, and he might have bowed to another, a Staff officer whom he had twice met at the house of a mutual acquaintance. Besides, what was the fun of walking with Obzhógov and Súslikov when as it was he met them and shook hands with them six times a day? Was this what he had come to hear the music for?

He would have liked to accost the adjutant whom he had bowed to and to talk with those gentlemen, not at all that he wanted Captains Obzhógov and Súslikov and Lieutenant Pashtétski and others to see him talking to them, but simply because they were pleasant people who knew all the news and might have told him something.

But why is Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov afraid and unable to muster courage to approach them? ‘Supposing they don’t return my greeting,’ he thinks, ‘or merely bow and go on talking among themselves as if I were not there, or simply walk away and leave me standing among the aristocrats?’ The word aristocrats (in the sense of the highest and most select circle of any class) has lately gained great popularity in Russia, where one would think it ought not to exist. It has made its way to every part of the country, and into every grade of society which can be reached by vanity – and to what conditions of time and circumstance does this pitiful propensity not penetrate? You find it among merchants, officials, clerks, officers – in Sarátov, Mamadíshi, Vínnitza, in fact wherever men are to be found. And since there are many men, and consequently much vanity, in the besieged town of Sevastopol, aristocrats are to be found here too, though death hangs over everyone, be he aristocrat or not.

To Captain Obzhógov, Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov was an aristocrat, and to Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov, Adjutant Kalúgin was an aristocrat, because he was an adjutant and intimate with another adjutant. To Adjutant Kalúgin, Count Nórdov was an aristocrat, because he was an aide-de-camp to the Emperor.

Vanity! vanity! vanity! everywhere, even on the brink of the grave and among men ready to die for a noble cause. Vanity! It seems to be the characteristic feature and special malady of our time. How is it that among our predecessors no mention was made of this passion, as of small-pox and cholera? How is it that in our time there are only three kinds of people: those who, considering vanity an inevitably existing fact and therefore justifiable, freely submit to it; those who regard it as a sad but unavoidable condition; and those who act unconsciously and slavishly under its influence? Why did the Homers and Shakespeares speak of love, glory, and suffering, while the literature of to-day is an endless story of snobbery and vanity?

Twice the lieutenant-captain passed irresolutely by the group of his aristocrats, but drawing near them for the third time he made an effort and walked up to them. The group consisted of four officers: Adjutant Kalúgin, Mikháylov’s acquaintance, Adjutant Prince Gáltsin who was rather an aristocrat even for Kalúgin himself, Lieutenant-Colonel Nefërdov, one of the so-called ‘two hundred and twenty-two’ society men, who being on the retired list re-entered the army for this war, and Cavalry-Captain Praskúkhin, also of the ‘two hundred and twenty-two’. Luckily for Mikháylov, Kalúgin was in splendid spirits (the general had just spoken to him in a very confidential manner, and Prince Gáltsin who had arrived from Petersburg was staying with him), so he did not think it beneath his dignity to shake hands with Mikháylov, which was more than Praskúkhin did though he had often met Mikháylov on the bastion, had more than once drunk his wine and vodka, and even owed him twelve and a half rubles lost at cards. Not being yet well acquainted with Prince Gáltsin he did not like to appear to be acquainted with a mere lieutenant-captain of infantry. So he only bowed slightly.

‘Well, Captain,’ said Kalúgin, ‘when will you be visiting the bastion again? Do you remember our meeting at the Schwartz Redoubt? Things were hot, weren’t they, eh?’

‘Yes, very,’ said Mikháylov, and he recalled how when making his way along the trench to the bastion he had met Kalúgin walking bravely along, his sabre clanking smartly.

‘My turn’s to-morrow by rights, but we have an officer ill’, continued Mikháylov, ‘so —’

He wanted to say that it was not his turn but as the Commander of the 8th Company was ill and only the ensign was left in the company, he felt it his duty to go in place of Lieutenant Nepshisétski and would therefore be at the bastion that evening. But Kalúgin did not hear him out.

‘I feel sure that something is going to happen in a day or two,’ he said to Prince Gáltsin.

‘How about to-day? Will nothing happen to-day?’ Mikháylov asked shyly, looking first at Kalúgin and then at Gáltsin.

No one replied. Prince Gáltsin only puckered up his face in a curious way and looking over Mikháylov’s cap said after a short silence:

‘Fine girl that, with the red kerchief. You know her, don’t you, Captain?’

‘She lives near my lodgings, she’s a sailor’s daughter,’ answered the lieutenant-captain.

‘Come, let’s have a good look at her.’

And Prince Gáltsin gave one of his arms to Kalúgin and the other to the lieutenant-captain, being sure he would confer great pleasure on the latter by so doing, which was really quite true.

The lieutenant-captain was superstitious and considered it a great sin to amuse himself with women before going into action; but on this occasion he pretended to be a roué, which Prince Gáltsin and Kalúgin evidently did not believe and which greatly surprised the girl with the red kerchief, who had more than once noticed how the lieutenant-captain blushed when he passed her window. Praskúkhin walked behind them, and kept touching Prince Gáltsin’s arm and making various remarks in French, but as four people could not walk abreast on the path he was obliged to go alone until, on the second round, he took the arm of a well-known brave naval officer, Servyágin, who came up and spoke to him, being also anxious to join the aristocrats. And the well-known hero gladly passed his honest muscular hand under the elbow of Praskúkhin, whom everybody, including Servyágin himself, knew to be no better than he should be. When, wishing to explain his acquaintance with this sailor, Praskúkhin whispered to Prince Gáltsin that this was the well-known hero, Prince Gáltsin – who had been in the Fourth Bastion the day before and seen a shell burst at some twenty yards’ distance – considering himself not less courageous than the newcomer, and believing that many reputations are obtained by luck, paid not the slightest attention to Servyágin.

Lieutenant-Captain Mikháylov found it so pleasant to walk in this company that he forgot the nice letter from T— and his gloomy forebodings at the thought of having to go to the bastion. He remained with them till they began talking exclusively among themselves, avoiding his eyes to show that he might go, and at last walked away from him. But all the same the lieutenant-captain was contented, and when he passed Cadet Baron Pesth – who was particularly conceited and self-satisfied since the previous night, when for the first time in his life he had been in the bomb-proof of the Fifth Bastion and had consequently become a hero in his own estimation – he was not at all hurt by the suspiciously haughty expression with which the cadet saluted him.

IV

BUT the lieutenant-captain had hardly crossed the threshold of his lodgings before very different thoughts entered his head. He saw his little room with its uneven earth floor, its crooked windows, the broken panes mended with paper, his old bedstead with two Túla pistols and a rug (showing a lady on horseback) nailed to the wall beside it,² as well as the dirty bed of the cadet who lived with him, with its cotton quilt. He saw his man Nikita, with his rough greasy hair, rise from the floor scratching himself, he saw his old cloak, his common boots, a little bundle tied in a handkerchief ready for him to take to the bastion, from which peeped a bit of cheese and the neck of a porter bottle containing vodka – and he suddenly remembered that he had to go with his company to spend the whole night at the lodgements.

‘I shall certainly be killed to-night,’ thought he, ‘I feel I shall. And there was really no need for me to go – I offered to do it of my own accord. And it always happens that the one who offers himself gets killed. And what is the matter with that confounded Nepshisétski? He may not be ill at all, and they’ll go and kill me because of him – they’re sure to. Still, if they don’t kill me I shall certainly be recommended for promotion. I saw how pleased the regimental commander was when I said: “Allow me to go if Lieutenant Nepshisétski is ill.” If I’m not made a major then I’ll get the Order of Vladímir for certain. Why, I am going to the bastion for the thirteenth time. Oh dear, the thirteenth! Unlucky number! I am certain to be killed. I feel I shall … but somebody had to go: the company can’t go with only an ensign. Supposing something were to happen.… Why, the honour of the regiment, the honour of the army is at stake. It is my duty to go. Yes, my sacred duty.… But I have a presentiment.’

The lieutenant-captain forgot that it was not the first time he had felt this presentiment: that in a greater or lesser degree he had it whenever he was going to the bastion, and he did not know that before going into action everyone has such forebodings more or less strongly. Having calmed himself by appealing to his sense of duty – which was highly developed and very strong – the lieutenant-captain sat down at the table and began writing a farewell letter to his father. Ten minutes later, having finished his letter, he rose from the table his eyes wet with tears, and repeating mentally all the prayers he knew he began to dress. His rather tipsy and rude servant lazily handed him his new cloak – the old one which the lieutenant-captain usually wore at the bastion not being mended.

‘Why isn’t my cloak mended? You do nothing but sleep,’ said Mikháylov angrily.

‘Sleep indeed!’ grumbled Nikita, ‘I do nothing but run about like a dog the whole day, and when I get fagged I mayn’t even go to sleep!’

‘I see you are drunk again.’

‘It’s not at your expense if I am, so you needn’t complain.’

‘Hold your tongue, you dolt!’ shouted the lieutenant-captain, ready to strike the man.

Already upset, he now quite lost patience and felt hurt by the rudeness of Nikita, who had lived with him for the last twelve years and whom he was fond of and even spoilt.

‘Dolt? Dolt?’ repeated the servant. ‘And why do you, sir, abuse me and call me a dolt? You know in times like these it isn’t right to abuse people.’

Recalling where he was about to go Mikháylov felt ashamed.

‘But you know, Nikita, you would try anyone’s patience!’ he said mildly. ‘That letter to my father on the table you may leave where it is. Don’t touch it,’ he added reddening.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Nikita, becoming sentimental under the influence of the vodka he had drunk, as he said, at his own expense, and blinking with an evident inclination to weep.

But at the porch, when the lieutenant-captain said, ‘Goodbye, Nikita,’ Nikita burst into forced sobs and rushed to kiss his master’s hand, saying, ‘Good-bye, sir,’ in a broken voice. A sailor’s widow who was also standing in the porch could not, as a woman, help joining in this tender scene, and began wiping her eyes on her dirty sleeve, saying something about people who, though they were gentlefolk, took such sufferings upon themselves while she, poor woman, was left a widow. And she told the tipsy Nikita for the hundredth time about her sorrows; how her husband had been killed in the first bondbarment, and how her hut had been shattered (the one she lived in now was not her own) and so on. After his master was gone Nikita lit his pipe, asked the landlady’s little girl to get some vodka, very soon left off crying, and even had a quarrel with the old woman about a pail he said she had smashed for him.

‘But perhaps I shall only be wounded,’ reasoned the lieutenant-captain as he drew near the bastion with his company when twilight had already begun to fall. ‘But where, and how? Here or here?’ he said to himself, mentally passing his chest, his stomach, and his thighs in review. ‘Supposing it’s here’ (he thought of his thighs) ‘and goes right round.… Or goes here with a piece of a bomb, then it will be all up.’

The lieutenant-captain passed along the trenches and reached the lodgements safely. In perfect darkness he and an officer of Engineers set the men to their work, after which he sat down in a pit under the breastwork. There was little firing; only now and again there was a lightning flash on our side or his, and the brilliant fuse of a bomb formed a fiery arc on the dark, star-speckled sky. But all the bombs fell far beyond or far to the right of the lodgement where the lieutenant-captain sat in his pit. He drank some vodka, ate some cheese, smoked a cigarette, said his prayers, and felt inclined to sleep for a while.

V

PRINCE GÁLTSIN, Lieutenant-Colonel Nefërdov, and Praskúkhin – whom no one had invited and to whom no one spoke, but who still stuck to them – went to Kalúgin’s to tea.

‘But you did not finish telling me about Váska Méndel,’ said Kalúgin, when he had taken off his cloak and sat in a soft easy chair by the window unbuttoning the collar of his clean starched shirt. ‘How did he get married?’

‘It was a joke, my boy! … Je vous dis, il y avait un temps, on ne parlait que de ça à Pétersbourg,’³ said Prince Gáltsin, laughing as he jumped up from the piano-stool and sat down near Kalúgin on the window-sill,⁴ ‘a capital joke. I know all about it.’

And he told, amusingly, cleverly, and with animation, a love story which, as it has no interest for us, we will omit.

It was noticeable that not only Prince Gáltsin but each of these gentlemen who established themselves, one on the window-sill, another with his legs in the air, and a third by the piano, seemed quite different people now from what they had been on the boulevard. There was none of the absurd arrogance and haughtiness they had shown towards the infantry officers; here among themselves they were natural, and Kalúgin and Prince Gáltsin in particular showed themselves very pleasant, merry, and good-natured young fellows. Their conversation was about their Petersburg fellow officers and acquaintances.

‘What of Máslovski?’

‘Which one – the Leib-Uhlan, or the Horse Guard?’

‘I know them both. The one in the Horse Guards I knew when he was a boy just out of school. But the eldest – is he a captain yet?’

‘Oh yes, long ago.’

‘Is he still fussing about with his gipsy?’

‘No, he has dropped her.…’ And so on in the same strain.

Later on Prince Gáltsin went to the piano and gave an excellent rendering of a gipsy song. Praskúkhin, chiming in unasked, put in a second and did it so well that he was invited to continue, and this delighted him.

A servant brought tea, cream, and cracknels on a silver tray.

‘Serve the prince,’ said Kalúgin.

‘Isn’t it strange to think that we’re in a besieged town,’ said Gáltsin, taking his tea to the window, ‘and here’s a pianerforty, tea with cream, and a house such as I should really be glad to have in Petersburg?’

‘Well, if we hadn’t even that much,’ said the old and ever-dissatisfied lieutenant-colonel, ‘the constant uncertainty we are living in – seeing people killed day after day and no end to it – would be intolerable. And to have dirt and discomfort added to it —.’

‘But our infantry officers live at the bastions with their men in the bomb-proofs and eat the soldiers’ soup’, said Kalúgin, ‘what of them?’

‘What of them? Well, though it’s true they don’t change their shirts for ten days at a time, they are heroes all the same – wonderful fellows.’

Just then an infantry officer entered the room.

‘I … I have orders … may I see the gen … his Excellency? I have come with a message from General N.,’ he said with a timid bow.

Kalúgin rose and without returning the officer’s greeting asked with an offensive, affected, official smile if he would not have the goodness to wait; and without asking him to sit down or taking any further notice of him he turned to Gáltsin and began talking French, so that the poor officer left alone in the middle of the room did not in the least know what to do with himself.

‘It is a matter of the utmost urgency, sir,’ he said after a short silence.

‘Ah! Well then, please come with me,’ said Kalúgin, putting on his cloak and accompanying the officer to the door.

* * *

‘Eh bien, messieurs, je crois que cela chauffera cette nuit,’⁵ said Kalúgin when he returned from the general’s.

‘Ah! What is it – a sortie?’ asked the others.

‘That I don’t know. You will see for yourselves,’ replied Kalúgin with a mysterious smile.

‘And my commander is at the bastion, so I suppose I must go too,’ said Praskúkhin, buckling on his sabre.

No one replied, it was his business to know whether he had to go or not.

Praskúkhin and Nefërdov left to go to their appointed posts.

‘Good-bye gentlemen. Au revoir! We’ll meet again before the night is over,’ shouted Kalúgin from the window as Praskúkhin and Nefërdov, stooping on their Cossack saddles, trotted past. The tramp of their Cossack horses soon died away in the dark street.

‘Non, dites-moi, est-ce qu’il y aura véritablement quelque chose cette nuit?’⁶ said Gáltsin as he lounged in the window-sill beside Kalúgin and watched the bombs that rose above the bastions.

‘I can tell you, you see … you have been to the bastions?’ (Gáltsin nodded, though he had only been once to the Fourth Bastion). ‘You remember just in front of our lunette there is a trench,’ – and Kalúgin, with the air of one who without being a specialist considers his military judgement very sound, began, in a rather confused way and misusing the technical terms, to explain the position of the enemy, and of our own works, and the plan of the intended action.

‘But I say, they’re banging away at the lodgements! Oho! I wonder if that’s ours or his?… Now it’s burst,’ said they as they lounged on the window-sill looking at the fiery trails of the bombs crossing one another in the air, at flashes that for a moment lit up the dark sky, at puffs of white smoke, and listened to the more and more rapid reports of the firing.

‘Quel charmant coup d’œil! a?’⁷ said Kalúgin, drawing his guest’s attention to the really beautiful sight. ‘Do you know, you sometimes can’t distinguish a bomb from a star.’

‘Yes, I thought that was a star just now and then saw it fall … there! it’s burst. And that big star – what do you call it? – looks just like a bomb.’

‘Do you know I am so used to these bombs that I am sure when I’m back in Russia I shall fancy I see bombs every starlight night – one gets so used to them.’

‘But hadn’t I better go with this sortie?’ said Prince Gáltsin after a moment’s pause.

‘Humbug, my dear fellow! Don’t think of such a thing. Besides, I won’t let you,’ answered Kalúgin. ‘You will have plenty of opportunities later on.’

‘Really? You think I need not go, eh?’

At that moment, from the direction in which these gentlemen were looking, amid the boom of the cannon came the terrible rattle of musketry, and thousands of little fires flaming up in quick succession flashed all along the line.

‘There! Now it’s the real thing!’ said Kalúgin. ‘I can’t keep cool when I hear the noise of muskets. It seems to seize one’s very soul, you know. There’s an hurrah!’ he added, listening intently to the distant and prolonged roar of hundreds of voices – ‘Ah – ah – ah’ – which came from the bastions.

‘Whose hurrah was it? Theirs or ours?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s hand-to-hand fighting now, for the firing has ceased.’

At that moment an officer followed by a Cossack galloped under the window and alighted from his horse at the porch.

‘Where are you from?’

‘From the bastion. I want the general.’

‘Come along. Well, what’s happened?’

‘The lodgements have been attacked – and occupied. The French brought up tremendous reserves – attacked us – we had only two battalions,’ said the officer, panting. He was the same officer who had been there that evening, but though he was now out of breath he walked to the door with full self-possession.

‘Well, have we retired?’ asked Kalúgin.

‘No,’ angrily replied the officer, ‘another battalion came up in time – we drove them back, but the colonel is killed and many officers. I have orders to ask for reinforcements.’

And saying this he went with Kalúgin to the general’s, where we shall not follow him.

Five minutes later Kalúgin was already on his Cossack horse (again in the semi-Cossack manner which I have noticed that all adjutants, for some reason, seem to consider the proper thing), and rode off at a trot towards the bastion to deliver some orders and await the final result of the affair. Prince Gáltsin, under the influence of that oppressive excitement usually produced in a spectator by proximity to an action in which he is not engaged, went out, and began aimlessly pacing up and down the street.

VI

SOLDIERS passed carrying the wounded on stretchers or supporting them under their arms. It was quite dark in the streets, lights could be seen here and there, but only in the hospital windows or where some officers were sitting up. From the bastions still came the thunder of cannon and the rattle of muskets,⁸ and flashes kept on lighting up the dark sky as before. From time to time the tramp of hoofs could be heard as an orderly galloped past, or the groans of a wounded man, the steps and voices of stretcher-bearers, or the words of some frightened women who had come out onto their porches to watch the cannonade.

Among the spectators were our friend Nikita, the old sailor’s widow with whom he had again made friends, and her ten-year-old daughter.

‘O Lord God! Holy Mary, Mother of God!’ said the old woman, sighing as she looked at the bombs that kept flying across from side to side like balls of fire; ‘What horrors! What horrors! Ah, ah! Oh, oh! Even at the first bondbarment it wasn’t like that. Look now where the cursed thing has burst just over our house in the suburb.’

‘No, that’s further, they keep tumbling into Aunt Irene’s garden,’ said the girl.

‘And where, where, is master now?’ drawled Nikita, who was not quite sober yet. ‘Oh! You don’t know how I love that master of mine! I love him so that if he were killed in a sinful way, which God forbid, then would you believe it, granny, after that I myself don’t know what I wouldn’t do to myself! I don’t! … My master is that sort, there’s only one word for it. Would I change him for such as them there, playing cards? What are they? Ugh! There’s only one word for it!’ concluded Nikita, pointing to the lighted window of his master’s room to which, in the absence of the lieutenant-captain, Cadet Zhvadchévski had invited Sub-Lieutenants Ugróvich and Nepshisétski – the latter suffering from face-ache – and where he was having a spree in honour of a medal he had received.

‘Look at the stars! Look how they’re rolling!’ the little girl broke the silence that followed Nikíta’s words as she stood gazing at the sky. ‘There’s another rolled down. What is it a sign of, mother?’

‘They’ll smash up our hut altogether,’ said the old woman with a sigh, leaving her daughter unanswered.

‘As we went there to-day with uncle, mother,’ the little girl continued in a sing-song tone, becoming loquacious, ‘there was such a b – i – g cannon-ball inside the room close to the cupboard. Must have smashed in through the passage and right into the room! Such a big one – you couldn’t lift it.’

‘Those who had husbands and money all moved away,’ said the old woman, ‘and there’s the hut, all that was left me, and that’s been smashed. Just look at him blazing away! The fiend! … O Lord! O Lord!’

‘And just as we were going out, comes a bomb fly-ing, and goes and bur-sts and co-o-vers us with dust. A bit of it nearly hit me and uncle.’

VII

PRINCE GÁLTSIN met more and more wounded carried on stretchers or walking supported by others who were talking loudly.

‘Up they sprang, friends,’ said the bass voice of a tall soldier with two guns slung from his shoulder, ‘up they sprang, shouting “Allah! Allah!”⁹ and just climbing one over another. You kill one and another’s there, you couldn’t do anything; no end of ’em —’

But at this point in the story Gáltsin interrupted him.

‘You are from the bastion?’

‘Yes, your Honour.’

‘Well, what happened? Tell me.’

“What happened? Well, your Honour, such a force of ’em poured down on us over the rampart, it was all up. They quite overpowered us, your Honour!’

‘Overpowered?… But you repulsed them?’

‘How could we repulse them when his whole force came on, killed all our men, and no re’forcements were given us?’

The soldier was mistaken, the trench had remained ours; but it is a curious fact which anyone may notice, that a soldier wounded in action always thinks the affair lost and imagines it to have been a very bloody fight.

‘How is that? I was told they had been repulsed,’ said Gáltsin irritably. ‘Perhaps they were driven back after you left? Is it long since you came away?’

‘I am straight from there, your Honour,’ answered the soldier, ‘it is hardly possible. They must have kept the trench, he quite overpowered us.’

‘And aren’t you ashamed to have lost the trench? It’s terrible!’ said Gáltsin, provoked by such indifference.

‘Why, if the strength is on their side …’ muttered the soldier.

‘Ah, your Honour,’ began a soldier from a stretcher which had just come up to them, ‘how could we help giving it up when he had killed almost all our men? If we’d had the strength we wouldn’t have given it up, not on any account. But as it was, what could we do? I stuck one, and then something hits me. Oh, oh-h! Steady, lads, steady! Oh, oh!’ groaned the wounded man.

‘Really, there seem to be too many men returning,’ said Gáltsin, again stopping the tall soldier with the two guns. ‘Why are you retiring? You there, stop!’

The soldier stopped and took off his cap with his left hand.

‘Where are you going, and why?’ shouted Gáltsin severely, ‘you scoun—’

But having come close up to the soldier, Gáltsin noticed that no hand was visible beneath the soldier’s right cuff and that the sleeve was soaked in blood to the elbow.

‘I am wounded, your Honour.’

‘Wounded? How?’

‘Here. Must have been with a bullet,’ said the man, pointing to his arm, ‘but I don’t know what struck my head here,’ and bending his head he showed the matted hair at the back stuck together with blood.

‘And whose is this other gun?’

‘It’s a French rifle I took, your Honour. But I wouldn’t have come away if it weren’t to lead this fellow – he may fall,’ he added, pointing to a soldier who was walking a little in front leaning on his gun and painfully dragging his left leg.

Prince Gáltsin suddenly felt horribly ashamed of his unjust suspicions. He felt himself blushing, turned away, and went to the hospital without either questioning or watching the wounded men any more.

Having with difficulty pushed his way through the porch among the wounded who had come on foot and the bearers who were carrying in the wounded and bringing out the dead, Gáltsin entered the first room, gave a look round, and involuntarily turned back and ran out into the street: it was too terrible.

VIII

THE large, lofty, dark hall, lit up only by the four or five candles with which the doctors examined the wounded, was quite full. Yet the bearers kept bringing in more wounded – laying them side by side on the floor which was already so packed that the unfortunate patients were jostled together, staining one another with their blood – and going to fetch more wounded. The pools of blood visible in the unoccupied spaces, the feverish breathing of several hundred men, and the perspiration of the bearers with the stretchers, filled the air with a peculiar, heavy, thick, fetid mist, in which the candles burnt dimly in different parts of the hall. All sorts of groans, sighs, death-rattles, now and then interrupted by shrill screams, filled the whole room. Sisters with quiet faces, expressing no empty feminine tearful pity, but active practical sympathy, stepped here and there across the wounded with medicines, water, bandages, and lint, flitting among the blood-stained coats and shirts. The doctors, kneeling with rolled-up sleeves beside the wounded, by the light of the candles their assistants held, examined, felt, and probed their wounds, heedless of the terrible groans and entreaties of the sufferers. One doctor sat at a table near the door and at the moment Gáltsin came in was already entering No. 532.

‘Iván Bogáev, Private, Company Three, S— Regiment, fractura femuris complicata!’ shouted another doctor from the end of the room, examining a shattered leg. ‘Turn him over.’

‘Oh, oh, fathers! Oh, you’re our fathers!’ screamed the soldier, beseeching them not to touch him.

‘Perforatio capitis!’

‘Simon Nefërdov, Lieutenant-Colonel of the N— Infantry Regiment. Have a little patience, Colonel, or it is quite impossible: I shall give it up!’ said a third doctor, poking about with some kind of hook in the unfortunate colonel’s skull.

‘Oh, don’t! Oh, for God’s sake be quick! Be quick! Ah —!’

‘Perforatio pectoris … Sebastian Seredá, Private … what regiment? But you need not write that: moritur. Carry him away,’ said the doctor, leaving the soldier, whose eyes turned up and in whose throat the death-rattle already sounded.

About forty soldier stretcher-bearers stood at the door waiting to carry the bandaged to the wards and the dead to the chapel. They looked on at the scene before them in silence, only broken now and then by a heavy sigh.

IX

ON his way to the bastion Kalúgin met many wounded, but knowing by experience that in action such sights have a bad effect on one’s spirits, he did not stop to question them but tried on the contrary not to notice them. At the foot of the hill he met an orderly-officer galloping fast from the bastion.

‘Zóbkin! Zóbkin! Wait a bit!’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Where are you from?’

‘The lodgements.’

‘How are things there – hot?’

‘Oh, awful!’

And the orderly galloped on.

In fact, though there was now but little small-arms firing, the cannonade had recommenced with fresh heat and persistence.

‘Ah, that’s bad!’ thought Kalúgin with an unpleasant sensation, and he too had a presentiment – a very usual thought, the thought of death. But Kalúgin was ambitious and blessed with nerves of oak – in a word, he was what is called brave. He did not yield to the first feeling but began to nerve himself. He recalled how an adjutant, Napoleon’s he thought, having delivered an order, galloped with bleeding head full speed to Napoleon. ‘Vous êtes blessé?’¹⁰ said Napoleon. ‘Je vous demande pardon, sire, je suis mort,’¹¹ and the adjutant fell from his horse, dead.

That seemed to him very fine, and he pictured himself for a moment in the role of that adjutant. Then he whipped his horse, assuming a still more dashing Cossack seat, looked back at the Cossack who, standing up in his stirrups, was trotting behind, and rode quite gallantly up to the spot where he had to dismount. Here he found four soldiers sitting on some stones smoking their pipes.

‘What are you doing there?’ he shouted at them.

‘Been carrying off a wounded man and sat down to rest a bit, your Honour,’ said one of them, hiding his pipe behind his back and taking off his cap.

‘Resting, indeed! … To your places, march!’

And he went up the hill with them through the trench, meeting wounded men at every step.

After ascending the hill he turned to the left, and a few steps farther on found himself quite alone. A splinter of a bomb whizzed near him and fell into the trench. Another bomb rose in front of him and seemed flying straight at him. He suddenly felt frightened, ran a few steps at full speed, and lay down flat. When the bomb burst a considerable distance off he felt exceedingly vexed with himself and rose, looking round to see if anyone had noticed his downfall, but no one was near.

But when fear has once entered the soul it does not easily yield to any other feeling. He, who always boasted that he never even stooped, now hurried along the trench almost on all fours. He stumbled, and thought, ‘Oh, it’s awful! They’ll kill me for certain!’ His breath came with difficulty, and perspiration broke out over his whole body. He was surprised at himself but no longer strove to master his feelings.

Suddenly he heard footsteps in front. Quickly straightening himself he raised his head, and boldly clanking his sabre went on more deliberately. He felt himself quite a different man. When he met an officer of the Engineers and a sailor, and the officer shouted to him to lie down, pointing to a bright spot which growing brighter and brighter approached more and more swiftly and came crashing down close to the trench, he only bent a little, involuntarily influenced by the frightened cry, and went on.

‘That’s a brave one,’ said the sailor, looking quite calmly at the bomb and with experienced eye deciding at once that the splinters could not fly into the trench, ‘he won’t even lie down.’

It was only a few steps across open ground to the bombproof shelter of the commander of the bastion, when Kalúgin’s mind again became clouded and the same stupid terror seized him: his heart beat more violently, the blood rushed to his head, and he had to make an effort to force himself to run to the bomb-proof.

‘Why are you so out of breath?’ said the general, when Kalúgin had reported his instructions.

‘I walked very fast, your Excellency!’

‘Won’t you have a glass of wine?’

Kalúgin drank a glass of wine and lit a cigarette. The action was over, only a fierce cannonade still continued from both sides. In the bomb-proof sat General N—, the commander of the bastion, and some six other officers among whom was Praskúkhin. They were discussing various details of the action. Sitting in this comfortable room with blue wall-paper, a sofa, a bed, a table with papers on it, a wall-clock with a lamp burning before it, and an icon¹² – looking at these signs of habitation, at the beams more than two feet thick that formed the ceiling, and listening to the shots that sounded faint here in the shelter, Kalúgin could not understand how he had twice allowed himself to be overcome by such unpardonable weakness. He was angry with himself and wished for danger in order to test his nerve once more.

‘Ah! I’m glad you are here, Captain,’ said he to a naval officer with big moustaches who wore a staff-officer’s coat with a St George’s Cross and had just entered the shelter and asked the general to give him some men to repair two embrasures of his battery which had become blocked. When the general had finished speaking to the captain, Kalúgin said: ‘The commander-in-chief told me to ask if your guns can fire case-shot into the trenches.’

‘Only one of them can,’ said the captain sullenly.

‘All the same, let us go and see.’

The captain frowned and gave an angry grunt.

‘I have been standing there all night and have come in to get a bit of rest – couldn’t you go alone?’ he added. ‘My assistant, Lieutenant Kartz, is there and can show you everything.’

The captain had already been more than six months in command of this, one of the most dangerous batteries. From the time the siege began, even before the bomb-proof shelters were constructed, he had lived continuously on the bastion and had a great reputation for courage among the sailors. That is why his refusal struck and surprised Kalúgin. ‘So much for reputation,’ thought he.

‘Well then, I will go alone if I may,’ he said in a slightly sarcastic tone to the captain, who however paid no attention to his words.

Kalúgin did not realize that whereas he had spent some fifty hours all in all at different times on the bastions, the captain had lived there for six months. Kalúgin was still actuated by vanity, the wish to shine, the hope of rewards, of gaining a reputation, and the charm of running risks. But the captain had already lived through all that: at first he had felt vain, had shown off his courage, had been foolhardy, had hoped for rewards and reputation and had even gained them, but now all these incentives had lost their power over him and he saw things differently. He fulfilled his duty exactly, but quite understanding how much the chances of life were against him after six months at the bastion, he no longer ran risks without serious need, and so the young lieutenant who had joined the battery a week ago and was now showing it to Kalúgin, with whom he vied in uselessly leaning out of the embrasures and climbing out on the banquette, seemed ten times braver than the captain.

Returning to the shelter after examining the battery, Kalúgin in the dark came upon the general, who accompanied by his staff-officers was going to the watch-tower.

‘Captain Praskúkhin,’ he heard the general say, ‘please go to the right lodgement and tell the second battalion of the M— Regiment which is at work there to cease their work, leave the place, and noiselessly rejoin their regiment which is stationed in reserve at the foot of the hill. Do you understand? Lead them yourself to the regiment.’

‘Yes, sir.’

And Praskúkhin started at full speed towards the lodgements.

The firing was now becoming less frequent.

X

‘IS this the second battalion of the M— Regiment?’ asked Praskúkhin, having run to his destination and coming across some soldiers carrying earth in sacks.

‘It is, your Honour.’

‘Where is the commander?’

Mikháylov, thinking that the commander of the company was being asked for, got out of his pit and taking Praskúkhin for a commanding officer saluted and approached him.

‘The general’s orders are … that you … should go … quickly … and above all quietly … back – no, not back, but to the reserves,’ said Praskúkhin, looking askance in the direction of the enemy’s fire.

Having recognized Praskúkhin and made out what was wanted, Mikháylov dropped his hand and passed on the order. The battalion became alert, the men took up their muskets, put on their cloaks, and set out.

No one without experiencing it can imagine the delight a man feels when, after three hours’ bombardment, he leaves so dangerous a spot as the lodgements. During those three hours Mikháylov, who more than once and not without reason had thought his end at hand, had had time to accustom himself to the conviction that he would certainly be killed and that he no longer belonged to this world. But in spite of that he had great difficulty in keeping his legs from running away with him when, leading the company with Praskúkhin at his side, he left the lodgement.

‘Au revoir!’ said a major with whom Mikháylov had eaten bread and cheese sitting in the pit under the breastwork and who was remaining at the bastion in command of another battalion. ‘I wish you a lucky journey.’

‘And I wish you a lucky defence. It seems to be getting quieter now.’

But scarcely had he uttered these words before the enemy, probably observing the movement in the lodgement, began to fire more and more frequently. Our guns replied and a heavy firing recommenced.

The stars were high in the sky but shone feebly. The night was pitch dark, only the flashes of the guns and the bursting bombs made things around suddenly visible. The soldiers walked quickly and silently, involuntarily outpacing one another; only their measured footfall on the dry road was heard besides the incessant roll of the guns, the ringing of bayonets when they touched one another, a sigh, or the prayer of some poor soldier lad: ‘Lord, O Lord! What does it mean?’ Now and again the moaning of a man who was hit could be heard, and the cry, ‘Stretchers!’ (In the company Mikháylov commanded artillery fire alone carried off twenty-six men that night.) A flash on the dark and distant horizon, the cry, ‘Can-n-on!’ from the sentinel on the bastion, and a ball flew buzzing above the company and plunged into the earth, making the stones fly.

‘What the devil are they so slow for?’ thought Praskúkhin, continually looking back as he marched beside Mikháylov. ‘I’d really better run on. I’ve delivered the order.… But no, they might afterwards say I’m a coward. What must be will be. I’ll keep beside him.’

‘Now why is he walking with me?’ thought Mikháylov on his part. ‘I have noticed over and over again that he always brings ill luck. Here it comes, I believe, straight for us.’

After they had gone a few hundred paces they met Kalúgin, who was walking briskly towards the lodgements clanking his sabre. He had been ordered by the general to find out how the works were progressing there. But when he met Mikháylov he thought that instead of going there himself under such a terrible fire – which he was not ordered to do – he might just as well find out all about it from an officer who had been there. And having heard from Mikháylov full details of the work and walked a little way with him, Kalúgin turned off into a trench leading to the bombproof shelter.

‘Well, what news?’ asked an officer who was eating his supper there all alone.

‘Nothing much. It seems that the affair is over.’

‘Over? How so? On the contrary, the general has just gone again to the watch-tower and another regiment has arrived. Yes, there it is. Listen! The muskets again! Don’t you go – why should you?’ added the officer, noticing that Kalúgin made a movement.

‘I certainly ought to be there,’ thought Kalúgin, ‘but I have already exposed myself a great deal to-day: the firing is awful!’

‘Yes, I think I’d better wait here for him,’ he said.

And really about twenty minutes later the general and the officers who were with him returned. Among them was Cadet Baron Pesth but not Praskúkhin. The lodgements had been retaken and occupied by us.

After receiving a full account of the affair Kalúgin, accompanied by Pesth, left the bomb-proof shelter.

XI

‘THERE’S blood on your coat! You don’t mean to say you were in the hand-to-hand fight?’ asked Kalúgin.

‘Oh, it was awful! Just fancy —’

And Pesth began to relate how he had led his company, how the company-commander had been killed, how he himself had stabbed a Frenchman, and how if it had not been for him we should have lost the day.

This tale was founded on fact: the company-commander had been killed and Pesth had bayoneted a Frenchman, but in recounting the details the cadet invented and bragged.

He bragged unintentionally, because during the whole of the affair he had been as it were in a fog and so bewildered that all he remembered of what had happened seemed to have happened somewhere, at some time, and to somebody. And very naturally he tried to recall the details in a light advantageous to himself. What really occurred was this:

The battalion the cadet had been ordered to join for the sortie stood under fire for two hours close to some low wall. Then the battalion-commander in front said something, the company-commanders became active, the battalion advanced from behind the breastwork, and after going about a hundred paces stopped to form into company columns. Pesth was told to take his place on the right flank of the second company.

Quite unable to realize where he was and why he was there, the cadet took his place, and involuntarily holding his breath while cold shivers ran down his back he gazed into the dark distance expecting something dreadful. He was however not so much frightened (for there was no firing) as disturbed and agitated at being in the field beyond the fortifications.

Again the battalion-commander in front said something. Again the officers spoke in whispers passing on the order, and the black wall, formed by the first company, suddenly sank out of sight. The order was to lie down. The second company also lay down and in lying down Pesth hurt his hand on a sharp prickle. Only the commander of the second company remained standing. His short figure brandishing a sword moved in front of the company and he spoke incessantly.

‘Mind lads! Show them what you’re made of! Don’t fire, but give it them with the bayonet – the dogs! – when I cry “Hurrah!” Altogether, mind, that’s the thing! We’ll let them see who we are. We won’t disgrace ourselves, eh lads? For our father the Tsar!’

‘What’s your company-commander’s name?’ asked Pesth of a cadet lying near him. ‘How brave he is!’

‘Yes he always is, in action,’ answered the cadet. ‘His name is Lisinkóvski.’

Just then a flame suddenly flashed up right in front of the company, who were deafened by a resounding crash. High up in the air stones and splinters clattered. (Some fifty seconds later a stone fell from above and severed a soldier’s leg.) It was a bomb fired from an elevated stand, and the fact that it reached the company showed that the French had noticed the column.

‘You’re sending bombs, are you? Wait a bit till we get at you, then you’ll taste a three-edged Russian bayonet, damn you!’ said the company-commander so loud that the battalion-commander had to order him to hold his tongue and not make so much noise.

After that the first company got up, then the second. They were ordered to fix bayonets and the battalion advanced. Pesth was in such a fright that he could not in the least make out how long it lasted, where he went, or who was who. He went on as if he were drunk. But suddenly a million fires flashed from all sides, and something whistled and clattered. He shouted and ran somewhere, because everyone shouted and ran. Then he stumbled and fell over something. It was the company-commander, who had been wounded at the head of his company, and who taking the cadet for a Frenchman had seized him by the leg. Then when Pesth had freed his leg and got up, someone else ran against him from behind in the dark and nearly knocked him down again. ‘Run him through!’ someone else shouted. ‘Why are you stopping?’ Then someone seized a bayonet and stuck it into something soft. ‘Ah Dieu!’ came a dreadful, piercing voice and Pesth only then understood that he had bayoneted a Frenchman. A cold sweat covered his whole body, he trembled as in a fever and threw down his musket. But this lasted only a moment; the thought immediately entered his head that he was a hero. He again seized his musket, and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ ran with the crowd away from the dead Frenchman. Having run twenty paces he came to a trench. Some of our men were there with the battalion-commander.

‘And I have killed one!’ said Pesth to the commander.

‘You’re a fine fellow, Baron!’

XII

‘DO you know Praskúkhin is killed?’ said Pesth, while accompanying Kalúgin on his way home.

‘Impossible!’

‘It is true. I saw him myself.’

‘Well, good-bye … I must be off.’

‘This is capital!’ thought Kalúgin, as he came to his lodgings. ‘It’s the first time I have had such luck when on duty. It’s first-rate. I am alive and well, and shall certainly get an excellent recommendation and am sure of a gold sabre. And I really have deserved it.’

After reporting what was necessary to the general he went to his room, where Prince Gáltsin, long since returned, sat awaiting him, reading a book he had found on Kalúgin’s table.

It was with extraordinary pleasure that Kalúgin found himself safe at home again, and having put on his night-shirt and got into bed he gave Gáltsin all the details of the affair, telling them very naturally from a point of view where those details showed what a capable and brave officer he, Kalúgin, was (which it seems to me it was hardly necessary to allude to, since everybody knew it and had no right or reason to question it, except perhaps the deceased Captain Praskúkhin who, though he had considered it an honour to walk arm in arm with Kalúgin, had privately told a friend only yesterday that though Kalúgin was a first-rate fellow, yet, ‘between you and me, he was awfully disinclined to go to the bastions’).

Praskúkhin, who had been walking beside Mikháylov after Kalúgin had slipped away from him, had scarcely begun to revive a little on approaching a safer place, than he suddenly saw a bright light flash up behind him and heard the sentinel shout ‘Mortar!’ and a soldier walking behind him say: ‘That’s coming straight for the bastion!’

Mikháylov looked round. The bright spot seemed to have stopped at its zenith, in the position which makes it absolutely impossible to define its direction. But that only lasted a moment: the bomb, coming faster and faster, nearer and nearer, so that the sparks of its fuse were already visible and its fatal whistle audible, descended towards the centre of the battalion.

‘Lie down!’ shouted someone.

Mikháylov and Praskúkhin lay flat on the ground. Praskúkhin, closing his eyes, only heard the bomb crash down on the hard earth close by. A second passed which seemed an hour: the bomb had not exploded. Praskúkhin was afraid. Perhaps he had played the coward for nothing. Perhaps the bomb had fallen far away and it only seemed to him that its fuse was fizzing close by. He opened his eyes and was pleased to see Mikháylov lying immovable at his feet. But at that moment he caught sight of the glowing fuse of the bomb which was spinning on the ground not a yard off. Terror, cold terror excluding every other thought and feeling, seized his whole being. He covered his face with his hands.

Another second passed – a second during which a whole world of feelings, thoughts, hopes, and memories flashed before his imagination.

‘Whom will it hit – Mikháylov or me? Or both of us? And if it’s me, where? In the head? Then I’m done for. But if it’s the leg, they’ll cut it off (I’ll certainly ask for chloroform) and I may survive. But perhaps only Mikháylov will be hit. Then I will tell how we were going side by side and how he was killed and I was splashed with his blood. No, it’s nearer to me … it will be I.’

Then he remembered the twelve rubles he owed Mikháylov, remembered also a debt in Petersburg that should have been paid long ago, and the gipsy song he had sung that evening. The woman he loved rose in his imagination wearing a cap with lilac ribbons. He remembered a man who had insulted him five years ago and whom he had not yet paid out. And yet, inseparable from all these and thousands of other recollections, the present thought, the expectation of death, did not leave him for an instant. ‘Perhaps it won’t explode,’ and with desperate decision he resolved to open his eyes. But at that instant a red flame pierced through the still closed lids and something struck him in the middle of his chest with a terrible crash. He jumped up and began to run, but stumbling over the sabre that got between his legs he fell on his side.

‘Thank God, I’m only bruised!’ was his first thought, and he was about to touch his chest with his hand, but his arms seemed tied to his sides and he felt as if a vice were squeezing his head. Soldiers flitted past him and he counted them unconsciously: ‘One, two, three soldiers! And there’s an officer with his cloak tucked up,’ he thought. Then lightning flashed before his eyes and he wondered whether the shot was fired from a mortar or a cannon. ‘A cannon, probably. And there’s another shot and here are more soldiers – five, six, seven soldiers.… They all pass by!’ He was suddenly seized with fear that they would crush him. He wished to shout that he was hurt, but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and a terrible thirst tormented him. He felt a wetness about his chest and this sensation of being wet made him think of water, and he longed to drink even this that made him feel wet. ‘I suppose I hit myself in falling and made myself bleed,’ thought he, and giving way more and more to fear lest the soldiers who kept flitting past might trample on him, he gathered all his strength and tried to shout, ‘Take me with you!’ but instead of that he uttered such a terrible groan that the sound frightened him. Then some other red fires began dancing before his eyes and it seemed to him that the soldiers put stones on him. The fires danced less and less but the stones they put on him pressed more and more heavily. He made an effort to push off the stones, stretched himself, and saw and heard and felt nothing more. He had been killed on the spot by a bomb-splinter in the middle of his chest.

XIII

WHEN Mikháylov dropped to the ground on seeing the bomb he too, like Praskúkhin, lived through an infinitude of thoughts and feelings in the two seconds that elapsed before the bomb burst. He prayed mentally and repeated, ‘Thy will be done.’ And at the same time he thought, ‘Why did I enter the army? And why did I join the infantry to take part in this campaign? Wouldn’t it have been better to have remained with the Uhlan regiment at T— and spent my time with my friend Natásha? And now here I am …’ and he began to count, ‘One, two, three, four,’ deciding that if the bomb burst at an even number he would live but if at an odd number he would be killed. ‘It is all over, I’m killed!’ he thought when the bomb burst (he did not remember whether at an odd or even number) and he felt a blow and a cruel pain in his head. ‘Lord, forgive me my trespasses!’ he muttered, folding his hands. He rose, but fell on his back senseless.

When he came to, his first sensations were that of blood trickling down his nose, and the pain in his head which had become much less violent. ‘That’s the soul passing,’ he thought. ‘How will it be there? Lord, receive my soul in peace! … Only it’s strange,’ thought he, ‘that while dying I should hear the steps of the soldiers and the sounds of the firing so distinctly.’

‘Bring stretchers! Eh, the captain has been hit!’ shouted a voice above his head, which he recognized as the voice of the drummer Ignátyev.

Someone took him by the shoulders. With an effort he opened his eyes and saw above him the sky, some groups of stars, and two bombs racing one another as they flew over him. He saw Ignátyev, soldiers with stretchers and guns, the embankment, the trenches, and suddenly realized that he was not yet in the other world.

He had been slightly wounded in the head by a stone. His first feeling was one almost of regret: he had prepared himself so well and so calmly to go there that the return to reality, with its bombs, stretchers, and blood, seemed unpleasant. The second feeling was unconscious joy at being alive, and the third a wish to get away from the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer tied a handkerchief round his commander’s head and taking his arm led him towards the ambulance station.

‘But why and where am I going?’ thought the lieutenant-captain when he had collected his senses. ‘My duty is to remain with the company and not leave it behind – especially,’ whispered a voice, ‘as it will soon be out of range of the guns.’

‘Don’t trouble about me, my lad,’ said he, drawing his hand away from the attentive drummer. ‘I won’t go to the ambulance station: I’ll stay with the company.’

And he turned back.

‘It would be better to have it properly bandaged, your Honour,’ said Ignátyev. ‘It’s only in the heat of the moment that it seems nothing. Mind it doesn’t get worse.… And just see what warm work it is here.… Really, your Honour —’

Mikháylov stood for a moment undecided, and would probably have followed Ignátyev’s advice had he not reflected how many severely wounded there must be at the ambulance station. ‘Perhaps the doctors will smile at my scratch,’ thought the lieutenant-captain, and in spite of the drummer’s arguments he returned to his company.

‘And where is the orderly officer Praskúkhin, who was with me?’ he asked when he met the ensign who was leading the company.

‘I don’t know. Killed, I think,’ replied the ensign unwillingly.

‘Killed? Or only wounded? How is it you don’t know? Wasn’t he going with us? And why didn’t you bring him away?’

‘How could we, under such a fire?’

‘But how could you do such a thing, Michael Iványch?’ said Mikháylov angrily. ‘How could you leave him supposing he is alive? Even if he’s dead his body ought to have been brought away.’

‘Alive indeed, when I tell you I went up and saw him myself!’ said the ensign. ‘Excuse me.… It’s hard enough to collect our own. There, those villains are at it again!’ he added. ‘They’re sending up cannon-balls now.’

Mikháylov sat down and lifted his hands to his head, which ached terribly when he moved.

‘No, it is absolutely necessary to go back and fetch him,’ he said. ‘He may still be alive. It is our duty, Michael Iványch.’

Michael Iványch did not answer.

‘O Lord! Just because he didn’t bring him in at the time, soldiers will have to be sent back alone now … and yet can I possibly send them under this terrible fire? They may be killed for nothing,’ thought Mikháylov.

‘Lads! Someone will have to go back to fetch the officer who was wounded out there in the ditch,’ said he, not very loudly or peremptorily, for he felt how unpleasant it would be for the soldiers to execute this order. And he was right. Since he had not named anyone in particular no one came forward to obey the order.

‘And after all he may be dead already. It isn’t worth exposing men uselessly to such danger. It’s all my fault, I ought to have seen to it. I’ll go back myself and find out whether he is alive. It is my duty,’ said Mikháylov to himself.

‘Michael Iványch, you lead the company, I’ll catch you up,’ said he, and holding up his cloak with one hand while with the other he kept touching a small icon of St Metrophanes that hung round his neck and in which he had great faith, he ran quickly along the trench.

Having convinced himself that Praskúkhin was dead he dragged himself back panting, holding the bandage that had slipped on his head, which was beginning to ache very badly. When he overtook the battalion it was already at the foot of the hill and almost beyond the range of the shots. I say ‘almost’, for a stray bomb reached even here now and then.

‘To-morrow I had better go and be entered at the ambulance station,’ thought the lieutenant-captain, while a medical assistant, who had turned up, was bandaging his head.

XIV

HUNDREDS of bodies, which a couple of hours before had been men full of various lofty or trivial hopes and wishes, were lying with fresh bloodstains on their stiffened limbs in the dewy, flowery valley which separated the bastions from the trenches and on the smooth floor of the mortuary chapel in Sevastopol. Hundreds of men with curses or prayers on their parched lips, crawled, writhed, and groaned, some among the dead in the flowery valley, some on stretchers, or beds, or on the blood-stained floor of the ambulance station. Yet the dawn broke behind the Sapún hill, the twinkling stars grew pale and the white mists spread from the dark roaring sea just as on other days, and the rosy morning glow lit up the east, long streaks of red clouds spread along the pale-blue horizon, and just as in the old days the sun rose in power and glory, promising joy, love, and happiness to all the awakening world.

XV

NEXT evening the Chasseurs’ band was again playing on the boulevard, and officers, cadets, soldiers, and young women, again promenaded round the pavilion and along the side-walks under the acacias with their sweet-scented white blossoms.

Kalúgin was walking arm in arm with Prince Gáltsin and a colonel near the pavilion and talking of last night’s affair. The main theme of their conversation, as usual in such cases, was not the affair itself, but the part each of the speakers had taken in it. Their faces and the tone of their voices were serious, almost sorrowful, as if the losses of the night had touched and saddened them all. But to tell the truth, as none of them had lost anyone very dear to him, this sorrowful expression was only an official one they considered it their duty to exhibit.

Kalúgin and the colonel in fact, though they were first-rate fellows, were ready to see such an affair every day if they could gain a gold sword and be made major-general each time. It is all very well to call some conqueror a monster because he destroys millions to gratify his ambition, but go and ask any Ensign Petrúshev or Sub-Lieutenant Antónov on their conscience, and you will find that every one of us is a little Napoleon, a petty monster ready to start a battle and kill a hundred men merely to get an extra medal or one-third additional pay.

‘No, I beg your pardon,’ said the colonel. ‘It began first on the left side. I was there myself.’

‘Well, perhaps,’ said Kalúgin. ‘I spent more time on the right. I went there twice: first to look for the general, and then just to see the lodgements. It was hot there, I can tell you!’

‘Kalúgin ought to know,’ said Gáltsin. ‘By the way, V— told me to-day that you are a trump —’

‘But the losses, the losses are terrible!’ said the colonel. ‘In my regiment we had four hundred casualties. It is astonishing that I’m still alive.’

Just then the figure of Mikháylov, with his head bandaged, appeared at the end of the boulevard walking towards these gentlemen.

‘What, are you wounded, Captain?’ said Kalúgin.

‘Yes, slightly, with a stone,’ answered Mikháylov.

‘Est-ce que le pavillon est baissé déjà?’¹³ asked Prince Gáltsin, glancing at the lieutenant-captain’s cap and not addressing anyone in particular.

‘Non, pas encore,’¹⁴ answered Mikháylov, wishing to show that he understood and spoke French.

‘Do you mean to say the truce still continues?’ said Gáltsin, politely addressing him in Russian and thereby (so it seemed to the lieutenant-captain) suggesting: ‘It must no doubt be difficult for you to have to speak French, so hadn’t we better simply …’ and with that the adjutants went away. The lieutenant-captain again felt exceedingly lonely, just as he had done the day before. After bowing to various people – some of whom he did not wish and some of whom he did not venture to join – he sat down near the Kazárski monument and smoked a cigarette.

Baron Pesth also turned up on the boulevard. He mentioned that he had been at the parley and had spoken to the French officers. According to his account one of them had said to him: ‘S’il n’avait pas fait clair encore pendant une demi-heure, les ambuscades auraient été reprises,’¹⁵ and he replied, ‘Monsieur, je ne dis pas non, pour ne pas vous donner un démenti,’¹⁶ and he told how pat it had come out, and so on.

But though he had been at the parley he had not really managed to say anything in particular, though he much wished to speak with the French (‘for it’s awfully jolly to speak to those fellows’). He had paced up and down the line for a long time asking the Frenchmen near him: ‘De quel régiment êtes-vous?’¹⁷ and had got his answer and nothing more. When he went too far beyond the line, the French sentry, not suspecting that ‘that soldier’ knew French, abused him in the third person singular: ‘Il vient regarder nos travaux, ce sacré —’¹⁸ in consequence of which Cadet Baron Pesth, finding nothing more to interest him at the parley, rode home, and on his way back composed the French phrases he now repeated.

On the boulevard was Captain Zóbov talking very loud, and Captain Obzhógov, the artillery captain who never curried favour with anyone, was there too, in a dishevelled condition, and also the cadet who was always fortunate in his love affairs, and all the same people as yesterday, with the same motives as always. Only Praskúkhin, Nefërdov, and a few more were missing, and hardly anyone now remembered or thought of them, though there had not yet been time for their bodies to be washed, laid out, and put into the ground.

XVI

WHITE flags are hung out on our bastions and on the French trenches, and in the flowery valley between them lie heaps of mangled corpses without boots, some clad in blue and others in grey, which workmen are removing and piling onto carts. The air is filled with the smell of decaying flesh. Crowds of people have poured out from Sevastopol and from the French camp to see the sight, and with eager and friendly curiosity draw near to one another.

Listen to what these people are saying.

Here, in a circle of Russians and Frenchmen who have collected round him, a young officer, who speaks French badly but sufficiently to be understood, is examining a guardsman’s pouch.

‘Eh sussy, poor quah se waso lié?’¹⁹‘Parce que c’est une giberne d’un régiment de la garde, monsieur, qui porte l’aigle impérial.’²⁰‘Eh voo de la guard?’²¹‘Pardon, monsieur, du 6^−ème de ligne.’²²‘Eh sussy oo ashtay?’²³ pointing to a cigarette-holder of yellow wood, in which the Frenchman is smoking a cigarette.

‘A Balaclava, monsieur. C’est tout simple en bois de palme.’²⁴‘Joli,’²⁵ says the officer, guided in his remarks not so much by what he wants to say as by the French words he happens to know.

‘Si vous voulez bien garder cela comme souvenir de cette rencontre, vous m’obligerez.’²⁶

And the polite Frenchman puts out his cigarette and presents the holder to the officer with a slight bow. The officer gives him his, and all present, both French and Russian, smile and seem pleased. Here is a bold infantryman in a pink shirt with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, accompanied by other soldiers standing near him with their hands folded behind their backs and with merry inquisitive faces. He has approached a Frenchman and asked for a light for his pipe. The Frenchman draws at and stirs up the tobacco in his own short pipe and shakes a light into that of the Russian.

‘Tabac boon?’ says the soldier in the pink shirt, and the spectators smile. ‘Oui, bon tabac, tabac turc,’ says the Frenchman. ‘Chez vous autres tabac – Russe? Bon?’²⁷‘Roos boon,’ says the soldier in the pink shirt while the onlookers shake with laughter. ‘Fransay not boon. Bongjour, mossier!’, and having let off his whole stock of French at once, he slaps the Frenchman on the stomach and laughs. The French also laugh.

‘Ils ne sont pas jolis ces b— de Russes,’²⁸ says a Zouave among the French.

‘De quoi est-ce qu’ils rient donc?’²⁹ says another with an Italian accent, a dark man, coming up to our men.

‘Coat boon,’ says the cheeky soldier, examining the embroidery of the Zouave’s coat, and everybody laughs again.

‘Ne sors pas de ta ligne, à vos places, sacré nom!’³⁰ cries a French corporal, and the soldiers separate with evident reluctance.

And here, in the midst of a group of French officers, one of our young cavalry officers is gushing. They are talking about some Count Sazónov, ‘que j’ai beaucoup connu, monsieur,’ says a French officer with only one epaulette – ‘c’est un de ces vrais comtes russes, comme nous les aimons.’³¹‘Il y a un Sazónqff, que j’ai connu,’ says the cavalry officer, ‘mais il n’est pas comte, à moins que je sache, un petit brun de votre âge à peu près.’³²‘C’est ça, monsieur, c’est lui. Oh! que je voudrais le voir, ce cher comte. Si vous le voyez, je vous prie bien de lui faire mes compliments – Capitaine Latour,’³³ he said, bowing.

‘N’est-ce pas terrible la triste besogne que nous faisons? Ça chauffait cette nuit, n’est-ce pas?’³⁴ said the cavalry officer, wishing to maintain the conversation and pointing to the corpses.

‘Oh, monsieur, c’est affreux! Mais quels gaillards vos soldats, quels gaillards! C’est un plaisir que de se battre avec des gaillards comme eux.’³⁵‘Il faut avouer que les vôtres ne se mouchent pas du pied non plus,’³⁶ said the cavalry officer, bowing and imagining himself very agreeable.

But enough.

Let us rather look at this ten-year-old boy in an old cap (probably his father’s), with shoes on his stockingless feet and nankeen trousers held up by one brace. At the very beginning of the truce he came over the entrenchments, and has been walking about the valley ever since, looking with dull curiosity at the French and at the corpses that lie on the ground and gathering the blue flowers with which the valley is strewn. Returning home with a large bunch of flowers he holds his nose to escape the smell that is borne towards him by the wind, and stopping near a heap of corpses gazes for a long time at a terrible headless body that lies nearest to him. After standing there some time he draws nearer and touches with his foot the stiff outstretched arm of the corpse. The arm trembles a little. He touches it again more boldly; it moves and falls back to its old position. The boy gives a sudden scream, hides his face in his flowers, and runs towards the fortifications as fast as his legs can carry him.

Yes, there are white flags on the bastions and the trenches but the flowery valley is covered with dead bodies. The glorious sun is sinking towards the blue sea, and the undulating blue sea glitters in the golden light. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at one another. And these people – Christians professing the one great law of love and self-sacrifice – on seeing what they have done do not at once fall repentant on their knees before Him who has given them life and laid in the soul of each a fear of death and a love of the good and the beautiful, and do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and gladness.

The white flags are lowered, the engines of death and suffering are sounding again, innocent blood is flowing and the air is filled with moans and curses.

There, I have said what I wished to say this time. But I am seized by an oppressive doubt. Perhaps I ought to have left it unsaid. What I have said perhaps belongs to that class of evil truths that lie unconsciously hidden in the soul of each man and should not be uttered lest they become harmful, as the dregs in a bottle must not be disturbed for fear of spoiling the wine.…

Where in this tale is the evil that should be avoided, and where the good that should be imitated? Who is the villain and who the hero of the story? All are good and all are bad.

Not Kalúgin, with his brilliant courage – bravoure de gentil-homme – and the vanity that influences all his actions, not Praskúkhin, the empty harmless fellow (though he fell in battle for faith, throne, and fatherland), not Mikháylov with his shyness, nor Pesth, a child without firm principles or convictions, can be either the villain or the hero of the tale.

The hero of my tale – whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful – is Truth.

¹ The Army and Navy Gazette.

² A common way in Russia of protecting a bed from the damp or cold of a wall, is to nail a rug or carpet to the wall by the side of the bed.

³ ‘I tell you, at one time it was the only thing talked of in Petersburg.’

⁴ The thick walls of Russian houses allow ample space to sit or lounge at the windows.

⁵ ‘Well, gentlemen, I think there will be warm work to-night.’

⁶ ‘No, tell me, will there really be anything to-night?’

⁷ ‘What a charming sight, eh?’

⁸ Rifles, except some clumsy stutzers, had not been introduced into the Russian army, but were used by the besiegers, who had a still greater advantage in artillery. It is characteristic of Tolstoy that, occupied with men rather than mechanics, he does not in these sketches dwell on this disparity of equipment.

⁹ Our soldiers fighting the Turks have become so accustomed to this cry of the enemy that they now always say that the French also shout ‘Allah!’ L. T.

¹⁰ ‘You are wounded?’

¹¹ ‘Excuse me, sire, I am dead.’

¹² The Russian icons are paintings in Byzantine style of God, the Holy Virgin, Christ, or some saint, martyr, or angel. They are usually on wood and often covered over, except the face and hands, with an embossed gilt cover.

¹³ ‘Is the flag (of truce) lowered already?’

¹⁴ ‘No, not yet.’

¹⁵ ‘Had it remained dark for another half-hour, the ambuscades would have been recaptured.’

¹⁶ ‘Sir, I will not say no, lest I give you the lie.’

¹⁷ ‘What regiment do you belong to?’

¹⁸ ‘He’s come to look at our works, the confounded —’

¹⁹ ‘And what is this tied bird for?’

²⁰ ‘Because this is a cartridge pouch of a guard regiment, monsieur, and bears the Imperial eagle.’

²¹ ‘And do you belong to the Guards?’

²² ‘No, monsieur, to the 6th regiment of the line.’

²³ ‘And where did you buy this?’

²⁴ ‘At Balaclava, monsieur. It’s only made of palm wood.’

²⁵ ‘Pretty.’

²⁶ ‘If you will be so good as to keep it as a souvenir of this meeting you will do me a favour.’

²⁷ ‘Yes, good tobacco, Turkish tobacco … You others have Russian tobacco. Is it good?’

²⁸ ‘They are not handsome, these d— Russians.’

²⁹ ‘What are they laughing about?’

³⁰ ‘Don’t leave your ranks. To your places, damn it!’

³¹ ‘Whom I knew very intimately, monsieur. He is one of those real Russian counts of whom we are so fond.’

³² ‘I am acquainted with a Sazónov, but he is not a count, as far as I know – a small dark man, of about your age.’

³³ ‘Just so, monsieur, that is he. Oh, how I should like to meet the dear count. If you should see him, please be so kind as to give him my compliments – Captain Latour.’

³⁴ ‘Isn’t it terrible, this sad duty we are engaged in? It was warm work last night, wasn’t it?’

³⁵ ‘Ah, monsieur, it is terrible! But what fine fellows your men are, what fine fellows! It is a pleasure to fight with such fellows!’

³⁶ ‘It must be admitted that yours are no fools either.’ (Literally, ‘don’t wipe their noses with their feet’.)