“How could you, who have means, and were under no necessity, simply de gaiete de coeur, make up your mind to come and serve in the Caucasus? That’s what I don’t understand,” said he to me.
I endeavored to explain this act of renunciation, which seemed so strange to him.
“I can imagine how disagreeable the society of those officers — men without any comprehension of culture — must be for you. You could not understand each other. You see, you might live ten years, and not see anything, and not hear about anything, except cards, wine, and gossip about rewards and campaigns.”
It was unpleasant for me, that he wished me to put myself on a par with him in his position; and, with absolute honesty, I assured him that I was very fond of cards and wine, and gossip about campaigns, and that I did not care to have any better comrades than those with whom I was associated. But he would not believe me.
“Well, you may say so,” he continued; “but the lack of women’s society, — I mean, of course, FEMMES COMME IL FAUT, — is that not a terrible deprivation? I don’t know what I would give now to go into a parlor, if only for a moment, and to have a look at a pretty woman, even though it were through a crack.”
He said nothing for a little, and drank still another glass of the red wine.
“Oh, my God, my God! If it only might be our fate to meet again, somewhere in Petersburg, to live and move among men, among ladies!”
He drank up the dregs of the wine still left in the bottle, and when he had finished it he said: “AKH! PARDON, maybe you wanted some more. It was horribly careless of me. However, I suppose I must have taken too much, and my head isn’t very strong. [Footnote: ET JE N’AI PAS LA TETE FORTE.] There was a time when I lived on Morskaia Street, AU REZ-DE-CHAUSSEE, and had marvellous aPartments, furniture, you know, and I was able to arrange it all beautifully, not so very expensively though; my father, to be sure, gave me porcelains, flowers, and silver — a wonderful lot.
Le matin je sortais, visits, 5 heures regulierement. I used to go and dine with her; often she was alone. Il faut avouer que c’etait une femme ravissante! You didn’t know her at all, did you?”
“No.”
“You see, there was such high degree of womanliness in her, and such tenderness, and what love! Lord! I did not know how to appreciate my happiness then. We would return after the theatre, and have a little supper together. It was never dull where she was, toujours gaie, toujours aimante. Yes, and I had never imagined what rare happiness it was. Et j’ai beaucoup a me reprocher in regard to her. Je l’ai fait souffrir et souvent. I was outrageous. AKH! What a marvellous time that was! Do I bore you?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then I will tell you about our evenings. I used to go — that stairway, every flower-pot I knew, — the door-handle, all was so lovely, so familiar; then the vestibule, her room. . . . No, it will never, never come back to me again! Even now she writes to me: if you will let me, I will show you her letters.
But I am not what I was; I am ruined; I am no longer worthy of her. . . . Yes, I am ruined for ever. Je suis casse. There’s no energy in me, no pride, nothing — nor even any rank. . . . [Footnote: Blagorodstva, noble birth, nobility.] Yes, I am ruined; and no one will ever appreciate my sufferings. Every one is indifferent. I am a lost man. Never any chance for me to rise, because I have fallen morally . . . into the mire — I have fallen. . . .”
At this moment there was evident in his words a genuine, deep despair: he did not look at me, but sat motionless.
“Why are you in such despair?” I asked.
“Because I am abominable. This life has degraded me, all that was in me, all is crushed out. It is not by pride that I hold out, but by abjectness: there’s no dignite dans le malheur. I am humiliated every moment; I endure it all; I got myself into this abasement.
This mire has soiled me. I myself have become coarse; I have forgotten what I used to know; I can’t speak French any more; I am conscious that I am base and low. I cannot tear myself away from these surroundings, indeed I cannot. I might have been a hero: give me a regiment, gold epaulets, a trumpeter, but to march in the ranks with some wild Anton Bondarenko or the like, and feel that between me and him there was no difference at all — that he might be killed or I might be killed — all the same, that thought is maddening.
You understand how horrible it is to think that some ragamuffin may kill me, a man who has thoughts and feelings, and that it would make no difference if alongside of me some Antonof were killed, — a being not different from an animal — and that it might easily happen that I and not this Antonof were killed, which is always UNE FATALITE for every lofty and good man. I know that they call me a coward: grant that I am a coward, I certainly am a coward, and can’t be anything else.
Not only am I a coward, but I am in my way a low and despicable man. Here I have just been borrowing money of you, and you have the right to despise me. No, take back your money.” And he held out to me the crumpled bank-bill. “I want you to have a good opinion of me.” He covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears. I really did not know what to say or do.
“Calm yourself,” I said to him. “You are too sensitive; don’t take everything so to heart; don’t indulge in self-analysis, look at things more simply. You yourself say that you have character. Keep up good heart, you won’t have long to wait,” I said to him, but not very consistently, because I was much stirred both by a feeling of sympathy and a feeling of repentance, because I had allowed myself mentally to sin in my judgment of a man truly and deeply unhappy.
“Yes,” he began, “if I had heard even once, at the time when I was in that hell, one single word of sympathy, of advice, of friendship — one humane word such as you have just spoken, perhaps I might have calmly endured all; perhaps I might have struggled, and been a soldier. But now this is horrible. . . . When I think soberly, I long for death. Why should I love my despicable life and my own self, now that I am ruined for all that is worth while in the world?
And at the least danger, I suddenly, in spite of myself, begin to pray for my miserable life, and to watch over it as though it were precious, and I cannot, je ne puis pas, control myself. That is, I could,” he continued again after a minute’s silence, “but this is too hard work for me, a monstrous work, when I am alone. With others, under special circumstances, when you are going into action, I am brave, j’ai fait mes epreuves, because I am vain and proud: that is my failing, and in presence of others. . . . Do you know, let me spend the night with you: with us, they will play all night long; it makes no difference, anywhere, on the ground.”
While Nikita was making the bed, we got up, and once more began to walk up and down in the darkness on the battery. Certainly Guskof’s head must have been very weak, because two glasses of liquor and two of wine made him dizzy. As we got up and moved away from the candles, I noticed that he again thrust the ten-ruble bill into his pocket, trying to do so without my seeing it. During all the foregoing conversation, he had held it in his hand. He continued to reiterate how he felt that he might regain his old station if he had a man such as I were to take some interest in him.
We were just going into the tent to go to bed when suddenly a cannon-ball whistled over us, and buried itself in the ground not far from us. So strange it was, — that peacefully sleeping camp, our conversation, and suddenly the hostile cannon-ball which flew from God knows where, the midst of our tents, — so strange that it was some time before I could realize what it was. Our sentinel, Andreief, walking up and down on the battery, moved toward me.
“Ha! he’s crept up to us. It was the fire here that he aimed at,” said he.
“We must rouse the captain,” said I, and gazed at Guskof.
He stood cowering close to the ground, and stammered, trying to say, “Th-that’s th-the ene-my’s . . . f-f-fire — th-that’s — hidi — .” Further he could not say a word, and I did not see how and where he disappeared so instantaneously.
In the
