But here is the last trench and the voice of a soldier of the P — regiment who has recognized his former company-commander, and there stands the third battalion, pressing against the wall in the darkness, now and then lit up for an instant by the firing, and sounds are heard, subdued talking and the clatter of muskets.
‘Where is the commander of the regiment?’ asked Kozeltsov.
‘In the naval officers’ casemate, your honour,’ answers an obliging soldier. ‘Let me show you the way.’
Passing from trench to trench, the soldier led the way to a cutting in the trench. A sailor sat there smoking a pipe. Behind him was a door through a chink in which a light shone.
‘Can I go in?’
‘I’ll announce you at once,’ and the sailor went in at the door. Two voices were heard talking inside.
‘If Prussia remains neutral,’ said one voice, ‘Austria will too. . . .’
‘What does Austria matter?’ said the other, ‘when the Slavonic lands. . . . Well, ask him in.’
Kozeltsov had never been in this casemate and was struck by its elegance. It had a parquet floor and a screen in front of the door, two beds stood against the walls, and in a corner of the room there was a large icon — the Mother of God with an embossed gilt cover — with a pink lamp alight before it. A naval officer, fully dressed, was lying asleep on one of the beds. On the other, before a table on which stood two uncorked bottles of wine, sat the speakers — the new regimental commander and his adjutant. Though Kozeltsov was far from being a coward and was not at all guilty of any offence either against the government or the regimental commander, still he felt abashed in the presence of his former comrade the colonel, so proudly did that colonel rise and give him his attention.
[And the adjutant who was sitting there also made Kolzeltsov feel abashed by his pose and look, that seemed to say: ‘I am only a friend of your regimental commander’s. You have not come to present yourself to me, and I can’t and don’t wish to demand any deference from you.’]
‘How strange!’ thought Kolzeltsov as he looked at his commander, ‘It’s only seven weeks since he took the command, and yet all his surroundings — his dress, manner, and looks — already indicate the power a regimental commander has: [a power based not so much on his age, seniority, or military worth, as on his wealth as a regimental commander.] It isn’t long since this same Batrishchev used to hobnob with us, wore one and the same dark cotton print shirt a whole week, ate rissoles and curd dumplings every day, never asking any one to share them — but look at him now! [A fine linen shirt showing from under his wide-sleeved cloth coat, a ten-ruble cigar in his hand, a six-ruble bottle of claret on the table — all bought at incredible prices through the quartermaster at Simferopol — and] in his eyes that look of the cold pride of a wealthy aristocrat, which says: though as a regimental commander of the new school I am your comrade [don’t forget that your pay is sixty rubles once in four months, while tens of thousands pass through my hands, and] believe me I know very well that you’d give half your life to be in my place!’
‘You have been under treatment a long time,’ said the colonel, with a cold look at Kozeltsov.
‘I have been ill, Colonel. The wound is not thoroughly closed even now.’
‘Then it’s a pity you’ve come,’ said the colonel, looking suspiciously at the officer’s solid figure. ‘But still, you are capable of taking duty?’
‘Certainly sir, I am.’
‘I am very glad to hear it. Then you’ll take over from Ensign Zaytsev the Ninth Company that you had before. You will receive your orders at once.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Be so good as to send the regimental adjutant to me when you go.’ The commander finished with a slight bow, thereby intimating that the audience was at an end.
On leaving the casemate Kolzeltsov muttered something to himself several times, and shrugged his shoulders as if he were hurt, or uncomfortable, or provoked — and provoked not with the colonel (he had no ground to be so) but with himself, and he felt dissatisfied with everything around him.
[Discipline and the subordination that goes with it, like every legalized relationship, is pleasant only when it rests on a mutual consciousness of its necessity, and of a superiority in experience, military worth, or simply on a moral superiority recognized by the inferior. But if the discipline is founded on arbitrary or pecuniary considerations, as is often the case among us, it always turns into pretentiousness on the one side and into suppressed envy and irritation on the other, and instead of a useful influence uniting the mass into one whole it produces a quite opposite effect. A man who does not feel that he can inspire respect by his own worth, instinctively fears intimacy with his subordinates and tries by ostentation to keep criticism at a distance. The subordinates, seeing only this external side which is offensive to themselves, suppose (often unjustly) that there is nothing good behind it.]
XVI
Before going to join his fellow officers Kozeltsov went to greet the men of his company and to see where it was stationed. The breastworks of gabions, the plan of the trenches, the cannon he passed, and even the fragments and bombs he stumbled over on the way, all lit up incessantly by the flashes of the firing, were quite familiar to him. All this had vividly impressed itself on his memory three months before, when he had spent two consecutive weeks at this bastion. Though there was much that was dreadful in the recollection, a certain charm of old times was mingled with it and he recognized all the familiar places and objects with pleasure, as if the fortnight spent there had been an agreeable one. His company was stationed against the wall of defence on the side towards the Sixth Bastion.
Kozeltsov entered a long bomb-proof, quite open on the entrance side, where he was told he would find the Ninth Company. There was literally no room to set one’s foot in the whole shelter: it was crowded with soldiers from the very entrance. At one side burned a crooked tallow candle which a soldier, lying on the ground, held over the book another was reading from, spelling out the words. Through the smoky atmosphere of the place, in the dim light near the candle, heads were visible, raised eagerly to listen to the reader. The book was a primer, and on entering the bomb-proof Kozeltsov heard the following:
‘Prayer af-ter les-sons. We Thank Thee, O Cre-a-tor. . . .’
‘Snuff the candle!’ said a voice. ‘It’s a fine book.’
‘God . . . is’ . . . continued the reader.
When Kozeltsov asked for the sergeant-major the reader stopped and the soldiers began moving, coughing and blowing their noses, as is usual after a restrained silence. The sergeant-major, buttoning his uniform, rose not far from the reader’s group, and stepping over and onto the legs of those who could not get out of his way for lack of room, came up to the officer.
‘Good evening, friend! Is this the whole of our company?’
‘We wish your honour health. Welcome back, your honour!’ answered the sergeant-major with a cheerful and friendly look at Kozeltsov. ‘How is your health getting on, your honour? Thank God you’re better! We have missed you.’
It was easy to see that Kozeltsov was liked by his company.
Far back in the bomb-proof voices were heard saying: ‘Our old company-commander has come back!’ ‘Him that was wounded.’ ‘Kozeltsov.’ ‘Michael Semenich,’ and so on. Some men even moved nearer to him, and the drummer greeted him.
‘How do you do, Obantchrik?’ said Kozeltsov. ‘Still whole ? Good evening, lads!’ he added, raising his voice.
The answer, ‘Wish your honour health!’ resounded through the casemate.
‘How are you getting on, lads?’
‘Badly, your honour. The French are getting the better of us. They give it us hot from behind their ‘trenchments, but don’t come out into the open.’ ‘Perhaps it will be my luck to see them coming out into the open, lads,’ said Kozeltsov. ‘It won’t be the first time . . . you and I will give them a thrashing.’
‘We’ll do our best, your honour,’ several voices replied.
‘Yes, he’s really brave!’ said a voice.
‘Awfully brave!’ said the drummer to another soldier, not loud but so as to be heard, and as if justifying the commander’s words to himself and proving that there was nothing boastful or unlikely in what he had said.
From the soldiers, Kozeltsov went to join his fellow officers in the Defence Barracks.
XVII
In the large caserne there was a crowd of naval, artillery, and infantry officers. Some slept, others talked, sitting on a chest of some kind and on the carriage of a garrison gun, but the largest and noisiest group sat on two Cossack cloaks spread out on the floor beyond the arch, and were drinking porter
