‘Ah, Kozeltsov! Kozeltsov! … So you’ve come! That’s good. . . . You’re a brick. . . . How’s your wound?’ It was evident that he was liked here also, and that his return gave pleasure.
When he had shaken hands with those he knew, Kozeltsov joined the noisy group of officers playing cards. With some of them he was acquainted. A thin, dark, handsome man, with a long thin nose and large moustaches which joined his whiskers, was keeping the bank and dealt the cards with thin white fingers on one of which he wore a large seal-ring with a crest.
He dealt straight ahead and carelessly, being evidently excited about something, and only trying to appear at ease. On his right lay a grey-haired major leaning on his elbows who with affected coolness kept staking half-rubles and paying at once. On his left squatted an officer with a red perspiring face, smiling unnaturally and joking. When his cards lost he kept fumbling with one hand in his empty trouser pocket. He was playing high, but evidently no longer for ready money, and it was this that upset the handsome dark man. A bald, thin, pale officer with a huge nose and mouth paced the room with a large bundle of paper money in his hand and continually staked va-banque for ready money and won. Kozeltsov drank a glass of vodka and sat down with the players.
‘Stake something, Michael Semenich!’ said the banker. ‘You must have brought back heaps of money.’
‘Where should I get money? On the contrary, what I had I’ve spent in the town.’
‘Never! . . . You’ve surely cleared someone out in Simferopol!’
‘I’ve really very little,’ said Koseltsov, but evidently not wishing to be believed he unbuttoned his uniform and took up an old pack of cards.
‘Well, suppose I have a try! Who knows what the devil may do for one? Even a mosquito, you know, wins his battles sometimes. But I must have a drink to keep up my courage.’
And having drunk another glass of vodka and some porter he soon lost his last three rubles.
A hundred and fifty rubles were noted down against the perspiring little officer.
‘No, I’ve no luck,’ he said, carelessly preparing another card.
‘I’ll trouble you to hand up the money,’ said the banker, ceasing to deal the cards for a moment and looking at him..
‘Allow me to send it to-morrow,’ replied the other, rising and fumbling with renewed vigour in his empty pocket.
The banker cleared his throat loudly, and angrily throwing the cards right and left finished the deal. ‘But this won’t do. I give up the bank. This won’t do, Zakhar Ivanich,’ he repeated. ‘We were playing for cash, not on credit.’
‘What? Don’t you trust me? It’s really too ridiculous!’
‘Who am I to receive from?’ muttered the major, who was quite drunk by this time and had won some eight rubles. ‘I have paid up more than twenty rubles and when I win I get nothing.’
‘What am I to pay with,’ said the banker, ‘when there’s no money on the board?’
‘That’s not my business,’ shouted the major, rising. ‘I’m playing with you, with honest people, and not with him.’
The perspiring officer suddenly flared up:
‘I shall pay to-morrow, I tell you. How dare you insult me?’
T shall say what I please! Honest people don’t behave like that. So there!’ shouted the major.
‘That’s enough, Fedor Fedorich!’ said everybody, trying to pacify him.
But let us hasten to drop the curtain on this scene. To-morrow or to-day, perhaps, each of these men will cheerfully and proudly go to face death, and die steadfastly and calmly; but the only relief in these inhuman conditions, horrible even to the coldest imagination and from which there is no hope of escape, is to forget and to suppress consciousness. Deep in each soul is a noble spark capable of making its possessor a hero, but it wearies of burning brightly — till a fateful moment comes when it will flash into flame and illumine great deeds.
XVIII
The bombardment continued with equal vigour the next day. At about eleven o’clock Volodya Kozeltsov was sitting among the officers of his battery whom he was already beginning to get used to. He was examining the new faces, observing, asking questions, and talking. The modest conversation, with some pretension to knowledge, of these artillery officers inspired him with respect and pleased him, and on the other hand, Volodya’s bashful and innocent good looks inclined the officers in his favour. The senior of the battery, a captain, a short man with reddish hair standing up in a tuft above his forehead and brushed smooth on his temples, brought up in the old artillery traditions, a ladies’ man with pretensions to scientific knowledge, questioned Volodya about what he knew of artillery and new inventions, joked in a friendly manner about his youth and his pretty face, and in general treated him like a son — and this pleased Volodya very much.
Sub-lieutenant Dyadenko, a young officer who spoke with an Ukrainian accent and who wore a torn cloak and had dishevelled hair — though he talked loudly, snatched every opportunity to begin a hot dispute, and was abrupt in his movements — nevertheless seemed attractive to Volodya, for he could not help seeing that a very kind heart and much that was good lay beneath this rough exterior. Dyadenko kept offering to be of use to Volodya, and demonstrating to him that none of the guns in Sevastopol were placed according to rule.
The only one Volodya did not like was Lieutenant Tchernovitski with his arched eyebrows, though he was the most polite of them all, and wore a coat which was clean enough and neatly patched if not very new, and though he displayed a gold chain over his satin waistcoat. He kept asking what the Emperor and the Minister of War were doing, and told him with unnatural rapture of feats of valour performed in Sevastopol, regretted [the ill-advised arrangements that were being made, and] that there were so few real patriots, and in general displayed much knowledge, intelligence, and noble feeling; but for some reason it all seemed unnatural and unpleasant. Volodya noticed in Particular that the other officers hardly spoke to Tchernovitski. Cadet Vlang, whom Volodya had disturbed the night before, was also there.
He did not speak, but sitting modestly in a corner laughed when there was anything funny, helped to recall anything that was forgotten, handed the vodka bottle, and made cigarettes for all the officers. Whether it was the modest, courteous manner of Volodya, who treated him as an officer and did not order him about as if he were a boy, or whether Volodya’s attractive appearance charmed Vlanga (as the soldiers called him, giving a feminine form to his name), at any rate he did not take his large kindly eyes from the new officer, foresaw and anticipated his wants, and was all the time in a state of enamoured ecstasy which of course the officers noticed and made fun of.
Before dinner the lieutenant-captain was relieved from the bastion and joined them. Lieutenant-Captain Kraut was a fair-haired, handsome, vivacious officer with big sandy moustaches and whiskers. He spoke Russian excellently, but too accurately and elegantly for a Russian. In the service and in his life he was just the same as in his speech: he served admirably, was a first-rate comrade, most reliable in money matters, but as a man he seemed to lack something just because everything about him was so satisfactory. Like all Russo-Germans, in strange contradistinction to the idealist German-Germans, he was praktisch in the extreme.
‘Here he comes — our hero I’ said the captain, as Kraut entered the room swinging his arms and jingling his spurs. ‘What will you take, Friedrich Christianich, tea or vodka?’
‘I have already ordered some tea,’ answered Kraut, ‘but meanwhile I do not mind taking a drop of vodka as a refreshment for my soul…. Very pleased to make your acquaintance. I hope you will favour me with your company and your friendship,’ he added, turning to Volodya, who rose and bowed to him. ‘Lieutenant-Captain Kraut. … The master-gunner at our bastion told me yesterday that you had arrived.’
‘I am very grateful to you for your bed: I slept on it.’
‘But were you comfortable? One of the legs is broken; no one has time to mend it in this state of siege, it has to be propped up.’
‘Well, what luck have you had on duty?’ asked Dyadenko.
‘Oh, all right; only Skvortsov was hit, and yesterday we had to mend a gun-carriage — the cheek was blown to shivers.’
He rose and began to walk up and down. It was evident that he was under the influence of that pleasant feeling men experience who have just left a post of danger.
‘Well, Dmitri Gavrilich,’ he said, shaking the captain by his knee, ‘how are you getting on? What of your recommendation? Is it still silent?’
‘There’s no news as yet.’
‘And there won’t be any,’ began Dyadenko. ‘I told you so before.’
‘Why won’t there be?’
‘Because the report was not written properly.’
‘Ah, you wrangler! You wrangler!’ said Kraut, smiling merrily. ‘A real obstinate Ukrainian! There now, just to spite you you’ll get a lieutenancy.’
‘No I shan’t!’
‘Vlang, get me my pipe and fill it,’ said Kraut, turning to the cadet, who rose at once and readily ran for the pipe.
Kraut brightened them all up: he talked of the bombardment, asked what had been going on in his absence, and spoke to everybody.
XIX
Well, have you established yourself satisfactorily among us?’ Kraut asked Volodya. ‘Excuse me, what is your name and
