He looked at me with surprise, then turned quietly round, put on his cap, and went back to his place.
The affair in general was successful. The Cossacks, as we heard, had made a fine charge and brought back three dead Tartars;1 the infantry had provided itself with firewood and had only half-a-dozen men wounded; the artillery had lost only Velenchuk and two horses. For that, two miles of forest had been cut down and the place so cleared as to be unrecognizable. Instead of the thick outskirts of the forest you saw before you a large plain covered with smoking fires and cavalry and infantry marching back to camp.
Though the enemy continued to pursue us with artillery and small-arm fire up to the cemetery by the little river we had crossed in the morning, the retirement was successfully accomplished. I was already beginning to dream of the cabbage-soup and mutton-ribs with buckwheat that were awaiting me in camp, when a message came from the General ordering a redoubt to be constructed by the river, and the
3rd battalion of the K-Regiment and the platoon
of the 4th Battery to remain there till next day.
The carts with the wood and the wounded, the Cossacks, the artillery, the infantry with muskets and faggots on their shoulders, all passed us with noise and songs. Every face expressed animation and pleasure caused by the escape from danger and the hope of rest. Only we and the 3rd battalion had to postpone those pleasant feelings till to-morrow.
Chapter X
WHILE WE OF the artillery were busy with the guns — parking the limbers and the ammunition wagons and arranging the picket-ropes — the infantry had already piled their muskets, made up camp-fires, built little
1 The ‘Tartars’, being Mohammedans, made a point of not letting the bodies of their slain fall into the hands of the ‘unbelievers’, but removed them and buried them as heroes. The capture of three bodies therefore indicates the vigour of the attack and the demoralization of the enemy. huts of branches and maize straw, and begun boiling their buckwheat.
The twilight had set in. Bluish white clouds crept over the sky. The mist, turning into fine dank drizzle, wetted the earth and the soldiers’ cloaks; the horizon narrowed and all the surroundings assumed a gloomier hue. The damp I felt through my boots and on my neck, the ceaseless movement and talk in which I took no Part, the sticky mud on which my feet kept slipping, and my empty stomach, all combined to put me into the dreariest, most unpleasant frame of mind after the physical and moral weariness of the day. I could not get Velenchuk out of my head. The whole simple story of his soldier-life depicted itself persistently in my imagination.
His last moments were as clear and calm as his whole life had been. He had lived too honestly and been too artless for his simple faith in a future heavenly life to be shaken at the decisive moment.
‘Your honour!’ said Nikoldyev, coming up to me, ‘the Captain asks you to come and have tea with him.’
Having scrambled through, as best I could, between the piles of arms and the camp-fires, I followed Nikolayev to where Bolkhov was, thinking with pleasure of a tumbler of hot tea and a cheerful conversation which would disperse my gloomy thoughts.
‘Have you found him?’ I heard Bolkhov’s voice say from inside a maize-hut in which a light was burning.
‘I’ve brought him, y’r honour,’ answered Nikolayev’s bass voice.
Inside the hut Bólkhov was sitting on a dry mantle, with unbuttoned coat and no cap. A samovar stood boiling by his side and on a drum were light refreshments. A bayonet holding a candle was stuck into the ground.
‘What do you think of it?’ he asked, looking proudly round his cosy establishment. It really was so nice inside the hut that at tea I quite forgot the damp, the darkness, and Velenchuk’s wound. We talked of Moscow and of things that had not the least relation to the war or to the Caucasus.
After a moment of silence such as sometimes occurs in the most animated conversation, Bólkhov looked at me with a smile.
T think our conversation this morning struck you as being very strange,’ he said.
‘No, why do you think so? It only seemed to me that you were too frank; there are things which we all know, but which should never be mentioned.’
‘Why not? If there were the least possibility of changing this life for the lowest and poorest without danger and without service, I should not hesitate a moment.’
‘Then why don’t you return to Russia?’ I asked.
‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Oh, I have thought about that long ago. I can’t return to Russia now until I have the Anna and Vladimir orders: an Anna round my neck and the rank of major, as I planned when I came here.’
‘Why? — if, as you say, you feel unfit for the service here.’
‘But what if I feel still more unfit to go back to Russia to the same position that I left? That is also one of the traditions in Russia, confirmed by Passek, Sleptsov and others, that one need only go to the Caucasus to be laden with rewards. Everyone expects and demands it of us; and I have been here for two years, have been on two expeditions, and have got nothing. But still I have so much ambition that I won’t leave on any account until I am a major with a Vladimir and Anna round my neck. I have become so concerned about it that it upsets me when Gniloklshkin gets a reward and I don’t. And then how am I to show myself in Russia, to the village elder, to the merchant Kotelnikov to whom I sell my corn, to my Moscow aunt, and to all those good people, if after two years spent in the Caucasus I return without any reward? It is true I don’t at all wish to know all those people, and they no doubt care very little about me either; but man is so made that, though I don’t want to know them, yet on account of them I’m wasting the best years of my life, all my life’s happiness, and am mining my future.’
Chapter XI
JUST THEN WE heard the voice of the commander of the battalion outside, addressing Bolkhov.
‘Who is with you, Nicholas Fedorovich?’
Bolkhov gave him my name, and then three officers scrambled into the hut — Major Kirsanov; the adjutant of his battalion; and Captain Trosenko.
Kirsanov was not tall but stout, he had black moustaches, rosy cheeks, and oily little eyes. These eyes were his most remarkable feature. When he laughed nothing remained of them but two tiny moist stars, and these little stars together with his wide-stretched lips and outstretched neck often gave him an extraordinarily senseless look. In the regiment Kirsanov behaved himself and bore himself better than anyone else; his subordinates did not complain of him and his superiors respected him — though the general opinion was that he was very limited. He knew the service, was exact and zealous, always had ready money, kept a carriage and a man-cook, and knew how to make an admirable pretence of being proud.
‘What were you talking about, Nicholas Fedorovich?’
‘Why, about the attractions of the service here.’
But just then Kirsanov noticed me, a cadet, and to impress me with his importance he paid no attention to Bólkhov’s reply, but looked at the drum and said— ‘Are you tired, Nicholas Fedorovich?’
‘No, you see we-’ Bolkhov began.
But again the dignity of the commander of the battalion seemed to make it necessary to interrupt, and to ask another question.
‘That was a famous affair to-day, was it not?’
The adjutant of the battalion was a young ensign recently promoted from being a cadet, a modest, quiet lad with a bashful and kindly-pleasant face. I had met him at Bolkhov’s before. The lad would often come there, bow, sit down in a corner, and remain silent for hours making cigarettes and smoking them; then he would rise, bow, and go away. He was the type of a poor Russian nobleman’s son who had chosen the military career as the only one possible to him with his education, and who esteemed his position as an officer above everything else in the world — a simple-minded and lovable type notwithstanding the comical appurtenances inseparable from it: the tobacco-pouch, dressing-gown, guitar, and little moustache-brush we are accustomed to associate with it. It was told of him in the regiment that he bragged about being just but strict with his orderly, and that he used to say, ‘I punish seldom, but when I am compelled to do it it’s no joke,’ but that when his tipsy orderly robbed him outrageously and even began to insult him, he, the master, took him to the guard-house and ordered everything to be prepared for a flogging, but was so upset at the sight of the preparations that he could only say, ‘There now, you
see, I could-’ and becoming quite disconcerted,
ran home in great confusion and was henceforth afraid to look his man Chernov in the eyes. His comrades gave the simple-minded boy no rest but teased him continually about this episode, and more than once I heard how he defended himself, and blushing to the tips of his ears assured them that it was not true, but just the contrary. The third visitor, Captain Trosenko, was a thoroughgoing old Caucasian — that is, a man for whom the company he commanded had become his family; the fortress where
