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 lie?’1
‘Parce que c’esi une giberne d’un regiment de la garde, monsieur, qui porte I’aigle imperial.’2
‘Eh voo de la guard?’3
1 ‘And what is this tied bird for?’
2 ‘Because this is a cartridge pouch of a guard regiment, monsieur, and bears the Imperial eagle.’
3 ‘And do you belong to the Guards?’ ‘Pardon, monsieur, du 6-eme de ligne.’1
‘Eh sussy oo ashtay?’2 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.’3
‘Joli,’4 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.’5
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 ?’6
‘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
1 ‘No, monsieur, to the 6th regiment of the line.’
2 ‘And where did you buy this?’
3 ‘At Balaclava, monsieur. It’s only made of palm
wood.’
4 ‘Pretty.’
5 ‘If you will be so good as to keep it as a souvenir of this meeting you will do me a favour.’
6 ‘Yes, good tobacco, Turkish tobacco . . . You others have Russian tobacco. Is it good?’ 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,’1 says a Zouave among the French.
‘De quoi est-ce qu’ils rient donc?’2 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, a vos places, sacre nom!’3 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 Sazonov, ‘que fai beaucoup connu, monsieur,’ says a French officer with only one epaulette— ‘c’est un de ces vrais comtes russes, comme nous les aimons.’4
‘II y a un Sazonoff, que j’ai connu’ says the cavalry officer, ‘mais il n’est pas comte, a moins que je sache, un petit brun de voire age a peu pres.’5
‘C’est ca, 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,’6 he said, bowing.
‘N’est-ce pas terrible la triste besogne que nous faisons? Ca chauffait cette nuit, n’est-ce pas?’9 said the cavalry
1 ‘They are not handsome, these d — Russians.’
2 ‘What are they laughing about?’
3 ‘Don’t leave your ranks. To your places, damn it!’
4 ‘Whom I knew very intimately, monsieur. He is one of those real Russian counts of whom we are so fond.’
5 ‘I am acquainted with a Sazonov, but he is not a Count, as far as I know — a small dark man, of about your age.’
6 ‘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.’
7 ‘Isn’t it terrible, this sad duty we are engaged in? It was warm work last night, wasn’t it?’ 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 unplaisir que de se battre avec des gaillards comme eux.’1
‘Il faut avouer que les votres ne se mouchent pas du pied non plus,’2 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
1 ‘Ah, monsieur, it is terrible! But what fine fellows your men are, what fine fellows! It is a pleasure to fight with such fellows!’
2 ‘It must be admitted that yours are no fools either.’ (Literally, ‘don’t wipe their noses with their feet’.) 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 Kalugin, with his brilliant courage — bravoure de gentilhomme — and the vanity that influences all his actions, not Praskukhin, the empty harmless fellow (though he fell in battle for faith, throne, and fatherland), not Mikhaylov 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.
SEVASTOPOL IN AUGUST 1855
I
Towards the end of August, through the hot thick dust of the rocky and hilly highway between Duvankal and Bakhchisariy, an officer’s vehicle was slowly toiling towards Sevastopol (that peculiar kind of vehicle you never meet anywhere else — something between a Jewish britzka, a Russian cart, and a basket).
In the front of the trap, pulling at the reins, squatted an orderly in a nankeen coat and wearing a cap, now quite limp, that had once belonged to an officer: behind, on bundles and bales covered with a soldier’s overcoat, sat an infantry officer in a summer cloak. The officer, as far as one could judge while he was sitting, was not tall but very broad and massive, not across the shoulders so much as from back to chest. His neck and the back of his head were much developed and very solid.
He had no waist, and yet his body did not appear to be stout in that Part: on the contrary he was rather lean, especially in the face, which was burnt to an unwholesome yellow. He would have been good-looking had it not been for a certain puffiness and the broad soft wrinkles, not due to age, that blurred the outlines of his features, making them seem larger and giving the face a general look of coarseness and lack of freshness. His small eyes were hazel, with a daring and even insolent expression: he had very
