The major began laughing.
‘Very queer questions. . . . They ask, can jealousy exist where there is no love. . . . What?’ he asked, turning round and glancing at us all.
‘Dear me!’ said Bólkhov, with a smile.
‘Yes, you know, it is nice in Russia,’ continued the major, just as if his sentences flowed naturally from one another. ‘When I was in Tamb6v in ‘52 they received me everywhere as if I had been some emperor’s aide-de-camp. Will you believe it that at a ball at the Governor’s, when I came in, you know . . . well, they received me very well. The General’s wife herself, you know, talked to me and asked me about the Caucasus, and everybody was … so that I hardly knew. . . . They examined my gold sabre as if it were some curiosity; they asked for what I had received the sabre, for what the Anna, for what the Vladimir … so I just told them…What? That’s what the Caucasus is good for, Nicholas Fedorovich!’ he continued without waiting for any reply:— ‘There they think very well of us Caucasians. You know a young man that’s a staff-officer and has an Anna and a Vladimir . . . that counts for a good deal in Russia…What?’
‘And you, no doubt, piled it on a bit, Abram Ilych?’ said Bólkhov.
‘He — he!’ laughed the major stupidly, ‘You know one has to do that. And didn’t I feed well those two months!’
‘And tell me, is it nice there in Russia?’ said Trosenko, inquiring about Russia as though it were China or Japan.
‘Yes, and the champagne we drank those two months, it was awful!’
‘Eh, nonsense! You’ll have drunk nothing but lemonade. There now, I’d have burst to let them see how Caucasians drink. I’d have given them some-thing to talk about. I’d have shown them how one drinks; eh, Bolkhov?’ said Trosenko.
‘But you, Daddy, have been more than ten years in the Caucasus,’ said Bolkhov, ‘and you remember what Ermolov1 said? . .. And Abram Ilych has been only six.’
‘Ten indeed! .. . nearly sixteen. . . . Well, Bolkhov, let us have some sage-vodka. It’s damp, b-r-r-r! . . . Eh?’ said Trosenko, smiling, ‘Will you have a drink, Major?’
But the major had been displeased by the old captain’s first remarks to him, and plainly drew back and sought refuge in his own grandeur. He hummed something, and again looked at his watch.
‘For my Part I shall never go there!’ Trosenko continued without heeding the major’s frowns. ‘I have lost the habit of speaking and walking in the Russian way. They’d ask, “What curious creature is this coming here? Asia, that’s what it is.” Am I right, Nicholas Fedorovich? Besides, what have I to go to Russia for? What does it matter? I shall be shot here some day. They’ll ask, “Where’s Trosenko?” “Shot!” What will you do with the 8th Company then, eh?’ he added, always addressing the major.
‘Send the officer on duty!’ shouted the major, without answering the captain, though I again felt sure there was no need for him to give any orders.
‘And you, young man, are glad, I suppose, to be drawing double pay?’2 said the major, turning to the adjutant of the battalion after some moments of silence.
1 General A. P. Ermolov (1772-1861), who was renowned for his firmness and justness as a ruler in the Caucasus, and who subdued Chechnya and Daghestan, used to say that after ten years in the Caucasus an officer ‘either takes to drink or marries a loose woman’.
2 An officer’s allowance in Russia proper was very small, but when on service in Poland, the Caucasus, Siberia, etc, they received a higher rate of pay. ‘Yes, sir, very glad of course.’
‘I think our pay now very high, Nicholas Fedorovich,’ continued the major; ‘a young man can live very decently and even permit himself some small luxuries.’
‘No, really, Abram Ilych,’ said the adjutant bashfully. ‘Though it’s double it’s barely enough. You sec one must have a horse.’
‘What are you telling me, young man? I have been an ensign myself and know. Believe me, one can live very well with care. But there! count it up,’ added he, bending the little finger of his left hand.
‘We always draw our salaries in advance; isn’t that account enough for you?’ said Trosenko, emptying a glass of vodka.
‘Well, yes, but what do you expect. . . . What?’
Just then a white head with a fiat nose thrust itself into the opening of the hut and a sharp voice said with a German accent —
‘Are you there, Abram Ilych? The officer on duly is looking for you.’
‘Come in, Kraft!’ said Bolkhov.
A long figure in the uniform of the general staff crept in at the door and began shaking hands all round with peculiar fervour.
‘Ah, dear Captain, are you here too?’ said he, turning to Trosenko.
In spite of the darkness the new visitor made his way to the captain and to the latter’s extreme surprise and dismay as it seemed to me, kissed him on the lips.
‘This is a German trying to be hail fellow well met,’ thought I.
Chapter XII
MY SURMISE WAS at once confirmed. Captain Kraft asked for vodka, calling it a ‘warmer’, croaked horribly, and throwing back his head emptied the glass.
‘Well, gentlemen, we have scoured the plains of Chechnya to-day, have we not?’ he began, but seeing the officer on duty, stopped at once to allow the major to give his orders.
‘Have you been round the lines?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have the ambuscades been placed?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then give the company commanders orders to be as cautious as possible.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The major screwed up his eyes in profound contemplation.
‘Yes, and tell the men they may now boil their buckwheat.’
‘They are already boiling it, sir.’
‘All right! you may go, sir.’
‘Well, we were just reckoning up how much an officer needs,’ continued the major, turning to us with a condescending smile. ‘Let us count. You want a uniform and a pair of trousers, don’t you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘That, let us say, is 50 rubles for two years; therefore 25 rubles a year for clothes. Then for food, 40 kopeks a day — is that right?’
‘Oh yes, that is even too much.’
‘Well, never mind, I’ll leave it so. Then for a horse and repair of harness and saddle — 30 rubles. And that is all. So it’s 25, and 120, and 30 — that’s 175 rubles. So you have for luxuries — tea, sugar, tobacco — a matter of 20 rubles left. So you see … Isn’t it so, Nicholas Fedorovich?’
‘No, but excuse me, Abram Ilych,’ said the adjutant timidly, ‘nothing remains for tea and sugar. You allow one suit in two years; but it’s hardly possible to keep oneself in trousers with all this marching. And boots? I wear out a pair almost every month. Then underclothing — shirts, towels, leg-bands,1 — it all has to be bought. When one comes to reckon it all up nothing remains over. That’s really so, Abram Ilych.’
‘Ah, it’s splendid to wear leg-bands,’ Kraft suddenly remarked after a moment’s silence, uttering the word ‘leg-bands’ in specially tender tones. ‘It’s so simple, you know; quite Russian!’
‘I’ll tell you something,’ Trosenko remarked. ‘Reckon what way you like and you’ll find we might as well put our teeth away on a shelf, and yet here we are all alive, drinking tea, smoking tobacco, and drinking vodka. When you’ve served as long as I have,’ he went on, turning to the ensign, ‘you’ll have also learned how to live. Why, gentlemen, do you know how he treats the orderlies?’
And Trosenko, dying with laughter, told us the whole story about the ensign and his orderly, though we had all heard it hundreds of times.
‘Why do you look so like a rose, old chap?’ continued he, addressing the ensign, who blushed, perspired, and smiled, so that it was pitiful to see him. ‘Never mind, old chap! I was just like you once and now look what a fine fellow I am. You let a young fellow straight from Russia in here — haven’t we seen them? — and he gets spasms or rheumatism or something; and here am I settled here, and it’s my house and my bed and all, d’you see?’
And thereupon he drank another glass of vodka and looking fixedly at Kraft, said, ‘Eh?’
‘That is what I respect! Here’s a genuine old Caucasian! Permit me to shake hands.’
And Kraft, pushing us all aside, forced his way to Trosenko and catching hold of his hand shook it with peculiar emotion.
‘Yes,’ continued Kraft, ‘we may say we have gone
1 It is customary, especially among the peasants and soldiers, to wrap long strips of linen round the feet and legs instead of wearing stockings. through every kind of experience here. In ‘45 you were present, Captain, were you not? — you remember the night between the 12th and 13th, when we spent the night knee-deep in mud and next day captured the barricades they had made of felled trees. I was attached to the commander-in-chief at the time and we took fifteen barricades that one day, — you remember, Captain?’ .
Trosenko nodded affirmatively, stuck out his nether lip and screwed up his eyes.
‘You see . . began Kraft with great animation, making unsuitable gestures with his hands and addressing the major.
But the major, who had
