‘I suppose it’s about Dargo1 you are telling, comrade,’ said the infantry soldier to Antónov.
‘Yes, about Dargo in ‘45,’ Antónov replied.
The infantryman shook his head, screwed up his eyes, and sat down on his heels near us.
‘Yes, all sorts of things happened there,’ he remarked.
‘Why did you leave him behind?’ I asked Antonov.
‘He was suffering a lot with his stomach. As long as we halted it was all right, but as soon as we moved on he screamed aloud and asked for God’s sake to be left behind — but we felt it a pity. But when he began to give it us hot, killed three of our men from the guns and an officer besides and we somehow got separated from our battery. … It was such a go! We thought we shouldn’t get our guns away. It was muddy and no mistake!’
‘The mud was worst under the Indeysky2 Mountain,’ remarked one of the soldiers.
‘Yes, it was there he got more worse! So we considered it with Anoshenka — he was an old artillery sergeant. “Now really he can’t live and he’s asking for God’s sake to be left behind; let us leave him here.” So we decided. There was a tree, such a
1 Dargo, in the T6rek Territory, was the head-quarters of Shamyl until 1845.
2 The soldier miscalls the Andiysky chain of mountains ‘Indeysky,’ apparently connecting them with India. branchy one, growing there. Well, we took some soaked hard-tack Zhdanov had, and put it near him, leant him against the tree, put a clean shirt on him, and said good-bye, — all as it should be — and left him.’
‘And was he a good soldier?’
‘Yes, he was all right as a soldier,’ remarked Zhdanov.
‘And what became of him God only knows,’ continued Antonov; ‘many of the likes of us perished there.’
‘What, at Dargo?’ said the infantryman as he rose, scraping out his pipe and again half-closing his eyes and shaking his head; ‘all sorts of things happened there.’
And he left us.
‘And have we many still in the battery who were at Dargo?’ I asked.
‘Many? Why, there’s Zhdanov, myself, Patsan who is now on furlough, and there may be six others, not more.’
‘And why’s our Patsan holiday-making all this time?’ said Chikin, stretching out his legs and lying down with his head on a log. ‘I reckon he’s been away getting on for a year.’
‘And you, have you had your year at home?’ I asked Zhdanov.
‘No, I didn’t go,’ he answered unwillingly.
‘You see, it’s all right to go,’ said Antonov, ‘if they’re well off at home or if you are yourself fit to work; then it’s tempting to go and they’re glad to see you.’
‘But where’s the use of going when one’s one of two brothers?’ continued Zhdanov. ‘It’s all they can do to get their bread; how should they feed a soldier like me? I’m no help to them after twenty-five years’ service. And who knows whether they’re alive still?’
‘Haven’t you ever written?’ I asked.
‘Yes, indeed! I wrote two letters, but never had an answer. Either they’re dead, or simply won’t write because they’re living in poverty themselves; so where’s the good?’
‘And is it long since you wrote?’ ‘I wrote last when we returned from Dargo . . . Won’t you sing us “The Birch-Tree”?’ he said, turning to Antonov, who sat leaning his elbows on his knees and humming a song.
Antonov began to sing ‘The Birch-Tree’.
‘This is the song Daddy Zhdanov likes most best of all,’ said Chikin to me in a whisper, pulling at my cloak. ‘Sometimes he right down weeps when Philip Antonych sings it.’
Zhdanov at first sat quite motionless with eyes fixed on the glimmering embers, and his face, lit up by the reddish light, seemed very gloomy; then his jaws below his ears began to move faster and faster, and at last he rose, and spreading out his cloak, lay down in the shadow behind the fire. Either it was his tossing and groaning as he settled down to sleep, or it may have been the effect of Velenchuk’s death and of the dull weather, but it really seemed to me that he was crying.
The bottom of the charred log, bursting every now and then into flames, lit up Antonov’s figure with his grey moustaches, red face, and the medals on the cloak that he had thrown over his shoulders, or it lit up someone’s boots, head, or back. The same gloomy drizzle fell from above, the air was still full of moisture and smoke, all around were the same bright spots of fires, now dying down, and amid the general stillness came the mournful sound of Antonov’s song; and when that stopped for an instant the faint nocturnal sounds of the camp — snoring, clanking of sentries’ muskets, voices speaking in low tones — took Part.
‘Second watch! Makatyuk and Zhdanov!’ cried Maksimov.
Antonov stopped singing. Zhdanov rose, sighed, stepped across the log, and went slowly towards the guns.
15 June 1855.
The end
