Thrusting Gregor back, he placed himself with arms outstretched between the two men.
‘You lie; you won’t kill me!’ Uriupin smiled.
As they were riding back in the dusk Gregor was the first to notice the body of the hussar lying in the path. He rode up in front of the others, and reining in his horse, stared down. The man lay with arms flung out over the velvety moss, his face downward, his palms, yellow like autumn leaves, turned upward and open. A terrible blow from behind had cloven him in two from the shoulder to the belt.
The cossacks rode past the body and on to the company headquarters in silence. The evening shadows deepened. A breeze was driving up a black, feathery cloud from the east. From a swamp nearby came the stagnant scent of marshgrass, of rusty dampness and rot. A bittern boomed. The drowsy silence was broken by the jingle of the horses’ equipment, and the occasional knock of sabre on stirrup, or the scrunch of pine cones under the horses’ hoofs. Through the glade the dark ruddy gleam of the departed sun streamed over the pine trunks. Uriupin smoked incessantly, and the fleeting spark of his cigarette lit up his thick fingers with their blackened nails firmly gripping the cigarette.
The cloud floated over the forest, emphasizing and deepening the fading, inexpressibly mournful hues of the evening shadows on the ground.
The following morning an assault was begun on the next town. Flanked by cavalry, the infantry was to have advanced from the forest at dawn. Somewhere someone blundered; the infantry regiments did not arrive in time; the 211th Sharpshooter regiment was ordered to cross over to the left flank, and during the offensive movement initiated by another regiment it was raked with fire from its own batteries. The hopeless confusion upset the plans, and the attack threatened to end in failure, if not in disaster. Whilst the infantry was thus being shuffled about the order came for the eleventh cavalry division to advance. The wooded and marshy land in which they had been held in readiness did not permit of an extended frontal movement, and in some cases the cossacks had to advance in troops. The fourth and fifth companies of the twelfth regiment were held in reserve in the forest, and within a few minutes of the general advance the roaring, rending sound of the battle began to reach their ears.
The two companies were drawn up in a glade. The stout pine trunks hemmed them in and prevented their following the course of the battle. After the first few moments of shouting a deep silence fell. All strained their ears. From time to time they caught an outburst of cheering; on the right flank the Austrian artillery thundered away at the attacking forces; the roar was interspersed with the rattle of machine-guns.
Gregor glanced around his troop. The cossacks were fidgeting nervously, and the horses were restive as though troubled by gnats. Uriupin had hung his cap on the saddle-bow and was wiping his bald head; at Gregor’s side Misha Koshevoi puffed fiercely at his home-grown tobacco. All the objects around were distinct and exaggeratedly real, as they appear after a night’s unbroken watching.
The companies were held in reserve for three hours. All the stocks of tobacco were exhausted and the men were pining in expectation, when just before noon an orderly officer galloped up with instructions. The commander of the fourth company led his men off to one side. To Gregor it seemed that they were retreating rather than advancing. His own company was marched off and rode for some twenty minutes through the forest, the sound of the battle drawing nearer and nearer. Not far behind them a battery was firing; the shells flew overhead with a roar. The narrow forest paths broke up the company’s formation, and they emerged into the open in disorder. About half a mile away Hungarian hussars were sabring the team of a Russian battery.
‘Company, form!’ the commander shouted.
The cossacks had not completely carried out the order when the further command came:
‘Company, draw sabres; into the attack, forward!’
A blue shower of blades. From a swift trot the cossacks broke into a gallop.
Six Hungarian hussars were busily occupied with the horses of the field-gun on the extreme right of the battery. One was dragging at the bits of the excited artillery horses, another was beating them with the flat of his sword, whilst the others were tugging and pulling at the spokes of the carriage wheels. An officer on a docktailed chocolate mare was superintending the operations. At the sight of the cossacks he gave an order, and the hussars leapt to their horses.
As Gregor galloped towards them one foot momentarily lost its stirrup, and feeling himself insecure in his saddle, with inward alarm he bent over and fished with his toe for the dangling iron. When he had recovered his foothold he looked up, and saw the six horses of the field-gun in front of him. The outrider on the foremost, in a blood and brain-spattered shirt, was lying over the animal’s neck, embracing it. Gregor’s horse brought its hoof down with a sickening scrunch on the body of a dead gunner. Two more were lying by an overturned case of shells. A fourth was stretched face downward over the gun-carriage. A cossack of Gregor’s troop was just in front of him. The Hungarian officer fired at almost point-blank range and the cossack fell, his hands clutching and embracing the air. Gregor pulled on his reins and tried to approach the officer from the right, the better to use his sabre; but the officer saw through his manoeuvre and fired under his arm at him. He discharged the contents of his revolver and then drew his sword. Three smashing blows he parried dexterously. Gregor reached at him yet a fourth time, standing in his stirrups. Their horses were now galloping almost side by side, and he noticed the ashen-grey, clean-shaven cheek of the Hungarian and the regimental number sewn on his collar. With a feint he drew off the officer’s attention, and changing the direction of his stroke, thrust the point of his sabre between the Hungarian’s shoulder-blades. He aimed a second blow at the neck, just at the top of the spine. The officer dropped his sword and reins from his hands, and straightened up, then toppled over his saddle-bow. Feeling a terrible relief, Gregor lashed at his head, and saw the sabre smash into the bone above the ear.
A fearful blow at his head from behind tore consciousness away from Gregor. He felt a burning, salty taste of blood in his mouth, and realized that he was falling; from one side the stubbled earth came whirling and flying up at him. The heavy crash of his body against the ground brought him momentarily back to reality. He opened his eyes; blood poured into them. A trample past his ears, and the heavy breathing of horses. For the last time he opened his eyes and saw the dilated nostrils of horses, and someone’s foot in a stirrup. ‘Finished!’ the comforting thought crawled through his mind like a snake. A roar, and then a black emptiness.
Chapter Five
In the middle of August Eugene Listnitsky decided to apply for a transfer from the Ataman’s Lifeguard regiment to one of the cossack regular army regiments. He made his formal application, and within three weeks received an appointment as he desired. Before leaving Petersburg he wrote to his father informing him of the step he had taken and asking his blessing.
The train for Warsaw left Petersburg at eight p.m. Listnitsky took a drozhki and drove to the station. Behind him Petersburg lay in a dove-blue twinkle of lights. The station was clamorous with soldiers. He settled down into his compartment, removed his sword-belt and coat, and spread his cossack blanket over the seat. By the window sat a priest with the lean face of an ascetic. Brushing the crumbs from his hempen beard, he offered some curd-cake to a swarthy girl sitting in the seat opposite him. As Eugene dozed off he heard the priest’s voice as though coming from a distance:
‘It’s a miserable income my family gets, you know. So I’m off as a chaplain to the forces. The Russian people cannot fight without faith. And you know, from year to year the faith increases. Of course there are some who fall away, but they are among the intelligentsia, and the peasant holds fast to God.’
The priest’s bass voice failed to penetrate further into Eugene’s consciousness. After two sleepless nights a refreshing sleep came to him. He awoke when the train was a good twenty-five miles outside Petersburg. The wheels clattere
d rhythmically, the carriage swayed and rocked, in a neighbouring compartment someone was singing. The lamp cast slanting lilac shadows.
The regiment to which Listnitsky was assigned had suffered considerable losses, and had been withdrawn from the front to be remounted and its complement made up. The regimental staff headquarters were at a large village called Berezniagi. Eugene left the train at some nameless halt. At the same station a field hospital was detained. Eugene inquired the destination of the hospital from the doctor in charge, and learnt that it had been transferred from the south-western front to the sector in which his own regiment was engaged. The doctor spoke very unfavourably of his immediate superiors, cursed the divisional staff officers up hill and down dale, and tearing his beard, his eyes glowing behind his pince-nez, poured his jaundiced anger into the ears of his fortuitous acquaintance.
‘Can you take me to Berezniagi?’ Eugene interrupted him.
‘Yes, get into the trap, subaltern,’ he agreed, and familiarly twisting the button on Eugene’s coat, went on with his complaints.
Dusk was falling as the field hospital approached Berezniagi. The wind ruffled the yellow stubble. Clouds were massing in the west. At their height they were a deep violet black, but below they shaded into a tender, smoky lilac. In the middle the formless mass, piled like floes against a river dam, was drawn aside. Through the breach the flood of sunset rays poured in a strong orange, spreading in a spurting fan of light and weaving a Bacchanalian spectrum of colours below the gap.
A dead horse lay by the roadside ditch. On one of its hoofs, flung weirdly upward, the horse-shoe gleamed. Jumping down from the trap, Listnitsky stared at the carcass. The orderly with whom he was riding explained:
‘It’s overeaten itself … Got among the grain … There it lies, and no one troubles to bury it. That’s just like the Russians. The Germans are different.’
‘And how do you know?’ Eugene asked with unreasoning anger. At that moment he was filled with hatred for the orderly’s phlegmatic face with its suggestion of superiority and contempt. The man was grey and dreary like a stubble field in September; he was in no way different from the thousands of peasant soldiers whom Eugene had seen on his way to the front. They all seemed faded and drooping, dullness stared in their grey eyes, and they strongly reminded him of well-worn, long-minted copper coins.
‘I lived in Germany for three years before the war,’ the orderly replied unhurryingly. In his voice was the same nuance of superiority and contempt that showed in his face.
‘Hold your tongue!’ Listnitsky commanded sternly, and turned away.
They drove on. The colours faded in the west, sucked into the clouds. Behind them the leg of the dead horse stuck up like a wayside cross bereft of its arm. As Eugene was staring back at it, suddenly a stream of rays fell on the horse, and, lit up with an orange gleam, the leg with its sorrel hair unexpectedly blossomed like a marvellous leafless branch.
As the field hospital drove into Berezniagi it passed a transport of wounded soldiers. An elderly White Russian, the owner of the first wagon, strode along at his horse’s head, the hempen reins gathered in his hands. On the wagon lay a cossack with a bandaged head. He was resting on his elbow, but his eyes were closed wearily as he chewed grain and spat out the black husks. At his side a soldier was stretched out; over his buttocks his torn trousers were horribly shrivelled and taut with congealed blood. He was cursing savagely, without lifting his head. Listnitsky was horrified as he listened to the intonation of the man’s voice, for it sounded exactly like a believer fervently muttering prayers.
On the fifth wagon three cossacks were comfortably seated. As Listnitsky passed they stared silently at him, their harsh faces showing no sign of respect for an officer.
The commander of Listnitsky’s new regiment had his headquarters in the house of a priest. The place was very quiet and slack, like all staff headquarters situated away from the front line. Clerks were bent over a table; an elderly captain was laughing down the mouthpiece of a field-telephone. The flies droned around the windows, and distant telephone bells buzzed like mosquitoes. An orderly conducted Eugene to the regimental commander’s private room. They were met on the threshold by a tall colonel, who greeted him coldly, and with a gesture invited him into the room. As he closed the door the colonel passed his hand over his hair with a gesture of ineffable weariness, and said in a soft, monotonous voice:
‘The brigade staff informed me yesterday that you were on your way. Sit down.’
He questioned Eugene about his previous service, asked for the latest news from the capital, inquired about his journey, and not once during all their brief conversation did he raise his eyes to Listnitsky’s face.
‘He must have had a hard time at the front; he looks mortally tired,’ Eugene thought sympathetically. As though deliberately to disillusion him, the colonel remarked:
‘Well, lieutenant, you must make the acquaintance of your brother officers. You must excuse me, I haven’t been to bed for three nights running. In this dead hole there’s nothing to do except play cards and get drunk.’
Listnitsky saluted and turned to the door, hiding his contempt behind a smile. He went out thinking unfavourably over this first meeting with his commanding officer, and ironically jesting at the respect which the colonel’s tired appearance had instilled in him.
Eugene’s division was allotted the task of forcing the river Styr and taking the enemy in the rear. The operations to force the river were carried through brilliantly. The division shattered a considerable concentration of enemy forces on their left flank, and reached their rear. The Austrians attempted to initiate a counter-offensive with the aid of cavalry, but the cossack batteries swept them away with shrapnel, and the Magyar squadrons retreated in disorder, annihilated by flanking machine-gun fire and pursued by the cossack cavalry.
Listnitsky advanced with his regiment to the counter-attack. The troop he commanded lost one cossack killed and four wounded. One of them, a young, hook-nosed cossack was crushed under his dead horse. He lay quietly groaning, and beseeching the cossacks riding past:
‘Brothers, don’t leave me. Get me free of the horse, brothers …’
His low, tortured voice sounded faintly, but there was not a sign of pity in the hearts of the other cossacks, or if there were, a higher will drove them on relentlessly, forbidding them to dismount. The troop rode on at a trot, letting the horses recover their wind. Half a mile away the scattered Magyar squadrons were in full retreat; here and there among them appeared the grey-blue uniforms of the enemy infantry. An Austrian transport crawled along the crest of a hill, and the milky smoke of shrapnel hovered valedictorily above them. From the left a battery was bombarding the transport, and its dull thunder rolled over the fields and echoed through the forest.
The regiment halted for the night in a little village. The twelve officers were all crowded into one hut. Broken with fatigue, they lay down hungry to sleep. The field-kitchen arrived only about midnight. Cornet Chubov brought in a pot of soup, and within a few minutes the officers were eating greedily, without exchanging a word, making up for the two days lost in battle. After the late meal their previous sleepiness passed, and they lay on their cloaks talking and smoking.
First lieutenant Kalmikov, a tubby little officer whose face as well as his name bore the traces of his Mongolian origin, gesticulated fiercely as he declared:
‘This war is not for me. I’ve been born four centuries late. You know, I shan’t live to see the end of the war.’
‘Oh, drop your fortune-telling!’
‘It’s not fortune-telling. It’s my predestined end. I’m atavistic, and I’m superfluous here. When we were under fire today I trembled with frenzy; I can’t stand not seeing the enemy. The horrible feeling I get is equivalent to fear. They fire at you from several miles away, and you ride like a bustard hunted over the steppe. I envy those who fought in the old-time, primitive fashion,’ he continued, turning to Listnitsky. ‘To thrust at your oppone
nt in honourable battle, and to split him in two with your sword – that’s the sort of warfare I understand. But this is the devil knows what.’
‘In future wars there will be no part left for the cavalry to play. It will be abolished,’ another officer observed.
‘But you can’t replace men by a machine. You’re going too far.’
‘I’m not referring to man, but to horses. Motor-cycles or motor-cars will take their place.’
‘I can just imagine a motor squadron!’
‘That’s all nonsense!’ Kalmikov interposed excitedly. ‘An absurd fantasy! We don’t know what war will be like in two or three centuries’ time, but today cavalry are …’
‘What will you do with the cavalry when there are trenches all along the front? Tell me that!’
‘They’ll break through the trenches, ride across them, and make sorties far to the rear of the enemy; that will be the cavalry’s task.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Oh, shut up and let us get some sleep,’ someone demanded.
The argument tailed away, and snores took its place. Listnitsky lay on his back, breathing the pungent scent of the musty straw on which he had spread his cloak. Kalmikov lay down at his side.
‘You should have a talk with the volunteer Bunchuk,’ he whispered to Eugene. ‘He’s in your troop. A very interesting fellow!’
‘How?’ Eugene asked, as he turned his back to Kalmikov.
‘He’s a Russianized cossack. He’s lived in Moscow as an ordinary worker, but he’s interested in the question of machinery. He’s a first-rate machine-gunner, too.’
‘Let’s get to sleep,’ Listnitsky replied.
Eugene completely forgot Kalmikov’s reference to Bunchuk, but the very next day chance brought him into contact with the volunteer. The regimental commander ordered him to ride at dawn on reconnaissance work, and if possible to establish contact with the infantry regiment which was continuing the advance on the left flank. Stumbling about the yard in the half-light, and falling over the bodies of the sleeping cossacks, Eugene found the troop sergeant and roused him: