A cold sweat broke out all over his body, as though in a fever, and he threw his musket to the ground. This state of affairs lasted only for a second, however; it suddenly occurred to him that he was a hero. Snatching up his musket and shouting “Hurrah!” with the rest of the men, he ran away from the body of the slain Frenchman, whose boots were already being removed by a Russian soldier. Some twenty yards further on he came to a trench that was being held by Russian forces and where he found the battalion commander.
“I got one of them, sir!” he told the battalion commander.
“Well done, Baron . . . ”
— 12 —
“Praskukhin was killed, you know,” said Pest, as he was seeing off Kalugin, who was returning to his quarters.
“Surely not!”
“He was, I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Well, goodbye. I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“I really feel quite pleased,” thought Kalugin, as he arrived back at his billet. “That’s the first time we’ve struck lucky when I’ve been on duty. It was a fine battle—I’m alive and well, and I should get a first-class decoration, probably even a golden sabre. And, I must say, I’ve deserved it.”
When he had finished reporting all the necessary details to the general he went to his room, where he found Prince Galtsin, who had already been sitting there waiting for him for quite a long time, reading a copy of Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes[e] which he had found on Kalugin’s table.
It was with a quite astonishing degree of satisfaction that Kalugin, feeling himself to be back home and out of danger, put on his nightshirt, got into bed and told Galtsin the details of the action, recounting them in a perfectly natural manner and from a point of view that made them illustrate what a thoroughly courageous and efficient officer he, Kalugin, was, a circumstance he felt it hardly necessary to allude to directly since everyone knew it to be so and had no reason to doubt it, with the possible exception of Captain Praskukhin, who was now deceased. Praskukhin, although he had deemed it an honour to walk arm-in-arm with Kalugin, had only the day before confidentially informed one of his closest friends that Kalugin was a very fine man, but that, “strictly between ourselves,” he appeared to have a terrible aversion to visiting the bastions.
What had happened was that Praskukhin, who had been walking beside Mikhailov and had only just parted company with Kalugin, had begun to recover his spirits somewhat, having reached a less dangerous stretch of terrain, when he suddenly saw a brilliant flash that seemed to come from somewhere behind him, heard a sentry shout: “Mortar!” and one of the soldiers beside him say: “That one’s going to land on the battalion!”
Mikhailov had looked round: the bright pinpoint of a shell seemed to have stopped at its zenith in a position that made it quite impossible to determine its future trajectory. But this illusion only lasted a moment: the shell had begun to descend faster and faster, coming nearer until the sparks of its fuse were clearly visible, as it headed straight for the centre of the battalion with a deadly whistling sound.
“Get down!” someone had shouted in a frightened voice.
Mikhailov had fallen forward on his stomach. Praskukhin found himself bending double and covering his eyes: all he heard was the sound of the shell thudding into the hard earth somewhere close by. A second elapsed. It had seemed like an hour, and still the shell hadn’t gone off. Praskukhin had been afraid his panic was groundless—perhaps the shell had really landed a long way off and it was only in his imagination that he could hear its fuse hissing right next to him. He had opened his eyes and seen to his vain satisfaction that Mikhailov, whom he still owed twelve and a half roubles, was lying right at his feet and nearer the ground than he was, flat on his belly, in fact. In that same moment, however, his eyes registered the glowing fuse of the shell which was spinning on the ground only a few feet away from him.
A sense of horror—a cold sense of horror which shut out all other thoughts and feelings—seized hold of his entire being. He covered his face with his hands and fell to his knees.
Another second passed, one during which a whole world of feelings, thoughts, hopes and memories flooded through his mind.
“Who’s it going to kill? Mikhailov or me? Or both of us? And if it’s to be me, where will it get me? If it gets me in the head, then I’m done for; but if it’s one of my legs they’ll have to amputate it and I shall most certainly ask to be given chloroform and then perhaps I’ll survive. But perhaps it will only be Mikhailov who’s killed. Then I’ll be able to tell the story of how we were walking side by side when he was suddenly killed and spurted blood all over me. No, it’s closer to me—I’m the one who’s for it.”
It was at this point that he remembered the twelve roubles he owed Mikhailov, as well as another debt he owed to someone in St Petersburg, one he should have paid a long time ago; the gypsy melody he had sung earlier that evening came into his head; the woman he loved appeared in his thoughts, wearing a hood adorned with lilac ribbons; he remembered a man who five years earlier had insulted him and on whom he had never got his own back. Running parallel with these and thousands of other memories, however, was an awareness of the present—an expectation of death and honour—which did not abandon him for one moment. “Anyhow, it may not explode,” he thought, and with desperate determination he made an effort to open his eyes. But at that moment a red light struck his still-closed eyelids, and something shoved him, with a terrible crack, in the centre of his chest; he started to run blindly, but tripped over his sword, which had slid down under his feet, and fell over on his side.
“Thank God, I’m only contused,” was his first thought, and he tried to touch his chest with his hands—but his arms seemed to be bound fast, and his head felt as though it were caught in some kind of vice. Soldiers flickered past his gaze—and he found himself unconsciously counting them: “One, two, three—ah, that one in the tucked-up greatcoat is an officer,” he thought; then there was a flash, and he wondered if it had been a mortar or a cannon; a cannon, more likely; and now there was some more firing, more soldiers going past—five, six, seven. He was suddenly afraid he might be trampled on; he wanted to shout that he was only contused, but his mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to his palate, and he was racked by a terrible thirst. He could feel something wet in the region of his chest—this wet sensation made him think of water, and he would even have drunk whatever it was his chest was wet with. “I must be bleeding from that fall,” he thought and, becoming more and more obsessed with the fear that the soldiers who were continuing to flicker past were about to trample on him, he mustered all his strength and tried to shout: “Take me with you!” Instead, however, he began to groan so horribly that he grew terrified at the sounds he was making. Then red lights began to dance in front of his eyes—and he had an impression that the soldiers were piling stones on top of him. The lights grew more and more sparse, and the stones being placed on top of him seemed to weigh more and more heavily on him. He made an effort to heave them aside, straightened himself up, and then neither saw nor heard nor thought nor felt anything more. He had been killed on the spot by a shell-splinter that had struck him in the middle of the chest.[33]
— 13 —
When Mikhailov caught sight of the shell, he dived to the ground, screwed up his eyes, and then opened and closed them again twice. Just as Praskukhin had done, in those two seconds during which the shell lay on the ground before it went off, he experienced an ineffable multitude of thoughts and emotions. He prayed in silence, repeating over and over to himself: “Thy will be done!,” and thinking as he did so: “Why on earth did I ever join the army? And to think I even got a transfer to an infantry division so I could take part in this campaign! I’d have done better to have stayed put in T—— with the Uhlans and spent the time with my friend Natasha . . . Instead, look at the mess I’m in!” And he began to count: one, two, three, four, making a silent wager that if the shell went off on an even number he would live, but
that if it went off on an odd number he would be killed. “It’s all over!” he thought, when the shell finally exploded (he had no idea of whether it was on an odd or an even number), and he felt a blow and a fierce pain in his head. “O Lord, forgive me my sins,” he said, clasping his hands, trying to sit up, and then falling back unconscious.
The first sensation he had on regaining consciousness was of the blood that was trickling down his nose and the pain in his head, which was much less fierce now. “That must be my soul leaving my body,” he thought. “What will it be like there? Lord, receive my soul in peace. The only thing that’s a bit strange,” he reflected, “is to be dying and yet to be able to hear the footsteps of the soldiers and the sounds of the firing so clearly.”
“Bring a stretcher over here—hey! The company commander’s been killed!” shouted a voice somewhere above his head. It was a voice he realized he knew—it belonged to a drummer named Ignatiev.
Someone took hold of him by the shoulders. He made an effort to open his eyes and saw above him the dark blue sky, the groupings of the stars, and two shells which appeared to be chasing one another far away up there; he saw Ignatiev, some soldiers carrying muskets and a stretcher; then he saw the earth bank of the trench, and suddenly decided he was not in the next world yet, at any rate.
He had received a slight head wound from a flying stone. His first reaction to this knowledge was one almost of regret: so thoroughly and peacefully had he made himself ready for his passage there that this return to reality with its shells, trenches, soldiers and blood seemed most unwelcome; his second reaction was one of unconscious joy at being alive, and his third was a sense of fear and a desire to get away from the bastion as soon as possible. The drummer bandaged up his commander’s head with a handkerchief and, taking him by the arm, led him in the direction of the dressing station.
“Just a moment, where am I going, and for what purpose?” thought the lieutenant-captain when he had recovered his wits slightly. “My duty’s to remain with my company and not go on ahead, particularly since we’ll soon be out of firing range anyway,” whispered a voice inside him. “And if I stay at my post even though I’m wounded, I’ll be certain to get a decoration.”
“Look here, old chap, this isn’t necessary,” he said, pulling his arm free of the obliging drummer, who was really only concerned to get away from this spot as quickly as possible. “I don’t want to go to the dressing station, I’m going to remain here with the company.”
And he turned back.
“You really ought to have your wound properly bandaged up, your honour,” said the battle-shy Ignatiev. “It’s only now, in the heat of battle, that you think it’s not worth bothering about. It’ll only get worse if you don’t have it seen to. And anyway, just look at the way things are warming up. Honest to God, your honour.”
Mikhailov paused for a moment in indecision, and would doubtless have followed Ignatiev’s advice had he not suddenly recalled a scene he had witnessed at the dressing station a few days previously. An officer who had a tiny scratch on his hand had come to have it bandaged up, and the surgeons had viewed it with amusement. One of them—a man with large sidewhiskers[34]—had even gone so far as to tell the officer that no one could possibly die of such a slight graze, and that one could do more damage to oneself with a dinner fork.
“Perhaps they won’t take my wound seriously either, and will make rude remarks about it,” thought the lieutenant-captain. His mind made up now, he ignored all the drummer’s arguments and returned to his company.
“Where’s that orderly officer, Praskukhin, who was walking with me?” he asked the ensign who had been in temporary command, when they met.
“I don’t know, sir. Er, I think he was killed,” the ensign replied, reluctantly. He was, to tell the truth, rather annoyed that the lieutenant-captain had come back, thereby depriving him of the satisfaction of being able to say that he had been the only officer who had remained with the company.
“Well, was he killed or was he wounded? You ought to know, after all—the fellow was with our company. Anyway, why hasn’t he been brought along with the rest of the men?”
“We couldn’t very well have brought him along with us the way things have been warming up, sir.”
“Oh, how could you ever have done such a thing, Mikhal[35] Ivanovich?” said Mikhailov, angrily. “How could you leave him lying there if he was alive? And even if he was dead, you ought still to have brought his body along. Well, on your own head be it. He’s the general’s orderly, you know, and he may still be alive.”
“How can he be alive? I tell you, I went right up to him and saw him with my own two eyes,” said the ensign. “For heaven’s sake, sir, we’re being hard enough put to it to get our own men out of here. There he goes again, it’s cannonballs this time, the swine,” he added, ducking. Mikhailov ducked too, but immediately clutched at his head, which hurt horribly from the sudden movement.
“No, we absolutely must go and get him: he may still be alive,” said Mikhailov. “It’s our duty, Mikhailo Ivanych!”
Mikhailo Ivanych made no reply.
Mikhailov thought: “If he was a good officer, he’d have brought the man along at the time. As it is now, we’re going to have to send some men out on their own, and how are we ever going to get them to go? With all this shelling going on they could easily be killed for nothing.”
“Men! Some of you will have to go back to fetch an officer who’s been left lying wounded in the ditch over there,” he said, trying not to raise his voice or sound imperious, aware of how reluctant the soldiers would be to carry out his order. And indeed, since he had addressed the order to no one in particular, no one came forward to execute it.
“Sergeant! Come over here!” he shouted.
But the sergeant merely kept on marching along as though he had not heard.
“That’s just it, he may be dead, and it isn’t worth exposing the men to danger for no reason. I’m the one who’s to blame, I should have taken care of it myself. I’ll go there and see if he’s alive or not. It’s my duty to,” Mikhailov told himself.
“Mikhal Ivanych, take command of the company while I’m gone. I’ll catch you up later,” he said. Then, tucking up his greatcoat with one hand and passing the other over his icon of St Metrophanes the Devout, in whom he had such an especial faith, trembling with fear and practically crawling on all fours, he scrambled off down the trench.
When he had ascertained that his comrade had in fact been killed, Mikhailov, still panting, ducking, and holding on with one hand the bandage that had slipped from his head, which was really beginning to hurt again now, dragged himself back. The battalion was already at the foot of the hill and more or less out of range of the enemy’s fire when he finally managed to catch up with it once more. I say “more or less” because every so often stray shells landed even here (that very same night a splinter from one of them had carried off a certain captain who had been spending the battle in one of the sailors’ dugouts).
“I think I’d better go to the dressing station tomorrow after all and have myself registered,” thought the lieutenant-captain, as an apothecary assistant, who had just arrived, bandaged him up. “It’ll help me get a medal.”
— 14 —
Hundreds of fresh, bloody corpses—the bodies of men who two hours earlier had been filled with all manner of hopes and desires, from the lofty to the trivial—lay with stiffened limbs on the floor of the dew-covered, flowering valley which separated the bastion from the trench, and on the smooth flagstones of the Mortuary Chapel in Sebastopol; hundreds of men, with curses and prayers on their parched lips, tossed and groaned, some among the corpses in the flowering valley, others on stretchers, on camp beds, or on the bloody floorboards of the dressing station; yet, just as on earlier days, the summer lightning flashed above the Sapun-gora, the glimmering stars grew pale, the white mist drifted in off the dark, thundering sea, the vermilion dawn flared in the east, long purple cloudlets trailed
across the light blue horizon, and again, as on earlier days, promising joy, love and happiness to the whole of the quickening world, the sun’s mighty, resplendent orb arose from the waves.
— 15 —
On the following evening the military band again played on the Boulevard, and again the officers, cadets, privates and young women strolled festively near the pavilion and along the lower avenues of white, flowering, scented acacias.
Kalugin, Prince Galtsin and a colonel were walking arm-in-arm in the area of the pavilion, discussing the action of the previous night. The principal connecting thread of their conversation, as is always the case on such occasions, was not the battle itself, but the part each man had played in it and the degree of bravery he had shown. Their facial expressions and tone of voice were serious, almost melancholy, as though yesterday’s losses had affected each one of them deeply and personally. The truth was, however, that since none of them had lost anyone to whom he was particularly close (is anyone particularly close in army life?), this air of melancholy had something of an official nature about it—it was an air they considered it their obligation to display. On the other hand, Kalugin and the colonel would have been perfectly prepared to endure battles of the kind they had just witnessed every day of their lives, as long as on each occasion they were to receive a golden sabre and a major-general’s star—and this in spite of the fact that they were both men of excellent character. It always gives me pleasure to hear some conqueror, who has destroyed millions of people for the sake of his own personal ambition, described as a monster. But I would ask you to inquire what is really on the minds of ensign Petrushov, Second Lieutenant Antonov, and the rest of them: you will discover that each is a little Napoleon, a little monster ready to start a conflict and kill a hundred or so men simply in order to obtain another star or an increase of a third in his pay.