“No, I’m afraid you’re wrong,” the colonel was saying. “It started on the left flank. I was there, after all.”
“Well, that may be,” replied Kalugin. “I spent more time over on the right flank myself; I went there twice, once to look for the general, and once just to see how things were going in the lodgments. That was where the real action was, I can tell you.”
“I expect Kalugin knows what he’s talking about,” said Prince Galtsin to the colonel. “You know, V. was telling me about you today; he says you’re a brave fellow.”
“But the losses, such terrible losses,” said the colonel, in his tone of official melancholy. “Four hundred of my regiment were knocked out of action. It’s a miracle I got out of there alive.”
Just then the lilac-coated figure of Mikhailov, with his worn-down boots and bandaged head, came into view at the other end of the Boulevard, heading in the direction of these gentlemen. The sight of them completely took him aback: he recalled how the night before he had ducked while Kalugin had been talking to him, and it also occurred to him that they might think his wound was merely a pretence. Indeed, if these gentlemen had not been looking towards him, he would have run down to the lower level and gone home, and would not have ventured out again until he was able to take the bandage off.
“Il fallait voir dans quel état je l’ai rencontré hier sous le feu,” said Kalugin, with a smile, as they met. “I say, what’s this, are you wounded, captain?” he added, with another smile, which meant:
“Well, did you see me last night? In pretty good form, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, slightly. I was hit by a stone,” Mikhailov replied, blushing, and with a look on his face that said: “Yes, I saw you, and I have to admit you’re a brave man and I’m a terrible, terrible coward.”
“Est-ce que le pavillon est baissé déjà?” enquired Prince Galtsin, who had resumed his customary haughty manner, surveying the lieutenant-captain’s cap and addressing no one in particular.
“Non pas encore,” replied Mikhailov, anxious to show that he too could speak French.
“Is the truce really still on?” said Galtsin, considerately addressing him in Russian and thereby implying—or so it appeared to the lieutenant-captain, at any rate—that since it must be a dreadful effort for him to speak French, why didn’t they simply . . . And at this the adjutants left his side.
Just as he had done the previous day, the lieutenant-captain felt extremely lonely, and when he had finished exchanging bows with various gentlemen—some of whom he did not want to talk to and others whom he could not summon up the courage to approach—he sat down near the Kazarsky[36] Monument and lit a cigarette.
Baron Pest had also come up to the Boulevard. He was telling a long story about how he had been present when the truce was signed, and had spoken with the French officers, one of whom had apparently said to him: “S’il n’avait pas fait clair encore pendant une demi-heure, les embuscades auraient été reprises,” and how he had replied: “Monsieur! Je ne dis pas non, pour ne pas vous donner un démenti” and what a good rejoinder that had been, and so forth.
While it was true that he had been present at the signing of the truce, he had not managed to say anything particularly clever, though he had wanted terribly to exchange a few words with the Frenchmen (it is, after all, not every day that one has the chance to talk to Frenchmen). Cadet volunteer Baron Pest had spent a long time walking up and down the lines, asking any Frenchman who happened to be standing nearby: “De quel régiment êtes-vous?” They had told him, and that had been the end of the conversation. When, however, he had begun to stray too far across the lines, a French sentry, unaware that this soldier knew French, had started swearing at him in no uncertain terms, saying: “Il vint regarder nos travaux, ce sacré c——” As a consequence of which, finding nothing of further interest in the truce, Baron Pest had set off back to his quarters. It had only been later, on his way to the Boulevard, that he had thought up the French ripostes with which he was now entertaining everyone.
Captain Zobov was also there on the Boulevard, talking to everyone in a loud voice; there, too, was Captain Obzhogov, who was looking his usual dishevelled self; there were the artillery captain who curried favour with no man, the moonstruck cadet, and all the others of the day before, all of them driven by the same unaltering stimuli of falsehood, vanity, and sheer plain silliness. Only Praskukhin and Neferdov were missing—along with one or two others whom hardly anyone here ever gave a thought to or remembered now, even though their corpses had not been washed, laid out and buried yet, and whose fathers, mothers, wives and children, if they had any, would also forget about them within a month or two, had they not already done so.
“I nearly didn’t recognize him, the old blighter,” said a soldier who was clearing away dead bodies, lifting by the shoulders a corpse with a stove-in chest, an enormous, bloated head, a black, glistening face and eyes with rolled-up pupils. “Put your arms round his back, Morozka, or else he’ll fall apart. Cor, what a godawful stink!”
“Cor, what a godawful stink!” That was all that remained of this man in the land of the living.
— 16 —
White flags have been raised both on the Russian bastion and along the trench on the French fortifications, and in between them, lying spread in little groups across the flowering valley, still dressed in their uniforms, some grey, others blue, but all without their boots, are mutilated corpses which are being gathered together by work parties and piled on to carts. A terrible cloying stench of dead bodies fills the air. Crowds of men have come straying out of Sebastopol and the French encampment in order to view this spectacle, rushing to join one another with an avid and benevolent curiosity.
Listen to what these men are saying to one another.
Here, in a circle of Russians and Frenchmen who have gathered around him, a young officer whose French, although poor, is none the less sufficient for him to be comprehensible, is examining a French guardsman’s pouch.
“Et ceci pourquoi ce oiseau ici?” the officer asks.
“Parce-que c’est une giberne d’un régiment de la garde, monsieur, qui porte l’aigle impérial.”
“Est vous de la garde?”
“Pardon, monsieur, du sixième de ligne.”
“Et ceci où acheté?” asks the officer, pointing to the yellow wooden cigarette-holder in which the Frenchman is smoking a Russian cigarette.
“À Balaclave, monsieur! C’est tout simple—en bois de palme.”
“Joli!” says the officer, who in this conversation is directed less by his own volition than by the words and phrases at his command.
“Si vous voulez bien garder cela comme souvenir de cette rencontre, vous m’obligerez.” And the courteous Frenchman, taking out the cigarette, offers him the holder with a little bow. The officer gives the Frenchman his own holder in exchange, and all those present, both French and Russian, look very pleased, and smile.
Here an infantryman, smartly turned but in a pink shirt, his greatcoat draped over his shoulders, is standing in the company of some other soldiers who have their hands behind their backs and whose faces are cheerful and inquisitive. The smartly dressed man goes up to one of the French soldiers and asks him for a light for his pipe. The Frenchman sucks at his own pipe, gives its red-hot contents a poke, and then pours some of them into the Russian’s pipe.
“Tobacco bong,” says the soldier in the pink shirt, and his audience smiles.
“Oui, bon tabac, tabac turc,” says the Frenchman. “Et chez vous tabac russe? bon?”
“Rooss bong,” says the soldier in the pink shirt, at which point his audience falls about with laughter. “Frongsay no bong, bongzhoor mongsewer,” says the soldier in the pink shirt, thereby firing off his entire French vocabulary in one go, digging the Frenchman in the ribs, and laughing. The French soldiers are also laughing.
“Ils ne sont pas jolis ces bêtes de russes,” says a Zouave who is standing among the crowd of Frenchmen.
“De quoi de ce qu’ils rient donc?” asks another dark-featured man in an Italian accent, moving over towards the Russians.
“Caftan bong,” says the smartly dressed soldier, as he examines the embroidered skirts of the Zouave’s oriental costume, and again they all laugh.
“Ne sortez pas de la ligne, à vos places, sacré nom . . . ” A French corporal shouts, and with evident unwillingness the soldiers disperse.
And here, surrounded by a ring of French officers, is one of our young Russian cavalry officers fairly showering his listeners with French barber’s slang. They are talking about a certain “comte Sazonoff, que j’ai beaucoup connu, monsieur,” whom a French officer with one epaulette has just mentioned. “C’est un de ces vrais comtes russes, comme nous les aimons,” he says.
“Il y a un Sazonoff que j’ai connu,” says the cavalry officer. “Mais il n’est pas un comte, à moins que je sache, un petit brun de votre âge à peu près.”
“C’est ça, 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,” says the Frenchman, bowing.
“N’est-ce pas terrible la triste besogne, que nous faisons? Ça chauffait cette nuit, n’est-ce pas?” says the cavalry officer, anxious to keep the conversation going, pointing in the direction of the corpses.
“Oh, monsieur, c’est affreux! Mais quels gaillards vos soldats, quels gaillards! C’est un plaisir que de se battre contre des gaillards comme eux.”
“Il faut avouer que les vôtres ne se mouchent pas du pied non plus,” says the cavalry officer, bowing, and thinking he was being extraordinarily kind. But enough of this.[37]
Let us look instead at this ten-year-old boy; at the very beginning of the truce he had come out from behind the ramparts wearing an old cap that had probably once belonged to his father, shoes with no socks, and a pair of nankeen breeches held up by a single suspender. He had spent a while walking up and down the hollow, gazing with dull curiosity at the French soldiers and the corpses that lay on the ground, and then started to pick some of the wild blue flowers with which this valley of death was carpeted. Returning homeward with a large bouquet, and holding his nose because of the smell which the wind was driving in his direction, he stopped beside one of the groups of bodies that had been gathered together, staring for a long time at the one nearest to him, a terrible, headless thing. After a little he had moved nearer and touched one of the corpses rigid, outstretched arms with his foot. The arm gave a slight jump. He placed his foot on it again, harder this time. The arm sprang upright and then fell back into place again. The boy suddenly screamed, hid his face in his flowers and ran off to the fortress as fast as he could.
Yes, white flags have been raised on the bastion and all along the trench, the flowering valley is filled with stinking corpses, the resplendent sun is descending towards the dark blue sea, and the sea’s blue swell is gleaming in the sun’s golden rays. Thousands of men are crowding together, studying one another, speaking to one another, smiling at one another. It might be supposed that when these men—Christians, recognizing the same great law of love—see what they have done, they will instantly fall to their knees in order to repent before Him who, when He gave them life, placed in the soul of each, together with the fear of death, a love of the good and the beautiful, and that they will embrace one another with tears of joy and happiness, like brothers. Not a bit of it! The scraps of white cloth will be put away—and once again the engines of death and suffering will start their whistling; once again the blood of the innocent will flow and the air will be filled with their groans and cursing.
Now I have said all that I wished to say on this occasion. I am, however, beset by a painful thought. Perhaps I ought not to have said it. Perhaps what I have said belongs to the category of those harmful truths each of us carries around in his subconscious, truths we must not utter aloud lest they cause active damage, like the lees of wine which must not be shaken up if the wine is not to be spoiled.
Where in this narrative is there any illustration of evil that is to be avoided? Where is there any illustration of good that is to be emulated? Who is the villain of the piece, and who its hero? All the characters are equally blameless and equally wicked.
Neither Kalugin with his gentleman’s bravado (bravoure de gentilhomme) and personal vanity—the motive force of all his actions—not Praskukhin who, in spite of the fact that he falls in battle for “Church, Tsar and Fatherland” is really nothing more than a shallow, harmless individual, nor Mikhailov with his cowardice and blinkered view of life, nor Pest—a child with no steadfast convictions or principles—are capable of being either the villains or the heroes of my story.
No, the hero of my story, whom I love with all my heart and soul, whom I have attempted to portray in all his beauty and who has always been, is now and will always be supremely magnificent, is truth.
26 June 1855
SEBASTOPOL
IN AUGUST 1855
— 1 —
Slowly trundling, at the end of August, through the thick, hot dust of the main road that leads along a series of gorges to Sebastopol, in the stretch between Duvankóy[f] and Bakhchisaray, was an officer’s waggon (that peculiar form of transport, encountered nowhere else, and representing a cross between a Jew’s britzka, a Russian cart and a wicker basket).
In the front of the waggon, dressed in a nankeen frock-coat and a cap that had once belonged to an officer but was now worn completely limp, an orderly squatted on his heels, tugging at the reins; in the rear, an infantry officer in a summer greatcoat sat on a heap of packs and bundles which were covered by a horsecloth. The officer, in so far as it was possible to judge from his sedentary position, was not particularly tall, this showing less in his shoulders than in his chest and back. These had a wide, compact appearance; his neck and occiput were very well developed and resilient, and he entirely lacked the inflexion of the trunk that is called a “waist.” Neither, however, did he have a paunch, and indeed elsewhere in his physique he was rather on the thin side, especially around his face, which bore an unhealthy, yellowish tan. It was a face that would have been handsome had it not been for a certain puffiness and the presence of large, soft wrinkles (not of the kind associated with age) which enlarged his features and made them flow into one another, giving the whole a coarse, unfresh appearance. His eyes were small and hazel-coloured, extremely lively, even insolent; he had a moustache which was very thick but small in size and somewhat chewed at the ends. His chin, and more particularly his cheekbones, were covered by an extremely dense, black and stubbly growth of beard, some two days old. On the tenth of May this officer had received a wound from a shell-splinter which had struck his head, on which he still wore a bandage. For the past week, however, he had been feeling completely recovered, and was now on his way from hospital in Simferopol back to his regiment, which was stationed somewhere over yonder, where the sounds of firing were coming from—but whether it was at Sebastopol itself, or over on the North Side, or at Inkerman, he had not so far been able to ascertain from anyone. The sounds of the firing could already be heard quite clearly, particularly on the odd occasion when there were no mountains in the way, and the wind was blowing in the right direction; they were quite frequent, and seemed near at hand. At one moment an explosion would seem to give the air a jolt, making one tremble involuntarily; at the next, a rapid series of fainter sounds, like the noise of a drum being beaten, would follow, punctuated now and then by a startling boom; at other times this would all merge into a sort of rolling crackle, similar to the peals of thunder one hears when a storm is at its height and the rain has just started. Everyone was saying—and it was indeed plain enough to hear—that there was a terrible bombardment under way. The officer hurried his orderly on, evidently anxious to rejoin his regiment as soon as possible. Coming towards them was a long train of Russian muzhiks’ carts which had brought provisions to Sebastopol, and were now leaving it again filled with
sick and wounded soldiers in grey greatcoats, sailors in black overcoats, Greek volunteers wearing red fez caps, and bearded militiamen. The waggon was forced to stop, and the officer, blinking and frowning because of the dust which had risen up in a thick, motionless cloud above the road, getting into his eyes and sticking to his sweaty face, surveyed with sour dispassion the faces of the sick and wounded who were being trundled past.
“Look, sir, that weakling of a soldier there’s from our company,” said the orderly, turning to his master and pointing to the cart filled with wounded which had just drawn level with them.
Seated sideways in the front of the cart was a grey-bearded Russian peasant in a wool felt hat; as he rode along he was binding the leather ends of a knout, holding the knout-handle against him by the pressure of his elbow. Behind him, jolting this way and that with the movement of the cart, sat five or six soldiers in various postures. One of them, his arm held in a sling made of rope, his greatcoat draped across his shoulders over a shirt that was thoroughly dirty, sat looking cheerful, if somewhat thin and pale, in the middle of the cart; at the sight of the officer he made as though to remove his cap, but then, probably remembering that he was wounded, pretended that he had been merely about to scratch his head. Beside him, in the bottom of the cart, lay another man. The only parts of him that were visible were the two wasted hands with which he held on to the sides of the cart, and his raised knees, which flopped from side to side like wisps of bast. A third soldier, with a swollen face and bandaged head, on top of which a privates cap was firmly stuck, was sitting on one of the sides of the cart with his legs hanging down over the wheel, and seemed to have nodded off with his elbows propped on his knees. It was to this man that the itinerant officer addressed himself.