At such pains was this officer to account for his slow arrival, and so great appeared to be his desire to justify himself, that it was hard not to suppose that he had, after all, been influenced by fear. This became even more noticeable when he eventually started to ask where his regiment was stationed, and whether this was a dangerous spot. When the one-armed officer, who belonged to the same regiment, told him that during these past two days they had had seventeen losses in the officer category alone, he went very pale and his voice started to break.
And such indeed was the case: at that particular moment this officer was an abject coward, though six months previously he had been very far from one. He had experienced the upheaval common to many men, both before and after him. He had lived in one of those Russian provinces in which there are cadet corps. Although he had occupied a good, quiet position in civilian life, the experience of reading, both in newspaper accounts and in letters he had received from friends, about the deeds of the heroes of Sebastopol—his former colleagues and companions—suddenly inflamed him with ambition and, even more, with patriotism.
To this emotion he had sacrificed much: his comfortable position, his flat with its upholstered furniture, acquired through ten years of effort, his friends and acquaintances, and his hopes of marrying a rich lady. All this he had thrown to the winds, and as early as February had volunteered for active service, dreaming of the laurels of immortal glory and a general’s stripes. Two months after making his application he received an official letter asking whether he would require financial assistance from the government. He had replied in the negative and patiently continued to wait for a posting, even though his patriotic ardour had had time to cool significantly during those two months. At the end of another two months he received another letter enquiring whether he belonged to a Masonic lodge, and containing various other questions of a routine nature, all of which he had answered in the negative. Finally, more than four months after his initial application, his posting had come through. During this latter period he had become convinced, both by his friends and under the influence of that retrospective wisdom which in every change of circumstances is expressed in a sense of discontent with ones new situation, that in volunteering for active service in the army he had committed a most foolish error. When at length he had found himself—alone, with heartburn, his face caked with dust—at the fifth posthouse, where he had encountered a despatch rider from Sebastopol who filled him in on the horrors of war, and had had to wait twelve hours to obtain a change of horses, he had utterly repented of his thoughtless decision, contemplated what lay in store for him with ill-defined horror and completed the remainder of his journey in a kind of trance, like a lamb going to the slaughter. In the course of his three months’ long wandering from posthouse to posthouse, at virtually each one of which he had found himself obliged to wait and where he had met officers on their way back from Sebastopol with horrifying tales to tell, this feeling of horror had gradually intensified, until the poor officer had been transformed from the hero ready for the most desperate deeds of valour he had imagined himself to be in P—— to the wretched coward he revealed himself as in Duvankóy. When, a month earlier, he had joined forces with a company of young officers fresh from cadet corps he had tried to spin the journey out for as long as possible, regarding these as the last days of his life. At each posthouse he had assembled his camp bed, sorted out the contents of his portable larder, organized a game of preference among the officers, treated the complaints book as a form of pastime, and been genuinely pleased when his order for horses was turned down.
Had he gone straight from P—— to the bastions, he really would have been a hero; now, however, he was going to have to endure much mental anguish if he was to become the man, patient and calm in toil and danger, who constitutes our generally accepted image of the Russian officer. And it was going to be no easy task to rekindle his enthusiasm.
— 6 —
“Who was it asked for bortsch?” sang the postmaster’s wife, a fat, rather grubby woman of about forty, as she came into the postroom with a tureen of cabbage soup.
The conversation immediately died away, and everyone in the room transferred his gaze to this bearer of sustenance. The volunteer from P—— even winked at the young officer when she appeared.
“I know, it was Kozeltsov,” said the young officer. “We’ll have to wake him up. Come on, wakey wakey, it’s dinner-time,” he said, approaching the sleeper on the sofa and nudging his shoulder.
A young lad of about seventeen with lively black eyes and a pink flush on both cheeks sprang up energetically from the sofa and came to a halt in the middle of the room, rubbing his eyes.
“Oh, I say, I am sorry,” he said in a silvery, resonant voice to the surgeon against whom he had knocked in rising.
Lieutenant Kozeltsov at once recognized his brother, and went up to him.
“Don’t you know who I am?” he said, smiling.
“Aha-a-a!” cried his younger brother. “Well I never!” And he ran to kiss him.
They kissed three times, but at the third kiss hesitated, as though each had had the same thought: why three?
“Well, am I glad to see you,” said the older man, looking at his brother. “Let’s go out on the porch and talk for a while.”
“Yes, let’s, let’s! I don’t want any bortsch. You can have it if you like, Federson,” he said to his companion.
“But I thought you said you were hungry?”
“I’m not any more.”
Once they were out on the porch, the younger brother kept asking the older one to tell him how things were going with him, and kept repeating how glad he was to see him, without, however, managing to say anything about himself.
After five minutes or so, when their conversation was already beginning to flag slightly, the older brother asked the younger why he had not joined the guards, as all our people at home had expected him to.
“Oh, that!” the younger brother replied, blushing at the mere recollection. “That really was too killingly bad, and I certainly never thought it would turn out that way. Can you imagine, just before the finals three of us went off to have a smoke—you know, in that little room behind the porter’s lodge, I should think it was the same in your day—well, what do you suppose? Even though we’d all tipped him on various occasions, that rascal of a porter saw us and ran off to tell the duty officer, who soon came snooping around. As soon as he appeared, the others threw their cigarettes away and made their escape through the side door, you know the one I mean—but I was too slow. He started to get objectionable, and of course I gave him what for. He reported me to the inspector, and that was that. That was why I got such low marks for behaviour, even though all my other marks were excellent, apart from the twelve I got in mechanics—but no, that was that. I had to enlist for active service in the regular army. They said I’d get a transfer to the guards later on, but by that time I’d stopped caring and told them I wanted to go and fight in the war.”
“You don’t say!”
“Actually, you know, joking apart, everything suddenly seemed so bloody awful that I simply wanted to get to Sebastopol as quickly as I could. Anyway, if things work out right I may do better for myself here than I’d have done in the guards: with them you have to wait ten years before you can be a colonel, whereas out here Totleben[40] became a general in two. Well, perhaps I shall be killed—but what can you do about that?”
“You are a proper character,” said his brother, smiling.
“But really, you know,” the younger one went on, smiling and blushing, as if he were preparing to confess something particularly shameful, “all that s just so much nonsense; the real reason I asked to fight in the war was that I somehow felt guilty about continuing to live in St Petersburg while out here men were dying for their country. And then, too, I wanted to be where you were,” he added, even more bashfully.
“You really are a funny chap,” said the older brother, taking out his cigarette c
ase and avoiding the other’s eyes. “It’s a pity we won’t be together.”
“Listen, tell me truthfully, is it really as terrible as they say on the bastions?” the younger brother asked, suddenly.
“It’s bad at first, but one gets used to it. You’ll see for yourself.”
“There’s something else you can tell me, too: what do you think, are they going to take Sebastopol? I don’t believe they will, ever.”
“God knows.”
“The only thing that really bothers me is this damn stroke of bad luck I’ve had. Can you imagine, on our way here a whole bundle of our stuff was stolen, including my shako, and now I’m in the most dreadful fix; I simply don’t know how I’m going to present myself. You know, we have these new shakos now, and in fact there are a whole lot of other changes, too, all of them for the better. I can tell you all about them . . . When I was in Moscow I got about all over the place.”
The younger Kozeltsov—his Christian name was Vladimir—was very like his brother Mikhail, but in the way an opening rosebud resembles a faded briar. His hair was of the same light brown colour, but it was thick, and sprouted in curls about his temples. It stuck up on the soft, white skin at the back of his neck in a little quiff—a sign of good luck, as nurses like to say. The similarly soft, white skin of his face was not so much permeated as sporadically ignited by a healthy, full-blooded glow, which betrayed every shift of his moods and feelings. He had his brother’s eyes, but in him they were rounder and brighter, an effect that was heightened by their frequently being covered in a gentle, moist brilliance. A light brown fuzz stood forth on his cheeks and above his red lips, which often spread in a shy smile that showed his white, gleaming teeth. Slender, broad-shouldered, in an unfastened greatcoat that revealed a glimpse of a red shirt with a high collar, cigarette in hand, leaning against the porch railing, his face and gestures displaying his simple-hearted joy at seeing his brother again—such a pleasant, good-looking boy was he that one could scarcely take one’s eyes off him. He was delighted to be rejoined with his brother and eyed him with pride and veneration, imagining him to be a hero. In some respects, however—with regard to worldly education, for example, something which, if truth be told, he did not himself possess, or the ability to speak French, to conduct oneself correctly in the presence of important persons, or to dance well—he was rather ashamed of him, looked down on him and even hoped, if possible, to give him some instruction. His head was still full of St Petersburg, and in particular the house of a certain lady who was fond of pretty boys and who on festive occasions had invited him to visit her home, that of a Moscow senator, where he had once danced at a grand ball.
— 7 —
When they had talked all they wanted to, and had finally begun to feel the way close relatives often do—namely, that although each is very fond of the other, they neither of them have terribly much in common—the brothers fell silent for quite a long time.
“Right, then. Get your kit together and we’ll set off at once,” said the older brother at last.
The younger brother suddenly blushed and hesitated.
“Are we going straight to Sebastopol?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.
“Why not? After all, you haven’t much kit with you; I think we’ll manage to get it all in.”
“All right, let’s go now,” said the younger brother with a sigh, and he started to make for the waiting-room.
Before he opened the door, however, he stopped in the passageway, inclining his head sadly, and began to reflect: “Straight to Sebastopol, that hell on earth—how dreadful! But it can’t be helped, it had to come sooner or later. At least now I’m with my brother . . . ”
The fact was that only now, confronted with the thought that once he got into the waggon he would not get out of it again until they reached Sebastopol, and that no lucky chance was going to delay their arrival there—only now did he have a clear presentiment of the danger he himself had sought, and for a moment he lost his nerve at the thought of its proximity. Somehow managing to calm himself, he went into the waiting-room; but when a quarter of an hour had elapsed, and he still had not re-emerged, the older brother opened the door in order to tell him to hurry up. With the air of a guilty schoolboy, Kozeltsov the younger was discussing something with the officer from P——. When his brother opened the door he was completely caught off his guard.
“In a moment, I’ll be out in a moment!” he said, waving to his brother. “Wait for me out there.”
A moment later he did indeed emerge, and came over to his brother with a deep sigh.
“Do you know what, I can’t come with you,” he said.
“What? Rubbish.”
“I’m telling you the truth, Misha. None of us has any money left, and we’re all in debt to that lieutenant-captain from P——. It’s damned embarrassing!”
The older brother frowned and for quite a long time said nothing.
“Do you owe him a lot?” he asked, giving his brother a doubtful look.
“Yes . . . well, no, not really; but I feel so ashamed of myself. He paid all my expenses at three of the posthouses we stopped at, and he provided all the sugar for the tea . . . so I don’t really know . . . oh, and we played preference, too . . . I owe him a bit for that.”
“This is too bad, Volodya! I mean, what would you have done if you hadn’t run into me?” he said sternly, avoiding his brother’s eye.
“Well, you see, Misha, I thought I’d get my travel money in Sebastopol, and then I’d pay him back. That is allowed, after all; anyway, I’d better stay here and go along with him tomorrow.”
The older brother took out his purse and, not without some trembling of the fingers, extricated two ten-rouble notes and one three-rouble note.
“This is all the money I have,” he said. “How much do you owe him?”
It was not quite true that this was all the money he had; he had, in addition, four gold roubles which were sewn into the cuff of his greatcoat in case of emergencies, but he had vowed to himself not to touch them.
It turned out that the younger Kozeltsov, with his sugar and games of preference, owed the officer from P—— only eight roubles. His older brother gave him the money, remarking merely that if one is out of funds one should not play preference.
“What sort of stakes were you playing for, anyway?”
The younger brother kept resolutely silent. It seemed to him that the question cast aspersions on his integrity. His annoyance at himself, the shame he felt at having committed an act that could arouse such suspicions, and the wounding comments of his brother, to whom he was so deeply attached, provoked in him such an intense and painful reaction that he could not bring himself to reply, sensing that he would be unable to choke back the tearful sounds that were rising to his throat. He took the money without a glance, and went back to rejoin his companions.
— 8 —
Nikolayev, who had fortified himself in Duvankóy with two jars of vodka he had bought from a soldier who had been selling the stuff on the bridge there, gave the reins a tug and the little vehicle wobbled off down the stony road that nursed patches of shade here and there as it led along the course of the Belbek[41] towards Sebastopol. The brothers sat in the back, knocking legs with each other; although they never ceased to think about each other for a single moment, they both maintained a stubborn silence.
“Why did he have to insult me?” the younger brother was thinking. “Couldn’t he just have kept quiet about it? It’s as if he suspected I was a thief; he still seems to be angry with me even now, so relations between us have probably been soured for good. Yet how fine it would have been, the two of us fighting together in Sebastopol. Two brothers, the closest of friends, both fighting the enemy: one already quite mature, a bit of a rough diamond, perhaps, but a brave fighter nevertheless, the other still young, but also a brave fellow . . . It’ll only take me a week to show them all that I’m not as young as all that! I’ll stop blushing, my face will display courage, a
nd I’ll have a moustache—not a big one, perhaps, but in a week it’ll have grown to a reasonable size.” Here he tweaked the fuzz that had grown at the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps we’ll get there tonight, and I’ll go into battle alongside my brother. I suppose it’s just that he’s a stubborn sort of fellow, and very brave—the kind of man who doesn’t say much but puts up a better performance than the rest. What I’d like to know,” he continued to reflect, “is whether he’s trying to squeeze me against the edge of the waggon like this on purpose. He must realize that I’m uncomfortable. I expect he’s just pretending to have forgotten I’m here. Let’s suppose we get there tonight,” he mused, his body pressed against the edge of the waggon, trying not to move a muscle in case his brother noticed he was uncomfortable, “and are sent straight to the bastion—I to help man the guns, and my brother to join his company—and we go there together. Suddenly the French attack us. I fire shell after shell, killing a vast number of them; but still they keep on coming straight at me. Finally it becomes impossible to fire any more, and it looks as though it’s all over, there’s no escape for me; but my brother leaps forward with his sabre, I snatch up a musket, and we rush to the defence along with the rest of the men. The French hurl themselves on Misha. I run up, killing one of them, and then another, thus saving my brother’s life. I’m wounded in one arm, I seize the musket in the other and keep running; but my brother is cut down dead at my side by a bullet. I stop running for a moment, look at him sadly, get up and shout: ‘Follow me, men! Let us avenge his death! I loved my brother more than all else on earth,’ I say, ‘and now I have lost him. Let us take vengeance, let us destroy our enemies or else die forthwith!’ They all raise a shout and rush after me. Then the entire French force appears, with Pellisier[42] himself at its head. We slaughter them all, but in the battle I’m hit a second and a third time, and I fall down at the point of death. Then everyone comes running up to me; Gorchakov[43] arrives and asks me if I have a last request. I tell him there’s nothing I want except to be put to lie beside my brother, and that I want to die with him. They carry me over and put me down beside my brother’s blood-stained corpse. I raise myself on one elbow and say merely: ‘Yes, you placed too little value on two men who truly loved their fatherland; now they have both fallen . . . may God forgive you!’—and then I die.”