“Well now, Captain,” said Kalugin. “When are we going to see you in the bastion again, eh? Remember that time we met at the Schwartz redoubt?[28] Pretty hot, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was,” said Mikhailov, ruefully calling to mind the pathetic figure he had cut that night when, picking his way bent double along the trench towards the bastion, he had run into Kalugin, who was striding along fearlessly, briskly rattling his sabre.
“I’m really supposed to go there tomorrow night,” Mikhailov continued, “but one of our officers is ill, so . . . ” He began to explain that it was not really his turn tonight, but that since the commander of the 8th Regiment was indisposed, with only an ensign looking after things, he felt it his duty to offer himself in Lieutenant Nieprzysiecki’s stead, and so would be going to the bastion that night after all. Kalugin did not wait for him to finish.
“I have a feeling something’s going to happen in the next couple of days,” he said to Prince Galtsin.
“But, er, don’t you think something might happen tonight?” asked Mikhailov, timidly, looking now at Kalugin and now at Prince Galtsin. Neither man replied. Prince Galtsin merely frowned somewhat, directed his gaze somewhere beyond Mikhailov’s cap and, after a brief silence, said: “That’s a nice-looking girl over there, the one in the red kerchief. Perhaps you know her, Captain?”
“Yes, sir, she’s the daughter of a sailor who lives near my quarters,” the lieutenant-captain replied.
“Let’s go and take a proper look at her.”
And Prince Galtsin took Kalugin by one arm and the lieutenant-captain by the other, knowing full well that this could not but afford the latter great satisfaction, which was indeed the case.
The lieutenant-captain was a superstitious man, and he considered it a grave error to have anything to do with women before an action; now, however, he pretended to be a regular ladykiller, a performance which evidently neither Prince Galtsin nor Kalugin found very convincing, and which thoroughly astonished the girl in the red kerchief, who on several occasions had noticed the lieutenant-captain blush as he passed her window. Praskukhin walked behind them, continually nudging Prince Galtsin by the arm and making various remarks in French; but since there was not room enough for four people to walk along the path abreast of one another, he had to bring up the rear on his own, and it was only on the second round of the path that he succeeded in taking the arm of Sevryagin, a naval officer famed for his bravery, who also wished to join the company of the aristocrats. And the famous hero delightedly thrust his honest, muscular arm through the elbow of Praskukhin, whom everyone, even Sevryagin himself, knew was no saint. But when Praskukhin, in the process of explaining how it was that he knew “this” naval officer, whispered to him that the man was a famous hero, Prince Galtsin, who the day before had been in the 4th bastion, had observed a shell explode twenty paces from him and considered himself no less of a hero than the other gentleman, surmising that rather too many reputations are obtained for nothing very much in particular, paid Sevryagin not the slightest attention.
So much did Lieutenant-Captain Mikhailov enjoy strolling around in this company that he forgot all about his dear letter from T——, the gloomy thoughts that had beset him at the prospect of his forthcoming spell of duty on the bastion and, most importantly, the fact that he was supposed to be back at his quarters by seven o’clock. He stayed with the officers until they began to address themselves exclusively to one another, avoiding his gaze and thereby letting him know that he might depart, and finally walking away from him altogether. But the lieutenant-captain was none the worse satisfied for this, and as he passed Baron Pest, a cadet volunteer who had been full of himself ever since the previous night, which he had spent in the casemate[29] of the 5th bastion—the first time he had been there—and who now as a result considered himself a hero, he was not in the least put out by the suspicious and haughty manner in which the cadet stood to attention and removed his cap.
— 4 —
Hardly had the lieutenant-captain crossed the threshold of his quarters, however, than thoughts of a very different kind began to preoccupy him. He saw his little room with its bumpy floor of packed earth and crooked windows stuck with strips of paper; his old bedstead with, above it, the wall-hanging depicting an Amazon on horseback, and the pair of Tula pistols nailed above that; his room-mate’s, the cadet’s, grubby bed with its calico print bedspread. He saw his manservant Nikita, with dishevelled, greasy hair, getting up from the floor, scratching himself; he saw his old greatcoat, his civilian boots and a cloth bundle, from which protruded the butt end of a soapy cheese and the neck of a porter bottle containing vodka, and which had been prepared for him to take with him to the bastion; and then, with a dawning sense of horror, he suddenly remembered that he was to take his company to the lodgments[30] and stay there all night.
“I expect I’ll be killed tonight,” thought the lieutenant-captain. “I’ve got that kind of feeling. It’s even more likely because I volunteered to go, though it wasn’t my turn. It’s always those who go asking for trouble who are killed. What’s the matter with that miserable Nieprzysiecki, anyway? The likelihood is that he’s not ill at all, and yet here’s a man going to be killed, bound to be killed, and all because of Nieprzysiecki! Oh well, I suppose if I’m not killed I’ll get a medal. I saw how pleased the regimental commander was when I asked to be allowed to go since Lieutenant Nieprzysiecki was ill. Even if I’m not made a battalion commander I’ll probably be given the Order of St Vladimir. After all, this’ll be my thirteenth time on the bastion. Damn! Thirteen’s an unlucky number! I’m going to be killed, I just know it, I’m bound to be killed. Yet someone has to go, a company can’t just go off to fight with only an ensign in charge of it—if anything were to go wrong the honour of the whole regiment, the whole army, would be at stake. It’s my duty to go . . . yes, that’s right, it’s my duty. But I’ve got a kind of premonition . . . ” The lieutenant-captain had forgotten that he was visited by a more or less severe form of this premonition every time he had to go to the bastion, and was unaware that it is one experienced to a greater or lesser degree by every man before he goes into battle. When he had managed to calm his nerves a little by means of this notion of duty, which was highly developed in him as in all persons of limited intellect, the lieutenant-captain sat down at the table and began to write a farewell letter to his father, with whom his relations had of late been somewhat strained because of various money matters. After a space of some ten minutes, having finished this letter, he rose from the table, his eyes wet with tears, and, mentally reciting to himself all the prayers he knew (he was too ashamed to pray out loud in front of his manservant), began to get changed. He also had a strong desire to kiss the miniature icon of St Metrophanes which had been given to him by his mother (who was dead now) in blessing, and in which he placed an especial faith; but, being too embarrassed to do this with Nikita looking on, he decided to let all his icons hang down on the outside of his frock-coat, so he would be able to take them in his hand once he was out on the street without having to undo his coat buttons. His drunken and ill-mannered servant lethargically held up his new frock-coat for him to put on (the old one, which the lieutenant-captain usually wore to the bastion, had not been mended).
“Why has my old coat not been mended? All you ever do is sleep,” said Mikhailov, angrily.
“When do I ever get any sleep, sir?” grumbled Nikita. “All day long I run around like a dog, wearing myself out, and still I’m not allowed to sleep.”
“You’re drunk again, I see.”
“Well, if I am, it’s not on your money, so don’t go on about it.”
“Silence, you brute!” shouted the lieutenant-captain, on the point of striking his servant. Where before he had merely felt put out, now he finally lost all patience, vexed and exasperated by the oafish rudeness of Nikita, whom he was fond of, had even spoiled, and in whose company he had lived for twelve years now.
“Brute, brute,” the serva
nt repeated. “Why are you calling me a brute, master? Is this the right time for it? You shouldn’t be calling me names like that.”
Mikhailov remembered where he was about to go, and felt ashamed of himself.
“Oh, Nikita, it’s just that you’d try the patience of a saint,” he said, gently. “Look, you see this letter I’ve written to my father? Please leave it where it is, on the table, and don’t touch it,” he added, blushing.
“I shall obey, master,” said Nikita, his voice heavily emotional from the vodka he had drunk, vodka bought, as he liked to say, “on his own money.” He showed not the slightest sign of having taken in the precise nature of his master’s request, and had every appearance of being about to break down in tears.
Finally, when the lieutenant-captain reached the porch and said, “Farewell, Nikita!,” Nikita suddenly burst into torrents of affected sobbing and threw himself upon his master’s hands in order to kiss them. “Farewell, master,” he said, snuffling and moaning.
The landlady, an old sailor’s widow, who was standing in the porch and could not, as a woman, remain aloof from this touching scene, began to rub her eyes with her dirty sleeve and utter words to the effect that if this was what the gentry were reduced to, what must be the sufferings of the rest, and that she, poor woman, had been left a widow; for the hundredth time, she told the drunken Nikita of her woes: how her husband had been killed in the first bombardment and how their little house had been blown to smithereens (the house in which she now lived did not belong to her), and so on and so forth. Once his master was gone, Nikita lit his pipe, asked the landlady’s daughter to go and fetch some vodka, and very soon stopped crying; instead he began to quarrel with the old woman about a pail he said she had squashed.
“Perhaps I’ll only be wounded,” the lieutenant-captain thought to himself as he drew near to the bastion with his company at dusk. “But where will I be wounded? And how? Here?—or here?” he wondered, his thoughts moving from his stomach to his chest. “What if I’m hit there,” he winced, thinking of the upper part of his leg, “and it only grazes me? Well . . . but if a splinter gets me there it’ll all be over with me!”
All this notwithstanding, the lieutenant-captain, ducking down, managed to pass along the trenches to the lodgments in relative safety. In the darkness, which by now was total, he helped a sapper officer assign the men to their various duties, and then got into a dugout underneath the parapet. There was not much gunfire; only from time to time was there a flash, now from our side, now from his, and the incandescent fuse of a mortar shell would describe a fiery arc in the dark, starry sky. But all the shells were landing away to the right, far short of the lodgment where the lieutenant sat crouching in his dugout, and so he calmed down somewhat, took a swig of vodka, had a few nibbles of the soapy cheese, lit a cigarette and, after saying his prayers, tried to sleep for a while.
— 5 —
Prince Galtsin, Lieutenant-Colonel Neferdov, cadet volunteer Baron Pest, who had run into the others by chance, and Praskukhin, whom no one had invited and to whom no one spoke but who had tagged along none the less, had all gone down the Boulevard together in order to have tea at Kalugin’s quarters.
“I say, you never finished telling me about Vaska Mendel,” said Kalugin, who had taken off his greatcoat and was sitting in a soft, comfortable armchair by the window, unbuttoning the collar of his clean, starched linen shirt. “How did he get married?”
“My dear fellow, you’d simply die laughing! Je vous dis, il y avait un temps où on ne parlait que de ça à Pétersbourg,” said Prince Galtsin, laughing and jumping up from the piano at which he had been sitting. He resettled himself on the window-seat, next to Kalugin. “You’d die laughing! I know the whole story.” And he quickly launched, with much wit and humour, into an account of a love affair which we shall omit as it is of no interest to us.
What was remarkable, however, was that not only Prince Galtsin, but all these gentlemen who had made themselves comfortable in various parts of the room—one in the window, another in a chair with his legs drawn up, yet another at the piano—seemed quite different from the way they had appeared out on the Boulevard: they seemed to have lost all the absurd haughtiness and snobbery with which they addressed the infantry officers; here they were among their own kind, and they revealed themselves as thoroughly charming, high-spirited and good-hearted young men, Kalugin and Prince Galtsin especially so.
“How’s Maslovsky these days?”
“Which one? The one in the Leib Uhlans or the one in the Horse Guards?”
“I know them both. I knew the one in the Horse Guards when he was still a lad and had only just left school. But how’s the older one getting on—is he a captain yet?”
“Oh yes, he’s been one for ages.”
“Still carrying on with that gypsy girl of his, eh?”
“No, he gave her up.” And so it went on.
Then Prince Galtsin sat down at the piano and gave everyone a marvellous rendering of a gypsy song. Although no one had asked him to, Praskukhin began to put in a second part, and did it so well that he was actually asked to do it again, which pleased him no end.
A servant came in with a silver tray bearing tea with cream and krendelki.
“Serve the Prince first,” said Kalugin.
“It’s a strange thought,” said Galtsin, when he had taken his glass and was on his way back to the window-seat again. “Here we are in a town that’s under siege, tickling the ivories and having tea and cream in the sort of flat I for one would be proud to own in St Petersburg.”
“Well, all I can say is it’s just as well,” said the old lieutenant-colonel, who was never satisfied with anything. “Otherwise this constant waiting about for something to happen would be intolerable . . . Just think what it would be like if we had to live surrounded by this never-ending slaughter day after day up to our necks in mud, without any creature comforts.”[31]
“But what about our infantry officers?” said Kalugin. “They have to live in the bastions with the rest of the men and have to eat the same bortsch they’re given in the casemates. What about them?”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Prince Galtsin. “I have to confess, I really don’t see how men in dirty underwear, suffering from lice and not even able to wash their hands, can possibly be capable of bravery. You know what I mean, cette belle bravoure de gentilhomme—it’s simply not on.”
“Well, they don’t understand that kind of bravery,” said Praskukhin.
“Don’t talk such nonsense,” said Kalugin, breaking in angrily. “I’ve more experience of those men than you have, and I can tell you one thing: our infantry officers may have lice and go without changing their underwear for ten days at a time, but they’re heroes, wonderful people.”
Just at that moment an infantry officer actually walked into the room.
“I . . . I’ve got orders . . . May I have a word with Gen . . . with His Excellency? Its from General X., sir,” he said, bowing timidly.
Kalugin rose to his feet; without returning the officer’s bow he asked him, with insulting politeness and a forced, official smile, to be so good as to wait. Then, not even asking him to sit down and indeed paying no further attention to him, he turned to Galtsin and proceeded to talk to the latter in French. The poor officer, who had been left standing in the middle of the room, was really at a loss as to what he should do—his gloveless hands dangled limply in front of him.
“It’s extremely urgent, sir,” said the officer, after a moment’s silence.
“Really? Then please come this way,” said Kalugin with the same insulting smile, putting on his greatcoat and escorting the man to the door.
“Eh bien, messieurs, je crois que cela chauffera cette nuit,” said Kalugin, when he emerged from the general’s quarters.
“What’s up, then? Come on, tell us, is it a sortie?” everyone began to ask.
“I really don’t know, you’ll have to wait and see for yourselves
,” replied Kalugin, with an enigmatic smile.
“Look, old man, do tell me,” said Baron Pest. “If there’s going to be an action, I’ve got to join the T—— regiment for the first sortie.”
“Well, off you go, then!”
“My boss is on the bastion too,” said Praskukhin, fastening on his sabre, “so I suppose this means I’d better go as well.” No one made any reply to this, however—it was up to Praskukhin to know whether he had to go or not.
“I bet it’s a false alarm,” said Baron Pest, contemplating the impending action with sinking heart, but managing none the less to don his cap at a rakish angle and march out of the room with loud, firm steps in the company of Praskukhin and Neferdov, who were also hurrying off to their posts with a sense of fear weighing on them. “Cheerio, chaps!” “Cheerio, chaps, see you later on tonight,” Kalugin shouted, leaning out of the window, as Praskukhin and Pest set off at a trot down the road on their horses, bending forward over the pommels of their Cossack saddles, for all the world like genuine Cossacks.