by Hugh Walpole
My excitement had never left me; I had had no doubt, during this last half-hour, that I was on the Enchanted Ground of the Enemy, so stray and figurative had been my impressions all day. Now they were all gathered into this half-hour and the whole affair received its climax. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “if I might only stay here now I should draw closer and closer — I should make my discovery, hunt him down. But just when I am on the verge I must leave it all. Ah, if I could but stay!”
Nevertheless we hastened. The world, in spite of the ghosts, was real enough for us to be conscious of that attack looming behind us. We found our wagons, transferred our wounded, then hurried down the road. We found the cross-roads and there, waiting for us, Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna. Standing in the moonlight, commanding, as it seemed to me, all of us, even Semyonov, she was a very different figure from the frightened girl of the early morning. Now her life was in her eyes, her body inflamed with the fire of the things that had come to her. So young in experience was she, so ignorant of all earlier adventure, that she could well be seized, utterly and completely, by her new vision ... possessed by some vision she was.
And that vision was not Trenchard. Seeing her, he hurried towards her, with a glad cry:
“Ah, you are safe!”
But she did not notice him.
“Quick, this way!... Yes, the stretchers here.... No, I have everything.... At once. There is little time!”
The wounded were laid on the stretchers in the square of the cross-roads. Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna bandaged them under the moonlight and with the aid of electric-torches. On every side of me there were little dialogues: “No ... not there. More this way. Yes, that bandage will do. It’s fresh. Hold up his leg. No, durak, under the knee there.... Where’s the lint?... Turn him a little — there — like that. Horosho, golubchik. Seitchass! No, turn it back over the thigh. Now, once more ... that’s it. What’s that — bullet or shrapnel?... Take it back again, over the shoulder.... Yes, twice!”
Once I caught sight of Trenchard, hurrying to be useful with the little bottle of iodine, stumbling over one of the stretchers, causing the wounded man to cry out.
Then Semyonov’s voice angrily:
“Tchort! Who’s that?... Ah, Meester! of course!”
Then Marie Ivanovna’s voice: “I’ve finished this, Alexei Petrovitch.... That’s all, isn’t it?”
These voices were all whispers, floating from one side of the road to the other. The wounded men were lifted back on to the wagons. We moved off again; Semyonov, Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna and I were now sitting together.
We left the flat fields where we had been so busy. Very slowly we began to climb the hill down which I had come this afternoon. Behind me was a great fan of country, black now under a hidden moon, dead as though our retreat from it, depriving it of the last proofs of life, had flung it back into non-existence. Before us was the black forest. Not a sound save the roll of our wheels and, sometimes, a cry from one of the wounded soldiers, not a stir of wind....
I looked back. Without an instant’s warning that dead world, as a match is set to a waiting bonfire, broke into flame. A thousand rockets rose, soaring, in streams of light into the dark sky; the fields that had been vapour ran now with light. A huge projector, the eye, as it seemed to me, of that enemy for whom I had all day been searching, slowly wheeled across the world, cutting a great path across the plain, picking houses and trees and fields out of space, then dropping them back again. The rockets were gold and green, sometimes as it seemed ringed with fire, sometimes cold like dead moons, sometimes sparkling and quivering like great stars. And with this light the whole world crackled into sound as though the sky, a vast china plate, had been smashed by some angry god and been flung, in a million pieces, to earth. The rifle-fire rose from horizon to horizon like a living thing. Now the shrapnel rose, breaking on the dark sky in flashes of fire. Suddenly some house was burning! The flames rose in a column, breaking into tongues that advanced and retreated, climbed and fell again. In the farthest distance other houses had caught and their glow trembled in faint yellow light fading into shadow when the projector found them. With a roar at our back our own cannon began; the world bellowed and shook and trembled at our feet.
We reached the top of the hill. I caught one final vision, the picture seeming to sway with all its lights, its shadows, its giant eye that governed it, its colours and its mist, like a tapestry blown by wind. I saw in our wagon, their faces lighted by the fire, Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna. Semyonov knelt on the wooden barrier of the cart, his figure outlined square and strong. She was kneeling behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Her face was exultant, victorious. She seemed to me the inspirer of that scene, to have created it, to hold it now with the authority of her gaze.
Behind her Trenchard was in shadow.
We were on the hill-top, the cannon, as it seemed, on every side of us. We hung for a moment so, the sky flaming up to our feet. Then we had fallen down between the woods, every step muffling the sounds. Everything was dark as though a curtain had been dropped.
Semyonov turned round to me.
“Well,” he said, “there’s your battle.... You’ve been in the thick of it to-day!”
I saw his eyes turned to Marie Ivanovna as though already he possessed her.
I was suddenly tired, disappointed, exhausted.
“We’ve not been in the thick of it,” I answered. “We have missed it — all day we have missed it!”
I tried to settle down in my wagon. “I beg your pardon,” I said irritably to Trenchard, “but your boot is in my neck!”
CHAPTER IV
NIKITIN
But this is not my story. If I have hitherto taken the chief place it is because, in some degree, the impressions of Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna, Andrey Vassilievitch must, during those first days, have run with my own. We had all been brought to the same point — that last vision from the hill of the battle of S —— and from that day we were no longer apprentices.
I now then retire. What happened to myself during the succeeding months is of no matter. But two warnings may be offered. The first is that it must not be supposed that the experiences of myself, of Trenchard, of Nikitin in this business found their parallel in any other single human being alive. It would be quite possible to select every individual member of our Otriad and to prove from their case that the effect of war upon the human soul — whether Russian or English — was thus and thus. A study, for example, might be made of Anna Petrovna to show that the effect of war is simply nothing at all, that any one who pretends to extract cases and contrasts from the contact of war with the soul is simply peddling in melodrama. Anna Petrovna herself would certainly have been of that opinion. Or one might select Sister K —— and prove from her case that the effect of war was to display the earthly failings and wickedness of mankind, that it was a punishment hurled by an irate God upon an unrepentant people and that any one who saw beauty or courage in such a business was a sham sentimentalist. Sister K —— would take a gloomy joy in such a denunciation. Or if one selected the boy Goga it would be simply to state that war was an immensely jolly business, in which one stood the chance of winning the Georgian medal and thus triumphing over one’s schoolfellows, in which people were certainly killed but “it couldn’t happen to oneself”; meals were plentiful, there were horses to ride, one was spoken to pleasantly by captains and even generals. Moreover one wore a uniform.
Or if Molozov, our chief, were questioned he would most certainly say that war, as he saw it, was mainly a business of diplomacy, a business of keeping the people around one in good temper, the soldiers in good order, the generals and their staffs in good appetite, the other Red Cross organisations in good self-conceit, and himself in good health. All these things he did most admirably and he had, moreover, a heart that felt as deeply for Russia as any heart in the world; but see the matter psychologically or even dramatically he would not. He had his own “nerves” and on occasion he displayed them, but war
was for him, entirely, a thing of training opposed to training, strategy opposed to strategy, method and system opposed to method and system. For our doctors again, war was half an affair of blood and bones, half an affair of longing for home and children. The army doctors contemplated our voluntary efforts with a certain irony. What could we understand of war when we might, if we pleased, return home at any moment? Why, it was simply a picnic to us.... No, they saw in it no drama whatever.
Nevertheless how are we to be assured that these others, Anna Petrovna, Sister K —— , Goga, the Doctors had not their own secret view? The subject here is simply the attitude of certain private persons with whom I was allowed some intimacy ... for the rest one has no right to speak.
There comes then the second difficulty, namely: that of Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna one can only present a foreign point of view. Of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch, at least, I was the friend, but however deeply a Russian admits an Englishman into friendship he can, to the very last, puzzle, confuse, utterly surprise him. The Russian character seems, superficially, with its lack of restraint, its idealism, its impracticality, its mysticism, its material simplicities, to be so readily grasped that the surprise that finally remains is the more dumbfounding. Perhaps after all it is the very closeness of our resemblance the one to the other that confuses us. It is, perhaps, that in the Russians’ soul the East can never be reconciled to the West. It is perhaps that the Russian never reveals his secret ideal even to himself; far distant is it then from his friend. It may be that towards other men the Russian is indifferent and towards women his relation is so completely sexual that his true character is hidden from her. Whatever it be that surprise remains. For to those whom Russia and her people draw back again and again, however sternly they may resist, this sure truth stands: that here there is a mystery, a mystery that may never be discovered. In the very soul of Russia the mystery is stirring; here the restlessness, the eagerness, the disappointment, the vision of the pursuit is working; and some who are outside her gates she has drawn into that same search.
I am not sure whether I may speak of Nikitin as my friend. I believe that no one in our Otriad save Trenchard could make, with truth, this claim. But for his own reasons or, perhaps, for no reason at all, he chose me on two occasions as his confidant, and of these two occasions I can recall every detail.
We returned that night from S —— to find that the whole Otriad had settled in the village of M —— , where I myself had been the night before. We were all living in an empty deserted farmhouse, with a yard, a big orchard, wide barns and a wild overrun garden. We were, I think, a little disappointed at the very languid interest that the history of our adventures roused, but the truth was that the wounded had begun to arrive in great numbers and there was no time for travellers’ stories.
A dream, I know, yesterday’s experiences seemed to me as I settled down to the business that had filled so much of my earlier period at the war. Here, with the wounded, I was at home — the bare little room, the table with the bottles and bandages and scissors, the basins and dishes, the air ever thicker and thicker with that smell of dried blood, unwashed bodies, and iodine that is like no other smell in the world. The room would be crowded, the sanitars supporting legs and arms and heads, nurses dashing to the table for bandages or iodine or scissors, three or four stretchers occupying the floor of the room with the soldiers who were too severely wounded to sit or stand, these soldiers often utterly quiet, dying perhaps, or watching with eyes that realised only dreams and shadows, the little window square, the strip of sky, the changing colours of the day; then the sitting soldiers, on ordinary of a marvellous and most simple patience, watching the bandaging of their arms and hands and legs, whispering sometimes “Bojé moi! Bojé moi!” dragging themselves up from their desperate struggle for endurance to answer the sanitars who asked their name, their regiments, the nature of their wounds. Sometimes they would talk, telling how the thing had happened to them:
“And there, your Honour, before I could move, she had come — such a noise — eh, eh, a terrible thing — I called out ‘Zemliac. Here it is!’ I said, and he....”
But as a rule they were very quiet, starting perhaps at the sting of the iodine, asking for a bandage to be tighter or not so tight, sometimes suddenly slipping in a faint to the ground, and then apologising afterwards. And in their eyes always that look as though, very shortly, they would hear some story so marvellous that it would compensate for all their present pain and distress. There would be the doctors, generally two at a time — Semyonov, unmoved, rough apparently in his handling of the men but always accomplishing his work with marvellous efficiency, abusing the nurses and sanitars without hesitation if they did not do as he wished, but never raising his soft ironic voice, his square body of a solidity and composure that nothing could ruffle, his fair beard, his blue eyes, his spotless linen all sharing in his self-assured superiority to us all; one of the Division doctors, Alexei Ivanovitch, a man from Little Russia, beloved of us all, whether in the Otriad or the army, a character possessing it seemed none of the Russian moods and sensibilities, of the kindest heart but no sentimentality, utterly free from self-praise, self-interest, self-assertion, humorous, loving passionately his country and, with all his Russian romance and even mysticism, packed with practical common sense; another Division doctor, a young man, carving for himself a practice out of Moscow merchants, crammed with all the latest inventions and discoveries, caring for nothing save his own career and frankly saying so, but a lively optimist whose belief in his own powers was quite refreshing in its sincerity.
In such a place and under such conditions Semyonov had at the earlier period been master of us all. The effect of his personality was such that we had, every one of us, believed him invincible. The very frankness of his estimate of the world and ourselves as the most worthless and incompetent bundle of rubbish, caused us to yield completely to him. We believed that he rated himself but little higher than the rest of us. He was superior but only because he saw so clearly with eyes purged of sentiment and credulity. We, poor creatures, had still our moments of faith and confidence. I had never liked him and during these last days had positively hated him. I did not doubt that he was making the frankest love to Marie Ivanovna and I thought he was influencing her.... Trenchard was my friend, and what an infant indeed he seemed against Semyonov’s scornful challenge!
But now, behold, Semyonov had his rival! If Semyonov cared nothing for any of us, Nikitin, it was plain enough, cared nothing for Semyonov. From the very first the two men had been opponents. It seemed as though Nikitin’s great stature and fine air, as of a king travelling in disguise from some foreign country, made him the only man in the world to put out Semyonov’s sinister blaze. Nikitin was an idealist, a mystic, a dreamer — everything that Semyonov was not. It is true that if we mattered nothing at all to Semyonov, we also mattered nothing at all to Nikitin, but for Nikitin there were dreams, visions, memories and hopes. We were contented to be banished from his attention when we were aware that happier objects detained him. We might envy him, we could not dislike him.
Semyonov never sneered at Nikitin. From the first he left him absolutely alone. The two men simply avoided one another in so far as was possible in a company so closely confined as ours. From the first they treated one another with a high and almost extravagant politeness. As Nikitin spoke but seldom, there was little opportunity for the manifestation of what Semyonov must have considered “his childishly romantic mind,” and Nikitin, on his side, made on no single occasion a reply to the challenge of Semyonov’s caustic cynicism.
But if Nikitin was an idealist he was also, as was quite evident, a doctor of absolutely first-rate ability and efficiency. I was present at the first operation that he conducted with us — an easy amputation. Semyonov was assisting and I know that he watched eagerly for some slip or hesitation. It was an operation that any medical student might have conducted with success, but the first incis
ion of the knife showed Nikitin a surgeon of genius. Semyonov recognised it.... I fancied that from that moment I could detect in his attitude to Nikitin a puzzled wonder that such an artist could be at the same time such a fool.
I began to feel in Nikitin a very lively interest. I had from the first been conscious of his presence, his distinction, his attitude of patient expectation and continuously happy reminiscence; but I felt now for the first time a closer, more personal interest. From the first, as I have said on an earlier page, his relationship to Andrey Vassilievitch had puzzled me. If Nikitin were not of the common race of men, most assuredly was Andrey Vassilievitch of the most ordinary in the world. He was a little man of a type in no way distinctively Russian — a type very common in England, in America, in France, in Germany. He was, one would have said, of the world worldly, a man who, with a sharp business brain, had acquired for himself houses, lands, food, servants, acquaintances. Upon these achievements he would pride himself, having worked with his own hand to his own advantage, having beaten other men who had started the race from the same mark as himself. He would be a man of a kindly disposition, hospitable, generous at times when needs were put plainly before him, but yet of little imagination, conventional in all his standards, readily influenced outside his business by any chance acquaintance, but nevertheless having his eye on worldly advantage and progress; he would be timid of soul, playing always for safety, taking the easiest way with all emotion, treading always the known road, accepting day by day the creed that was given to him; he would be, outside his brain, of a poor intelligence, accepting the things of art on the standard of popular applause, talking with a stupid garrulity about matters of which he had no first-hand knowledge — proud of his position as a man of the world, wise in the character and moods of men of which, in reality, he knew nothing. Had he been an Englishman or a German, this would have been all and yet, because he was a Russian, this was not even the beginning of the matter.