The Light and the Dark

by Shishkin, Mikhail

  Alas, this is a lull for us, but not for death. We have to carry on burying just as before, almost every day, but now we don’t put up any crosses and we try to make the grave inconspicuous. The first mass grave that I wrote to you about was dug up at night by the Chinese, the bodies were mutilated and scattered about. That’s how much they hate us. It was noticed in the morning because a sentry from one of the outposts spotted a dog with a gnawed human hand in its teeth.

  A tug has gone off downstream to Taku with two barges full of refugees from Tientsin. Exhausted women and children, plus their belongings.

  The railway lines are being hastily repaired so that it will be possible to bring in munitions and men. The locomotives have all been damaged and the Americans and our railway engineers are trying to get them into working order. The telegraph team is restoring communications, but everything is in short supply, especially poles, and instead of insulators they use bottles.

  Sometimes we mingle with the allies – there are new units arriving here every day. Yesterday our officers invited the Japanese officers to be our guests. When the difficulties of fighting the Yihetuan came up in conversation one Japanese, who spoke fairly decent Russian, declared:

  ‘The valour of the Chinese consists in the following!’ – and he set his hand down on a table dotted with flies, which all flew away, of course.

  ‘You see, and now I’ve taken my hand away, the flies have come back. The Yihetuan are the same as these flies. They kill us from under cover, and when we move into the attack, they hide, only to come back again later.’

  Then he swatted several flies very deftly with his open hand.

  I must say that the exceptional discipline and fatalistic courage of the Japanese is very impressive. Perhaps this is why they have the very heaviest casualties. They are commanded by General Fukushima, famous for riding from Petersburg to Vladivostok on horseback. The Japanese march in a very funny manner, with a cramped sort of stride.

  All in all, we make up a very picturesque company here.

  The Americans’ soft, wide-brimmed hats make them look like rakish cowboys. They fight well, too, but their discipline is not outstanding. Watching them I feel as if I’m in one of Mayne Reid’s novels.

  There aren’t many genuine Frenchmen here, only Zouaves brought in hastily from Indochina. They’re not much like regular troops and are very belligerent.

  The English have Sepoys here – tall and clean-limbed, in yellow-and-red turbans. There is always an English officer in command of each company and the Sepoy officer, who is sometimes three times the age of his commander, carries out the duties of a subaltern. I don’t think the English could rely on them entirely. The Sepoys salute by pressing their hands to their turban and their chest.

  There are only a few dozen Austrians here, but their national flags are so large that one would cover all of them at once.

  Italy is represented by a company of Bersaglieri – alpine marksmen. They all look as if they came straight out of a picture in the Pictorial Review. Hats with cock’s feathers, naked calves, with small carbines in their hands. They smile at everyone.

  Today I saw some Germans in their awkward brown jackets. One of them had been taken ill in the blazing sun, his comrades had dragged him into the shade and were fanning him. In general, men often collapse from the heat here.

  Sometimes all this reminds me of a strange kind of masquerade – all these uniforms, fine outfits, helmets, turbans. People used to dress up for carnivals in order to thumb their noses at death. Is that what we’re doing here?

  Another point worth noting is that the relationship between the allies is extremely amicable, even among the men. But how could it be otherwise when they have to share the same deprivations and dangers and come to each other’s aid in battle?

  Do you know what is really remarkable? Mingling here with our forage caps are the white helmets of the English, the round blue headgear of the French, the German helmets, the turbans of the Sepoys, the rakishly downturned hats of the Americans, the small white kepis of the Japanese – and I get the feeling that a genuinely united human family does exist and all the wars that were fought by our ancestors have retreated into the past. We are probably in the last war.

  Sometimes, when I’m not on duty, I drop into the wounded men’s tents to sit and listen to their conversations for a while. Today in one of the tents they were discussing the artillery. The commander of the second battery, Anselm, whose elbow had been shattered and his nose mutilated by shrapnel – he had effectively been left with one arm missing and a disfigured face, but was still delighted to have got off so lightly – well, he told us that the Chinese were firing from the very latest Krupp guns with smokeless powder, from positions completely concealed by railway embankments and outside the city’s earth wall.

  It is amazing to see a man with a bandaged face, who is going to be a disfigured freak for the rest of his life, not giving way to dejection, and even finding the strength to laugh and support the other wounded men. I can’t help thinking: Could I do that?

  The Cossacks display exceptional endurance when they are wounded. One Amur region Cossack, Sergeant Savin, had his jaw shattered and his tongue has swollen up so much that it won’t fit in his mouth, but he still tries to smile at the fact that he has been bound up like a woman.

  You remember I wrote to you about Rybakov, whose feet had been crushed? One of his legs has been amputated at the knee. He says he can still feel it. And when I was thinking about him I imagined that after death a man can probably still feel his whole body, which doesn’t exist any more.

  They bring new wounded every day. Today is a happy exception. The living are still alive and the unharmed still unharmed. But yesterday they brought in a courier who had been sent to us, they say he came under fire accidentally – in the darkness a frightened sentry took him for a spy. There weren’t any stretchers, and they carried the poor man in on a door taken from a ruined house. He was wounded in the groin and is in terrible agony. His suffering is only increased by the thought that he might die from one of our bullets and not by the enemy’s hand. They are afraid that he might develop blood poisoning. Men die from that more often than from their actual wounds.

  I have really taken a liking to the fiery Zaremba, our surgeon. When he is in a good mood, he starts making everyone laugh with his stories about how he worked for several years at our mission in Peking. He understands a little Chinese. Today over tea he recalled how a young Chinese once came to him and explained about his mother’s illness. Zaremba gave the young man some medicine, but he didn’t take it to his mother, instead he swallowed it himself there and then. It didn’t seem at all strange to the young man that his mother was supposed to be healed by medicine that her son had taken! This gives some idea of the level of development of the Chinese.

  The surgeon has a great deal of work to do. He has just gone to perform an operation now – they’ve brought a soldier from a team of sappers who has developed gangrene. He begged them to leave him his leg. I heard Zaremba cut him short:

  ‘I never amputate unnecessarily.’

  And he ordered the chloroform mask to be applied by force. You know, the other day I sniffed the mask, out of curiosity – tasteless, warmish air with a smell of rubber.

  Sometimes I manage to exchange a quick couple of words with Lucie. Yesterday evening she was helping the surgeon’s assistant change a dressing, they had to pull off bandages that had dried on to the wound. In his pain the patient clung tightly to her arms. Lucie showed me her wrists with a smile – they were black and blue. She is proud of those bruises.

  It turns out that Lucie became a nurse out of necessity. She tried to leave the city with the last train of refugees that set out from Tientsin to Taku, but it came under fire and the unfortunate people – the carriages were crowded with women and children and wounded – had to turn back, the railway line had already been ruined. They were all obliged to stay in the besieged city and endure the ferocious bombardment. S
he couldn’t simply stay there and do nothing, so she went to the hospital to help as a volunteer. She could have left with the other refugees now, but for the time being she has decided to stay in our infirmary. Indeed, Lucie, with her warmth and affection, is needed by the men every bit as much as their medicine.

  When I talk to her, my eyes involuntarily attach themselves to that incongruous mole, she notices my glance and covers it with her hand, and that makes things awkward.

  The men are drawn to her. That’s quite understandable. So many men, torn away from home, from their nearest and dearest. Every one of them wants a drop of tenderness, a human word, human warmth. But Lucie is equally affectionate with everyone and doesn’t allow anyone close. I think the only exception made here is for Glazenap. I often see them together, discussing something animatedly. The nurse has a light, agreeable laugh. Now Kirill has just come back from her to our tent and collapsed onto the camp bed and is sighing silently. He wipes the sand dust off his spectacles, with lenses as thick as the bottoms of water glasses. I tried looking through them once – it only made my eyes hurt.

  The thick darkness is advancing rapidly here at this moment. The crickets and frogs have started up their evening songs. And the mosquitoes are back again already. I can hear cursing and slaps on all sides.

  I wait for darkness, so that things will become at least slightly more comfortable but, on the contrary, the wind dies down, the earth gives out the heat accumulated during the day and the air becomes absolutely stifling.

  Today’s sandstorm has left a coating of sand on everything. It even grits on my teeth. I want to rinse out my mouth all the time. But the worst thing is the thirst. I constantly raise my flask to my lips although, to be honest, this water only makes me feel worse. My face and my entire body are streaming with sweat. And the dust sticks to my skin, covering it in a thick, sticky film. Well, that’s enough complaining from me. This is all trivial nonsense, believe me!

  And another thing I know now, my Sashenka, is that war is not only battles, explosions and wounds, no, it is also endless waiting, uncertainty, boredom. And this is where Kirill’s companionship is my salvation. We talk about everything under the sun and sometimes argue or even quarrel and get angry with each other, but not for long: afterwards we forget that we quarrelled and start talking about something again.

  I’m sure you would like him. Although Glazenap does have certain habits that I find irritating – for instance, waving his arms about vigorously during a conversation and grabbing the other person by the sleeve – I feel close to him and find him very likeable. I like his judicious voice and his intelligent eyes, shrunk by the lenses of his spectacles. He can only sleep if he puts a little embroidered Chinese pillow under his head – it’s stuffed with a special kind of tea and has a little hole for his ear. And the aroma of that tea, so he claims, is very good for the eyes.

  He always tells me such amusing things! For instance, how do you like this story? The vital energy that permeates and connects everything all around us is called chi by the Chinese. And the chi can be influenced by music. In former times, in order to determine if an army was ready for battle, a musician would stand among the soldiers and blow into a special trumpet, and he drew his conclusion from the sound. If the trumpet sounded feeble, then the martial spirit was likewise, which augured defeat. In this case the general ordered his army not to join battle but retreat. Did you smile?

  When the opportunity offers, Glazenap practises calligraphy. He has a whole set of brushes. And the ink is in briquettes – sticks that he grates on a stone ink slab, in a hollow with water. But there isn’t very much paper, and he often writes on a board or sheet of canvas, dipping the brush into plain water. Several hieroglyphs, written from the top downwards, make up a poem. As he finishes writing the poem, the beginning is already starting to disappear in the sun and the wind. Sashenka, if only you could see how wonderful that is!

  You see, sometimes we have quite a good time here.

  I’m sorry, I tried to joke, but it turned out stupid.

  It’s just that I grab at every opportunity to take my mind off things.

  Today Kirill was practising his calligraphy and I wanted so much to try that I couldn’t resist and made a few strokes myself. Glazenap remarked condescendingly that my stroke looked like a section of bamboo, and I felt inexpressibly proud, but that proved to be a mistake. Just imagine, a brushstroke should not resemble the head of a sheep or the tail of a rat or the leg of a stork, or a broken branch, that is, anything real at all. I know now that a horizontal stroke is like a cloud that stretches for ten thousand li. I’ve decided not to practise calligraphy any more.

  Apparently the ancient writing began as a record of the procedure for offering sacrifice. The pictures showed scenes of the rite with the participants and the ritual utensils. That is all very understandable. But then something amazing happened! You see, it turned out that the mystery had become accessible to everyone who looked at the picture. A dog was a dog, a fish was a fish, a horse was a horse, a man was a man. And then they started deliberately complicating the writing, so that only the initiated could understand it. The signs started freeing themselves of the tree, the sun, the sky, the river. Previously the signs had reflected harmony and universal beauty. Now the harmony shifted into the act of writing. The characters no longer reflected beauty, they were beauty itself!

  How clear and familiar this all is to me!

  Kirill is sad because he won’t get home for his sister’s wedding. He says his mother didn’t want to let him go, she was terribly worried that he would be killed. He said:

  ‘I’ve never been afraid for myself, but now I’m afraid with her fear.’

  I didn’t say anything. I know my mum is afraid for me in the same way.

  When we said goodbye at the railway station, she cried and reached out to kiss me, but I felt embarrassed and kept trying to break out of her embrace.

  And then her blind man suddenly wanted to hug me too. He scratched me with his stubble.

  At the parting she said:

  ‘Well, say something to me!’

  But all I could manage to force out was:

  ‘Go! Everything will be all right! Go!’

  You see, Sasha, I had convinced myself that I didn’t love her. No, of course you can’t understand that. And to be honest, now I don’t really understand it either.

  I close my eyes and see that world which is no longer visible – our old apartment, the wallpaper, the curtains at the windows, the furniture, the parquet flooring. The mirror in the dresser that I used to make faces into, trying to get to know myself. On the sofa there’s a cushion with a peacock with a button-eye that I can twist. That cushion was embroidered by my granny. The button kept coming off again and again, with some help from myself, of course, and then it was sewn back on again, which changed the peacock’s expression – sometimes he squinted in fright, sometimes he stared at the ceiling in amazement, sometimes he sniggered gleefully.

  I see marks on the doorpost – mum used to measure my height by putting a book on my head. But she refused to measure herself, no matter how much I asked.

  You know, once again in my thoughts I fly far away from this sultry heat, the wounds and the death, and I feel so good!

  Ever since I could remember, there was a cross-section plan of an ocean-going steamship hanging over my bed and I used to gaze endlessly at the cabins, stairways and engines, the captain’s bridge, the holds and the little figures strolling around the deck or dining at the tables in the restaurant, the sailors and the stokers – there was even a little dog stealing a sausage from the cook. I was sure my dad had hung that steamship above my bed. I loved to imagine that life – what the captain was shouting through his megaphone, what answer the redheaded cabin boy clambering up the mast was giving him. I used to invent what the sailors were saying as they scrubbed the deck. I made up all sorts of stories about the passengers and gave them funny names. Sometimes I used to draw in the missing litt
le figures myself, for instance, a sailor hanging from a rope like a monkey, with a bucket of paint, and he’s painting the anchor.

  And it was interesting and strange to wonder who I was for them.

  And did they even suspect that I existed?

  When we went to the dacha for the summer, I used to pick the thumbtacks out of the wall carefully, roll the picture up into a tube and not let anyone else have it. I travelled with it all the way, gazing thorough it into the distance, as if it was my telescope. Mum kept that picture with my childhood drawings for a long time until I threw the whole lot out myself.

  All that was left of my father were a few patchy memories. I don’t even know how old I was. We go to the railway to meet Mum. It’s very crowded there, Dad puts me on his shoulders and tells me not to let her get past, or we’ll miss each other. I remember holding on to Dad’s neck and staring hard into the crowd. I feel anxious and afraid that we might not find each other. Suddenly I see her and shout loud enough for the whole station to hear:

  ‘Mum! Mum! We’re here!’

  A visit to the photographer is another thing that stuck in my memory. Obviously because of my disappointment that the promised birdie didn’t come flying out of the box. The photos taken then with my father in them disappeared somewhere, Mum probably destroyed them. The only one that survived showed me on my own with a guitar, which I was holding like a double bass.

  And here’s another absolutely stupid memory: in frosty weather I touch his nose, as red as a clown’s.

  I’m so glad that I can share all these things that nobody needs any more with you!

  What else can I remember?

  For a whole year Mum took me to special exercise sessions, in order to stretch my spine and neck – the doctors had told her I had bad posture. They used to fasten my head into a sturdy leather collar with straps for my forehead and chin and hoist me up almost all the way to the ceiling. There were other boys and girls with bad posture dangling beside me, hanging there like sticks of salami in a shop. I hated those exercises, and Mum as well, for making me go there, no matter how stubbornly I resisted.