by Leo Tolstoy
‘Thank God, I’m only bruised!’ was his first thought, and he was about to touch his chest with his hand, but his arms seemed tied to his sides and he felt as if a vice were squeezing his head. Soldiers flitted past him and he counted them unconsciously: ‘One, two, three soldiers! And there’s an officer with his cloak tucked up,’ he thought. Then lightning flashed before his eyes and he wondered whether the shot was fired from a mortar or a cannon. ‘A cannon, probably. And there’s another shot and here are more soldiers – five, six, seven soldiers.… They all pass by!’ He was suddenly seized with fear that they would crush him. He wished to shout that he was hurt, but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and a terrible thirst tormented him. He felt a wetness about his chest and this sensation of being wet made him think of water, and he longed to drink even this that made him feel wet. ‘I suppose I hit myself in falling and made myself bleed,’ thought he, and giving way more and more to fear lest the soldiers who kept flitting past might trample on him, he gathered all his strength and tried to shout, ‘Take me with you!’ but instead of that he uttered such a terrible groan that the sound frightened him. Then some other red fires began dancing before his eyes and it seemed to him that the soldiers put stones on him. The fires danced less and less but the stones they put on him pressed more and more heavily. He made an effort to push off the stones, stretched himself, and saw and heard and felt nothing more. He had been killed on the spot by a bomb-splinter in the middle of his chest.
XIII
WHEN Mikháylov dropped to the ground on seeing the bomb he too, like Praskúkhin, lived through an infinitude of thoughts and feelings in the two seconds that elapsed before the bomb burst. He prayed mentally and repeated, ‘Thy will be done.’ And at the same time he thought, ‘Why did I enter the army? And why did I join the infantry to take part in this campaign? Wouldn’t it have been better to have remained with the Uhlan regiment at T— and spent my time with my friend Natásha? And now here I am …’ and he began to count, ‘One, two, three, four,’ deciding that if the bomb burst at an even number he would live but if at an odd number he would be killed. ‘It is all over, I’m killed!’ he thought when the bomb burst (he did not remember whether at an odd or even number) and he felt a blow and a cruel pain in his head. ‘Lord, forgive me my trespasses!’ he muttered, folding his hands. He rose, but fell on his back senseless.
When he came to, his first sensations were that of blood trickling down his nose, and the pain in his head which had become much less violent. ‘That’s the soul passing,’ he thought. ‘How will it be there? Lord, receive my soul in peace! … Only it’s strange,’ thought he, ‘that while dying I should hear the steps of the soldiers and the sounds of the firing so distinctly.’
‘Bring stretchers! Eh, the captain has been hit!’ shouted a voice above his head, which he recognized as the voice of the drummer Ignátyev.
Someone took him by the shoulders. With an effort he opened his eyes and saw above him the sky, some groups of stars, and two bombs racing one another as they flew over him. He saw Ignátyev, soldiers with stretchers and guns, the embankment, the trenches, and suddenly realized that he was not yet in the other world.
He had been slightly wounded in the head by a stone. His first feeling was one almost of regret: he had prepared himself so well and so calmly to go there that the return to reality, with its bombs, stretchers, and blood, seemed unpleasant. The second feeling was unconscious joy at being alive, and the third a wish to get away from the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer tied a handkerchief round his commander’s head and taking his arm led him towards the ambulance station.
‘But why and where am I going?’ thought the lieutenant-captain when he had collected his senses. ‘My duty is to remain with the company and not leave it behind – especially,’ whispered a voice, ‘as it will soon be out of range of the guns.’
‘Don’t trouble about me, my lad,’ said he, drawing his hand away from the attentive drummer. ‘I won’t go to the ambulance station: I’ll stay with the company.’
And he turned back.
‘It would be better to have it properly bandaged, your Honour,’ said Ignátyev. ‘It’s only in the heat of the moment that it seems nothing. Mind it doesn’t get worse.… And just see what warm work it is here.… Really, your Honour —’
Mikháylov stood for a moment undecided, and would probably have followed Ignátyev’s advice had he not reflected how many severely wounded there must be at the ambulance station. ‘Perhaps the doctors will smile at my scratch,’ thought the lieutenant-captain, and in spite of the drummer’s arguments he returned to his company.
‘And where is the orderly officer Praskúkhin, who was with me?’ he asked when he met the ensign who was leading the company.
‘I don’t know. Killed, I think,’ replied the ensign unwillingly.
‘Killed? Or only wounded? How is it you don’t know? Wasn’t he going with us? And why didn’t you bring him away?’
‘How could we, under such a fire?’
‘But how could you do such a thing, Michael Iványch?’ said Mikháylov angrily. ‘How could you leave him supposing he is alive? Even if he’s dead his body ought to have been brought away.’
‘Alive indeed, when I tell you I went up and saw him myself!’ said the ensign. ‘Excuse me.… It’s hard enough to collect our own. There, those villains are at it again!’ he added. ‘They’re sending up cannon-balls now.’
Mikháylov sat down and lifted his hands to his head, which ached terribly when he moved.
‘No, it is absolutely necessary to go back and fetch him,’ he said. ‘He may still be alive. It is our duty, Michael Iványch.’
Michael Iványch did not answer.
‘O Lord! Just because he didn’t bring him in at the time, soldiers will have to be sent back alone now … and yet can I possibly send them under this terrible fire? They may be killed for nothing,’ thought Mikháylov.
‘Lads! Someone will have to go back to fetch the officer who was wounded out there in the ditch,’ said he, not very loudly or peremptorily, for he felt how unpleasant it would be for the soldiers to execute this order. And he was right. Since he had not named anyone in particular no one came forward to obey the order.
‘And after all he may be dead already. It isn’t worth exposing men uselessly to such danger. It’s all my fault, I ought to have seen to it. I’ll go back myself and find out whether he is alive. It is my duty,’ said Mikháylov to himself.
‘Michael Iványch, you lead the company, I’ll catch you up,’ said he, and holding up his cloak with one hand while with the other he kept touching a small icon of St Metrophanes that hung round his neck and in which he had great faith, he ran quickly along the trench.
Having convinced himself that Praskúkhin was dead he dragged himself back panting, holding the bandage that had slipped on his head, which was beginning to ache very badly. When he overtook the battalion it was already at the foot of the hill and almost beyond the range of the shots. I say ‘almost’, for a stray bomb reached even here now and then.
‘To-morrow I had better go and be entered at the ambulance station,’ thought the lieutenant-captain, while a medical assistant, who had turned up, was bandaging his head.
XIV
HUNDREDS of bodies, which a couple of hours before had been men full of various lofty or trivial hopes and wishes, were lying with fresh bloodstains on their stiffened limbs in the dewy, flowery valley which separated the bastions from the trenches and on the smooth floor of the mortuary chapel in Sevastopol. Hundreds of men with curses or prayers on their parched lips, crawled, writhed, and groaned, some among the dead in the flowery valley, some on stretchers, or beds, or on the blood-stained floor of the ambulance station. Yet the dawn broke behind the Sapún hill, the twinkling stars grew pale and the white mists spread from the dark roaring sea just as on other days, and the rosy morning glow lit up the east, long streaks of red clouds spread along the p
ale-blue horizon, and just as in the old days the sun rose in power and glory, promising joy, love, and happiness to all the awakening world.
XV
NEXT evening the Chasseurs’ band was again playing on the boulevard, and officers, cadets, soldiers, and young women, again promenaded round the pavilion and along the side-walks under the acacias with their sweet-scented white blossoms.
Kalúgin was walking arm in arm with Prince Gáltsin and a colonel near the pavilion and talking of last night’s affair. The main theme of their conversation, as usual in such cases, was not the affair itself, but the part each of the speakers had taken in it. Their faces and the tone of their voices were serious, almost sorrowful, as if the losses of the night had touched and saddened them all. But to tell the truth, as none of them had lost anyone very dear to him, this sorrowful expression was only an official one they considered it their duty to exhibit.
Kalúgin and the colonel in fact, though they were first-rate fellows, were ready to see such an affair every day if they could gain a gold sword and be made major-general each time. It is all very well to call some conqueror a monster because he destroys millions to gratify his ambition, but go and ask any Ensign Petrúshev or Sub-Lieutenant Antónov on their conscience, and you will find that every one of us is a little Napoleon, a petty monster ready to start a battle and kill a hundred men merely to get an extra medal or one-third additional pay.
‘No, I beg your pardon,’ said the colonel. ‘It began first on the left side. I was there myself.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ said Kalúgin. ‘I spent more time on the right. I went there twice: first to look for the general, and then just to see the lodgements. It was hot there, I can tell you!’
‘Kalúgin ought to know,’ said Gáltsin. ‘By the way, V— told me to-day that you are a trump —’
‘But the losses, the losses are terrible!’ said the colonel. ‘In my regiment we had four hundred casualties. It is astonishing that I’m still alive.’
Just then the figure of Mikháylov, with his head bandaged, appeared at the end of the boulevard walking towards these gentlemen.
‘What, are you wounded, Captain?’ said Kalúgin.
‘Yes, slightly, with a stone,’ answered Mikháylov.
‘Est-ce que le pavillon est baissé déjà?’13 asked Prince Gáltsin, glancing at the lieutenant-captain’s cap and not addressing anyone in particular.
‘Non, pas encore,’14 answered Mikháylov, wishing to show that he understood and spoke French.
‘Do you mean to say the truce still continues?’ said Gáltsin, politely addressing him in Russian and thereby (so it seemed to the lieutenant-captain) suggesting: ‘It must no doubt be difficult for you to have to speak French, so hadn’t we better simply …’ and with that the adjutants went away. The lieutenant-captain again felt exceedingly lonely, just as he had done the day before. After bowing to various people – some of whom he did not wish and some of whom he did not venture to join – he sat down near the Kazárski monument and smoked a cigarette.
Baron Pesth also turned up on the boulevard. He mentioned that he had been at the parley and had spoken to the French officers. According to his account one of them had said to him: ‘S’il n’avait pas fait clair encore pendant une demi-heure, les ambuscades auraient été reprises,’15 and he replied, ‘Monsieur, je ne dis pas non, pour ne pas vous donner un démenti,’16 and he told how pat it had come out, and so on.
But though he had been at the parley he had not really managed to say anything in particular, though he much wished to speak with the French (‘for it’s awfully jolly to speak to those fellows’). He had paced up and down the line for a long time asking the Frenchmen near him: ‘De quel régiment êtes-vous?’17 and had got his answer and nothing more. When he went too far beyond the line, the French sentry, not suspecting that ‘that soldier’ knew French, abused him in the third person singular: ‘Il vient regarder nos travaux, ce sacré —’18 in consequence of which Cadet Baron Pesth, finding nothing more to interest him at the parley, rode home, and on his way back composed the French phrases he now repeated.
On the boulevard was Captain Zóbov talking very loud, and Captain Obzhógov, the artillery captain who never curried favour with anyone, was there too, in a dishevelled condition, and also the cadet who was always fortunate in his love affairs, and all the same people as yesterday, with the same motives as always. Only Praskúkhin, Nefërdov, and a few more were missing, and hardly anyone now remembered or thought of them, though there had not yet been time for their bodies to be washed, laid out, and put into the ground.
XVI
WHITE flags are hung out on our bastions and on the French trenches, and in the flowery valley between them lie heaps of mangled corpses without boots, some clad in blue and others in grey, which workmen are removing and piling onto carts. The air is filled with the smell of decaying flesh. Crowds of people have poured out from Sevastopol and from the French camp to see the sight, and with eager and friendly curiosity draw near to one another.
Listen to what these people are saying.
Here, in a circle of Russians and Frenchmen who have collected round him, a young officer, who speaks French badly but sufficiently to be understood, is examining a guardsman’s pouch.
‘Eh sussy, poor quah se waso lié?’19‘Parce que c’est une giberne d’un régiment de la garde, monsieur, qui porte l’aigle impérial.’20‘Eh voo de la guard?’21‘Pardon, monsieur, du 6−ème de ligne.’22‘Eh sussy oo ashtay?’23 pointing to a cigarette-holder of yellow wood, in which the Frenchman is smoking a cigarette.
‘A Balaclava, monsieur. C’est tout simple en bois de palme.’24‘Joli,’25 says the officer, guided in his remarks not so much by what he wants to say as by the French words he happens to know.
‘Si vous voulez bien garder cela comme souvenir de cette rencontre, vous m’obligerez.’26
And the polite Frenchman puts out his cigarette and presents the holder to the officer with a slight bow. The officer gives him his, and all present, both French and Russian, smile and seem pleased. Here is a bold infantryman in a pink shirt with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, accompanied by other soldiers standing near him with their hands folded behind their backs and with merry inquisitive faces. He has approached a Frenchman and asked for a light for his pipe. The Frenchman draws at and stirs up the tobacco in his own short pipe and shakes a light into that of the Russian.
‘Tabac boon?’ says the soldier in the pink shirt, and the spectators smile. ‘Oui, bon tabac, tabac turc,’ says the Frenchman. ‘Chez vous autres tabac – Russe? Bon?’27‘Roos boon,’ says the soldier in the pink shirt while the onlookers shake with laughter. ‘Fransay not boon. Bongjour, mossier!’, and having let off his whole stock of French at once, he slaps the Frenchman on the stomach and laughs. The French also laugh.
‘Ils ne sont pas jolis ces b— de Russes,’28 says a Zouave among the French.
‘De quoi est-ce qu’ils rient donc?’29 says another with an Italian accent, a dark man, coming up to our men.
‘Coat boon,’ says the cheeky soldier, examining the embroidery of the Zouave’s coat, and everybody laughs again.
‘Ne sors pas de ta ligne, à vos places, sacré nom!’30 cries a French corporal, and the soldiers separate with evident reluctance.
And here, in the midst of a group of French officers, one of our young cavalry officers is gushing. They are talking about some Count Sazónov, ‘que j’ai beaucoup connu, monsieur,’ says a French officer with only one epaulette – ‘c’est un de ces vrais comtes russes, comme nous les aimons.’31‘Il y a un Sazónqff, que j’ai connu,’ says the cavalry officer, ‘mais il n’est pas comte, à moins que je sache, un petit brun de votre âge à peu près.’32‘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,’33 he said, bowing.
‘N’est-ce pas terrible la triste besogne que nous faisons? Ça chauffai
t cette nuit, n’est-ce pas?’34 said the cavalry officer, wishing to maintain the conversation and pointing to the corpses.
‘Oh, monsieur, c’est affreux! Mais quels gaillards vos soldats, quels gaillards! C’est un plaisir que de se battre avec des gaillards comme eux.’35‘Il faut avouer que les vôtres ne se mouchent pas du pied non plus,’36 said the cavalry officer, bowing and imagining himself very agreeable.
But enough.
Let us rather look at this ten-year-old boy in an old cap (probably his father’s), with shoes on his stockingless feet and nankeen trousers held up by one brace. At the very beginning of the truce he came over the entrenchments, and has been walking about the valley ever since, looking with dull curiosity at the French and at the corpses that lie on the ground and gathering the blue flowers with which the valley is strewn. Returning home with a large bunch of flowers he holds his nose to escape the smell that is borne towards him by the wind, and stopping near a heap of corpses gazes for a long time at a terrible headless body that lies nearest to him. After standing there some time he draws nearer and touches with his foot the stiff outstretched arm of the corpse. The arm trembles a little. He touches it again more boldly; it moves and falls back to its old position. The boy gives a sudden scream, hides his face in his flowers, and runs towards the fortifications as fast as his legs can carry him.
Yes, there are white flags on the bastions and the trenches but the flowery valley is covered with dead bodies. The glorious sun is sinking towards the blue sea, and the undulating blue sea glitters in the golden light. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at one another. And these people – Christians professing the one great law of love and self-sacrifice – on seeing what they have done do not at once fall repentant on their knees before Him who has given them life and laid in the soul of each a fear of death and a love of the good and the beautiful, and do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and gladness.