Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1
Page 23
‘Well, Dmítri Gavrílich,’ he said, shaking the captain by his knee, ‘how are you getting on? What of your recommendation? Is it still silent?’
‘There’s no news as yet.’
‘And there won’t be any,’ began Dyádenko. ‘I told you so before.’
‘Why won’t there be?’
‘Because the report was not written properly.’
‘Ah, you wrangler! You wrangler!’ said Kraut, smiling merrily. ‘A real obstinate Ukrainian! There now, just to spite you you’ll get a lieutenancy.’
‘No I shan’t!’
‘Viang, get me my pipe and fill it,’ said Kraut, turning to the cadet, who rose at once and readily ran for the pipe.
Kraut brightened them all up: he talked of the bombardment, asked what had been going on in his absence, and spoke to everybody.
XIX
‘WELL, have you established yourself satisfactorily among us?’ Kraut asked Volódya. ‘Excuse me, what is your name and patronymic? You know that’s our custom in the artillery.… Have you a horse?’
‘No,’ said Volódya, ‘I don’t know what I’m to do. I was telling the captain … I have no horse nor any money until I get my forage-money and travelling expenses paid. I thought meanwhile of asking the commander of the battery to let me have a horse, but I’m afraid he’ll refuse.’
‘Apollón Sergéich …?’ and Kraut made a sound with his lips expressive of strong doubt, and looking at the captain added, ‘Hardly!’
‘Well, if he does refuse there’ll be no harm done,’ said the captain. ‘To tell you the truth, a horse is not much wanted here. Still, it’s worth trying. I will ask him to-day.’
‘How little you know him,’ Dyádenko put in: ‘he might refuse anything else, but not that.… Will you bet?’
‘Oh, we know you can’t help contradicting!’
‘I contradict because I know. He’s close in other matters, but he’ll give a horse because he gains nothing by refusing.’
‘Gains nothing when oats are eight rubles?’ said Kraut. ‘The gain is not having to keep an extra horse.’
‘You ask for Skvoréts, Vladímir Semënich,’ said Vlang, returning with Kraut’s pipe. ‘He’s a capital horse.’
‘Off which you fell into a ditch in Soróki, eh, Vlánga?’ remarked the lieutenant-captain.
‘What does it matter if oats are eight rubles, when in his estimates they figure at ten and a half?10 That’s where the gain comes in,’ said Dyádenko, continuing to argue.
‘Well naturally you can’t expect him to keep nothing. When you’re commander of a battery I daresay you won’t let a man have a horse to ride into town.’
‘When I’m commander of a battery my horses will get four measures each and I shan’t make an income, no fear!’
‘We shall see if we live …’ said the lieutenant-captain. ‘You’ll act in just the same way – and so will he,’ pointing to Volódya.
‘Why do you think that he too would wish to make a profit?’ said Tchernovítski to Kraut. ‘He may have private means, then why should he want to make a profit?’
‘Oh no, I … excuse me, Captain,’ said Volódya, blushing up to his ears, ‘but I should think such a thing dishonourable.’
‘Dear me! What a severe fellow he is!’ said Kraut.
‘No, I only mean that I think that if the money is not mine I ought not to take it.’
‘But I’ll tell you something, young man,’ began the lieutenant-captain in a more serious tone. ‘Do you know that if you are commanding a battery you have to conduct things properly, and that’s enough. The commander of a battery doesn’t interfere with the soldiers’ supplies: that’s always been the custom in the artillery. If you are a bad manager you will have no surplus. But you have to spend over and above what’s in the estimates: for shoeing – that’s one’ (he bent down one finger), ‘and for medicine – that’s two’ (and he bent down another finger), ‘for office expenses – that’s three: then for off-horses one has to pay up to five hundred rubles my dear fellow – that’s four: you have to supply the soldiers with new collars, spend a good bit on charcoal for the samovars, and keep open table for the officers. If you are in command of a battery you must live decently: you must have a carriage and a fur coat, and one thing and another.… It’s quite plain!’
‘And above all,’ interrupted the captain, who had been silent all the time, ‘look here, Vladímir Semënich – imagine a man like myself say, serving for twenty years with a pay of first two hundred, then three hundred rubles a year. Can one refuse him a crust of bread in his old age, after all his service?’
‘Ah, what’s the good of talking,’ began the lieutenant-captain again. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to judge, but live and serve.’
Volódya felt horribly confused and ashamed of what he had so thoughtlessly said. He muttered something, and then listened in silence while Dyádenko began very irritably to dispute and to argue the contrary of what had been said. The dispute was interrupted by the colonel’s orderly who came to call them to dinner.
‘Ask Apollón Sergéich to give us some wine to-day,’ said Tchernovítski to the captain, buttoning his uniform. ‘Why is he so stingy? If we get killed, it will all be wasted.’
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘Oh no, you’re the senior officer. We must observe order in everything.’
XX
IN the room where Volódya had presented himself to the colonel the evening before, the table had been moved away from the wall and covered with a dirty table-cloth. To-day the commander of the battery shook hands with him and asked him for the Petersburg news, and about his journey.
‘Well, gentlemen, who takes vodka? Please help yourselves.… Ensigns don’t take any,’ he added with a smile.
Altogether he did not seem at all as stern as the night before; on the contrary he seemed a kind and hospitable host and an elder comrade among fellow officers. But in spite of it all, the officers from the old captain down to Ensign Dyádenko showed him great respect, if only by the way they addressed him, politely looking him straight in the eyes, and by the timid way they came up one by one to the side-table to drink their glass of vodka.
The dinner consisted of Polish cutlets with mustard, dumplings with butter that was not very fresh, and a large tureen of cabbage-soup in which floated pieces of fat beef with an enormous quantity of pepper and bay-leaves. There were no napkins, the spoons were of tin or wood, there were only two tumblers, and there was only water on the table, in a bottle with a broken neck; but the meal was not dull and the conversation never flagged. At first they talked about the battle of Inkerman, in which the battery had taken part, and each gave his own impressions of it and reasons for our reverse, but all were silent as soon as the commander spoke. Then the conversation naturally passed to the insufficient calibre of our field-guns, and to the subject of the new lighter guns, which gave Volódya an opportunity to show his knowledge of artillery. But the conversation never touched on the present terrible condition of Sevastopol: it was as if each man had thought so much on this subject that he did not wish to speak of it. Nor to Volódya’s great surprise and regret was there any mention at all of the duties of the service he would have to perform. It was as if he had come to Sevastopol solely to discuss lighter guns and to dine with the commander of the battery. During dinner a bomb fell near the house they were in. The floor and walls shook as if from an earthquake, and the windows were darkened by the powder smoke.
‘You didn’t see that sort of thing in Petersburg, I fancy, but here we get many such surprises,’ said the commander of the battery. ‘Vlang, go and see where it burst.’
Vlang went out to see, and reported that it had fallen in the square, and no more was said about the bomb.
Just before dinner ended, a little old man, the battery clerk, came into the room with three sealed envelopes and handed them to the commander: ‘This one is very important: a Cossack has just brought it from the Chief of the Artillery.’
‘Again!’ said the commander, angrily throwing the paper on the table.
‘What is it, Apollón Sergéich?’ asked the senior officer.
‘They order an officer and men to some mortar-battery or other.… As it is I have only four officers, and not enough men for the gun detachments,’ grumbled the commander of the battery, ‘and here they are taking more away.… However, gentlemen, someone will have to go,’ he said after a short silence, ‘the order is, to be at the outposts at seven. Send the sergeant-major to me. Well, who will go? Decide, gentlemen.’
‘There’s your man – he’s not been anywhere yet,’ said Tchernovítski, pointing to Volódya.
The commander of the battery did not answer.
‘Yes, I should like to go,’ said Volódya, feeling a cold sweat break out on his back and neck.
‘No, why should he?’ interrupted the captain. ‘Of course no one would refuse, but one need not offer oneself either: if Apollón Sergéich leaves it to us, let us cast lots as we did last time.’
All agreed. Kraut cut up some paper, rolled up the pieces, and threw them into a cap. The captain joked and on this occasion even ventured to ask the colonel for some wine – to keep up their courage, as he said. Dyádenko sat looking grim, something made Volódya smile. Tchernovítski declared he was sure to draw it. Kraut was perfectly calm. Volódya was allowed to draw first. He took a roll of paper a bit longer than the others but then decided to change it, and taking a thinner and shorter one unrolled it and read, ‘Go.’
‘It’s I,’ he said with a sigh.
‘Well, God be with you! You’ll get your baptism of fire at once,’ said the commander, looking at the ensign’s perturbed face with a kindly smile. ‘But make haste and get ready, and to make it more cheerful for you, Vlang shall go with you as gun-sergeant.’
XXI
VLANG was extremely pleased with his appointment, ran off quickly to get ready, and when dressed came to help Volódya, trying to persuade him to take with him a bed, a fur coat, some back numbers of Fatherland Records, the coffee-pot with the spirit-lamp, and other unnecessary things. The captain advised Volódya to read up in the Handbook (Bezák’s Artillery Officer’s Handbook) about firing mortars, and especially to copy out the tables in it. Volódya set to work at once and noticed to his surprise and joy that his fear of the danger and even greater fear that he was a coward, though it still troubled him a little, was far from what it had been the night before. This was partly the effect of daylight and activity, but was chiefly due to the fact that fear, like every strong feeling, cannot long continue with the same intensity. In short he had already had time to live through the worst of it. At about seven o’clock, just as the sun began to disappear behind the Nicholas Barracks, the sergeant-major came and announced that the men were ready and waiting.
‘I have given Vlánga the list, your Honour will please receive it from him,’ said he.
About twenty artillerymen, with side-arms only, stood behind the corner of the house. Volódya and the cadet walked up to them. ‘Shall I make them a little speech or simply say “Good-day lads,” or say nothing at all?’ he thought. ‘But why not say “Good-day lads”, it is even right that I should,’ and he cried boldly with his ringing voice, ‘Good-day lads!’ The soldiers answered gaily. The fresh young voice sounded pleasantly in the ears of each. Volódya went briskly in front of the soldiers, and though his heart beat as fast as if he had run full-speed for miles his step was light and his face cheerful. As they approached the Malákhov Redoubt and mounted the hill he noticed that Vlang, who kept close to him all the time and had seemed so brave before leaving the house, was continually dodging and stooping, as if all the bombs and cannon-balls, which whistled past very frequently here, were flying straight at him. Some of the soldiers did the same, and in general most of the faces expressed uneasiness if not exactly alarm. These circumstances emboldened Volódya and completely comforted him.
‘So here am I too on the Malákhov mound, which I fancied a thousand times more terrible. And I get along without bowing to the balls, and am even much less frightened than the others. So I am no coward,’ he thought with pleasure, and even with a certain self-complacent rapture.
This feeling however was quickly shaken by a sight he came upon in the twilight at the Kornílov Battery while looking for the commander of the bastion. Four sailors stood by the breastwork holding by its arms and legs the blood-stained corpse of a man without boots or coat and swinging it before heaving it over. (On the second day of this bombardment it was found impossible in some parts to clear away the corpses from the bastions, and they were therefore thrown out into the ditch so as not to be in the way at the batteries.) Volódya felt stunned for a moment when he saw the body bump on the top of the breastwork and then roll down into the ditch, but luckily for him the commander of the bastion met him just then and gave him his orders and a guide to show him the way to the battery and to the bomb-proof assigned to his men. We will not speak of all the dangers and disenchantments our hero lived through that evening: how – instead of the firing he was used to on the Vólkov field amid conditions of perfect exactitude and order which he had expected to meet with here also – he found two damaged mortars, one with its muzzle battered in by a ball, the other standing on the splinters of its shattered platform; how he could not get workmen before the morning to mend the platform; how not a single charge was of the weight specified in the Handbook; how two of the men under him were wounded, and how he was twenty times within a hair’s-breadth of death. Fortunately a gigantic gunner, a seaman who had served with the mortars since the commencement of the siege, had been appointed to assist Volódya, and convinced him of the possibility of using the mortars. By the light of a lantern this gunner showed him all over the battery as he might have shown him over his own kitchen-garden, and undertook to have everything right by the morning. The bomb-proof to which his guide led him was an oblong hole dug in the rocky ground, twenty-five cubic yards in size and covered with oak beams two and a half feet thick. He and all his soldiers installed themselves in it.
As soon as he discovered the little door, not three feet high, Vlang rushed in headlong before anyone else, and at the risk of breaking his limbs against the stone bottom squeezed into the farthest corner and remained there. Volódya, when all the soldiers had settled on the ground along the walls and some had lit their pipes, made up his own bed in a corner, lit a candle, and after lighting a cigarette, lay down.
The reports of continuous firing could be heard overhead but not very distinctly, except from one cannon which stood quite close and shook the bomb-proof with its thunder. In the bomb-proof all was quiet, except when one or other of the soldiers, still rather shy in the presence of the new officer, spoke, asking a neighbour to move a little or to give him a light for his pipe, when a rat scratched somewhere among the stones, or when Vlang, who had not yet recovered and was still looking wildly around him, heaved a deep sigh.
Volódya, on his bed in this quiet corner crammed with people and lighted by a solitary candle, experienced a sensation of cosiness such as he had felt as a child when, playing hide-and-seek, he used to creep into a cupboard or under his mother’s skirt and sit listening in breathless silence, afraid of the dark yet conscious of enjoyment. It felt rather uncanny, yet his spirits were high.
XXII
AFTER ten minutes or so the soldiers grew bolder and began to talk. The more important ones – two non-commissioned officers: an old grey-haired one with every possible medal and cross except the St George, and a young one, a Cantonist,11 who was smoking cigarettes he had rolled himself – settled nearest to the light and to the officer’s bed. The drummer had as usual assumed the duty of wai
ting upon the officer. The bombardiers and those who had medals came next, and farther off, in the shadow nearer the entrance, sat the humbler folk. It was these last who started a conversation, caused by the noise a man made who came tumbling hurriedly into the bomb-proof.
‘Hullo, old fellow! Why don’t you stay outside? Don’t the lasses play merrily enough out there?’ said a voice.
‘They’re playing such tunes as we never hear in our village,’ laughingly replied the man who had just run in.
‘Ah, Vásin don’t like bombs – that he don’t!’ said someone in the aristocratic corner.
‘If it was necessary, that would be a different matter,’ replied Vásin slowly, and when he spoke all the others were silent. ‘On the 24th we were at least firing, but why grumble at me now? The authorities won’t thank the likes of us for getting killed uselessly.’
At these words everyone laughed.
‘There’s Mélnikov – he’s out there now, I fancy,’ said someone.
‘Go and send Mélnikov in here,’ said the old sergeant, ‘or else he really will get killed uselessly.’
‘Who is Mélnikov?’ asked Volódya.
‘Oh, he’s a poor silly soldier of ours, your Honour. He’s just afraid of nothing, and he’s walking about outside now. You should have a look at him, he’s just like a bear.’
‘He knows a charm,’ came Vásin’s long-drawn accents from the other corner.
Mélnikov entered the bomb-proof. He was stout (an extremely rare thing among soldiers), red-haired and red-faced, with an enormous bulging forehead and prominent pale-blue eyes.
‘Aren’t you afraid of the bombs?’ asked Volódya.
‘What’s there to be afraid of in them bombs?’ answered Mélnikov, wriggling and scratching himself. ‘They won’t kill me with a bomb, I know.’
‘So you’d like to live here?’
‘’Course I should. It’s jolly here,’ he said and burst out laughing.
‘Oh, then they should take you for a sortie! Shall I speak to the general about it?’ said Volódya, though he did not know a single genera] in the place.