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Page 35
For some time he walked in silence by my side.
"Have you a cigarette?" [Footnote: "Avez-vous un papiros?"] he asked me.
"And so I stayed right where I was? Yes. I could not endure it
physically, because, though we were wretched, cold, and ill-fed, I lived
like a common soldier, but still the officers had some sort of
consideration for me. I had still some prestige that they regarded. I
wasn't sent out on guard nor for drill. I could not have stood that. But
morally my sufferings were frightful; and especially because I didn't
see any escape from my position. I wrote my uncle, begged him to get me
transferred to my present regiment, which, at least, sees some service;
and I thought that here Pavel Dmitrievitch, qui est le fils de
l'intendant de mon pere, might be of some use to me. My uncle did this
for me; I was transferred. After that regiment this one seemed to me a
collection of chamberlains. Then Pavel Dmitrievitch was here; he knew
who I was, and I was splendidly received. At my uncle's request--a
Guskof, vous savez; but I forgot that with these men without cultivation
and undeveloped,--they can't appreciate a man, and show him marks of
esteem, unless he has that aureole of wealth, of friends; and I noticed
how, little by little, when they saw that I was poor, their behavior to
me showed more and more indifference until they have come almost to
despise me. It is horrible, but it is absolutely the truth.
"Here I have been in action, I have fought, they have seen me under
fire," [Footnote: On m'a vu au feu.] he continued; "but when will it all
end? I think, never. And my strength and energy have already begun to
flag. Then I had imagined la guerre, la vie de camp; but it isn't at all
what I see, in a sheepskin jacket, dirty linen, soldier's boots, and you
go out in ambuscade, and the whole night long lie in the ditch with some
Antonof reduced to the ranks for drunkenness, and any minute from behind
the bush may come a rifle-shot and hit you or Antonof,--it's all the
same which. That is not bravery; it's horrible, c'est affreux, it's
killing!" [Footnote: Ca tue]
"Well, you can be promoted a non-commissioned officer for this campaign,
and next year an ensign," said I.
"Yes, it may be: they promised me that in two years, and it's not up
yet. What would those two years amount to, if I knew any one! You can
imagine this life with Pavel Dmitrievitch; cards, low jokes, drinking
all the time; if you wish to tell anything that is weighing on your
mind, you would not be understood, or you would be laughed at: they talk
with you, not for the sake of sharing a thought, but to get something
funny out of you. Yes, and so it has gone--in a brutal, beastly way, and
you are always conscious that you belong to the rank and file; they
always make you feel that. Hence you can't realize what an enjoyment it
is to talk a coeur ouvert to such a man as you are."
I had never imagined what kind of a man I was, and consequently I did
not know what answer to make him.
"Will you have your lunch now?" asked Nikita at this juncture,
approaching me unseen in the darkness, and, as I could perceive, vexed
at the presence of a guest. "Nothing but curd dumplings, there's none of
the roast beef left."
"Has the captain had his lunch yet?"
"He went to bed long ago," replied Nikita, gruffly, "According to my
directions, I was to bring you lunch here and your brandy." He muttered
something else discontentedly, and sauntered off to his tent. After
loitering a while longer, he brought us, nevertheless, a lunch-case; he
placed a candle on the lunch-case, and shielded it from the wind with a
sheet of paper. He brought a saucepan, some mustard in a jar, a tin
dipper with a handle, and a bottle of absinthe. After arranging these
things, Nikita lingered around us for some moments, and looked on as
Guskof and I were drinking the liquor, and it was evidently very
distasteful to him. By the feeble light shed by the candle through the
paper, amid the encircling darkness, could be seen the seal-skin cover
of the lunch-case, the supper arranged upon it, Guskof's sheepskin
jacket, his face, and his small red hands which he used in lifting the
patties from the pan. Everything around us was black; and only by
straining the sight could be seen the dark battery, the dark form of the
sentry moving along the breastwork, on all sides the watch-fires, and on
high the ruddy stars.
Guskof wore a melancholy, almost guilty smile as though it were awkward
for him to look into my face after his confession. He drank still
another glass of liquor, and ate ravenously, emptying the saucepan.
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