II
We had only two officers in our company—the company commander, Captain Zaikin, and a subaltern officer, a lieutenant of the reserve named Stebelkoff. The company commander was a man of middle age, rather stout, and of jovial disposition. Stebelkoff was a youth only just out of the Academy. They lived on good terms with each other. The Captain took care of the Lieutenant, messed him, and during the rain even sheltered him under his own waterproof cloak. When they issued out the tents our officers camped together, and as the officers’ tents were spacious, the Captain decided to take me in with him.
Tired out by a sleepless night, our company had been told off to help the transport, and had spent the whole night in dragging it out of gullies, and had even pulled the carts and wagons out of swollen streams by singing.
I was sleeping soundly after dinner, when the Captain’s servant awoke me by cautiously touching my shoulder.
“Sir, Mr. Ivanoff, Mr. Ivanoff—” he whispered, as if he did not want to awake me, but rather was trying all he could not to disturb my sleep.
“What’s the matter?”
“The Captain wants you.” Then, seeing me putting on my belt and bayonet, added: “He said I was to bring you just as you were.”
A whole crowd had assembled in Zaikin’s tent. Besides its usual occupants there were two more officers—the regimental Adjutant and the commander of the rifle company, named Ventzel. In 1877 a battalion did not consist, as now, of four companies, but of five. On service the rifle company brought up the rear, so that the rear files of our company were in touch with their front files. I often marched almost amongst the riflemen, and I had already several times heard from them the most uncomplimentary remarks about Staff-Captain Ventzel. All four officers were seated around a box which took the place of a table, and on which stood a samovar, plates and dishes, etc., and a bottle, and were drinking tea.
“Mr. Ivanoff! Come in, please,” cried out the Captain. “Nikita! Bring a cup, mug, or glass, or whatever you have. Ventzel, move up a bit, and let Ivanoff sit down.”
Ventzel stood up and bowed very courteously. He was a short, rawboned, pale, and nervous-looking young man. What restless eyes! and what thin lips! were the thoughts which came into my head when I first saw him. The Adjutant, without rising, stretched out his hand. “Lukin,” he said briefly, introducing himself.
I felt awkward. The officers were silent. Ventzel was sipping tea in which was some rum. The Adjutant was pulling at a short pipe, and Stebelkoff, the Lieutenant, having nodded to me, went on reading a battered volume, a translation of some novel which went through the march from Russia to the Danube with him in a portmanteau and subsequently returned home in a still more battered state. My host poured out some tea into a large earthenware mug and added an enormous go of rum.
“How are you, Mr. Student? Don’t be angry with me. I am a plain man. Yes, and all of us here, you know, are just common folk. But you are an educated man, so you must excuse us. Isn’t that so?”
And he seized my hand with his huge fist as a bird of prey seizes its booty, and waved it several times in the air, looking at me with a kind expression in his prominent round little eyes.
“Are you a student?” inquired Ventzel.
“Yes, sir, I was.”
He smiled and raised his restless eyes on me. I recalled the soldiers’ stories I had heard about him, and doubted their truth.
“Why ‘sir’? Here in this tent we are all alike. Here you are simply an intelligent man amongst others like yourself,” he said quietly.
“An intelligent man! Yes, that’s true,” exclaimed Zaikin. “A student! I like students, although they are such insubordinate beggars. I should have been a student myself if it had not been for fate.”
“What was your particular fate, Ivan Platonich?” inquired the Adjutant.
“Why, I simply could not work up for exams. Mathematics were not so bad, but as for the rest … it was hopeless. Literature, composition. I never learnt to write properly when I was a cadet. Honestly!”
“Do you know, Mr. Student,” said the Adjutant between two gigantic puffs of smoke, “how Ivan Platonich makes four spelling mistakes in one simple word?”
“Come, come, don’t tell lies, old chap,” said Zaikin with a wave of his hand.
“It’s quite true; I am not lying,” said the Adjutant, laughing heartily as he spelt the word à la Zaikin.
“Laugh away! But the Adjutant himself is no better,” said Zaikin, giving a specimen in his turn.
The Adjutant roared with laughter. Stebelkoff, who happened to have his mouth full of tea, spluttered it over his novel and put out one of the two candles which lighted the tent. I too could not help laughing. Ivan Platonich, thoroughly pleased with his witticism, went off into peals of deep laughter. Only Ventzel did not laugh.
“It was literature, then, Ivan Platonich?” he inquired quietly as before.
“Literature. … Yes, and other things. It reminds me of a man who only knew of the equator in geography and the meaning of the word ‘era’ in history. But, no, I am speaking rot. That wasn’t the reason. It was simply that I had money and would never do any work. I, Ivanoff … I beg your pardon, what’s your name?”
“Vladimir Mikhailich.”
“Vladimir Mikhailich? Thank you. … Well, I was a lightheaded fellow from the very first, and what tricks I used to play! You know the song about the boy who had money.
“I entered this famous, although a purely line regiment, as a junker. They sent me to school. I only just passed, and now I have been twenty years slaving in the service. Now we are dodging after the Turk. Drink up, gentlemen—drink properly! Is it worth while spoiling good tea? Let us drink, gentlemen, to ‘Food for powder.’ ”
“Chair à canon,” said Ventzel.
“Well, all right, in French, if you like. Our Captain, Vladimir Mikhailich, is a clever man. He knows several languages, and can repeat a lot of German poetry by heart. Look here, young man, I sent for you to propose you should transfer yourself into my tent. Where you are now there are six of you, and it is stifling and crowded with soldiers. Besides, they are not over clean. In any case, you will be better off with us.”
“Thank you, but please allow me to refuse your offer.”
“Why? Bosh! Nikita! Go and fetch his knapsack! Which tent are you in?”
“The second on the right. But please allow me to stay there. I have to be more with the men, and it is better I should be altogether with them.”
The Captain looked at me attentively, as if desirous of reading my thoughts. Having pondered a little, he said:
“What is it? You want to make friends with the men?”
“Yes, if it is possible.”
“That’s right. Don’t change. I respect you for it.”
And he grabbed my hand and once more waved it in the air.
Soon afterwards I took farewell of the officers and left the tent. It had grown dark. The men were putting on their greatcoats in preparation for evening prayers. The companies were drawn up in their lines, so that each battalion formed a closed square, within which were the tents and piled arms. Owing to the halt, the whole of our division had got together. The drums were beating tattoo, and from afar could be heard the words of the command preparatory to prayers:
“Remove caps!”
And twelve thousand men bared their heads. “Our Father which art in Heaven,” began our company. The chant was taken up around us. Sixty choirs of two hundred men each, and each choir singing independently. There were discordant notes to be heard, but, nevertheless, the hymn produced a stirring and solemn effect. Gradually the choirs came to an end. Finally, the last company of the battalion at the far end of the camp sang, “But deliver us from evil.” The drums gave a short roll, and the order:
“Put on headdress!” was given.
The soldiers laid themselves down to sleep. In our tent, where, as in the other tents, six men occupied a space of two square sajenes, my place was near the walls of the tent, and for a long time I lay gazing at the stars, at the campfires of other troops far from us, and listening to the low, confused murmur of a large camp. In the neighbouring tent someone was telling a fairytale, everlastingly interspersed with “And after that …” “and after that this prince went to his spouse and began to scold her about everything. And after that she … Lutikoff, are you asleep? Well, sleep, then, and God be with you,” murmured the narrator of the tale, and lapsed into silence.
The sound of conversation was audible from the officers’ tent also, and the movements of the officers sitting there were revealed in distorted form against the canvas by the light of the candles. From time to time could be heard the noisy laugh of the Adjutant. An armed sentry was pacing his beat in our lines. Opposite, and not far from us, was the artillery camp, with yet another sentry with drawn sword. The stamping of the horses picketed in their lines, and their deep breathing as they quietly chewed their oats, could be plainly heard, a sound which recalled nights passed at post-stages in now faraway homeland on just such quiet starlight nights as this one.
The Great Bear constellation was shining low down on the horizon, much lower down than with us in Russia. Gazing at the North Star, I pondered as to the exact direction in which St. Petersburg lay, where I had left my mother, friends, and all dear to me. Above my head familiar star groups were shining. The Milky Way shone in a bright, majestically calm, band of light. Towards the South burned the great stars of some constellations unknown to me, one with a red, and the other with a greenish fire. I wondered whether I should see any other strange stars when we were across the Danube and Balkans, and into Constantinople.
As I did not feel sleepy, I got up and commenced to stroll along the damp grass between our lines and the artillery. A dark figure came up with me, and, guessing by the clinking of a sword that it was an officer, I turned to my front. It proved to be Ventzel.
“Not asleep, Vladimir Mikhailich?” he inquired in a soft, quiet voice.
“No, sir.”
“My name is Peter Nicolaievitch … and I also cannot sleep. … I sat and sat with your Captain. But it was boring. They sat down to cards, and were all drinking too much. … Ah, what a night!”
He walked alongside me, and, reaching the end of our lines, we turned and continued to pace backwards and forwards in this manner several times, neither of us saying anything. Ventzel was the first to break the silence.
“Tell me, you have started on this campaign voluntarily?”
“Yes.”
“What induced you to do so?”
“How can I explain?” I replied, not wishing to go into details. “Chiefly, of course, a desire to experience and see things personally.”
“And probably to study the people in the person of its representative—the soldier?” inquired Ventzel. It was dark, and I could not see the expression on his face, but I detected the irony in his tone.
“How could one study here? How can one study when one only thinks of how to get to the night’s camp and sleep?”
“No; without joking, tell me why you would not transfer yourself to your Captain’s tent? Surely you do not value the opinion of a muzhik?”
“Certainly I value the opinion of anyone whose opinion I have no reason not to respect.”
“I have no reason to disbelieve you. Besides, it is the fashion nowadays. Even literature presents the muzhik as a masterpiece of creation.”
“But who is speaking of masterpieces of creation, Peter Nicolaievitch? If only they would recognize him as a man.”
“Enough of such sentimentality, please! Who does not recognize him as a man? A man? Well, granted he is a man, but what sort is another question. … Well, let’s talk of something else.”
We did, in fact, talk a great deal. Ventzel had evidently read a great deal, and, as Zaikin had said, “knew languages.”
The Captain’s remark that he could recite poetry also proved to be true. We talked about French writers, and Ventzel, having censured the “Realist” school, went back to the thirties and forties, and even recited with feeling Alfred de Musset’s A December Night. His rendering of it was good, simple, and expressive, and with a good accent. Having recited it, he was silent, and then added:
“Yes, it is good, but all the French authors put together are not worth ten lines of Schiller, Goethe, or Shakespeare.”
Until he got his company, he had charge of the regimental library, and had followed Russian literature closely.
Talking of it, he expressed himself strongly against what he termed its “boorish tendency.” The conversation then reverted to the old subject. Ventzel argued heatedly:
“When I was almost a boy, I entered the regiment, and I did not then think what I am telling you now. I tried to act by mere force of word. I endeavoured to obtain some moral influence over the men. But after a year they had exhausted me. All that remained from the so-called good books coming into contact with actuality proved to be sentimental bosh, and now I am convinced that the only way of making oneself understood is—that!”
He made some sort of gesture with his hand. But it was so dark that I did not understand it.
“What, Peter Nicolaievitch?”
“A clenched fist!” he interjected.
“But good night; it is time to sleep.”
I saluted and went back to my own tent, sorry and disgusted.
They were apparently all asleep, but a minute later, when I had laid down, Feodoroff, who was sleeping alongside me, asked quietly:
“Mikhailich, are you asleep?”
“No, why?”
“Were you walking with Venztel?”
“Yes.”
“How was he? Quiet?”
“All right—quiet and even kind.”
“Well, well. What it means to be a brother Barin! He isn’t like that with us.”
“What do you mean? Is he really very bad-tempered?”
“I should just think so—awful. He makes their teeth rattle in the second rifle company, the beast!”
And Feodoroff forthwith fell asleep, so that in reply to my next question I heard only his even and calm breathing. I wrapped myself up more tightly in my big cloak. My thoughts became at first confused, and then disappeared in sound sleep.