III
The rain was followed by heat. About this time we left the little village where our feet used to stick in the slippery mud, and came on to the main road leading from Yass to Bukarest. Our first march along this road from Tekuch to Berlada will always be remembered by those who made it. It was thirty-five degrees (Réaumur) in the shade, and the distance was forty-eight versts. It was perfectly still. A fine dust, full of lime, which was being raised by thousands of feet, hung over the road. It got into our noses and mouths, and powdered our hair so thickly that it was impossible to distinguish its colour.
Settling all over our perspiring faces, it became mud, and turned us into niggers. For some reason we marched in our tunics instead of in our shirtsleeves. The black cloth drew the sun, which literally baked our heads through our black shakos. The almost red-hot stones of the metalled road could be felt through the soles of our boots. The men kept on “falling out.” To add to our misfortunes, there were few wells along the route, and there was for the most part so little water in them that the head of our column (it was a whole division) exhausted the supply, and after frightful crushing and pushing at the wells, we found only a sticky liquid more resembling mud than water. When there was not even this, the men used to fall, utterly done up. On this day in our battalion alone about ninety men fell out along the road. Three died from sunstroke.
Compared with my comrades, this trial affected me but lightly. Possibly because the majority of my battalion hailed from the North, whereas I had been accustomed from childhood to the heat of the Steppe. Perhaps, also, there was another cause. I had occasion to note that the common soldier, speaking generally, takes physical suffering more to heart than is the case with those drawn from the so-called privileged classes. (I am referring only to those who went to the war as volunteers.) To the ordinary soldier physical misfortunes were a source of genuine grief, capable of producing depression and, in general, mental torture. Those who were going to the war as volunteers of course suffered, physically speaking, no less, but rather more, than the soldier drawn from the lower class—owing to a more tender upbringing, comparative bodily weakness, etc., but inwardly were calmer. Their spiritual world could not be disturbed by bleeding feet, insufferable heat, and deadly tiredness. Never have I experienced such complete spiritual calm, such peace within myself, and such contentment with life as when I was undergoing these hardships, and went forward under a rain of bullets to kill people. All this may seem wild and strange, but I am only writing the truth.
However that may be, when others fell by the roadside I still kept up.
In Tekuch I supplied myself with an enormous calabash water-bottle, holding at least four flaskfuls. It often cost me dear to fill it. Half of the water I used to keep for myself, and the other half I shared out to my comrades. A man would force himself to plod along, but in the end the heat would claim him. His legs would begin to bend under him, his body reel as if drunk. Through the thick layer of grime and dust could be seen the apoplectic hue of his face as his trembling hands gripped his rifle. A gulp of water would revive him for a few minutes, but eventually the man would fall senseless into the road thick with lime-dust. Hoarse voices would cry out “Orderly!” It was the orderly’s duty to drag the fallen man to one side, and assist him although he was himself almost in the same condition. The ditches along the road were sown with prostrate men. … Feodoroff and Jitkoff were marching alongside me, and, though obviously suffering, were endeavouring to hold out. The heat was affecting each reversely, according to his temperament. Talkative Feodoroff kept silent, merely giving an occasional deep sigh, and a piteous look was in his beautiful but now dust-inflamed eyes. “Uncle” Jitkoff, on the other hand, kept up a continuous flow of abuse and argument.
“Look at him, tumbling down—he will stick me with his bayonet, d⸺n him! …” he would cry angrily, avoiding some fallen soldier, the point of whose bayonet had nearly caught him in the eye. “Lord! why are you sending this on us? If it wasn’t for that brute I should fall myself.”
“Who is the brute, ‘Uncle’?” I asked.
“Niemtseff, the Staff-Captain. He is orderly officer today, and is in the rear. Better to go ahead or else he will beat me black and blue.”
I already knew that the men had changed the name Ventzel into Niemtseff. The two names were not unlike in Russian. I stepped out of the ranks. It was a little easier marching along the side of the road. There was less dust and not so much jostling. Many were doing this. On this unfortunate day nobody cared about keeping the ranks. Gradually I dropped behind my company, and found myself at the tail of the column.
Ventzel, worn out and breathless but excited, caught me up.
“How are you getting on?” he inquired, in a hoarse voice. “Let us go along the side of the road. I am absolutely worn out.”
“Do you want some water?”
He greedily took several gulps from my water-bottle. “Thank you, I feel better now. What a day!” For a little time we marched side by side in silence.
“By the way,” he said, “you have not transferred yourself to Ivan Platonich?”
“No.”
“More fool you. Excuse my outspokenness. Au revoir. I am wanted at the tail of the column. For some reason many of these tender creations are falling down.”
Having gone a few paces farther, I turned my head and saw Ventzel bend over a fallen soldier, and drag him by the shoulder.
“Get up, you blackguard! Get up!”
I literally did not recognize my educated conversationalist. He was pouring out an endless flow of the coarsest abuse. The soldier was almost senseless, and his lips were murmuring something as he gazed up with a hopeless expression at the infuriated officer.
“Get up! Get up immediately, Aha! you won’t? Then take that, and that, and that!”
Ventzel had seized his sword, and was dealing blow after blow with its iron scabbard over the wretched man’s shoulders, all blistered and aching from the weight of his knapsack and rifle. I could stand it no longer, and went up to Ventzel.
“Peter Nicolaievitch!”
“Get up! …” His arm with the sword was once more raised for a blow, when I succeeded in seizing it firmly.
“For God’s sake, Peter Nicolaievitch, leave him alone!”
He turned a frenzied face towards me. He was a terrifying sight with his eyes half out of his head, and a distorted mouth, which was convulsively twitching. With a sharp movement he wrenched his arm from my hold. I thought that he would roar at me for my boldness (to seize an officer by the arm was certainly most daring), but he restrained himself.
“Listen, Ivanoff; never do this. If, in my place, there was some other brute, such as Schuroff or Timothieff, you would have paid dearly for your pleasantry. You must remember that you are a private, and that for such action you could be without further words—shot.”
“It is all the same to me. I could not see and not interfere.”
“It does honour to your tender feelings. But apply them elsewhere. Can one act otherwise with these? …” (His face assumed an expression of contempt—nay, more, hatred.) “Perhaps ten of these scores who have given way and fallen down like a lot of old women are really absolutely played out. I am doing this not from cruelty. I have none in my nature. But one must maintain discipline. If it was possible to reason with them, I would talk, but words have no effect on them. They understand and feel only physical pain.”
I did not hear him out, but started to overtake my company, which was already far away. I caught up Feodoroff and Jitkoff as our battalion debouched from the road into a field and was halted.
“What were you talking about, Mikhailich, with Staff-Captain Ventzel?” asked Feodoroff, when, thoroughly exhausted, I threw myself down near him, after having with difficulty piled my arm.
“Talking,” muttered Jitkoff.
“Can you call it talking? He seized him by the arm.”
“Take care, Ivanoff, sir. Be careful of Niemtseff. Don’t be misled because he likes to talk with you. It will cost you dear.”