XII
“Do you know Praskoúhin is killed?” said Pesth, accompanying Kaloúgin, who was returning home.
“Impossible!”
“Yes, I saw him myself.”
“Well, goodbye … I must be off.”
“I am very pleased,” thought Kaloúgin, approaching his lodgings. “It is the first time I have had such luck when on duty, it’s first-rate; I am alive and well, and shall certainly get an excellent recommendation, and I am sure of a gold sabre. And I really have deserved it.”
After reporting what was necessary to the General he went to his room, where Prince Gáltsin, long since returned, sat awaiting him, reading a book he had found on Kaloúgin’s table.
It was with wonderful pleasure Kaloúgin felt himself again safe at home, and having put on his nightshirt and got into bed, he related to Gáltsin all the details of the affair, recounting them, very naturally, from a point of view from which the facts showed what a capable and brave officer he, Kaloúgin, was—which it seemed hardly necessary to allude to, since everyone knew it, and had no right or reason to question it, except, perhaps, the deceased Captain Praskoúhin, who, though he used to consider it an honour to walk arm-in-arm with Kaloúgin, had, only yesterday, told a friend privately that though Kaloúgin was a first-rate fellow, yet, between you and me, he was awfully disinclined to go to the bastions.
When Praskoúhin, walking beside Miháylof after Kaloúgin left them, had just begun to revive somewhat on approaching a safer place, he suddenly saw a bright light flash up behind him, and heard the sentinel shout “Mortar!” and a soldier walking behind him say, “That’s coming straight for the bastion!”
Miháylof looked round. The bright spot seemed to have stopped at its zenith, in the position which makes it absolutely impossible to define its direction. But that only lasted a moment; the bomb—coming faster and faster, nearer and nearer, so that the sparks of its fuse were already visible and the fatal whistle audible—descended towards the centre of the battalion.
“Lie down!” shouted someone.
Miháylof and Praskoúhin lay flat on the ground. Praskoúhin, closing his eyes, only heard how the bomb crashed down on to the hard earth close by. A second passed which seemed an hour: the bomb had not exploded. Praskoúhin was afraid: perhaps he had played the coward for nothing. Perhaps the bomb had fallen far away, and it only seemed to him that its fuse was fizzing close by. He opened his eyes, and was pleased to see Miháylof lying immovable at his feet. But at that moment he caught sight of the glowing fuse of the bomb, which was spinning on the ground not a yard off. Terror—cold terror, excluding every other thought and feeling, seized his whole being. He covered his face with his hands.
Another second passed—a second during which a whole world of feelings, thoughts, hopes, and memories flashed before his imagination.
“Whom will it kill—Miháylof or me? Or both of us? And if it’s me, where? In the head? then I’m done for; and if in the leg, they’ll cut it off (I’ll certainly ask for chloroform), and I may survive it. But perhaps only Miháylof will be killed; then I shall relate how we were going side by side, and how he was killed, and I was splashed with his blood. No, it’s nearer to me … it will be I.”
Then he remembered the twelve roubles he owed Miháylof, remembered also a debt in Petersburg that should have been paid long ago, and the gipsy song he had sung that evening. The woman he loved rose in his imagination, wearing a cap with lilac ribbons; he recollected a man who had insulted him five years ago and whom he had not paid out; and yet, inseparable from all these and from thousands of other recollections, the present thought, the expectation of death, did not leave him for a moment. “Perhaps it won’t explode,” and with desperate decision he wished to open his eyes. But at that instant a red flame pierced through the still closed lids, and with a terrible crash something struck him in the middle of his chest. He jumped up and began to run, but stumbling over the sabre that got between his legs, he fell on his side.
“Thank God, I’m only bruised!” was his first thought, and he wished to touch his chest with his hand; but his arms seemed tied to his sides, and it felt as if a vice were squeezing his head. Soldiers fitted 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 it wet 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 bled,” thought he, and giving way more and more to fear lest the soldiers who kept fitting 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 he was frightened to hear it. 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.