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Entering the first room, lined with beds on which wounded men were lying, and the air of which was permeated with a horribly disgusting hospital smell, they met two Sisters of Mercy just going out.
One, a woman of fifty, with black eyes and a stern expression, was carrying bandages and lint and giving orders to a young lad, a medical assistant, who was following her. The other, a very pretty girl of about twenty, whose pale, tender, fair face looked with a peculiarly sweet helplessness from under her white cap, was walking with her hands in her apron pockets by the side of the elder woman, and seemed afraid of being left behind.
Kozeltsóf asked them if they knew where Mártsof was, whose leg had been torn off the day before.
“He is of the P⸺ regiment, I think?” asked the elder. “Is he a relation of yours?”
“No, a comrade.”
“Take them to him,” said she in French to the young Sister. “It is this way,” and she herself, followed by the assistant, went to one of the patients.
“Come along; what are you looking at?” said Kozeltsóf to Volódya, who stood with raised brows and a look of suffering on his face, unable to tear his eyes from the wounded. “Come now!”
Volódya followed his brother, but still kept looking back and repeating unconsciously, “O my God! my God!”
“I suppose he has not been here long?” the Sister remarked to Kozeltsóf, with reference to Volódya, who followed them along the corridor with exclamations and sighs.
“He has only just come.”
The pretty Sister looked at Volódya, and suddenly began to cry.
“My God! my God! when will it end?” she said, with despair in her voice.
They entered the officers’ ward. Mártsof was lying on his back, his sinewy arms, bare to the elbow, thrown behind his head, and an expression on his yellow face as of a man who has clenched his teeth to keep himself from screaming with pain. His sound leg with a stocking on showed from under the blanket, and one could see the toes moving spasmodically.
“Well, how are you?” asked the Sister, raising his slightly bald head with her slender delicate fingers (on one of which Volódya noticed a gold ring) and arranging his pillow.
“In pain, of course!” he answered angrily. “That’ll do—the pillow’s all right!” and the toes in the stocking moved still faster. “How d’you do? What’s your name?”—“Excuse me,” he said, when Kozeltsóf had told him. “Ah yes, I beg pardon! one forgets everything here. Why, we lived together,” he added, without any sign of pleasure, and looked inquiringly at Volódya.
“This is my brother, arrived today from Petersburg.”
“H’m! And I have got my discharge,” said the wounded man, frowning. “Oh, how it hurts; if only it would be over quicker.”
He drew up his leg and, moving his toes still more rapidly, covered his face with his hands.
“He must be left alone,” said the Sister in a whisper, while tears filled her eyes: “he is very ill.”
While yet on the North Side the brothers had decided to go to the Fifth Bastion together, but on leaving the Nicholas Battery it was as though they had agreed not to expose themselves to needless danger, and, without mentioning the matter, they decided to go each his own way.
“Only, how will you find it, Volódya?” said the elder. “Look here! Nikoláyef shall take you to the Korábelnaya, and I’ll go on alone and come to you tomorrow.”
Nothing more was said at this last parting between the brothers.