XIII
It was already dark, and only the watch-fires dimly lit up the camp when, after the horses were groomed, I rejoined my men. A large stump lay smouldering on the charcoal. Only three men sat round it: Antonov, who was turning a little pot of ryabco on the fire; Zhdanov, who was dreamily poking the embers with a stick, and Chikin, with his pipe, which never would draw well. The rest had already lain down to sleep—some under the ammunition wagons, some on the hay, some by the campfires. By the dim light of the charcoal I could distinguish familiar backs, legs, and heads, and among the latter that of the young recruit who, drawn close to the fire, seemed to be already sleeping. Antonov made room for me. I sat down by him and lit a cigarette. The smell of mist and the smoke of damp wood filled the air and made one’s eyes smart, and, as before, a dank drizzle kept falling from the dismal sky.
One could hear the regular sound of snoring nearby, the crackling of branches in the fire, a few words now and then, and the clattering of muskets among the infantry. The camp watch-fires glowed all around, lighting up within narrow circles the dark shadows of the soldiers near them. Where the light fell by the nearest fires, I could distinguish the figures of naked soldiers waving their shirts close over the fire. There were still many who had not lain down, but moved and spoke, collected on a space of some eighty square yards; but the gloomy dull night gave a peculiar mysterious character to all this movement, as if each one felt the dark silence and feared to break its calm monotony.
When I began to speak, I felt that my voice sounded strange, and I discerned the same frame of mind reflected in the faces of all the soldiers sitting near me. I thought that before I joined them they had been talking about their wounded comrade; but it had not been so at all. Chikin had been telling them about receiving supplies at Tiflis, and about the scamps there.
I have noticed always and everywhere, but especially in the Caucasus, the peculiar tact with which our soldiers avoid mentioning anything that might have a bad effect on a comrade’s spirits. A Russian soldier’s spirit does not rest on easily inflammable enthusiasm which cools quickly, like the courage of Southern nations; it is as difficult to inflame him as it is to depress him. He does not need scenes, speeches, war-cries, songs, and drums; on the contrary, he needs quiet, order, and an absence of any affectation. In a Russian, a real Russian, soldier, you will never find any bragging, swagger, or desire to befog or excite himself in time of danger; on the contrary, modesty, simplicity, and a capacity for seeing in peril something quite else than the danger, are the distinctive features of his character. I have seen a soldier wounded in the leg, who, in the first instant, thought only of the hole in his new sheepskin cloak; and an artillery outrider, who, creeping from beneath a horse that was killed under him, began unbuckling the girths to save the saddle. Who does not remember the incident at the siege of Gergebel, when the fuse of a loaded bomb caught fire in the laboratory and an artillery sergeant ordered two soldiers to take the bomb and run to throw it into the ditch, and how the soldiers did not run to the nearest spot, by the Colonel’s tent, which stood over the ditch, but took it farther on, so as not to wake the gentlemen asleep in the tent, and were consequently both blown to pieces. I remember also, how, in the expedition of 1852, something led a young soldier, while in action, to say he thought the platoon would never escape, and how the whole platoon angrily attacked him for such evil words, which they did not like even to repeat. And now, when the thought of Velenchuk must have been in the mind of each one, and when we might expect Tartars to steal up at any moment and fire a volley at us, everyone listened to Chikin’s sprightly stories, and no one referred either to the day’s action, or to the present danger, or to the wounded man; as if it had all happened goodness knows how long ago, or had never happened at all. But it seemed to me that their faces were rather sterner than usual, that they did not listen to Chikin so very attentively, and that even Chikin himself felt he was not being listened to, but talked for the sake of talking.
Maksimov joined us at the fire, and sat down beside me. Chikin made room for him, stopped speaking, and started sucking at his pipe once more.
“The infantry have been sending to the camp for vodka,” said Maksimov after a considerable silence; “they have just returned.” He spat into the fire. “The sergeant says they saw our man.”
“Is he alive?” asked Antonov, turning the pot.
“No, he’s dead.”
The young recruit suddenly raised his head in the little red cap, looked intently for a minute over the fire at Maksimov and at me, then quickly let his head sink again and wrapped himself in his cloak.
“There now, it wasn’t for nought that death had laid its hand on him when I had to wake him in the ‘park’ this morning,” said Antonov.
“Nonsense!” said Zhdanov, turning the smouldering log, and all were silent.
Then, amid the general silence, came the report of a gun from the camp behind us. Our drummers beat an answering tattoo. When the last vibration ceased Zhdanov rose first, taking off his cap. We all followed his example.
Through the deep silence of the night rose an harmonious choir of manly voices:
“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from the evil one.”
“We had a man in ’45 who was wounded in the same place,” said Antonov, when we had put on our caps and again sat down by the fire. “We carried him about with us on a gun for two days—do you remember Shevchenko, Zhdanov—and then we just left him there under a tree.”
At this moment an infantryman with tremendous whiskers and moustaches, carrying a musket and pouch, came up to our fire.
“Give me a light for my pipe, comrades,” said he.
“All right, smoke away: there’s fire enough,” remarked Chikin.
“I suppose it’s about Dargo you are telling, comrade,” said the infantry soldier to Antonov.
“Yes, about Dargo in ’45,” Antonov replied.
The infantryman shook his head, screwed up his eyes, and sat down on his heels near us.
“Yes, all sorts of things happened there,” he remarked.
“Why did you leave him behind?” I asked Antonov.
“He was suffering much with his stomach. As long as we halted it was all right, but as soon as we moved on he screamed aloud and asked for God’s sake to be left behind—but we felt it a pity. But when he began to give it us hot, killed three of our men from the guns and an officer besides, and we somehow got separated from our battery … It was such a go! We thought we should not get our guns away. It was muddy and no mistake!”
“The mud was worst under the Indeysky Mountain,” remarked one of the soldiers.
“Yes, it was there he got more worse! So we considered it with Anoshenka—he was an old artillery sergeant. ‘Now really he can’t live, and he’s asking for God’s sake to be left behind; let us leave him here.’ So we decided. There was a tree, such a branchy one, growing there. Well, we took some soaked hardtack Zhdanov had, and put it near him, leant him against the tree, put a clean shirt on him, and said goodbye—all as it should be—and left him.”
“And was he a good soldier?”
“Yes, he was all right as a soldier,” remarked Zhdanov.
“And what became of him God only knows,” continued Antonov; “many of the likes of us perished there.”
“What, at Dargo?” said the infantryman, as he rose, scraping out his pipe, and again half-closing his eyes and shaking his head; “all sorts of things happened there.”
And he left us.
“And have we many men still in the battery who were at Dargo?” I asked.
“Many? why, there’s Zhdanov, myself, Patsan, who is now on furlough, and there may be six others, not more.”
“And why’s our Patsan holiday-making all this time?” said Chikin, stretching out his legs, and lying down with his head on a log. “I reckon he’s been away getting on for a year.”
“And you, have you had your year at home?” I asked Zhdanov.
“No, I did not go,” he answered unwillingly.
“You see, it’s all right to go,” said Antonov, “if they’re well off at home, or if you are yourself fit to work; then it’s tempting to go and they’re glad to see you.”
“But where’s the use of going when one’s one of two brothers?” continued Zhdanov. “It’s all they can do to get their bread; how should they feed a soldier like me? I’m no help to them after twenty-five years’ service. And who knows whether they’re alive still?”
“Haven’t you ever written?” I asked.
“Yes, indeed! I wrote two letters, but never had an answer. Either they’re dead, or simply won’t write because they’re living in poverty themselves; so where’s the good?”
“And is it long since you wrote?”
“I wrote last when we returned from Dargo … Won’t you sing us ‘The Birch-Tree’?” he said, turning to Antonov, who sat leaning his elbows on his knees and humming a song.
Antonov began to sing “The Birch-Tree.”
“This is the song Daddy Zhdanov likes most best of all,” said Chikin to me in a whisper, pulling at my cloak. “Sometimes he right down weeps when Philip Antonov sings it.”
Zhdanov at first sat quite motionless, with eyes fixed on the glimmering embers, and his face, lit up by the reddish light, seemed very gloomy; then his jaws below his ears began to move faster and faster, and at last he rose, and spreading out his cloak, lay down in the shadow behind the fire. Either it was his tossing and groaning as he settled down to sleep, or it may have been the effect of Velenchuk’s death and of the dull weather, but it really seemed to me that he was crying.
The bottom of the charred log, bursting every now and then into flames, lit up Antonov’s figure, with his grey moustaches, red face, and the medals on the cloak that he had thrown over his shoulders; or it lit up someone’s boots, head, or back. The same gloomy drizzle fell from above, the air was still full of moisture and smoke, all around were the same bright spots of fires, now dying down, and amid the general stillness came the mournful sound of Antonov’s song; and when that stopped for an instant, the faint nocturnal sounds of the camp—snoring, clanking of sentries’ muskets, voices speaking in low tones—took part.
“Second watch! Makatyuk and Zhdanov!” cried Maksimov.
Antonov stopped singing. Zhdanov rose, sighed, stepped across the log, and went slowly towards the guns.