III
As soon as the bright sun appeared above the hill and lit up the valley along which we were marching, the wavy clouds of mist cleared away and it grew hot. The soldiers, with muskets and sacks on their shoulders, stepped slowly along the dusty road. Now and then Little-Russian words and laughter could be heard in their ranks. Several old soldiers in white blouses (most of them noncommissioned officers) walked together by the roadside smoking their pipes and conversing gravely. Three-horsed heavily-laden wagons moved steadily along, raising thick clouds of dust that hung motionless in the air. The officers rode on in front: some of them caracoled, i.e. they whipped their horse, made it take three or four leaps, and then, turning its head back, stopped abruptly. Others were occupied with the singers, who in spite of the heat and sultriness sang song after song. With the mounted Tartars, about two hundred yards ahead of the infantry, rode a tall handsome lieutenant in Asiatic costume, on a large white horse. He was known in the regiment as a desperate daredevil who would spit the truth out at anybody. He wore a black tunic trimmed with gold braid, leggings to match, soft closely-fitting gold-braided oriental shoes, a yellow coat and a tall sheepskin cap pushed back from his forehead. Fastened to the silver strap that lay across his chest and back, he carried a powder-flask and a pistol behind him. Another pistol and a silver-mounted dagger hung from his girdle, and above these a sword in a red-leather sheath and a musket in a black cover, were swung over his shoulder. By his clothing, by the way he sat his horse, by his general bearing, in fact by his every movement, one could see that he tried to resemble a Tartar. He even talked in a language I did not know, to the Tartars with whom he was riding, but from the bewildered and amused looks with which they glanced at one another, I surmised that they did not understand him either. He was one of our young officers, daredevil braves who shape their lives on the model of Lermontov’s and Marlinsky’s heroes. These officers see the Caucasus only through the prism of such books as the Heroes of Our Times, and Mullah-Nur, and are guided in their actions not by their own inclinations, but by the examples of their models.
The lieutenant, for instance, may perhaps have liked the company of well-bred women and of men of rank: generals, colonels, and aides-de-camp (it is even my conviction that he liked such society very much, for he was exceedingly ambitious), but he considered it his imperative duty to turn his roughest side to all important men, though he was strictly moderate in his rudeness to them; and when any lady came to the fortress, he considered it his duty to walk with his bosom-friends in a red shirt, and with slippers on his bare feet, before her window and to shout and swear at the top of his voice.
But all this he did not so much with the intention of offending her, as to let her see what beautiful white feet he had, and how easy it would be to fall in love with him, should he desire it. Or he would often go with two or three friendly Tartars to the hills at night, to lie in ambush by the roadside, and to watch for passing hostile Tartars and to kill them: and though his heart told him more than once that there was nothing valiant in this, he considered himself bound to cause suffering to people, with whom he affected to be disillusioned, and whom he chose to hate and despise. He always carried two things: a large icon hanging round his neck, and a dagger which he wore over his shirt even when in bed. He sincerely believed that he had enemies. To persuade himself that he must avenge himself on someone and wash away some insult with blood was his greatest enjoyment. He was convinced that hatred, vengeance, and contempt for the human race, were the noblest and most poetic of feelings. But his mistress (a Circassian, of course) whom I happened to meet subsequently, used to say that he was the kindest and mildest of men, and that every evening he wrote down his dismal thoughts in his diary, as well as his accounts on ruled paper, and prayed to God on his knees. And how much he suffered, merely to appear in his own eyes what he wished to be! For his comrades and the soldiers could never see him as he wished to appear. Once, on one of his nocturnal expeditions on the road with his bosom friends, he happened to wound a hostile Chechen with a bullet in the leg, and took him prisoner. After that, the Chechen lived for seven weeks with the lieutenant, who attended to him and nursed him as he would have nursed his dearest friend; and when the Chechen recovered he gave him presents and set him free.
After that, during one of our expeditions, when the lieutenant was retreating with the soldiers of the cordon and was firing to keep back the foe, he heard someone among the enemy call him by name, and the man he had wounded rode forward and made signs to the lieutenant to do the same.
The lieutenant rode up to his friend and pressed his hand. The hillsmen stood some way back and did not fire, but scarcely had the lieutenant turned his horse to return, before several men shot at him and a bullet grazed the small of his back. Another time, at night, when a fire had broken out in the fortress and two companies of soldiers were putting it out, I myself saw how the tall figure of a man, mounted on a black horse, and lit up by the red glow of the fire, suddenly appeared among the crowd and, pushing through, rode up to the very flames. When quite close, the lieutenant jumped from his horse and rushed into the house, one side of which was burning. Five minutes later he came out, with singed hair and burned elbow, carrying in his bosom two pigeons which he had rescued from the flames.
His name was Rosenkranz; yet he often spoke of his descent, deducing it somehow from the Varangians (the first rulers of Russia), and clearly demonstrated that he and his ancestors were pure Russians.