Part + 

I + 

To speak with a clear conscience as one does at confession, even now I can’t make out why I was in such a panic on that day. War is war, we all know; no one greets its coming with delight; still, it is a simple matter, when all is said and done; we have been through it before. The Japanese War is still fresh in our memories. At present, for example, when bloody battles are being fought, I have no sense of fear, and live as I always do. I go about my work, see my friends, indulge in a theatre or a picture-show, and were it not for my wife’s brother, Pavel, being at the war, I could almost forget, on occasions, the terrible events that are happening. + 

Of course, I don’t deny that there’s a restlessness and anxiety at bottom. I can’t exactly describe the sensation; it’s a kind of gnawing despair that comes over one mostly in the morning at breakfast. You no sooner open your paper (I take in two besides Kopeika) than you are brought back to the horrors that are happening over there to those poor Belgians, to their houses and children, and you feel as though someone had poured cold water over you, and turned you out naked on a frosty winter’s day. Still, this sensation has no relation to fear; it’s merely a feeling of human pity for those in distress. + 

As I was saying, on that first day I was ridiculously frightened. It makes me blush to think of it. I need only mention that on the 2nd August I paid no less than thirty roubles for a miserable conveyance to take us from Shuvalov, where we had been staying, back to town, and in less than five days I was taking the whole of my family back again by train, and that we actually remained in the country until the 25th August in the most peaceful manner possible. What a state we were in, to be sure! My wife, unkempt, unwashed, dazed and distraught, jolted along with the children in the cart, while I, the head of the family, marched in the road by their side, feeling as though doomsday were behind us and we must run, run without looking back, without stopping to take breath, not merely to St. Petersburgh, but to the very ends of the earth. + 

All the shops along the road were selling bread in abundance, and I had thrust some stupid crusts into my pocket in case of need. Prudence and foresight⁠—under any circumstances! + 

The weather was glorious at the time, but we had no faith even in the weather. It seemed to us that it was bound to pour with rain, or that a sudden snowstorm would descend upon us although it was August, and we should perish on the way! How horribly we worried our driver! + 

Another disgraceful circumstance comes to my mind. I picked some blue little bell flower on the wayside and gave it to Lidotchka, my little girl, chaffing her a bit as I did so. It was a natural act, being fond of my children as I am, especially of Lidotchka, but it pains me to recall the thought that occurred to me at the time. I congratulated myself on not having lost my head like other people, since there I was picking flowers, joking and trying to cheer up my family. An extraordinary act of heroism! + 

With what a sense of relief did we tumble into the house! Beside ourselves with joy as we lighted the candles (the electric light was disconnected owing to our absence) and seated ourselves at the table round the samovar. + 

The most astonishing thing is that I don’t know exactly when the absurd panic left me, nor how it happened that five days later we were going calmly back again to the country, not the least bit ashamed. However, half the carriage was full of heroes like ourselves. I wonder what we must have thought of each other? I don’t suppose we bothered, though; we were too engrossed in our journey, telling each other without the least embarrassment what we had been foolish enough to pay for our conveyances! + 

To do myself a little justice, I was largely infected by my wife’s unspeakable horror. At any rate, that is how I explain our “flight from Egypt” to our friends. The explanation, however, does not fully satisfy my own conscience. Had I been a coward, or what might be called an effeminate person, there would have been nothing more to say, but, far from being a coward, I am a man of some courage; a convulsion took place in my brain, and the world was turned upside down. What a fool I must have looked as I strutted along beside the cart, picking flowers into the bargain! And what a smart fellow I considered myself, to have got that cart to save my family! + 

I wonder what made me go like that? + 

I know now, to be sure. The vision the war must have presented to me was so appalling and strange as to bear no resemblance to a war at all. I can’t recall that vision, no matter how hard I try. It must have seemed like the crack of doom, that the end of the world had come and the destruction of all living things. I must have heard a tremendous crash of thunder that cleft the earth in two, and we had to fly for our very lives. + 

I remember one thing, however, I was not in the least afraid of the Germans or their Kaiser. I never thought of them at all, in fact. It must have seemed plain to any fool that they couldn’t come flying to Shuvalov in a day. + 

And why should I have been afraid of the Germans, anyway? Weren’t they human beings like ourselves, as much afraid of us as we of them? + 

We were both in the same boat, as it were. It was as if some antediluvian animals were close at our heels, crushing the earth with their tremendous paws.⁠ ⁠… But, no, that doesn’t describe it. What is an animal? Who is afraid of an animal nowadays? It was something quite different. Some convulsion must have taken place in my brain as to make the world seem upside down⁠—literally upside down⁠—so that I seemed to be walking not on my feet, but on hands like an acrobat. + 

I remember, too, how everything astonished me on the road that day; the most ordinary little thing with no claim to the remarkable whatever. For instance, a man would be coming down the road, and as I watched him moving his legs, I thought, “Fancy that, he’s walking!” Or a hen would run out of some yard, or a little kitten would sit on a patch of weeds, and again I wonder, “A kitten!” Or a “Good morning” said to some tradesman would make me marvel that he replied “Good morning,” and not some unintelligible bla, bla! We saw the streets in the town⁠—again a surprise. And the policeman, too, standing at the corner, and one we knew into the bargain, brought fresh exclamations of surprise, as though at the words from Wilhelm “War is declared” kittens and policemen and streets should have disappeared into the infernal regions, and the human tongue changed to the unintelligible roar of the beasts. What wild ideas a panic will create, to be sure! + 

It seems ridiculous to me now, and I’m ashamed to think of it. Another incident, besides the one of Lidotchka’s flower, bothers my conscience. Whether I am a coward or not, after what I have stated above, is open to conjecture, but of my honesty I have always been assured. Here in my diary, alone with God and my own conscience, I may even say more; I am not only honest, but remarkably so, and am naturally proud of the fact, but, however, people know what I am. And still, notwithstanding my honesty and decency, on the 2nd August, accursed day, I left out cook, Annisia, behind in Shuvalov, though she shed tears and entreated me to take her. + 

Even this incident produces nothing but a smile now. What could have happened to the silly thing there? And what did happen, in point of fact? She appeared home a couple of days later, having managed to conceal herself on a train, bringing back a jar of pickled cucumbers. That day, of course, the thing had an ugly look about it. There was I running away to save my family from some impending disaster, and leaving the poor girl behind, because there wasn’t room enough for her in the cart, or because I had to leave someone behind to look after my property! Under no circumstances did I forget my property! + 

It is consoling to think that, though Annisia cried and begged to be taken, she bore us no grudge for having left her. Foolish woman! + 

I write this diary in the evenings on the pretext of working on some papers I sometimes bring home from the office. My wife is a wonderful creature in every respect; she is a woman in a thousand, good-natured, intelligent and responsive, still, even a man’s nearest and dearest hinder him from expressing his thoughts as he would like. To secure freedom of thought and expression, I must be perfectly sure that no one will read what I write. Apart from the fact that one doesn’t like to disclose certain things even to those one loves, there are dangers and pitfalls to be avoided that a man less wary than I might fall into. I don’t interfere with other people’s thoughts, and I don’t want anyone to interfere with me. + 

I am going to make a great confession. Notwithstanding the general misery I am a shamelessly happy man! Over there a bloody war is raging, full of horrors, while here, Sashenka, my wife, is bathing the children. She has finished darling little Lidotchka and that rascal Peter, and is doing Jena. How sweetly she is smiling to herself! When she has put the children to bed she will go about her own affairs, such as getting things ready for tomorrow, which will be Sunday, or she will play something on the piano, perhaps. + 

Yesterday we had a postcard from her brother Pavel, so Sashenka will be happy and contented for a week. Of course, we can’t tell what may happen, but if we don’t look too far ahead, our life may be said to be a truly happy one. Sashenka’s piano is a hired one; Sashenka is very fond of music, and was to have entered the conservatoire. To economise in wartime she offered to give up the piano, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Five roubles a month is a paltry sum for which to deprive the household of the pleasure of hearing her play. And Lidotchka, too, is beginning to learn. She shows remarkable talent for a child of six and a half. + 

Yes, I am truly a happy man. I will mention some of the reasons of my happiness here, though I would not talk of them to a living soul. For one thing, I am forty-five years old, and no matter what happens I will never under any circumstances be called to the colours. This is a thing it would hardly be safe to say to others; it might lead to so much misunderstanding. I have to be somewhat of a humbug at times and pretend, as all the rest do, that if I were younger and stronger and so on, I should most certainly join as a volunteer, but at bottom I can’t help rejoicing, that without in any way breaking the law, I can stop at home and not have to expose myself to some silly bullet. + 

I confess, too, that when the men in our office stand round the map loudly maintaining that this is a great war, essential to some great purpose, I make no attempt to argue with them. What would be the use of any little objection I might make? They would only laugh at or make sport of me, as they did of Vasia, the bookkeeper, a day or two ago, almost reducing the poor man to tears. Besides, a few indiscreet words in the mood people are in now might be harmful. No one knows how they might be interpreted. + 

Still, in spite of what the men in our office say, and the newspapers too, I am firmly convinced that I do not like this war at all. Greater minds than mine, such as those of scholars, politicians, or writers, may see some sense in this ugly brawl, but my small mind fails to see any good in it whatever. When I imagine myself standing in some clear field at the front, men aiming at me with rifle and gun with intent to kill⁠—aiming, straining, bursting to hit me⁠—I find it ridiculous; it seems like some silly practical joke. Where is the particular spot they would find so tempting to fire at? Is it my forehead, my chest, or my stomach? But no matter how much I touch myself, nor look myself up and down, I can discover nothing remarkable about me. I am a man, just an ordinary man, and no one but a fool would want to fire at me, I had some excuse to talk of silly bullets! And when my imagination carries me a little further, and I see a German on the other side of the field feeling his stomach and thinking what a fool I am, it is more than absurd, it becomes disgusting. + 

Let us suppose even that the German was not feeling his stomach, but aiming with every intent to kill me, does he know why he wants to do it? It’s quite possible that I’m a fool and a coward; we won’t argue about that, but supposing I’m not the only one? Supposing there are thousands, a hundred thousand men in St. Petersburgh like me, who keep diaries and rejoice that they will never be called up nor be killed, and who argue in exactly the same way as I do? + 

I admit there is nothing to be proud of in the fact of being afraid of one’s skin; I hardly expect to receive the St. George Cross for it; I wasn’t made for the St. George Cross, and I never set up to be a hero of the Malakhov Hill. I have never harmed anyone in my life, and I have a perfect right to demand that no one shall harm me by shooting me down like a sparrow. I didn’t want the war. Wilhelm did not send his ambassadors to me to find out if I wanted to fight; he just said “fight,” and that’s all. Needless to say, I love my country, Russia, and should any fool or madman come to attack it, I should be bound to defend it, regardless of my skin. Were I of military age (and this in all honesty) I should not evade my duties under pretext of medical unfitness, or take advantage of influence and hide behind Auntie’s skirts in the rear. I should be in my place at the front with the others, ready to kill or be killed. + 

This is as plain as broad daylight; but it so happens that I am forty-five and have a perfect right to stay where I am, to think as I choose, to be a coward or a fool, if I like. It is the hand of fate! Instead of being Ilya Petrovitch Dementev, living in Post Office Street in St. Petersburgh, I might have been a Belgian, a Maeterlinck; I might have perished beneath a German shell, but I am Ilya Petrovitch, forty-five years old, and do live in Post Office Street in St. Petersburgh, where no German shell can reach me, and I am happy in the consciousness thereof. + 

All sorts of things might have been. Instead of working in our particular bank, which is as sound as any banking house can well be, and likely to withstand any war, I might have been working in some wretched little business that would have collapsed with the first breath of war, as so many of them have done, and I might have been left homeless with my Lidotchka, nothing but a lottery ticket in my pocket and five hundred roubles in the savings bank⁠—a pleasant prospect indeed! Or I might have been a Pole or a Jew in Galicia and lain as carrion in the dust, or dangling from a tree. No man escapes his fate! + 

It is useless, however, to speculate on things that are not, and no matter how sorry I might feel for the Belgians or for our own soldiers in the trenches, I can’t help rejoicing that I am what I am. God! to think that instead of my dear Sashenka I might have had some wretched woman for a wife, of whom there are so many in the world! That, too, would have been fate; as it is, I can’t help gloating over the happiness that is mine. + 

Sashenka has just been playing the Belgian National Anthem. What beautiful music it is! How exhilarating, and what love of freedom and country it expresses! The tears came into my eyes as I listened. A feeling of pity for the poor Belgians came over me. Their beautiful anthem and their love of their native land availed them nothing; they are being crushed by the confounded Germans. + 

Yes, no matter what the politicians in our office may say, I can never agree that this war is a good war. How absurd to think of it! People are being crushed and butchered, yet they maintain that there is no harm in it, for when we take Berlin, they argue, justice will be done. What kind of justice, and for whom? What use would justice be to an unfortunate Belgian⁠—a man of my age, let us say? And there must be many men like me. + 

Sashenka says it’s late and time for bed. It’s not my fault that after a hard, honest day’s work I am well pleased at the prospect of a peaceful night’s rest! + 

This is a great, historic day. The name of St. Petersburgh has been changed to Petrograd. Henceforth I shall be a citizen of Petrograd. It will be difficult to get used to the change, though it sounds so well. The men in our office are delighted, but I am sorry to lose familiar old Petersburgh, St. Petersburgh, into the bargain. Petrograd makes you feel as though you had been stuck in your chief’s waiting-room for a whole day in a new coat. The coat was a good one, no doubt, but you couldn’t help regretting the cast-off jacket, every stain of which reminded you of its lost comfort. + 

We continue to be victorious. Prussia has been occupied by our troops, and there is a rumour that today or tomorrow, we shall take Königsberg. This is becoming serious, indeed! Today’s staff communique says that Lvov and Halitch have fallen, and that the Austrians are completely routed. + 

I need not conceal what I am going to say. For all that I am a peace-loving man I can’t help feeling the glory of it. If there must be a war, of course it is better to beat than be beaten. + 

How quickly the war has spread! How swift are its fiery footsteps! I am reminded of a fire I once saw in the country when a boy. One house caught fire at first, and in less than an hour every thatched roof in the village was ablaze, and there seemed no end to the sea of flame. + 

It would be an interesting study for a moralist to discover what there was in the human soul that found satisfaction in watching a fire. What is it that produces the festive sensation it gives? Is it the alarm bell, the firemen’s helmets, or the bustling crowd? I went to a school in a provincial town when I was a boy, and I well remember how we used to run to watch a fire, no matter how far away it was. Workmen would throw down their tools and run, paying no heed to dusty clothes and grimy faces. At the cry of “Fire,” men and boys scrambled to the roofs, the iron sheets clanking as they went, and there they stood, arms outstretched, fingers pointing in the direction of the fire, in the attitudes of marshals on monuments. Even at school we did not fail to rush to the windows at sound of the fire brigade, and the masters, too, were not above looking out themselves. And no one thought at all of the poor people whose house was burning. + 

I confess to a certain feeling of excitement and curiosity at the European conflagration, and wonder how it will change from day to day. I should have preferred peace, of course, and have no sympathy with the continual assertion of the men in our office that we should be proud to be living at a time like the present and going through this war; nevertheless, I cannot help being interested in the war. + 

Pavel is the only load at my heart. He is treading as a conqueror on Prussian soil so far, but who knows what may happen tomorrow? Where would I have been had I been, say, twenty or thirty, not forty-five? The thought damps your ardour somewhat. It would be as well to remember it when your enthusiasm gets the better of you. + 

It is over a fortnight since we have heard any news of Pavel. From his last letter or two we gathered that he was somewhere in Prussia where the Samsonov Corps was so completely smashed up. Sashenka is horribly uneasy, and added to that, her mother comes to us almost every day, and the sight of the poor old lady’s grief upsets the whole household. She is here now, having come straight from Mass. Sashenka is giving her coffee in the dining-room as I write here. Besides Pavel, Sashenka’s mother has another son, Nikolai, who is married and has a family. The old lady lives with them, having no means of her own, but either because Nikolai is unsympathetic, or by the very nature of things, she is drawn more towards her daughter, and gives us the benefit of every little trouble and worry she has. I am not complaining of the harmless old lady, but I must confess I do find her visits rather trying at times. One day it’s tears and complaints about Nikolai, who doesn’t get on very well with his wife, another it’s Pavel. There is always something to upset Sashenka and bring discord into our otherwise happy family. + 

I am very fond of Pavel myself, and can’t think without a shudder that at this moment, as I write his name, he may be wounded or even killed. I awoke in the middle of last night and could not go to sleep again for two absurd, conflicting sensations that tormented me. I couldn’t think of Pavel as living, yet I had no ground for thinking him dead. I didn’t know whether to pity him exposed to danger in the trenches, or to mourn for him dead. + 

At the present moment it seems to me that he is alive, but sooner or later he is bound to be killed in this horrible war that is more like some wholesale butchery than the triumph of justice. I never argue with the men in our office when they declare that the war will be over in November. Their view seems to me too optimistic; we can hardly expect peace before Christmas at least. Another four months are before us, and with two hundred thousand killed every month, what earthly chance can Pavel have? + 

Being a man I can look the inevitable in the face with fortitude, and will bear the blow with dignity should it befall us, but how about mother and Sashenka? The poor old lady is ready to die at the merest breath of misfortune. + 

When I lay awake last night I wondered how I would break the news to mother in the event of the calamity happening. What could I say to her? My heart began to beat violently at the very thought. To pronounce the word that is to change completely the aspect of the world for another, to make it something different to what it was a moment ago, is not a pleasant task. To be responsible for the first burst of grief was truly terrifying, particularly as I did not know what form it would take. Would it produce a flood of tears, one heartrending cry, or sudden death? + 

I watched mother in the dining-room before I came away, as she raised a rusk to her mouth. “I wonder what would happen to that rusk if I were to say that Pavel was killed?” I thought. And a vivid picture rose up in my mind of how that unfortunate rusk would roll to the floor; I even saw the very spot where it would lie, and how Annisia would pick it up when she swept the room, and eat it, little witting how it came there. + 

The autumn climate of Petrograd is evidently having a bad effect on us all. The children are very fractious. Even my darling Lidotchka so far forgot her usually angelic ways and had a fight with Peter. + 

I have just returned from a three hours’ walk along the river and the Nevsky. Our northern capital is indeed a beautiful city, so grand and magnificent! There are many people who compare it unfavourably with Moscow. Even the men in our office are often to be heard in this timeworn dispute, but I hold my tongue according to my usual habit. What is the use of attempting to convince the blind, or men who refuse to see? The man who irritates me most of all in this respect is Zvoliansky, a Pole, who thinks himself competent to judge because he happened to have spent six months studying in Paris. To see the way he turns up his nose! I should like to set the fool to build a city like ours! + 

I happened to reach the Nevsky at the moment when the lights went up as by magic, and turned the grey twilight into deep blue. It is really wonderful that no matter what the weather, be it raining or snowing, it seems to change with the lighting of the lamps, to some enchanted weather of its own. I mixed with the crowd with a sense of pleasure; it was denser and more animated than usual; I moved along with it and soon found myself at the Admiralty without having noticed the way I had come. We seemed to be treading on air. I admired, as I walked, the numberless lights of green, white and mauve. Tramcars streamed past, so many that one lost count of their green and red lamps. Motors swept over the smooth bridge, their electric lamps looking like enormous shining eyes; electric advertisements flashed in the sky; and the crowd moved along noisily, onward, ever onward; cabs darted in and out among the traffic; a carriage with spirited horses flew past, taking someone to an evening party, no doubt.⁠ ⁠… It is not for me to describe the glories of this scene! + 

On the embankment huge sombre palaces rose high; the light of a passing steamer twinkled here and there on the dark surface of the water; the Peter-Paul Fortress could just be discernible with its memorials of our Tsars. Its doleful bell sounded like the voice of time.⁠ ⁠… Silent couples sat on the round stone seats as Sashenka and I used to sit together before we were married, when I would put my hand into her warm little muff on pretext of feeling cold. For some time I stood watching the new Palace bridge in course of construction, thinking how that would add to the beauty of our wonderful city. + 

Wending my way home through the crowd I thought of how remote the horrible war was from us, and how, in spite of its fury, it was powerless to effect human life and all the creations of man. How firm and solid everything seemed! Trams, cabs, even the couples on the seats, and everything connected with our daily life, seemed to be cast in steel. I was more than ever ashamed of my early panic. What had we to fear, indeed! + 

There are rumours that Berlin is practically in darkness, and that the Germans are starving. As a Russian, I suppose I ought to rejoice in their misfortunes, since they are to blame for this savage war, but⁠ ⁠… again I am going to say something I wouldn’t breathe in our office. I am sorry for the Germans, if Berlin is even a little bit like our Petrograd. How awfully cold those poor, adventurous Teutons must be now, and how they must curse the day that they embarked upon this confounded war. “What is the good of it,” they must think, “if for all our crime and slaughter, we have nothing but darkness and cold?” I can’t understand the sense of people killing each other! + 

I must go to bed. By the way, I had nearly forgotten⁠—I suppose it’s because I’m not used to keeping a diary that I forget the most essential things⁠—we had a postcard from Pavel. He is alive and well. It came at the moment when mother was wrapping herself up in her shawls in the hall to go home. Both she and Sashenka were very much cheered. I couldn’t help sharing in their happiness. But how frail human happiness is! + 

There is something very low about a crowd, it seems to me. One moment it is ready to curse the war and its cruelties, the next to gloat over it with a morbid pleasure. It may be due to our successes in Galicia, or perhaps to the general excitement over military engagements, but to my mind there is too much noise and rejoicing, both in the papers as well as in our office. No one denies that the Belgians are heroes and that King Albert is an exalted personality, worthy of his crown, but since the throats of these heroes are being cut wholesale, what is there to rejoice about? I hold my tongue in my usual manner, of course, but their attitude is amazing. However, I couldn’t resist the popular enthusiasm, and paid my tribute to it by buying a portrait of King Albert. It doesn’t mean, though, that I am carried away by the war. The sight of staring headlines such as “Yaraslav Ablaze,” “Sandomir in Flames,” sends a sharp pain through my brain as if some foreign matter had got into it. What an imagination a man must have to visualise the picture of “Yaraslav Ablaze,” or “Sandomir in Flames”! Unconsciously you find yourself thanking your stars that Petrograd is so far removed from those horrors. + 

After great deliberation I have decided to let Andrei Vasilevitch read this diary, if he is fortunate enough to return from the war, that is. He was never a man to agree with my views; let him judge in this case whether I am right or wrong. I found it distinctly disagreeable to read my remarks about my age and personal happiness. It seems mean to write about these things frankly merely for one’s own benefit, as though one had something to conceal. I am not mean and have nothing to conceal. I merely did not wish to thrust my opinions on other people. I have nothing to hide; my life is open to any man. + 

Peter got an attack of quinsy and we had great difficulty in getting a doctor. Our own doctor is at the war; those who have not gone away are so busy at the military hospitals that it is next to impossible to get hold of them. I ought to rejoice, according to some people, that my sick child is deprived of medical aid, and to find some lofty purpose in the fact, but I can’t. I shall always have my own views on the subject. + 

In horror and trepidation have I been following the German siege of Antwerp. Thousands of heavy guns are shelling the town; the ruins are in flames; the people have fled; only detachments of soldiers are to be seen in the deserted streets. “The sky over Antwerp is ablaze,” my paper says, and I try to imagine the significance of the phrase. Zeppelins fly in this flaming sky and drop bombs. What fiends in men’s shapes must they be to fly over this hell, over the fires, explosions, and roofs, and rain down more destruction on this blazing mass of ruins? + 

Worked on by the horrors I read in the newspapers I flew over blazing Antwerp in the night, and despite my unbounded terror, I could not help being envious of those dauntless, fearless men. Did they belong to a different species that they were not afraid and had no pity? Why did their hands not tremble and their hearts not stop still? What kind of eyes must they have to peer over the sides of their zeppelins (or whatever it is that they do) at the burning, flaming town beneath, and calculate and take aim? + 

The whole thing seems so much like a fairy tale that I can hardly believe it is true. If it is true, what use am I in the world⁠—a sheep lagging behind the species? It is only in my sleep that I can fly; in my waking moments I look about for a spot where I can hide my head. A long time before the war, one of our dirigibles flew over the Nevsky, and we all rushed out of the office to admire it. How brilliant it looked beneath the rays of the sun as it soared away in the dizzy heights! The people in the streets, too, craned their necks to have a sight of it, a tipsy civil servant among them, a regulation cap on his head, and the neck of a bottle peeping out of his pocket. He half closed his eyes as he looked, seeming to measure the distance, and said aloud, “It needs a sober man for that job!” He ran away, and the rest of us laughed, but his words come back to me now, when I try to picture the blazing sky over Antwerp. Is a sober or a drunken man needed for that job? I refuse to accept the new type that flies through the clouds dropping inflammable bombs! He is the new despot who despises and oppresses all men alike. We have had enough of his kind⁠—truthless, merciless men who would as soon crack a man’s head as an egg. I would sooner be as I am, a lagging sheep, than like one of them. Let them butcher away if they will, I offer my own throat, if it pleases them! + 

My thoughts keep on reverting to Antwerp. It must be like our Petrograd, spacious and beautiful; its numerous waters reflect the flames now, and blood flows in the darkness of the night. And the sky is ablaze! God! what appalling things are going on in this world! + 

Antwerp has fallen. + 

I don’t know whether it is due to the bad weather and the darkness, and all this muddle, but of late I have been very depressed. I take no pleasure in anything and have a constant feeling of nausea in the pit of the stomach. You start the day each morning with a horrible scramble for a tramcar⁠—there seem more people than ever, in spite of the war, or fewer cars, perhaps⁠—and you come out of the crush bruised and shaken as though you’d been through some drunken brawl. The persistent collectors, men and women alike, with their flags and flowers, do not increase the general pleasantness. Particularly insolent in this respect are the boys and girls whose parents would do much better to keep them at home, than let them drag themselves about the streets. + 

I am as prepared as any man to take my share of the burden; it is a pleasure to me, in so far as my limited means will allow, and I object to this distrust of my feelings of duty and compassion, and the indecency with which these people search your eyes to demand your purse. People seem afraid to look each other square in the face as they walk along the streets, but in reality everyone takes a stealthy glance to see if his neighbour has the symbol of the day. Even I can’t resist doing so. It is more than the scrutiny of my purse that I mind, it is the scrutiny of my soul that I object to. My soul is my own; I am its master. The State can dispose of my body, if it wills, in so far as the law permits, but no one, not Peter the Great himself, has the right of probing into my soul and introducing his laws there, no matter how excellent they may be. People have tampered with my soul too much of late, using it as freely as a public road. Today, for instance, I had a wild argument with Sasha. I have always considered myself a Liberal, and was rather proud of the fact. Every intelligent man ought to be a Liberal. Nations are all alike to me. I make no difference between a German, a Frenchman, or even a Jew. For the past two months, however, the papers, the fellows in the office, and everyone, has been trying to impress upon me that I ought to hate the Germans. Sasha even said to me today in the most brutal manner, “You must be mean if you can love the Germans now!” + 

“How do you know I love them?” I demanded. “With my principles I can’t hate anyone, no matter who it is.” + 

She laughed. + 

“Principles, indeed! We should hear a different tale if Pavel had been your brother and not mine! I wonder mother can bear to come here, seeing how much you love her son?” + 

Then with a brutality of which I should not have thought her capable, she called me a coward and a traitor, and declared that I was glad that my age prevented me from going to the war. And this, after all the talks we had had when she had seemed to agree with me, and after the way she had been concerned about my digestion but a day or two ago! A fine soldier I should make with my poor digestion and my palpitations. + 

I didn’t say a word the whole evening to show my resentment, and won’t speak for a day or two to come; but I fear it will have but little effect. + 

The war is beginning to get on one’s nerves; one can’t escape it for a day. I left off reading the papers, but that proved too much for me; I couldn’t keep it up for long. The papers are full of sensations, and the men in our office are forever disputing and arguing round the maps. Horrible! I would go right away if I could afford it. There must be some spot in the world where one would be free from the war. Living as one is amidst the general folly, it is practically impossible to preserve one’s own individuality, and save one’s soul from corruption. I didn’t want the war, as I said before! I loathe it for all its “significance.” Why should I be compelled to think and read about its horrors every day of my life? + 

I am not a heartless blackguard. I have my sympathies and sense of decency⁠—I say this in all modesty⁠—and I suffer agonies at these unbearable horrors. The killing of thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, is bad enough, but the fiendish way in which it is done, the deafening noise and the fire, surpasses all understanding. Before death comes to release a man he is driven mad a thousand times by all their devilish inventions and surprises! There is not much use in living in Post Office Street, far removed from the sight of a gun, when the newspapers, and photographs, and information from people spare me none of the horrors! + 

What good does my suffering do to anyone? I don’t care what people might say to this, but if I could bewitch or hypnotise myself to get this war out of my head, I would do so without the smallest hesitation. Since I am not fighting, my torments are of no use to anyone. I don’t see why I should lose my sleep and thereby get too ill to do my work! + 

How sad it is that Sasha doesn’t understand it! If she gave the matter a single thought she would see that my health was essential to the family, and that if I began to hate the Germans as she and mother do, and went about in fear and trembling over Pavel, it would be a poor lookout for them all. There she is, sleeping with a feeling of injury, while I cannot sleep, and suffer in my forced loneliness. Ah, Sasha, Sasha! Do you think my lot is an easy one? I envy every dog barking innocently in its backyard, for it knows nothing of Germans slaughtering Russians and Russians Germans! Oh, for some dark garret in which to hide, as when a boy I used to hide from my stepfather! “How shall I fly from thy spirit?” + 

I ought to be thankful that from childhood I have never been in the habit of dreaming; sleep does afford me a certain forgetfulness and rest, but no sooner do I wake than an unbearable irritation takes possession of my being and drives me to despair. I am beginning to sleep badly, too: I lie awake straining to catch some sound. Sasha is also uneasy in her sleep; she moans and throws her arms about. I feel quite sorry for her. She is only a woman, after all. + 

We’ve had news of Pavel. He tells us that he has been moved to some base, so that we can be easy about him for some time. Mother made me quite angry today. She doesn’t seem to know what a base means, and keeps on looking for Pavel’s name in the casualty lists. It’s useless to tell her that the lists are old ones. She won’t believe a word I say. The poor old lady must have lost her senses a bit, I think. + 

This has been a most unpleasant day. Zvohansky, the Pole in our office, enlarged on the subject of the Turks entering the war. He was stupidly exultant at the prospect of Tsar-Grad and the Straits becoming ours! I couldn’t help thinking what a fool he was, and how glad he ought to be that Petrograd still belonged to us without bothering about Tsar-Grad. I got a picture of some harmless little Turk sitting quietly in Constantinople, Ibragim-Bey by name, perhaps, or Ilya Petrovitch, as we should call him, little dreaming as he pats his round belly that tomorrow he will make a target for our smart troops. I wonder what he would say if he were told? + 

A small hospital of fifteen beds has been opened in our block of flats, to be supported by the different residents. I shall do my share, of course. + 

Ah, Sasha, Sasha, dear! + 

Turkey has opened hostilities against Russia. Dear, dear, how the war is spreading! + 

I am at a loss to understand how I came to join the demonstration over Turkey, with its flags and banners. To think of my dragging myself about the streets singing and shouting “Hurrah” and making a fool of myself generally! What a hero I felt! My heroism has brought on a bad cold, I am afraid. I have a stiff neck today and feel shivery without my coat. When I got home I found a large company collected there. It consisted of Nikolai and his wife and the inevitable Kindiakov, a lawyer, Sashenka’s friend, Fimotchka, a midwife, and a few others, making seven in all. + 

To celebrate the occasion I got out four bottles of wine, presented to me by Zvohansky some time back in August. We were more intoxicated by the news than the wine. We shouted and argued and made sport of Turkey; we sang national anthems, Kindiakov accompanying on the piano. It was three in the morning when I got to bed, for I had to see Fimotchka home first. It is well that I have had a snooze today, otherwise I should have been very irritable. + 

This is the first time in my life that I have taken part in a national demonstration, and I must confess, it was an interesting experience. I shall never forget it as long as I live. This may seem absurd to the more experienced, but what interested me the most was, that no matter where we marched, on pavement or road, the traffic stopped to make way for us. And then the flags, the spontaniety of our singing, the fact that police and soldiers saluted us as we passed, gave us a martial air, and made us feel as though we, too, were part of the war⁠—we were the troops for home defence. There were some retired military and naval men among us, and one old fellow, an admiral, would insist on us marching in time, and when he succeeded in making us do so, now and again, our singing grew more measured and we felt more and more like soldiers on their way to the battlefield. With what a sense of joy did we sing! What faith we had in the invincibility of our strength, and how certain we felt of victory! I don’t know whether it was the strangeness of the procession, or the fact that the streets looked different, but despite my enthusiasm, the sense of panic I had felt on the first day came over me again. Distant Turkey and the war itself seemed to have come closer, so close that we could have touched them; we felt their nearness, and the sense of security was gone. It seemed as though the whole structure of our lives would collapse, and we should go down into the abysses of hell. The Turks, again, played no part in this fear; we despised them too much, and could even afford to pity them for having been duped; our fear was based on some inexplicable cause. Something I saw this morning would perhaps illustrate my meaning. On the way to the office I saw a load of young trees that were meant for planting somewhere, no doubt. Their delicate roots, with the soil clinging to them, were in baskets, but the poor things rocked to and fro on the boards. They must have felt very forlorn and strange, and were wondering where they were going. The new soil may be good for them in time to come, but until they become accustomed to the difference between the old soil and the new, they must feel very insecure. + 

I don’t know whether it was my enthusiasm or my fear that made me shout “Hurrah,” but while I shouted with all my heart in it, I thought, nevertheless, “My God, my God, when is it going to end?” I looked at the drizzling sky, misty and grey⁠ ⁠… the ways of the world are so enigmatical⁠ ⁠… the sky was the same as of old, the houses, those I had known in my boyhood. Where was the difference then, if houses and sky and people were the same? What had happened? I reduced myself to such a state in the end as to wonder whether I had changed personally, and a strong desire came over me to see my own face in the glass as I shouted “Hurrah.” + 

My enthusiasm has gone today and my fear too. Nothing on earth would make me open my mouth to shout or to sing. I am filled with a dull aching despair. My God, what is the use of it all? As a good Russian I can’t help being pleased at the prospect of the Straits and Tsar-Grad becoming ours, but my pleasure is not altogether unalloyed. We have got on quite well without Tsar-Grad so far, and what is to happen to my fat little Turk, Ibragim-Bey, who can’t escape being killed? I must be sorry for him. + 

I don’t know why I compare myself to that fat little Turk, for I am not fat at all. It seems such a pity that he should be hurt when he never hurt anyone. His blood will rise, of course, for the Turks are a fiery race, but why should he be roused at all? Even the gentlest dog will turn on his master when teased enough. I dislike this war intensely, for all the fine talk of the men in our office. + 

I was foolish enough today to try to explain to Lidotchka something about the war and Turkey. I even pointed Turkey out to her on the map. The little thing didn’t understand, of course; she was more interested in the idea that there was so much water. She made me leave my paper to come and watch her skipping. Skip away, my child, skip away, and rejoice that you are not a Belgian or Polish child, for you would have perished in the flames or been killed by a bomb dropped from the clouds. + 

How horrible to think that even children are being slaughtered! + 

There is an alarming rumour that Warsaw has been taken by the Germans. All the men in our office are deeply depressed, and as for Zvoliansky, the Pole, it makes my heart ache to look at him. + 

There has been a lot of unpleasantness at home, too. Mother has come to live with us for good, owing to a fearful scandal in Nikolai’s family about Nikolai’s wife and Kindiakov, the lawyer. Husband and wife have separated. Sasha tells me that Nikolai tried to shoot Kindiakov, but missed aim, fortunately, and the matter was hushed up. Mother happened to spend that night with us, and was consequently spared the disgraceful scene. How people can busy themselves with love and jealousy at a time like the present is more than I can understand. A most disgraceful business! Nikolai has departed for the Caucasus, his wife has gone off with Kindiakov, and we hear that she wants to go on the stage, or something. + 

We’ve had no news of Pavel for three weeks, so one can easily imagine the family’s mood. Three weeks is not a long time, when one takes into consideration the slowness and uncertainty of the army posts, but mother refuses to consider these things, and depresses us all by her terrible anxiety. Added to her other misfortunes, the poor old lady is ill at ease and rather afraid of me. The thought of her dependence on us is wounding to her pride. She seems to think she has no right to live with us. When I try to reassure her on Pavel’s account by pointing out the uncertainty of the posts, she is over eager to agree with me, yet looking so scared, as though, in some subtle way, I had asked her to leave the house. I rebuked her on one occasion, unable to contain myself. “You really ought to be ashamed to think of me as you do, Mother; you put me in a very awkward position. I am only thinking of your good, and you look upon me as no better than a German straight from Berlin.” This only made her more nervous than ever. How ridiculous it is! When I am absent she does nothing but cry, I am told, but when I am at home, she tries to appear cheerful, and by the way she confuses her words when she is making some joke, one can see what she is really feeling. She has just brought me some coffee, for example, and forgotten the sugar. I hate the old lady’s having to wait on me; she can hardly keep up as it is! + 

The thing, however, that causes me the greatest anxiety, is my dear Sashenka. I don’t know what to do with her. This is a subject one can only speak of in a diary. I have mentioned before, I think, that a small hospital has been opened in our block of flats, to be supported by the various inhabitants. It is not the money I grudge, though there is little enough of it, God knows, but with the arrival of the first batch of wounded, Sashenka can’t be got away from the place, in her womanly kindness; she is there day and night. She is a staff nurse now, or a probationer, perhaps, since she has not been through the training, but I think it must be a nurse, though. + 

It seems that one could raise little objection to such a truly Christian spirit. All our friends admire Sashenka for what she is doing, the soldiers adore her, and she herself finds satisfaction in her work. What objections could there be to raise in such a splendid arrangement? I can do nothing but keep them to myself, for no matter how right I might be, no one would give me the credit of it. I should only be censured by people and annoyed by their distrust. I should gain the reputation of being a hopeless egoist, and a tyrant, who wouldn’t allow his wife to work in a hospital. It is certainly difficult for a man to prove his case when people find it to their advantage that a woman should neglect her family to work for others and help mend the damage that they have caused. + 

My conscience, however, compels me to say that Sashenka’s devotion to the hospital is selfish and wicked to the extreme. It isn’t right to give yourself up entirely to charity at the expense of your own home! There is not much virtue in a compassion that devotes itself to some people and neglect others equally as helpless. + 

Some things a man doesn’t like to mention even in a diary. I am unlucky enough to have a bad digestion. It is only by the most careful diet that I can keep well enough to support my family, and Annisia, our cook, gives me such horrible food as to make me quite ill. The digestion of an Ilya Petrovitch is a small matter in face of the horrors of the war, the suffering of the wounded, the destitute and fatherless; it’s hardly decent to mention it. Doctors, I know, look with contempt on such complaints nowadays, yet Ilya Petrovitch is just as much a human being as the rest; he has worked honestly all his life to keep his wife and little ones, and I maintain that his digestion has every claim to attention and care. + 

I might manage with my scorned digestion somehow or other by starving myself a little, but what can I do with the children? We have three little ones, of whom Lidotchka, the eldest, is only six and a half. (I married late in life.) Our nurse, who acts as housemaid as well, is a most ignorant creature, and is able in good faith to poison or kill a child. She allowed Peter to get his feet wet the other day, and the poor boy had to stay in bed for some time with a high temperature. The youngest child, Jena, too, is not very well; he has lost all appetite and grown pale and thin. I haven’t the remotest idea how to look after children. When I point out their pitiable condition to Sashenka, she tells me to get mother to look after them. As if mother could! She has no more resistance than a feather, and can think of nothing, awake or sleeping, but her Pavel in the trenches. Of course, she could have done it at one time, I admit, but not now; she is too weak. It’s not fair to put so much responsibility on the old lady’s shoulders. Her efforts are pitiful to see. I don’t know whether it was she who started a game with the children the other day, or whether they began it, but they knocked her down (not meaning any harm, of course) and nearly suffocated her like a kitten. When I dragged her out she burst into tears. I, too, was upset at sight of her trembling head and ruffled hair. + 

Dear, dear! Sashenka is behaving very, very badly! We are not responsible that there is a war. The war has no right to thrust itself among us like a brigand, and lay waste our home. We bear enough trials and sacrifices we have done nothing to deserve. There is no need for us to throw ourselves down for the war to walk over us as the Hindus throw themselves beneath the chariot wheels of their evil god Juggernaut. I refuse to accept evil gods, I refuse to accept the war for all its “significance.” I fail to see the good of it around me, least of all in my own home! + 

Or must I see good in the fact that the face of my darling Lidotchka is beginning to show signs of sadness? The poor little thing is already trying to exert her little mind in attempts to cheer me when she sees me dull and depressed. Her little hands, too, are trying to be useful by helping to wash up the glasses and to nurse Jena. She herself is badly in need of a nurse. + 

The cost of living is rising in the most appalling manner. The luxury of a cab or a theatre is not to be thought of. Even a tram fare needs consideration nowadays; one’s legs have to serve one in good stead. I am glad of the extra work from the office in real earnest now, and thankful that there is still such work to take home. We were compelled to give up the piano. And the cursed war is only at its beginning; it is only getting into the way of it, so to speak. What horrible deeds men are perpetrating over there! To leave the lower orders out of the question, men of the higher professions, such as scholars, professors, lawyers, are devouring each other like wild beasts; they have grown so fiendish as to lose every spark of human feeling. What is science and religion worth after that? There was a time when you could rely upon a professor as on a stone wall; you might feel sure that he would not betray nor hurt, nor kill, because he knew and understood things, now he is just as vicious as the rest, and there is no one left to rely on. + 

I protest against the popular assertion that we are all (myself included) responsible for the war. It’s too absurd for argument. I know that some people think that with my ideas I ought to march continually about the streets, neither eating nor drinking, shouting “Stop the war,” and snatching rifles from the hands of the soldiers. But I wonder who would listen to me, except the policeman, or where I should find myself, if I carried out their wishes, if not in prison or in a lunatic asylum? I deny all responsibility for the war, and my suffering is needless and senseless. + 

I have a small piece of news. Andrei Vasilevitch, the man who is to read my diary, has been decorated with two St. George Crosses. Being a friend of Sashenka’s she is very proud and pleased, but I wonder if Andrei Vasilevitch himself is proud and pleased? + 

I must relieve my mind about this, come what may. No matter how many cigarettes I buy nowadays, I never seem to have any. No one besides myself smokes at home, so Sasha takes them to her wounded, no doubt. I can’t lock up my drawers from her, can I? At the merest hint today, she retorted, “You can go without smoking yourself, but I will take cigarettes to the wounded!” And she looked at me in such an uncanny way. It was not love, but hate I saw reflected in those dear eyes of hers. I grew cold all over, and a feeling of despair settled on my heart. I might have been sitting in the trenches on a damp day and some confounded German aiming at me. I shall buy two thousand cigarettes tomorrow and put them in every visible place to show her that I’m not mean. She ought to have understood that it was not a question of meanness. Ah, Sashenka, Sashenka! + 

I often visit our hospital. It is now being supported by the town, and occupies two stories in our building. I suffer needless torments by the sight of the wounded⁠—men who have lost an arm or a leg, or their sight. The effect produced after a couple of hours in their presence is indescribable. You feel perfectly unstrung, particularly after the arrival of a batch of “fresh ones,” as the nurses call them. I can’t help going, or people would think me a brute, so I suffer and conform to public opinion. + 

A certain reservist, no longer a young man, made a great impression on me. He told me that when he first went out to the front, he resolved not to take life, and to be on the safe side, in a bayonet attack on a German trench he threw away his rifle as they charged forward⁠—a most excellent thing to do it seemed⁠—but when, together with his fellows, he stepped over the fatal barrier, such a feeling of fury came over him, that he dug his teeth into some German’s throat. Now he rages at night, and digs his teeth into his pillow as if it were a German’s throat, and there he lies tearing and screaming. + 

Great God, supposing such a thing were to have happened to me! I was nearly brought to the condition of digging my teeth into someone the other night, when I lay awake thinking of the war and the Germans who had started it; I grew so terrified at the possibilities in me, at Sashenka’s empty bed (Sashenka is on night duty at the hospital), at mother’s ghostly face, at the futile destruction, that I dressed hastily and went in to Sashenka. (The hospital being in our own building made it an easy thing to do.) Sashenka was not surprised at this nocturnal visit; she just asked me to be quiet, and brought me a cup of tea from somewhere, and smiled. There was a gentle moaning; the lamps were low, and feeble voices called “Nurse! Nurse!” Sashenka led me over to the man who bites and tears an imaginary German. The poor man, his head completely bandaged, was squeezing his blanket with both hands, “Strangling someone,” Sashenka said. She gave him a drink of water, and he seemed to grow quiet after that, and lay with his hands folded as innocently as a child. + 

I remained in the hospital until daybreak, but I could not go to sleep for a long time when I got home. I wept aloud from sheer pity. The thought of the man’s bandaged head and pale hands depressed me deeply. + 

I wonder if Sashenka was right, after all? Was it meanness that made me regret the cigarettes? My God! I could have gone down on my knees before that wounded man, and for the pleasure of having him ask me for a cigarette, I could have torn out my own heart! How short a man’s memory is! + 

By the same post we received four letters from Pavel. He is alive and well, and in Prussia once more. Needless to say, both mother and Sashenka and I were beside ourselves with joy. How absurd it seems! Pavel might have been killed a hundred times since his last letter, and yet there we were rejoicing over a piece of crumpled paper and a few faint pencil strokes as though Pavel himself stood before us. Among other things, this is what he writes, “What else can I tell you, my dear Sashenka? Everything here is so interesting. You look at the moving mass of men in the snow and twilight, and think.⁠ ⁠… Snow⁠ ⁠… fields⁠ ⁠… Germany⁠ ⁠… great events⁠ ⁠… a great war⁠ ⁠… and this is the war, and I am part of it. An officer comes back from the firing lines, soaking wet, his coat and hood covered with snow. He takes off his coat and tries to warm himself with a cup of tea, and you think again, ‘This then is the great war, and this is the great Russian army!’ In the most trifling little act you see something of the passing greatness. The military operations on our front have been slow. The cold and the snow seems to have made everything heavy to move, especially the men. There is not much life in us, wrapped up as we are, and the hardest time is yet to come! I am having tea in the officers’ mess just now, in a real glass with a stand. I am writing this letter, but the telephone may ring at any moment, and everything will change as in a dream. Our battery may have to be moved half a mile to right or left or forward, and then will come digging in the hard, cold soil to have a dugout ready by nightfall (it is horribly cold in the trenches now), in which we will he down to sleep, damp and hungry. This is not fiction, but naked fact. Do you know what blood on snow looks like, Sashenka? Like a red watermelon. Isn’t it funny?” + 

In another letter he tells how the men covered themselves with wet straw one night in a thaw, and had to force their way out of it, so hard had it frozen by morning. Poor Pavel! and we rejoiced over his letter! + 

A blizzard has been blowing all day, drifting the snow into every street. Mountains of it have fallen. Walls and cornices and windows are covered with snow. There might not have been a town at all; the houses seemed to be standing in absurd array in the midst of snowy fields. I happened to pass the Isaac Cathedral. The snow had drifted on to pillars and steps. The pillars were so cold that it made one shudder to look at them. Men and women, muffled up, fought their way against the wind; only those who were compelled to, ventured out of doors, the rest kept within. I began to wonder suddenly what it would be like to have no home to go back to, and to be forced to remain in the streets in weather like this. It would be enough to drive one mad. What is it like in the trenches now? + 

I have no time for my diary nowadays. I bring home so much work from the office as to leave me hardly any breathing space. And my health, I am sorry to say, is anything but good; I am always tired and sleepy and cold⁠—so cold that I find it hard to keep warm in bed with my two heavy blankets. Our house is a warm one, fortunately. + 

It is nearly Christmas, and still there is no end to the war. In the squares, where in former years Christmas-trees used to be sold, soldiers are drilling. They help to make things jolly, though. You can’t help being drawn to them. I saw a curious sight in the Palace Square the other day, which amused me very much at a first glance. About fifty men were drilling there, and seen from the distance, they looked as though the sun were shining full on them. The effect was strange, for it was a dull day and the sun had not been out at all. I laughed when I came closer. Every man of them had a red beard, which gave the effect of sunlight. My silly laughter died away, however, when I came closer still, for though the beards were red, the faces were old and pale and drawn; there was no light in the eyes; dull despair was expressed in them. They were reservists, men who had families, no doubt. I learnt afterwards that men with red beards were chosen for some special regiment. + 

I am trying to earn as much as I possibly can to be able to take Sasha and the children to Finland for a few days at Christmas, if only to get away from the newspapers for a bit. It would do Sasha good to get a rest from the hospital, and I, too, am tired. The rooms seem so gloomy, as though we were going blind. We can hardly distinguish each other’s pale faces in the gloom. I am very, very tired. + 

Pavel has been killed. God help us! + 

Pavel, my poor dear! I never made enough of you, not knowing you would die so soon, and now you are no more, and my bitter tears cannot help you! If I could only gaze once more into your dear, grey eyes, hear your hesitating laugh, see your funny little moustache we used to chaff you about so much! But now you are dead. Dead! I can’t think that it’s true! + 

My boy, my friend, my defender, my words cannot reach you in the cold earth! If I could only put my arms about you, my poor, lonely boy, and let the warmth of my body pass into yours! And you will never, never know how the war is going to end, and you used to be so keen about it!⁠ ⁠… Pavel, Pavel!⁠ ⁠… + 