Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1 Page 6
[Hastily mounting my horse I set out to overtake the detachment.]
The rear-guard was still within the gates of the fort. I had great difficulty in making my way across the bridge among the guns, ammunition wagons, carts of different companies, and officers noisily giving orders. Once outside the gates I trotted past the troops who, stretching out over nearly three-quarters of a mile, were silently moving on amid the darkness, and I overtook the general. As I rode past the guns drawn out in single file, and the officers who rode between them, I was hurt as by a discord in the quiet and solemn harmony by the German accents of a voice shouting, ‘A linstock, you devil!’ and the voice of a soldier hurriedly exclaiming, ‘Shévchenko, the lieutenant wants a light!’
The greater part of the sky was now overcast by long strips of dark grey clouds; it was only here and there that a few stars twinkled dimly among them. The moon had already sunk behind the near horizon of the black hills visible to the right and threw a faint trembling light on their peaks, in sharp contrast to the impenetrable darkness enveloping their base. The air was so warm and still that it seemed as if not a single blade of grass, not a single cloudlet, was moving. It was so dark that even objects close at hand could not be distinguished. By the sides of the road I seemed to see now rocks, now animals, now some strange kind of men, and I discovered that they were merely bushes only when I heard them rustle, or felt the dew with which they were sprinkled.
Before me I saw a dense heaving wall followed by some dark moving spots; this was the cavalry vanguard and the general with his suite. Another similar dark mass, only lower, moved beside us; this was the infantry.
The silence that reigned over the whole division was so great that all the mingling sounds of night with their mysterious charm were distinctly audible: the far-off mournful howling of jackals, now like agonized weeping, now like chuckling; the monotonous resounding song of crickets, frogs, and quails; a sort of rumbling I could not at all account for but which seemed to draw nearer; and all those scarcely audible motions of Nature which can neither be understood nor defined, mingled into one beautiful harmony which we call the stillness of night. This stillness was interrupted by, or rather combined with, the dull thud of hoofs and the rustling of the tall grass caused by the slowly advancing detachment.
Only very occasionally could the clang of a heavy gun, the sound of bayonets touching one another, hushed voices, or the snorting of a horse, be heard. [By the scent of the wet juicy grass which sank under our horses’ feet, by the light steam rising from the ground and by the horizons seen on two sides of us, it was evident that we were moving across a wide, luxuriant meadow.) Nature seemed to breathe with pacifying beauty and power.
Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth under those immeasurable starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the desire to exterminate their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men should, one would think, vanish at contact with Nature – that most direct expression of beauty and goodness.
[War! What an incomprehensible phenomenon! When one’s reason asks: ‘Is it just, is it necessary?’ an inner voice always replies ‘No’. Only the persistence of this unnatural occurrence makes it seem natural, and a feeling of self-preservation makes it seem just.
Who will doubt that in the war of the Russians against the mountain-tribes, justice – resulting from a feeling of self-preservation – is on our side? Were it not for this war, what would secure the neighbouring rich and cultured Russian territories from robbery, murder, and raids by wild and warlike tribes? But consider two private persons. On whose side is the feeling of self-preservation and consequently of justice? Is it on the side of this ragamuffin – some Djemi or other – who hearing of the approach of the Russians snatches down his old gun from the wall, puts three or four charges (which he will only reluctantly discharge) in his pouch and runs to meet the giaours, and on seeing that the Russians still advance, approaching the fields he has sown which they will tread down and his hut which they will burn, and the ravine where his mother, his wife, and his children have hidden themselves, shaking with fear – seeing that he will be deprived of all that constitutes his happiness – in impotent anger and with a cry of despair tears off his tattered jacket, flings down his gun, and drawing his sheepskin cap over his eyes sings his death-song and flings himself headlong onto the Russian bayonets with only a dagger in his hand? Is justice on his side or on that of this officer on the general’s staff” who is singing French chansonettes so well just as he rides past us? He has a family in Russia, relations, friends, serfs, and obligations towards them, but has no reason or desire to be at enmity with the hillsmen, and has come to the Caucasus just by chance and to show his courage. Or is it on the side of my acquaintance the adjutant, who only wishes to obtain a captaincy and a comfortable position as soon as possible and for that reason has become the hillsmen’s enemy? Or is it on the side of this young German who, with a strong German accent, is demanding a linstock from the artillerymen? What devil has brought him from his fatherland and set him down in this distant region? Why should this Saxon, Kaspar Lavréntich, mix himself up in our blood-thirsty conflict with these turbulent neighbours?]
Chapter VII
WE had been riding for more than two hours. I was beginning to shiver and feel drowsy. Through the gloom I still seemed to see the same indefinite forms; a little way in front the same black wall and the moving spots. Close in front of me I could see the crupper of a white horse which swung its tail and threw its hind legs wide apart, the back of a white Circassian coat on which could be discerned a musket in a black case, and the glimmering butt of a pistol in an embroidered holster; the glow of a cigarette lit up a fair moustache, a beaver collar and a hand in a chamois glove. Every now and then I leant over my horse’s neck, shutting my eyes and forgetting myself for a few minutes, then startled by the familiar tramping and rustling I glanced round, and felt as if I were standing still and the black wall in front was moving towards me, or that it had stopped and I should in a moment ride into it. At one such moment the rumbling which increased and seemed to approach, and the cause of which I could not guess, struck me forcibly: it was the sound of water. We were entering a deep gorge and approaching a mountain-stream that was overflowing its banks.7 The rumbling increased, the damp grass became thicker and taller and the bushes closer, while the horizon gradually narrowed. Now and then bright lights appeared here and there against the dark background of the hills, and vanished instantly.
‘Tell me, please, what are those lights?’ I asked in a whisper of a Tartar riding beside me.
‘Don’t you know?’ he replied.
‘No.’
‘The hillsmen have tied straw to poles and are waving it about alight.’
‘Why are they doing that?’
‘So that everyone should know that the Russians have come. Oh, oh! What a bustle is going on now in the aouls! Everybody’s dragging his belongings into the ravine,’ he said laughing.
‘Why, do they already know in the mountains that a detachment is on its way?’ I asked him.
‘How can they help knowing? They always know. Our people are like that.’
‘Then Shamyl8 too is preparing for action?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he answered, shaking his head, ‘Shamyl won’t go into action; Shamyl will send his naibs,9 and he himself will look on through a telescope from above.’
‘Does he live far away?’
‘Not far. Some eight miles to the left.’
‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘Have you been there?’
‘I have. Our people have all been.’
‘Have you seen Shamyl?’
‘Such as we don’t see Shamyl! There are a hundred, three hundred, a thousand murids10 all round him, and Shamyl is in the centre,’ he said, with an expression of servile admiration.
Looking up, it was possible to discern that th
e sky, now cleared, was beginning to grow lighter in the east and the pleiades to sink towards the horizon, but the ravine through which we were marching was still damp and gloomy.
Suddenly a little way in front of us several lights flashed through the darkness; at the same moment some bullets flew whizzing past amid the surrounding silence [and sharp abrupt firing could be heard and loud cries, as piercing as cries of despair but expressing instead of fear such a passion of brutal audacity and rage that one could not but shudder at hearing it.] It was the enemy’s advanced picket. The Tartars who composed it whooped, fired at random, and then ran in different directions.
All became silent again. The general called up an interpreter. A Tartar in a white Circassian coat rode up to him and, gesticulating and whispering, talked with him for some time.
‘Colonel Khasánov! Order the cordon to take open order,’ commanded the general with a quiet but distinct drawl.
The detachment advanced to the river, the black hills and gorges were left behind, the dawn appeared. The vault of the heavens, in which a few pale stars were still dimly visible, seemed higher; the sunrise glow beyond shone brightly in the east, a fresh penetrating breeze blew from the west and the white mists rose like steam above the rushing stream.
Chapter VIII
OUR guide pointed out a ford and the cavalry vanguard, followed by the general, began crossing the stream. The water which reached to the horses’ chests rushed with tremendous force between the white boulders which here and there appeared on a level with its surface, and formed foaming and gurgling ripples round the horses’ legs. The horses, surprised by the noise of the water, lifted their heads and pricked their ears, but stepped evenly and carefully against the current on the uneven bottom of the stream. Their riders lifted their feet and their weapons. The infantry, literally in nothing but their shirts, linked arm in arm by twenties and holding above the water their muskets to which their bundles of clothing were fastened, made great efforts (as the strained expression of their faces showed) to resist the force of the current. The mounted artillerymen with loud shouts drove their horses into the water at a trot. The guns and green ammunition wagons, over which the water occasionally splashed, rang against the stony bottom, but the sturdy little horses, churning the water, pulled at the traces in unison and with dripping manes and tails clambered out on the opposite bank.
As soon as the crossing was accomplished the general’s face suddenly assumed a meditative and serious look and he turned his horse and, followed by the cavalry, rode at a trot down a broad glade which opened out before us in the midst of the forest. A cordon of mounted Cossacks was scattered along the skirts of the forest.
In the woods we noticed a man on foot dressed in a Circassian coat and wearing a tall cap – then a second and a third. One of the officers said: ‘Those are Tartars.’ Then a puff of smoke appeared from behind a tree, a shot, and another.… Our rapid fire drowns the enemy’s. Only now and then a bullet, with a slow sound like the buzzing of a bee’s wings, passes by and proves that the firing is not all ours. Now the infantry at a run and the guns at a trot pass into the cordon. You can hear the boom of the guns, the metallic sounds of flying grape-shot, the hissing of rockets, and the crackle of musketry. Over the wide glade on all sides you can see cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Puffs of smoke mingle with the dew-covered verdure and the mist. Colonel Khasánov, approaching the general at full gallop, suddenly reins in his horse.
‘Your Excellency, shall we order the cavalry to charge?’ he says, raising his hand to his cap. ‘The enemy’s colours11 are in sight,’ and he points with his whip to some mounted Tartars in front of whom ride two men on white horses with bits of blue and red stuff fastened to poles in their hands.
‘Go, and God be with you, Iván Mikháylovich!’ says the general.
The colonel turns his horse sharply round, draws his sword, and shouts ‘Hurrah!’
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ comes from the ranks, and the cavalry gallop after him.…
Everyone looks on with interest: there is a colour, another, a third and a fourth.…
The enemy, not waiting for the attack, hides in the wood and thence opens a small-arms fire. Bullets come flying more and more frequently.
‘Quel charmant coup d’œil!’12 says the general, rising slightly, English fashion, in his saddle on his slim-legged black horse.
‘Charmant!’ answers the major, rolling his r’s, and striking his horse he rides up to the general: ‘C’est un vrai plaisir que la guerre dans un aussi beau pays,’13 he says.
‘Et surtout en bonne compagnie,’14 replies the general with a pleasant smile.
The major bows.
At that moment a hostile cannon-ball flies past with a disagreeable whiz, and strikes something. We hear behind us the moan of a wounded man.
This moaning strikes me so strangely that the warlike scene instantly loses all its charm for me. But no one except myself seems to notice it: the major laughs with apparently greater gusto, another officer repeats with perfect calm the first words of a sentence he had just been saying, the general looks the other way and with the quietest smile says something in French.
‘Shall we reply to their fire?’ asks the commander of the artillery, galloping up.
‘Yes, frighten them a bit!’ carelessly replies the general, lighting a cigar.
The battery takes up its position and the firing begins. The earth groans under the shots, the discharges flash out incessantly, and smoke, through which it is scarcely possible to distinguish the artillerymen moving round their guns, veils your sight.
The aoul has been bombarded. Colonel Khasánov rides up again, and at the general’s command gallops towards the aoul. The war-cry is again heard and the cavalry disappears in the cloud of dust it has raised.
The spectacle was truly magnificent. The one thing that spoilt the general impression for me – who took no part in the affair and was unaccustomed to it – was that this movement and the animation and the shouting appeared unnecessary. The comparison involuntarily suggested itself to me of a man swinging his arms vigorously to cut the air with an axe.
Chapter IX
OUR troops had taken possession of the village and not a single soul of the enemy remained in it when the general and his suite, to which I had attached myself, rode up to it.
The long clean huts, with their flat earthen roofs and shapely chimneys, stood on irregular stony mounds between which flowed a small stream. On one side were green gardens with enormous pear and small plum trees brightly lit up by the sun, on the other strange upright shadows, the perpendicular stones of the cemetery, and long poles with balls and many-coloured flags fastened to their ends. (These marked the graves of dzhigits.)
The troops were drawn up outside the gates.
[‘Well, how about it, Colonel?’ said the general. ‘Let them loot. I see they are terribly anxious to,’ he added with a smile, pointing at the Cossacks.
You cannot imagine how striking was the contrast between the carelessness with which the general uttered these words, and their import and the military surroundings.]
A moment later, dragoons, Cossacks, and infantry spread with evident delight through the crooked lanes and in an instant the empty village was animated again. Here a roof crashes, an axe rings against the hard wood of a door that is being forced open, here a stack of hay, a fence, a hut, is set on fire and a pillar of thick smoke rises up in the clear air. Here is a Cossack dragging along a sack of flour and a carpet, there a soldier, with a delighted look on his face, brings a tin basin and some rag out of a hut, another is trying with outstretched arms to catch two hens that struggle and cackle beside a fence, a third has somewhere discovered an enormous pot of milk and after drinking some of it throws the rest on the ground with a loud laugh.
The battalion with which I had come from Fort N. was also in the aoul. The captain sat on the roof of a hut and sent thin whiffs of cheap tobacco smoke through his short pipe with such an expression o
f indifference on his face that on seeing him I forgot that I was in a hostile aoul and felt quite at home.
‘Ah, you are here too?’ he said when he noticed me.
The tall figure of Lieutenant Rosenkranz flitted here and there in the village. He gave orders unceasingly and appeared exceedingly engrossed in his task. I saw him with a triumphant air emerge from a hut followed by two soldiers leading an old Tartar. The old man, whose only clothing consisted of a mottled tunic all in rags and patchwork trousers, was so frail that his arms, tightly bound behind his bent back, seemed scarcely to hold onto his shoulders, and he could scarcely drag his bare crooked legs along. His face and even part of his shaven head were deeply furrowed. His wry toothless mouth kept moving beneath his close-cut moustache and beard, as if he were chewing something; but a gleam still sparkled in his red lashless eyes which clearly expressed an old man’s indifference to life.
Rosenkranz asked him, through an interpreter, why he had not gone away with the others.
‘Where should I go?’ he answered, looking quietly away.
‘Where the others have gone,’ someone remarked.
‘The dzhigits have gone to fight the Russians, but I am an old man.’
‘Are you not afraid of the Russians?’
‘What will the Russians do to me? I am old,’ he repeated, again glancing carelessly round the circle that had formed about him.
Later, as I was returning, I saw that old man bareheaded, with his arms tied, being jolted along behind the saddle of a Cossack, and he was looking round with the same expression of indifference on his face. He was needed for the exchange of prisoners.
I climbed onto the roof and sat down beside the captain.