Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1 Read online

  ‘Light a twig and hold it up,’ said a soldier.

  ‘No, better get a linstock, lad,’ said another.

  When I had at length lit my cigarette without the aid of Velenchúk, who was again trying to take a piece of charcoal in his hand, he rubbed his burnt fingers on the skirts of his sheepskin coat and then, probably for want of something else to do, lifted a large piece of plane-tree wood and swung it into the fire. When at last he felt free to rest a bit, he came close up to the fire, threw open his cloak which he wore like a mantle fastened by one button, spread out his legs, held out his big, black hands, and drawing his mouth a bit to one side, screwed up his eyes.

  ‘Ah, I’ve gone and forgot my pipe. Here’s a go, lads!’ said he after a short silence, not addressing anyone in particular.

  Chapter II

  IN Russia there are three predominant types of soldier under which the men of all our forces – whether line, guards, infantry, cavalry, artillery, army of the Caucasus, or what not – may be classified.

  These principal types, including many sub-divisions and combinations, are:

  1. The submissive;

  2. The domineering;

  3. The reckless.

  The submissive are divided into (a) the calmly submissive and (b) the bustlingly submissive.

  The domineering are divided into (a) the sternly domineering and (b) the diplomatically domineering.

  The reckless are divided into (a) the amusingly reckless and (b) the viciously reckless.

  The type most often met with – a type more lovable and attractive than the others and generally accompanied by the best Christian virtues, – meekness, piety, patience, and devotion to the will of God, – is the submissive type in general. The distinctive feature of the calmly submissive is his invincible resignation to and contempt for all the reverses of fate which may befall him; the distinctive features of the submissive drunkard are a mild, poetic disposition and sensibility; the distinctive feature of the bustlingly submissive is limited mental capacity combined with purposeless industry and zeal.

  The domineering type in general is found chiefly among the higher grade of soldiers: the corporals, sergeants, sergeant-majors and so on. The first sub-division, the sternly domineering, is a noble, energetic, pre-eminently military type and does not exclude high poetic impulses (Corporal Antónov, with whom I wish to acquaint the reader, belonged to this type). The second sub-division, formed by the diplomatically domineering, has for some time past been increasing largely. A man of this type is always eloquent and literate,3 wears pink shirts, won’t eat out of the common pot, sometimes smokes tobacco of Mousátov’s brand, and thinks himself much superior to the common soldier, but is rarely himself as good a soldier as the domineering of the first sub-division.

  The reckless type, like the domineering type, is good in its first sub-division, the amusingly reckless, whose characteristic traits are irresistible mirth, great capacity of all kinds, and a highly gifted and daring nature. As with the domineering class, the second sub-division is bad; the viciously reckless are terribly bad, but to the honour of the Russian army it must be said that this type is very rare, and when found it is excluded from companionship by the public opinion of the soldiers themselves. Unbelief and a kind of boldness in vice are the chief traits characteristic of this class.

  Velenchúk belonged to the bustlingly submissive. He was an Ukrainian by birth, had already served for fifteen years, and although not a showy or smart soldier he was simple-minded, kindly, extremely though often inopportunely zealous, and also exceedingly honest. I say exceedingly honest, because an incident had occurred the year before which made this characteristic quality of his very evident. It must be remembered that almost every soldier knows a trade. The most usual trades are tailoring and boot-making. Velenchúk taught himself the former, and judging from the fact that even Michael Doroféich, the sergeant-major, ordered clothes from him, he must have attained some proficiency at his craft. Last year, in camp, Velenchúk undertook to make a fine cloth coat for Michael Doroféich; but that very night after he had cut out the coat and measured out the trimmings and put them all under his pillow in the tent, a misfortune befell him: the cloth that had cost seven rubles, disappeared during the night! Velenchúk, with tears in his eyes, trembling white lips and suppressed sobs, informed the sergeant-major of the occurrence. Michael Doroféich was enraged. In the first moment of irritation he threatened the tailor; but afterwards, being a man with means and kindly, he just waved his hand and did not demand from Velenchúk payment of the value of the cloth. In spite of all the fuss made by the fussy Velenchúk, in spite of all the tears he shed when telling of his mishap, the thief was not found. A strong suspicion fell on the viciously reckless soldier Chernóv, who slept in the same tent; but there were no positive proofs. The diplomatically domineering Michael Doroféich, being a man with means and having some little business transactions with the master-at-arms and the caterer of the mess (the aristocracy of the battery), very soon forgot all about the loss of his mufti coat. Not so Velenchúk. He did not forget his misfortune. The soldiers said they feared at the time that he might commit suicide or run away into the mountains, so great was the effect of his mishap upon him. He neither ate nor drank and could not even work, but was continually crying. When three days had passed he appeared, quite pale, before Michael Doroféich, took with trembling fingers a gold coin from under his cuff and gave it him. ‘Heaven’s my witness, Michael Doroféich, that it’s all I have, and even that I borrowed from Zhdánov,’ said he, sobbing again; ‘and the other two rubles I swear I will also return as soon as I have earned them. He’ (whom ‘he’ meant Velenchúk did not himself know) ‘has made me appear like a rascal before you. He – with his loathsome, viper soul – he takes the last morsel from his brother soldier, after I have served for fifteen years.…’ To the honour of Michael Doroféich be it said, he did not take the remaining two rubles, though Velenchúk brought them to him two months later.

  Chapter III

  BESIDES Velenchúk, five other soldiers of my platoon sat warming themselves by our fire.

  In the best place, on a butt with his back to the wind, sat Maksímov, the gun-sergeant of the platoon, smoking a pipe. The habit of commanding and the consciousness of his dignity were betrayed by the pose, the look, and by every movement of this man, not to mention his nankeen-covered sheepskin coat and the butt he was sitting on, which latter is an emblem of power at a halting-place.

  When I came up he turned his head towards me without removing his eyes from the fire, and his look, following the direction his head had taken, only fell on me some time later. Maksímov was not a serf but a peasant-yeoman; he had some money, had qualified to take a class in the school-brigade, and had stuffed his head with erudition. He was awfully rich and awfully learned, so the soldiers said. I remember how once when we were practising plunging fire with a quadrant, he explained to the soldiers gathered round, that a spirit level is nothing but as it occurs that atmospheric mercury has its motion. In reality, Maksímov was far from being stupid, and understood his work thoroughly; but he had the unfortunate peculiarity of sometimes purposely speaking so that there was no possibility of understanding him and so that, I am convinced, he did not understand his own words. He was particularly fond of the words ‘as it occurs’ and ‘continues’, so that when I heard him say ‘as it occurs’ or ‘continues’, I knew beforehand that I should understand nothing of what followed. The soldiers on the other hand, as far as I could judge, liked to hear his ‘as it occurs’ and suspected it of being fraught with deep meaning, though they did not understand a word of it any more than I did. This they attributed entirely to their own stupidity, and respected Theodor Maksímov all the more. In a word, Maksímov was one of the diplomatically domineering.

  The soldier next to him, who had bared his sinewy red legs and was putting on his boots again by the fire, was Antónov, – that same Corporal Antónov who in 1837, remaining with only two others in charge of a
n exposed gun, persisted in firing back at a powerful enemy and, with two bullets in his leg, continued to serve his gun and to reload it.

  The soldiers used to say that he would have been made a gun-sergeant long ago but for his character. And his character really was very peculiar. No one could have been calmer, gentler, or more accurate than he was when sober; but when he had a fit of drinking he became quite another man; he would not submit to authority, fought, brawled, and became a perfectly good-for-nothing soldier. Only the week before this, during the Carnival, he had had a drinking-bout, and in spite of all threats, persuasions, and being tied to a cannon, he went on drinking and brawling up to the first day of Lent. During the whole of Lent, though the division had been ordered not to fast, he fed on dried bread, and during the first week would not even drink the regulation cup of vodka. But one had to see his sturdy thick-set figure, as of wrought iron, on its stumpy bandy legs, and his shiny moustached visage when in a tipsy mood he took the balaláyka in his sinewy hands and looking carelessly round played Lady, or walked down the street with his cloak thrown loosely over his shoulders, his medals dangling, his hands in the pockets of his blue nankeen trousers, and a look on his countenance of soldierly pride and of contempt for all that was not of the artillery – one had to see all this in order to understand how impossible it was for him at such a moment to abstain from fighting an orderly, a Cossack, an infantryman, a peasant (in fact, anyone not of the artillery) who was rude to him or happened merely to be in his way. He fought and rioted not so much for his own pleasure as to maintain the spirit of soldiership in general, of which he felt himself to be the representative.

  The third soldier, who sat on his heels smoking a clay pipe, was the artillery driver Chíkin. He had an ear-ring in one of his ears, bristling little moustaches, and the physiognomy of a bird. ‘Dear old Chíkin,’ as the soldiers called him, was a wit. During the bitterest frost, or up to his knees in mud, or after going two days without food, on the march, on parade, or at drill, the ‘dear fellow’ was always and everywhere making faces, twisting his legs about, or cracking jokes that convulsed the whole platoon with laughter. At every halting-place, and in the camp, there was always a circle of young soldiers collected round Chíkin, who played Fílka4 with them, told them stories about the cunning soldier and the English milord, personated a Tartar or a German, or simply made remarks of his own at which everyone roared with laughter. It is true that his reputation as a wit was so well established in the battery that it was sufficient for him to open his mouth and wink in order to produce a general guffaw, but really there was much in him that was truly humorous and surprising. He saw something special, something that never entered anybody else’s head, in everything, and above all, this capacity for seeing the funny side of things was proof against any and every trial.

  The fourth soldier was an insignificant-looking boy recruited the year before and this was his first campaign. He stood surrounded by the smoke and so near the flames that his threadbare cloak seemed in danger of catching fire, yet judging by the way he extended the skirts of his cloak and bent out his calves, and by his quiet self-satisfied pose, he was feeling highly contented.

  The fifth and last of the soldiers was Daddy Zhdánov. He sat a little way off, cutting a stick. Zhdánov had been serving in the battery longer than anyone else, had known all the others as recruits, and they were all in the habit of calling him ‘daddy’. It was said of him that he never drank, smoked, or played cards (not even ‘noses’), and never used bad language. He spent all his spare time boot-making, went to church on holidays where that was possible, or else put a farthing taper before his icon and opened the book of psalms, the only book he could read. He seldom kept company with the other soldiers. To those who were his seniors in rank though his juniors in years he was coldly respectful; with his equals he had few opportunities of mixing, not being a drinker. He liked the recruits and the youngest soldiers best: he always took them under his protection, admonished them, and often helped them. Everyone in the battery considered him a capitalist because he had some twenty-five rubles, out of which he was always ready to lend something to a soldier in real need.

  The same Maksímov who was now gun-sergeant told me that ten years ago, when he first came as a recruit and drank all he had with the old soldiers who were in the habit of drinking, Zhdánov, noticing his unfortunate position, called him up, severely reprimanded him for his conduct and even beat him, delivered a lecture on how one should live in the army, and sent him away after giving him a shirt (which Maksímov lacked) and half-a-ruble in money. ‘He made a man of me,’ Maksímov always used to say with respect and gratitude. He also helped Velenchúk (whom he had taken under his protection since he was a recruit) at the time of his misfortune. When the coat was stolen he helped him as he had helped many and many another during the twenty-five years of his service.

  One could not hope to find a man in the service who knew his work more thoroughly or was a better or more conscientious soldier than he; but he was too meek and insignificant-looking to be made a gun-sergeant, though he had been bombardier for fifteen years. Zhdánov’s one enjoyment and passion was song. He had a few favourite songs, always collected a circle of singers from among the younger soldiers, and though he could not sing himself he would stand by them, his hands in the pockets of his cloak, his eyes closed, showing sympathy by the movements of his head and jaw. I don’t know why, but that regular movement of the jaws below the ears, which I never noticed in anyone else, seemed to me extremely expressive. His snow-white head, his blackened moustaches, and his sunburnt, wrinkled face, gave him at first sight a stern and harsh expression; but on looking closer into his large round eyes, especially when they smiled (he never laughed with his lips), you were suddenly struck by something remarkable in their unusually mild, almost childlike look.

  Chapter IV

  ‘I’LL be blowed! I’ve gone and forgot my pipe. Here’s a go, lads!’ repeated Velenchúk.

  ‘You should smoke cikars, old fellow!’ began Chíkin, drawing his mouth to one side and winking. ‘There, now, I always smoke cikars when I’m at home – them’s sweeter.’

  Of course everybody burst out laughing.

  ‘Forgot your pipe, indeed!’ interrupted Maksímov without heeding the general mirth, and beating the tobacco out of his pipe into the palm of his left hand with the proud air of a superior; ‘where did you vanish to – eh, Velenchúk?’

  Velenchúk, half turning round to him, was about to raise his hand to his cap, but dropped it again.

  ‘Seems to me you hadn’t your sleep out after yesterday – falling asleep when you are once up! It’s not thanks the likes of you get for such goings on.’

  ‘May I die, Theodor Maksímov, if a drop has passed my lips; I don’t myself know what happened to me,’ answered Velenchúk. ‘Much cause I had for revelling,’ he muttered.

  ‘Just so; but we have to answer to the authorities because of the likes of you, and you continue – it’s quite scandalous!’ the eloquent Maksímov concluded in a calmer tone.

  ‘It’s quite wonderful, lads,’ Velenchúk went on after a moment’s silence, scratching his head and addressing no one in particular; ‘really quite wonderful, lads! Here have I been serving for the last sixteen years and such a thing never happened to me. When we were ordered to appear for muster I was all right, but at the “park”, there it suddenly clutches hold of me, and clutches and clutches, and down it throws me, down on the ground and no more ado – and I did not myself know how I fell asleep, lads! That must have been the trances,’ he concluded.

  ‘True enough, I hardly managed to wake you,’ said Antónov as he pulled on his boot. ‘I had to push and push just as if you’d been a log!’

  ‘Fancy now,’ said Velenchúk, ‘if I’d been drunk now!…’

  ‘That’s just like a woman we had at home,’ began Chíkin; ‘she hardly got off the stove for two years. Once they began waking her – they thought she was asleep – and she was already
dead. She used to be taken sleepy that way. That’s what it is, old fellow!’

  ‘Now then, Chíkin, won’t you tell us how you set the tone during your leave of absence?’ said Maksímov, looking at me with a smile as if to say: ‘Would you, too, like to hear the stupid fellow?’

  ‘What tone, Theodor Maksímov?’ said Chíkin, giving me a rapid side-glance. ‘In course I told them what sort of a Cawcusses we’d got here.’

  ‘Well, yes, how did you do it? There! don’t give yourself airs; tell us how you administrated it to them.’

  ‘How should I administrate it? In course they asked me how we live,’ Chíkin began rapidly with the air of a man recounting something he had repeated several times before. ‘ “We live well, old fellow,” says I. “Provisions in plenty we get: morning and night a cup of chokelad for every soldier lad, and at noon barley broth before us is set, such as gentle-folks get, and instead of vodka we get a pint of Modera wine from Devirier, such as costs forty-four – with the bottle ten more!” ’

  ‘Fine Modera,’ Velenchúk shouted louder than anyone, rolling with laughter: ‘that’s Modera of the right sort!’

  ‘Well, and what did you tell them about the Asiaites?’ Maksímov went on to ask when the general mirth had subsided a little.

  Chíkin stooped over the fire, poked out a bit of charcoal with a stick, put it to his pipe, and long continued puffing at his shag as though not noticing the silent curiosity awakened in his hearers. When he had at last drawn enough smoke he threw the bit of charcoal away, pushed his cap yet farther back, and, stretching himself, continued with a slight smile —

  ‘Well, so they asked, “What’s that Cherkés fellow or Turk as you’ve got down in your Cawcusses”, they say, “as fights?” and so I says, “Them’s not all of one sort; there’s different Cherkéses, old fellow. There’s the Wagabones, them as lives in the stony mountains and eat stones instead of bread. They’re big,” says I, “as big as a good-sized beam, they’ve one eye in the forehead and wear burning red caps,” just such as yours, old fellow,’ he added, turning to the young recruit, who really wore an absurd cap with a red crown.