Part 5

It was with an inexpressible joy that Kalouguine found himself at home, far from danger. Lying on his bed in his nightshirt, he related to Galtzine the incidents of the fight. These incidents naturally arranged themselves so as to make it appear how he, Kalouguine, was a brave and capable officer. He discreetly touched on this because no one could be ignorant of it, and no one, with the exception of the defunct captain Praskoukine, had the right to doubt it. The latter, although he felt very much honored to walk arm-in-arm with the aide-de-camp, had told one of his friends in his very ear the evening before that Kalouguine--a very good fellow, however--did not like to walk on the bastions.

We left Praskoukine coming back with Mikhaïloff. He reached a less exposed place and began to breathe again, when he perceived, on turning around, the sudden light of a flash. The sentinel shouted, “Mor--tar!” And one of the soldiers who followed added, “It is coming straight into the bastion!” Mikhaïloff looked. The luminous point of the bomb-shell seemed to stop directly over his head, exactly the moment when it was impossible to tell what direction it was going to take. That was for the space of a second. Suddenly, redoubling its speed, the projectile came nearer and nearer. The sparks of the fuse could be seen flying out, the dismal hissing was plainly audible. It was going to drop right in the midst of the battalion. “To earth!” shouted a voice. Mikhaïloff and Praskoukine obeyed. The latter, with shut eyes, heard the shell fall somewhere on the hard earth very near him. A second, which appeared to him an hour, passed, and the shell did not burst. Praskoukine was frightened; then he asked himself what cause he had for fear. Perhaps it had fallen farther away, and he wrongly imagined that he heard the fuse hissing near him. Opening his eyes, he was satisfied to see Mikhaïloff stretched motionless at his feet; but at the same time he perceived, a yard off, the lighted fuse of the shell spinning around like a top. A glacial terror, which stifled every thought, every sentiment, took possession of his soul. He hid his face in his hands.

Another second passed, during which a whole world of thoughts, of hopes, of sensations, and of souvenirs passed through his mind.

“Whom will it kill? Me or Mikhaïloff, or indeed both of us together? If it is I, where will it hit me? If in the head, it will be all over; if on the foot, they will cut it off, then I shall insist that they give me chloroform, and I may get well. Perhaps Mikhaïloff alone will be killed, and later I will tell how we were close together, and how I was covered with his blood. No, no! it is nearer me--it will be I!”

Then he remembered the twelve rubles he owed Mikhaïloff, and another debt left at Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long ago. A Bohemian air that he sang the evening before came to his mind. He also saw in his imagination the lady he was in love with in her lilac trimmed bonnet; the man who had insulted him five years before, and whom he had never taken vengeance on. But in the midst of these and many other souvenirs the present feeling--the expectation of death--did not leave him. “Perhaps it isn’t going to explode!” he thought, and was on the point of opening his eyes with desperate boldness. But at this instant a red fire struck his eyeballs through the closed lids, something hit him in the middle of the chest with a terrible crash. He ran forward at random, entangled his feet in his sword, stumbled, and fell on his side.

“God be praised, I am only bruised.”

This was his first thought, and he wanted to feel of his breast, but his hands seemed as if they were tied. A vice griped his head, soldiers ran before his eyes, and he mechanically counted them:

“One, two, three soldiers, and, besides, an officer who is losing his cloak!”

A new light flashed; he wondered what had fired. Was it a mortar or a cannon? Doubtless a cannon. Another shot, more soldiers--five, six, seven. They passed in front of him, and suddenly he became terribly afraid of being crushed by them. He wanted to cry out, to say that he was bruised, but his lips were dry, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He had a burning thirst. He felt that his breast was damp, and the sensation of this moisture made him think of water.... He would have liked to drink that which drenched him.

“I must have knocked the skin off in falling,” he said to himself, more and more frightened at the idea of being crushed by the soldiers who were running in crowds before him. He tried again to cry out,

“Take me!--”

But instead of that he uttered a groan so terrible that he was frightened at it himself. Then red sparks danced before his eyes; it seemed as if the soldiers were piling stones on him. The sparks danced more rapidly, the stones piled on him stifled him more and more. He stretched himself out, he ceased to see, to hear, to think, to feel. He had been killed instantly by a piece of shell striking him full in the breast.

XII.

Mikhaïloff also threw himself down on seeing the shell. Like Praskoukine, he thought of a crowd of things during the two seconds which preceded the explosion. He said his prayers mentally, repeating,

“May Thy will be done! Why, O Lord, am I a soldier? Why did I exchange into the infantry to make this campaign? Why did I not remain in the uhlan regiment, in the province of F----, near my friend Natacha? and now see what is going to happen to me.”

He began to count--“One, two, three, four,” saying to himself that if the shell exploded on an even number he would live, if at an odd number he would be killed.

“It is all over, I am killed!” he thought, at the sound of the explosion, without thinking any more of odd or even. Struck on the head, he felt a terrible pain.

“Lord, pardon my sins!” he murmured, clasping his hands.

He tried to rise, and fell unconscious, face downward. His first sensation when he came to himself was of blood running from his nose. The pain in his head was much lessened.

“My soul is departing. What will there be over _yonder_? My God, receive my soul in peace! It is nevertheless strange,” he reasoned, “that I am dying, and I can distinctly hear the footsteps of the soldiers and the sound of shots!”

“A stretcher this way! The company chief is killed!” cried a voice which he recognized, that of the drummer Ignatieff.

Some one raised him up by the shoulders; he opened his eyes with an effort and saw the dark-blue sky over his head, myriads of stars, and two shells flying through space as if they were racing with each other. He saw Ignatieff, soldiers loaded down with stretchers and with muskets, the slope of the intrenchment, and suddenly he understood he was still in the world.

A stone had slightly wounded him on the head. His first impression was almost a regret. He felt so well, so quietly prepared to go over _yonder_, that the return to reality, the sight of the shells, of the trenches, and of blood, was painful to him. The second impression was an involuntary joy at feeling himself alive, and the third was the desire to leave the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer bandaged his chief’s head and led him towards the field-hospital, supporting him under his arm.

“Where am I going, and what for?” thought the captain, coming to himself a little. “My duty is to remain with my company--all the more,” whispered a little voice within him, “since it will shortly be out of range of the enemy’s fire.”

“It’s no use, my friend,” he said to the drummer, taking away his arm. “I won’t go to the field-hospital; I will stay with my company.”

“You had better let yourself be properly taken care of, your Excellency. It don’t seem to be anything at first, but it may grow worse. Indeed, your Excellency--”

Mikhaïloff stopped, undecided what to do. He would have followed Ignatieff’s advice, perhaps, but he saw what a number of wounded men crowded the hospital, almost all of them seriously hurt.

“Perhaps the doctor will make fun of my scratch,” he said to himself, and without listening to the drummer’s arguments he went with a firm step to join his company.

“Where is officer Praskoukine, who was beside me a short time ago?” he asked of the sub-lieutenant whom he found at the head of the company.

“I don’t know; I think he was killed,” hesitatingly replied the latter.

“Killed or wounded? Why, don’t you know? He was marching with us. Why didn’t you bring him off?”

“It wasn’t possible in that furnace.”

“Oh! why did you abandon a living man, Mikhaïl Ivanitch?” said Mikhaïloff, with a vexed tone. “If he is dead, we must bring off his body.”

“How can he be alive? Indeed I tell you I went up to him, and I saw--What would you have? We scarcely had time to bring off our own men. Ah! the devils, how they are firing shell now!”

Mikhaïloff sat down, and held his head in his hands. The walk had increased the violence of the pain.

“No,” said he, “we must certainly go and get him. Perhaps he is alive. It is our duty, Mikhaïl Ivanitch.”

Mikhaïl Ivanitch did not reply.

“He didn’t think of bringing him off at the time, and now I must detail men for it. Why send them into this hell-fire, which will kill them, for nothing?” thought Mikhaïloff.

“Children, we must go back to get that officer who is wounded yonder in the ditch,” he said, without raising his voice, and in a tone which had no authority, for he guessed how disagreeable the execution of this order would be to the men.

But since he addressed himself to no one in particular, not one of them came forward at this call.

“Who knows? he is dead, perhaps, and it isn’t worth while to risk our men uselessly. It is my fault; I ought to have thought of it. I will go alone; it is my duty. Mikhaïl Ivanitch,” he added, aloud, “lead on the company, I will overtake you.”

Gathering up the folds of his cloak with one hand, he touched the image of St. Mitrophanes with the other. He wore this on his breast as a sign of special devotion to the blessed one.

The captain retraced his steps, assured himself that Praskoukine was really dead, and came back holding in his hand the bandage which had become unwound from his own head. The battalion was already at the foot of the hill, and almost out of reach of the balls, when Mikhaïloff rejoined it. A few stray shells still came in their direction.

“I must go to-morrow and be registered in the field-hospital,” said the captain to himself while the surgeon was dressing his wound.

XIII.

Hundreds of mutilated, freshly bleeding bodies, which two hours before were full of hopes and of different desires, sublime or humble, lay with stiffened limbs in the flowery and dew-bathed valley which separated the bastion from the intrenchment, or on the smooth floor of the little mortuary chapel of Sebastopol. The dry lips of all of these men murmured prayers, curses, or groans. They crawled, they turned on their sides, some were abandoned among the corpses of the blossom-strewn valley, others lay on stretchers, on cots, and on the damp floor of the field-hospital. Notwithstanding all this, the heavens shed their morning light over Mount Saponné as on the preceding days, the sparkling stars grew pale, a white mist rose from the sombre and plaintively swelling sea, the east grew purple with the dawn, and long, flame-colored clouds stretched along the blue horizon. As on the days before, the grand torch mounted slowly, powerful and proud, promising joy, love, and happiness to the awakened world.

XIV.

On the following evening the band of the regiment of chasseurs again played on the boulevard. Around the pavilion officers, yunkers, soldiers, and young women promenaded with a festal air in the paths of white flowering acacias.

Kalouguine, Prince Galtzine, and another colonel marched arm-in-arm along the street, talking of the affair of the day before. The chief subject of this conversation was, as it always is, not of the affair itself, but of the part the talkers had taken in it. The expression of their faces, the sound of their voices, had something serious in it, and it might have been supposed that the losses profoundly affected them. But, to tell the truth, since no one among them had lost any one dear to him, they put on this officially mournful expression for propriety’s sake. Kalouguine and the colonel, although they were very good fellows, would have asked nothing better than to be present at a similar engagement every day, in order to receive each time a sword of honor or the rank of major-general. When I hear a conqueror who sends to their destruction millions of men in order to satisfy his personal ambition called a monster, I always want to laugh. Ask sub-lieutenants Petrouchef Antonoff, and others, and you will see that each is a little Napoleon, a monster ready to engage in battle, to kill a hundred men, in order to obtain one more little star or an increase of pay.

“I ask pardon,” said the colonel, “the affair began on the left flank. _I was there._”

“Perhaps so,” replied Kalouguine, “for I was almost all the time on the right flank. I went there twice, first to seek the general, then simply of my own accord to look on. It was there it was hot!”

“If Kalouguine says so it is a fact,” continued the colonel, turning towards Galtzine. “Do you know that only to-day V---- told me you were a brave man? Our losses are truly frightful. In my own regiment four hundred men disabled! I don’t understand how I came out alive.”

At the other end of the boulevard they saw Mikhaïloff’s bandaged head arise. He was coming to meet them.

“Are you wounded, captain?” asked Kalouguine.

“Slightly--by a stone,” said Mikhaïloff.

“_Le pavillon est il déjà amené?_” said Prince Galtzine, looking over the head of the captain, and addressing himself to no one in particular.

“_Non pas encore_,” said Mikhaïloff, very anxious to show that he knew French.

“Does the armistice still go on?” asked Galtzine, addressing him politely in Russian, as if to say to the captain, “I know you speak French with difficulty, why not simply speak Russian?” Upon this the aides-de-camp went away from Mikhaïloff, who felt, as on the evening before, very lonesome. Not wishing to come in contact with some of them, and not making up his mind to approach others, he limited himself to saluting certain officers, and sat down near the Kazarsky monument to smoke a cigarette.

Baron Pesth also made his appearance on the boulevard. He related that he had taken part in the negotiations of the armistice, that he had chatted with the French officers, and that one of them had said to him,

“If daylight had come an hour later the ambuscades would have been retaken.”

To which he had replied,

“Sir, I don’t say they would not have been, so that I shall not contradict you,” and his answer had filled him with pride.

In reality, although he had been present at the conclusion of the armistice, and had been very desirous of talking with the French, he had said nothing remarkable. The yunker simply promenaded for a long time in front of the lines, asking the nearest Frenchmen,

“What regiment do you belong to?”

They answered him, and that was all. As he advanced a little beyond the neutral zone, a French sentinel, who did not imagine that the Russian understood his language, flung a formidable curse at him.

“He is coming to examine our works, this damned--”

Indeed, after that the yunker returned home, composing along the road the French phrases he had just retailed to his acquaintances.

Captain Zobkine was also seen on the promenade, shouting with a loud voice; Captain Objogoff, with his torn uniform; the captain of artillery, who asked no favors of any one; the yunker, in love--in a word, all the personages of the day before, swayed by the same eternal moving forces. Praskoukine, Neferdoff, and several others were alone absent. Nobody thought of them. Nevertheless, their bodies were neither washed, nor dressed, nor buried in the earth.

XV.

White flags are flying on our fortifications and in the French intrenchments. In the blossom-covered valley mutilated bodies, clothed in blue or in gray, with bare feet, lie in heaps, and the men are carrying them off to place them in carts. The air is poisoned by the odor of the corpses. Crowds of people pour out of Sebastopol and out of the French camp to witness this spectacle. The different sides meet each other on this ground with eager and kindly curiosity.

Listen to the words exchanged between them. On this side, in a small group of French and Russians, a young officer is examining a cartridge-box. Although he speaks bad French, he can make himself understood.

“And why that--that bird?” he asks.

“Because it is the cartridge-box of a regiment of the guard, sir. It is ornamented with the imperial eagle.”

“And you--you belong to the guard?”

“Pardon, sir, to the sixth regiment of the line.”

“And this--where was this bought?” The officer points to the little wooden mouth-piece which holds the Frenchman’s cigarette.

“At Balaklava, sir. It is only palm-wood.”

“Pretty,” replies the officer, obliged to make use of the few words he knew, and which, _nolens volens,_ intruded themselves into the conversation.

“You will oblige me if you will keep that as a souvenir of this meeting.”

The Frenchman throws away his cigarette, blows in the mouth-piece, and politely presents it to the officer with a salute. The latter gives him his in exchange. All the French and Russian by-standers smile and seem delighted.

Here comes a shrewd-looking infantryman in a red shirt, his overcoat thrown over his shoulders. His face is full of good spirits and curiosity. Accompanied by two comrades, their hands behind their backs, he approaches and asks a Frenchman for a light. The latter blows into his pipe, shakes it, and offers a light to the Russian.

“_Tabac bonn!_” says the soldier in the red shirt, and the by-standers smile.

“Yes, good tobacco--Turkish tobacco!” answers the Frenchman; “and with you Russian tobacco good?”

“_Rouss bonn!_” repeats the soldier in the red shirt, and this time the spectators burst out laughing.

“_Français pas bonn, bonn jour, mousiou!_” continues the soldier, making a show of all he knew in French, laughing, and tapping on the stomach of the man who was talking with him. The Frenchmen also laugh.

“They are not pretty, these Russian B----,” said a Zouave.

“What are they laughing at?” asks another, with an Italian accent.

“_Le caftan bonn!_” the bold soldier begins again, examining the embroidered uniform of the Zouave.

“To your places, _sacré nom_!” shouts a French corporal at this instant.

The soldiers sulkily disperse.

Nevertheless, our young cavalry lieutenant is strutting in a group of the enemy’s officers.

“I knew Count Sasonoff well,” says one of the latter. “He is one of the true Russian counts, such as we like.”

“I also knew a Sasonoff,” replies the cavalry officer, “but he wasn’t a count, as far as I know. He is a small, dark man about your age.”

“That’s it, sir--that’s he. Oh, how I would like to see the dear count! If you see him, give him my regards. Captain Latour,” he adds, bowing.

“What a miserable business we are carrying on! It was hot last night, wasn’t it?” continues the cavalry officer, anxious to keep up the conversation, and pointing to the corpses.

“Oh, sir, it is frightful. But what fine fellows your soldiers are! It is a pleasure to fight with fine fellows like that.”

“It must be confessed that your fellows are up to snuff also,” replies the Russian horseman, with a salute, satisfied that he has given him a good answer.

But enough on this subject. Let us watch that ten-year-old boy, with an old worn cap on his head which doubtless belonged to his father, and with naked legs and large shoes on his feet, dressed in a pair of cotton trousers, held up by a single brace. He came out of the fortifications at the beginning of the truce. He has been walking about ever since on the low ground, examining with stupid curiosity the French soldiers and the dead bodies lying on the ground. He is gathering the little blue field-flowers with which the valley is strewn. He retraces his steps with a great bouquet, holding his nose so as not to smell the fetid odor that comes on the wind. Stopping near a heap of corpses, he looks a long time at a headless, hideous, dead man. After an examination, he goes near and touches with his foot the arm stretched stiffly in the air. As he presses harder on it the arm moves and falls into place. The boy gives a cry, hides his face in the flowers, and enters the fortifications, running at full speed.

Yes, flags of truce float over the bastions and on the intrenchments; the brilliantly shining sun is setting into the blue sea, which ripples and sparkles under the golden rays. Thousands of people assemble, look at each other, chat, laugh. These people, who are Christians, who profess to obey the great law of love and devotion, are looking at their work without throwing themselves down in repentance at the knees of Him who gave them life, and with life the fear of death, the love of the good and the beautiful. They do not embrace each other like brothers, and shed tears of joy and happiness! We must at least take consolation in the thought that we did not begin the war, that we are only defending our country, our native land. The white flags are lowered; the engines of death and of suffering thunder once more; again a flood of innocent blood is shed, and groans and curses can be heard.

I have said what I have wanted to say for this time at least, but a painful doubt overwhelms me. It would have been better, perhaps, to have kept silent, for possibly what I have uttered is among those pernicious truths obscurely hidden away in every one’s soul, and which, in order to remain harmless, must not be expressed; just as old wine must not be disturbed lest the sediment rise and make the liquid turbid. Where, then, in my tale do we see the evil we must avoid, and the good towards which we must strive to go? Where is the traitor? Where is the hero? All are good and all are bad. It is not Kalouguine with his brilliant courage, his gentlemanly bravado, and his vanity--the chief motive power of all his actions; it is not Praskoukine, an inoffensive cipher, although he fell on the battle-field for his faith, his ruler, and his country; nor timid Mikhaïloff; nor Pesth, that child with no conviction and no moral sense, who can pass for traitors or for heroes.

No; the hero of my tale, the one I love with all the power of my soul, the one I have tried to reproduce in all his beauty, just as he has been, is, and always will be beautiful, is Truth.

_SEBASTOPOL IN AUGUST, 1855._

I.

Towards the end of the month of August there was slowly moving along the stony Sebastopol road between Douvanka[E] and Baktchisaraï an officer’s carriage of peculiar form, unknown elsewhere, which held a middle place in construction between a basket-wagon, a Jewish britchka, and a Russian cart.