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ee 
 INDEPENDENT NOVEL 
 SERIES 
 
 STORIES FROM GARSHIN 
 
 
 
~~ 
 ery, 
 
 THE 
 INDEPENDENT NOVEL SERIES 
 
 THE SHIFTING OF THE FIRE 
 A PHANTOM FROM THE EAST 
 JEAN DE KERDREN 
 
 POOR LADY MASSEY 
 
 STORIES FROM GARSHIN 
 
PG 2460 
 
 On 7J-! SIL , Cs 
 | A28 
 1393 
 V. GaRSHIN 
 
 STORIES 
 FROM 
 GARSHIN 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Peele OVO NICH 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 S: STE PNT A $< (or Noro 
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 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 
 
 MDCCCXCIII 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 In 2021 with funding from 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 https://archive.org/details/storiestromgarshOOgars 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 eee 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, ° : ; ° : 
 THE SCARLET FLOWER, : : : : 23 
 From THE MEmoIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV, : 59 
 A COWARD, . C ? ; : po iy, 
 
 AN OCCURRENCE, . 5 : : » 199 
 

 

 
 Stories from Garshin. 
 
 efi 
 
 PNP RODUCTION: 
 
 INCE the two great Russian 
 
 novelists, Turgenev and 
 
 
 
 Tolstoi, broke the ice of 
 indifference to Russian literature, and 
 won for themselves and for Russian 
 fiction a high place in the world of 
 art, the English are constantly asking 
 who are the successors of these great 
 men, who, even in translation, were 
 able to captivate their intellects and 
 imaginations. 
 
 Real successors, able to stand side 
 A 
 
2 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 by side with Tolstoi and Turgenev 
 and not be eclipsed, there are none. 
 Modern Russian fiction can be com- 
 pared with that of the generation of 
 the forties in Russia. 
 
 This falling off in artistic creation, 
 after so glorious a blossoming, is a 
 phenomenon which is in nowise dis- 
 creditable to Russian genius, for it 
 can be observed not in Russia alone. 
 There is no continuity of progress in 
 the domain of art such as we see in 
 the domain of abstract thought. Whilst 
 in science every new generation in- 
 variably marks a new stride in advance, 
 in every branch of art we notice a 
 modest beginning, after which the 
 summit of perfection is reached, to be 
 followed by a period of comparative 
 inefficiency, protracted until a new 
 historical period remoulds the condi- 
 
 tions of life, and gives rise to a new 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 art, which follows the same line of 
 development. 
 
 The movement of art may be re- 
 presented by an undulating line, the ~ 
 summits of the huge waves being 
 divided sometimes by centuries, whilst 
 the smaller waves, forming the surface 
 of the huge ones, are separated by 
 several generations. There has been 
 no successor to Shakespeare or Dante 
 or Homer, who mark the three great 
 periods of European history. 
 
 There has been no successor to 
 Geethe and Schiller in Germany, to 
 Hugo and De Musset in France, or 
 to the great novelists of the past 
 generation, Thackery, Dickens, George 
 Elliot and Walter Scott in England. 
 
 Russia has had a similar artistic. 
 history, although condensed into the 
 short space of the present century. 
 
 With Pushkin and Lermontov she 
 
4 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 reaches the summit of her poetical 
 growth; with Gogol, Turgenev, Tol- 
 stoi, Dostoevsky and Goncharov, the 
 summit of her fiction. The genera- 
 tion of the sixties marks its lowest ebb. 
 Among the novelists of that epoch 
 there is not a single one whose works 
 will live. 
 
 With the eighties another rising tide 
 is clearly noticeable. It is still at its 
 beginning, and one cannot help think- 
 ing that the terrible political crisis, 
 through which the country is passing, 
 has much to do with checking its full 
 manifestations. When the flower of a 
 generation is ruthlessly decimated, the 
 best, the most ardent spirits, finding 
 an early grave in the mines of Siberia, 
 or in the gloomy subterranean cells of 
 the fortresses, there is little scope for 
 the development of national genius. 
 
 Yet the last generation of Russian 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 novelists has undoubtedly produced 
 men whose works show traces of 
 superior, unperishable talent, emulating, 
 sometimes, those of the great masters. 
 
 Among these modern authors, none 
 deserves closer attention, or is more 
 worth careful study, than Vsevolod 
 Garshin, whom adverse fate alone pre- 
 vented from reaching the summit of 
 Pieeeiicadied in 13888, at the-age of 
 thirty-two, killed, not by the brutal 
 force of Russian despotism, but by 
 the moral suffering resulting from the 
 conditions which this despotism has 
 created. None of our great mas- - 
 ters created, at Garshin’s age, any- 
 thing better than his work, and none 
 can stand as so true and painfully 
 effective a representative of the spirit 
 of our troubled time. 
 
 Garshin wrote nothing but prose. 
 
 But he was far more a poet than a 
 
6 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 novelist. Like the greatest of our 
 lyric writers, Lermontov, towards 
 whom he felt such an organic attrac- 
 tion, Garshin gives in his works a 
 vast amount of crystallised feeling 
 and emotion with comparatively little 
 of the plastic elements of poetry— 
 those which appeal to all times and 
 all nations. He felt too strongly the 
 woes and sorrows of his own epoch 
 to be able to give to his creations 
 that completeness which would make 
 them live of themselves. But for his 
 contemporaries this is rather an addi- 
 tional charm than a drawback. Most 
 of his sketches are but lyric poems, 
 whose artistic merit and interest lies 
 in their opening the very heart of 
 'the author himself, For his heart 
 was that of the Russian humanity of 
 his epoch, intoxicated with bright 
 
 social ideals of the future, burning 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 with devotions, love and pity for all 
 the disheartened and unfortunate, yet 
 difident of itself, humbled and_ sad, 
 often crushed by the consciousness of 
 Hemenelpiessness in face of such 
 overwhelming evils—the noblest and 
 most unfortunate heart that ever beat 
 in man’s breast. 
 
 Two periods are to be distinguished 
 in the literary career of Vsevolod Gar- 
 shin. The first is closely connected 
 with his military career, and some 
 of his best works of this period are 
 the reproduction of his own military 
 experiences during the Turkish war 
 of 1877, in which he took part as 
 a volunteer. 
 
 The motives which impelled this most 
 kind-hearted of men to embrace the pro- 
 fession of arms are very characteristic of 
 him, and of the class to which he be- 
 
 longed. The thirst for ‘heroic exploits, 
 
8 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 the ‘glory of Russia’s arms, were, for 
 him, words with a rather ugly meaning. 
 But when war broke out and the news- 
 papers reported the daily slaughter of 
 Russian soldiers upon the battlefield, 
 and their unspeakable miseries in the 
 camps and hospitals, Garshin felt im- 
 pelled to go and share the sufferings of 
 his people. 
 
 The admirable sketch, bearing the 
 rather misleading title, 4 Coward, de- 
 scribes his own feelings at that period, 
 and also gives us the moral physiog- 
 nomy of those generous and devoted 
 young Russian men and women, whose 
 motto is: ‘Everything for the People.’ 
 
 A Coward was written after Gar- 
 shin's return from the campaign; his 
 first literary production, Four Days on 
 the Battlefield, was written almost from 
 the battlefield itself, and has for its basis 
 
 atieactualriact. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 It is the story of an educated man 
 who has enlisted in the army upon high 
 humanitarian grounds. During his first 
 mction he kills a Turk, and, a minute 
 later, is himself stretched upon the 
 ground by a ball that hits him in the 
 leg. He loses consciousness, and is 
 left upon the battlefield among the 
 corpses. Then follows the wounded 
 man’s diary—describing his sufferings, 
 his strugele with death (which he staves 
 off, thanks to the water he finds in the 
 flask of the Turk whom he has killed) ; 
 and the ghastly sight of the corpse by 
 his side, rapidly decomposing under the 
 hot sun. The whole is a picture of war 
 divested of its glamour. The absence 
 of sermonising or moralising makes it 
 only the more impressive and convinc- 
 ing. 
 
 This sketch has been twice trans- 
 
 lated into English. It has therefore 
 
10 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 not been incorporated into the present 
 volume. 
 
 Those English readers whose opinion 
 I have had the opportunity of hear- 
 ing, find four Days horrible, and 
 even ‘ghastly.’ But to Russians it 
 is only truthful; like the war pic- 
 tures of Vereshchagin, mercilessly truth- 
 ful, yet simple; not seeking to pile 
 up horrors, but not avoiding them 
 in order to spare the feelings of the 
 public. 
 
 Later on Garshin wrote another 
 longer sketch, Zhe Recollections of 
 Private Ivanov, which reproduces more 
 fully his soldier life. 
 
 The Recollections, which the reader 
 will find in the present volume, is one 
 -of the best of Garshin’s stories; yet 
 it reveals at the same time the im- 
 maturity of his talent, and that truly 
 
 Oriental incapacity of some Russians 
 
INTRODUCTION. II 
 to realise that love and sympathy are 
 not everything, and that the ideas of 
 honour and human dignity must also 
 have some room in the making of 
 human character. 
 
 The figure of Captain Wentzel, who 
 may in a sense be called the hero of 
 the Recollections, is not merely un- 
 real, but shocking, from an artistic 
 as well as from a human point of 
 view. 
 
 To idealise such a brute, and make 
 allowances for him on account of his 
 ‘hidden sympathy’ with the soldiers 
 whom he so brutally maltreats, is the 
 same as to idealise an executioner or 
 slave-driver who would torture children 
 and prostitute women in the name of 
 some ‘idea’ which has entered into 
 - his wooden head. 
 
 But the Recollections need not be 
 
 viewed as a story. They present a 
 
12 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 series of scenes from military life, loosely 
 connected by a very thin plot, which 
 one almost forgets in the striking 
 effectiveness of separate war pictures 
 -in this collection, After those of 
 Count Tolstoi they are the best of 
 their, Kind’ in ‘our “literature = jabhey 
 have that plasticity, fulness of detail, 
 breadth, and objective calmness, which 
 we do not find in Garshin’s other 
 “ works. 
 
 It is interesting to note that this most 
 objective of Garshin’s stories was 
 written, one may say, in view of one 
 of the greatest physical calamities that 
 has occurred upon Russian soil. 
 
 The Kukuev railway catastrophe 
 happened a few miles from the country 
 place where Garshin was staying when 
 writing the Recollections. He went 
 to the place of the disaster and saw 
 
 all its ghastly details, and yet he was 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 able to preserve calmness enough to 
 complete his story. 
 
 His sensitiveness was not the result 
 of weakness of nerves. In one of his 
 letters, written from Bulgaria to an 
 intimate friend, he says that he was 
 himself surprised at his calmness at the 
 sight of slaughter and horrible mutila- 
 tion. What destroyed his peace of - 
 mind, deprived him of sleep, and made 
 life unendurable to him, was the sight 
 of a moral evil, injustice appealing to 
 men’s moral sense, and demanding their 
 interference. 
 
 Now, this was precisely what he had 
 to live through during the nine years 
 which followed his return from the war. 
 
 That was the epoch when Russian 
 revolt broke out, attempt following 
 attempt in rapid succession, resulting 
 in executions, wholesale arrests, and 
 
 flerce sentences worse than executions, 
 
14 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Many of those who perished were 
 Garshin’s dear and beloved friends. 
 He did not approve of their methods. 
 But what other way could he advise 
 them to take in fighting the dark power 
 stifling the life of the whole country? 
 If they were wrong, were not those 
 ten thousand times more wrong who 
 watched the desperate struggle without 
 moving a finger, lest they should com- 
 promise themselves? And who among 
 these outsiders could say that he had 
 done enough to exculpate himself from 
 the charge of indifference ? 
 
 These are questions which every 
 Russian of sensitive conscience was 
 asking himself in the troubled times 
 Ole ancemnectiiomwat, «Ole 2 emMatiesso 
 loving, so generous to others, and so 
 severe to himself, the trial proved too 
 hard. In a few years he was literally 
 
 consumed by it, body and soul. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 18 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that 
 Garshin’s works belonging to this 
 second period of his literary career 
 bear the stamp of the author’s gloomy 
 mood. We have rather to wonder at 
 the extent to which he succeeded in 
 restraining himself, and in avoiding the 
 intrusion of his personality upon the 
 reader. 
 
 His stories of that period are sub- 
 jective, lyrical. But it is the true, the 
 artistic lyricism of Lermontov, to whom 
 he may be compared in nervous, im- 
 passioned style, poetic language, and 
 wonderful capacity of saying so much 
 in a few pages, almost in a few lines. 
 The subjective stories of this period 
 mate. far superior, artistically, to the 
 more objective military sketches of his 
 earlier period. Some of them are per- 
 fect masterpieces of their kind. ‘This 
 
 can be said of most of his fairy tales— 
 
16 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 a peculiarly difficult form of writing, 
 in which he has no rival throughout 
 the whole of Russian literature. They 
 can be compared only with the few 
 gems of this kind which Tourgener 
 Set qinmhis 2270529 0c77s wear Ney mate 
 melancholy ; but here the gloom is 
 relieved, as with a ray of sunshine, by 
 the bright and simple life of nature, of 
 all those trees, flowers, birds, insects 
 and animals, which Garshin, as a true 
 poet, loves and reproduces with such 
 quaint and delicate humour. 
 
 When from nature he turns to man’s 
 life, the gloom becomes denser, and 
 there is no sunshine to relieve it. 
 
 Such is one of the most powerful of 
 Garshin’s_ stories, MWzght — the last 
 night of a suicide, a weak, kind- 
 hearted, not particularly courageous 
 creature, who is driven to put an end 
 
 to his miserable days by his utter 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 incapacity to find an issue out of the 
 lies and contradictions of the world. 
 Or another—the most concrete, the 
 best finished, and the gloomiest of the 
 series — dn Occurrence, telling the 
 heart-rending story of the love of a 
 simple, good-natured man —a_ petty 
 official —for a street girl, who has 
 been well brought up, and is honest 
 and pure in heart notwithstanding her 
 life of degradation, who suffers horribly 
 but cannot accept the redeeming hand 
 held out to her, because she does not 
 love him, and feels that to consent to 
 marry him would be another and per- 
 haps worse desecration of herself. 
 
 Neither the little story MWzg4¢ nor 
 any of the fairy tales have entered 
 into the present volume for want of 
 space. But let us hope that another 
 volume of Garshin will appear, to 
 
 give to English readers a full idea of 
 
18 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 this subtle, poetic, merciless, yet irre- 
 sistibly sympathetic author. 
 
 The year 1880 was a fatal one 
 in Garshin’s life. The burden of 
 grief, harboured in his sensitive soul, 
 proved too great for him, and he broke 
 down. 
 
 The Winter Palace explosion occurred 
 in February. Count Loris Melikov 
 was appointed virtual Dictator, and a 
 few days later a young revolutionist, 
 Mlodetzki, attempted his life. He was 
 immediately apprehended and_ con- 
 demned to death, and lay in prison 
 awaiting his execution on the morrow. 
 
 Garshin was in St Petersburg, and 
 spent that night at his house in a 
 mental agony, assuredly more dreadful 
 than that of the brave young con- 
 demned. In the early dawn he left 
 the house, impelled by one absorbing 
 
 idea, that of seeing the Dictator, im- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 ploring him to spare the man who had 
 attempted his life, and inaugurating a 
 policy of pacification. He overcame 
 all obstacles, and was admitted to the 
 house. Count Loris Melikov was 
 awakened and gave him a long audi- 
 ence. With the eloquence of passion 
 and despair, Garshin urged his 
 request. But the supplications of the 
 young humanitarian were met by con- 
 siderations of the iron ‘necessity of 
 
 face eet ner Count treated him) very. 
 kindly, and Garshin always retained a 
 good memory of Loris Melikov. But - 
 the interview did not restore his peace 
 of mind. 
 
 Mlodetzki was executed, and Gar- 
 shin hurriedly left the capital. In 
 Moscow he obtained, by very strange 
 means, an interview with another high 
 official, whom he also tried to convert 
 
 to his views. Then he left Moscow, 
 
20 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 roamed all over Russia, and saw Count 
 Tolstoi. A few weeks later he was 
 discovered by his relatives, in a distant 
 corner of Russia, in a state of melan- 
 choly insanity. 
 
 He recovered for the time being, and 
 wrote his Scarlet Flower, a story of a 
 madman. ‘This was his last and finest 
 work, and would have done honour to 
 Turgenev. It is a work of surpassing 
 beauty, uniting in a wonderful way the 
 subtle pyschology, the all - pervading 
 poetry, of which he alone, among 
 modern Russian writers, possessed the 
 secret, with the plasticity and objec- 
 tiveness of his early period. 
 
 Dr Sikorsky, a well-known Russian 
 specialist in mental diseases, wrote in 
 a medical journal a very interesting 
 notice upon this work, pronouncing it 
 to be a strikingly faithful study of 
 
 “maniacal insanity. This is quite credi- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 ble, and is a high testimony to such a . 
 work. But it is no test of artistic 
 merit. With all its scientific faithful- 
 ness, the sketch might be worthless as 
 a work of art. If the Scarlet Flower 
 is not merely a remarkable, but a great 
 work, this is because it gives us a 
 powerfully vivid picture of a madman, 
 a creature apart, who is, at the same 
 time, a man like everyone of us. 
 
 To me it seems evident that the 
 hero of this story is, if not a ‘ Nihilist, 
 certainly a man whose mania is of a 
 political kind. In creating this weird 
 and absorbing story, Garshin shows 
 that, whilst the reasoning capacities of 
 the sick man are impaired, his feelings 
 and moral impulses—his moral man— 
 are perfectly sane. We see the true 
 man behind the distorted face of the 
 maniac, and we recognise in him a 
 
 perfect type, embodying one of the 
 
22 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 most interesting phases of human psy- 
 chology. 
 
 The Scarlet Flower was Garshin’s 
 ‘Swan-song.’ 
 
 ‘His fatal disease returned, and in one 
 of its attacks he threw himself from the 
 fourth storey of the house upon the 
 stone staircase floor. He lingered for 
 
 a few days, and died. 
 
 ost ba eek he 
 
 
 
HEP eSCARLET FLOWER 
 

 

 
 Wipe oCARUET FLOWER 
 (In memory of I. S. Turgenev). 
 
 Ne 
 
 \N the name of His Imperial 
 Majesty, the Emperor Peter I., 
 I declare this lunatic asylum 
 vat open to inspection.’ 
 
 These words were uttered in a loud 
 
 
 
 resonant voice. The asylum clerk, who 
 was entering the patient’s name in a large 
 ragged book on an inky table, could not 
 refrain from smiling. But the two young 
 men in charge of the patient did not smile; 
 they could hardly stand on their feet, so 
 exhausted were they after two days and 
 nights spent without sleep, alone with the 
 madman, whom they had just brought by 
 train. At the last station but one his fury 
 had increased ; they had managed to obtain 
 a strait-jacket, and, with the help of a 
 gendarme and the railway officials, had put 
 it on the patient. In this condition they had 
 B 
 
26 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 brought him to the town and presented him 
 at the hospital. 
 
 He was, terrible; Over eis (srey ecoat, 
 which he had torn to ribbons during his fit of 
 fury, was fastened the coarse sacking strait- 
 jacket, cut low at the neck, with its long- 
 sleeves tied behind, and binding his arms 
 across his chest. His inflamed, widely-dis- 
 tended eyes (he had not slept for ten days) 
 burned with a fixed, fiery glare; the corners 
 of his under lip twitched with a nervous 
 convulsion; the curly, tangled hair had fallen 
 Overunis foreheads like sautilane ssandasne 
 tramped up and down the entry office with 
 quick, heavy steps, curiously examining the 
 old cases full of documents and the leather- 
 covered chairs, and glancing now and then 
 at his escort. 
 
 ‘Take him into the ward to the right.’ 
 
 ‘I know, I know. I was here with you 
 last year. We inspected the asylum. | 
 know everything; it will be difficult to de- 
 ceive me!’ said the patient. 
 
 He turned towards the door. The hall- 
 porter opened it for him, and, with his quick, 
 heavy, resolute gait, he walked out of the 
 office, holding his frenzied head erect and 
 high, and hurried, almost at a run, down the 
 right-hand corridor into the lunatic ward. The 
 attendants could hardly keep pace with him. 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 27 
 
 ‘Ring. I can’t; you've tied my hands. 
 
 The porter opened the door, and the new 
 arrival entered the asylum. 
 
 It was a large stone building of the old- 
 fashioned state-barrack type. Two large halls 
 —the dining-hall and a general living-room 
 for quiet patients, a wide corridor with a 
 glass door leading to the gardens and flower- 
 beds, and about a score of separate rooms in 
 which the patients lived—occupied the ground 
 floor. There were on this floor also two dark 
 rooms—one lined with mattrasses, the other 
 with boards, and a huge gloomy, vaulted bath- 
 room. The upper floor was occupied by the 
 women. A confused noise, broken by shrieks 
 and howls, came from that quarter. The 
 asylum was built to accommodate eighty per- 
 sons; but, as it served for several provinces, up 
 to three hundred patients were crowded into it, 
 Four or five beds were placed in each little 
 cell; and during the winter, when the patients 
 were not allowed out into the garden, and 
 all the iron-grated windows were fast shut, 
 the air became intolerably close. 
 
 The new patient was taken into the 
 bath-room. Even on a healthy person that 
 room would have produced a dismal impres- 
 tion, and on his excited, over-strung imagina- 
 tion the impression was morbidly vivid. It 
 was a great, vaulted room, with a clammy 
 
28 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 stone floor, and was lighted by a single window 
 in a corner; the walls and vaulted roof were 
 painted dark red; two stone baths, like two 
 oval pits filled with water, were sunk in the 
 floor (which was black with dirt), with their 
 rims ona level with it. A huge brass stove, 
 with a cylindrical cauldron to heat the water, 
 and a complete array of brass pipes and 
 taps filled up the corner opposite the window 
 The whole place wore an appearance which 
 seemed to a morbid imagination unusually 
 gsloomy and fantastic; and the dismal face 
 of the bath-keeper, a fat, taciturn Oukrainian, 
 still further strengthened the impression. 
 Thus, when the patient was taken into 
 this terrible room to have a bath, and, in 
 accordance with the system of treatment 
 adopted by the head doctor of the asylum, 
 a large blister was placed on the back of his 
 neck, he was seized with horror and fury. 
 Absurd fancies, one more monstrous than 
 another, crowded through his brain. What 
 was this? The inquisition? Some place of 
 secret execution, where his enemies had re- 
 solved to make an end of him. Perhaps, 
 hell itself. At last the idea came into his 
 head that he was to be put to the question. 
 The attendants undressed him in spite of 
 his desperate resistance. His disease had 
 doubled his muscular strength, and he easily 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 29 
 
 tore himself from the hands of several keepers, 
 dashing them to the ground ; at last, four of 
 them got him down, and, taking him by the 
 hands and feet, put him into the warm water. 
 It seemed to him boiling, and through the 
 frenzied brain flashed a fragmentary, in- 
 coherent thought of torture by scalding 
 water and red-hot iron. Choking, and con- 
 vulsively beating the water with hands and 
 feet (as far as the firm hold of the keepers 
 allowed), he shrieked out in strangled tones 
 an incoherent speech, such as no one could 
 imagine without hearing it. Prayers and 
 Succesmwete jumbled together in it. He 
 shrieked and shouted until he was exhausted ; 
 and then, with bitter tears, softly murmured 
 a sentence in no way connected with the 
 former one :— 
 
 ‘Blessed martyr, holy St George. Into 
 thy hands I give my body. But my spirit— 
 no, oh no!’ 
 
 The keepers still held him, although he 
 had calmed down. The warm bath and an 
 ice-bag placed on his head had produced 
 their effect. But when he was lifted out: 
 of the water and seated on a stool to have 
 the blister put on, what remained of his 
 strength and of his frenzied fancies burst 
 out afresh. 7 
 
 ‘Why? Why?’ he cried, ‘I have done 
 
30 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 no willing wrong to anything. Why should 
 you kill me? Oh—o—oh! Oh God! Oh 
 martyrs tortured before me! Save me, lI 
 HOO LOtC wes 
 
 The burning touch of the blister against 
 the back of his neck made him struggle 
 frantically. The attendants could not hold 
 him, and were at a loss what to do. 
 
 “There's, nothing for it) remarked the 
 soldier, who was performing the operation ; 
 ‘we must take it off? 
 
 These simple words made the patient 
 shudder. ‘Take it off! Take what off? 
 My head!’ he thought, and closed ‘his eyes 
 in deadly terror. The soldier took a coarse 
 towel by the two ends, and drew it quickly 
 and heavily across the back of the patient’s 
 neck, scraping off the blister, and with it the 
 outer skin, and leaving a bare, red, grazed 
 place. The pain of this operation, almost 
 unbearable even fora calm and healthy person, 
 seemed to the patient to be the end of every- 
 thing. He made one frenzied effort, and tore 
 himself from the hands of the keeper, and his 
 naked body dropped on the stone flags. He 
 thought that his head had been cut off. He 
 would have cried out, but could not. He was 
 carried to his pallet in a fainting fit, which 
 gradually passed into a long, profound, dead 
 sleep. 
 

 
 Hite 
 
 —=—— 5K awoke in the night. All was 
 
 ; still; he could hear the breath- 
 ing of the sleeping patients from 
 the neighbouring large room. 
 Somewhere in the distance someone, who 
 had been placed in the dark room, was talk- 
 ing to himself in a strange, monotonous 
 voice, and in the women’s department over- 
 head a hoarse contralto was singing some 
 wild song. The patient listened to these 
 sounds. He felt a terrible exhaustion and 
 weakness throughout all his body ; his neck 
 was very painful. 
 
 ‘Where am 1? What has happened?’ he 
 thought. Then suddenly the last month came 
 up before his mind’s eye with extraordinary — 
 vividness, and he realised that he was ill, 
 and of what disease. He remembered a 
 whole series of absurd ideas, words and 
 actions, and the thought of them made his 
 whole being shudder. ‘But that is over— 
 31 
 
 
 
32 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 thank God, all that is over!’ he whispered, 
 and fell asleep again. 
 
 The open, iron-grated window looked out 
 into a little space between the huge buiid- 
 ings and the stone outer wall; no one ever 
 entered this space, and it was thickly over- 
 grown with lilac and some kind of wild 
 bushes. The lilac was magnificent just then, 
 in full flower. Beyond the bushes, straight 
 opposite the window, was the dark, high wall ; 
 here and there peeped over it the tall tree tops 
 of the great garden, flooded with the moon- 
 light that streamed through them. To the 
 right was the white asylum building, with 
 iron-grated windows lighted from within; 
 to the left the blank white wall of the 
 mortuary shining in the moonlight. The 
 moonbeams streamed through the window- 
 grating on to the floor of the room, and 
 lighted up part of the bed and the white, 
 worn face of the patient, with its closed eyes ; 
 there was nothing mad about his appearance 
 now. He slept the deep heavy sleep of 
 an exhausted man, dreamless, motionless, 
 .and almost breathless. For a few seconds 
 he had awaked in full possession of his 
 senses, like a sane man; but only to rise 
 -next morning as mad as before. 
 

 
 isle le 
 
 ‘ |= |OW are you?’ asked the doctor | 
 : ie] next morning. 
 
 The patient, who had just 
 awaked, was still lying under 
 
 
 
 the coverlet. 
 
 ‘Perfectly well, he answered, jumping up, 
 putting on his slippers and snatching up 
 his dressing-gown. ‘Capital—only for this.’ 
 
 He touched the back of his neck. 
 
 ‘IT can’t move my neck without pain. But 
 that doesn’t matter. Everything’s all right 
 if one understands it, and I understand.’ 
 
 ‘Do you know where you are?’ 
 
 ‘Of course, doctor! I’m in the madhouse. 
 But you know, if one understands it, that’s 
 of not the slightest consequence. Not the 
 slightest !’ 
 
 The doctor looked fixedly into his patient’s 
 eyes, and his handsome, delicate face, with its 
 exquisitely-kept golden beard and calm blue 
 eyes, looking out through gold-rimmed spec- 
 
 33 
 
34 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 tacles, was immovable and inscrutable. He 
 was observing. 
 
 ‘Why do you look at me so fixedly? You 
 can’t read what is in my heart,’ continued the 
 patient ; ‘but I can read yours plainly! Why 
 do you do evil? Why have you collected 
 this crowd of unfortunate people, and why 
 do you keep them’ here? For me it is a 
 matter of indifference. J understand all, and 
 am calm; but they? What is the use of this 
 misery? To a man who has attained to 
 having in his mind a great thought, a general 
 thought, it is all one where he lives or what 
 he feels. Is not that so?’ 
 
 ‘Possibly, answered the doctor, sitting 
 down at the table in a corner of the room 
 in order to get a good view of the patient, 
 who walked hurriedly up and down, shuffling 
 in his huge horse-leather slippers, and waving 
 the tails of his large-flowered cotton dressing- 
 gown with broad red stripes. The assistant 
 and superintendent, who accompanied the 
 doctor, stood stiffly by the door. 
 
 ‘And I have it!’ exclaimed the patient. 
 ‘When I found it, I felt that I was born anew. 
 My senses have grown keener, my brain 
 works as it has never done before. What 
 formerly had to be reached by the long 
 road of conjectures and mental conclusions I 
 now comprehend intuitively. I have attained 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 35 
 
 to the actuality of what philosophy has 
 worked out. I live through, in my own self, 
 the great idea that time and space are fic- 
 tions. I live in all ages. I live without 
 space, everywhere, or nowhere, as you please ; 
 and therefore it is all one to me whether you 
 keep me here or let me go free—whether I 
 am tied or at liberty. I have remarked that 
 there are a few more such persons here. But 
 for all the crowd of others, it is a dreadful 
 position. Why do you not set them free? 
 Who needs— 
 
 ‘You said, interrupted the doctor, ‘that 
 you live without time and space. Neverthe- 
 less you cannot deny that we are in this room 
 and that it is now’—the doctor pulled out 
 his watch—‘half-past ten o'clock on May 
 6th, 18—. What do you think about this?’ 
 
 ‘Nothing. It is all the same to me where 
 and when I live ; and if it is all the same to 
 me, does not that mean that / am always and 
 everywhere ?’ 
 
 The doctor laughed. 
 
 ‘Out-of-the-way logic!’ he said, rising. — 
 ‘Maybe you're right. Good-bye. Will you 
 have a cigar?’ 
 
 ‘Thank you.’ He stopped, took a cigar, 
 and nervously bit off its end, ‘That helps 
 one to think,’ he said. ‘That’s the world—a 
 microcosm. At one end is alkali, at the other, 
 
36 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 acid. That is the balance of the world, too, 
 in which opposing elements neutralise one 
 another. Good-day, doctor!’ 
 
 The doctor went on his way. Most of the 
 patients were standing straight up by their 
 -beds to receive him. No personage in 
 authority anywhere is so much looked up 
 to by his subordinates as a lunacy doctor 
 ‘ by his maniacs. 
 
 The patient, left alone, Leite’ to tramp, 
 with an abrupt gait, up and down his little 
 room. Tea was brought to him; he tossed 
 off a large mugful in two gulps without sit- 
 ting down, and swallowed a big piece of 
 bread almost at a mouthful. Then he left 
 the room, and for several hours walked with- 
 out stopping, with his quick, heavy tread, 
 from end to end of the great building. It 
 was a rainy day, and the patients were not 
 allowed out into the garden. When the 
 doctor’s assistant came to look for the new 
 patient he found him at one end of the 
 corridor, where he was standing pressing his 
 face against a pane of the glass garden door 
 and gazing fixedly into the flower-garden. 
 His attention had been attracted by an un- 
 usually brilliant scarlet flower, a certain 
 ‘variety of poppy. 
 
 ‘Come and be weighed, please, said the 
 assistant, touching him on the shoulder, 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 37 
 
 When the patient turned round facing him 
 the assistant almost started back with fright ; 
 such savage hatred and anger were in the 
 wild eyes. On seeing the assistant, however, 
 _ he assumed a quite different expression of 
 face, and followed obediently, without speak- 
 ing a word. He appeared to be absorbed 
 in profound thought. They went into the 
 doctor’s study ; the patient of his own accord 
 placed himself on the platform of the little 
 weighing machine, and the assistant, after 
 weighing him, wrote down against his name 
 imecieEbook 109 Ibs. -On the next day he 
 weighed 107 lbs.; on the next after that 
 106 lbs. 
 
 ‘If he goes on this way he won't live,’ said 
 the doctor, and gave orders that he should 
 have the most nourishing food possible. 
 
 But, notwithstanding both this and the ex- 
 traordinary appetite of the patient, he grew 
 thinner with every day, and every day the 
 assistant wrote under his name a smaller and 
 smaller number of pounds. He hardly slept 
 at all, and passed whole days in ceaseless — 
 
 motion. 
 
 Ge 
 

 
 LV, 
 
 E realised that he was in a mad- 
 house ; he realised even that he 
 was ill. Sometimes, as during 
 the first night, he would awake 
 
 in the silence, after a whole day of frantic 
 
 movement, with an aching in all his limbs, 
 and a feeling of terrible weight in his head, 
 but in full possession of his senses. Pos- 
 sibly this was caused by the absence of 
 impressions in the twilight and stillness of 
 the night; perhaps by the languid way in 
 which the brain of a man just awaked works ; 
 but at such moments he clearly understood 
 his position, and was, as it were, sane. But 
 day soon returned, and with the light and 
 the awakening of life in the asylum, the wave 
 of impressions would sweep him away again ; 
 the diseased brain was unable to cope with 
 them, and he was mad anew. His condition 
 of mind was a strange tangle of logical think- 
 
 ing and absurdities. He understood that the 
 38 
 
 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 39 
 
 people around him were all mad, yet, at the 
 same time, he’ saw in each of them some 
 person hidden or disguised whom he had 
 known before, or of whom he had read or 
 heard. The asylum was peopled by men of 
 all times and all lands. There were among 
 them both living and dead men ; famous and 
 powerful personages, and soldiers killed in the 
 last war and risen from the dead. He saw 
 himself in some magic, enchanted circle, into 
 which were gathered all the powers of the 
 earth, and haughtily regarded himself as the 
 centre of that circle. All his fellow patients . 
 had assembled here in order to carry out a 
 work which he vaguely imagined asa gigantic 
 undertaking intended to destroy evil in the 
 world. He did not know in what this work 
 was to consist, but felt within himself strength 
 sufficient for its accomplishment. He was_ 
 able to read the thoughts of others; to see in 
 things their whole history ; the great elms in 
 the asylum garden told him long legends of 
 their past; the building itself, which indeed © 
 was rather old, he believed to have been | 
 erected by Peter the Great, and was con- 
 vinced that that emperor had lived in it at the 
 time of the battle of Poltava. He read this 
 on the walls, on the crumbling stucco, on the 
 bits of broken bricks and tiles which he found 
 in the garden ; the whole history of the house 
 
40 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, 
 
 and garden was written upon them. He 
 peopled the little mortuary building with 
 scores and hundreds of long-dead men, and 
 would gaze fixedly at the window which 
 looked from its basement into a corner of the 
 garden, seeing in the broken reflection of 
 lights on the old, dirty, iridescent glass 
 familiar figures which he had seen at some 
 time in life or in portraits. 
 
 Meanwhile beautifully fine weather began, 
 and the patients spent whole days in the 
 open air. In their division of the garden, 
 small and thickly planted with trees, flowers 
 were set in every spot where there was room 
 for them. The superintendent made those 
 of the patients who were fit for any labour 
 at all, work in the garden, and the whole 
 day long they swept and gravelled the paths, 
 weeded and watered the beds of flowers, 
 cucumbers and melons, which they had dug 
 and planted. One corner of the garden was 
 filled with a dense growth of cherry-trees ; 
 the whole length of the garden ran an avenue 
 of elms; and in the middle, on a small arti- 
 ficial hillock, was the finest flower-bed in the 
 whole garden. Bright-coloured flowers grew 
 round the edges of the raised bed, and the 
 middle was occupied by a great large- 
 blossomed dahlia of a rare variety, yellow, 
 with red spots. This dahlia formed the 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 4t 
 
 centre-piece of the whole garden, standing 
 up taller than the other flowers, and it might 
 have been observed that many of the patients 
 ascribed to it some mysterious significance. ’ 
 To the new patient also it appeared to be 
 something out of the common—a kind of 
 palladium of the garden and building. All 
 the paths had been bordered by the hands of 
 patients. The edgings were formed of all 
 those flowers which can be met with in Ou- 
 krainian gardens—tall hollyhocks, bright pe- 
 tunias, clumps of tall tobacco with small 
 pinkish blossoms, mint, marigolds, nastur- 
 tions and poppies. Not far from the front . 
 door grew three clumps of a peculiar variety 
 of poppy; the blossoms were much smaller 
 than those of the ordinary kind, and dif- 
 fered from them also by the remarkable 
 brilliance of their scarlet colour. This was 
 the flower which had startled the patient 
 when he looked through the glass door into 
 the garden on the day after his arrival. | 
 On going into the garden for the first time, 
 he at once, before leaving the door-step, 
 looked towards these brilliant flowers. There 
 were only two of them; the plants had hap- 
 pened to grow upa little apart from the other 
 flowers, and in a spot which was left un- 
 weeded, so that they were surrounded by 
 thick goose-foot and other coarse weeds. 
 
42 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 _ The patients came out, one after another ; 
 the keeper, standing at the door, gave to each 
 of them a thick, white knitted cotton cap 
 with a red cross on the forehead. The caps 
 had come back from the war, and had been 
 bought at an auction. But our patient, as 
 might have been expected, ascribed to the 
 red crosses a peculiar, mystic significance. 
 He took off his cap and looked first at the 
 cross, then at the poppy-flowers. The flowers 
 were brighter coloured than the cross. 
 
 ‘It wins, said the patient; ‘but we shall see.’ 
 
 He left the door-step. Glancing round, 
 but not seeing the keeper, who was behind 
 him, he stepped across the bed and stretched 
 out his hand to the blossom, but could not 
 make aips his’ mind sto spick wit. shicmicltea 
 burning and pricking sensation, first in the 
 outstretched hand, then through all his body, 
 as though some strong current of a force un- 
 known to him flowed from the red petals and 
 penetrated through his whole frame. He 
 drew nearer and touched the blossom with 
 his hand, but he fancied that it defended 
 itself by throwing out a poisonous, deadly 
 vapour. His head swam; he made a last, 
 desperate effort, and seized the stem. Sud- 
 denly a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder. 
 It was the keeper’s. 
 
 ‘You must not pick it,’ said the old Ou- 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER, 43 
 
 krainian. ‘And don’t walk on the _ bed. 
 There are a lot of you mad folk here; let 
 each of you take a flower, and youd pretty 
 soon spoil the garden, he added, convinc- 
 ingly, still keeping his hold upon the patient’s 
 shoulder. 
 
 The patient looked him in the face, silently 
 freed his hand, and walked, in deep agitation, 
 down the path. ‘Oh, unhappy men, he 
 thought; ‘you do not see—you are so blinded 
 that you defend it! But, come what may, I 
 will put an end to it. If not to-day, then 
 to-morrow we will measure our strength. 
 And if I perish, what does it matter ?’ 
 
 He walked about the garden till evening, 
 forming acquaintances and carrying on with 
 the other patients strange conversations, in 
 which each speaker heard only answers to his 
 own insane thoughts, expressed in senselessly 
 mysterious language. He walked, now with 
 one fellow-patient, now with another, and by 
 evening had made up his mind that ‘all is 
 ready, as he said to himself. Soon, soon 
 these iron gratings would fall asunder, all 
 these trampled human beings would go forth 
 from here to the ends of the earth, and all 
 the world would start into movement, fling 
 off its ancient trammels and appear in new 
 and glorious beauty. He had almost for- 
 goiten the flower; but, coming in {rom the 
 
44 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 garden and mounting the doorsteps, he again 
 caught sight of the blossams shining like two 
 red coals in the twilight among the thick and 
 already dewy weeds. He lagged a little be- 
 hind the crowd, and, getting behind the 
 keepers back, waited for a favourable 
 moment. No one saw him jump across 
 the bed, snatch a blossom, and _ hurriedly 
 thrust it into his breast under his shirt. 
 When the fresh, dewy petals touched his 
 body he grew as white as death, and his 
 eyes dilated with horror. Cold sweat broke 
 out upon his forehead. 
 
 The lamps were lighted in the hospital. 
 While awaiting supper most of the patients 
 lay down on their beds; a few restless ones 
 walked hurriedly up and down the rooms 
 and corridors. The patient with the flower 
 was among these. He walked with his arms 
 folded and convulsively pressed to his breast, 
 as though he wished to crush and smash to 
 pieces the flower hidden there. Whenever 
 he met anyone in walking, he shrank away 
 in order that his clothing might not brush 
 against them. ‘Don’t come near me! Don’t 
 come near me!’ he cried. But in the asylum 
 little notice was taken of such exclamations, 
 He walked faster and faster, with longer and 
 longer steps ; he walked with a kind of fury, 
 —an hour—two hours. 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 4s 
 
 iifewear you out!’ Ill stifle you!*. he 
 muttered savagely. At moments he ground 
 his teeth. 
 
 Supper was served in the dining-hall. 
 Several painted and gilded wooden bowls 
 of thin wheat-porridge were placed on each 
 of the large, bare tables. The patients sat 
 down on benches, and each was given a slice 
 of black bread. They ate with wooden 
 spoons, seven or eight persons from each 
 bowl. Some patients, who had been ordered 
 better food, were served separately. Our 
 patient hastily swallowed the ration brought 
 into his room by the keeper, and then, not 
 content with that, went into the dining- 
 hall. 
 
 ‘Allow me to sit down here,’ he said to the 
 superintendent. 
 
 ‘Haven’t you had your supper?’ asked the 
 superintendent, who was filling up the bowls 
 again. 
 
 ‘I am very hungry, and I need a lot of 
 nourishment. All my strength depends on 
 -food—you know, I don’t sleep at all.’ 
 
 ‘Certainly, have some more if you like. 
 Taras, give him a spoon and some bread. 
 
 He sat down before one of the bowls and 
 ate an enormous quantity of porridge. 
 
 eabieres that vedo. that lls dos said the 
 superintendent at last, when everyone else 
 
46 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 had finished supper and our patient still sat 
 before the bowl, spooning out porridge with 
 one hand and holding the other tightly 
 clenched on his breast. ‘You'll make your- 
 self ill? 
 
 ‘Oh, if you knew how much strength I 
 need —how much strength! Good - bye, 
 Nikolai Nikolaitch!’ said the patient, rising 
 from the table and firmly pressing the super- 
 intendent’s hand. ‘ Good-bye.’ 
 
 ‘Where are you going?’ asked the super- 
 intendent, with a smile. 
 
 ‘I? Nowhere. I shall stay. But per- 
 haps we sha’n’t see one another to-morrow. 
 Thank you for your kindness.’ 
 
 He once more pressed the superintendent’s 
 hand firmly. His voice trembled and tears 
 came into his eyes. 
 
 - © There, there! Don’t upset yourself, my 
 dear fellow,’ said the superintendent. ‘Why 
 do you think such dismal things? You had 
 better go to bed and get to sleep comfort- 
 ably. You ought to sleep more; if you sleep 
 properly you'll soon get well.’ 
 
 The patient burst out sobbing. The super- 
 intendent turned round to tell the attendants 
 to clear away the supper things. Half-an- 
 hour later everyone in the asylum slept 
 except one man, who lay, dressed, on his 
 bed in a corner room. He was shaking 
 
GHEE SCAKRLIC: FLOWER, 47 
 
 as if with fever, and convulsively clasped 
 his breast, which seemed to him to be 
 saturated with a deadly poison of unheard-of 
 force. 
 
 
 

 
 V. 
 
 —>e——>|E did not sleep at all that night. 
 Hook He had picked the flower be- 
 cause he saw in the action a 
 feat that he was bound to ac- 
 - complish. At the first glance through the 
 glass door the scarlet petals had attracted 
 his attention, and he believed that in that 
 moment he had found the special thing that 
 he was to accomplish on earth. In this 
 bright red flower was concentrated all the 
 
 
 
 evil of the world. He knew that opium is 
 made from poppies; possibly this idea, ex- 
 aggerated to monstrous proportions, caused 
 him to create this terrible, tantastic spectre. 
 In his eyes the flower was the incarnation 
 of all evil; it had drawn into itself all the 
 innocent blood that had been shed in the 
 world (that was why it was so red), all the 
 tears, all the bitterness of humanity. It was 
 a mysterious, terrible being, the opposite of 
 48 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 49 
 
 God; it was Ahrimanes concealed under a 
 modest and innocent exterior. It must be 
 plucked and killed. But that was not all; 
 it must not be allowed, in expiring, to dis- 
 charge its evil into the world. This was the 
 reason that he had put it into his breast. 
 He hoped that by morning the flower would 
 lose its force. Its evil would flow into his 
 breast, into his soul, there to be conquered 
 or to conquer; if it conquered, it would 
 destroy him, and he would die, but would die 
 as a faithful soldier, as the first champion of 
 humanity, for up till now no one had dared to 
 fight against all the evil of the world at once. 
 Miney did not sce it.. I saw it. Can | 
 leave it alive? Rather death than that.’ 
 And he lay, wearing his strength out in 
 a spectral, imaginary warfare, but none the 
 less wearing it out. In the morning the 
 assistant found him half-dead. But not- 
 withstanding that, his excitement soon con- 
 quered all fatigue, and he sprang up from 
 his bed, and, as before, ran about the asylum 
 talking to the other patients and to him- 
 self more loudly and incoherently than ever. 
 He was not allowed into the garden; the 
 doctor, seeing that his weight was still de- 
 creasing, and that he still did not sleep, and 
 still kept on walking and walking, ordered a 
 large hypodermic injection of morphia. The 
 Cc 
 
50 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 patient did not resist ; fortunately his insane 
 ideas at that moment somehow agreed with 
 the operation. He soon fell asleep, the 
 frenzied motion stopped, and the loud tune, 
 which had grown out of the rhythm of his 
 own abrupt footsteps and which constantly 
 accompanied him, left off sounding in his 
 ears. He forgot everything, and did not 
 think even of the second blossom which he 
 had yet to pick, 
 
 Nevertheless, he picked it three days later, 
 before the eyes of the old keeper, who was 
 not quick enough to stop him. The keeper 
 ran after him. With aloud scream of triumph 
 the patient fled into the asylum, and, rush- 
 ing into his room, hid the flower in his 
 breast. 
 
 ‘What do you pick the flowers for?’ asked 
 the keeper, running in after him. But the 
 patient, who was already lying on his bed 
 in his accustomed attitude with folded arms, 
 began to talk such wild nonsense that the 
 keeper only took off from him in silence 
 the cap with the red cross, which the patient 
 had forgotten in his haste, and went away. 
 Then the spectral struggle began anew. The 
 patient felt evil creeping out of the flower 
 in long sluggish currents, like snakes; they 
 entangled him in their folds, pressed and 
 crushed his limbs and permeated his body 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER 51 
 
 through and through with their horrible 
 substance. He wept and prayed in the in- 
 tervals between the curses that he addressed 
 to his enemy. Towards evening the blossom 
 faded. The patient stamped the blackened 
 flower to bits, gathered them up from the 
 floor and carried them into the bath-room. 
 He flung the shapeless lump on to the red- 
 hot coals of the stove, and long stood watch- 
 ing, as his enemy, hissing and squirming, 
 changed at last into a delicate, snow-white, 
 tiny heap of ash. He breathed on it, and 
 it disappeared. 
 
 On the following day the patient was worse. 
 Fearfully pale, with haggard cheeks and burn- 
 ing, deeply-sunken eyes, he continued his 
 frenzied pacing up and down, though now 
 with a faltering step and often stumbling, 
 and talked and talked without end. 
 
 ‘I should be sorry to have to use force,’ 
 said the head doctor to his assistant. 
 
 ‘But this sort of thing must be stopped 
 somehow. To-day he weighs only 93 Ibs. 
 If he goes on this way, he’ll die in two days,’ 
 
 The head doctor meditated. 
 
 ~*Morphia? Chloral ?’ he said half-inquir- 
 ing. 
 
 ‘Morphia no longer acted on him yesterday.’ 
 
 ‘Tell them to bind him. For that matter, 
 I doubt his recovering.’ 
 

 
 Vel 
 
 ~IHE patient was bound. He lay 
 on his bed dressed-\in the 
 strait - jacket, and _ tightly 
 fastened with broad bands of 
 ae to the iron bars of the bedstead. 
 But the furious motion increased instead of 
 
 
 
 diminishing. For several hours he struggled 
 obstinately to free himself from his bonds. 
 At last, with a violent effort, he tore one 
 of the bands of sacking, freed his feet, and 
 slipping from under the other bands, began 
 pacing about the room with tied hands, 
 shrieking out wild, incomprehensible phrases. 
 
 ‘Drat the man !’ cried the keeper, enteting 
 the room. ‘It’s really for all the world as if 
 the devils help him. Hritzko! Ivan! hurry 
 up there ; he’s untied hisself.’ 
 
 All three flung themselves upon the patient, 
 and there began a long struggle, exhausting 
 to them, and to him, whose already worn-out 
 
 52 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 53 
 
 strength was taxed to the uttermost in de- 
 fending himself—a positive torture. At last 
 they threw him down upon the bed and tied 
 him more firmly than before. 
 
 ‘You don’t understand what you're doing !’ 
 cried the patient, gasping for breath. ‘You 
 are ruining everything! I saw a third... 
 feeercoming out. its ready now... ... Let 
 me finish my work. I must kill it—kill it—_ 
 kill it! Then all will be done—all will be 
 saved! I would send you, but no one can 
 do it—no one but I. You would die of its 
 very touch !’ 
 
 ‘Hush, sir, hush!’ said the old attendant, 
 who had stopped to keep guard by the bed- 
 side, 
 
 The patient suddenly grew quiet. He 
 had resolved to deceive his keepers. They 
 left him tied the whole day, and did not 
 unfasten his bonds even for the night. After 
 feeding him with his supper, the keeper 
 made up a shake-down for himself beside 
 the bed, and lay down. A moment later 
 -he was sound asleep, and the patient set to 
 work. 
 
 He bent all his body round until he could 
 touch the iron bar of the bedstead, then, 
 feeling this bar with one hand through 
 the long sleeve of the strait-jacket, began 
 quickly and firmly rubbing the sleeve against 
 
5t STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 the iron. After some time the thick sacking 
 began to give, and he soon got his first finger 
 free. The work now went more quickly. 
 With an agility and elasticity, altogether 
 incredible to a healthy man, he untied 
 the knots which fastened the sleeves behind 
 him and unlaced the jacket; then, for a 
 long while, lay listening to the snoring of 
 the keeper. The old man was sleeping 
 soundly. The patient took off the jacket 
 and untied himself from the bed. He was 
 frecwae es tricd them door a ltewas mocked 
 irom the inside, and the key was probably 
 in the keeper's pocket. The patient dared 
 not search his pockets for fear of waking 
 him, and decided to leave the room by the 
 window. 
 
 It was a still, warm, dark night; the 
 window was open; stars shone in the black 
 sky. He looked up at them, recognising 
 the familiar constellations and rejoicing that 
 they, as he fancied, understood and sympa- 
 thised with him. MHalf-closing his eyes, he 
 saw innumerable rays which the stars seemed 
 to send down to him, and his insane resolu- 
 tion grew stronger. He had to force aside 
 ‘a strong bar of the iron grating, to squeeze 
 himself through a narrow hole into the little 
 space where the bushes grew, and to climb 
 over a high stone wall. Beyond that wall 
 
THE SCARLET FLOWER. 55 
 
 would be the last struggle, and after that 
 —no matter if it should be death. 
 
 He tried to bend the bar with his hands, 
 but the iron would not yield, so he twisted 
 tne strong sleeves of the strait-jacket into 
 a rope, and, throwing this over the iron 
 point of the bar, hung on to it with all his 
 weight. After frantic efforts, which almost 
 exhausted what was left of his strength, the 
 point bent ;—a narrow opening was made. 
 ie forced his body through it, grazing his 
 shoulders, elbows and bare knees, made his 
 way through the bushes and stopped before 
 the garden wall. All was still; the night- 
 lights dimly lit up the windows of the great 
 building ; no one was to be seen in them. 
 No one had noticed him; the old man on 
 duty by his bedside was, no doubt, still 
 sleeping heavily. The stars shone upon him 
 with tenderly quivering rays, that seemed to 
 penetrate into his very heart. 
 
 ‘I go to you,’ he whispered, looking up at 
 the sky. 
 
 He made an attempt to climb the garden 
 wall, and fell back with torn finger-naiis and — 
 bleeding hands and knees; he thea felt about 
 for an easier place to climb, Just where this 
 wall joined that of the mortuary, several 
 bricks had fallen out from both walls. 
 Feeling these holes, the patient took advan- 
 
56 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 tage of them, climbed on to the top of the 
 garden wall, caught at the boughs of an 
 elm growing on the other side, and let 
 himself gently down by the tree on to the 
 ground. 
 
 - He rushed to the well-known spot beside 
 the door-steps. The delicate head of the 
 flower, with its folded petals, stood out 
 plainly, dark against the dewy foliage. 
 
 ‘The last!’ whispered the patient. ‘The 
 last! To-night is victory or death 
 but that is all one tome. Wait!’ he added, 
 looking at the sky, ‘I shall be with you soon.’ 
 
 He pulled up the plant, tore and crushed it, 
 and, still holding it in his hand, returned to 
 his room by the way that he had left it. 
 The keeper was still asleep. The patient, 
 barely reaching his bed, dropped down on it 
 insensible. 
 
 In the morning they found him dead. 
 His face was calm and radiant; the worn 
 features, with the thin lips and deeply sunken 
 closed eyes, had taken a strange look of 
 proud happiness. When he was laid on the 
 trestle they tried to open his hand and take 
 away the scarlet flower. But the hand had 
 stiffened, and he carried his trophy to the 
 
 ~ grave. 
 
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF 
 
 elie Te Li ANOY, 
 

 

 
 PeOvVo lik MEMOIRSSOR PRIVATE 
 IVANOV, CONCERNING THE 
 
 CAMPAIGN OF 1877. 
 
 I. 
 
 ‘May 4th, 1877, I reached Kis- 
 henev, and half-an-hour after 
 my arrival learned that the 56th 
 
 
 
 — i division of the line was passing 
 through the town. As I had come on purpose 
 to enter some regiment and take part in the 
 war, on May 7th by four o’clock in the morn- 
 ing I was already standing in the street in one 
 of the grey rows that were drawn up before 
 the quarters of the colonel in command of 
 the 222d Starobyelsky infantry regiment. I 
 wore the grey soldiers cloak, with red 
 shoulder-straps and blue loops, the blue- 
 banded cap, and carried the knapsack on 
 my back, the cartridge-bag on my shoulder, 
 the heavy rifle in my hand. 
 59 
 
60 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 The military band began to play; the 
 standards were carried out from the colonel’s 
 quarters. The word of command was given ; 
 the regiment silently advanced arms. ‘Then 
 there was a tremendous shout; the colonel 
 first gave the word of command, and after 
 him the commanders of the battalions and 
 companies, and the non - commissioned 
 officers of the platoons. The result of all 
 this was a confused and, for me, utterly in- 
 comprehensible movement of the grey cloaks, 
 which ended in the regiment forming into a 
 long column, and moving evenly forwards to 
 the sound of the military band, which had 
 struck up a spirited march. I moved with 
 the rest, trying to keep step and march 
 evenly with my next neighbour. The knap- 
 sack dragged backwards, the heavy bags 
 forwards; the rifle kept slipping from my 
 shoulder; the collar of the grey cloak scrubbed 
 against my neck; but in spite of all these 
 little unpleasantnesses, the music, the steady 
 even movement of the column, the fresh 
 early morning, the sight of the bristling 
 bayonets, and stern, sunburnt faces induced a 
 calm and steadfast mood of mind. 
 
 At the gates of the houses, notwithstand- 
 ing the early hour, stood crowds of people ; 
 half-dressed figures looked from the windows. 
 We marched down a long, straight street, 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 61 
 
 past the bazaar, to which the Moldavians 
 were already driving in their carts, drawn by 
 oxen; the road began to mount uphill and 
 passed by the town cemetery. The morning 
 was dull, cold, and drizzly; the cemetery 
 trees loomed through the mist; the tops of 
 the gravestones peered from behind the wet 
 walls and gates. We passed by the cemetery, 
 leaving it to the right of us. I had a fancy 
 that it looked at us through the fog in 
 bewilderment: ‘Why should all you thou- 
 sands go hundreds of miles away to die in 
 strange places when you can die here quietly 
 and lie under my stone slabs and wooden 
 crosses? Stay!’ 
 
 But we did not stay. We were drawn on 
 by an inscrutable, secret force ; there is none 
 Sreater in’ human life. Each one of us - 
 separately would have gone home, but the 
 whole mass went on, driven, not by discipline, 
 not by any sense of the righteousness of his 
 cause, not by any feeling of hatred towards 
 the unknown enemy, not by the fear of 
 punishment, but by that unknown and un- 
 conscious something that will long yet lead 
 humanity into bloody carnage—the greatest 
 cause of all human miseries and troubles. 
 
 Beyond the cemetery opened out a deep, 
 wide valley, half hidden in the mist. The 
 rain became heavier ; here and there in the 
 
62 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 far distance the clouds would part and let 
 a sunbeam through; at such moments the 
 straight or slanting bands of rain glittered 
 like silver. Mists were creeping along the 
 green slopes of the valley ; through them we 
 could distinguish the long, stretched-out 
 columns of troops marching in front of 
 us. Here and there we could see the occa- 
 sional flash of a bayonet. Some weapon on 
 which the sunlight struck would blaze for a 
 little while like a glittering star, and then 
 vanish. Sometimes the clouds shifted; then 
 it would grow darker and the rain would be 
 heavier. An hour after our start I could feel 
 a streamlet of cold water trickling down my 
 back. 
 
 The first day’s march was not a long one— 
 from Kishenev to the village of Gaouren is 
 only thirteen miles. All the same, not being 
 accustomed to carry 25 to 30 lbs. weight with 
 me, I was so tired by the time we reached 
 the hut where we were to pass the night 
 that at first I could not even sit down; I 
 leaned up against the wall with my knapsack, 
 and remained for about ten minutes just as I 
 was, with my rifle in my hand. One of the 
 soldiers, going into the kitchen to fetch dinner, 
 had pity on me and took my kettle with his 
 own; but when he came back he found me 
 already sound asieep. i did not wake until 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 63 
 
 four in the morning, when I was awaked 
 by the insufferably harsh sound of the horn, 
 playing a military march. Five minutes later 
 I was again tramping along the dirty, clay 
 road, under a fine, drizzling rain, that seemed 
 to come down through a sieve. 
 
 In front of me was moving along someone’s 
 erey back, with a calf-skin knapsack, in which 
 the iron kettle rattled, strapped on to it, and 
 the rifle across the shoulder ; on both sides of 
 me and behind me moved other such grey 
 ficures. During the first days I could not tell 
 them apart. The 222d regiment of the line, 
 in which I had been enrolled, consisted for the 
 most part of peasants from the Viatka and 
 Kostroma provinces. They had all broad, 
 weather-tanned faces, with high cheek-bones, 
 small grey eyes, and light colourless hair and 
 beards. Although I remembered several 
 names, I did not know which name belonged 
 to which man. A fortnight later I could not 
 understand how I could have confused to- 
 gether two of my neighbours, one of whom 
 marched side by side with me, and the other 
 with the possessor of the grey back which 
 was always before my eyes. At first I called 
 these two promiscuously Feodorov and Zhit- 
 kov, and constantly mistook them for one 
 another; and yet they were not in the least 
 alike, 
 
64 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Feodorov, the corporal, was a young fellow 
 of about twenty-two, of middle height and 
 slender, even graceful build. He had a 
 regular, chiselled face, with beautifully out- 
 lined nose, mouth and chin, a fair, curly 
 beard,” and merry) blne eyes, =) Whengthe 
 order was given, ‘Singers forward!’ he 
 always took the lead in our company, and 
 would give out in a pure chest tenor, witha 
 high falsetto on the upper notes,— 
 
 ‘The Tzar is ca-a-alled into the Senate.’... 
 
 He was a native of the Vladimir province, 
 but had lived in St Petersburg from his child- 
 hood. Contrary to the usual result in such 
 cases, he had not been spoiled by the St 
 Petersburg education ; it had only given him 
 a certain polish, and had taught him, among 
 other things, the use of various learned words. 
 
 ‘Of course, Vladimir Mikhailovich, he 
 would say to me, ‘I may have more sense 
 in me than Uncle Zhitkov, because “ Peter ”* 
 has had its influence upon me.  There’s 
 civilisation in “ Peter,’ but in their villages 
 there’s nothing but ignorance and savagery. 
 But all the same, as he’s a man that’s getting 
 on in life, and, so to say, has come through 
 and seen various chances of fate, I can’t shout 
 
 * Popular name for St Petersburg. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 65 
 
 at him, you know. He’s forty, and I’m only 
 twenty-two, although I’m corporal of the 
 company for all that.’ 
 
 ‘Uncle Zhitkov’ was a regular pcasant, 
 unusually strong, and always wearing a 
 gloomy expression. His face was dark, with 
 high cheek-bones; and his eyes were small 
 and scowling. He never smiled, and rarely 
 spoke. He was a carpenter by trade, and 
 had been in the reserve when our army was 
 mobilised. In a few months more he would 
 have been completely free from the service ; 
 but war was declared, and Zhitkov had 
 to go, leaving at home a wife and five little 
 children. Notwithstanding his unfortunate 
 appearance and perpetual gloom, there was 
 about him something kind and strong and 
 attractive. It seems to me now utterly in- 
 comprehensible that I could ever have con- 
 fused together these two neighbours; but 
 for the first few days they seemed to me 
 exactly alike —grey, buttoned-up, and shiver- 
 ing with cold. 
 
 All the first half of May it rained inces- 
 santly, and we had no tents. The endless 
 clayey road went uphill or downhill with 
 almost every mile, and we had hard work to 
 march. Great lumps of mud stuck to our 
 feet, and from the low, grey sky the per- 
 petual rain fell drizzling on to us. There 
 
66 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 seemed to be no end to the rain—no hope 
 of getting dry and warm even at night; 
 _ the Roumanians would not let us into their 
 houses ; and, indeed, there was no room for 
 such enormous numbers. We had to pass 
 through the towns and villages, and stop 
 for the night somewhere in the open air. 
 
 Halt} ecbile armsi. 
 
 Then we would eat our hot broth and 
 lie down anywhere in the mud, water above 
 us, water below us; we felt as if it had 
 soaked right through our bodies. We 
 would wrap ourselves up, shivering, in our 
 cloaks; we would gradually begin to feel 
 a damp kind of warmth, and at last would 
 fall asleep, and awake only at the hated 
 roll-call. Again the grey column, the grey 
 sky, the muddy road, and the wet, dismal 
 hillocks and dells. It was very trying for 
 everyone. 
 
 ‘All the flood-gates of heaven are opened !’ 
 exclaimed, with a sigh, our sergeant-major 
 Karpov, an old soldier, who had fought at 
 Khiva; ‘we are getting sodden through 
 with this wet!’ 
 
 ‘We shall get dry again, Vasili Karpych !’ 
 said Feodorov; ‘you'll see, when the sun 
 comes out, itll dry us up fast enough! We 
 have a long way to go; we shall have time 
 enough to get dry, and to get wet again, on 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV, 67 
 
 the way. Mikhailovich !’ he went on, turning 
 to me,—‘ Is it far to the Danube?’ 
 
 ‘Another three weeks’ march.’ 
 
 ‘Three weeks more? ‘Why, we've been 
 a fortnight already.’ 
 
 ‘We're going into the devil’s jaws, mut- 
 tered Uncle Zhitkov. 
 
 ‘What are you grumbling about, you old 
 rascal? you're just upsetting all the lads! 
 What do you mean by the devil’s jaws? 
 Why do you talk that sort of stuff for?’ 
 
 ‘Well, do you think were going for a 
 holiday ?’ retorts Zhitkov. 
 
 ‘Not for a holiday, but to keep the oath, 
 Pomlomriciteand: proper! . . . ‘What did 
 you say when you took the oath, eh?.. . 
 “Caring not for my life” . . . Ugh! you old 
 blockhead, you! You'd best be careful!’ 
 
 ‘What have I said, Vasili Karpych? I 
 amie cOinc, aint 1p.) lf we've) got ‘to die; 
 we may as well die. Doesn’t make much 
 difference—’ 
 
 ‘A-ha! You'd best shut up!’ 
 
 Zhitkov says no more, but his face grows | 
 gloomier than ever. No one cares to talk 
 much, marching is too difficult. We slip and 
 stumble, and many fall, face downwards, in 
 the liquid mud. The whole battalion swears 
 furiously. Feodorov alone keeps up his * 
 spirits, and, never wearying, tells me anec- 
 
68 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 dote after anecdote of life in St Petersburg 
 and in his native village. 
 
 Everything comes to an end at last. One 
 morning I awoke in our bivouac, beside a 
 village where we were to rest for a day, to 
 see a blue sky and brilliant sunshine flash- 
 ing on the white cottages and vineyards of 
 the village. I heard merry, animated voices. 
 The soldiers had already got up and dried 
 their clothes, and now were resting after the 
 exhausting ten days’ march in the rain with- 
 out shelter. The tents arrived during the 
 day, and the soldiers at once set to work to 
 unroll them. ‘They drove in the poles and 
 set up the tents, and then almost everyone 
 lay down in the shade. 
 
 ‘They haven’t helped us against the rain; 
 at least they’ll keep the sun off us.’ 
 
 ‘Yes, so that the gentleman shouldn't get 
 sunburnt, said Feodorov, slyly winking in 
 my direction. 
 
 G9) 
 

 
 Bi, 
 
 HERE were only two officers in 
 our division—the commander, 
 Captain Zaikin, and a subaltern, 
 Sub-Lieutenant® Stebelkov. The 
 
 commander was a middle-aged man, fat and 
 good-humoured ; Stebelkov was a mere lad, 
 who had just left school. They lived in 
 peace and amity; the captain made much 
 of the sub-lieutenant, offered him food and 
 drink, and in the rain even warmed him 
 under his own macintosh cloak. When the 
 tents were given out our two officers shared 
 one between them, and, as the officers’ tents 
 were roomy, the captain resolved to take me 
 in too. 
 
 Tired out with a sleepless night (our 
 division had been told off, the evening before, 
 to bring in the baggage, and we had spent 
 the night dragging it out of a hollow, and 
 even pulling it up, by the help of ‘ Du- 
 69 
 
 
 
70 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 binushka, from a stream which had over- 
 flowed), I was sleeping soundly after dinner. 
 The commander’s man waked me by touch- 
 ing me lightly on the shoulder. 
 
 ‘Mr Ivanov! Gentleman Ivanov!’ he 
 whispered, as softly as though he did not 
 want to wake me, but, on the contrary, was 
 taking the greatest care not to disturb me. 
 
 ‘What is it?’ 
 
 ‘The commander wants you.’ 
 
 Then, as I began to put on my knapsack 
 and rifle, he added,— 
 
 ‘T was to bring you just as you are.’ 
 
 I found visitors in Zaikin’s tent. Besides 
 the two occupants, there were two other 
 officers, the adjutant of the regiment and the 
 commander of the riflemen’s division, Wentzel. 
 In 1877 the battalion consisted of five divi- 
 sions instead of the present four; the rifle- 
 men’s division marched just behind ours, so 
 that the last ranks of our division, when 
 marching, were close to their front ranks. 
 Thus I had marched almost among the rifle- 
 men, and had several times heard from them 
 the worst possible accounts of staff-captain 
 Wentzel. All the four officers were sitting 
 round a box, which did duty for a table, and 
 on which stood the samovar, tea-things, and 
 a bottle. They were drinking tea. 
 
 ‘Mr Ivanov! come in; come in, please! 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 71 
 
 cried the captain. ‘Nikita! Bring a glass 
 Or cup or mug, or whatever youve got! 
 Move a bit, Wentzel, my lad; make room 
 for him.’ 
 
 Wentzel rose and bowed to me very courte- 
 ously. He was a short, thin, young man, 
 pale and nervous, ‘What restless eyes and 
 what thin lips he has!’ came into my head. 
 The adjutant, without rising, held out his 
 hand to me. 
 
 ‘Lukin, he said, introducing himself 
 shortly. | 
 
 ] felt uncomfortable. The officers sat in 
 silence; Wentzel sipping tea with rum in 
 it, the adjutant puffing a short pipe. Ste- 
 belkoyv, after greeting me with a nod, went 
 on with the book he was reading—a tattered 
 copy of some transiated novel, which had 
 travelied in his portmanteau from kussia 
 across the Danube, and which afterwards 
 returned to Kussia in a stiil more tattered 
 condition. Our host poured some tea into 
 a large earthenware mug, whicn he filled up 
 with an enormous quantity of rum. 
 
 ‘There you are, Mr Student! Don’t you 
 be offended with me; [ma plain man. for 
 that matter, were all plain fellows here. 
 And you're an educated man, so you must 
 make allowances for us—eh ?’ 
 
 He swooped down upon my hand with 
 
72 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 his huge paw, like a bird of prey seizing its 
 victim, and shook it several times in the air, 
 looking affectionately at me the while with 
 his little, round, goggle eyes. 
 
 ‘You are a student?’ asked Wentzel. 
 
 ‘A former student, sir.’ 
 
 He smiled and lifted his restless eyes to 
 my face. I thought of the soldier’s accounts 
 of him, but at that moment I doubted their 
 truth. 
 
 VV hat sisethe sneeds of ms isinmrmetl ere, min 
 the tent, you are one of us—simply a man 
 of culture among other men of culture,’ he 
 said softly. 
 
 ‘Culture—that’s just it!’ cried Zaikin ; 
 student! I’m fond of students, though they 
 are such a mutinous lot. I’d have been a 
 student myself, if it hadn’t been for my fate.’ 
 
 ‘What particular sort of fate have you got, 
 Ivan Platonych?’ asked the adjutant. 
 
 ‘Well, somehow I never could get through 
 with the preliminaries. Mathematics I could 
 manage somehow, but as for all the rest . . 
 it was no use, nothing would come of it. All 
 this grammar business . . . and then spell- 
 inom eee ethestime alawassinstiescadet 
 school I couldn’t learn to write properly. 
 Couldn't, indeed !’ 
 
 ‘Do you know,’ said the adjutant to me 
 between two huge putts of smoke, ‘how Ivan 
 
 ¢ 
 
 a 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 73 
 
 Platonych manages to make four mistakes 
 in the word eshchau ?’* 
 
 ‘There, there; shut up, you old granny, 
 you!’ said Zaikin, waving him off with one 
 hand. 
 
 ‘But it’s true. /—zhk—sh—o. What do you 
 think of that?’ And the adjutant burst out 
 laughing aloud. 
 
 ‘Hold your jaw. You're another — call 
 yourself un adjutant! Who writes Szol+ 
 with a y—e ?’ 
 
 The adjutant collapsed altogether; the 
 subaltern, Stebelkov, who had just got his 
 mouth full of tea, sent the tea spluttering 
 all over his novel, and extinguished one of 
 the two candles that lighted the tent. I, too, 
 could not help laughing. Ivan Platonych, 
 more delighted than anyone else with his 
 own joke, thundered with peals of bass 
 laughter. Wentzel alone did not laugh. 
 
 ‘So it was grammar and spelling, Ivan 
 Platonych ?’ he asked, in his former low voice. 
 
 ‘Grammar and spelling, yes, my lad, and— 
 and all the rest, you know. Don’t you re- 
 member how someone got through geography 
 as far as the equator, and through history 
 as far as “the era”? No, of course, all that’s 
 rubbish, that was not the reason. I simply 
 pitched my money away and lived at the 
 
 esate + Table. 
 D 
 
74 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 top of my speed. You see,Ivanov— What's 
 your Christian name and patronymic ?’ 
 
 ‘Vladimir Mikhailych,’ 
 
 ‘Vladimir Mikhailych? All right. Well, 
 you see, I was a wild sort of fellow when I 
 was young. Didn’t I have a jolly good time, 
 too! Ah, well, you know what the song 
 says :— 
 
 ***In my youth I dreamed of nought but pleasure, 
 Gold had I to spend or give ; 
 
 Now my joy is wasted with my treasure, 
 As a wretched slave I live.” 
 
 ‘Well, I entered this honourable, but ex- 
 tremely military, regiment as a cadet. They 
 sent me to the military college, and I 
 scrambled, through the examinations some- 
 how, and here I’ve been plodding away for 
 over a dozen years. Now, we've got to set 
 to and slash at the Turks. Come, gentle- 
 men, let’s have a drink of the real stuff, 
 neat. What’s the good of spoiling it with 
 tea? Let’s drink to “food for powder.”’ 
 
 ‘ Chair-a-canon !’ said Wentzel. 
 
 ‘ Chair-a-canon ! by all means, have it in 
 French if you like. Our captain’s a clever 
 lad, Vladimir Mikhailych, he knows foreign 
 languages, and can say all sorts of German 
 rhymes by heart. Look here, my lad, what 
 I called you here for was to ask you to 
 move into my tent. You can’t be comfort- 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 75 
 
 able packed in with the privates—six in one 
 tent. And then, the vermin. ‘You'll be 
 better off here.’ 
 
 ‘Thank you, but I would rather not accept.’ 
 
 “What for? Stuff! Nikita, bring in his 
 knapsack. Which tent are you in,’ 
 
 ‘The second to the right. But please allow 
 me to stop there. You see, I shall have to be 
 together with the privates most of the time, 
 so I had better keep with them altogether.’ 
 
 The captain looked at me attentively, as 
 though he would read my thoughts. After 
 thinking a moment, he said,— 
 
 ‘Do you mean that you want to be on 
 friendly terms with them ?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, if it is possible.’ 
 
 ‘You are right. I respect you for it. You 
 had better stop there.’ 
 
 He again seized my hand in his great paw, 
 and shook it in the air. 
 
 A little later, I took leave of the officers 
 and went out of the tent. It was growing 
 dark, and the men were putting on their » 
 cloaks, to be ready at dawn. The com- 
 panies drew up into long rows, so that every 
 battalion found a hollow square, inside of 
 which were the tents and field guns. All our 
 division was assembled that evening because 
 of the day’s rest. The drums beat the roll- 
 
76 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 call, and from somewhere far off came the 
 word of command. f 
 
 ‘Regiments to prayer, caps off!’ 
 
 And twelve thousand men uncovered their 
 heads. ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven, 
 our company led off, and all the rows, one 
 after another, began to chant. Sixty choirs 
 of two hundred voices each sang indepen- 
 dently of each other, so there was a good 
 deal of discord ; and yet the prayer had a 
 solemn and touching sound. One after 
 another the choirs left off singing; at last, 
 far off, in the battalion standing at the 
 further edge of the camp, the last company 
 ended: ‘But deliver us from evil’ Then 
 came a short flourish of drums. ‘Caps on!’ 
 
 The soldiers settled down to sleep. In our 
 tent, where, as in the others, six persons 
 squeezed into the space of two square 
 fathoms—my place was at the edge. I lay for 
 a long time watching the stars and the bon- 
 fires of far-off troops, listening te the soft, 
 confused sound of the great camp. In the 
 next tent someone was telling someone else 
 a story, continually repeating the words, 
 ©50-then; you see. : 
 
 ‘So then, you see, the prince came to his 
 wife, and began telling her all about it. So 
 then; youssce, shes se aaeaee me Uti kOvmate 
 you asleep? All right, sleep away and 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE LVANOV. 77 
 
 miemmeper with, you! °O; Lord, «1 .cf 
 @uecensor Heaven, i... . .and*the holy 
 fotietsan.) .). .. whispers. the narrator, 
 and falls asleep. 
 
 A sound of voices comes from the officers’ 
 tent, too. Along the canvas move huge, 
 distorted shadows, cast by the light within, 
 of the officers sitting in the tent. Now and 
 then I hear a burst of laughter: that is the 
 adjutant giggling. A sentinel, with his rifle, 
 walks backwards and forwards along the line ; 
 opposite us, on the bivouac of the artillery, 
 which is encamped near to us, stands another 
 sentinel with a naked sabre. From that 
 direction I can hear, now and then, the paw- 
 ing of the tethered horses. I can hear them 
 neigh, and quietly champ their oats with 
 the same good-natured, crunching sound that 
 I have heard, far from the war, in country 
 posting stations in my home, on just such 
 starlit nights. The seven stars of the Great 
 Bear glittered just above the horizon, far 
 lower than at home. ‘I must look at the 
 Pole-star, I thought, for St Petersburg would 
 be in that direction ;—St Petersburg, where I 
 had left my mother, my friends and all that 
 was dear to me. Over my head shone the 
 familiar consteJlations ; the Milky Way was 
 not a mere shimmer, but a brilliant, calm, 
 triumphant band of light. In the south the 
 
8 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 big stars of some constellation, unknown at 
 home, burned, one with red, another with 
 greenish fire. ‘I wonder, came into my head, 
 ‘when we go on further, past the Danube, past 
 the Balkans, to Constantinople, shall I see 
 more new stars, and what will they be 
 like?” 
 
 I was not sleepy; I got up and began to 
 pace the damp grass between our battalion 
 and the artillery. A dark figure passed me, 
 with a clinking sword; I recognised an officer 
 by the sound, and saluted. The officer came 
 up to me, and turned out to be Wentzel. 
 
 ‘Can’t you sleep, Vladimar Mikhailych?’ 
 he asked in his soft, low voice. 
 
 eNOMSIicg. 
 
 ‘My name is Piotr Nikolaevich... 12. J 
 can’t sleep either. I sat and sat at your 
 commander’s, till at last I got bored; they 
 have begun playing cards, and they’ve all 
 had too much to drink. . ... Oh, what a 
 night.’ 
 
 He walked on beside me. Reaching the 
 end of the line we turned back, and walked 
 several times backwards and forwards in 
 silence. Wentzel spoke first :— 
 
 ‘Tell me, you came to the war of your own 
 choice ?’ 
 
 Pes: 
 
 ‘What attracted you to it?’ 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 79 
 
 ‘How should I say?’ I answered, not caring 
 to enter into details. ‘Chiefly, of course, the 
 desire to see something—to experience some- 
 thing.’ 
 
 ‘And, no doubt, to study the peasant in the 
 person of his representative, the soldier?’ 
 asked Wentzel. It was dark, and I could 
 not see the expression of his face, but caught 
 the ironical tone of his voice. 
 
 ‘Study! How is one to study when all 
 one thinks of is how to get to camp and to 
 go to sleep!’ 
 
 ‘No; but, joking apart ... tell me, why 
 wouldn’t you move into your commander’s 
 tent? Surely you don’t value the opinion of 
 these clowns ?’ 
 
 ‘Of course I value their opinion, as I do 
 that of all persons whom I have no cause not 
 to respect.’ 
 
 ‘I have no cause not to believe you. In- 
 deed, for that matter, that sort of thing’s the 
 rage now-a-days. Even literature exalts the 
 peasant into a sort of pearl of creation.’ 
 
 ‘Who talks of pearls of creation, Piotr 
 Nikolaevich? If you would recognise a 
 human being, that would be something.’ 
 
 ‘Oh, what is the use of empty phrases like 
 that? Who doesn’t recognise him? A human 
 being! Well, let him be a human being; 
 what sort of human being? that’s another 
 
80 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 question. . . . There, let us talk about some- 
 thing else.’ 
 
 We dropped into conversation. Wentzel 
 evidently was very well read; and, as Zaikin 
 had said, knew several languages. The cap- 
 tain’s remark that he could ‘say rhymes by 
 heart’ also proved to be true. We began 
 talking of the French, and Wentzel recited, 
 with much feeling, Alfred de Musset’s ‘ Vuet 
 de Decembre’ He recited well, simply and 
 expressively, and with a good French accent. 
 When he had finished, he paused a moment 
 and added,— 
 
 ‘Yes, that is fine; but all the French put 
 together are not worth ten lines of Schiller, 
 Goethe, or’ Shakespeare. 
 
 Before undertaking the command of the 
 company, he had been in charge of the 
 regimental library, and had closely followed 
 the course of Russian, as well as foreign, 
 literature. Through this the coversation 
 brought us back to the former subject. 
 Wentzel argued hotly. 
 
 ‘When I entered the regiment, almost as 
 a boy, I did not think in the way I have 
 been talking to you now. I tried to man- 
 age by talking to the men. I tried to gain 
 a moral influence over them. But in a year 
 they worried me almost to death. All that 
 remained in me from the so-called “ad- 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 8&1 
 
 vanced” books I had read, when it was 
 brought into contact with reality, turned 
 out to be sentimental trash. And now I 
 think that the only means of making one- 
 self understood is—that !’ 
 
 He made some gesture with his hand. 
 It was so dark that I did not understand 
 him. 
 
 ‘What is “that,” Piotr Nikolaevich ?’ 
 
 ‘A fist!’ he answered shortly. ‘Good-_ 
 night, anyhow;; it’s time to get to sleep.’ 
 
 I saluted to him and went back to my 
 tent. I was both pained and disgusted. 
 
 I thought that everyone in the tent was 
 asleep, but two or three minutes after I had 
 lain down, Feodorov, who lay beside me, 
 asked softly,— 
 
 ‘ Mikhailych, are you asleep ?’ 
 
 ‘No,’ 
 
 ‘Were you walking with Wentzel ?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, with him,’ 
 
 ‘What was he like with you? Peaceable?’ 
 
 ‘Peaceable enough ; amiable even.’ 
 
 ‘Well, I never did! That comes of be- 
 longing to the gentlefolk! It’s another story 
 with our sort!’ 
 
 ‘Why? Is he so fierce ?’ 
 
 ‘Eh-h-h! Isn’t he just! There are broken 
 heads in the Second Rifles! He’s a wild 
 beast !’ 
 
82 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Then he fell asleep, so that my next 
 question was answered only by his quiet 
 and regular breathing. I wrapped my cloak 
 round me, and everything faded from my 
 mind and vanished in a sound sleep. 
 
 
 

 
 Te lel: 
 
 FTER the rains the hot weather 
 began. Just about that time 
 we left the badly-made country 
 road where our feet had stuck 
 
 in the slushy soil, and came out on to the 
 
 great high-road leading from Yassy to Bucha- 
 rest. Our first day’s march along that high- 
 road, between Tekuch and Berlad, will never 
 be forgotten by any of those who endured it. 
 There were 110 degs. (Fahr.) in the shade, and 
 the day’s march was thirty-two miles. There 
 was no wind; the fine limestone dust, raised 
 by the thousands of feet, hung over the road, 
 filled our mouths and noses, powdered our 
 hair till there was no distinguishing the colour, 
 and, mixing with perspiration, coated our 
 faces with dirt and turned us all to negroes. 
 
 For some reason, instead of being in our 
 
 shirts, we had to march in uniform. The 
 
 sunbeams heated the black cloth through, 
 
 and scorched our heads intolerably under the - 
 83 
 
 
 
84 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 black caps; we could feel through the soles 
 of our boots the glaring heat of the rubble of 
 the road. The men gasped and struggled for 
 breath. As ill-luck would have it, wells were 
 few and far between, and in most of them 
 there was so little water that the head of our 
 column (the whole division marched at once) 
 baled out all the water there was, and we, 
 after terrible struggling and crushing at the 
 wells, got nothing but an earthy liquid, more 
 like mud than water. When even that was 
 not to be had, the men began to fall. During 
 that one day, in our battalion alone, nearly 
 ninety men fell by the way. Three died of 
 sunstroke. 
 
 I endured this torture more easily than 
 most of the others did. Perhaps this was 
 because our regiment consisted chiefly of 
 northerns, whereas I was accustomed from 
 childhood to the hot season of the steppes ; 
 perhaps there were other reasons. 
 
 In any case, while others were falling by 
 the roadside, I was still able to keep my 
 senses. In Tekuch I had provided myself 
 with a huge hollow gourd, which contained at 
 the least four pints of water. I filled it 
 several times on the way; half the water I 
 drank myself, and the other half I divided 
 among my neighbours. A man struggles on 
 ‘and on by sheer force of will; but the heat 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 85 
 
 conquers him; his knees begin to give way - 
 under him; his body sways like that of a 
 drunkard ; the dark flush on his face shows 
 even through the coating of dirt and dust ; 
 his hand catches convulsively at his rifle. 
 A mouthful of water restores him for a few 
 minutes, but finally the man drops senseless 
 on the hard, dusty road. ‘Orderly!’ cry the 
 hoarse voices of, his neighbours. The 
 orderly’s business is to drag the fallen man to 
 the side of the road and help him, but the 
 orderly himself is in almost the same con- 
 dition. The ditches on both sides of the 
 road are strewn with prostrate figures..... 
 Feodorov and Zhitkov marched beside me, 
 and though evidently suffering, kept up their 
 courage ; the effect of the heat upon them was 
 to reverse their characters. Feodorov held 
 his tongue, only sighing heavily now and 
 then, with a piteous look in his beautiful eyes, 
 now inflamed with the dust; Zhitkov swore 
 and orated incessantly. | 
 
 ‘There goes another down.... D—n 
 you, keep your bayonet straight !’ he shouted 
 snappishly, starting away from the bayonet — 
 of a falling soldier, the point of which 
 had almost put his eye out. ‘O Lord! O 
 Holy Virgin! why dost, thou persecute us? 
 If it weren’t for that bloodsucker, ’m ready 
 to tumble down myself!’ 
 
86 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 ‘What bloodsucker, uncle ?’ I asked. 
 
 ‘Nyemtzev, the staff-captain. He’s in 
 command to-day ; he’s just behind us. We'd 
 best keep on, or he'll give us what for... . 
 He won’t leave asound place about you.’ . . 
 
 I knew already that the soldiers had cor- 
 rupted the name ‘ Wentzel’ into ‘ Nyemtzev.’* 
 The sound was much alike, and was more 
 Russian. 
 
 I left my place in the ranks. It was a 
 little easier to walk at the side of the road, 
 as there was less dust and crowding. Many 
 walked at the side ; on that miserable day no 
 one troubled about keeping up the proper 
 form of the column. Little by little I lagged 
 behind, and soon found myself at the tail of 
 the column. 
 
 Wentzel, exhausted, panting for breath, but 
 excited, caught me up. 
 
 ‘How are you?’ he asked, hoarsely. ‘Let’s 
 walk on one side a bit; I’m dead beat.’ 
 
 ‘Will you have some water ?’ 
 
 He eagerly drank several gulps of water 
 from my gourd. 
 
 ‘Thanks, I feel better. We're having a 
 nice day of it!’ 
 
 For some time we walked side by side 
 without speaking. 
 
 ‘By-the-bye, he said, ‘you still haven’t 
 
 * From ‘ Nyemetz,’ a German. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 87 
 
 moved into Ivan Platonych’s tent, have 
 you?’ 
 
 No. 
 
 ‘That's stupid. Excuse my frankness. 
 Good-bye; I must get back to the tail of 
 my column. There seems to be a wonder- 
 ful number of these tender creatures tumbling 
 down.’ 
 
 I walked on a few steps, and then, look- 
 ing backwards, saw Wentzel stooping over 
 a fallen soldier and dragging him by the 
 shoulder. 
 
 ‘Get up, you hound! get up!’ 
 
 I could hardly recognise my cultivated 
 acquaintance. He poured out a torrent of 
 coarse abuse. The soldier, who was almost 
 unconscious, looked at the infuriated officer 
 with a hopeless expression. His lips whis- 
 pered something. 
 
 ‘Get up! Get up this instant! Ah! you 
 won't? Then there, there, there !’ 
 
 Wentzel seized his sword and, with the 
 heavy iron scabbard, struck blow after blow 
 upon the unhappy man’s shoulders, already 
 sore from the knapsack and rifle. I could 
 not bear it; I went up to him. 
 
 ‘Piotr Nikolaevich !’ 
 
 ‘Get up!’ The hand with the sword was 
 lifted for another blow, but I caught it firmly 
 in mine. 
 
88 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 ‘For God’s sake, Piotr Nikolaevich, let 
 him alone!’ 
 
 He turned his frenzied face round to me. 
 With eyes starting from his head and con- 
 vulsively distorted mouth, he was terrible to 
 see. He tore his hand from mine with a 
 violent movement. I thought he was going 
 to burst out and storm at me for my insolence 
 (to seize an officer by the arm was, indeed, 
 great insolence), but he restrained himself. 
 
 ‘Look here, Ivanov, don’t ever do that 
 sort of thing! If there had been in my place 
 some pompous idiot like Shchurov or Timo- 
 feyev, you would pay dearly for your joke. 
 You must remember that you are only a 
 private, and that for things of that kind you 
 may get simply—shot !’ 
 
 ‘I don’t care. I could not see it and not 
 interfere.’ 
 
 ‘That does honour to your tender feelings, 
 but you display them in the wrong place. 
 What else can I do with these’... . (his 
 face expressed contempt—even more—even 
 a kind of hatred). ‘Of all these dozens, 
 tumbling down like women, there are pro- 
 bably only a few that are really exhausted. 
 I don’t do these things from cruelty; there 
 is no cruelty in me. I must keep up order 
 and discipline. If it were possible to talk 
 to them, I would manage them by exhorta- 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 98 
 
 tion; but words are nothing to them. The 
 only thing they feel is physical pain—’ 
 
 I did not stop to hear him out, but hurried 
 away to catch up my column, which was 
 already far ahead. I rejoined Feodorov and 
 Zhitkov only when our battalion turned 
 from the high road into a field, where a halt 
 was called. 
 
 ‘Mikhailych, what were you after, talking 
 to staff-captain Wentzel?’ asked Feodorov, 
 when I dropped, exhausted, beside him, 
 hardly able even to put down my rifle. 
 
 ‘Talking!’ grumbled Zhitkov. ‘Is that 
 what you call talking? He caught hold of 
 his arm. Eh, darine Ivanov, keep clear of 
 Nyemtzev! Don’t be too cocksure because 
 he likes to talk to you! You'll come to grief 
 with him in good earnest!’ 
 

 
 IV. 
 
 S|ATE in the evening we reached 
 Fokshan, passed through the 
 dark, silent, dusty little town, 
 
 
 
 and came out into a field. There 
 was not a gleam of light to be seen; the 
 battalions were settled for the night anyhow, 
 and the exhausted men slept like the dead ; 
 hardly anyone cared to eat the dinner which 
 . was provided. A soldier’s meals are always 
 ‘dinner, whether eaten early in the morning, 
 at midday or at night. The whole night long 
 the stragglers were coming up. At dawn we 
 started on the march again, consoling our- 
 selves with the thought that, after this one 
 more day we should have a day’s halt. 
 
 Again the same moving rows, the same 
 crushing weight of the knapsack on the 
 weary shoulders, the same pain in the 
 blistered and swollen feet. But we hardly 
 realised the first seven miles of the way. 
 Our short night’s rest had not been enough 
 to recover us from the exhaustion of the 
 90 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. QI 
 
 day before, and we marched in a_half- 
 dazed condition. For my part, I slept so 
 soundly while marching, that when a halt 
 was called, I could hardly believe that we 
 had made seven miles, and could not recol- 
 lect a single spot that we had passed on the 
 way. Only when the columns began to draw 
 up all together and fall out of line for the halt, 
 did we come to our senses, and think with . 
 delight of the whole hour’s rest before us, 
 when we could unstrap, boil water in our 
 kettles, and lie down at our ease to drink 
 our hot tea. Every day, directly the weapons 
 were put down and the knapsacks taken off, 
 most of the men began collecting fuel, gener- 
 ally using the dried stalks of last year’s maize. 
 Two bayonets were stuck into the ground, 
 a ramrod was placed on them, and two or 
 three kettles slung across it. The light, dry 
 stalks burned brightly; they were always 
 placed on that side from which the wind 
 blew, so that the flames licked the blackened 
 kettles, and in ten minutes the water bubbled 
 merrily. The tea was thrown straight into 
 the boiling water and allowed to boil. The 
 result was a strong, almost black liquid, 
 which was usually drunk without sugar, as 
 the provision department, which had given 
 a large amount of tea (it was even used for 
 smoking when the men were out of tobacco), 
 
92 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 had provided very little sugar, and the tea 
 was drunk in enormous quantities. A kettle- 
 ful (seven tumblers) was the average amount 
 per head. 
 
 It may seem strange that I should enter 
 into so many details. But the life of soldiers 
 on the march is so hard, there is so much 
 hardship and suffering in it, and so little hope 
 of anything good in the future, that some 
 trifling luxury, such as tea, forms a real joy. 
 It was worth while to see the seriously happy 
 faces of the rough, gloomy, sunburnt soldiers, 
 old and young alike—though, indeed, there 
 was hardly anyone among us over forty years 
 old—as they, like little children, arranged the 
 twigs and stubble under the kettles, made up 
 the fire, and advised one another :-— 
 
 ‘No, Liutikov; put it there—put it at the 
 edge there. That’s right; that’s the way. 
 It’s catching now; it'll boil in a minute!’ 
 
 _ Tea, occasionally, in cold and rainy weather, 
 
 a little grog, and a pipe of tobacco—these 
 are all the soldier’s pleasures, except, of 
 course, all-healing sleep, in which one can for- 
 get both physical hardships and the thought 
 of the dark, terrible future. Tobacco played 
 with us no small part in these joys of life, 
 as it roused and supported our worn-out 
 nerves. A closely-filled pipe would make 
 - the round of as many as ten persons, and 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 93 
 
 then return to its owner, who would take a 
 last puff, knock out the ashes, and, with 
 an air of importance, put away the pipe 
 in his boot. I remember how grieved I was 
 when one of my friends, to whom I had lent 
 my pipe, lost it, and how distressed and 
 ashamed the man himself was. It seemed to 
 us as if he had lost a whole fortune that had 
 been entrusted to him. 
 
 At the long halt (about mid-day) we had 
 from one-and-a-half to two hours’ rest. After 
 drinking the tea, nearly everyone used to go 
 to sleep. There would be dead silence in the 
 bivouac, but for the sentinel pacing up and 
 down before the standard, and here and there 
 an officer awake. One lies on the ground, 
 with one’s knapsack for a pillow, half-asleep, 
 half enjoying oneself; the hot sun scorches 
 one’s face and neck, the flies persistently sting, 
 and will not let one get to sleep properly. 
 Dreams and realities get mixed up together; . 
 it is such a short while ago that we lived a life 
 utterly different from this, that in this state of 
 -half-consciousness it seems as if we should 
 wake up in a minute and find ourselves at 
 home among the familiar surroundings, and 
 that this steppe, this naked soil with thorns 
 for grass, this pitiless sun and dry wind, these 
 thousands of strangely-clothed people, in dusty 
 white shirts, these stacks of weapons would ~ 
 
94 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 all vanish from our sight. They are all so 
 like a strange, miserable dream. 
 
 ‘Time’s u-u-up!’ shouts in a long, gloomy 
 cry the powerful voice of our short, bearded 
 battalion commander, Major Chornoglarov. 
 The prostrate crowd of white shirts begins to 
 move; sighing and stretching their limbs the 
 men get up, put on their wallets and knap- 
 sacks, and form into line. 
 
 ‘Take up arms.’ 
 
 Each man picks out his own weapon. To 
 this day I remember my rifle, No. 18,635, with 
 the butt-end a little darker than most of the 
 others, and a long scratch on the dark lacquer. 
 One more word of command, and the battalion, 
 forming into a column, marches out on to the 
 road. In front is led the commander’s horse, 
 a bay stallion, named ‘Barbarian,’ bridling 
 and curveting and pawing the ground. The 
 major rides him only on exceptional occasions, 
 and usually follows his ‘Barbarian’ on foot 
 with the measured tread of a first-rate walker. 
 He takes care to show the soldiers that their 
 superior officers too ‘do their best,’ and for this 
 reason he is a favourite with the men. He is 
 always cool and composed, never smiles or 
 jokes, rises in the morning earlier than anyone 
 else, lies down to sleep last of all his battalion 
 at night, and behaves to the soldiers with firm- 
 - ness and self-control, never permitting himself 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 95 
 
 to shout at or strike them in fits of temper. 
 The men say that, if it were not for the major, 
 Wentzel would be worse even than he is. 
 
 It was a hot day, but not so hot as the day 
 before. Moreover, we were now marching, not 
 on the high-road, but beside the railway-line, 
 along a narrow path, so that most of the sol- 
 diers walked on the grass. There was no 
 dust ; clouds began to gather; here and there 
 a great, solitary drop would fall. We watched 
 the sky, and spread out our hands to feel 
 whether it was raining yet. Even yesterday’s 
 stragglers recovered their spirits; there was 
 now not much further to go—only another six 
 or seven miles—and then we should have a rest, 
 a longed-for rest, of not one short night alone, 
 but a night, a whole day and another night. 
 The men brightened up and felt an impulse to 
 sing ; Feodorov’s voice rang out among the 
 singers, as they struck up the famous— 
 
 ©‘ There was a battle near Poltava.’ 
 
 On reaching the line— 
 * Suddenly a shameless bullet flew into the Tzar’s own hat,’ 
 
 he began a senseless and unworthy doggerel, 
 very popular, however, among the soldiers, 
 about how a certain Liza, going into the 
 forest, found there a black beetle, and what 
 were the consequences. Then followed the 
 
96 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 historical ballad of how Peter the Great was 
 called into the Senate; and on top of that a 
 doggerel song of our regiment :— 
 ‘Said the White Tzar Alexander, said our Emperor 
 to us: 
 “ Now, my lads, my gallant soldiers, do your best before 
 your Tzar!” 
 
 So we showed him we’re good fellows, and he 
 thanked us for our pains. 
 
 ‘Our battalion’s bold commander, Chornoglazov is 
 
 his name, 
 
 He’s no lazy sluggard, but an officer that drills his 
 
 men. 
 
 When he sits on horseback there is not a man shall 
 
 say him nay.’ 
 And so on, for fifty verses. 
 
 ‘Feodorov, I asked one day, ‘why do you 
 sing all that rubbish about Liza?’ I spoke 
 to him, too, about several other songs, absurd 
 and indecent to such a degree that their very 
 indecency lost all meaning, and became a 
 mere succession of senseless sounds. 
 
 ‘It comes natural, Vladimir Mikhailych. 
 But, dear me, that’s not singing! That’s just 
 a sort of shouting to keep one’s lungs open. 
 Seems easier to march, somehow.’ 
 
 When the singers got tired the band began 
 ’ to play. It was always much easier to walk 
 to the sound of the loud, rhythmical and 
 usually merry marches; all the men, even the 
 most weary, would brighten up, march care- 
 - fully in step, and keep their proper places in 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 97 
 
 the column without lagging; the battalion 
 would be transformed beyond recognition 
 I remember that one day we marched to the - 
 band music over four miles in an hour, with- 
 out feeling any weariness ; but when the tired 
 musicians left off playing, the energy roused 
 by the music failed us, and I felt that I 
 should fall with exhaustion every minute; 
 indeed, I should have fallen if we had not 
 soon halted to rest. 
 
 About three-and-a-half miles beyond the 
 midday halt we came to an obstruction. We 
 _ were marching along a valley formed by a 
 stream ; on one side were hills, on the other 
 a narrow and rather high railway embank- 
 ment. The recent rains had flooded th® 
 valley, forming a great pool, over 200 feet 
 wide, across our path. The high railway 
 embankment ran across it like a dam, and we 
 had to walk along the line. The signalman 
 let the first battalion pass, and get safely 
 across the pond; but then announced that 
 the rest of us must wait, as a train would 
 pass in five minutes. We halted, and had 
 just put down our arms, when, at the turn of 
 the road, appeared the familiar carriage of the 
 general in command of our brigade. 
 
 Our general was a fine fellow. Such a 
 larynx as he possessed I have never come 
 across, even in the archepiscopal choirs. His 
 
 EK 
 
98 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 thundering bass bellowed in the air like the 
 sound of trumpets; and his large, solid 
 figure, with big red face, huge grey whiskers 
 streaming in the wind, and thick black brows 
 overshadowing small eyes that shone like live 
 coals, had a most impressive effect when he 
 sat on horseback and gave out the word of 
 command to his brigade. On one occasion, 
 during some military exercises in the Kho- 
 dynsky field in Moscow, he presented so gal- 
 lant and warlike appearance as to enrapture 
 an old artisan in the crowd, who ex- 
 claimed,— 
 
 ‘What a brick! That’s the sort we want.’ 
 
 From that day forth our general was always 
 nicknamed ‘the Brick.’ 
 
 He dreamed of prowess and exploits, and 
 during the whole campaign was always ac- 
 companied by several volumes of military 
 history. His favourite theme of conversation 
 with the officers was the Napoleonic cam- 
 paign, which he loved to criticise. This, of 
 course, I knew only by rumour, as I very 
 seldom saw the general; he usually passed 
 us at about midday in his carriage, to which 
 three good horses were harnessed, and, driv- 
 ing to the place where we were to pass the 
 .night, would take lodgings and stay there till 
 late the next morning, and then catch us up 
 again. When he passed us the soldiers 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 99 
 
 always observed carefully the degree of red- 
 ness of his face, and of hoarseness in the 
 deafening voice with which he shouted at 
 us:—‘ Good-day, Starobyeltzy !’ * 
 
 ‘Good-day, your excellency!’ the men 
 would answer, and then remark to one an- 
 other :—‘ The Brick wants a hair of the dog 
 that bit him.’ 
 
 After this the general would sometimes 
 drive on ahead without any further incidents, 
 but sometimes would stop to give a terrific 
 ‘wigging’ to the commander of some division. 
 
 Seeing that our battalion had halted, the 
 general flew towards us and sprang out of the 
 carriage as rapidly as was consistent with his 
 solidity. The major hastily came forward 
 to meet him. 
 
 ‘What is the matter? Why have they 
 halted? Who allowed it?’ 
 
 ‘Your excellency, the road is flooded, 
 and a train is just going to pass along the 
 line.’ 
 
 ‘The road is flooded? A train? Non- 
 sense! You are accustoming the men to 
 effeminacy. You are making old women of © 
 them. I forbid you to halt without permis- 
 sion! I will put you under arrest, sir!’ . 
 
 mY Ounexcellency...2...-.: 
 Ssiences: 
 
 * Soldiers of the Starobyelsky regiment. 
 
100 STORIES FORM GARSHIN. 
 
 The general flashed his eyes wrathfully 
 around and fastened upon another victim. 
 
 ‘What’s this? Why isn’t the commander 
 of the second riflemen’s division at his post ? 
 Staff-captain Wentzel ! Please to come here !’ 
 
 Wentzel advanced, and the general’s wrath 
 was poured out upon him in a torrent. I 
 could hear that he tried to give some answer, 
 raising his voice, but the general drowned 
 him completely, and we could only guess that 
 Wentzel must have said something dis- 
 respectful. 
 
 ‘To answer me? And with insolence?’ 
 bellowed the general. ‘Silence! Take off 
 his sword. Put him on duty at the money- 
 chest underarrest. [ll makeanexample!.. 
 . . Afraid of a puddle! . . Follow me, men! 
 Remember Suvorov!’ 
 
 The general hastily passed in front of the | 
 battalion, and went down to the water’s 
 edge with the awkward gait of a man who 
 has been driving in a carriage for a long 
 time. 
 
 ‘Follow me, men! Remember Suvorov!’ 
 he repeated, plunging with his shining top- 
 boots into the water. The major, glancing 
 backwards with a savage expression, followed 
 him, and the battalion waded in after them. 
 At first the water was only up to our knees, 
 then to our waists, then still higher; the tall 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. ot 
 
 general waded without difficulty, but the 
 little major began to help himself along with 
 his arms. The soldiers, like a flock of sheep 
 at the washing, shoved and pushed one 
 another and swayed from side to side, 
 floundering and trying to free their feet, 
 which stuck in the muddy bottom. The 
 adjutant and the commanders of companies, 
 who were on horseback, could, of course, have 
 ridden across very comfortably, but, seeing 
 the example set by the general, rode up to 
 the water’s edge, dismounted, and leading 
 their horses by the bridle, waded through the 
 dirty water, which the soldiers’ feet had left 
 thick and brown. Our company, which was 
 formed of the tallest men in the battalion, got 
 across without much difficulty, but the men 
 of the eighth company, who waded side by 
 side with us, and were all of small stature, 
 were immersed up to their ears ; some even 
 began to choke and caught hold of us for 
 support. A little soldier of gipsy race, with 
 a white face and widely dilated black eyes, 
 let his rifle go, and caught Uncle Zhitkov 
 round the neck with both hands. Luckily 
 for the gipsy, some one caught the state's 
 weapon and saved it from sinking. About 
 twenty yards further on the water grew 
 shallower, and the men, feeling themselves 
 out of danger, scrambled on, hurrying to the 
 
102 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 further edge, shoving and swearing at one 
 another. Many of our men were laughing, 
 but the eighth company was in no laughing 
 mood ; the faces of some of them were blue, 
 not with cold alone. The riflemen hurried 
 them on from behind. 
 
 ‘Come, mannikins, get on! You'll be 
 half-drowned !’ they shouted. 
 
 ‘And no wonder; it’s easy to get drowned 
 here!’ answered voices from the eighth com- 
 pany. ‘It’s easy for him to lead the way; 
 he’s hardly got his whiskers wet. He’s a 
 fine sort of a hero; we might have all been 
 drowned because of him. 
 
 ‘You should have crept into my kettle, and 
 I'd have carried you over as dry as a bone.’ 
 
 ‘Ah, you see, I didn’t think of it, good- 
 humouredly answered a little soldier, 
 
 The cause of all this confusion having by 
 this time got his feet out of the sticky mud 
 of the bottom and reached dry land, stood 
 majestically on the shore, watching the 
 crowd floundering in the water. He was wet 
 through and through; the water was dripping 
 even from his long whiskers. Streams of 
 water ran from his clothes; his patent top- 
 boots were swollen out with water, as he 
 stood shouting to encourage the soldiers. 
 
 ‘Forwards, men! in Suvorov’s fashion !’ 
 
 The wet officers crowded round him with 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 103 
 
 gloomy faces. Wentzel stood among them 
 with a distorted face, and without his sword. 
 Meanwhile, the general’s coachman, after try- 
 ing the depth of the water in several places 
 with his long whip, had got up on his box 
 and driven safely across at a spot a little to 
 one side of our crossing. The water was 
 hardly up to the axles of the carriage wheels. 
 
 ‘That is where we ought to have crossed, 
 your excellency, remarked the major, calmly. 
 ‘Will you permit the men to get dry?’ 
 
 ‘Certainly, certainly, Sergyey Nikolaich, 
 mildly answered the general. The cold water 
 had cooled his ardour. He got into his car- 
 riage, sat down, then stood up again and 
 bellowed at the top of his mighty voice: 
 
 ‘Thank you, Starobyeltzy! You're brave 
 lads !’ 
 
 ‘Glad to do our best, your excellency!’ 
 confusedly shouted the soldiers ; and the wet 
 general drove on ahead. 
 
 The sun was still high, and we had only 
 about three and a half miles more to go, so 
 the major called a long halt. We undressed, 
 made bonfires, dried our clothes, our boots, 
 our knapsacks and wallets, and two hours 
 later started afresh, already looking back 
 upon our bath as a jest. 
 
 ‘And the Brick has put Wentzel under 
 arrest |’ said Feodorov, as we talked. 
 
104 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 ‘That’s no loss! He'll have two days in 
 front of the money chest, and so much the 
 better, answered one of the riflemen from 
 behind. 
 
 ‘What's it to you?’ 
 
 ‘To me? It’s not only I but the whole 
 company that’s better off. At least we shall 
 get two days’ peace. There’s no bearing 
 him; that’s what it is to me!’ 
 
 ‘Patience, Cossack ; you'll be hetman some 
 Clavel ean 
 
 ‘We've got to have patience, but I doubt 
 we sha’n’t be hetmans, unless it’s in the next 
 world, remarked Zhitkov in his usual gloomy 
 tone; ‘if we get shot by the Turks.’ 
 
 ‘Come, uncle, don’t you get melancholy. 
 You should think of how you and I have 
 got ourselves dry and comfortable, and the 
 Brick’s driving, as wet as a drowned rat,’ said 
 Feodorov, and everyone burst out laughing 
 atethe joke; 
 
 * An Oukrainian proverb, equivalent to ‘ Live, horse, and 
 you'll get grass.’ 
 
 
 

 
 Ve 
 
 UR road still ran beside the rail- 
 way, and we were constantly 
 passed, as we marched, by trains 
 full of people, horses and stores. 
 
 The soldiers looked enviously at the horses’ 
 
 
 
 muzzles protruding from the open doors of 
 the goods-trains passing us. Lucky horses, 
 to have carriages given them—and we on 
 foot ! 
 
 ‘Horses are stupid, they’d get off their feed,’ 
 says Vasili Karpych, dogmatically. ‘That’s 
 the use of being a man—to know how to 
 behave.’ 
 
 One day, during a halt, a Cossack galloped 
 up with important news for our commanding 
 officers. We were called up and formed into 
 line in our white shirts and without knapsacks 
 or weapons. None of us knew the reason of 
 this. The officers examined each his own 
 
 men; Wentzel, as usual, swore and shouted, 
 105 
 
106 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 jerking crookedly fastened belts, and, with 
 kicks and blows, telling his men to put their 
 shirts straight. We were then led up to the 
 railway-line, and, after a rather long process 
 of forming and re-forming, the regiment was 
 drawn up in two ranks along the line. The 
 white row of shirts stretched out for three- 
 quarters of a mile. 
 
 ‘Men!’ shouted the major ; ‘His Majesty 
 the Emperor is going to pass!’ 
 
 We stood and awaited the Emperor. Ours 
 was a provincial division, which had been 
 quartered far away from both St Petersburg 
 and Moscow. Not more than one in ten of 
 the soldiers had ever seen the Tzar, and all 
 awaited the imperial train with impatience. 
 Half-an-hour passed, and still the train did 
 did not come; the men were allowed to 
 sit down. Conversations and anecdotes 
 began. 
 
 ‘Will he stop?’ asked someone. 
 
 ‘What next! Stop for every regiment! 
 If he looks at us out of the window it’s as 
 much as he'll do.’ 
 
 ‘And we sha’n’t be able to see which is he ; 
 there'll be a lot of generals with him,’ 
 
 ‘I shall know him. I saw him the year 
 before last at Khodynka, as close as that.’ 
 And the speaker spread out his hands to show 
 us how close he had been to the Emperor. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 107 
 
 At last, after two hours’ waiting, a little 
 line of smoke appeared in the distance. The 
 regiment rose and formed into line. First 
 passed the train with the servants and pro- 
 visions. The white-capped cooks and scullions 
 looked out of the windows at us, laughing at 
 something. The Emperor’s train followed five 
 hundred yards behind ; the engine-driver, see- 
 ing the regiment drawn up in line, slackened 
 speed, and the carriages passed, ponderously 
 rumbling, slowly before the eager eyes that 
 looked at the windows. But all the blinds 
 were drawn; a Cossack and an officer, who 
 stood on the platform of the last carriage, 
 were the only occupants of the train that we 
 saw. We watched the train going off, faster 
 and faster in the distance, and then, after 
 standing another three minutes, returned to 
 the bivouac. The soldiers were grumbling 
 and disappointed. 
 
 ‘It'll be ages before we see him now!’ 
 
 But we saw him very soon. Before reach- 
 ing Ploeshti we were told that the Emperor 
 would inspect the regiment there. 
 
 We passed before him, just as we were after 
 the march, in the old dirty white shirts and 
 trousers, in the old rusty, dust-covered boots 
 with the old unsightly burdens of knapsack, 
 biscuit-wallet and bottle hanging by a string. 
 There was about the soldiers nothing elegant, 
 
Ly 
 
 108 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 gallant, or heroic; they were all very much 
 like ordinary peasants ; nothing but the knap- 
 sacks and cartridge-bags showed that these 
 peasants were on their way to the war. We 
 were formed into a narrow column, four 
 abreast, the streets not being wide enough for 
 us to pass otherwise. I marched on the out- 
 side, trying to keep in step and in line, and 
 thinking only that, if the Emperor and his 
 suite should stand on the side, where I was, I 
 should have to pass before his eyes, and quite 
 close to him. But, glancing at Zhitkov, who 
 was marching next to me, I saw that his face, 
 stern and gloomy as ever, was nevertheless 
 agitated, and I felt that a part of the general 
 agitation was communicating itself to me, and 
 that my heart had begun to beat faster than 
 usual. It suddenly seemed to me as if every- 
 thing depended for us upon how the Emperor 
 would look at us. When, later on, I had to 
 face bullets for the first time, I experienced a 
 similar sensation. 
 
 The men marched faster and faster; the 
 step grew longer, the gait freer and bolder. I 
 had no need to make any effort to keep in 
 time; my weariness had gone. It was as if 
 we had developed wings which carried us for- 
 wards to the place from which sounded already 
 military music and a deafening ‘hurrah!’ I 
 do not remember the streets through which we 
 
Se AY 
 
 FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 109 
 
 passed. I do not remember whether there 
 were people in the streets, and whether they 
 looked at us; I remember only the emotion that 
 seized upon us, together with the consciousness 
 of the terrible strength of the mass to which we 
 belonged, and which was sweeping us along. 
 I felt that for this mass nothing was impos- 
 sible ; that the torrent, with which I was rush- 
 ing on, and of which I formed a part, could 
 know no hindrance, that it would break down, 
 destroy and annihilate everything Every 
 soldier thought of how the man before whom 
 this torrent was sweeping by, could, with a 
 single word, a single gesture of his hand, alter 
 its direction, turn it back, or fling it again upon 
 terrible obstacles ; every soldier sought in this 
 man’s word or gesture the something unknown 
 which was leading us to death. ‘You lead. 
 us, thought every man; ‘ we give our lives to 
 you ; look at us and be assured ; we are ready 
 to die.’ 
 
 And he knew that we were ready to die. He 
 saw the terrible ranks of men, firm in their de- 
 termination, passing before him almost at a run, 
 —children of a poor country, rugged, poorly- s 
 dressed soldiers. He felt that they were all. 
 going to death, calm and free from responsi- 
 bility. He was mounted on a grey horse, - 
 which stood motionless, pricking up its ears at 
 the music and the frenzied shouts of enthusi- 
 
110 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 asm. There was a gorgeous suite round him ; 
 but I remember no one of all the brilliant 
 group on horseback, except the one man on 
 the grey horse, in a plain uniform and white 
 military cap. I remember the pale, weary 
 face, wearied with the consciousness of how 
 weighty was the resolve that had been taken. 
 I remember how the tears poured down his 
 face, falling on to the dark uniform in bright, 
 glittering drops. I remember the convulsive 
 motion of the hand holding the reins, and the 
 quivering lips that were saying something— 
 no doubt a greeting to the thousands of young, 
 perishing lives for which he wept. All this 
 flashed before my eyes and disappeared, as 
 though lit up for an instant by lightning, as 
 I rushed past him, breathless, not from run- 
 ning but from frantic, unnatural excitement, 
 lifting up my rifle with one hand, waving my 
 cap over my head with the other, and shout- 
 ing a deafening ‘hurrah!’ which, in the 
 general roar, I could not even hear myself. 
 All this flashed past and disappeared. 
 Dusty streets, glaring in the scorching heat ; 
 soldiers, exhausted with excitement and with 
 keeping up their pace at almost a run for 
 half-a-mile, fainting from the heat, the shouts 
 of the officers, insisting that the men should 
 keep in line and in step—that is all that I saw 
 and heard five minutes later. And when, 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV, 111 
 
 after marching another mile-and-a-half through 
 the stifling town, we came out into the pas- 
 ture that had been chosen for our bivouac, I 
 dropped on the ground, utterly exhausted in 
 both body and soul. 
 
 
 

 
 VI. 
 
 LEE ICU le marches dustasncae 
 weariness, worn and _ bleeding 
 fect siCrem testa by maay,ecead 
 sleep by night, the detested horn 
 awaking us at daybreak, and always fields— 
 fields unlike the fields at home—covered with 
 tall verdure, with loudly-rustling, long, silky 
 maize-leaves, or full-eared wheat, already 
 yellowing here and there. 
 
 The same faces ; the same life of a regi- 
 ment on the march; the same conversations 
 and anecdotes of home, of quarters in a 
 provincial town; the same criticisms on the 
 
 
 
 officers. 
 
 Of the future the men spoke rarely and 
 unwillingly. They had very vague ideas as 
 to why we were going to the war, although 
 the regiment had been stationed for a whole 
 half-year near Kishenev, waiting tostart. The 
 reason of the impending war might have been 
 
 112 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 113 
 
 explained by them during that time, but 
 apparently, this had been considered un- 
 necessary. I remember a soldier once ask- 
 ing me :— 
 
 ‘I say, Vladimir Mikhailych, shall we soon 
 reach Bokhara?’ 
 
 I at first thought that my ear had deceived 
 me, but when he repeated the question I told 
 him that Bokhara was beyond two seas, that 
 it was nearly three thousand miles away, and 
 that we were not likely ever to get there. 
 
 ‘No, Mikhailych, you’re wrong there. The 
 pisar* told me about it. He said: “ We shall 
 just cross the Danube,” says he, “and there 
 we shall be at once in Bokhara.”’ 
 
 ‘Ah! Not Bokhara—Bulgaria,’ I explained. 
 
 ‘Call it what you like—Burgaria, Bokhara, 
 it’s all one how you call it, I suppose?’ 
 
 And he broke off, evidently offended. 
 
 They only knew that they were going to 
 fight the Turk, because he had shed so much 
 blood. And they were anxious to be re- 
 venged upon the Turk, not so much for the 
 bloodshed, about which they knew no details, 
 as for the trouble that he had given to so_ 
 many people and the hardships of the difficult 
 march that were all on his account (‘ All these 
 hundreds of miles to go dragging along to get 
 to a scoundrel like him!’) and because of 
 
 * Village clerk. 
 
— 
 
 114 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 the soldiers on whom the lot had fallen at the 
 conscription, and who had been forced to 
 leave their homes and families and go off, ail 
 of them, somewhere into the distance to face 
 bullets and cannon-balls. They had an idea 
 that the Turk was a disorderly personage, a 
 ringleader of mutiny, who must be subdued 
 and suppressed. 
 
 We were much more occupied with the 
 domestic affairs of the battalions or of the 
 companies. In our company all went quietly 
 and smoothly, but among the riflemen 
 matters went from bad to worse. Wentzel 
 continued as before ; the suppressed indigna- 
 tion of the men grew more and more intense, 
 and after one incident, which even now, five 
 years afterwards, I cannot remember without 
 a sense of pain, reached the pitch of absolute 
 hatred. 
 
 We had just passed through some town on 
 the way, and had come out into a meadow, 
 where the first regiment, which marched in 
 front of us, had already halted. The place 
 was charming; on one side was a river, on 
 the other a grove composed entirely of old 
 oak-trees, probably a pleasure-ground for the 
 town’s-people. It was a fine, warm evening ; 
 the sun was setting ; the regiment stood piling 
 arms. Zhitkov and I began setting up the 
 tent; we placed the poles, then I held the 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 115 
 
 edge of the canvas while Zhitkov drove in the 
 pegs with a stick. 
 
 ‘Tighter! Hold it tighter, Mikhailych, my 
 lad!’ He had begun, a few days before, to 
 call meso. ‘That’s the way!  That’s it!’ 
 
 At that moment I heard behind me a 
 regular succession of strange, dull sounds. I 
 turned round. 
 
 The riflemen were standing in line. Wentzel, 
 hoarsely shouting something, was striking a 
 soldier in the face. The man, holding his 
 rifle at his feet and not daring even to shrink 
 away from the blows, stood with a dead, livid 
 face, trembling from head to foot. Wentzel’s 
 small, thin figure swayed to and fro with the 
 force of his own blows, as he struck with both 
 hands, now on one side of the man’s face, now 
 on the other, Everyone around was silent ; 
 there was no sound but the thud of the blows 
 and the hoarse muttering of the infuriated 
 commander. Everything grew black before 
 my eyes; I started forward. Zhitkov, under- 
 standing my gesture, jerked the canvas with 
 all his might. 
 
 ‘Hold it, you clumsy devil!’ he shouted, © 
 and burst out swearing at me in the foulest 
 language possible. ‘Have you lost your 
 fingers, eh? What are you looking at? 
 What’s there to see, I’d like to know?’ 
 
 Blow followed blow; blood was trickling 
 
116 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 from the soldier's chin and upper lip. At 
 last he fell. Wentzel turned, glanced along 
 the whole line and shouted :— 
 
 ‘If any other scamp dares to smoke in the 
 ranks, I'll give him worse than that. Pick 
 up the beast, wash his face, and put him 
 in the tent till he comes to his senses. Pile 
 arms !’ 
 
 His hands were red, swollen trembling, 
 and blood-stained. He took out a hand- 
 kerchief, wiped them, and walked away from 
 the soldiers, who were piling their arms in 
 gloomy silence. Several men, muttering to 
 one another under their breath, were lifting 
 the injured man from the ground and attend- 
 ing to him. Wentzel walked with a nervous, 
 exhausted air; he was pale and his eyes 
 glittered, and the quivering muscles of his 
 face showed how he was clenching his teeth. 
 He passed us, and, meeting my steady gaze, 
 smiled in a forced, cynical way with his thin 
 lips alone, and, whispering something, walked 
 on. 
 
 ‘ Blood-sucker !’ said Zhitkov, in a tone full 
 ofvhatred And (yous sin: jomshamess aa 
 What should you go mixing up with it for? 
 D’you want to get shot? Wait a bit; they’ll 
 find a way to settle him !’ 
 
 ‘Are they going to complain?’ I asked. 
 ‘To whom ?’ | 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 117 
 
 ‘No, they won’t complain. When we come 
 to action, there’s’ 
 
 He muttered something half to himself. I 
 was afraid to understand him. Feodorov, 
 who by this time had gone across to the rifle- 
 men and found out from them what the affair 
 was about, came back to us. 
 
 ‘He knocks the men about for nothing at 
 all!’ he said. ‘While they were marching 
 this poor fellow, Matiushkin, smoked a cigar; 
 then, when they halted, he stood his rifle, 
 down and he’d got the cigar-end in his hand ; 
 he’d simply forgotten it. Well, and Wentzel 
 Sawit.. ©. What a brute!’ he added, 
 mournfully, as he lay down in the tent we 
 had set up. ‘And the cigar had gone out, 
 too; one could see the poor fellow had for- 
 gotten it.’ 
 
 A few days later we arrived at Alexandria, 
 where a great many troops were assembled. 
 As we descended the high hill before the 
 town, we could see a huge plain, covered with 
 white tents, black human figures, and long | 
 baggage-trains, with here and there shining 
 rows of brass cannon and green gun-carriages 
 and chests. The streets of the town were 
 crowded with officers and soldiers. From 
 the open windows of the small and dirty 
 hotels came the sounds of daring and 
 
118 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 mournful Hungarian music, mingled with the 
 clatter of dishes and noisy talking. The 
 shops were overflowing with Russians. Our 
 soldiers, the Roumanians, Germans and Jews, 
 all shouted together, and no one understood 
 anyone else; quarrels over the value of the 
 paper rouble could be heard at every step. 
 
 ‘What’s the use of jabbering ‘doou galagan, 
 you black-faced rascal? . . . Give me 
 back ten kopecks! Ay, you, domnul !’ 
 
 “Ounde eshte poshta?’ asks an_ officer, 
 armed with his ‘military interpreter’ (a little 
 book supplied to the troops), and saluting 
 with exaggerated politeness as he addressed 
 a Roumanian dandy. The Roumanian ex- 
 plains where the post-office is, and the officer 
 turns over the leaves of his ‘interpreter,’ 
 looking in vain for the incomprehensible 
 words, and politely expresses his thanks for 
 the information, although he cannot under- 
 stand it. 
 
 ‘Confound it, mates, did you ever see such 
 people? Their priests are like ours and their 
 churches are like ours, and yet they haven’t 
 got a bit of understanding in them!’ 
 
 ‘D’you want a silver rouble, eh?’ yells at 
 the top of his voice a soldier with a shirt in 
 his hand to a Roumanian stall-keeper in the 
 street. ‘For the shirt? Patru franku ? Four 
 francs ?’ 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV, 119 
 
 He pulls out the money and shows it, and 
 the bargain is completed to general satis- 
 faction. 
 
 ‘Out of the way, out of the way, lads! 
 Let the general pass!’ 
 
 A tall young general in a fashionably-cut 
 undress and topboots, and with a riding-whip 
 slung from his shoulder by a strap, passes 
 quickly down the street. A few steps behind 
 him comes an ordinary, a little Asiatic in a 
 bright-coloured robe and turban, with a huge 
 sword and a revolver at his belt. The 
 general, holding his head well up and 
 glancing with cheerful indifference at the 
 soldiers saluting and making way for him, 
 Emtersssone, of the hotels. Here Ivan 
 Platonych, Stebelkov and I were sitting ina 
 corner eating some Roumanian dish made of 
 meat and red pepper. The shabby room, 
 with its numerous little tables, was crowded 
 with people. The clatter of plates, the 
 popping of corks, the voices, both drunken 
 and sober, were all drowned by the sound of 
 the band, which was placed in a niche in the 
 room, adorned with red fustian curtains. 
 There were five players; the two fiddles 
 scraped indefatigably, the violoncello con- 
 stantly repeated the same thick, monotonous 
 notes, and the contra-bass roared its hardest; 
 but all these instruments formed a mere foil 
 
120 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 for the fifth. In front of the other players sat 
 a dark, curly-haired Hungarian, almost a lad, 
 with a strange instrument, something like the 
 ancient pipes with which Pan and the Fauns 
 are represented, thurst into the wide collar 
 of his velvet jacket. This instrument consists 
 of a row of little wooden pipes of varying 
 sizes, fastened together in such a manner that 
 their open ends are near to the performer’s 
 mouth. The Hungarian, turning his head 
 now to one side, now to the other, blew into 
 the pipes, drawing from them melodious and 
 powerful sounds, resembling neither those of 
 the flute nor those of the clarinet. Shaking 
 and turning his head about, he managed to 
 perform the most difficult and complicated 
 antics; the greasy black hair jumped and 
 danced on his head and fell over his brows, 
 his face grew flushed and damp, and the 
 veins stood out on his neck. Evidently, the 
 work was hard. Above the discordant 
 accompaniment of the stringed instruments 
 the sounds of the Pan-pipes rang out, distinct, 
 and, in their wild way, beautiful. 
 
 The general placed himself at a table at 
 which some officers of his acquaintance were 
 sitting, bowed to the people who had risen 
 on his entrance, and said aloud :— 
 
 ‘Sit down, friends!’ 
 
 This was addressed to the privates. We 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 121 
 
 finished dinner in silence; Ivan Platonych 
 then ordered some Roumanian red wine, and 
 after the second bottle; when his face had 
 - assumed a cheerful expression, and his cheeks 
 and nose a bright hue, he turned to me and 
 began :— 
 
 miecokinere, my lad; téll me...) . . You 
 remember the forced march?’ 
 
 “Yes, Ivan Platonych.’ 
 
 ‘You spoke to Wentzel that day ?’ 
 
 eyes? 
 
 “You seized him by the arm?’ the captain 
 asked in a tone of unnatural solemnity. 
 
 When I replied that I had, in fact, done so, 
 he uttered a long, loud sigh, and blinked his 
 eyes as though ill at ease. 
 
 Broumactea Very wrorigly <« ... very: 
 Beemcivin. =. You See, itvisnt that J 
 want to reprimand you. . . . You be- 
 haved splendidly . . . that is, contrary 
 to discipline... . Deuce take it, what rub- 
 bish am I talking! You mustn’t take it 
 ae 
 
 He broke off, and sat looking at the floor, 
 and puffing. I held my tongue. Ivan 
 Platonych drank off half a glass of wine, and 
 brought his hand down on my knee. 
 
 ‘Give me your word that you won’t play 
 any more tricks of that kind. I .understand 
 how you feel . . . It’s hard for a new 
 
 F 
 
122 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 man. . . . But what are you to do with 
 him? He's a regular mad dog, that Wentzel. 
 You see, you’ 
 
 Ivan Platonych was evidently at a loss for 
 words. He made a long pause, and once 
 more had recourse to his glass. 
 
 “Whatel meanas,.younsee sev ue leaea 
 good fellow in himself. This is a sort of fad 
 he secotethesdcucestakceited| (ie gmm en OU 
 
 saw yourself I boxed a soldier’s ears the other 
 day. Not hard, you know. Well, really, if a 
 blockhead can’t understand when he’s made a 
 beasteofephimselfis. 4). ee NOsmore sthangeea 
 great stupid log, you know. . . . But you 
 see, Vladimir Mikhailych, Pm like a father 
 with them . . . I do it without any ill- 
 feeling, indeed ; though, of course, a man does 
 get put out sometimes. But he—he’s made a 
 regular system of it. Hi there!’ he shouted to 
 the Roumanian waiter, ‘dshte win négru! 
 Give us some more wine here. . . . And 
 some day he'll get into a court-martial, or if he 
 doesn’t it'll be still worse. The men will get 
 savage, and in the first action— ... Andit 
 will be a pity, because, you know, he’s really a 
 good fellow after all. He’s a warm-hearted 
 fellow even.’ 
 
 M—m—well,’ drawled Stebelkov, ‘It’s a 
 queer sort of warm-hearted fellow that knocks 
 people about like that.’ 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 123 
 
 ‘If you'd seen, Ivan Platonych, what your 
 warm-hearted man did the other day.’ : 
 
 I told him how Wentzel had beaten the 
 soldier who had smoked. | 
 
 ‘There! There you are; it’s always like 
 that. Ivan Platonych reddened, puffed, broke 
 off and began again. ‘ But all the same he’s 
 not a brute. Whose men are best fed of the 
 whole lot? Wentzel’s. Whose men are best 
 trained? Wentzel’s. Who hardly ever puts 
 a man under punishment ? Who never sends 
 anyone up for triali—unless a man does some 
 regularly scoundrelly thing? Always Wentzel. 
 Really, if it weren’t for this miserable weak- 
 ness, the soldiers would just worship him.’ 
 
 ‘Have you talked to him about it, Ivan 
 Platonych? 
 
 ‘Talked to him and quarrelled with him a 
 dozen times over. What can you do with 
 aman like that? “Either an army,” he says 
 “ora militia.” He just invents a lot of stupid 
 phrases. “War is such a cruel thing alto- 
 gether,” he says, “that, if I’m cruel with the 
 _ soldiers, that is only a drop in the sea.” ... 
 “They’re at such a low level of development,” 
 
 mance sonOle a as! ne fact) such a deuced 
 
 lot of rubbish! ... And yet, for all that, 
 he’s a capital fellow. He never drinks, never 
 
 | plays cards, does his work conscientiously, 
 helps his sister and his old mother; and he’s 
 
124 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 a first-rate comrade! And then he’s a well- 
 educated man! There’s not another like him 
 in the regiment. And, mind my words, he'll 
 either come to a court-martial, or they’ judge 
 him in their own fashion. (He nodded in 
 the direction of the window.) ‘It’s a bad 
 business. That’s the fact of the matter, my 
 dear private.’ 
 
 Ivan Platonych tapped me affectionately 
 on the shoulder; then fumbled in his pocket, 
 pulled out a tobacco-pouch and began to 
 make a fat cigarette. Putting it into a huge 
 amber and silver mouthpiece, with the in- 
 scription, ‘Cau. Casus.’ in black, and placing 
 the mouthpiece in his mouth, he silently 
 pushed the tobacco-pouch towards me. We 
 all three began to smoke, and the captain 
 started afresh :— 
 
 ‘Sometimes, really, it is so, there’s nothing 
 for it; you save to box a man’s ears. You 
 see, they’re just like children. Do you know 
 Balunov ?’ 
 
 Stebelkov suddenly burst out laughing. 
 
 ‘There, there; shut up, Stebeleok!’ * 
 grumbled Ivan Platonych. 
 
 ‘Well, he’s an old soldier—a black list 
 man. He’s been in the service for nineteen 
 years, and still can’t get his discharge; he’s 
 
 * Affectionate diminutive. Stebeleok means a /7ttle stalk 
 or stem. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 125 
 
 always kept on for some misdemeanour or 
 other. Well, this same Balunov, the scamp! 
 
 . It was before you came; just before 
 Kishenev we came through a village, and 
 there was an order from head-quarters to: 
 inspect all the men’s second pairs of boots. 
 I drew my men up into line, walked behind 
 them and looked whether the tops of the 
 boots were sticking out of the knapsacks. 
 Balunov had none. “Where are your 
 boots?” “I put them in the knapsack for 
 safety, your honour.” “Stuff!” “No, indeed, 
 your honour; they’re in the knapsack, so 
 they shouldn’t get wet!” And the rascal 
 answered so coolly, too! “Take off your 
 knapsack and unstrap it.” At that he began 
 to pull the tops of his boots out from under 
 the cover of the knapsack without opening 
 it. “Unstrap it!” “I can get them without, 
 your honour.” However, I made him unstrap 
 it; and what do you think? Out of the 
 knapsack he pulls by the ears a live sucking- 
 pig! And if he hadn’t got a string tied 
 round its snout, so it shouldn’t squeak! | 
 There he stood, saluting with his right hand 
 and making the most respectful face you 
 please, and the pig in his left hand! The 
 scamp had stolen it from a Moldavian woman. 
 Well, of course, I had to box his ears a bit 
 that time!’ 
 
126 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Stebelkov, in convulsions of laughter, ex- 
 claimed in a choked voice :— 
 
 ‘Yes; and how! Ivanov, he boxed his ears 
 withethe qpio wc craria tehalehastehadehay 
 pies eee Snatchedithe piovandi.. 1): 
 
 ‘Couldn’t the matter have been arranged 
 without that, Ivan Platonych ?’ 
 
 ‘Really, it is quite annoying to hear the 
 way you talk! You wouldn’t have me send 
 him up for court-martial, I suppose?’ 
 
 
 

 
 Werle 
 
 S|URING the night of June 14th- 
 15th, Feodorov awakened me. 
 
 ‘Mikhailych ! do you hear?’ 
 
 ‘What?’ 
 
 ‘Firing. They're crossing the Danube.’ 
 
 I listened. There was a strong wind driv- 
 ing along the low, black clouds, that hid the 
 moon, rushing against the canvas of our 
 tent, lashing it loudly, howling among the 
 ropes, and whistling shrilly somewhere through 
 the stacks of arms. Through these sounds 
 we could hear from time to time a _ dull 
 
 
 
 booming. 
 ‘Think what a lot of people are falling 
 now . . .’ whispered Feodorov, sighing. 
 
 Pyvilethey, “send us. there?’ What do 
 you think? How it rumbles! Just like 
 thunder !’ 
 
 ‘Perhaps it really is only a thunderstorm ?’ 
 
 ‘No; that’s no thunderstorm! It’s too 
 regular. Don’t you hear? One after an- 
 other; one after another!’ 
 
 127 
 
128 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 The booming was, indeed, quite rhythmical, 
 with regular intervals between the sounds, 
 I slipped out of the tent and looked in the 
 direction from which the noise came; but I 
 could not see the flashes. Sometimes my 
 straining eyes caught, as it were, a glimmer of 
 light in the direction from which the roar 
 of the cannon came, but it was a mere 
 illusion. 
 
 ‘So it has come at last!’ I thought. 
 
 I tried to imagine what must be happening 
 there in the darkness. I saw, in fancy, the 
 broad, black river, with its precipitous banks— 
 utterly unlike the real Danube, as I after- 
 wards saw it. I imagined hundreds of boats 
 upon the water, exposed to this quick regular 
 fire. Would many of them get across un- 
 hurt? A cold shiver ran through me. ‘Do 
 you wish you were there?’ I involuntarily 
 asked myself. 
 
 I looked at the sleeping camp; all was 
 quiet ; through the noise of the wind and the 
 far-off thunder of the cannon I could hear the 
 regular breathing of the soldiers. A sudden, 
 passionate desire arose in me that all thes 
 should not be; that the march should not 
 come to an end yet, that these peacefully 
 sleeping men, and I among them, should not 
 have to go there where the cannon were 
 roaring. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 129 
 
 Sometimes the cannonade grew louder; 
 sometimes I fancied that I could faintly hear 
 other sounds, dull, and not so loud. ‘ Those 
 are rifle volleys, I thought, not knowing that 
 we were still more than thirteen miles from 
 the Danube, and that my morbidly excited 
 sense of hearing created these faint sounds 
 of itself. But, though existing only in fancy, 
 these sounds rendered my imagination still 
 more active and called forth terrible pictures. 
 Cries and groans, thousands of falling men, a 
 hoarse, desperate ‘ hurrah, a bayonet attack, a 
 general butchery—all passed beforeme. ‘ And 
 if they are beaten and it is all for nothing?’ 
 
 The dark east grew grey, the wind began to 
 die down, the clouds parted, and the fading 
 stars were faintly visible here and there in the 
 pale, greenish sky. It grew lighter ; a few men 
 in the camp woke up, and, hearing the sounds 
 of the distant battle, awoke the rest. The 
 men spoke little and softly. The unknown 
 had come near to them; no one knew what 
 would happen to-morrow, and no one cared to 
 think or speak of that to-morrow. 
 
 I fell asleep again at dawn, and awoke 
 rather late. The dull booming of the cannon 
 still continued, and, although there was no 
 news from the Danube, rumours, one more 
 incredible than another, began to circulate 
 among us. Some declared that our men had 
 
130 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 got across and were chasing the Turks; 
 others that they had not suceeded in crossing, 
 and that whole regiments were destroyed. 
 
 ‘All that aren’t drowned are shot,’ said 
 someone. 
 
 ‘Yes, you're the fellow to make up lies,’ 
 interrupted Vasili Karpych. 
 
 ‘What should I make up lies for when it’s 
 true ?’ 
 
 ‘True, indeed! Who told you?’ 
 
 ‘What?’ 
 
 ‘Why, your truth! Where did you hear 
 it? We all know there’s firing, and that’s all.’ 
 
 ‘Everybody says so. And there’s a 
 Cossack come to the general... . 
 
 ‘A Cossack! Did you see him? What’s 
 he like to look at, your Cossack, eh ?’ 
 
 “Why an ordinary Cossack . . . like a 
 Gossackyoucnttoabe cma 
 
 ‘Yes, ought to be! Your tongue’s an old 
 woman’s night-cap tassel—always wagging— 
 you'd far better hold your jaw. Nobody’s 
 come, and nobody knows anything.’ 
 
 I went to Ivan Plantonych. The officers 
 were sitting ready and waiting, with their uni- 
 forms buttoned up and revolvers in their belts. 
 Ivan Platonych, red, as usual, was puffing and 
 srunting and wiping his neck with a dirty 
 handkerchief. Stebelkov was excited and 
 beaming, and, for some reason, had waxed his 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 131 
 
 little moustache (which uusally hung down), 
 so that it stuck out in two sharp points. 
 
 ‘Just look at our lieutenant, what a dandy 
 he’s made of himself before going into action !’ 
 said Ivan Platonych, winking in his direction. 
 ‘Ah, Stebeleochek, Stebeleochek! I’m sorry 
 for you! There won’t be such another pair of 
 moustaches among all the lot of us. They'll 
 break you, poor little stalk!’ the captain 
 went on, in a comically - mournful tone. 
 ‘Well, lad, are you afraid?’ 
 
 ‘T'll try and not be afraid,’ answered Stebel- 
 kov, cheerfully. 
 
 ‘And you, warrior, are you afraid?’ 
 
 ‘I really don’t know, Ivan Platonych. Is 
 there no news from there ?’ 
 
 ‘No, the Lord knows what’s going on there.’ 
 Ivan Platonych sighed heavily. ‘We start at 
 at one o’clock,’ he added, after a pause. 
 
 A fold of the tent was thrown back, and 
 adjutant Lukin’s face appeared, for once 
 serious and pale. 
 
 ‘Are you here, Ivanov? I was to bring 
 you up to take the oath. . . . No, not now; 
 before we start. Ivan Platonych! I want the 
 fifth packet of cartridges for the men.’ 
 
 _ He would not come and sit down, but ran 
 off at once, saying that he had much to do. 
 I, too, went away. 
 
 Dinner was ready by twelve o’clock; but 
 
132 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 the men had little appetite. After dinner the 
 order was given to take off the leather pro- 
 tectors from the weapons, and extra cartridges 
 were distributed. The soldiers, preparing for 
 action, began to look over their knapsacks 
 and throw away all unnecessary things. They 
 threw away worn-out shirts and trousers, all 
 sorts of rags, old boots, brushes, greasy barrack 
 books. Some of the men, it appeared, had car- 
 ried to the Danube in their knapsacks quan- 
 tities of useless things. I saw on the ground 
 an old shchelkun (a kind of wooden block, 
 which in time of peace is used before parades 
 and reviews to smooth the ammunition-straps), 
 heavy stone pomade boxes, little baskets, 
 little planks—even a shoemaker’s last. 
 
 ‘Throw them all away, lads! You'll find 
 it easier in action, and you won’t want the 
 things to-morrow.’ 
 
 ‘Tve carried it three hundred miles . . 
 and now what use is it to me?’ soliloquized 
 one soldier, Liutikov, looking at some old 
 rag. ‘Ican’t take it away with me... 
 
 To clear out the knapsacks and throw 
 away things became the fashion on that day. 
 When we left the spot where we had halted, it 
 stood out from the dark steppe, an even, 
 parti-coloured square of innumerable rags and 
 odds and ends. 
 
 Just before we started, when the regiment, 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 133 
 
 ready drawn up into form, stood waiting for 
 the word of command, several officers came 
 forwards with our young regimental priest. 
 I and four more volunteers from other 
 battalions were called out of the ranks; we 
 had all entered the regiment during the 
 march. Leaving our arms with our neighbours, 
 we came forward and _ stood round the 
 standard; my unknown companions were 
 evidently agitated, and I too felt that my 
 heart was beating more strongly than usual. 
 
 ‘Lay your hands on the standard,’ said the 
 commander. 
 
 The ensign lowered the standard, and his 
 assistants took off its case. The old faded 
 strip of green silk fluttered out in the wind ; 
 we came up close, and, holding the pole with 
 one hand and raising the other over our heads 
 repeated the words after the priest, who read 
 aloud the ancient military oath of Peter’s 
 days. I thought of the words that Vasili 
 Karpych had quoted at the beginning of our 
 journey ; —‘ When are they coming?’ I 
 wondered. At last, after a long list of: 
 adventures in the service of his Imperial 
 Majesty, of marches, attacks, van-guards and 
 rear-guards, fortresses, sentries, and baggage- 
 trains, those words came. ‘Caring not for my 
 life” we all five repeated aloud with one voice ; 
 and, looking at the stern ranks of men pre- 
 
134 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, — 
 
 pared for fight, I felt that these were no idle 
 words. 
 
 We returned to the ranks ; a little stir and 
 movement went through the regiment; it 
 formed into a long column and started, ata 
 forced pace, in the direction of the Danube. 
 The sounds of firing stopped. 
 
 I remember that march as if it were a 
 dream — the dust raised by the Cossack 
 regiment passing us at a quick trot; the 
 broad steppe sloping down towards the 
 Danube; the opposite bank that we saw in 
 the blue distance ten miles away ; the fatigue, 
 the heat, the struggling and fighting for water 
 at the well we passed near Zimnitza; the 
 dirty little town crowded with troops; the 
 generals waving their caps to us from a 
 balcony and shouting: ‘Hurrah!’ and our 
 answering cheer. 
 
 ‘They've crossed! They've crossed !’ 
 shouted voices all around me. 
 
 ‘Two hundred killed, five hundred wounded.’ 
 
 
 

 
 WAQME 
 
 j/E was dark by the time we got 
 down the bank, and crossed, by 
 a little bridge, over a strip of 
 == the river on to a low-lying, sandy 
 island, still wet from the water which had 
 just trickled away from it. I remember the 
 sharp clashing of the bayonets of soldiers 
 stumbling against one another in the dark ; 
 the dull rattling of the artillery passing us, 
 the black expanse of the wide river, the 
 lights on the opposite bank, to which we 
 were to cross on the morrow, and where, I 
 thought, there would be a new battle. ‘ I'd 
 better go to sleep and not think,’ I decided, 
 and lay down on the sand, which was satu- 
 rated with water. | 
 
 When I opened my eyes the sun was 
 already high. Troops, baggage, trains and 
 artillery parks were crowded on the sandy 
 shore; at the very brink of the water batteries 
 and ditches for the riflemen had been dug 
 135 
 
 
 
136 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 out; on the high opposite bank of the 
 Danube were gardens and vineyards, swarm- 
 ing with our troops; beyond these rose the 
 hills, one above the other, sharply cutting off 
 the horizon ; to the right, about two miles 
 from the hills, was Sistovo, with its white 
 houses and minarets standing out against 
 the rising ground. A steamer, with a barge 
 in tow, was taking battalion after battalion 
 across the river. A little torpedo boat was 
 letting off steam close to our shore. 
 
 ‘Lucky crossing to you, Vladimir Mi- 
 khailych,’ said Feodorov, greeting me merrily. 
 
 ‘The same to you; but we aren't across 
 vet. | 
 
 ‘The steamer is just coming to take us 
 across. They say there’s a Turkish ironclad 
 not far from here, and this little samovar is 
 ready waiting for him, do you see?’ He 
 pointed to the torpedo boat. ‘Ah! Lord 
 help us; what a lot of poor fellows have been 
 killed!’ he went on, in another tone of voice. 
 ‘If you’d seen them brought, such a lot of 
 them, across the river.’ . 
 
 He told me the now famous details of the 
 battle of Sistovo. 
 
 ‘It’s our turn now. When we get across 
 to the other bank the Turks will attack 
 us.. .. . All the same we’ve had so much 
 grace; swere Valive istils bututhey—«malie 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 137 
 
 pointed towards a group of soldiers and 
 officers, standing at a little distance from 
 us, round some object which I could not see, 
 and at which they were looking. 
 
 ‘What is it?’ 
 
 ‘Some of our killed that have been brought 
 back from there. Go and look at them, 
 Mikhailych ; they’re awful !’ 
 
 I went up to the group of men who stood, 
 silent and bareheaded, looking at the corpses 
 lying side by side on the sand. Ivan Pla- 
 tonych, Stebelkov and Wentzel were there. 
 Ivan Platonych was frowning angrily, puffing 
 and clearing his throat. Stebelkov, with 
 naive horror, stretched out a slender neck 
 across his shoulder. Wentzel was standing 
 still, in deep absorption. 
 
 There were two bodies on the sand. One 
 was a tall, handsome guardsman, of the 
 Finnish regiment, one of that half-battalion 
 of picked men which lost half its number 
 during the attack. He was wounded in 
 the abdomen, and, probably, had suffered 
 long before he died. The pain had left on. 
 his face a refining mark of something spiri- 
 tual, delicate, and tenderly pathetic. His 
 eyes were closed, and his hands folded on his 
 breast. Had he taken that attitude himself 
 in dying, or had his companions cared for 
 him? His appearance aroused neither horror 
 
138 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 nor loathing, only an infinite pity for the 
 overflowing life that had been destroyed. 
 Ivan Platonych bent over the corpse and, 
 taking up the cap which lay beside the head, 
 read aloud the inscription on the front: ‘Ivan 
 
 Zhuréenko, third battalion. ‘He was an 
 
 4 
 
 Oukrainian, poor fellow,’ he said softly. And 
 my home came up before me, with the hot 
 wind in the steppe, the hamlet in the dell, 
 the marshy land overgrown with oziers, the 
 little white cottage with its red shutters... . 
 Who is waiting for you there? 
 
 The other was a private of the line, belong- 
 ing to the Volhynian regiment. Death had 
 overtaken him suddenly, while he ran forwards 
 to the attack, frenzied, breathless with shout- 
 ing ; a ball had struck him on the bridge of 
 the nose and had pierced through his head, 
 leaving behind it a yawning black wound. 
 And so he lay, with wide open, fixed eyes, 
 with open mouth and livid face convulsed 
 with fury. 
 
 ‘They've done their share and got their 
 discharge,’ said Ivan Platonych. ‘They will 
 need nothing more.’ 
 
 He turned away; the soldiers hurriedly 
 drew aside to let him pass. Stebelkov and 
 I followed him. Wentzel caught us up. 
 
 ‘Well, Ivanov, he said; ‘have you seen 
 them ?’ 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 139 
 
 ‘Yes, Piotr Nikolaich, I answered. 
 
 ‘What did you think of when you looked 
 at them ?’ he asked, gloomily. 
 
 There suddenly blazed up in me a feeling 
 of hatred against this cruel man and a desire 
 to say something to hurt him. 
 
 ‘I thought a good many things. Chiefly 
 that they are not food for powder any longer. 
 They have no more need of order and disci- 
 pline, and no one will torture them for the 
 sake of discipline any more. They are not 
 soldiers—not subordinates now, I added, in 
 a shaking voice; ‘they are mex /’ 
 
 Wentzel’s eyes flashed. A sound came 
 from his throat and broke off; probably he 
 was going to answer me, but then restrained 
 himself once more. He walked on beside me, 
 with his head bent down, and, after a few more 
 paces, said, without looking at me :— 
 
 ‘Yes, Ivanov, you are oo heyeare 
 men . dead men.’ 
 

 
 LEG 
 
 E were taken across the Danube, 
 and halted several days near Sis- 
 tovo, awaiting the Turks; then 
 the troops, and we among them, 
 
 moved on towards the heart of the land. For 
 
 some time we were kept wandering about, now 
 here, now there ; we were close to Tyrnov and 
 not far from Plevna; but three weeks passed, 
 and still we had not been in action. At last 
 we were joined to a special detachment, whose 
 duty was to prevent an attack from the main 
 body of the Turkish army. Forty thousand 
 of us were spread along a distance of forty- 
 five miles, with about a hundred thousand 
 
 Turks facing us; and only the cautiousness 
 
 of our chief commander in contenting himself 
 
 
 
 with offering resistance to the enemy’s attack 
 and not risking his men, together with the 
 languidness of the Turkish army, enabled us 
 
 to perform our work of preventing the Turks 
 140 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 141 
 
 from forcing a way through and cutting off 
 our main army from the Danube. 
 
 We were few in number and our line was 
 long, so we had little time for rest. We 
 passed by numberless villages, appearing now 
 here, now there, to meet some hypothetical 
 attack ; we penetrated into such out-of-the- 
 way parts of Bulgaria that the provision 
 transports could not reach us, and we had to 
 half-starve, making the two-days’ rations of 
 buscuits last for five days, or even longer. 
 The famished soldiers pounded up unripe 
 wheat with cudgels on tent-canvas spread out 
 on the ground, and made an odious mixture 
 by boiling it with sour crab-apples. This the 
 men ate (without salt, for we had none), and 
 fell ill in consequence. The battalions melted 
 away, though there was no fighting. 
 
 In the middle of July our brigade, witha 
 few cavalry squadrons and two batteries of 
 guns, came to a deserted Turkish village, 
 sacked and half-burnt. Our camp was spread 
 over a high, steep hill; the village was below 
 us, down in the valley, along which wound a. 
 little stream. On the other side of the valley 
 rose high, precipitous rocks. That side was, 
 as we supposed, Turkish ground ; but there 
 were no Turks near. We remained several 
 days on our hill, almost without food, and 
 obtaining water only with great difficulty by 
 
142 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, 
 
 descending to the spring that bubbled out of 
 a rock, far down in the valley. We were 
 completely cut off from the rest of the army 
 and knew nothing of what was happening in 
 the world. Ten miles in front were two or 
 three hundred Cossacks, patrolling a space of 
 thirteen miles. 
 
 There were no Turks to be seen there either. 
 
 Although we had not succeeded in coming 
 upon the enemy, our little band took all 
 possible precautions. The vanguard stood in 
 a close chain round our camp day and night. 
 The peculiarities of the place made it neces- 
 sary for the chain to be very long, and every 
 day several companies were engaged in this 
 passive, but very exhausting service.  In- 
 activity, suspense and almost constant hunger 
 was telling heavily upon the men. 
 
 The ambulances of the regiment was filled 
 to overcrowding, and every day patients, 
 exhausted with fever and dysentery, were sent 
 off to the far-away division ambulance. In 
 the companies remained only from half to 
 two-thirds of the full number. The men 
 were gloomily discontented and longed to be 
 called to action. That would, at least, be a 
 way out of the position. 
 
 At last the moment came. A Cossack rode 
 over to us from the commander of the Cossack 
 squadron, with the news that the Turks had 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 143 
 
 begun an attack, and that he, the commander, 
 had been obliged to draw in his forces and 
 retreat three miles. It appeared afterwards 
 that the Turks had retired, not intending to 
 follow up the attack, and that we might quite 
 well have stayed where we were, all the more 
 as no orders had come for us to attack. But 
 the general at that time in command of us, 
 who had only lately arrived from St Peters- 
 burg, experienced the same feeling as all the 
 men of the detachment. It had become un- 
 bearable to sit with folded hands, or stand for 
 days and nights together on guard against an 
 unknown and—as everyone was convinced— 
 non-existent enemy, to starve on bad food, 
 and wait each man his turn to fall ill. All 
 were anxious to join the fighting. The 
 general gave orders for us to advance. 
 
 We left half our detachment in the camp. 
 So little was known as to the position of 
 affairs that attacks might be expected from 
 any side. Fourteen companies, the hussars 
 and four cannon started off during the after- 
 noon. We had never marched so quickly and | 
 so gladly before, except on the day when we 
 defiled before the Emperor. 
 
 Our way lay along the valley, and we 
 passed village after village, some Turkish, 
 some Bulgarian, but all deserted. In the’ 
 narrow by-ways with their high wattle-fences 
 
144 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 that reached above our heads, we met neither 
 man, cattle nor dog; only the fowls fled 
 clucking to the roofs and fences as we passed, 
 and the geese raised themselves, hissing, 
 clumsily into the air, and tried to fly away. 
 In the gardens hung branches clustered all 
 over with ripe plums of every variety. In the 
 last village, three miles from the spot where 
 the Turks were supposed to be, we were given 
 half-an-hour’s rest. The famished soldiers 
 spent the time in shaking down huge quan- 
 tities of plums, eating some and_ filling 
 their biscuit-wallets with the rest. A few, 
 though only a few, of the men occupied them- 
 selves with catching and killing fowls and 
 geese, which they plucked and took with 
 them. I remembered how those very soldiers, 
 before the crossing at Sistovo, had thrown 
 away all the things they had in their knap- 
 sacks, and spoke of it to Zhitkov, who was 
 plucking an enormous goose. 
 
 ‘Well, Mikhailych, if we haven’t been in 
 action, at least we’ve learned how to wait. I 
 daresay we sha’n’t have to fight even now, and 
 nothing ’ll come of all this. And if we do get 
 into action, provisions will keep. Supposing 
 we don’t get killed, at least we shall have 
 something to eat.’ 
 
 ‘Are you afraid?’ I asked, involuntarily. 
 
 ‘Well, very likely there won’t be any fight- 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 145 
 
 ing, he answered, slowly, screwing up his 
 eyes and carefully pulling out what was left 
 of the white down. | 
 
 ‘But if there is ?’ 
 
 ‘If there is... it doesn’t matter whether 
 you're afraid or not, you've got to go. They 
 don’t ask poor folk like us. Go, and there’s 
 an end of it. Give me your knife; you’ve 
 got a fine knife.’ (I gave him my big hunt- 
 ing-knife, and he divided the goose down the 
 middle and held out one-half to me.) ‘Take 
 it, you may want it... and as for all that, 
 whether one’s afraid or whether one isn’t... 
 the best thing is not to think about it, sir. 
 It’s all God’s will, and you can’t get away 
 from Him.’ 
 
 ‘If a ball or one of these grenade things 
 comes flying at you, there’s no use trying 
 to get away, that’s true enough!’ assented 
 Feodorov, who was lying beside us. 
 
 ‘What I think, Vladimir Mikhailych, is 
 that there’s more danger in running away 
 _ than in stopping where one is. Because you 
 see, according to the trajectory, a ball flies 
 _ this way’ (he described a curve with his 
 finger), ‘and the very worst of it is just at the 
 rear.’ 3 | 
 
 ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘especially with the Turks. 
 It is said that they aim high,’ 
 
 You and your learned jaw!’ said Zhitkov 
 
 G 
 
146 - STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 to Feodorov. ‘They'll show you what a 
 trajectory is when you get there! Of course, 
 he added, after a pause, ‘it’s best to keep in 
 wifont” Wee. | 
 
 ‘With the officers,’ said Feodorov; ‘you'll 
 see our commander will be in front; he’s no 
 coward.’ 
 
 ‘Oh yes, ours ’ll be in front ; he’s not afraid. 
 And Nyemtzev ’ll be in front too.’ 
 
 ‘Uncle Zhitkov,’ asked Feodorov, ‘what do 
 you think ; will he be alive to-night or not?’ 
 
 Zhitkov dropped his eyes. 
 
 ‘What are you talking about ?’ he said, 
 
 ‘Why, man, have you seen him? No? 
 Well, he’s just shaking all over.’ 
 
 Zhitkov grew gloomier than ever. 
 
 ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ he muttered, sullenly. 
 
 ‘What did you say yourself before we 
 reached the Danube?’ asked Feodorov. 
 
 ‘Before the Danube! A man says any 
 sort of stuff when he’s put out. ’Tisn’t only 
 natural, there was no bearing him! What 
 sort of people do you take the men for— 
 murderers, eh?’ Zhitkov turned round as 
 he said this and looked Feodorov straight in 
 the face. ‘Do you think they’ve forgotten 
 God? Don’t they know what’s before us 
 all? Who knows which of them may be 
 called to answer for himself before the Lord 
 Almighty to-day, and you think they'll have 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 147 
 
 that in their heads? Before the Danube! 
 Before the Danube I talked of it myself to 
 the gentleman here’ (pointing to me) ;—‘ yes, 
 it’s true, I said that too, for it was more than 
 aman could bear to look on at. Have you 
 got nothing better to do than to remember 
 what happened before the Danube?’ 
 
 He began fumbling in his top-boots for his 
 tobacco pouch, and all the while he filled and 
 smoked his pipe, kept muttering and grumb- 
 ling to himself. Finally, he put away the 
 tobacco pouch, settled himself in a com- 
 fortable attitude, clasping his knees with both 
 arms, and sank into a brown study. 
 
 Half-an-hour later we left the village, and 
 began to mount uphill. Beyond the rising 
 ground which we had to cross were the 
 Turks. We reached the summit of the hill, 
 and a broad stretch of broken ground, gradu- 
 ally sloping downwards, spread out before us, 
 covered here with wheat and maize fields, 
 there, with huge thickets of elms and medlar 
 trees. Intwo spots shone white minarets ; but 
 the villages to which they belonged were | 
 hidden behind green hillocks. It was the 
 right-hand village that we were to seize. 
 Beyond it, on the horizon, was a barely visible 
 white band ; it was the high road which our 
 Cossacks had just retired from occupying. 
 Soon the whole scene was hidden from our 
 
148 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 eyes, for we entered a dense thicket, broken 
 here and there by little glades. 
 
 I cannot distinctly remember the beginning 
 of the battle. When we came out on to the 
 open ground at the hilltop, where our com- 
 panies, emerging from the bushes, and form- 
 ing into a long chain, were plainly visible to 
 the Turks, we heard the sudden thunder oft 
 a cannon-shot. They had fired a grenade at 
 us. Our men started, and all eyes turned 
 to the already fading cloudlet of white smoke 
 creeping down the hillside. At that moment 
 the sharp whizzing sound of the approach- 
 ing missile made everyone shrink back. It 
 seemed to fly right over our heads; then 
 struck into the ground close beside the 
 company which was marching behind us. I 
 ‘remember the hollow sound of the explosion 
 and the piteous cry that followed. A frag- 
 ment of the grenade had torn off the leg of 
 a sergeant. This I heard afterwards; but, 
 at the time, I could not understand the cry ; 
 my ear received the sound mechanically, 
 and that was all. Everything was swallowed 
 up in that vague feeling, which no words can 
 express, that seizes upon a man the first 
 time he -coestnder fire [teis= said sstuas 
 everyone is afraid in battle; that every 
 truthful and modest man, if asked whether 
 he is afraid, will answer ‘yes.’ But this fear 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 149 
 
 was not the physical terror which takes 
 possession of a man when he meets a robber 
 in a lonely lane by night; it was a full, distinct 
 consciousness of the closeness, the inevitable- 
 ness of death. And, strange as the words 
 sound, this consciousness neither held our 
 men back nor made them think of flight, but — 
 led them on. There was no awakening of 
 blood-thirsty instincts, no desire to press 
 forwards in order to kill anyone; but an 
 irresistible impulse to go forwards at any 
 cost ; and the thought in our minds of what 
 we had to do was not— We must kill, but, 
 rather ‘We must die.’ 
 
 We had to cross an open glade, and the 
 Turks took the opportunity to fire several 
 shots at us. Between us and them was now 
 only one large thicket, sloping gradually 
 upwards to the village. We entered into 
 the brushwood, and all grew still. 
 
 It was difficult walking; the tall, often 
 thorny, bushes grew close together, and we 
 had to get round them or force a passage 
 through them. The company of riflemen, | 
 which was in front of us, had split up into 
 a chain, and the men softly called to one 
 another every now and then in order not to 
 get separated. Our company, for the present, 
 kept together. Deep silence reigned in the 
 wood, 
 
150 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Suddenly the first rifle-shot rang out, not 
 very loud, like the sound of a wood-cutter’s 
 axe. The Turks began to fire at random in 
 our direction. The balls whistled high in 
 the air in varying notes, and flew noisily 
 through the bushes, tearing off boughs as 
 they s passed; sbUt™ toOuchingamnOmonc manic 
 sounds of the breaking boughs grew more 
 and more frequent, till they blended in one 
 continuous crash. We could no longer hear 
 the whistling and hissing of individual balls, 
 the whole air hissed and whistled. We 
 pressed hastily forwards; all near me were 
 unhurt, and I myself was unhurt. This 
 surprised me greatly. 
 
 The thicket broke off suddenly, and a deep 
 ravine with a brook ran across the way. We 
 stopped fora moment to rest and drink water. 
 
 At this spot the companies were separated, 
 in order that they might fall upon the Turkish 
 forces from both flanks; our company was 
 left in the ravine, as a reserve. The riflemen 
 were to go straight on, and, passing through 
 ‘the bushes, force their way into the village. 
 The Turkish volleys were still crashing, as 
 frequently as before, but louder. 
 
 Wentzel, on reaching the top of the ravine 
 on the opposite side, drew up his forces into 
 form. He said something to the men, which 
 I did not catch. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 151 
 
 ‘We'll do our best,’ answered the voices 
 of the riflemen. 
 
 I looked up at him; he was pale, and, I 
 thought, sad, but fairly calm. Catching sight 
 of Ivan Platonych and Stebelkov he waved 
 his handkerchief to them, and then turned 
 his eyes to our company, evidently looking 
 for something. I guessed that he wanted to 
 take leave of me, and stood up that he might 
 see me. He smiled, nodded to me several 
 times, and commanded his company to form 
 into a chain. The men separated to right 
 and left in groups of four, drew out into a 
 long chain and, in one moment, disappeared 
 among the bushes; all except one man, who 
 suddenly drew himself up violently, flung up 
 his hands and dropped heavily on the ground. 
 Two of our men ran out of the ravine and 
 brought in the body. 
 
 Half-an-hour passed in weary suspense. 
 
 The battle grew hotter. The sounds of the 
 volleys became more and more frequent, and 
 then melted into one terrific roar. The can- 
 non began to thunder on the right flank.. 
 Bloodstained men, walking or crawling, came 
 out of the bushes; at first there were only a 
 few of them, but with every moment their 
 number increased. Our men helped them 
 down into the ravine, gave them water, and 
 laid them down to wait till the ambulance 
 
152 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 people should come with litters. A rifleman, 
 with one hand torn into rags, and a face livid 
 with pain and loss of blood, came without any 
 help, but groaning and rolling his eyes fear- 
 fully, and sat down by the brook. Our men 
 bound his arm up and laid him on a cloak; 
 the bleeding stopped. He was shaking with 
 fever; his lips were quivering and he burst 
 out sobbing convulsively, with a nervous 
 catching of the breath. 
 
 OMETNES © oe cp TREN Pe oo COME seeks 
 lads!’ ; 
 
 ‘Many killed ?’ 
 
 ‘Oh, so many—so many!’ 
 
 ‘Is the commander hurt ?’ 
 
 ‘Not yet. If it weren’t for him they'd have 
 driven us back. Ours will win 
 they'll win with him,’ said the wounded man, 
 faintly. ‘He led us up three times, and they 
 drove us back. Now he’s charged again 
 
 thesiourth stimesies ease heviromin 
 the bivouac .. . their cartridges 
 One ie emits eiustetaining bullets) 
 
 No!’ he cried out with sudden fierceness, 
 half rising and gesticulating with his wounded 
 hands “yvoursha n'teet off solu, eeu 
 sha’n’t, damn you!’ 
 
 - The man rolled his eyes frantically, shrieked 
 out a horrible, brutal oath, and fell back in- 
 sensible. 
 
FROM MEMOIRS OF PRIVATE IVANOV. 153 
 
 Lukin appeared at the top of the ravine. 
 ‘Ivan Platonych!’ he shouted in a voice 
 not like his own; ‘bring up your men.’ 
 
 Smoke, thundering crashes, moans, a. 
 fee iedeee hurrah }))0 1). othe “stench. of 
 blood and powder .. . Strange, un- 
 known, white-faced people wrapped in smoke 
 
 A horrible, inhuman butchery... 
 God be thanked that such moments are re- 
 membered but dimly, as through a mist! 
 
 When we came up Wentzel was leading 
 what remained of his company for a fifth 
 charge again:t the Turkish hail of bullets. 
 That time the riflemen succeeded in forcing 
 their way into the village. Not many of the 
 Turks defending the spot had time to escape. 
 The second company of riflemen lost, during - 
 two hours fighting, 7/ty-two men out of a little 
 over a hundred; our company, which took 
 only a small part in the action, had few 
 losses. | 
 
 We did not remain in occupation of the 
 position gained, although the Turks were 
 completed routed. When our general saw 
 battalion after battalion, with masses of 
 cavalry and long trains of cannon, come out 
 upon the high road, he was horror-stricken at 
 
154 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 their numbers. Evidently the Turks had not 
 known what forces we had, as we were hidden 
 by the bushes ; had they guessed that a mere 
 fourteen battalions had driven them from the 
 deep-cut roads, gullies and high fences sur- 
 rounding the village, they would have come 
 back and crushed us. Their numbers were 
 three times greater than ours. 
 
 By evening we were back again at our old 
 quarters. Ivan Platonych called me in to tea. 
 
 ‘Have you see Wentzel?’ he asked. 
 
 ‘Not yet.’ 
 
 ‘Go into his tent and make him come ree 
 will you? The man’s breaking his heart. 
 “Fifty-two! Fifty-two!” that’s all we can get 
 out of him. Do go to him.’ 
 
 Wentzel’s tent was dimly lit up by one 
 scrap of candle. He was crouching down in 
 a corner, with his head laid on an old box, 
 and sobbing bitterly. 
 
rae O VA RD, 
 
. es 
 a Cag Aun 
 
 tad, 
 
 ng 
 
 Jos 
 at 
 2: 
 
 
 

 
 ame ONE ROD! 
 
 
 
 
 ogee iE war simply will not give me 
 | y any peace. I see plainly that it 
 “ a is going to drag on, and when it 
 YS} will end is very difficult to say. 
 Our soldiers remain the same wonderful 
 soldiers that they always were, but the enemy 
 turns out to be by no means so feeble as was 
 supposed, and now it is four months since the 
 declaration of war and still our side has had 
 no positive success. And yet every needless 
 day carries off hundreds of lives. I don’t 
 know whether it comes from the way my 
 nerves are made, but the war telegrams giving | 
 the number of killed and wounded produce 
 on me a much stronger impression than on 
 other people. Others will quietly read out,— 
 ‘Our losses are insignificant; such-and-such 
 officers are wounded, fifty privates killed, and 
 one hundred wounded, and will even be glad 
 157 
 
 
 
158 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 that the number is so small ; but when I read 
 such an announcement, a whole bloody 
 picture scOines sup spelotemmymcycs, mmlity, 
 corpses—a hundred mutilated human beings 
 —that is an ‘insignificant’ thing! Why are 
 we so horrified when we read in the papers 
 of some murder case in which three or four 
 persons have fallen victims? Why is it that 
 the sight of corpses riddled with bullets, lying 
 on a battle-field, does not strike us with the 
 same horror as the sight of the interior of a 
 house, ravaged by a murderer? Why did all 
 Russia cry out at the catastrophe of the 
 Tiligul embankment, which killed several 
 dozen persons, when no one takes any notice 
 of the vanguard skirmishes with their ‘in- 
 significant’ losses—also of several dozen lives? 
 
 A few days ago, Lvov, a medical student 
 friend of mine, with whom I often argue about 
 the war, said to me :— 
 
 ‘Ah, well, you lover of peace, we shall see 
 how you'll carry out your philanthropic 
 theories when they take you for a soldier and 
 you yourself will have to shoot people.’ 
 
 ‘They won't take me, Vasili Petrovich; I 
 am entered in the reserve.’ 
 
 ‘But if the war goes on they’ll take the 
 reserve too. Don’t be too sure—your turn 
 will come.’ 
 
 My heart sank. How was it that this 
 
A COWARD. 159 
 
 thought did not come into my head before? 
 Indeed, they may take the reserve; there is 
 nothing impossible in that. ‘Ifthe war goes 
 ieee). and; itis sure to go on.) -Even 
 if this war does not go on long, another will 
 begin. Why should we not fight? Why 
 should we not do great things? It seems to 
 me that the present war is only the beginning 
 of future wars, from which neither I, nor my 
 little brother, nor my sister’s baby son shall 
 escape. And my turn will come very soon. 
 Where is one’s ego to go to? You protest 
 with all the force of your being against war, 
 and yet war forces you to take a rifle on your 
 shoulder and go to kill and be killed. But no, 
 that is impossible! I, a peaceable, inoffensive 
 young man, who up till now have known only 
 my books, the lecture-hall, my own family 
 and a few friends ; who hoped to begin other 
 work in a year or two—a labour of love and 
 truth—I, that have been accustomed to look 
 at the world objectively, to set it before me, 
 thinking that everywhere in this world I 
 understand the evil and, by understanding it, — 
 can avoid it; I see all my castle of tran- 
 quillity fallen into ruin, and myself putting 
 on to my shoulders that very garment, at the 
 stains and rents of which I was just looking. 
 And no degree of culture, no knowledge of 
 myself and of the world, no spiritual liberty, 
 
160 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 can give me this petty physical liberty—the 
 liberty to dispose of my own body. 
 
 Lvov makes fun of me when I begin ex- 
 plaining to him my horror of war. 
 
 ‘Look at things more simply, my dear 
 fellow, says he; ‘you'll find life an easier 
 job so. Do you think this butchering busi- 
 ness has any charms for me? Why, it does 
 me a personal mischief as well; it won't let 
 me study properly. They’ve hurried up the 
 medical course, so as to send us to chop off 
 arms and legs. All the same, I don’t spend 
 my time on useless theorizing about the 
 horrors of war, because, however much I 
 may think, I can’t do anything to put a 
 stop to it. Really, it’s better to leave off 
 thinking and just do one’s business. And 
 if they send me out to look after the 
 wounded, I shall go and look after them. 
 What would you have? Ina time like this 
 a man’s self must be sacrificed. By-the-bye, 
 do you know, my sister Masha is going as 
 a sister of mercy ?’ 
 
 ‘No, really ?’ 
 
 ‘She decided the day before yesterday, 
 and to-day she’s gone to learn bandaging. 
 I didn’t try to dissuade her; I only asked 
 what she thinks of doing about her studies, 
 and she said :—“ I'll finish afterwards, if I’m 
 
A COWARD. 161 
 
 giver ohes quite richt; let the girl go 
 and learn something real.’ 
 
 ‘And what about Kuzma Fomich ?’ 
 
 ‘Kuzma holds his tongue, he’s only got 
 as sullen as a bear with a sore head, and 
 left off working altogether. I’m glad for his 
 sake that my sister's going away, for the 
 man is simply off his head; he’s perfectly 
 _ miserable; he can’t work; he just dangles 
 after her like her shadow. Oh, this precious 
 love!’ Vasili Petrovich shook his head. 
 ‘He’s gone off to escort her home, as if 
 the girl hadn’t always gone about the streets 
 by herself!’ 
 
 ‘It seems to me, Vasili Petrovich, that 
 it is a pity he lives with you.’ 
 
 ‘Of course it is, but who could foresee 
 this? The flat is too big for me and my 
 sister alone; there was a spare room, and 
 why shouldn’t we let a good fellow take it? 
 And then, of course, the good fellow must 
 go and tumble over head and ears in love. 
 To say the truth, I can’t help being a bit 
 put out with her too; which way is Kuzma © 
 worse than she is? He’s kind, and no fool, 
 and a jolly good fellow altogether. And she 
 takes no more notice than if he weren’t 
 there. 
 
 ‘Well, this is all very fine, but get along 
 out of my room; I’m in a hurry. If you 
 
162 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 want to see my sister and Kuzma, wait in 
 the dining-room ; they’ll soon come.’ 
 
 ‘No, Vasili Petrovich, I’m in a hurry too. 
 Good-bye.’ 
 
 Just as I got out into the street, I saw 
 Marya Petrovna and Ktzma. They were 
 walking silently—Marya Petrovna in front 
 with a certain forced concentration about the 
 expression of her face, and Ktzma a little 
 behind her on one side, as though afraid to 
 walk close beside her, every now and then 
 glancing furtively at her face. They passed 
 without seeing me. 
 
 I can neither do anything, nor think of 
 anything. I have read the account of the 
 third battle of Plevna. There are twelve 
 thousand killed and wounded on the Russian 
 and Roumanian side alone, Turks not 
 counteds war selwelvessthousandes seecmelioe 
 number floats before my eyes in figures, or 
 stretches out before me in an endless row 
 of corpses lying side by side. If they were 
 laid shoulder to shoulder they would form a 
 road five miles long... . What sort of thing 
 is this? 
 
 I have been told something about Skobelev, 
 that he charged somewhere, attacked some- 
 thing, took some redoubt, or else it was taken 
 from him—I forget. Of all this fearful busi- 
 
A COWARD. 163 
 
 ness I remember and see only one thing— 
 a mountain of corpses, serving as pedestal 
 to some grand events, which will be chroni- 
 cled in the pages of history. Maybe this is 
 necessary ; I do not take upon myself to 
 judge, and, indeed, cannot do so; I have no 
 views about the war, nothing but a feeling 
 of revolt against the shedding of this sea of 
 blood. A bull, before whose eyes other bulls 
 like himself are slaughtered, feels, in all pro- 
 bability, something of the kind.... He does 
 not understand of what use his death can 
 be, and only looks at the blood with staring 
 eyes of horror, and bellows despairingly in a 
 heartrending voice. 
 
 Am I a coward or no? 
 
 I was told to-day that I am a coward. I 
 was told so, it is true, by a very silly person, 
 in whose presence I had expressed a dread of 
 being taken for a soldier, and an aversion to 
 the idea of going to the war. Her opinion 
 in no way distressed me, but it raised in my 
 mind the question:—Am I not indeed a 
 coward? Possibly all my sense of revolt 
 against the thing that everyone counts so 
 great results from fear for my own skin? 
 And really, is it worth while to trouble about 
 some one trifling life, in face of a great cause? 
 And am I capable of exposing my life to 
 
164 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, 
 
 risk at all, for the sake of any cause what- 
 ever P 
 
 I did not brood over these questions for 
 long. I looked back over all my life, all 
 those occasions—it is true that they are not 
 many—on which I have found myself face 
 to face with danger, and I could not charge 
 myself with cowardice. I did not fear for 
 my life then, and do not fear for it now. 
 It is, therefore, not death which terrifies me. 
 
 Always new battles, new deaths and 
 miseries. After reading the papers I am 
 unable to set about anything; the letters 
 in my book seem like rows of fallen men; 
 my pen is a weapon, making black wounds 
 on the white paper. If it goes on this way 
 I shall really come to actual hallucinations. 
 However, just now I have got a new care, 
 which, to some extent, distracts my attention 
 from the one tyrannous thought. 
 
 Yesterday evening I went to the Lvovs’, 
 and found them at tea. The brother and 
 sister were sitting at the table, and Kuzma 
 was tramping quickly up and down the room, 
 pressing his hand to his face, which was 
 swollen and tied up with a handkerchief. 
 
 ‘What is the matter with you?’ I asked. 
 
 He made no answer, except a gesture of his 
 hand, and continued tramping up and down. 
 
A COWARD. 165 
 
 ‘He got a toothache, and then his face 
 swelled up and a great abcess came,’ said 
 Marya Petrovna. ‘I asked him to go to 
 the doctor in time, but he wouldn’t, and 
 now you see what it’s come to.’ 
 
 ‘The doctor will be here in a minute; I 
 went to fetch him, said Vasili Petrovich. 
 
 ‘Worth while!’ muttered Kuzma between 
 his teeth. 
 
 ‘Of course its worth while, when you may 
 get subcutaneous extravasation! And there 
 you will keep on walking about, although I’ve 
 begged you to go to bed. You know how 
 these things sometimes end.’ 
 
 ‘Doesn’t matter however it ends, muttered 
 Kuzma. 
 
 ‘It matters very much, Kuzma Fomich 
 don’t talk nonsense,’ said Marya Petrovna, 
 softly. 
 
 These words were enough to smooth 
 Kuzma down. He even seated himself at 
 the table and asked for some tea. Marya 
 _ Petrovna poured it out and handed it to 
 him. When he took the glass from her hand, 
 his face assumed an expression of absolute 
 rapture, which was so out of character with 
 the grotesquely swollen cheek that I could 
 not keep from smiling. Lvov, too, laughed ; 
 only Marya Petrdvna looked at Kuzma 
 gravely and pityingly. 
 
166 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 The doctor presently arrived. He was a 
 very merry fellow, as fresh and bright as 
 aujuicy sapples OW heniwhemexaminedmathe 
 patient’s neck, his usually jovial face became 
 troubled. 
 
 ‘Let us go into your room; I want to 
 examine you thoroughly.’ 
 
 I followed them into Kuzma’s room. The 
 doctor made him lie down on the bed and be- 
 gan to examine the upper part of his chest, 
 cautiously touching it with his fingers. 
 
 ‘Well, now, you will have the kindness to 
 lie there quiet and not get up. Have you 
 any friends who would be willing to sacrifice 
 a little of their time for your benefit?’ asked 
 the doctor. 
 
 ‘TI think so,’ answered Kuzma, in a hesi- 
 tating tone. 
 
 ‘I would ask them,’ said the doctor, 
 graciously, turning to me, ‘to watch by the 
 patient day and night, and, if anything new 
 should occur, to send for me.’ 
 
 He left the room. Lvov went to the door 
 with him, and they talked together a long 
 time under their breath. I went to Marya 
 Petrovna. She was sitting in a thoughtful 
 attitude, leaning her head on one hand and 
 slowly stirring her tea with the other. 
 
 ‘The doctor says someone must sit up 
 up with Kuzma,’ 
 
A COWARD. 167 
 
 ‘Can there really be any danger?’ asked 
 Marya Petrovna, anxiously. 
 
 ‘Probably there is; else why should he 
 have to be watched? You will help to nurse 
 him, Marya Petrovna ?’ 
 
 ‘Oh; ofcourse! There, you see, I haven’t 
 gone to the war yet, and I have to be sister 
 of mercy already. Let us go to him; 
 
 feist be very dull**for him ‘to lie 
 alone.’ 
 
 Kuzma greeted us with a smile, somewhat 
 impeded by the swollen cheek. 
 
 ‘That’s good of you, he said; ‘I began 
 to think you had forgotten me.’ 
 
 ‘No, Kuzma Fomich; we won't forget 
 you now; someone will sit up with you. 
 You see, that is what comes of wilfulness,’ 
 said Marya Petrovna, smiling. 
 
 ‘And will you?’ asked Kuzma, timidly. 
 
 ‘Yes, yes ; only you must obey me!’ 
 
 Kuzma shut his eyes and blushed with- 
 delight. 
 
 ‘Ah, yes!’ he said suddenly, turning to 
 me, ‘give me the looking-glass, please; — 
 there it is, on the table.’ 
 
 I handed him the little round looking-glass ; 
 Kuzma asked me to hold the light, and ex- 
 amined the swollen place in the looking-glass. 
 After this his face grew dark, and, though we 
 all three tried to amuse him with conversa- 
 
168 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 tion, he did not utter a single word the whole 
 evening through. 
 
 To-day I was told positively that the re- 
 serve will soon be called out. I expected 
 this, and was not much affected by the news. 
 
 I could escape the fate I dread so much; I 
 might take advantage of my acquaintance 
 with certain influential persons, and remain in 
 St Petersburg as a state servant. My friends 
 would ‘get me a berth’ here, if only as clerk. 
 But, in the first place, it would disgust me to 
 resort to such means, and, in the second place, 
 something, that I cannot define, sits inside of 
 me, judges my case, and forbids me to escape 
 from the war. ‘It’s not right, says this inner 
 - voice to me. 
 
 Something has happened that I in no way 
 expected. 
 
 This morning I came here to take Marya 
 Petrovna’s place at Kuzma’s bedside. She 
 met me at the door, pale, tired out with her 
 sleepless night, and with traces of tears about 
 her eyes. 
 
 ‘What is the matter, Marya Petrovna, what 
 is it?’ 
 
 ‘Hush! Speak softly, please,’ she whispered. 
 ‘Do youknow . . . it’s all over.’ 
 
 ‘All over!’ Why, he can’t be dead ?’” 
 
A COWARD. 169 
 
 ‘No, not yet . . . onlythere’s no hope. 
 meormecdoctors . .. We called in an- 
 other ; 
 
 She could not speak for tears. 
 
 eeeminees 3. look . «4 let's go to 
 him.’ 
 
 ‘Dry your eyes first and drink some water, 
 or you will upset him altogether.’ 
 
 Mitaallethe same. . . =< Do you think 
 he doesn’t know? He knew yesterday, when 
 he asked for the looking-glass ; you know, he 
 would soon have been a doctor himself.’ 
 
 The heavy smell of a dissecting theatre 
 filled the room where the sick man lay. His 
 bed was moved out into the middle of the 
 room. His large figure, long legs and arms, 
 lying straight at his sides, were sharply out- 
 lined on the counterpane. His eyes were 
 shut, and his breathing was slow and laboured. 
 It seemed to me that he had grown thin in 
 one night; his face had taken an ominous 
 earthy look, and was damp and clammy. 
 
 ‘What has happened to him?’ I asked in 
 a whisper. 
 
 ‘He will tell you. . . . Stop with him 
 
 I can't. 
 
 She went away, covering her face with her 
 hands and shaking with suppressed sobs, and 
 I sat down beside the bed and waited for 
 Ktizma to wake. There was dead silence in 
 
 H 
 
170 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 the room; only the watch, lying on a table 
 by the bed, ticked out its little song, and 
 the patient breathed slowly and heavily. I 
 looked at his face and could hardly recognise 
 it; not that his features were much changed, 
 but I saw him in an altogether new light. I 
 had known Kuzma and been on friendly 
 terms with him for a long time (though there 
 had been no special intimacy between us), but 
 I had never before had occasion to enter into 
 his position as now. I now looked back over 
 his life, his joys and disappointments, as if 
 they had been my own. Up till now I had 
 seen principally the comic side of his love for 
 Marya Petrovna; but now I realised how 
 much this man must have suffered. ‘Is it 
 possible, I thought, ‘that he is in so much 
 danger? It cannot be Howcana man die 
 of a ridiculous toothache? Marya Petrovna 
 is crying for him; he will get well and all will 
 go right.’ 
 
 He opened his eyes and saw me. Without 
 any change in the expression of his face, he 
 began to speak, slowly, pausing after each — 
 word. Se 
 
 ‘Good morning. . . . You see 
 
 Fame es sh 
 all up with me. The end has come. It has 
 stolen on’ me. . isso: suddenly: ; 
 
 Stu pied ere, 
 
 ‘Tell me, Ktzma, what on earth has hap- 
 
A COWARD. 171 
 
 pened to you? Perhaps it’s not so bad after 
 all.’ 
 
 ““Not bad,” you say? No, my lad, it’s bad 
 enough. No mistaking trifles of this kind. 
 There, look !’ 
 
 Slowly, methodically, he drew back the 
 bed-clothes and unfastened his shirt. The 
 intolerable stench of a corpse suddenly filled 
 my nostrils. For a handsbreadth, beginning 
 from the neck, the right side of Kuzma’s 
 chest was black, like black velvet, covered 
 with a faint bluish shade. It was gangrene. 
 
 It is four days since I have closed my eyes. 
 I have been watching constantly by the sick 
 man’s bed, now with Marya Petrovna, now 
 with her brother. It seems as though life 
 hardly lingered on in him and yet could 
 not leave the strong body. The piece of 
 black, dead flesh was cut out and thrown 
 away, and the doctor ordered us to wash the 
 great wound, left by the operation, every two 
 hours. Every two hours, therefore, two, or 
 sometimes all three of us, go to Kuzma’s bed, 
 turn and lift his great figure, lay bare the 
 frightful wound and wash it with carbolic acid 
 and water, syringed through a gutta-percha 
 tube. The water sprays in the wound, and, 
 Kuzma sometimes even finds strength to smile, 
 ‘because, as he explains, ‘it tickles.’ Like 
 
172 STORIES FROM GA RSHIN. 
 
 all persons who are seldom ill, he delights 
 in being nursed and waited on like a child, 
 and when Marya Petrovna takes in her hands 
 what he calls ‘the reins of goverment,’ z.e., the 
 gutta-percha tube, and sprinkles the wound, 
 he is greatly pleased, and says that no one can 
 do it so beautifully as she, although her hand 
 often shakes with emotion and splashes the 
 water all over the bed. 
 
 How their relation to one another has 
 changed! Marya Petrovna, who used to be 
 for Ktzma something unapproachable, that 
 he was afraid to look at, who used to take 
 no notice of his existence, now often weeps 
 in silence as she sits by his bed when he 
 is asleep, and nurses him devotedly; while 
 he composedly accepts her care, as his due, 
 and talks to her like a father to a little 
 daughter. 
 
 At times he suffers very much. His 
 wound burns, he shakes all over with fever. 
 
 At such moments strange thoughts 
 come into my head. Kuzma seems to me 
 a unit—one of those who form the tens of 
 thousands mentioned in the war reports. By 
 his illness and his suffering I try to measure 
 the evil caused by the war. So much pain 
 and sorrow here, in one room, on one bed, in 
 one breast; and all this is but a drop in the 
 sea of misery and anguish suffered by the 
 
A COWARD. 173 
 
 huge mass of men who are sent forward, 
 brought back and laid upon the fields in 
 bloodstained heaps of bodies, some dead, 
 others still moving and groaning. 
 
 I am utterly worn out with miserable 
 thoughts and want of sleep. I must ask 
 Lvov or Marya Petrovna to take my place 
 for a bit and let me get to sleep, if only for 
 two hours. 
 
 I slept like the dead, curled up on the 
 little sofa, and was waked by someone shak- 
 ing me by the shoulder. 
 
 ‘Get up! Get up!’ said Marya Petrovna, 
 
 I sprang up, and for a moment could under- 
 stand nothing. Marya Petrovna was whis- 
 pering something in a quick, terrified way. 
 
 ‘Spots! New spots!’ I made out at last. 
 
 ‘What spots? Where?’ 
 
 ‘Oh, he doesn’t understand anything! 
 Kuzma Fomich has got new spots! I’ve 
 sent for the doctor already.’ 
 
 ‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter, said I, with 
 the indifference of a man just waked from | 
 sleep. 
 
 ‘Doesn’t matter! Look yourself!’ 
 
 Kuzma lay with his head thrown back, 
 sleeping heavily and restlessly. He tossed 
 his head from side to side, and sometimes 
 moaned in his sleep. His chest was bare 
 
174 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 and I saw upon it, a little way below the 
 bandage covering the wound, two small, new, 
 black spots. The gangrene had crept on 
 downwards under the skin, spread, and now 
 come out in two places. Although I had 
 not had from the beginning much hope of 
 Kuzma’s recovery, these new and certain 
 signs of death made me turn cold. 
 
 Marya Petroyna sat in a corner of the 
 room, her hands resting on her knee, and 
 looked at me with despairing eyes. 
 
 There is no need to quite despair, Marya 
 Petroyna. The doctor will come and look, 
 perhaps it is not quite final. We may pull 
 him through after all.’ | 
 
 ‘No, we shall not pull him through; he 
 will die,’ she whispered. 
 
 ‘Well, he will die, I answered, as softly ; ‘ for 
 all of us, of course, that is a great misfortune, 
 but you must not take it so terribly to heart ; 
 you have grown to look like a corpse in 
 these last days.’ 
 
 ‘If you knew what misery I have suffered 
 in these days! I cannot explain to myself 
 why it is so. I did not love him, you know, 
 and I don’t think I love him even now as 
 he loves me; but if he dies it will break my 
 heart! Everything will bring back to me 
 his steady gaze, his constant silence when- 
 ever I was present, though he liked talking, 
 
A COWARD. £75 
 
 and talked well. There will always be a 
 reproach on my conscience, that I did not 
 pity him, did not appreciate his intellect, 
 his heart, his affection. Perhaps it will seem 
 absurd to you, but I am constantly tor- 
 mented by the thought that, if I had loved 
 him, we should have lived quite differently, 
 everything would have been different, and 
 this ridiculous, frightful thing would never 
 have happened. I think and think, and try 
 to justify myself, but something within me 
 always keeps on saying, “It’s my fault, my 
 fault, my fault !”’ 
 
 I glanced at the patient, fearing that our 
 whispering would wake him, and saw a 
 change in his face. He had awakened and 
 heard what Marya Petrovna said, but did 
 not wish her to know it. His lips quivered, 
 his cheeks flushed, his face suddenly lighted 
 up, as a dull, rain-soaked meadow lights up 
 when the clouds that overhang it part and 
 let the sun peep through. No doubt he 
 forgot his sickness and the terror of death ; 
 one feeling only filled his heart, and over-. 
 flowed in two great tears from under the 
 closed and quivering lids. Marya Petrovna 
 looked at him for a few seconds in a startled 
 way; then a tender look came into her 
 face, and blushing, she bent down over the 
 poor half-corpse, and kissed him. 
 
176 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 He opened his eyes. 
 
 “My God,I don’t want to die!’ he murmured. 
 
 Suddenly I heard a strange, low, sobbing 
 sound, quite new to me, for I had never 
 before seen this man weep. 
 
 I went out of the room. I was nearly 
 ready to blubber myself. 
 
 I, too, do not want to die, and all these 
 thousands do not want to die. Kuzma, at 
 least, has found a consolation at the last 
 inomentsebutm there cumwuzina, fin sspitemol 
 physical suffering and the terror of death, 
 experiences such a feeling that I doubt 
 whether he would give up these moments 
 for any others in all his life. No, this is 
 quite another thing! Death will always 
 be death; but to die among loving friends, 
 or to die grovelling in the dirt, in your 
 own blood, expecting every moment that 
 someone will come and finish you, or that 
 the cannon will drive over you and crush 
 you like a worm 
 
 ‘I tell you, frankly,’ said the doctor to me, 
 as he put on his cloak and galoshes in the 
 hall; ‘ninety-nine out of a hundred of such 
 cases under hospital treatment die. I place 
 my hope only in the very careful nursing, the 
 remarkably cheerful mood of the patient, and 
 his intense desire to recove: 
 
A COWARD. 177 
 
 ‘Every patient wishes to recover, doctor.’ 
 
 ‘Certainly ; but, in your friend’s case, there 
 are peculiar circumstances to increase that 
 desire, said the doctor, witha smile. ‘ Well ; 
 to-day we'll operate again. We will make 
 a new aperture and put in drainage-tubes, 
 so that the water may flow better; and we 
 won't lose hope.’ 
 
 He shook hands with me, threw on his 
 bear-skin cloak, and drove off to visit his other 
 patients. In the evening he returned with 
 his instruments. 
 
 ‘Perhaps you, my future colleague, would 
 like to perform the operation for practice ?’ 
 he said to Lvov. 
 
 Lvov nodded his head, pulled up his sleeves, 
 and, with a grave and gloomy expression 
 of face, set to work. I saw how he put into 
 the wound an astonishing instrument with 
 a triple point, how the points cut into the 
 flesh, and how Ktzma clenched his hands 
 into the bedclothes and ground his teeth 
 with pain. 
 
 ‘There ; don’t be an old woman,’ gloomily ' 
 said Lvov, inserting the drainage-tube in the 
 new wound, 
 
 ‘Is it very painful?’ asked Marya Pe- 
 trovna, gently. 
 
 ‘Not so bad, dear ; only I’ve got weak and 
 worn out.’ 
 
178 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, 
 
 The bandages were put on, Kuzma was 
 made to drink some wine, and became calm ; 
 the doctor drove away, Lvov went into his 
 room to study, and Marya Petrovna and I 
 began setting the sick-room to rights.’ 
 
 ‘Put the coverlet straight,’ said Kuzma, 
 in a soundless, even voice ; ‘ there’s a draft.’ 
 
 I began smoothing his pillows and coverlet, 
 according to his own instructions, which he 
 gave very captiously, assuring me that some- 
 where near his left elbow there was a little 
 hole through which a draft came, and asking 
 me to tuck the clothes closer round him. 
 I tried to do it as well as possible, but, in 
 spite of all my efforts, Kuzma still felt a 
 draft, now at his side, now at his feet. 
 
 ‘You're so clumsy, he muttered softly. 
 ‘ Now there’sa draft at my back again. Let 
 her do it.’ 
 
 He glanced at Marya Petrovna, and it 
 became quite clear to me why I could not 
 satisfy him. 
 
 Marya Petrovna set down the medicine- 
 elass she was holding, and went up to the 
 bedside. 
 
 alle COVEIICt rE 
 
 MY cso sett straioht 7, thats aichteae 
 nice and warm !’ 
 
 He watched her while she smoothed the 
 coverlet ; then shut his eyes and fell asleep 
 
A COWARD. 179 
 
 with an expression of childlike delight on his 
 worn face. 
 
 ‘Are you going home?’ asked Marya 
 Petrovna. 
 
 “No; I’ve had a good sleep and can sit 
 up; but, if you don’t need me, I may as well 
 gO.’ 
 
 ‘Don’t go, please; let’s talk a little My 
 brother is always at his books, and it is so 
 sad, so bitter to sit alone with our patient 
 when he sleeps and think of his death.’ 
 
 ‘You must be firm, Marya Petrovna; sad 
 thoughts and tears are forbidden to sisters 
 of mercy.’ 
 
 ‘And I shall not cry when I am a sister 
 of mercy. After all, it will be much less hard 
 to nurse the wounded than a man that is 
 so dear to one.’ 
 
 ‘Then you are really going ?’ 
 
 ‘Of course. Whether he dies or whether 
 he recovers, I shall go in any case. I have 
 got accustomed to the idea and cannot give 
 it up. I want a good cause, I want to have 
 some good days, full of light, to look back 
 upon.’ 
 
 ‘Ah, Marya Petrovna, I am afraid you will 
 find no light at the war.’ 
 
 ‘Why not? I will work; there is light 
 for you. I want to take part in the war in 
 some way—in any way.’ 
 
180 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Slo takes part. iit! ee Docs mit rouse mio 
 horror in you? You to say such a thing!’ 
 
 ‘Yes, I. Who told you that I “ke the 
 warp) Only 7.) se.) how shalliliput it seme 
 War is evil, and you and I and very many 
 people hold that opinion, but it is inevitable. 
 Whether you like it or whether you don’t, 
 it will be all the same, and if you do not 
 go to fight, someone else will be taken and 
 a man will be mutilated or worn out with 
 the march just the same. I am afraid you 
 don’t understand me. I express myself badly. 
 - I mean this,—I think that the war is a general 
 misfortune, a general pain, and to evade it 
 may be excusable, but I do not like the 
 eicean 
 
 I kept silence. Marya Petrovna’s words 
 put into clearer form my dim aversion to 
 the idea of evading military service. I my- 
 self fe/t what she both felt and thought, only 
 I thought differently. 
 
 ‘You, I believe, constantly think of how 
 you can manage to stop here, she went on, 
 ‘supposing you should be taken for a soldier. 
 My brother has told me so. You know I am 
 very fond of you, and think well of you, but 
 ‘his trait in you does not please me.’ 
 
 ‘What would you have, Marya Petrovna? 
 Different opinions. Why should I be answer- 
 able? I didn’t begin the war.’ 
 
A COWARD. 181 
 
 ‘Neither you, nor any of the people who 
 have died and will die in it began it. They, 
 too, would not go if they could help it, but 
 they cannot get out of it,and you can. They 
 go to fight, and you will stay in St Peters- 
 burg, alive, well and happy, only because you 
 have acquaintances who are sorry to send a 
 man they personally know to the war. I do 
 not take upon myself to judge; perhaps this 
 is excusable, but I do not like it—no.’ 
 
 She relapsed into silence with an energetic 
 shake of her curly head. 
 
 At last it has come. To-day I put on the 
 grey cloak, and began the elementary train- 
 ing—the rifle practice. The words of com- 
 mand still ring in my ears,— 
 
 ‘Steady! Form into li-i-ine! At-ten-tion ! 
 Advance arms !’ 
 
 And I stood steady, and formed into line, 
 and clanked with my rifle as I was told. In 
 a short time, when I attain to sufficient wis- 
 dom in the matter of forming into line, I 
 shall be entered into some party of soldiers, 
 and we shall be put into trains and taken by 
 rail, and then divided among the regiments, 
 to fill up the places left vacant by the killed... 
 
 Ah, well, well, what does it matter! Every- 
 thing is over ; now I no longer belong to my- 
 self, I float with the stream. The best thing | 
 
182 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 now is not to think, not to argue, but just 
 accept all the chances of life, and, perhaps, 
 howl a bit when one is hurt... . 
 
 I have been put into a special division of 
 the barracks for men of the privileged classes. 
 It is distinguished by having beds instead of 
 sleeping benches, but it is, nevertheless, fairly 
 dirty. The place for the non-privileged re- 
 cruits is altogether insufferable. Until they 
 are distributed among the various regiments, 
 they live in a huge barn, which used to be a 
 horse-training ground. It has been divided 
 up by horizontal partitions into two storeys, 
 after which straw has been brought in, and 
 the place simply left to its temporary inhabi- 
 tants to domicile themselves how they can. 
 The pathway down the middle is filled with 
 snow and dirt, brought in by the boots of the 
 people constantly entering. This has got 
 mixed with the straw, and form an indescrib- 
 able slough. The rest of the straw is dirty 
 enough, too. Several hundred men sit, stand, 
 and lie on it, those from the same district 
 collecting together in groups—=in fact, a 
 complete ethnographical exhibition. I, too, 
 sought out the people from my native dis- 
 trict. The tall, clumsy Oukrainians, in their 
 new jerkins and lamb’s-wool caps, were lying 
 silently, huddled up together. There were 
 about ten of them. 
 
A COWARD. 183 
 
 ‘Good morning, neighbours,’ 
 Good morning.’ 
 
 ‘ Been here long ?’ 
 
 ‘’Bout a fortnight. And who may you 
 be ?’ asked one of them. 
 
 I told him my name, which I found to be 
 familiar to all of them. They were somewhat 
 enlivened by meeting a neighbour, and began 
 to talk. 
 
 ‘Are you home-sick ?’ I asked. 
 
 ‘How can a fellow help being home-sick ?’ 
 It’s dreary work! If they’d even feed one 
 properly, but there’s no bearing the stuff 
 they give you.’ 
 
 ‘And where are you to go now?’ 
 
 ‘And who the deuce knows that? To the 
 Turks, I s’pose.’ 
 
 ‘Do you want to go to the war ?’ 
 
 ‘There’s nothing much to see there.’ 
 
 I began to make inquiries about our native 
 town, and the recollection of home loosened 
 their tongues. They told me of the latest 
 _ wedding, to celebrate which two oxen had 
 been sold, and of how the bridegroom was 
 taken for a soldier directly afterwards ; of the 
 police-sergeant (‘may a hundred devils ride 
 down his throat’); of how there was so little 
 land remaining that several hundred persons 
 had started this year from the village of 
 Markovka for the Amur.... The conver- 
 
184 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 sation was confined entirely to the past; of 
 the future, of the labours, dangers and suffer- 
 _ ings that await us all, no one spoke. Not a 
 man cared to know anything about Turks 
 or Bulgarians or the cause for which he was 
 - going to die. 
 
 A tipsy little soldier of the town com- 
 mand stopped, as he passed in front 
 of our group, and, when I again started 
 the subject of the war, announced authori- 
 tatively,— | 
 
 ‘That Turk ought to be thrashed.’ 
 
 ‘Ought to be?’ I repeated, involuntarily 
 smiling at the positiveness of his decision. 
 
 ‘Yes, indeed, sir,—his very name shouldn’t 
 be left, the heathen scoundrel? ’Cause why ? 
 See what a lot we have to put up with all 
 along of him not keeping quiet! Now, if 
 he’d behave, so to say, properly and nicely, 
 and not make a fuss, I should be at home 
 now with my father and mother, and a long 
 sight better off. But he kicks up a row, and 
 we come to grief over it! It’s the truth I’m 
 saying, you may take my word for it. Won't 
 you give me a cigarette, sir?’ he suddenly 
 broke off, standing in position before me, and 
 touching his cap in military fashion. 
 
 I gave him a cigarette, took leave of my 
 neighbours, and went home, as it was my 
 off-duty time. 
 
A COWARD. 185 
 
 ‘He kicks up a row, and we come to grief 
 over it, rang in my ears the tipsy voice. 
 Short and clumsy as it is, we cannot get 
 beyond this little sentence. 
 
 There is sorrow and despondency at the 
 Lvovs’. Kuzma is in a very bad state, 
 although his wound is now clear of gangrene ; 
 he lies delirious, moaning, with a frightfully 
 high temperature. The brother and sister 
 have been constantly with him during all the 
 days that I have been occupied with enter- 
 ing the service and learning the discipline. 
 Now that they know I am going, the sister is 
 sadder than ever, and the brother gloomier. 
 
 ‘In uniform already!’ he muttered, when I 
 shook hands with him in the room, littered 
 with books and filled with tobacco-smoke, 
 in which he works.—‘Oh, you people, you 
 People! .. 2 
 
 ‘What sort of people are we, Vasili Petro- 
 vich ?’ | 
 
 ‘You won’t let me study—that’s what sort 
 you are! As it is there’s not time enough ; 
 they won't let me finish my course because 
 they want to send me to the war; as it is, 
 I shall not know heaps of things—and now 
 you and Kuzma...’ 
 
 ‘Well, Kizma’s dying, that’s true; but 
 what have I done?’ 
 
186 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 ‘Dear me, and aren’t you dying? If they 
 don’t kill you, you'll go mad or put a bullet 
 through your head. Do you suppose I don’t 
 know you, and do you suppose there have 
 been no instances ?’ 
 
 ‘What instances? Do you know of any 
 such cases? Tell me, Vasili Petrovich ! ’ 
 
 ‘I dare say! Much good I should do by 
 making you more dismal than you are already ! 
 It’s bad for you. And, besides, I don’t know 
 anything ; I just said that without thinking.’ 
 
 But I persisted, and he told me his ‘in- 
 stance.’ 
 
 ‘A wounded officer, an artillerist, told me. 
 They had just got out of Kishenev, in April, 
 directly after the declaration of war. It rained 
 incessantly, and the roads fairly disappeared ; 
 there was nothing left but mud so deep that 
 the weapons and transoms sank in, right up to 
 the axles of the wheels. It was so bad that 
 the horses couldn’t manage; so they tied on 
 ropes and set men to draw. On the second 
 day’s march the road was fearful; twelve hills 
 in eleven miles, and nothing but bog between. 
 They got into a bog, and stuck there. It 
 pelted cats and dogs—there wasn’t a dry 
 thread left on them; they were hungry and 
 thoroughly worn out, but the things must be 
 dragged. Well, of course, a man would pull 
 and pull, and then tumble face-downwards 
 
A COWARD. 187 
 
 into the mud in a fainting-fit. At last they - 
 got to such a slough that they couldn’t move 
 on a single step further, and still they kept on 
 dragging themselves to pieces. “It’s frightful 
 even to remember what it was like!” said my 
 officer. There was a young doctor with them, 
 of the last batch—a nervous fellow—and he 
 burst out crying. “I can’t bear this sight,” he 
 said; “I'll go on in front.” Well, off he rode. 
 The soldiers cut a lot of branches, made 
 almost a regular bridge over the swamp and, 
 at last, got out of the hole. They tugged the 
 battery up on to the hill, and there, behold, 
 was the doctor hanging from a tree. 
 
 There’s an instance for you. The man couldn’t 
 stand the szgkt of so much pain, so how do 
 you suppose you can stand the pain itself?... 
 
 ‘Vasili Petrovich, don’t you think it’s easier 
 to bear the pain oneself than to put an end to 
 oneself like that doctor ?’ 
 
 ‘Well, I don’t know that there’s anything 
 consoling in being harnessed to the shafts 
 yourself.’ 
 
 ‘At least your conscience will not torment 
 you, Vasili Petrovich.’ 
 
 ‘My good fellow, all that’s too fine for me. 
 You'd better talk about that with my sister ; 
 she’s a big-wig on such hair-splitting as that. 
 She can pull to pieces every little point in 
 Anna Karénina, or discuss Dostoyevsky, or 
 
 2 
 
188 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 anything else you like; and no doubt this 
 hobby of yours has been analysed in some 
 novel or other. Good-bye, philosopher.’ 
 
 He laughed good-humouredly at his own 
 joke, and held out his hand to me. 
 
 ‘Where are you going?’ 
 
 ‘To the Wyborg Side,* to the hospital.’ 
 
 I went into Kuzma’s room. He was 
 awake and feeling better than usual, as I was 
 told by Marya Petrovna, who, as usual, was 
 sitting by the bedside. He had not seen me 
 in uniform before, and the sight startled him 
 unpleasantly. 
 
 Will they leave you here, or forward you 
 on to the army ?’ he asked. 
 
 ‘They will forward me on. Did you not 
 know ?’ 
 
 He kept silence for a moment. 
 
 ‘I knew, but I forgot. I can’t take in or 
 remember many things, now... . Well, well 
 
 m0. licte sinotaing Mort. 
 
 ‘And you, Kuzma Fomich ?’ 
 
 ‘What about “and I?” Isn't it true? 
 What service have you done, that you should 
 be let off? Make haste and die. There are 
 people more wanted than you—people that 
 have worked better than you, and they go 
 
 set my pillow straight {4 ithaue 
 right.’ 
 * A quarter of St Petersburg. 
 
A COWARD. 189 
 
 He spoke softly and irritably, as though 
 trying to spite someone for his illness. 
 
 Pietnat is true, Kuzma, but am I not 
 going? Am I protesting for myself person- 
 ally? Ifso, I should have stayed here with- 
 out further question—it would not have been 
 difficult to arrange. I don’t do that—I am 
 wanted, and I go. But let me, at least, be 
 permitted to have my opinion about the 
 matter.’ 
 
 Kuzma lay with his eyes fixed steadily on 
 the ceiling, as though he did not hear me. 
 At last he slowly turned his head to me. 
 
 ‘Don’t you take what I say for anything 
 serious, he said. ‘I’m worn out and irritable, 
 and really I snap at people without knowing 
 why. I’ve got as grumpy as a bear—I sup- 
 pose it’s time I died.’ 
 
 ‘Nonsense, Kuzma, cheer up. The wound 
 is purified now and healing up, and every- 
 thing’s going well. It’s time to think of life, 
 not death, now.’ 
 
 Marya Petrovna glanced at me with great 
 sad eyes, and I suddenly remembered how © 
 she had said, a fortnight ago :—‘ No, we shall 
 not pull him through—he will die.’ 
 
 ‘Supposing I really were to come to life! 
 It would be jolly, said Kuzma, smiling 
 faintly. You'll be sent off to fight, and 
 Marya Petroyna and I will come out, she as 
 
190 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 sister of mercy, and I as doctor. Then, when 
 you're wounded, I shall look after you, as you 
 look after me now.’ 
 
 ‘That will do, Kuzma Fomich, said Marya 
 Petrovna. ‘It’s bad for you to talk so much ; 
 and besides, it’s time to begin tormenting 
 you.’ | 
 
 He submissively gave himself up into our 
 hands. We undressed him, took off the ban- 
 dages, and set to work upon the great lacer- 
 ated chest. When I directed the stream of 
 water on to the bare, bleeding wounds, on to 
 the exposed collar-bone, which glistened like 
 mother-of-pearl, the vein which ran across the 
 whole great wound, clean and unattached, as 
 though this were not a wound in the body of 
 a living man, but an anatomical specimen, I 
 thought of other wounds, far more terrible, 
 both in their character and in their over- 
 whelming number, and inflicted, moreover, 
 not by blind senseless chance, but by the 
 conscious act of men. 
 
 I do not write in this diary a word of what 
 takes place, and what I have to go through, 
 at home. My mother’s tears, whenever she 
 sees me, whenever I leave her, the strange 
 gloomy silence at table when I am there, the 
 tender considerateness towards me of my 
 brothers and sisters—all this is hard to see 
 
A COWARD, 19! 
 
 and hear, and still harder to write about. When 
 I think that in a week I shall have to lose all 
 that is dearest to me in the world, I am half- 
 choked with unshed tears. .. . 
 
 The time for the parting has come at last. 
 
 To-morrow morning, at daybreak, our party 
 
 is to start by rail. I have permission to 
 spend the last night at home, and now I sit 
 alone in my room for the last time. The last 
 time. Does anyone who has not suffered it 
 understood the bitterness of those three 
 words? For the last time we have separated 
 for the night—for the last time I have come 
 into this little room and sat down at this table 
 lighted with the familiar lamp, and littered 
 with books and paper. It is a whole month 
 since I have touched them. For the last 
 time I take up and look through the work I 
 began. I had to break it off, and now it lies 
 dead, abortive, senseless. Instead of finish- 
 ing it, off you go with a thousand others 
 like you to the world’s end, because history 
 
 has need of your physical powers. As for | 
 
 your mental powers, forget them ; no one has 
 any need of them. What does it matter that 
 you have spent many years in training them, 
 in preparing to make some use of them? 
 An immense, unknown organism, of which 
 
 you form a minute part, chooses to cut you- 
 
192 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 off and throw you away. And what can you 
 do against its will, you— 
 
 Shou, the creatitoe a. . 
 
 There, there, that will do. I had better 
 lie down and try to get to sleep; I have to 
 get up very early to-morrow. 
 
 I asked that no one should come to the 
 station with me. A deferred parting would 
 mean only useless tears. But, when I was 
 seated in the crowded railway carriage, I felt 
 such a heart-crushing sense of loneliness— 
 such an utter despondency that it seemed to 
 me as though I would give up everything in 
 the world for a few minutes with someone of 
 my friends. At last the hour for starting 
 arrived but the train did not move; for some 
 reason there was a delay. Half-an-hour passed, 
 an hour, an hour-and-a-half, and still it stood. 
 In an hour-and-a-half I should have had time 
 to go home for a bit... . Perhaps someone 
 Awille cOMmemaAttei allan w.N OwlOs LR CvamEal 
 think the train has started before now; no 
 one will count on its being late. Still it is 
 possible. =.) And sl. sat-lookine) in the 
 direction from which they might come. I 
 have never known the time drag so slowly. 
 
 The sharp sound of the horn, playing the 
 roll-call, made me start. Those soldiers who 
 had got out of the train and were standing in 
 
A COWARD. . 193 
 
 crowds on the platform, hurriedly took their 
 places. The train will start directly, and I 
 shaJl see no one. ; 
 
 But it was not so. The Lvovs, brother and 
 sister, almost ran up to the carriage, and the 
 sight of them was a real delight tome. Ido 
 not remember what I said to them; I do not 
 remember what they said to me, except one 
 sentence—‘ Ktizma is dead.’ 
 
 With this sentence the notes in the pocket- 
 book end. 
 
 A wide, snow-covered plain. White hills 
 surround it, and on the hills are white, 
 frosted trees. The sky is low and heavy; 
 there is thaw in the air. The rifles crack, the 
 -cannon-shots resound in quick succession ; 
 smoke covers one of the hills and creeps 
 slowly down into the plain. Through the 
 smoke can be seen a black, moving mass, 
 On looking fixedly one can see that it consists 
 of separate black dots. Many of these dots 
 are already motionless, but others keep moving 
 on and on, although they are still far from 
 their goal, which is visible only by the mass 
 of smoke rising from it, and although their 
 number grows less and less with every moment. 
 
 The reserve battalion, lying in the snow, 
 each man holding his rifle in his hand (the 
 
 i 
 
194 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 arms have not been piled), watches the move- 
 ments of the black mass with all its thousand 
 eyes. 
 
 ‘There they go, lads, there they go! 
 
 Ah, they'll never get there!’ 
 
 ‘And why ever do they want to keep us 
 here? They’d manage it fast enough witha 
 bit of help.’ 
 
 ‘Anybody’d think you were tired of your 
 life” gloomily remarked an elderly ‘ticketed’ 
 soldier. ‘ Lie still, when you’re put here, and 
 thank God that your skin’s whole.’ 
 
 ‘I shall be whole enough, daddy, never 
 fear!’ answered the merry-faced young 
 soldier, ‘I’ve been in four actions and got 
 nothing. Just at first, while your strange to 
 it, like, you feel queer; but afterwards, not 
 a bit. Now, it’s our Jdarine’s first action, so 
 I doubt he’s repenting of his sins, eh? 
 Barine, 1 say, barine !? 
 
 ‘What?’ asked a rather thin soldier, with 
 a black beard, who was lying beside him. 
 
 ‘Cheer up, darzne !’ 
 
 ‘I’m all right, my lad, thanks.’ 
 
 ‘You stick on to me if you get queer. I’ve 
 been in already ; I know about it. But our 
 barine’s a plucky lad; he won’t turn tail. 
 Before you, though, we had one of these 
 volunteers, and when we got to the place, 
 and the balls began to fly, he up and 
 
A COWARD. 195 
 
 pitched away his knapsack and his rifle, and 
 cut and run, and a ball after him and took 
 him in the back. That sort of thing won’t 
 do, ’cause, you see, there’s our oath.’ 
 
 ‘Don’t be afraid, I sha’n’t run,’ answered 
 the darine, softly ; ‘there’s no running away 
 from a ball.’ 
 
 ’Course not; how can you get away? 
 ieee balls too quick for that...... Heart 
 alive! ours have stopped !’ 
 
 The black mass had stopped moving, and 
 poured out a smoky volley. 
 
 ‘Yes, they’ve begun firing; they'll go back 
 
 directly. ... No, they’re moving forwards ! 
 frorvedviother of God; protect them! ..-. 
 Mmercme here!) « There’ again! . ..: Eh, 
 
 look what a lot of wounded! And they 
 don’t pick them up! Good Lord!’... 
 
 ‘A ball! <A ball!’ cried out several voices. 
 
 Something, indeed, whizzed in the air. It 
 was a stray, chance shot, flying across the 
 * reserve. Another followed it, then a third 
 _ The battalion began to rouse up. 
 
 ‘A stretcher !’ cried someone. 
 
 One of the stray shots had done its work. 
 Four soldiers ran to the wounded man with a 
 stretcher. Suddenly on one of the hills, in 
 another direction from the place of the attack, 
 there appeared small figures of men and 
 horses, from which flew sharply out a 
 
196 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 close, round mass of smoke, white as the 
 snow. 
 
 ‘The scoundrel’s aiming at us!’ cried the 
 merry soldier. 
 
 The grenade hissed and buzzed ; a detona- 
 tion resounded. . . . The merry soldier 
 pressed his face into the snow. When he 
 raised his head, he saw that the darine was 
 lying beside him, face downwards, his arms 
 stretched out, and his neck unnaturally bent 
 round. Another stray shot had made a 
 great black hole just over his right eye. 
 
MeNEROCCUORR ANCE 
 

 

 
 AN OCCURRENCE. 
 
 oy 
 
 i; 
 
 SAS OW it happened that I, who had 
 : not thought about anything for 
 almost two years, began to think, 
 I can’t understand. It couldn't 
 have been that gentleman, surely, that stirred 
 up these thoughts in me, because one so 
 often meets these gentlemen, and I’ve already 
 got accustomed to their sermons. 
 
 Yes, almost all of them, except those that 
 are quite accustomed, or the very clever ones, 
 invariably get talking about these subjects; 
 no use, either to them or tome. First, they 
 ask what my name is, how old I am; then the 
 greater number of them put on rather sad faces 
 and began to talk about—‘ Can’t you anyhow 
 abandon such a way of life?’ At first this 
 catechising distressed me, but now I’m ac- 
 199 
 
 
 
200 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 customed. One gets accustomed to many 
 things. 
 
 But all this last fortnight, every time that 
 I’m not gay—that is, not tipsy (for can 
 I possibly be gay without being tipsy ?), 
 and when I am quite alone, I begin to 
 think. I don’t want to, but I can’t help 
 it; there’s no getting rid of these gloomy 
 thoughts; the only way to forget is to 
 go to some place where there are a lot 
 of people, where there is drunkenness and 
 rollicking. I, too, begin to drink and rollick 
 —one’s thoughts get muddled, one forgets 
 everything ; then it’s more bearable. Why 
 wasn't that so before, from the very day that 
 I flung over everything? I’ve lived here, in 
 this wretched room, more than two years, 
 spent all my time in the same way, fre- 
 quented the same ‘Eldorados’ and ‘ Palais 
 de Cristal, and all this time, if I wasn’t 
 happy, at least I didn’t think about being 
 unhappy; but now, it’s quite, quite dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 How tiresome, how stupid! It’s all the 
 same, I sha’n’t change—sha’n’t change, be- 
 cause I myself don’t want to change. I’m 
 inured to this life; I know my path. Why, 
 in the Dragonfly (which one of my acquaint- 
 ances often brings me, and always brings 
 if there is anything ‘piquant’ in it), I saw 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 201 
 
 an illustration; in the middle, a pretty 
 little girl with a doll, and around, two rows 
 of figures. Upwards from.the child go— 
 a little school-girl, then a modest young 
 girl, a mother of a family, and, at last, a 
 venerable old woman; and on the other 
 side, downwards, a shop-girl with a box, 
 then—I, I, and I again. The first is I, as 
 I am now; the second, sweeping the cross- 
 ing with a broom; and the third—she is 
 quite disgusting —a hideous old woman. 
 Only I sha’n’t let myself come to that. Two 
 or three more years, if I can stand this life 
 so long, and then the Ekaterininsky canal. 
 I have courage enough for that; I’m not 
 afraid. 
 
 But how odd that artist is! Why, after 
 the school-girl, are bound to follow the 
 modest maiden, the honourable mother and 
 erandmother? And I? Thank heaven, I 
 can still shine with French and German 
 somewhere on the Nevsky! And I think 
 I haven’t forgotten yet how to paint flowers, 
 and I remember— Califso ne pouvait se 
 consoler du départ d’ Ulysse ; and I remember 
 Pushkin and Lermontov, and everything— 
 everything ; and the examinations, and that 
 fatal, terrible time when I was left, a helpless, 
 silly girl, alone, with my kind relations who 
 declared that they ‘took in the orphan, and 
 
202 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 the passionate, villainous speeches of that 
 fop, and how glad I was in my foolishness ; 
 and all the lies and filth there in ‘pure 
 society, from which I passed into this 
 position in which I stupefy myself with 
 gin.... Yes, now I have begun to drink 
 even gin. ‘ Horreur!’ my cousin Olga Niko- 
 laevna would cry. 
 
 And, indeed, isn’t it horreur? But, in 
 very truth,am I to blame? If, when I was 
 a child of seventeen, that had lived cooped 
 up within four walls, and seen no one but 
 children like myself and a few mammas since 
 I was eight years old, I had met, not my 
 amiable friend with his hair @ la Capoule, 
 but some other man, some /onest man; then, 
 no doubt, all would have been different... . 
 What an absurd idea! As if there were 
 any honest men! Did I ever meet any, either 
 before or after my catastrophe? Ought I 
 to believe that honest people exist, when, of 
 all the scores I know, there is not one that 
 I could succeed in not hating? And can I be- 
 lieve it, when here come husbands from their 
 young wives, and children (almost children, of 
 fourteen and fifteen), of ‘ good families, and 
 bald, paralytic old men, with one foot in their 
 graves P 
 
 And then, can I help hating and despising 
 them, although I myself am a despised and 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 203 
 
 despicable creature, when I see among them 
 persons like a certain young German with > 
 a monogram tattooed on his arm just above 
 the elbow. He explained to me _ himself 
 that it was the name of his betrothed. ‘ Yetzt 
 aber bist du meine Liebe, allerliebstes Lieb- 
 chen,’ he said, looking at me with his greasy 
 eyes, and, moreover, repeated some verses of 
 Heine. And even proudly explained to me 
 that Heine was a great German poet, but 
 that they, the Germans, had poets still greater, 
 Goethe and Schiller, and that such poets 
 could only be born of the great and gifted 
 German nation. 
 
 How I longed to scratch his vile, fair, 
 handsome, brutal face! But, instead of that, 
 I only tossed off a glass of port wine that 
 he gave me, and forgot everything. 
 
 Why should I think of my future, when 
 I know so well what it will be? Why should 
 I think of my past, when there is nothing 
 in it for which I would exchange my present 
 life? Yes, that’s true. If it were offered me 
 to-day, to go back there to the elegant sur- 
 roundings, to the people with fashionably- 
 parted hair and chignons, and fine words—I 
 would not return. I would stay, and die at 
 my post. 
 - Yes, and I have a post. And I, too, am 
 
204 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 necessary. I am needed. The other day 
 there came to me a very talkative lad who 
 repeated to me by heart a whole page from 
 some book or other. ‘That’s our philosopher, 
 our Russian philosopher, he said. This 
 philosopher said something very vague, and, 
 for me, very complimentary ; something to 
 the effect that we are the ‘safety-valves for 
 the public passions. . .. The words are 
 vile, and the philosopher, no doubt, is bad ; 
 and worst of all was this boy, repeating these 
 ‘ safety-valves.’ 
 
 For that matter, the other day, the same 
 idea came into my head. I was before the 
 justice of the peace, who sentenced me to a 
 fine of fifteen roubles for indecent behaviour 
 in a public place. 
 
 Just at the moment when he pronounced 
 the sentence, at which everyone stood up, it 
 occurred to me—Why does all this public 
 regard me with such contempt? Granted, 
 I perform a filthy, disgusting business, fulfil 
 the most contemptible of duties, but none the 
 less it zs a duty! This judge, too, fulfils a 
 duty, and I think that we both... 
 
 I don’t think anything ; I feel that I drink, 
 that I remember nothing, that I am in a 
 muddle.... Everything is mixed up to- 
 gether in my head ; that shameful hall where 
 I shall dance immodestly this evening, and 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 205 
 
 the Litovsky Castle, and this shameful room 
 that one can only live in when one is drunk. 
 My temples throb, there is a singing in my 
 ears, everything is darting about and whirl- 
 ing in my head, and I myself am whirling 
 away somewhere. ... I want to stop myself, 
 to hold on to something—if it were only a 
 straw—but I haven’t so much as a straw. 
 That’s a lie; I have! and not a straw, 
 but maybe something stronger; but I myself 
 have sunk so low that I don’t choose to put 
 out my hand to seize the stay held out to me. 
 
 It happened, I think, at the end of August. 
 I remember it was a beautiful autumn even- 
 ing. I was walking in the summer garden, 
 and there made acquaintance with this ‘stay,’ 
 There was nothing noticeable about this man, 
 except, perhaps, a sort of good-natured talka- 
 tiveness. He told me about nearly all his 
 acquaintances and affairs. He was twenty- 
 five, and his name was Ivan Ivanovich. He 
 was neither handsome nor plain. He chatted 
 with me just as with some acquaintance; 
 even told me anecdotes about his superior 
 official, and explained to me what was going 
 to be done in the department where he 
 serves, 
 _ He went away, and I forgot about him. 
 But, a month afterwards, he turned up; and 
 
206 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 turned up gloomy, thin, unhappy. When he 
 came in I was quite startled at the tragic, 
 unknown face. 
 
 ‘You remember me ?’ 
 
 That moment I recognised him, and said so. 
 
 He coloured. 
 
 ‘I thought you wouldn’t remember, be- 
 cause, of course, so many—’ 
 
 The conversation broke off. We sat on the 
 sofa; I at one end, he at the other as if he 
 had come to pay a visit for the first time ; 
 stiff, straight up—even holding his top-hat in 
 his hands. We sat some time; at last he 
 rose and bowed. 
 
 ‘Good evening, Nadyezhda Nikolaevna, 
 he said, with a sigh. 
 
 ‘How do you know my name?’ I cried, 
 firing up. My current name was not Na- 
 dyezhda Nikolaevna, but Evgenia. 
 
 I spoke to Ivan Ivanovich so fiercely 
 that he was quite startled. 
 
 ‘I didn’t mean any harm, Nadyezhda 
 Nikolaevna; I won’t tell anyone. I know 
 Piotr Vassilyevich, the police inspector, and 
 he told me all about you. I wanted to say 
 “Evgenia,” and said your real name by a 
 slip of the tongue.’ 
 
 ‘But tell me why you came to me ?’ 
 
 He silently and sadly looked me in the 
 face, 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 207 
 
 ‘What for?’ I went on angrily. ‘What 
 interest can I possibly be to you? No; 
 don’t come to me any more, I don’t want 
 your acquaintance. I have no acquaint- 
 ances. I know what you came for! This 
 policeman’s story interested you. You 
 thought “here’s a rare case; an educated 
 girl fallen into such a life.” You wanted to 
 save me? Go away! I don’t want your. 
 help! I'd» rather be left -to rot alone 
 than—’ 
 
 I glanced at his face and broke off. I saw 
 that every word was as a blow to him. He 
 did not speak, but his mere look silenced me. 
 
 ‘Good evening, Nadyezhda Nikolaevna,’ he 
 said. ‘I am very sorry that I hurt you— 
 and myself too. Good evening !’ 
 
 He held out his hand to me (I couldn't 
 help giving him mine), and went slowly 
 out. I heard him go downstairs, and saw 
 from the window how he crossed the court 
 with bent head and slow, unsteady steps. 
 At the gate he turned, looked up at my | 
 windows, and disappeared. 
 
 And this man might be my ‘stay.’ I have 
 only to say a word to become a lawful 
 wife, the lawful wife of a poor but honourable 
 man, and even to become a poor but honour- 
 able mother, if the Lord in his wrath should 
 send me a child, 
 

 
 II. 
 
 O-DAY Yevsey Yevséich said to 
 me :— 
 
 ‘Look here, Ivan Ivanovich. 
 I’m an old man; listen to me. 
 Hisatt ve begun behaving in an unreasonable 
 manner; take care you don't get into hot- 
 water at head-quarters, my good sir,’ 
 
 He preached me a long sermon (beat- 
 ing about the bush and avoiding the main 
 point) about the office, about respect for 
 rank, about our general, about myself, and, 
 at last, touched upon my trouble. We were 
 sitting in a restaurant where Nadyezhda 
 Nikolaevna often comes with her acquaint- 
 ances. 7 
 
 Yevsey Yevséich noticed everything long 
 ago, and wormed a lot of details out of me. 
 I couldn’t hold my stupid tongue; blabbed 
 everything to him, and almost burst out 
 crying like a baby. 
 
 Yevsey Yevséich got quite angry. 
 
 208 
 
 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 209 
 
 ‘Why, you milksop! You sentimental 
 old woman! A young fellow like you—a 
 steady business man—to get up all this 
 fuss about a good-for-nothing creature like 
 that! Why, the deuce take her! what 
 business is she of yours? If it were some 
 good, respectable girl; but this creature, 
 saving your presence— 
 
 Yevsey Yevscich even spat on the floor. 
 
 After that he often returned to the subject 
 of his grievance (Yevsey Yevséich honestly 
 takes it as a grievance), but did not use 
 strong language any more, because he saw 
 that it was unpleasant to me. For that 
 matter he couldn’t restrain himself for long ; 
 and although at first he tried to speak 
 evasively, he always ended with the same 
 conclusion—that I ought to drop it; care 
 killed the cat, and so on. 
 
 And I, too, feel, strictly speaking, the 
 same thing that he repeats every day. How 
 often have I, too, said to myself that I must 
 drop it and hang care! Ah, how often! | 
 And just as often, after such thoughts, I 
 have gone out of doors, and my feet have 
 dragged me into that street... . And then 
 she comes, with painted face and darkened 
 eyebrows, in a velvet cloak and coquettish 
 seal-skin hat, straight towards me; and I 
 cross to the opposite side, so that she should 
 
210 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, 
 
 not notice that I follow her. She walks as far 
 as the corner, and then turns back, proudly 
 and insolently looking at the passers-by, and 
 sometimes addressing them. I follow her 
 from the other side of the street, trying not 
 to lose sight of her slender figure, until some 
 scoundrel or other comes up and speaks 
 to her. She answers him; she turns round 
 and goes with him ... and I follow them. 
 If the road were set with sharp nails it 
 would not hurt me more. I walk on, hear- 
 ing nothing and seeing nothing except two 
 HULCS#. wens 
 
 I look neither round me nor where I am 
 going, and walk on, with wide-open eyes, 
 knocking up against the passers-by, and get- 
 ting remarks and abuse and pushes. Once I 
 knocked down a child... 
 
 They turn to the right and left, and go 
 in at the gate—first she, then he. From 
 some strange sort of courtesy, he almost 
 always makes way for her. Then I enter. 
 Opposite the windows I know so well stands 
 a shed with a hay-loft; up to the loft leads 
 a light iron ladder, ending in a landing 
 without a balustrade. And I sit on the 
 landing and look at the lowered white 
 curtains ... } 
 
 
 
 To-day, too, I stood at my strange post, 
 although there was a hard frost. I was 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 211 
 
 frightfully chilled; my feet grew numb; and 
 still I stood. Steam came from my breath ; 
 my moustache and beard were frozen; my 
 feet began to die away. There were some 
 people in the yard, but they did not notice 
 me, and went past, talking in loud voices. 
 From the street resounded a drunken song 
 (oh, this is a gay street!), and some quarrel 
 or other, and the scraping of the spades on 
 a path that the doorkeepers were cleaning. 
 All these sounds rang in my ears, but I took 
 no more notice of them than of the frost 
 that stung my feet. All that—the noise and 
 frost, and my own feet—seemed, somehow, 
 far, far off. . . . My feet ached intolerably, 
 but something within me ached still worse. 
 I haven’t the strength to go to her. Does she 
 know that there is a man who would count 
 it as happiness to sit in the room with her, 
 and not so much as touch her hand, only 
 look into her eyes?—that there isa man 
 who would throw himself into the fire, if 
 that would help her to escape from this 
 hell, and she desired to escape? But she 
 doesn’t desire it, and to this day I don’t 
 know why she doesn’t. For I can’t believe 
 that she is corrupted to the very core; I 
 can’t believe that, because I know it is not 
 so—because I know her—because I love 
 her+love her... 
 
212 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 The waiter came up to Ivan Ivanovich 
 (who sat leaning his elbows on the table, and 
 hiding his face on his arms, shuddering from 
 time to time), and touched him on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 ‘Mr Nikitin! We can’t allow this, sir. ... 
 Before everyone. . . . My master will be 
 angry. Mr Nikitin! You mustn’t go on so 
 here. Please to get up.’ 
 
 Ivan Ivanovich raised his head and looked 
 at the waiter. He was not drunk at all, and 
 the waiter understood his mistake directly he 
 saw the sad face. 
 
 ‘Nothing, Semeon—nothing. Just give me 
 half a decanter of spirits ?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, sir. With what, sir?’ 
 
 ‘With what? . . . With a wine-glass 
 
 and, no; not half a decanter—a 
 whole one. Stay, I'll pay for all now, and 
 take two double-griven besides. In an hour 
 you send me home in a cab. You know 
 where I live?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, sir. Only, sir—I don’t understand— 
 
 He was evidently puzzled ; it was the first 
 time in all the years of his restaurant experi- 
 ence that he had come across such a case, 
 
 ‘Stay, though, I’d better do it myself.’ 
 
 Ivan Ivanovich put on his things in the 
 passage, went out at the street door and 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. ~— 213 
 
 turned into the bar, in the low window of 
 which glittered brightly in the gaslight the 
 parti-coloured labels of the bottles, carefully 
 and tastefully arranged on a bed of moss, 
 A minute afterwards he came out, carrying 
 two bottles, walked to his lodgings in the 
 Chambers Garnies Zuckerberg, and locked 
 his door. 
 
 
 

 
 AGAIN forgot everything, and 
 again have come to my senses. 
 Three weeks of daily street-walk- 
 ing; how on earth do I stand it? 
 To-day my head aches, all my bones ache— 
 everything aches. I am bored. I have the 
 blue devils—useless, miserable thoughts. If 
 only someone would come! 
 
 
 
 As if in reply to her thought the door- 
 bell rang. 
 
 ‘Is Evgenia at home?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, come in please,’ answered the ser- 
 vant’s voice. 
 
 Uneven, hasty steps along the corridor; 
 then the door was flung open and Ivan 
 Ivanovich appeared. 
 
 He did not in the least resemble the re- 
 served and modest man who had come two 
 months before. A hat cocked on one side, 
 a coloured necktie, a bold, self-confident look ; 
 and, with that, a staggering walk and a‘strong 
 smell of spirits. 
 
 214 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 21s 
 
 Nadyezhda Nikolaevna started to her feet. 
 
 ‘Good-day,’ he began; I’ve come to you.’ 
 
 And he sat down on a chair by the door, 
 stretching out his feet, and without taking off 
 his hat. She did not speak, neither did he. 
 If he had not been drunk she would have 
 found something to-say; but now she was 
 thoroughly confused. While she was think- 
 ing what to do he began again. 
 
 ‘“We—ell! Soherelam. .. . Ihave 
 a right to come, he suddenly cried out 
 furiously, and stood up, drawing himself to 
 his full height. His hat dropped off, the black 
 hair fell in disorder over his face, his eyes 
 flashed. His whole figure expressed such 
 frenzy, that, for a moment, Nadyezhda Nikol- 
 aevna was terrified. 
 
 She tried coaxing, 
 
 ‘Listen, Ivan Ivanovich, I shall be very glad 
 to have you come to me, only go home now. 
 You have been drinking. Please go home. 
 Come again when you are quite well.’ 
 
 ‘ Frightened !’ Ivan Ivanovich muttered as if 
 to himself, sitting down again. ‘Tamed! 
 But why do you drive me away?’ he cried _ 
 again desperately. ‘Why? You know it 
 was on your account that I began to drink. 
 I never was a drunkard. Why do you draw 
 me to you? Tell me?’ 
 
 He burst out crying. The drunken tears 
 
216 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 choked him, streamed down his face, trickled 
 into his mouth; his lips were convulsed with 
 sobs ; he could scarcely speak. 
 
 ‘Why, any other girl would be glad to 
 have a chance of getting out of this hell. I 
 would work like a horse—you would live 
 safely, peacefully, honourably. Tell me, 
 what have I done to deserve such hate from 
 you P’ 
 
 Nadyezhda Nikolaevna remained silent. 
 
 ‘Why don’t you answer?’ hecried. ‘Speak, 
 say what you like—only say something! 
 I’m drunk, that’s true. I shouldn't have 
 come here sober. Do you know how afraid 
 I am of you when I’m in my right senses? 
 Why, you can twist me round your little 
 finger. If you tell me to steal, I'll steal ; if 
 you tell me to murder, I'll murder! Do you 
 know that? Ofcourse youdo. You'reclever ; 
 you see everything. If you dont know— 
 Nadya, my love, have mercy on me—!’ 
 
 And he flung himself on his knees before 
 her. But she stood silently with her head 
 thrown back, resting against the wall, and 
 her hands clasped behind her. Her eyes 
 were fixed on some one point of space. Did 
 she see or hear anything there? What did 
 she feel at the sight of this man, grovelling at 
 her feet and imploring her love? Pity? 
 Contempt? She wanted to pity him, but 3 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 217 
 
 felt that she could not; he roused in her no- 
 thing but disgust. And, indeed, what other 
 feeling could he excite when in this pitiable 
 condition—drunk, dirty, humbly entreating? 
 
 He had left off going to business several 
 days ago, and had got drunk every day. 
 Finding consolation in drink, he had given up 
 the pursuit of his passion and only sat at home 
 and drank, collecting his strength to go to her 
 and tell her ‘a//” What he wanted to say to 
 her he himself did not know. ‘I will say all; 
 I will lay my heart bare, passed vaguely 
 through his tipsy head. At last he made up 
 his mind, came and tried to speak. Even 
 through the mist of intoxication he realised 
 that he was saying and doing things not at 
 all likely to awaken love for him, and yet he 
 went on, feeling that with every word he was 
 falling ever lower and lower, ever tightening 
 the rope about his neck. 
 
 He spoke long and incoherently. His 
 speech grew slower and slower, and, at last, 
 the heavy, swollen eyelids closed, and, drop- 
 ping his head over the back of the chair, he 
 fell asleep. 
 
 Nadyezhda Nikolaevna stood in her former 
 position, gazing aimlessly somewhere on the 
 ceiling, and drumming her fingers on the wall- 
 paper. . 
 
 “Am I sorry for him? No. What can I 
 
 K 
 
218 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 do sfore him aa Marry @him 9 ea butecdarcmmer 
 And won't that be selling myself just the 
 same? My God, no; that’s still worse!’ 
 
 She did not know why it would be worse, 
 but felt it to be so. 
 
 ‘Now, at least, I am_ straightforward. 
 Everyone has the right to strike me. Do I 
 not suffer insults enough? But then!—In 
 what way shall I be better? Won’t it be just 
 the same prostitution, only not so open? 
 There he sits asleep; his head has fallen 
 backwards, his mouth is open, his face is as 
 pale as a corpse. His coat is all soiled; no 
 doubt he’s been wallowing somewhere. How 
 heavily he breathes ; sometimes even snores. 
 
 Yes, but all that will pass over, and he 
 will be modest and decorous again. No, it’s 
 not» that !@butl sthinkethatsthiseman weiter 
 give him the upper hand over me now, will 
 torment me with one recollection; and I 
 couldn’t endure that. No, I had _ better 
 remain as I am; after all, it’s not for long 
 now. 
 
 She threw something over her shoulders, 
 and went out of the room, slamming the door 
 behind her. Ivan Ivanovich woke up at the 
 noise, looked around him with vacant eyes, 
 and, finding the chair uncomfortable to sleep 
 on, staggered to the bed, tumbled down on it 
 and slept like a top. He awoke late in the 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 219 
 
 evening with a headache, but sober; and, 
 seeing where he was, rushed away. 
 
 I left the house, not knowing myself where 
 to go. The weather was bad, the day dark 
 and gloomy ; wet snow fell on my face and 
 hands. It would be much better to sit at home; 
 but can I sit there now? He is going to 
 utter perdition. What can I do to save him ? 
 Can I alter my relation to him? Oh! all my 
 heart, all my soul burns! I don’t know 
 myself why I don’t choose to catch at this 
 chance to forsake this fearful life, to free 
 myself from this nightmare. If I married 
 him? . . . New life, new hopes 
 Cannot this pity I feel for him ever pass into 
 love? 
 
 Ah, no! now he is ready to lick my hand 
 like a dog; but then . . . then he will 
 spurn me with his foot and say,—‘ Ah! and 
 you resisted too! Contemptible creature! 
 You despised me!’ 
 
 Will he say that? I think he will. 
 
 There is one last resource, one way of » 
 deliverance open to me, one sure way, that I 
 resolved on long ago, and that I shall surely 
 come to in the end; but it is too early yet, I 
 think. I am too young, there is too much 
 life in me. I want to live; I want to breathe, 
 to feel, to hear, to see ; I want to be able to 
 
220 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 look; tonce Sina away,eat, theesky eataeie 
 Neva. 
 
 Here I am at the embankment. On one 
 side huge buildings, on the other the 
 blackening Neva. Soon the ice will break, 
 the river will be blue again. The park on 
 the other side is coming into leaf. The 
 islands, too, are growing green. Although 
 it is a Petersburg spring, still, it is spring. 
 
 And suddenly came up before me my last 
 happy spring. I was then a child of seven 
 years old, and lived with my father and 
 mother in the country, in the steppes. I 
 was very little looked after, and ran about 
 _ wherever I liked. JI remember how, after the 
 thaw, rivers of water flowed and murmured 
 in our steppe-ravines, how wonderful the 
 air became, damp and delicious. First the 
 tops of the hillocks grew bare, and the green 
 grass appeared onthem. Then all the steppe 
 grew green, although the melting snow still 
 lay in the ravines. Ina few days, as quickly 
 as if they had started from the earth ready- 
 made, grew up peony-bushes, covered with 
 gorgeous, brilliant, crimson flowers. The 
 larks began to sing ; 
 
 Oh God! what have I Aone that I deserve 
 to be thrown into hell before I die? Isn’t it 
 worse than any hell,—what I endure? . 
 
 The stone staircase leads straight down to 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 221 
 
 a hole in the ice. Something dragged me 
 down to look at the water. But isn’t it too 
 soon? Oh yes! too soon! I'll wait a bit 
 longer. 
 
 And yet, how sweet it would be to stand 
 on that slippery, wet edge of ice! Then I 
 should just—slip down. Only it would be cold 
 
 one second, and then to go floating 
 along the river under the ice; to dash one’s 
 hands and feet and head and face frantically 
 against the ice. I wish I knew whether the 
 daylight penetrates down there. 
 
 I stood beside the hole a long time without 
 moving, and got, at last, into the condition in 
 which one doesn’t think about anything. My 
 feet were wet, and still I did not move. The 
 wind was not cold, but it pierced me through 
 and through, so that I shivered from head to 
 foot, and still I stood there. I don’t know 
 how long I should have continued in that 
 petrified state, if some one had not shouted 
 to me from the embankment. 
 
 ‘Hi there, miss! ma’am !’ 
 
 I did not turn. 
 
 ‘Come on to the pavement please, ma’am !’ 
 
 Someone began descending the staircase 
 after me. Besides the scraping of feet on the 
 sanded steps, I heard a kind of dull tapping. 
 I turned round; a policeman was coming 
 down; his sword rapped against the stones. 
 
222 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 Seeing my face, he suddenly changed his 
 official expression into a rough and insolent 
 one, came up to me, and seized me by the 
 shoulder. 
 
 ‘Get along with you, you good-for-nothing 
 trollop! Always dangling about everywhere! 
 You'll be throwing yourself under the ice 
 next, or some such trick, and then we get 
 into trouble for a rubbishy thing like you !’ 
 
 He saw from my face what I am. 
 
 
 

 
 Te 
 
 Ve sy Sethe same thing)... eel 
 can’t stop a minute alone with- 
 out these black moods coming 
 on. What shall I do with 
 
 myself to forget ? 
 
 Annushka has brought me a letter. Who 
 is it from? It’s so long since I got letters 
 from anyone. 
 
 
 
 ‘DEAR MADAM,—Although I clearly un- 
 derstand that I am nothing to you, never- 
 theless, I trust that you are a kind-hearted 
 girl and would not willingly grieve me. For 
 the first and last time in my life, I beg you 
 to come and see me, as to-day is my name-. 
 day. Ihave no friends or relations to invite. 
 I implore you to come. I give you my word 
 of honour that I will say nothing unpleasant 
 or offensive to you. Be merciful to your 
 
 sincere well-wisher, 
 ‘IVAN NIKITIN. 
 223 
 
224 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 ‘P.S.—I cannot remember without shame 
 my late behaviour in your lodgings. Come 
 to me to-day at six o’clock. Address above. 
 
 crlaaNe 
 
 What is the meaning of this? He has 
 made up his mind to write to me. There’s 
 something not quite straight here. What 
 does he want to do to me? Shall I go or 
 note 
 
 Strange to decide upon, to go or not. 
 If he has laid a trap for me, it is either to 
 
 kill me, or . .. . but even if he kills me 
 it will be a way out of the muddle. 
 I will go. 
 
 I will dress simply and modestly, and wash 
 the paint and powder off my face. It will 
 be more agreeable for him. I will do my 
 hair simply. How thin my hair has grown! 
 
 I fastened it up, put on a black stuff 
 dress, a little black scarf, and a white collar 
 and cuffs, and went to look in the glass. 
 
 I almost burst out crying when I saw in 
 it a woman not at all resembling the Evgenia 
 who so ‘charmingly’ dances immodest dances 
 in various low haunts. What I saw was not 
 a shameless, painted courtesan, with smiling 
 face and stylish head-dress, and darkened 
 lashes. This pale, broken-down, unhappy 
 woman, with great, mournful, black eyes, 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 225 
 
 heavily ringed with dark lines,—this is some- 
 thing new—not I at all— But, perhaps, this 
 is—just I. And the other one, Evgenia, 
 that everyone sees and knows—/hat is some- 
 thing foreign—taking possession of me— 
 crushing me—killing me. 
 
 And I actually burst into tears, and wept 
 long and bitterly. Tears are a relief—so 
 I have always heard from my childhood,— 
 but that is not true for everyone. My heart 
 grew not lighter, but heavier. Every sob 
 hurt me, every tear was bitter. To those 
 who have still some hope of deliverance and 
 grace, perhaps tears are a relief. But what 
 hope have I? 
 
 I dried my tears and went. 
 
 I found Madame Zuckerberg’s lodgings 
 without difficulty, and the Finnish servant- 
 maid showed me Ivan Ivanovich’s door. 
 
 ‘May I come in ?’ 
 
 In the room the lid of a trunk was hastily 
 banged. 
 
 ‘Come in, cried Ivan Ivanovich quickly. 
 
 I entered. He was sitting at a writing- 
 table and gumming down an envelope. He 
 did not even seem glad at my appearance. 
 
 Good-evening, Ivan Ivanovich,’ said I. 
 
 ‘Good evening, Nadyezhda Nikolaevna,’ he 
 answered, rising and holding out his hand. 
 
226 STORIES FROM GARSHIN, 
 
 Something tender crossed his face for a mo- 
 ment, when I gave him my hand, but instantly 
 disappeared. He was grave—even stern. 
 
 ‘Thank you for coming.’ 
 
 ‘Why did you ask me?’ said I. 
 
 ‘Good heavens! don’t you know what it is 
 to me to see you? But this conversation is 
 unpleasant to you.. ” 
 
 We sat down in silence. The Finnish 
 maid brought the samovar. Ivan Ivanovich 
 handed me tea and sugar, then put on the 
 table jam, cakes, confectionery, and half a 
 bottle of sweet wine. 
 
 ‘Excuse these preparations, Nadyezhda 
 Nikolaevna. Perhaps they offend you, but 
 don’t be angry. Beso kind as to make tea. 
 Please take something—there are sweets 
 and wine.’ 
 
 While I made and poured out the tea, he 
 sat opposite me, in such a position that his 
 face remained in shadow, and looked at me 
 steadily. I felt his fixed and earnest gaze 
 upon me, and felt myself blush under it. I 
 raised my eyes for an instant, but dropped 
 them again at once, for he still continued 
 gravely looking me straight in the face— 
 What is that for? Is it possible that these 
 surroundings—the simple black dress, the ab- 
 sence of shameless faces and vulgar speeches, 
 have affected me so strongly as to turn me 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 227, 
 
 back into the modest, bashful girl I was two 
 years ago? It annoyed me. 
 
 ‘Tell me, please, why do you stare at me 
 so?’ I said with an effort, but boldly. 
 
 Ivan Ivanovich started up and began pac- 
 ing the room. 
 
 ‘Nadyezhda Nikolaevna! Don’t speak so 
 roughly! Be just one hour as you were 
 when you came in!’ 
 
 ‘But I don’t understand why you invited 
 me. Surely not merely in order to sit silent 
 and look at me?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, Nadyezhda Nikolaevna, merely for 
 that. You see, there is no particular offence 
 to you in that, and to me it’s a consolation to 
 look at you for the last time. You were so 
 kind as to come; and in this dress, too, as 
 you are now. I didn’t expect that, and am 
 still more grateful to you for that.’ 
 
 ‘ But why for the last time, Ivan Ivanovich ?’ 
 
 ‘I’m going away.’ 
 
 e\y hereto 2? 
 
 ‘A long way, Nadyezhda Nikolaevna. It is 
 not my name-day to-day. I just wrote that, 
 —I don’t know why. I simply wanted to look 
 at you once more. At first I wanted to go 
 and wait till you come out, but then I some- 
 how made up my mind to ask you to come 
 here, and you were so kind as to come. God 
 give you every happiness for that!’ 
 
228 STORIES FROM GARSHIN. 
 
 ‘There’s little happiness before me, Ivan 
 Ivanovich.’ 
 
 ‘Yes, there’s little happiness before you. 
 For that matter, of course, you yourself 
 know better than I what is before you...’ 
 
 Ivan Ivanovich’s voice quivered.. . ‘ It’s better 
 for me, he added, ‘because I am going 
 away... 
 
 And his voice quivered still more. 
 
 I felt an unutterable pity for him. Was I 
 just to be so hard against him? Why did I 
 repulse him so roughly, so bitterly? But now 
 t was too late to regret. 
 
 I rose and began to put on my things, 
 Ivan Ivanovich started up as if he had been 
 stung. 
 
 ‘You're going >—Already ?’ he asked in an 
 agitated voice. 
 
 ‘Yes, it’s time to go—’ 
 
 ‘Time to go... There again! Nadyezhda 
 Nikolaevna! you'd better let me kill you at 
 once !’ 
 
 He said this in a whisper, grasping me by 
 the arm and looking at me with great wild 
 eyes. 
 
 ‘It'll be better ?>—Yes ?’ 
 
 ‘But, you see, Ivan Ivanovich, you would be 
 sent to Siberia, and I don’t want that on my 
 account.’ 
 
 ‘To Siberia? .. . Do you think that’s why 
 
AN OCCURRENCE. 229 
 
 I can’t kill you—that I’m afraid of Siberia? 
 That’s not the reason... I can’t kill you 
 1 eee Why, how can I kill you?.... 
 How can I kill you, my love?’ he gasped, 
 miei. 2 l-. . 
 
 And he seized me, lifted me off my feet 
 like a child, stifling me with embraces and 
 covering my face and lips and eyes and hair 
 with kisses. Then, just as suddenly as he 
 had caught me up, he put me down again, 
 and said hurriedly :— 
 
 ‘Well, go then, go! Forgive me; it’s the 
 first and last time. Don’t be angry with 
 me. Go, Nayezhda Nikolaevna!... Go, 
 go! thank you for coming.’ : 
 
 He accompanied me to the door, and in- 
 stantly locked himself in. I went down- 
 stairs. My heart ached worse than before. 
 
 Let him go away and forget me, and leave 
 me to live my life out. That’s enough senti- 
 mentalising—time to go home. 
 
 I walked faster, and already began think- 
 ing what dress to wear and where to go this 
 evening. So, there’s the end of my romance 
 —one little foothold on my slippery path. 
 Now I can glide freely, without hindrance, 
 lower and lower... ‘ BUT HE’S SHOOTING 
 HIMSELF NOW, something suddenly cried 
 within me. I stopped, petrified. Everything 
 grew dark before my eyes—my blood curdled 
 
230 AN OCCURRENCE. 
 
 —I held my breath... Yes, he’s killing 
 himself now! Heshut down the trunk ; he'd 
 been inspecting the revolver; he’d written a 
 letter—‘ the last time’... I must rush! Per- 
 haps I shall be in time. God! Stop him! 
 Leave him to me, my God! 
 
 A deadly, unknown terror seized upon me. 
 I tore back like a maniac, dashing against 
 the passers-by. I don’t remember how I ran 
 upstairs. I remember only the stupid face 
 of the servant who opened the door. I re- 
 member the long, dark corridor with the 
 lodgers’ doors. I remember how I flew to 
 his door .. . And, as I seized the handle, a 
 shot was fired off within. People came rush- 
 ing out from everywhere, and they and the 
 corridor, and the doors and the walls, whirled 
 furiously round and round ... And I fell— 
 and in my brain, too, everything whirled 
 round and disappeared. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
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