Coward

The war is decidedly giving me no rest. I see clearly that it is dragging, and when it will end is very difficult to foretell. Our soldiers are as splendid as ever, but the enemy has proved far from being as weak as we thought, and now, four months from the declaration of war, no decisive success has been gained by our side. In the meanwhile every extra day claims its hundreds of victims. Is it my nerves which cause the telegrams merely stating the numbers of killed and wounded to affect me far more than those around me? Somebody will calmly read out: “Our losses insignificant; officers, wounded, so many, giving names; rank and file, killed, 50; wounded, 100,” and even rejoice that the numbers are so small; but to me the reading of such news immediately brings the whole bloody picture before my eyes. Fifty dead, one hundred maimed⁠—this is “insignificant!” Why are we so horrified when the newspapers inform us of some murder where the victims are few? Why does not the sight of corpses riddled with bullets lying on a battlefield strike us with the same horror as the interior of a house ransacked by murder? Why does a catastrophe costing the lives of some scores of persons cause all Russia to cry out, whilst nobody pays any attention to advanced-guard skirmishes with “insignificant” losses, also of some scores of men?

A few days ago Lvoff, a medical student and a friend of mine, with whom I often argue about the war, said to me: “Well, we shall see, my peaceful friend, what will become of your humanitarian convictions when you are called up and are obliged to fire at people.”

“Me, Vassili Petrovich? They will not call me up. I am in the Militia Reserve.”

“That may be, but if the war drags on it will affect the Militia as well. Do not be too sure about it. Your turn will come.”

My heart seemed to contract. How was it that this thought had not come into my head before? Of course the Militia will be called up. There was nothing impossible in that. “If the war drags on,” and it is sure to drag on. Even if this war does not last long it is all the same, some other war will commence. Why not have a war? Why not perform great exploits? It seems to me that the present war is only the forerunner of future wars from which I shall not escape, nor my little brother, nor even my sister’s baby boy. And my turn will come very soon.

What will become of your “ego”? Your whole being protests against the war, but nevertheless the war will compel you to shoulder a rifle, and go to die⁠ ⁠… and kill.⁠ ⁠… No, it is impossible! I am a quiet, kindhearted young man who has up till now known only his books, the lecture-room, the family circle, and one or two close friends; who has dreamt in one or two years’ time of beginning other work, the labour of love and of truth. I have been accustomed to regard this world objectively, accustomed to place it before me. I have imagined I understood all the evil in it, and so would be able to avoid this evil. But now I see my whole building of tranquillity destroyed, and I see myself automatically fitting on to my shoulders those same tatters, holes, and stains which I have hitherto only looked at. And no kind of development, no self-knowledge, no knowledge of the world, no kind of spiritual liberty will give me a pitiful physical liberty⁠—the liberty to dispose of my own body.

Lvoff laughs when I begin to expound my views against the war to him.

“My dear old chap, look at things more simply, life will be easier then,” says he. “Do you think that this carnage is to my taste? Apart from the fact that it will bring misfortune on all, it also affects me personally. It will not let me finish my studies. They will reduce the term of the courses, and send us out to cut off legs and arms. For all that I do not worry myself with fruitless reflections on the horrors of war, because, whatever I may think, I can do nothing to abolish it. Surely it is better not to think about it, but to mind one’s own business? If they send us to treat the wounded, I shall go and do so. What is to be done in such a time as this? One must sacrifice oneself. By the way, do you know that Masha is going as a hospital nurse?”

“Not really?”

“The day before yesterday she made up her mind, and today has gone to practise bandaging. I did not try to dissuade her, but only asked her how she intends to arrange about her studies.

“ ‘Afterwards,’ she says⁠ ⁠… ‘I will study afterwards if I am alive.’ Never mind; let her go as a nurse. It will do her good.”

“And what about Kuzma Thomich?”

“Kuzma says nothing, only he has become almost ferociously gloomy, and has quite given up studying. I am glad for his sake that my sister is going. He is simply wasting away, and is in torture. He follows her like her shadow and does nothing. Well⁠—it is love!” and Vassili Petrovich shook his head. “He has rushed off now to escort her home, as if she has not always gone about alone!”

“It seems to me, Vassili Petrovich, that it is a pity he lives with you.”

“Of course it is a pity, but who could have foreseen this? For myself and sister this lodging is too large. There was one room too many. Why not let it to a nice man? And a nice man took it and has fallen in love. And I am sorry, and it is sad for her. How is Kuzma beneath her? He is a kind, intelligent, good chap. But she literally does not seem to notice him. But now make yourself scarce. I have no time to waste. If you want to see my sister and Kuzma, wait in the dining-room. They will be back soon.”

“No, Vassili Petrovich, I also have no time to spare. Goodbye.”

I had only just got into the street when I saw Mary Petrovna and Kuzma. They were coming along without speaking. Mary Petrovna in front, with a determined, concentrated expression on her face, and Kuzma a little to one side behind her, literally not daring to walk alongside her, but from time to time casting a hurried glance towards her face. They passed by without seeing me.

I can do nothing and think of nothing. I have read the account of the third fight before Plevna. Twelve thousand casualties amongst the Russians and Romanians alone!⁠—without counting the Turks⁠—twelve thousand!⁠ ⁠… These figures come before me in the form of an endless, drawn-out string of corpses lying side by side. If placed shoulder to shoulder they would form a road eight versts long.

“What is this?”

They tell me something about Skobeloff: that he hurled himself at some place, attacked something, took some fort, or they have taken it from him⁠—I do not remember. In this awful affair I understand and see only one thing⁠—a mountain of corpses serving as a pedestal for grandiose matters which will be inscribed on the pages of history. Perhaps it is necessary⁠—I will not take it upon myself to judge, and I cannot. I am not arguing about the war, but regard it with a direct feeling aroused by the wholesale shedding of blood. The bullock before the eyes of which other bullocks are slaughtered probably experiences something similar. It does not understand why it is to be killed, and only gazes terrified, with starting eyes, at the blood, and bellows in a despairing, heartrending manner.

Am I a coward or not?

Today I was told that I am a coward. Certainly it was a very shallow-minded person who said so when I declared in her presence my unwillingness to go to the war, and expressed a fear that they will call me up to serve. Her opinion did not distress me, but raised the question⁠—Am I really a coward? Perhaps all my aversion against what everyone else considers a great matter only arises from fear of my skin! Is it really worth while to worry about any one unimportant life in view of a great matter? And am I capable of subjecting my life to danger generally for the sake of any matter?

I did not occupy myself for any length of time with these questions. I recalled my whole life, all those occasions⁠—truth to say, not many⁠—on which I have been brought face to face with danger, and I could not charge myself with cowardice. I did not fear for my life then, and I do not now. Consequently it is not death which frightens me.⁠ ⁠…

Always fresh battles, fresh mortal suffering. After reading the papers I can do nothing. In books, instead of letters, I see prostrate rows of human beings. My pen seems a weapon inflicting black wounds on the white paper. If this goes much further it will become regular hallucinations. But now a new trouble has appeared which has somewhat taken me away from the everlasting oppressing thought.

Yesterday evening I went to the Lvoffs and found them at tea. The brother and sister were sitting at the table, but Kuzma was pacing quickly from corner to corner of the room, holding his hand to a swollen face tied up with a handkerchief.

“What is the matter?” I asked him.

He did not answer, but only made a gesture with his hand and continued his pacing.

“His teeth have been aching, and an enormous abscess has formed,” said Mary Petrovna. “I begged him at the time to go and see a doctor, but he would not listen to me, and now see what it has come to.”

“The doctor will be here directly. I went for him,” said Vassili Petrovich.

“Very necessary,” murmured Kuzma through his teeth.

“Of course, when it might easily turn into something most serious, and you still keep walking about, in spite of my entreaties to lie down. Do you know how this sometimes ends?”

“It is all the same how it ends,” muttered Kuzma.

“Not at all, Kuzma Thomich,” put in Mary Petrovna quietly. “Do not talk nonsense.”

These words were sufficient to calm Kuzma. He even sat down at the table and asked for some tea. Mary Petrovna poured some out, and handed him the glass. When he took the glass from her hand his face took on a triumphant expression which was so incongruous with the comical appearance given him by his swollen cheek that I could not help smiling. Lvoff also laughed. Only Mary Petrovna looked seriously and compassionately at Kuzma.

The doctor arrived, a fresh-looking, ruddy-complexioned man with cheeks like rosy apples and a most cheery manner. But when he examined the patient’s neck his usual cheery expression changed to one of some concern.

“Come along,” said he, “let us go into your room. I must have a good look at you.”

I went after them to Kuzma’s room. The doctor placed him on the bed and commenced to examine the upper portion of his chest, carefully tapping it with his fingers.

“H’m, you must lie quietly and not get up. Have you any friends who would give up some of their spare time for you?” inquired the doctor.

“I think so,” replied Kuzma in a perplexed tone.

“I would ask them,” said the doctor, turning politely to me, “to look after the patient from today, and if any new symptoms appear to come for me.”

He left the room. Lvoff escorted him to the passage, where they talked for a long time in low tones about something, and I went to Mary Petrovna. She was sitting in a thoughtful pose, resting her head on one hand, and with the other was slowly stirring her tea.

“The doctor has ordered someone to watch Kuzma.”

“Is there really any danger?” Mary Petrovna asked with alarm.

“Probably there is⁠—otherwise, why should it be necessary to watch him? You will not refuse to look after him?”

“Of course not. I have not gone to the war, but yet must turn nurse. Let us go to him. It must be very dull for him to lie all alone.”

Kuzma met us smiling, so far as his swollen cheek allowed him to do so.

“Thank you,” he said, “and I was already beginning to think you had forgotten me.”

“No, Kuzma Thomich, we will not forget you now. We must look after you. See what becomes of disobedience,” said Mary Petrovna smilingly.

“And shall you?” timidly asked Kuzma.

“Yes, yes, only you will have to obey me.”

Kuzma closed his eyes and reddened with pleasure.

“Ah, yes,” said he suddenly, turning to me. “Give me the looking-glass; it is lying on the table.”

I gave him a small round looking-glass. Kuzma begged me to show him the light, and with the help of the glass he looked at the place. After this his face darkened, and, notwithstanding that we three tried to make him talk, he never uttered a word all the evening.

Today they have told me that they will soon call up the Militia. I have expected it, and was not much surprised. I could get out of the fate I so fear. I could make use of certain influential friends, and stay in St. Petersburg at my post. They could “arrange” it for me, or send me as a clerk. But first I dislike resorting to such means, and second something vague and undefined within me is weighing up my position, and forbids me shirk the war. “It is not right,” says a little voice inside me.

Something I never dreamt of has happened.

I went this morning to relieve Mary Petrovna in watching Kuzma. She met me at the door with tear-stained eyes, pale and worn out with a sleepless night.

“What is the matter, Mary Petrovna?”

“Hush!” she whispered. “Do you know all is ended?”

“What is ended? He is not dead?”

“No, no, not yet⁠—but there is no possible hope. Both doctors⁠—we called in another⁠—” Tears prevented her from saying more.

“Come and look at him.”

“You must first dry those tears and drink some water. You will quite upset him.”

“It is all the same. Does not he know already! He knew yesterday when he asked for the glass. He would soon have been a doctor himself.”

The heavy atmosphere of an operating theatre filled the room in which the sick man lay. His bed had been moved into the middle of the room. His long legs, huge body, and arms stretched by his sides, showed up clearly under the blanket. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing slowly and heavily. It seemed to me that he had grown thinner in one night. His face was sticky and moist, and had an unpleasant greenish tinge.

“What is the matter with him?” I asked in a whisper.

“Let him tell you. You stay with him. I cannot.”

She left the room, hiding her face in her hands and convulsed with the sobs she was trying to restrain, and I sat down near the bed and waited until he should awake. There was an oppressive stillness in the room. Only the rare, heavy breathing of the sick man was heard and the soft ticking of a watch lying on a little table near the bed. I looked at his face, which was scarcely recognizable. It was not that his features had changed so much, but that I saw an entirely new light in them. I had known Kuzma for a long time, and we were friends, although not on especially intimate terms. I had never been on such terms with him as now. I recalled his life, disappointments, and joys as if they had been my own. In his love for Mary Petrovna I had hitherto seen more of the comic side, but now I understood what torments this being must have experienced. Was he really in such danger? I wondered. He cannot be. Surely a man cannot die from toothache! Mary Petrovna is crying about him, but he will recover, and all will be well.

He opened his eyes and saw me. Without changing the expression on his face, he said slowly, pausing after each word:

“How do you do?⁠—See what⁠—I am like.⁠—The end has come. Has come so⁠—stealthily, unexpectedly⁠—it is stupid.”

“Tell me, Kuzma, what is the matter with you? Perhaps it is nothing like so bad as all that.”

“Not so bad⁠—you say. No, no, old friend⁠—it is very bad. I do not make mistakes on such a simple matter as this. Look!”

He slowly and mechanically turned down the blanket and unbuttoned his shirt. Commencing from the right side of his neck was a dark, unpleasant-looking patch, the size of one’s hand, extending to his chest⁠—gangrene.

For four days now by the sick man’s bedside I have not closed my eyes, sitting first with Mary Petrovna and then with her brother. The patient appears to be barely living, yet life seems to be unwilling to leave his strong body. They have cut out the dead flesh, and the doctors have ordered us to wash the gaping wound left by the operation every two hours. Every two hours we two or three go to his bed, turn him over, raise his huge body, and wash the terrible wound with carbolic acid through a gutta-percha tube. It sprays the wound, and Kuzma sometimes finds strength even to smile because he explains “it tickles.” As is the case with all persons who are rarely ill, he likes being nursed and tended like a child, and when Mary Petrovna takes in her hands what he calls “the reins of government”⁠—that is, the gutta-percha tube⁠—and begins to spray, he is especially pleased, and declares that no one can do this so skilfully as she, notwithstanding the fact that her trembling hands often cause the bed to be soaked with water.

How their relations have altered! Mary Petrovna, who had been something unattainable for him, on whom he had gazed and feared, who had never taken any notice of him, now nurses him tenderly, and often sits crying quietly by his bedside. And he calmly accepts it all as a matter of course, and talks to her as would a father to his little daughter.

Sometimes he suffers very much. His wound burns and fever racks him.⁠ ⁠… Then strange thoughts come into my brain. To me Kuzma seems one of those of whom there are tens of thousands mentioned in the reports. By his pain and sufferings I attempt to measure the evil caused by the war. How much suffering and anguish here in one room, on one bed⁠—and yet all this is merely one drop in the sea of sorrow and agony being experienced by the enormous number of those whom they are sending forward only to lie on the field in heaps of dead or still groaning, bloodstained, plundered bodies.

I must ask Lvoff or Mary Petrovna to take my place, if only for a couple of hours, whilst I have a rest. I am utterly worn out from want of sleep and my depressing thoughts.

I was sleeping soundly, curled up on the little sofa, when I was awakened by someone touching my shoulder.

“Get up! get up!” said Mary Petrovna.

I jumped up instantly, without at first understanding anything. Mary Petrovna whispered something rapidly in a frightened manner to me.

“Spots! new spots!” I gathered at last.

“What spots, and where?”

“Oh dear, dear! he does not understand,” she wailed. “New spots have appeared on Kuzma Thomich. I have already sent for the doctor.”

“But perhaps it is nothing,” said I, with the indifference of a just-awakened man.

“How nothing? Look for yourself.”

Kuzma was wrapped in a heavy, restless sleep. He kept tossing his head from side to side, and sometimes groaned deeply. His chest was bare, and I saw on it, an inch or so below the bandaged wound, two new little black spots. The gangrene had penetrated further under the skin, and spreading under it, had come to the surface in two places. Although before this I had little hope of his recovery, these new unmistakable symptoms of death made me turn pale.

Mary Petrovna sat in a corner of the room with her hands on her knees, and silently gazed at me with despairing eyes.

“You must not despair,” I said to her. “The doctor will be here directly, and will examine him. Perhaps it is not yet all over, and perhaps we shall yet pull him round.”

“No, he will die,” she whispered.

“Well, if he dies,” I answered, also quietly, “it will, of course, be a great grief to all of us, but you must not wear yourself out in this manner. You look half dead.”

“You do not understand what tortures I suffer these days. I cannot myself explain why I did not love him, and even now do not love him, in the way he does me. But if he dies my heart will break. I shall always remember his steady, open glance, his persistent silence when near me, although he liked talking, and could talk well. I shall always reproach myself that I did not take pity on him, did not appreciate his cleverness, his love, his devotion. Perhaps this seems ridiculous to you, but the thought is a constant torture to me now that if I had loved him⁠—we should have lived quite differently. All would have happened differently, and this awful and stupid business would not have happened. One thinks and thinks, excuses and justifies oneself, but all the time at the bottom of one’s mind something keeps saying⁠—Your fault, your fault, your fault!”

At that moment I glanced at the patient, fearing that our whispering would awaken him, and saw a change in his face. He had awaked, and was listening to what Mary Petrovna was saying, but did not wish to show he was. His lips trembled, his cheeks burned, his whole face was lighted up literally as if by the sun, just as a wet, sombre-looking field is brightened up when the clouds above it open and allow a ray of sunshine to peep through. He had evidently forgotten about his sickness and fear of death. Only one feeling filled him, and two tears trickled from his closed and trembling eyelids. Mary Petrovna looked at him for a second or two half-frightenedly, and then blushed. A soft expression flashed into her face, and, bending over the poor half-corpse, she kissed him.

Then he opened his eyes. “My God, how I do not want to die!” he murmured. And suddenly strange, quiet sobbing sounds filled the room⁠—sounds quite new to me, who had never seen this man cry. I left the room, I was almost breaking down myself.

I also do not want to die, and all these thousands do not want to die. Kuzma at least has found consolation in his last moments⁠—but there at the war! Kuzma, for all his fear of death and his physical suffering, would scarcely change these present moments for any others of his life. No, it is not that at all! Death will always be death, but to die amidst those near and dear to one, and falling into the mud and one’s own blood, momentarily expecting someone will come up and finish you off, or that guns will ride over you and crush you like a worm.

“I tell you frankly,” said the doctor to me in the passage, as he put on his shuba and galoshes, “that with similar cases in hospitals ninety-nine out of one hundred are fatal. I can only hope on the attentive nursing, the wonderful spirits of the patient, and his burning desire to recover.”

“Every sick person longs to recover, doctor.”

“Of course, but your friend has certain vivifying circumstances,” said the doctor, with a smile. “And so this evening we shall operate again, and hope for the best.”

He shook my hand, and went off on his rounds, leaving behind him the smell of his bearskin shuba. In the evening he came with his instruments.

“Perhaps you would like, my embryo colleague, to operate for practice,” said he, turning to Lvoff. Lvoff nodded his head in assent, turned up his sleeves, and with a serious, gloomy expression on his face, began. I saw how he inserted some wonderful-looking, three-edged instrument into the wound, and saw how Kuzma, as the keen edge pierced his body, clutched the bedstead with his hands and clenched his teeth with the pain.

“Don’t be an old woman,” said Lvoff to him gruffly, placing a tampon into the new wound.

“Does it hurt very much?” asked Mary Petrovna tenderly.

“Not so very much, dearie, but I have grown weak, and am worn out.”

They bandaged him, gave him some wine, and he calmed down. The doctor left, and I, with Mary Petrovna, began to put the room in order.

“Put the clothes right,” murmured Kuzma in an even, dull voice. “There is a draught.”

I commenced to readjust his pillows and bedclothes according to his directions, which he gave very irritably, declaring that somewhere about his left elbow there was a small opening through which the cold was coming, and begging me to tuck the clothes in better. I tried to do my best, but notwithstanding all my efforts Kuzma still felt a draught, now at his side, then by his feet.

“You are very awkward,” he grumbled. “There is a draught again at my back. Let her.” He glanced at Mary Petrovna, and then it became quite clear to me why I was unable to please him.

Mary Petrovna put down the medicine-glass which was in her hand and went to the bed. “Make you comfortable?” she said.

“Put the things right. That’s right⁠—and warm now.”

He watched her whilst she settled the bedclothes, then closed his eyes, and, with a childishly happy expression on his worn face, dropped asleep.

“Are you going home?” asked Mary Petrovna.

“No, I have had a good sleep and can watch now, but if I am not wanted I will go.”

“No, don’t go, please. Let us have a little talk. My brother is in his room all the time with his books, and it is so bitter, so depressing, to sit alone with the patient whilst he is sleeping and think of nothing but his death.”

“You must be strong, Mary Petrovna; depressing thoughts and tears are strictly forbidden to hospital nurses.”

“And I, too, will not cry when I am a nurse. Anyhow, it will not be so hard to nurse the wounded as one so near.”

“Then in any case you are going?”

“Of course I am going. Whether he recovers or dies I am going. I have become so accustomed to the idea now that I cannot give it up. I want to do something good, something useful; I want to be able to remember good, bright days.”

“Ah, Mary Petrovna, I am afraid you will not see much light at the war.”

“Why? I shall work. But there is light for you. I should like even to take some part in the war.”

“To take part in it! But surely, does it not inspire you with horror? What are you telling me?”

“I am telling⁠—who told you that I love war? Only⁠—how shall I tell you?⁠—war⁠—is an evil. Both you and I and very many others have this opinion. But it is inevitable. Whether you like it or do not like it makes no difference. There will be war, and if you do not go to fight they will take someone else, and, anyhow⁠—mankind will be mutilated or tortured by its course. I am afraid you do not understand me, as I express myself badly. Listen! In my idea war is a common sorrow, a common suffering, and to avoid it is perhaps permissible, only such a course is not pleasing to me.”

I kept silence. Mary Petrovna’s words very clearly expressed my confused aversion to avoid the war. I myself have felt what she feels and thinks, only I have thought differently.

“You,” she continued, “it seems, are all the time thinking how you can remain here if they call you up for a soldier. My brother has spoken to me about it. You know I like you very much, and think you a nice man, but this trait in your character distresses me.”

“What is to be done, Mary Petrovna? Different views. What shall I reply? Was it I who started the war?”

“Not you, or any of those who have died at it, or will die. They also would not have gone if they could have avoided it, but they cannot, and you can. They go to fight and you stay in St. Petersburg, alive, sound, and lucky, only because you have friends who would be sorry to send someone they know personally to the war. I will not take upon myself to judge⁠—perhaps it is excusable, but I repeat, it distresses me.”

She energetically shook her curly head and said no more.

At last it has come. Today I put on a grey overcoat and have already tasted of the roots of military training⁠—the manual. At the present moment there is ringing in my ears⁠—“ ’Tion! Form fours! Present arms!”

And I stood to attention, formed fours, and flourished my rifle. And after a short time, when I have mastered the intricacies of forming fours, they will tell me off to a draft, place us in railway wagons, transport us, and distribute us amongst the regiments to fill up the vacancies left by the killed.⁠ ⁠…

Well, it is all the same. It is all over. Now I do not belong to myself. I shall go with the stream. Now it is best not to think and not to judge, but to accept without criticism all the chances of life, and only cry out when in pain.⁠ ⁠…

They have quartered me in a wing of the barracks specially detailed for the “privileged” class recruits. This wing is distinguished in having beds instead of bunks for sleeping accommodation, nevertheless it is quite sufficiently dirty. It is very bad amongst the non-privileged recruits. They live⁠—until told off to regiments⁠—in a huge shed which was formerly a riding-school. Two rows of tents have been fixed up in it. Straw has been carted as far as the door, and the rest is left to the temporary inhabitants to fix themselves up as best they may. Along the passage going down the middle of the riding-school, formed by the two rows of tents, the snow and filth brought in every minute from outside by persons entering has mingled with the straw, and has formed an indescribable slush. Even on either side of this passage the straw is not overclean. Some hundreds of men are standing, sitting, or lying on this straw in groups, each representing some village contingent, the whole forming a veritable ethnographical exhibition. I searched for representatives from my district. The tall, awkward “little Russians” in new overcoats and caps lay in a huddled group, not saying a word. There were ten of them.

“Good day, comrades.”

“Good day.”

“Is it long since you left home?”

“Two weeks. And who are you?” asked one of them of me. I gave him my name, which was known to all of them, and this meeting with someone from their part brightened them up a little, and they became more communicative.

“Lonely?” I asked.

“How not lonely?”

“Where are you going?”

“Who knows! I suppose to kill the Turk.”

“And do you want to go to the war?”

“What are we going to do there?”

I began to question them about our local town, and these recollections of home loosened their tongues. They commenced to tell me of a recent wedding for which a pair of bullocks had been sold, and how almost directly afterwards they had taken the young husband for a soldier. They told me about the pristav⁠—the devil stick in his throat!⁠—the lack of land, and how in consequence of this some hundreds had decided to leave the village and go to the Amur.⁠ ⁠… The conversation was only of the past, no one referred to the future, to those hard times, dangers, and sufferings which awaited us all. No one took any interest in the Turks or Bulgars, or troubled himself about the question for which he was perhaps going to die.

A drunken young recruit of a local contingent, passing us, stopped at our group, and when I again began to talk of the war authoritatively said:

“This Turk must be wiped out.”

“Must be?” I inquired, smiling involuntarily at the assurance of the decision.

“Of course, Barin, so that nothing shall remain of the unclean brute. Because through his mutinying how much suffering are we to undergo? Had he, for instance, kept quiet and behaved⁠—I should be at home now with my parents and in a better state. But he is fractious, and there is grief for us. Be assured I am speaking the truth. Give me a cigarette, barin, please.” And he suddenly stopped short, straightened himself in front of me, and put his hand to his cap.

I gave him a cigarette, said goodbye to my countrymen, and went back to barracks, as my leave was up.

“He is fractious, and there is grief for us,” and his drunken voice rang in my ears. Short and vague, but at the same time it covers all there is to be said.

Heartsickness and depression reign at the Lvoffs. Kuzma is very bad, and although the wound is clean, has very high fever, delirium, and great pain. Both brother and sister remain with him all the time I am engaged in learning my work. Now, when they know I am going to the war, the sister has grown still more depressed, and her brother still more surly.

“Already in uniform?” he had muttered when I said “How do you do?” to him in his room, littered with books and reeking of smoke. “Oh, you people!”

“Why, Vassili Petrovich?”

“Because you will not let me study⁠—that’s why. And as there is no time, they will not let me finish my course, but will send me to the war, and there is so much I cannot learn, and then there are you and Kuzma.”

“Well, Kuzma is dying, but what about me?”

“And are you not going to die? If they do not kill you, you will go out of your mind, or put a bullet through your head. I know you, and there are examples.”

“What examples? Do you really know of any like that? Tell me, Vassili Petrovich?”

“Stop talking. Is it so necessary further to disillusionize you? It is bad for you. I know nothing. I was only talking.”

But I was persistent, and then he told me of the example as follows:

“A wounded artillery officer told me,” he commenced. “They had only just left Kishinieff, in April, directly after the declaration of war. The rain was unceasing, and the roads disappeared. Only a sea of mud remained into which the guns and baggage-train sank up to the axles. It became so bad that the horses could do nothing, so they hitched on drag-ropes with which the men pulled. The second half of the road was awful. We had twelve ridges to get over in seventeen versts, and the whole distance was a perfect quagmire. They got into it and stuck. The rain lashed them, and there was not a dry thread on any of them. They were half starving and completely worn out, but it was necessary to drag the guns along. Well, of course, the men pulled and pulled until they fell senseless, face downwards, into the mud. Finally it was impossible to move ahead, but all the same they continued to toil. It was awful, said the officer; it is dreadful to think of it. They had a young surgeon with them, a nervous fellow who wept, and exclaiming that he could not stand such a sight, said he would go on ahead, which he did. The soldiers cut down branches and made what was almost a raft, and finally succeeded in getting out of the bog. They dragged the battery on to the mountain, and there saw the surgeon hanging on a tree. There is the example. If the man could not stand even seeing such suffering, how will you be able to stand it?”

“Vassili Petrovich, is it not easier to bear torture than to hang oneself like the surgeon?”

“Well, I do not know. What is there good in the fact that they will harness you to a shaft?”

“Conscience will not prick me, Vassili Petrovich.”

“Well, that is hairsplitting. Talk with my sister on that point⁠—she is well up in such fine distinctions.” Saying which he held out his hand and smilingly bade me goodbye.

“Where are you off to?”

“To the hospital.”

I went into Kuzma’s room. He was not asleep, and, as Mary Petrovna explained to me, felt better than usual. He had not yet seen me in uniform, and my appearance was an unpleasant surprise to him.

“Will they leave you here or send you to the army?” he asked.

“They will send me; surely you know?”

He was silent.

“I knew,” he said after a pause, “but I had forgotten. I cannot remember or think of much these days. Well, go! It is necessary.”

“And you, Kuzma Thomich, say this!”

“Why ‘and I’? Is it not true what I say? What services have you rendered that you should be exempted? Go and die! There are people more necessary than you, more hardworking than you, and they are going.⁠ ⁠… Put my pillow right⁠ ⁠… that’s better.”

He spoke quietly but irritably, as if blaming someone for his illness.

“All this is true, Kuzma. But could I really not go? Could I really protest personally on my own behalf? If so, I should have stayed here without further talk; it would not be difficult to arrange. I am not doing this⁠—they want me, and I am going. But at least they cannot prevent me from having my own opinion on this point.”

Kuzma lay motionless with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, as if he had not heard me. Finally he slowly turned his head towards me.

“Do not take any notice of my words. I”⁠—he murmured⁠—“I am worn out and irritable, and really do not know why I tease people. I have already grown quarrelsome, I shall soon die; it is time.”

“Enough, Kuzma; cheer up. The wound is clean and is healing, and everything is going on well. You must not talk of dying, but of living now.”

Mary Petrovna looked at me with her large, sorrowful eyes, and I suddenly remembered how she had said to me two weeks ago: “No, he will not recover; he will die.

“And if I really do recover, it will be good,” said Kuzma, smiling weakly. “They will send you to fight, and I, with Mary Petrovna, will come⁠—she as a hospital nurse, and I as a surgeon. And I will look after you when you are wounded, as you are looking after me now.”

“You will chatter, Kuzma,” said Mary Petrovna. “It is bad for you to talk much, and it is time to begin tormenting you.”

He resigned himself to us. We undressed him, took off the bandages, and commenced work on his huge and lacerated chest. When I directed the spray of water on the open places; on the collarbone, which glistened like mother-of-pearl; on a vein which, clean and free, ran right throughout the wound, it was not like dressing a living person, but like working on some anatomical apparatus. I thought of other wounds, far more awful in nature, and overwhelmingly greater in numbers, inflicted, moreover, not by blind, unreasoning chance, but by the conscious acts of human beings.

I am not writing a word in this diary of all that is happening at home, and what I am going through there. The tears with which my mother meets me, the depressing silence accompanying my presence at the common table, the kindness of my brothers and sisters⁠—all this is hard to witness and feel, but to write of it is harder still. When I think that in a week’s time I must say goodbye to all that is dearest in the world, the tears rise to my throat.

At last the farewells. Tomorrow morning, as soon as it is light, we are off by railway. They have allowed me to spend the last night at home, and I am sitting in my room alone for the last time. The last time! Does anyone know who has not experienced such a last time the whole misery of these two words? For the last time the family have separated, for the last time I have come into this little room, and am sitting at the table lighted by the familiar little lamp and littered with books and papers. For a whole month I have not touched them. For the last time I take the half-finished work into my hands. It has stopped short and lies dead, incomplete, senseless. Instead of finishing it I am going with thousands of others to the brink of the world because history has need of my physical strength. As for intellectual forces⁠—forget about them. No one wants them. Of what benefit have been the many years I have studied them and prepared myself to apply them? That enormous organization of which I know nothing, but of which I form a part, has wished to cut me off and hurl me aside. And what can I do against such a desire?

However, enough. It is time to lie down and try to sleep. Tomorrow I must get up very early.

I begged that no one should come to the station. But when I was already sitting in the wagon crammed full of men, I felt such a heart-pinching solitude and so homesick, that I would have given all the world to pass, if only a few minutes, with any one of my near relatives. Eventually the appointed hour arrived, but the train did not start. Something was delaying it. Half an hour went past, an hour, an hour and a half, and still we did not move. In this one and a half hours I could have gone home.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps, after all, someone will not be able to resist coming down.⁠ ⁠… No, they all imagine that the train has already gone. No one will think of it being late in starting. But still, perhaps⁠ ⁠… and I gaze anxiously in the direction whence they might come. Never has time dragged so.

The harsh notes of the bugle sounding the “assembly” made me shiver. Soldiers who had climbed out of the wagons and had crowded on to the platforms, hurriedly scrambled into their places. The train will be off in a minute, and I shall have seen no one. Then I catch sight of the Lvoffs. Brother and sister almost ran to the wagon, and I was madly glad to see them. I do not remember what I said to them, and do not remember what they said to me, except one sentence⁠—“Kuzma is dead!”

This sentence ends the notes in my diary.

Under a lowering sky lies a broad snow-covered field surrounded by white hills, on which are trees, also white with frost, although there is a touch of thaw in the air. Above the rattle of musketry comes the frequent boom of guns. One of the hills is almost enveloped in smoke, through which, as it slowly rolls down on to the field below, can be seen a dark, moving mass. Looking more attentively, it is seen that this mass is composed of little black spots. Many of these spots are already motionless, but others are ever moving forward, although their goal, indicated only by the extra density of the smoke, is still far away, and although their numbers become less every second.

A battalion in reserve, lying in the snow with rifles in hand, is following the progress of this dark mass with its thousand eyes.

“They have started!⁠—ours have started up!”

“But will they get there? Why do they keep us here? With our help they would quickly settle matters.”

“Tired of life, are you?” said an elderly soldier surlily. “Lie still and thank God you are whole.”

“Yes, old man, and I shall stay whole, don’t make any mistake about that,” replied a young soldier with a cheery face. “I have already been in four fights, and nothing happened. Only at first it is frightening, but then⁠—But the Barin⁠—it is his first time; he will be probably asking God’s pardon. Barin! Barin!”

“What is it?” replied a lanky, black-bearded man lying close by.

“You, Barin, cheer up!”

“I, my friend, am all right.”

“You, Barin, will be near me in case⁠ ⁠… I know, I have already been in it. Yes, our Barin is brave; he will not run away. But there was a volunteer before you who, as soon as we started, and directly the bullets began to fly, chucked away his knapsack and rifle, and bolted; but a bullet caught him up⁠—hit him in the back. That sort of thing is forbidden because of the oath.”

“Don’t you be alarmed. I shall not run away,” quietly replied the Barin. “You cannot get away from a bullet.”

“No, the rascal,” answered the young soldier. “Is it known where to get away from it?⁠ ⁠… Holy!⁠ ⁠… Surely ours have not stopped!”

The black mass had stopped, and were being enveloped in the smoke from their rifles.

“Well, they have begun to fire. That means in a minute or two they will commence retiring.⁠ ⁠… No! they have gone ahead again. Save!⁠ ⁠… Blessed Mother, again⁠ ⁠… and again.⁠ ⁠… How they are falling, and no one to pick them up!”

“A bullet! a bullet!” exclaimed several around, as something whistled through the air. It was a chance bullet which had passed over the reserves. It was followed by another, then a third. The battalion began to stir.

“Stretcher-bearers!” someone cried.

The stray bullet had done its work. Four soldiers with a stretcher ran forward towards the wounded man. Suddenly little figures of men and horses appeared on one of the hills on the flank of the attack, and at the same moment a puff of smoke, white as snow, showed up.

“They are firing at us, the blackguards!” cried the cheery young soldier. There was the scream of a shell followed by a report. The youngster threw himself face down into the snow. When he raised his head he saw that the Barin was lying stretched out alongside him, his arms thrown out, with his head doubled unnaturally under his chest. Another stray bullet had struck him under the right eye, making a large black hole.