“Vous êtes blessé?” Napoleon had asked him.
“Je vous demande pardon, sire, je suis tué,” the adjutant had replied. And with these words he had fallen from his horse and had died instantly.
Kalugin thought this was a marvellous story, and for a moment he even saw himself as that adjutant; then he gave his horse a smack of the whip, assumed an even more dashing “Cossack position,” glanced back over his shoulder at the Cossack who was riding behind him at a fast trot, standing in the stirrups, and arrived at the place where he was to dismount, every inch the gallant brave. Here he encountered four soldiers who were sitting on some large boulders and were smoking their pipes.
“What are you men doing here?” he shouted to them.
“We’ve been carting one of the wounded, your honour, and now we’ve sat down to have a rest,” replied one of the soldiers, trying to conceal his pipe behind his back and taking his cap off.
“I’ll give you a rest! Return to your posts at the double, or I’ll inform your regimental commander this instant!”
And together with them he began to climb the hill along the trench, meeting men who had been wounded every step of the way. When he reached the top he followed the trench that forked off to the left and, walking along it a little way, found himself completely alone. A splinter hummed by within a hair’s-breadth of him and slammed into the trench. A shell rose into the sky in front of him and seemed to be hurtling straight towards him. Suddenly, he felt afraid: he quickly scrambled forward a distance of some five yards, and then fell to the ground. When the shell finally exploded, a long way off, he felt thoroughly annoyed with himself; as he got up from the ground he looked to see if anyone had observed his fall, but there was no one nearby.
Once fear has found its way into the soul, it does not readily give way to any other emotion. He, who had always boasted that he never ducked, now found himself scurrying along the trench practically on all fours. “Ah! This is bad!” he thought, as he stumbled along, “I’m sure to be killed”—and, feeling his breathing constrict and the sweat break out all over his body, he marvelled at himself, but no longer tried to overcome the feeling that had taken hold of him.
All at once he heard footsteps somewhere up ahead. He quickly straightened himself, lifted his head, and, briskly rattling his sabre, walked on rather more slowly than before. Now he could hardly recognize himself. When an engineer officer and a sailor appeared coming in his direction, and the officer shouted to him: “Get down!,” pointing to the bright pinhead of a shell which, growing every brighter and faster in its descent, finally slapped into the earth beside the trench, he merely inclined his head slightly, startled by the man’s frightened cry, and continued on his way.
“There’s a brave one for ye,” said the sailor, who had observed the falling shell with utter equanimity, his experienced eye telling him at once that none of its fragments would hit the trench. “He didn’t even bother to lie down.”
Kalugin had only a few yards still to go across the open area to the casemate where the bastion commander had his headquarters, when once again his mind went blank and he was overtaken by the same unreasoning terror; his heart began to beat faster, the blood rushed to his head, and he really had to force himself in order to reach the casemate at all.
“Why are you so out of breath?” said the general, after Kalugin had delivered the orders he had been sent with.
“I came here at the double, your excellency!”
“How about a glass of wine?”
Kalugin accepted a glass of wine and lit a cigarette. The action was now over, and only a heavy cannonade continued from both sides. In the casemate sat General X., the bastion commander, and five or six officers, one of whom was Praskukhin, discussing various details of the action. Sitting in this snug little den, the walls of which were covered with blue wallpaper and which contained a bed, a sofa, a table, a clock and an icon with a vigil lamp burning in front of it; looking at these signs of habitation and at the thick, solid beams which formed the ceiling; and listening to the detonations of the cannon, which here in the casemate seemed muffled and remote, Kalugin was decidedly at a loss to understand how he could twice have allowed himself to be overcome by such unpardonable weakness. He felt angry with himself, and longed for fresh danger in order to put himself to the test once more.
“I’m glad you’re here too, captain,” he said to a naval officer who sported a moustache and was wearing a field officer’s greatcoat to which was pinned the ribbon of a St George Cross. The naval officer had only just entered the casemate and was asking the general for some labourers to help clear two of his battery’s embrasures which had become blocked by flying earth. “The general asked me to ascertain,” Kalugin went on, when the battery commander had finished talking to General X., “whether your guns are capable of firing grape into the enemy trenches.”
“There’s only one that could do it,” replied the captain, morosely.
“Even so, let’s go and have a look.”
The captain frowned and gave an angry grunt.
“I’ve been standing out there all night, and I’ve come in in order to get a little rest,” he said. “Can’t you go on your own? My assistant, Lieutenant Karz, is up there—he’ll show you round.”
The captain had been in charge of this battery, which was one of the most dangerous, for the past six months; he had been here even before the casemates had been constructed, had lived on the bastion from the outset of the siege and had a reputation for bravery among the other naval officers. It was for this reason that Kalugin found the man’s refusal particularly surprising and shocking.
“So much for reputations,” he thought.
“Well, all right then, I’ll go on my own, if you’ll permit me,” he said in a slightly mocking tone of voice. The captain was not, however, paying the slightest attention.
But Kalugin was not taking into account the fact that while he had, on various occasions, spent at the very most perhaps fifty hours on the bastions, the captain had been living on this one continuously for six months. Kalugin was still at the stage of being driven on by personal vanity—the desire to excel, the hope of receiving military honours, of winning a reputation, the fascination of risk. The captain, on the other hand, had already been through all that—at first he had indulged in vanity, had pretended to be brave, run foolish risks, hoped for honours and reputation, and even acquired them. But now all these incentives had lost their hold over him and he viewed the whole business rather differently: he still carried out his duties to the letter, but, understanding very well how small were the chances of survival left to him after his six months of duty in the bastion, he did not risk those chances except in dire necessity. The result of this was that the young lieutenant, who had joined the battery only a week previously and was now showing Kalugin over it (both men were rather needlessly leaning out of the embrasures and climbing up on to the banquettes), appeared ten times braver than the captain.
When he had finished looking over the battery and was on his way back to the casemate, Kalugin stumbled into the general, who was going to the watchtower with his orderlies.
“Captain Praskukhin,” said the general. “Please go to the right lodgment and tell the second battalion of the M—— Regiment who are working there to down tools immediately, withdraw without making a sound and rejoin their regiment, which is stationed at the foot of the hill in reserve. Have you got that? You’ll take them to their regiment yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
And Praskukhin set off for the lodgment at the double.
The sounds of gunfire were now growing less frequent.
— 10 —
“Is this the second battalion of the M—— Regiment?” asked Praskukhin, arriving at his destination and nearly running into a soldier who was carrying sacks of earth.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s your commander?”
Mikhailov, supposing it was the company commander whose presence
was requested, climbed from his dugout and, taking Praskukhin for a member of the general staff, approached him with one hand touching the peak of his cap.
“The general has ordered . . . you . . . you’re to go . . . immediately . . . and above all as quietly as possible . . . back, no forward, to join the reserves,” said Praskukhin, keeping a wary eye on the direction of the enemy’s fire.
Recognizing Praskukhin and becoming aware of the true situation, Mikhailov let his arm drop and passed on the order. The battalion bustled into action; each man reached for his musket, put on his greatcoat and set off.
Those who have never experienced it themselves cannot imagine the sense of relief experienced by a man when, after a three hours’ bombardment, he leaves a place as dangerous as the lodgments. Mikhailov, who several times during those three hours believed his end had come and who had smothered with kisses, several times over, all the icons he had with him, had towards the end grown somewhat calmer, certain that he was about to be killed and that he no longer belonged to this world. Even in spite of this, however, it cost him no little effort to prevent his legs running away with him when, with Praskukhin at his side, he emerged from the lodgments at the head of the company.
“Goodbye,” a major said to him. This was the commander of another battalion, who was remaining in the lodgments and with whom Mikhailov had shared his soapy cheese as they had crouched together in the dugout near the parapet. “I wish you a safe journey.”
“And I wish you a safe stay; things seem to have quietened down now.”
No sooner had he said this, however, than the enemy, who had doubtless observed the activity on the lodgments, began to blaze away with an artillery fire that grew heavier and heavier. The Russian guns began an answering fire, and once again an intense cannonade set in. The stars gleamed high but faintly in the heavens. The night was so dark that you could hardly see your hand in front of your face; only the flashes of the gunfire and the bursting of the shells momentarily lit up surrounding objects. The soldiers walked quickly, in silence, overtaking one another without meaning to; all that could be heard above the incessant rolling of the guns was the measured sound of their footsteps on the dry road, the clank of bayonets or the sighed prayer of a frightened soldier: “Lord, Lord, whatever’s that?” From time to time the groaning of a wounded man could be heard, and voices shouting: “Stretchers!” (In the company of which Mikhailov was commander, twenty-six men were killed that night by artillery fire alone.) Lightning would flare on the far-off, murky horizon, the sentry on the bastion would shout: “Ca-a-nnon!,” and a cannonball would come rapidly humming over the heads of the company, throwing up a shower of earth and stones as it landed.
“God, they’re moving slowly,” thought Praskukhin, who kept looking back over his shoulder as he strode along beside Mikhailov. “Why don’t I just hurry on ahead? After all, I have delivered the order now . . . But no, I’d better not, or else this brute will tell everyone afterwards what a coward I was, more or less the way I spoke about him to the others yesterday. What will be, will be. I’ll stay alongside him.”
“Why does he never leave my side,” Mikhailov was thinking meanwhile. “I’ve noticed it so many times now—he always brings me bad luck: I bet that one’s heading straight this way.”
When they had gone a few hundred paces further they ran into Kalugin, who was making his way to the lodgments, briskly rattling his sabre. He had been instructed by the general to find out how the building of the earthworks there was proceeding. When he met Mikhailov, however, it struck him that instead of going there in person under this terrible hail of fire—something he had not been ordered to do—he might just as well make some detailed enquiries of an officer who had been there and would know all about the situation. And, indeed, Mikhailov was able to give him a detailed report on the present state of the earthworks, although as he did so he provided Kalugin—who seemed totally oblivious to all the firing—with considerable amusement by cowering down every time a shell exploded (often quite far away), ducking his head and stating with conviction that “that one’s heading straight this way.”
“Look, captain, that one’s heading straight this way,” said Kalugin, teasing him, and giving him a nudge. Continuing with them for a short distance, Kalugin at length turned off into the trench that led to the casemate. “It would be impossible to describe that captain as being very brave,” he thought, as he passed through its doorway.
“Well, what’s the latest?” asked an officer who was eating his supper and was the only person in the room.
“Oh, there’s nothing, really. I think it’s all going to be over in a minute or two.”
“All over? But the general’s just gone up to the watchtower again. Another regiment’s arrived. There, hear that? That’s musketry fire again. I wouldn’t go out there if I were you. Why should you, anyway?” added the officer, observing the direction Kalugin was about to take.
“I really ought to be out there,” thought Kalugin. “But I think I’ve run enough risks for one day. I hope I can serve for something better than cannon fodder.”
“You’re probably right, I’d better just wait for them here,” he said.
And indeed, some twenty minutes later the general returned, together with the officers who had been accompanying him. One of these was the cadet volunteer, Baron Pest; but of Praskukhin there was no sign. The lodgments had been recaptured from the enemy and occupied by the Russian forces.
When he had heard a detailed account of the action, Kalugin left the casemate together with Pest.
— 11 —
“There’s blood all over your greatcoat: you weren’t in the hand-to-hand fighting, were you?” Kalugin asked Pest.
“Oh, my dear fellow, it was dreadful! Can you imagine . . . ” And Pest proceeded to describe how he had ended up in command of his entire company, how his company commander had been killed, how he, Pest, had bayoneted a Frenchman and how, had it not been for him, the day would have been lost, and so on, and so forth.
The principal elements of this story—that the company commander had been killed and that Pest had slain a Frenchman—were factually true; in recounting its details, however, the cadet boasted and made things up. He found himself boasting in spite of himself, and the reason for this was that during the whole of the action he had been lost in a fog of oblivion, to such a degree that all that had happened had seemed to be taking place somewhere else, at some other time and to some other person. It was, therefore, natural that he should now attempt to reproduce these details so that he came out of the affair with some credit. The following, however, is what really occurred.
The battalion to which Pest had been assigned for the sortie waited under fire for nearly two hours behind the defensive wall until the battalion commander gave a signal, the company commanders stirred into action, the battalion started to move, emerged from behind the parapet, and, having advanced a hundred yards or so, halted and formed itself into columns, each of which represented a company. Pest was ordered to join the right flank of the 2nd company.
Completely at a loss as to where he was and what he was doing there, the cadet took up his post and, finding his breathing strangely constricted and feeling cold shivers run up and down his spine, peered into the expanse of darkness ahead of him in expectation of something terrible. He was, however, beset less by fear—the guns were silent—as by a sense of the abnormal: it was strange to find himself on the outside of the fortress, out here in the open. Again the battalion commander gave a signal. Again the officers began to talk in whispers as they passed the orders along, and the black wall of the 1st company suddenly collapsed. Their orders had been to lie down. The 2nd company also lay down, and Pest pricked his hand on something sharp. The commander of the 2nd company alone remained standing. His stocky figure moved backwards and forwards in front of the company as, brandishing his sword in the air, he kept up a constant stream of talk.
“All right, men! Come on now, my fine fellows! We?
??ll save our bullets and take the riff-raff with our bayonets. When I shout ‘hurrah’ I want to see you follow me—let no man lag behind . . . You must stay together, that’s most important . . . let’s show them what we’re made of and not get dirt on our faces, all right, men? For our father, the Tsar!” he cried. These words were sprinkled with curses, and he waved his arms about in the most alarming fashion.
“Who’s our company commander?” Pest asked the cadet who was lying next to him. “He’s a bit of a daredevil, isn’t he?”
“Yes, whenever there’s a battle he always gets dead drunk,” the cadet replied. “His name’s Lisinkovsky.”
At that moment a sheet of flame leapt up in front of the company, followed by the most tremendous explosion, which made everyone deaf and sent a rustling hiss of stones and shell-fragments high into the air (at least fifty seconds later a stone fell from the sky, smashing a soldier’s foot). This was a shell from a “high angle” mortar, and the fact that it had hit the company was proof that the French had observed the column.
“Shells, is it? The swine . . . Just wait till we get to you, then you can try our three-edged Russian bayonets for size, you hellhounds!” said the company commander in such a loud voice that the commander of the battalion had to tell him to be quiet and stop making such a noise.
Thereupon the 1st company rose to its feet, followed by the 2nd—the order was given to slope muskets, and the battalion advanced. Pest was in such a state of funk that he lost all sense of the passage of time, of where they were going, who they were and what the purpose of their action was. He staggered along like one intoxicated. Suddenly, however, a million lights seemed to flash on at once, and there was a fearsome whistling and crackling; he gave a sudden shout, and found himself running in an unknown direction, simply because everyone else seemed to be running and shouting. Then he stumbled and fell over something—it turned out to be the company commander, who had been wounded at his post at the head of the company, had taken Pest in his red uniform for a Frenchman, and had seized him by the leg. Pulling his leg free, he stood up, but someone collided with him from behind in the darkness, nearly knocking him off his feet again, and another shouted: “Run him through! What are you waiting for?” Someone took hold of his musket and rammed it, bayonet first, into something soft. “Ah! Dieu! someone shouted in a horrible, strident voice, and it was only then that Pest realized he had bayoneted a Frenchman.