Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

The bell grew silent. The service in church had begun. It was the habit of Mikheyich in former years to go down and to stop in a corner near the door in order to pray and listen to the chanting. This time, however, he remained in the tower. It was difficult for him; aside from that, he felt intensely fatigued. He sat down on a little bench, and as he listened to the dying tones of the agitated bronze he grew deeply pensive. What were his thoughts? He himself could hardly have answered the question.... The bell-tower was but dimly lighted by his lantern. The still vibrating bells were lost in the darkness; faint murmurs of the chant reached him occasionally from below, and the nocturnal wind stirred the ropes fastened to the iron hearts of the bells.

The old fellow let fall his gray head upon his breast. His mind was in a state of delirious fancy. “Now they are singing a hymn,” he thought, and he imagined himself among the others in church. He heard an outpouring of children’s voices in a choir; he saw the figure of the long-since-departed priest Nahum exhorting the congregation to prayer; he saw hundreds of peasants’ heads, like ripe corn before the wind, bend low and stand erect again.... The peasants were crossing themselves.... Familiar faces, all of them, and all faces of the dead. Here was the stern face of his father; here, beside his father, his older brother, crossing himself and sighing. And he himself stood here, in the bloom of health and strength and full of the unconscious yearning for happiness and the joy of life.... Where, oh, where, was this happiness?... The old man’s mind flared up for a moment, like a dying flame, flashing with a bright, quick movement and illuminating for the moment all the passages of his past life.... Hard work, sorrow, care.... Oh, where was this happiness? A hard fate can bring furrows to a young face, give a stoop to a strong back, and cause one to sigh like an older man.

There, on the left, among the women of the village, humbly inclining her head, stood his sweetheart. A good woman, hers be the Kingdom of God! How much had she not suffered, that fine soul!... Constant need and labor and the inevitable womanly sorrow will cause a handsome woman to wither; her eyes will lose their sparkle; and the expression of perpetual, dull-like fright before each unawaited blow of life will change the most superbly beautiful creature.... Yes, and where was her happiness?... One son remained to them, their one hope and joy, and he fell a victim to human weakness.

And he too was here, his rich enemy, bending low time and again, seeking to pray away the bitter tears of orphans he had wronged; repeatedly he was performing upon himself the sign of the cross, falling on his knees and touching the ground with his forehead.... And Mikheyich’s heart boiled over within him, while the dark faces of the ikons looked down severely from their walls upon human sorrow and human iniquity.

All that was past, all that behind him.... Now the entire world seemed to him like a dark bell-tower, where the wind blew in the dusk, stirring the bell-ropes.... “Let the Lord judge you!” whispered the old man, shaking his gray head, while tears silently ran down his cheeks.

* * * * *

“Mikheyich! Mikheyich!... You haven’t fallen asleep?” someone shouted up to him from below.

“Eh?” returned the old man, and quickly jumped to his feet. “Lord! Have I in truth fallen asleep? That never happened before!”

With an accustomed hand, Mikheyich quickly caught the ropes. Below him moved the peasant throng, a veritable ant-hill; the holy banners aglimmer with gold brocade fluttered in the wind.... The procession made a circuit of the church, and presently Mikheyich heard the joyous cry, “Christ has risen from the dead!”

Coming like a mighty wave, the cry whelmed the old man’s heart.... And it seemed to Mikheyich that brighter flared the lights of the waxen candles, and that stronger grew the agitation of the people; the holy banners seemed to become more alive; and the suddenly awakened wind caught up the waves of sound and with broad sweeps lifted them high, where they became one with the loud triumphant music of the bell.

* * * * *

Never before had old Mikheyich rung so well!

It was as if the old man’s brimming-over heart had passed into the inanimate bronze; and it seemed as if the reverberations at the same time sang and throbbed, laughed and wept, and, uniting in a rare harmony, rose higher and higher unto the starry sky. The stars themselves seemed to him to take on a new sparkle, to burst into flame, while the sounds trembled and flowed, and again came down to earth with a loving embrace.

A powerful bass loudly proclaimed: “Christ has risen!”

While two tenor voices, constantly atremble from the repeated blows of the iron hearts, mingled with the bass joyously and resonantly: “Christ has risen!”

And, again, two most slender soprano voices, seemingly in haste not to be left behind, stole in among the more powerful ones, little children, as it were, and sang in emulation: “Christ has risen!”

The entire belfry seemed to tremble and to shake; and the wind blowing in the face of the bell-ringer appeared to flap its mighty wings and to repeat: “Christ has risen!”

The old heart forgot about life, full of cares and wrongs. The old bell-ringer forgot that life for him had become a thing shut up in a melancholy and crowded tower; he forgot that he was alone in the world--like an old stump, weather-beaten and broken.... He intercepted these singing and weeping sounds, fleeting higher towards the skies and falling again to the poor earth, and it seemed to him that he was surrounded by his sons and his grandsons; that these joyous voices, of old and young, had flowed together into one great chorus, and that they sang to him of happiness and joyousness, which he had not tasted in his life.... And the old man continued to tug at the ropes, while tears ran down his face, and his heart beat tremulously with the illusion of happiness.

* * * * *

And below the people were listening and saying to each other that never had old Mikheyich rung so marvellously.

Then all of a sudden the large bell trembled violently and grew silent.... The smaller ones, as if confused, rang an unfinished tone; and then too stopped, as if to drink in the prolonged, sadly droning note, which trembled and flowed and wept, gradually dying away in the air....

The old bell-ringer fell back exhausted on the bench, and his last two tears trickled silently down his pale face.

* * * * *

“Quick! Send a substitute! The old bell-ringer has rung his last stroke.”

GARSHIN THE MELANCHOLIAC

“There is still something around us and within that baffles and surprises us. Events happen which are as mysterious after our glib explanations as they were before. Changes for good or ill take place in the heart of man for which his intellect gives no reason.”

These words of Dr. Henry Van Dyke, written among others to preface his latest collected short fictions, apply right well to our attempts at literary criticism. Mathematics differ from life in this: after a proposition in number or in form-theory is demonstrated the last word has been said; the height of finality is reached; for any one to argue the point might amaze, though it would not interest us. But with life, who can name a fixed and infallible answer to its problems? Here is ever the unknown quantity, irreducible to precise terms, and varying in all sorts of perplexing ratios.

Is it not exactly because literature is the literate expression of life that we approach its subtler problems with the same sense of futility as the issues of life arouse in us? Yet the eternal challenge to discover the _why_, born, as it is, with our own babyhood, dies not with our manhood’s strength, but still calls us to try our “literary discernment” once more, and yet once more, to see if we may not by some magic of penetration find the true causes which move back among the shadows.

So, with some degree of assurance we lay our fingers upon the causes in a given literary career which seem to us to be calculable--parentage, birth, early environment, education, chosen occupation, and all the rest. Yet a considerable proportion of the results must remain unaccountable, because the actuating forces are, after all, imponderable. We find motives and standards of conduct, or ideals, clearly expressed in the man’s own words; but did he understand himself? Here we find one acknowledged fact, here a second, and here a third. But by what law of causation may we say that three-times-one is three and not six, or sixty, or even six myriads?

No, in seeking to estimate the weight of the inner things we are calculating the incalculable; it is like trying to clothe in cumbersome workaday garb a being that is too subtle for material restrictions.

Especially, then, in seeking to enter the penetralia of a man of Garshin’s varying moods and tenses, let us confess anew to ourselves how tentative must be our guesses at truth. His mind--like that of not a few other literary artists--fluttered between normality and abnormality. However, only the literal, prosaic, practical, uninventive mind is sane, and that is but a shorter way of spelling uninteresting. There is still a strong argument to be made for the essential seer-quality--perhaps the “second sight,” perhaps the inner light--of many a one whom the sober world has adjudged as of unsound mind. But this again brings us up facing another great and tantalizing _x_ of life.

* * * * *

Wsewolod Michailovich Garshin was born in February, 1855, of good family. His south-of-Russia parentage marked his physique. He was good-looking, almost dark, fiery of eye, and in temperament sweet, impressionable, and sympathetic--a combination rare enough in a man to make it noteworthy.

Like Pushkin, he spent his very early life on the family estates, his father having retired from the army when the boy was three years old. At nine, however, the child was placed at school in the inevitable St. Petersburg, with the object of his preparing for the study of medicine. But the parental ambitions were not realized, for the lad was so abnormally nervous that he became subject to vagaries and hallucinations, so that while yet but seventeen years of age, and already writing remarkable bits of realistic self-revelation, it was found best to place him under restraint. The effects of this clouded period are to be traced in much of his later work.

Happily, in about a year he recovered his balance, took up study anew, and finished his preparatory course with credit, entering the Institute of Mining Engineers in 1874, at the age of nineteen--for in everything Garshin was precocious.

From this point on, Garshin’s career may plainly be read in his writings. He wrote only about twenty-five stories in all, and practically without exception they are autobiographical. The two great dominant motifs grew out of his two great life-experiences: war--but war from a special viewpoint--and what I may call the border consciousness, experiences of the mind when its poise is either uncertain or completely upset.

I have said that Garshin viewed war in an unusual way. This is true not alone of his fiction but of his life. In 1876 the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and Garshin considered it his sacred duty to go. The horrors of war had always deeply affected his sensitive nature. The intoxicating blare, the thrill of glory, the call of the spectacle, all meant nothing to him, except revulsion. But duty was a word of serious meaning, and it won from him a serious response. This pupil of Tolstoi could detest and denounce an institution to whose claims he felt bound to bow in time of national need.

It is always interesting to observe how two artists, especially contemporary artists, interpret the same theme. Guy de Maupassant, incomparably the greater literator, but destined to the same sad end as met Garshin, has worked out a motive in “A Coward” similar to the Russian author’s “Coward,” though the stories themselves could not be more dissimilar.

Maupassant simply unclothes a human soul face to face with the idea of suicide. Relentlessly he strips shred after shred of illusion from the introspective thinker who is meditating upon his own cowardice. But when the end does come the reader is half in doubt as to how to judge the wretch.

Garshin’s impressionistic sketch is tremendously cumulative. In soliloquy the Person of the story weighs the war, its appeals, its repulsions, the motives that lead men to go, the awful casualties, and finally tells how that he is considered a coward for his inaction.

Am I a coward or not?

To-day 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 every one else considers a great matter arises only
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?

At length--just as it was with Garshin, who joined a regiment at Kishinev-of-terrible-memory--the “coward” goes to war, and after a story-within-a-story is told, his act of heroism closes the picture.

* * * * *

Ever since I was old enough to attempt just thinking, I have always had much sympathy for a coward--I suppose because I have been afraid so often myself at moments when heroes are said to feel no trepidation. And do we not all feel keenly with Garshin?--for a man of his temperament, and one finding nothing admirable in war, it must have required genuine courage to go, even while he was repelled and afraid. But this was only one more phase of a contradictory character--as all characters are in whom the inner life and the outer do not coördinate.

In “The Signal,” we have a perfectly-wrought short-story with as dramatic a surprise as ever capped a climax.

* * * * *

While serving in the army, as servant to an officer, the health of Simon Ivanoff had broken down, and all that was left to him was a minor post as linesman on the railway. One day, while walking the tracks, he met for the first time his neighboring linesman, whom he found to be quite repellent in his manner. The simple-minded Simon, however, eventually pressed an acquaintance upon both the linesman, Vassili Stepanich Spiridoff, and his young wife, and found that Vassili had been much embittered by reflecting upon the inequalities of life, and especially those of his own hard position.

One day, the traffic inspector came along and forced Vassili to tear up his little garden, merely because he had planted it without permission; and, besides, he reported him for his technical irregularity. Shortly after this, the district chief arrived and showed animosity, evidently founded upon the report against Vassili, and when the man protested, the chief struck him brutally.

The next day Simon met Vassili, stick and bundle over his shoulder, and his cheek bound up in a handkerchief.

“Where are you off to, Neighbor?” cried Simon.

Vassili came close, but was quite pale, white as chalk, and his
eyes had a wild look.

Almost choking, he muttered, “To the town--to Moscow--to the Head
Office.”

“Head Office? Ah, you are going, I suppose, to complain. Give it
up, Vassili Stepanich. Forget it.”

“No, Mate, I will not forget. It is too late. See! He struck me in
the face--drew blood. So long as I live, I will not forget.”

Simon vainly attempted to dissuade him, and the man at length passed on.

On the day following, Simon left his wife at home to meet the six o’clock train, and, taking his knife, started off to the forest to get some reeds out of which to make flutes, which he used to sell for two copecks apiece. As he walked along, he fancied that he heard the clang of iron striking iron. Since there were no repairs going on, he wondered, but as he came out on the fringe of the wood he saw a man squatting on the roadbed, busily engaged in loosening a rail.

A mist came before Simon’s eyes; he wanted to cry out, but he could
not. It was Vassili!... Simon scrambled up the bank as Vassili,
with crowbar and wrench, slid headlong down the other side.

“Vassili Stepanich! For the love ... Old friend! Come back! Give
me the crowbar. We will put the rail back; no one will know. Come
back! Save your soul from this sin!”

Vassili did not look back, but disappeared into the wood.

Simon stood before the rail which had been torn up. He threw down
his bundle of sticks. A train was due; not a goods train, but a
passenger train. And he had nothing with which to stop it, no flag.
He could not replace the rail, and could not drive in the spikes
with his bare hands. It was necessary to run to the hut for some
tools. “God help me,” he murmured.

He ran toward his hut, faltering every now and then in his
eagerness, but he soon realized that he would be too late. What
should he do! In desperation, he turned back to the spot where the
rail threatened disaster to the on-coming train. As he reached it,
he heard the even tremor of the rails.

Then an idea came into his head, literally like a ray of light.
Pulling off his cap, he took out of it a cotton scarf, drew his
knife out of the upper part of his boot, and crossed himself,
muttering, “God bless me!”

He buried the knife into his left arm above the elbow; the blood
spurted out, flowing in a hot stream. In this he soaked his scarf,
smoothed it out, tied it to the stick, and hung out his red flag.

He stood waving his flag. The train was already in sight. The
driver will not see him--will come close up, and a heavy train
cannot be pulled up in a hundred _sajenes_.

And the blood kept on flowing. Simon kept pressing the sides of
the wound together, wanting to close it, but the blood did not
diminish. Evidently he had cut his arm very deeply. His head
commenced to swim, black spots began to dance before his eyes, and
then it became dark. There was a ringing in his ears. He could not
see the train or hear the noise. Only one thought possessed him: “I
shall not be able to keep standing up. I shall fall and drop the
flag; the train will pass over me.... Help me, O Lord!...”

All became quite black before him, his mind became a blank, and he
dropped the flag; but the blood-stained banner did not fall to the
ground. A hand seized it and held it high to meet the approaching
train. The engine-driver saw it, shut the regulator, and reversed
steam. The train came to a standstill.

People jumped out of the carriages and collected in a crowd.
Looking, they saw a man lying senseless on the footway, drenched in
blood, and another man standing beside him with a blood-stained rag
on a stick.

Vassili looked around at all; then, lowering his head, said, “Bind
me; I have pulled up a rail!”

In “Four Days,” which follows in an original translation for this series, we have another autobiographical story of singular penetration. It must be remembered that Garshin’s convictions of duty led him to unusual length--he enlisted as a private, when his family connections would have warranted something better. So he writes from close to the people--in this respect differing from Tolstoi, with whose memorable Sevastopol sketches Garshin’s “Four Days” has been seriously compared by critics. It was at the engagement of Aislar that Garshin received his incapacitating bullet-wound, after real gallantry in action, and Aislar is the battle of the story.

After recovering from his wound, our author became desperately absorbed in trying to save one of his friends from execution for having attempted the life of Loris Melikov, but Garshin failed, and soon afterward it again became necessary to confine him in an asylum.

From this seizure he recovered, and married a young lady who devoted her life to a beautiful service--that of healing his mind and preventing a recurrence of his malady; but, sadly enough, without success. He never shook off the boding pall of the madhouse. One needs only to read his “Red Flower” to feel the haunting presence of that pathetic colony of abnormal minds and spirits coming to sit with him in hours when he sought happiness in forgetfulness. Half-memories of days of half-self-possession are indeed shapes that haunt the dusk! To quote Waliszewski’s vivid summary: “The story describes a demented person, half-conscious of his condition, who wears himself out in superhuman efforts to gain possession of a red-poppy--reddened, as he imagines, by the blood of all the martyrdoms of the human race. If the flower were only destroyed, he thinks, humanity would be saved.”

In 1887, in physical and mental suffering too combinedly torturing to be borne, Garshin eluded the watchers by his bedside and flung himself down a stone staircase, sustaining injuries from which he never recovered. The consciousness of his act caused him to brood still more painfully over his state, and he died in a hospital the next year, 1888, at the age of only thirty-three.

If one may venture to be analytical, there are three kinds of stories: those told of life as it exists apart from the narrator; those dealing with events intimately associated with the narrator; and those that are purely evoked from the inner life of the story-teller himself.

These last-named--spun of gossamer thread, intangible as the dawn, airy, floating, subtle--are the highest type. To this height Garshin did not perfectly attain. His stories were rather of the second sort, drawn from his own experiences. That they were touched with mysterious moods and vague, unnamable potencies must have been due to the author’s pitiful journeys into that shadowy, distraught land which we so confidently call the Insane.

* * * * *

Garshin’s realism grew out of his need for writing his own experiences. Though some of his descriptions of the dead Turk, in the following sketch, “Four Days,” are so revoltingly real as to justify the excisions made in the magazine version, I have retained them here, for Garshin’s realism, as a rule, lacks disgusting detail. But it is as faithful to fact as a canvas by Verestchagin, whose paintings, indeed, might be said to exhibit the same method which Garshin applied to literature.

Garshin is a pessimist--of course, one is almost forced to add. His heroes are not idealized, even in the hour of their victory. But there is nobility--that priceless tone in literature!--in much of his work, and the body takes its true place in life, as an expression of spirit, and not as the master of the house.

All in all, Garshin was a great writer, doing pitifully wonderful things under such stress as makes us love him for his brave, losing fight against black foes within and without.

FOUR DAYS
_By Wsewolod Garshin_

I remember how we ran through the wood, how the bullets whizzed past us, how the twigs that were hit by them snapped and fell, how we scrambled through the bushes. The firing grew heavier. Looking through to the outer edge, I could see little flashes of red here and there. Sidorov, a young private of Company I--“How did he come to fall into our line?” was the thought that flashed through my head--suddenly sat down on the ground and silently looked at me with open, terrified eyes. A stream of blood trickled from his mouth. Yes, that too I remember well. I also remember how when almost on the edge of the wood I first saw ... _him_ in the thick bushes. He was an enormous, corpulent Turk, but I ran straight at him, although I am weak and small. Something burst, something huge seemed to fly past me; there was a ringing in my ears. “He has shot me,” was my thought. But he, with a cry of terror, pressed his back against the dense foliage. He could have gone around it without difficulty, but in his fright he lost his presence of mind completely, and he tried to crawl through the prickly bushes.

With a blow, I knocked the gun out of his hand; I followed this by a thrust with my bayonet. There was an outcry: a roar that died into a moan. I ran on farther. Our soldiers cried, “Hurrah!” fell low, and discharged their guns. I remember that I too fired several times after we had left the wood and were in the field. Suddenly the cry of “Hurrah!” grew louder, and we all in a body moved forward. That is, not we, but my comrades; I remained behind. That seemed strange to me. Still stranger was the fact that suddenly everything vanished; all the cries and firing died away. I could hear nothing, but saw only something blue, which I concluded was the sky. Afterwards, that too passed out of my senses.

* * * * *

Never before have I found myself in such a strange situation. I am lying, it seems, on my stomach, and I see before me only a small clod of earth. A few blades of grass, an ant climbing down one of these head downwards, bits of litter from last year’s grass--that is my whole world. And I can see with only one eye, because the other is obstructed by some hard substance, perhaps a twig upon which my head rests. I feel terribly uncomfortable, and I wish to stir; it is incomprehensible to me why I cannot. So the time passes. I hear the noise of the grasshoppers and the humming of bees. Nothing more. At last I make an effort, and, extracting my right arm from under me, I press both my hands against the earth and try to rise to my knees.

Something sharp and rapid like lightning shoots across my entire body from the knees to my chest and head, and I collapse to the ground. Again darkness, again nothingness.

* * * * *

I am awake once more. Why do I see stars, which shine so brightly in the dark-blue Bulgarian sky? Am I in my tent? Why have I crawled out of it? I make a movement, and feel an agonizing pain in my legs.

Yes, I have been wounded in battle. Dangerously or not? I catch hold of my legs, there where the pain is. And both the right and the left legs are covered with clotted blood. When I touch them with my hands, the pain becomes even more intense. It is like a protracted toothache, gnawing at the very soul. There is a ringing in the ears, an oppressiveness in the head. I vaguely understand that I have been wounded in both legs. But it is all incomprehensible. Why have I not been picked up? Have the Turks really beaten us? I try to recall what has happened to me; at the beginning things seem a bit confused, but they gradually become clearer, and I come to the conclusion that we have not been beaten. And simply because I fell on the little field on top of the slope. In any case, how it all happened is difficult for me to remember; but I do recall how they all rushed forward, and that I alone could not run; and that only something blue remained before my eyes. Somewhat earlier our captain pointed towards this hillock. “Boys, we will get there!” he cried in his sonorous voice. And we got there; it is clear we have not been beaten.... Why, then, was I not picked up? This is such an open spot, and everything is visible. There must be others lying here. The shots came so thick. I must turn my head to look. It is easier to do this now, because when I first came to consciousness and I saw the grass, and the ant crawling head downwards, I tried to rise, and I fell back, not into my former position, but turned over on my spine. That explains why I see the stars.

I try to rise to a sitting position. This is very difficult, when both legs are wounded. After several attempts I begin to despair; at last, however, with tears in my eyes, forced out by the pain, I manage it.

Overhead I see a spot of dark-blue sky, in which are visible a large star and a number of small ones; and around me something dark and tall--the bushes. I am in the bushes--that is why I have not been found!

I feel a stirring at the roots of my hair.

How, then, did I get into the bushes, if I were shot in the open field? It is likely that I crawled here when I was wounded and the pain obliterated the memory of it. It is singular, however, that I should not be able to move now, and that I had been able to drag myself then towards these bushes. It is possible that I got my second wound while lying here, which may explain the matter.

I now see pale-rose stains around me. The large star has lost its brilliancy; some of the small ones have disappeared. It is because the moon has begun to rise. How good it must be at home!...

I hear strange sounds somewhere.... As if some one were moaning. Yes, it is a moan. Is it another unfortunate lying near me, forgotten like myself, with broken legs--or with a bullet in his stomach? No, the moans sound so near, and yet it seems there is no one here.... Oh, God, but it is--myself! Low, piteous moans; am I actually in such agony? I must be. Only, I don’t understand this pain; because there is a fog in my head that weighs me down like lead. It is better that I should lie down again and go to sleep--and sleep and sleep.... Shall I ever wake again? It does not really matter.

At the instant that I am gathering strength to lie down, a broad, pale strip of moonlight strikes the spot where I am sitting, revealing something dark and large lying only a few feet away. Here and there upon it little gleams are visible in the moonlight. Is it buttons or bullets? Is it a corpse, or is it some one wounded?

Well, I will lie down....

No, it is impossible. Our soldiers have not departed. They are here, they have beaten the Turks and have remained here. Why do I not hear voices and the crackle of bonfires? I must be too weak to hear. They are surely here.

“Help! Help!”

Wild, incoherent, and hoarse cries burst from my bosom, and they receive no answer. Loudly they scatter in the nocturnal air. Everything else is silent. Only the crickets chirrup on ceaselessly as before. The round moon looks compassionately down on me.

If _he_ were only wounded, my cries surely would have roused him. It is a corpse. Is it one of us or a Turk? Oh, God! as if it really mattered.... And I feel sleep descending upon my inflamed eyes.

* * * * *

I am lying with closed eyes, though I have been awake for some time. I do not wish to open my eyes, because I feel through the shut eyelids the blaze of the sun; if I open them, they will begin to smart. Perhaps I had better not even stir.... It was yesterday--yes, it must have been yesterday--that I was wounded; a day has now passed, and other days will pass, and I shall die. It does not matter. It is better not to stir. I will keep my body motionless. If I could only stop the working of the brain! Nothing will stop that. Thoughts, memories, crowd upon me. In any case, it will not be for long; the end must come soon. The newspapers will publish just a few lines to say that our losses have been insignificant: so many have been wounded; among those killed is Ivanov, a private in the volunteers’ ranks. No, even my name will not be mentioned; they will simply say, “One killed.” One soldier in the ranks--like some little dog.

The entire picture now comes to mind. It happened long ago; in fact, everything, all my life, _that_ life, before I lay here with wounded legs, seems to have been such a long time ago.... I remember strolling along the street. Seeing a crowd of people, I stopped. The crowd stood and silently looked upon something white, bloody, piteously whining. It was a handsome little dog which had been run over by a tram-car. It was dying, as I am now. A house-porter made his way through the crowd, picked the dog up by the collar, and carried it away. The crowd dispersed.

Will some one carry me away? No, you lie here and die. But how good it is to live!... Upon that particular day--when the little dog met misfortune--I was happy. I was walking along in a kind of intoxication; and there was good cause. Oh, my memories, don’t torture me, leave me! My past was happiness; my present is agony.... If only my sufferings alone remained, and my memories ceased to torture me--for they compel comparisons. Ah, longings, longings! You are wounded worse.

It is becoming hot. The sun is scorching me. I open my eyes, see the same bushes, the same sky--only, in the light of day. And here, too, is my neighbor. Yes, it is the Turk--his body. What a huge fellow! I recognize him--it is the very same one.

Before my eyes lies a man I have killed. Why have I killed him?

He lies here dead, blood-stained. What fate brought him here? Who is he? Perhaps, like myself, he has an old mother. Long will she sit evenings at the door of her wretched hut, looking ever towards the north: is he coming home, he, her beloved son, her protector and provider?...

And I? Yes, I also.... I would even change places with him. How happy he is! He hears nothing; neither does he feel pain from wounds, nor terrible longing, nor thirst.... The bayonet entered his very heart.... There is a large black hole in his uniform, and blood all around it. _That is my work._

I did not wish to do it. I did not wish to harm any one when I volunteered. The thought that I too should have to kill somehow escaped me. I only imagined how I would expose _my own_ breast to bullets. And I did expose it.

Well, and what has it come to? Fool, fool! This unfortunate _fellah_, in Egyptian uniform, he is even less to blame than you are. Before he and others were packed, like herrings in a barrel, into a steamer and brought to Constantinople, he had not even heard of Russia or of Bulgaria. He was commanded to go, and he went. Had he refused to go, he would have been beaten with sticks, and perhaps some Pasha or other would have fired a bullet into him. It was a long, difficult march for him from Stamboul to Rustchuk. We attacked, he defended himself. Seeing, however, that we were a fearless people, and that, unafraid of his English carbine, we rushed forward and still moved forward, he was seized with terror. Just as he was trying to get away, some sort of little man, whom he could have killed with one blow of his dark fist, ran forward and plunged a bayonet into his heart.

Of what had he been guilty?

And of what am I guilty, even though I have killed him? Of what am I guilty? Why am I tortured by thirst? Thirst! Who knows the meaning of this word? Even during the days when we marched through Roumania, fifty versts at a stretch, through unbearable heat, I did not feel what I feel now. If only some one came along this way!

Oh, God! But there must be water in that big flask of his! Only to reach it! Come what may, I will get it.

I begin to crawl. I drag my legs slowly; my exhausted arms barely stir the passive body from its place. The spot is hardly more than fifteen feet away, but it seems like ten versts. Nevertheless, I must crawl on. My throat is aflame with a terrible fire. To be sure, without water, I could die the more quickly. All the same, perhaps....

And so I crawl. My legs drag on the ground, and every movement calls forth most excruciating pain. I cry out again and again, with tears in my eyes, and still I crawl on. At last! The flask is in my hand.... There’s water in it--and quite a deal! It seems more than half full. Ah, it will last me some time ... until I die!

It is you, my victim, who will save me! I begin to undo the flask, propping myself up on one elbow; and suddenly, losing my balance, I fall downward across the breast of my deliverer. Decay having set in, a strong stench comes from his body.

I have slaked my thirst. The water is warm, but not spoilt; and there is a great deal of it. I can live a few more days. I remember having read somewhere that one could exist without food for over a week, provided one had water. Yes, and I recall also the story of the man who committed suicide by starvation, but who lived a long time because he drank water.

Well, and what’s to be the end of it? And if I do live five or six days longer, what of that? Our troops have gone, the Bulgarians have dispersed. I am far from a road. Death--there is no way out of it. I have but prolonged my three-day agony with a seven-day one. Perhaps I had better end it all. At my neighbor’s side lies his gun, an excellent English mechanism. I have only to stretch out my hand; then--one little moment, and an end. There is quite a lot of cartridges here, too. He hadn’t had time to dispose of them all.

Shall I end it all--or wait? Wait for what? Deliverance? Death? Or shall I wait until the Turks come here and tear the skin from my wounded legs? Far better that I should put an end to it myself.

No; there is no need to lose courage. I will struggle to the end, to my last resource. There is still hope of being found. It is possible my bones are not affected; and I may return to health. I shall again see my native land, my mother, and Masha....

Oh, Lord, save them from knowing the whole truth! Let them think I was killed outright. What if they should learn that I had suffered slow torture for two, three, or four days!

My head is in a whirl. My journey to my neighbor has completely exhausted me. What a terrible stench! He has grown black ... and what will he be like to-morrow or the day after? And now I am lying here only because I haven’t sufficient strength to drag myself away. I will rest awhile, and will then crawl back to my old place; and, besides, the breeze blows from that direction and will drive the smell away.

I am lying now in complete exhaustion. The sun is scorching my face and hands. There is nothing to cover oneself with. If only night would come! I think this will be the second night.

* * * * *

My thoughts wander, and I am losing consciousness.

I must have slept a long time, because when I awoke it was already night. As before, the wounds ache, and my neighbor lies beside me--the same huge, motionless figure.

I cannot help thinking of him. Have I really left behind me all that is pleasant and dear to me, and marched here at the speed of four versts an hour, hungered, froze, suffered from the heat, only to undergo this final torture--for no other reason than that this unfortunate should cease to live? And have I really accomplished anything useful for my country except this murder?

This is murder--and I am a murderer.

When I first got the idea into my head to go and fight, Mother and Masha did not try to dissuade me, although they both wept much. Blinded by my idea, I did not understand those tears. Only now I understand what I have done to those so near to me.

Why recall all this? There is no returning to the past.

And what a singular attitude my acquaintances assumed towards my action! “What a madman! He is meddling without knowing why!” How could they say that? How could they reconcile their words with _their_ ideas of heroism, love of mother country, and other such things? Surely I earned their admiration for living up to these virtues. Yet I am a “madman.”

Presently I am on my way to Kishinev; I am supplied with a knapsack and all the other military accoutrements. I go with thousands of others; among them a few, like myself, are volunteers. The rest would have preferred to remain at home, if they were permitted. Nevertheless, they go along just like we “conscious ones,” march thousands of versts, and fight as well as ourselves, or even better. They fulfil their obligations notwithstanding the fact that they would on the instant drop everything and go home if permission were given them.

A fresh early morning breeze has begun to blow. There is a stirring among the bushes; I can hear the flutter of a bird’s wings. The stars are no longer visible. The dark blue sky has turned gray, and stretching across it are gentle, fleecy cloudlets; a gray mist is rising from the earth. It is the beginning of the third day of my ... what can I call it? Life? Agony?

The third day.... How many more are left to me? At any rate, only a few. I have grown terribly weak, and I fear that I am unable to move away from the corpse. Only a little while longer, and I will stretch out by his side, and we shall not be unpleasant to each other.

I must have a drink. I will drink three times a day--in the morning, at noon, and in the evening.

* * * * *

The sun has risen. Its enormous disk, broken and intersected by the dark branches of the bushes, is red like blood. It looks as if it will be a hot day. My neighbor--what will become of you? Even now you are quite terrible.

Yes, he is terrible. His hair has begun to fall out. His skin, dark by nature, has grown a pale yellow; his bloated face has become so tightly stretched that the skin burst just behind one ear. The worms have begun to swarm there. The lower limbs, encased in gaiters, have swollen, and huge blisters have showed themselves from between the hooks of the gaiters. What will the sun make of him to-day?

It is unendurable to be so near him. I must get away, at all costs. Can I do it? I am still able to lift my hand, open the flask, and drink; but to move my passive, cumbersome body is quite another matter. Still, I will make an effort, even if it should take me an hour to move a few inches.

The entire morning passes in this attempt to shift. The pain is intense, but what does it matter? I no longer remember; I cannot imagine to myself the perception of a normal man. I have gotten used to the pain. I have managed to shift about fifteen feet, and am now in my old place. Not for long, however, have I enjoyed the fresh breeze, as far as it can be fresh with a rotting corpse only a few steps away. The breeze too has shifted and has brought the stench upon me anew to the point of nausea. The empty stomach contracts painfully and convulsively; all the internals groan. But the ill-smelling, infected air continues to pour upon me.

I weep in my desperation.

Broken in body and spirit and half insane, I was beginning to lose consciousness. Suddenly ... or is it only a delusion of a distressed imagination? Yes, I think I hear voices. The clatter of horses’ hoofs--and human voices. I almost came near shouting, but restrained myself. Suppose they should be Turks? They, of course--as if I already hadn’t suffered enough--will subject me to terrible torture, such as makes your hair stand on end just to read about in the newspapers. They’ll peel my skin off, and they’ll apply a fire to my wounded legs ... or they might invent some new torture. Is it not better to end my life at their hands than die here? Who can tell?--they may be my countrymen! Oh, accursed bushes! Why have you fenced yourselves so thickly around me? There is no opening except one aperture in the foliage, that opens like a window upon a hollow visible in the distance. There, I think, is a brook from which we drank before the battle. I can see, too, the huge flat stone across the stream, put there to serve as a bridge. They will surely cross it. The voices are dying away. I cannot make out the language they speak; my hearing too has grown weak. Oh, Lord! what if they are my countrymen!... I will shout. They will hear me even from the brook. That is better than falling into the hands of the Bashi-Bazouks. What has become of them? I don’t see them. I am being consumed with impatience; I no longer even notice the smell of the corpse, although it has not grown any less.

Suddenly a body of horsemen make their appearance crossing the bridge. Cossacks! Blue uniforms, red stripes, lances! About fifty of them! At the fore, upon a handsome horse, is an officer with a black beard. No sooner do the fifty horsemen cross the brook than he turns full face in his saddle and shouts:

“Tro-t, march!”

“Stop, stop, for God’s sake! Help, help, brothers!” But the stamping of sturdy horses, the clanging of many sabres, and the lusty shouting of Cossack throats are too much for my weak outcry--and I am not heard.

Oh, curses! In complete exhaustion, I fall face to the ground and begin to weep. In my falling, I fail to notice that I have upset the flask and out of its mouth the water--my life, my deliverance, my respite from death--is oozing. I notice it only when there is no more than a half-cupful left; the rest has been absorbed by the dry, thirsty earth.

It is simply agony to recall the stupor which seized me after this terrible accident. I lay motionless, with half-closed eyes. The wind kept changing, and now fanned me with pure, clear air and now sent the stench upon me anew. My neighbor has become unsightly beyond all description. Once I opened my eyes to glance at him, and I recoiled in horror. He no longer had any face. The flesh seemed to peel right off the bone. That horrible smile of bones, that eternal grin, seemed never so repulsive, never so awful, although it had been my lot to hold many a human skull in my hands before, in the medical classes. The skeleton in uniform with shining buttons caused me to shudder. “This is war,” I reflected, “and here is its symbol.”

The sun is burning and scorching me as before. My hands and face have been smarting for some time. I drank up the remaining water. The thirst tortured me so intensely that in trying to take a single swallow I gulped down all. Fool that I was not to have called to the Cossacks when they were so near! Even if they had been Turks, it would have been better than this. They would have tortured me an hour or two; but now there’s no saying how long I am to lie here and suffer. My dear, dearest mother! If you only knew! You would tear your gray hair out, you would knock your head against the wall, you would curse the day of my birth, you would curse the world which invented war and its sorrows.

It is well that you and Masha will not hear of my sufferings. Farewell, Mother; farewell, my sweetheart, my love! But how sad and bitter I feel! And there is something gnawing at the heart....

Again I am thinking of that little white dog! The porter did not pity it, but knocked its head against the wall and threw it into a garbage heap. And still it was alive; and suffered a whole day. I am more unfortunate, because I have suffered already three days. To-morrow will be the fourth day, then the fifth, the sixth.... Death, where art thou? Come, come! Take me!

But death does not come. And I am lying in the blaze of this terrible sun; and there is not a drop of water to refreshen my inflamed throat; the corpse, too, is making me ill. Myriads of vermin are feeding in it. How they swarm! When he is eaten, and there is nothing left except the bones and the uniform, then it will be my turn. I too shall share the same fate.

The day passes, and the night passes. No change. Again morning. No change. Another day will pass....

The bushes are stirring and rustling, as if they were talking among themselves. “You will die, you will die, you will die!” they whisper. “You will not see, you will not see, you will not see!” answer the bushes on the other side.

“No, you will not see them here!” I hear a loud voice quite near.

I tremble and at once come to myself. I look up, to find the good blue eyes of our corporal Yakovlev looking at me.

“Spades!” he cries out. “There are two more of them here--and one of them is theirs!”

“There is no need for spades, no need to bury me; I’m alive!” I wish to cry out; but only a feeble groan issues from my parched lips.

“Lord! But he is alive! _Barin_[1] Ivanov! Children, come this way! Our _Barin_ is alive! And bring the doctor, quick!”

Presently I feel the pleasant contact in my mouth of water, whiskey, and of something else. Then everything disappears.

The stretcher sways with a measured motion. This motion is soothing. Now I recall myself, now everything lapses from my memory. The bandaged wounds no longer hurt. An inexpressible feeling of comfort has diffused itself through my entire body....

“Hal-t! L-lo-wer! Fresh hands to the stretchers! Now get hold--lift--march!”

The command is issued by Peter Ivanich, our sanitary officer, a tall, lean, and very kindly man. He is so tall that as I turn my eyes in his direction I can see his head, his peculiar long beard, and his shoulders, although the stretcher is being carried on the shoulders of four big men.

“Peter Ivanich!” I whisper.

“What is it, dear fellow?”

Peter Ivanich leans toward me.

“Peter Ivanich, what did the doctor tell you? Will I die soon?”

“What are you saying, Ivanov? Of course you will live. Your bones are whole. What a lucky fellow you are! Your bones are all right, and so are your arteries! But tell me, how did you manage to pull through these three and a half days? What did you eat?”

“Nothing.”

“And had you anything to drink?”

“I took the Turk’s flask. Peter Ivanich, I cannot speak now. Later....”

“Well, God be with you, dear fellow, and have your nap.”

Again sleep, forgetfulness....

When I awake again, I am in the division hospital, surrounded by nurses and doctors. At my feet stands a man whom I recognize as a celebrated St. Petersburg professor. His hands are blood-stained. He is attending to me, and presently he turns to speak to me:

“Well, the Lord has been good to you, young man. You will remain alive. We’ve deprived you of one leg; but that is a mere trifle. Can you talk?”

Yes, I can talk, and I am telling him all that I have written here.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A term of deference usually employed by peasants and servants in addressing their master, or in speaking of him.