“Everything—the whole affair! … Are the cutlets ready, Nikolayev?”
“Then why did you come to serve here if you so dislike the Caucasus?” I said.
“Do you know why?” he answered with resolute frankness. “In obedience to tradition! You know there exists in Russia a most curious tradition about the Caucasus, making it out to be a ‘promised land’ for all unfortunates.”
“Yes, that is almost true,” said I. “Most of us—”
“But the best of it is,” he said, interrupting me, “that all of us who came to the Caucasus in obedience to the tradition made a terrible mistake in our calculations, and I can’t for the life of me see why one should, in consequence of an unfortunate love affair or of financial troubles, choose to go and serve in the Caucasus rather than in Kazan or Kaluga. Why, in Russia they imagine the Caucasus to be something majestic: eternal virgin ice, rushing torrents, daggers, mantles, fair Circassians, and an atmosphere of terror and romance; but in reality there is nothing amusing in it. If they only realized that we never get to the virgin-ice, that it would not be at all amusing if we did, and that the Caucasus is divided into governments—Stavropol, Tiflis, and so on.”
“Yes,” said I, laughing, “we look very differently at the Caucasus when we are in Russia and when we are here. It is like what you may have experienced when reading verses in a language you are not familiar with; you imagine them to be much better than they are.”
“I really don’t know; but I dislike this Caucasus awfully,” he said, interrupting me.
“Well, no; I still like the Caucasus, only in a different way.”
“Perhaps it is all right,” he continued irritably; “all I know is that I’m not all right in the Caucasus.”
“Why is that?” I asked, to say something.
“Well, first because it has deceived me. All that I, in obedience to tradition, came to the Caucasus to be cured of, has followed me here, only with the difference that there it was all on a big scale, and now it is on a little dirty one, where at each step I find millions of petty anxieties, shabbinesses, and insults; and next, because I feel that I am sinking, morally, lower and lower every day; but chiefly, because I do not feel fit for the service here. I can’t stand running risks. The fact of the matter is simply that I am not brave.”
He stopped and looked at me, not joking.
Though this unasked-for confession surprised me very much, I did not contradict him, as he evidently wished me to do, but waited for his own refutation of his words, which always follows in such cases.
“Do you know, in coming on this expedition I am taking part in an action for the first time,” he continued, “and you can’t think what was going on in me yesterday. When the Sergeant-major brought the order that my company was to join the column, I turned as white as a sheet and could not speak for excitement. And if you only knew what a night I had! If it were true that one’s hair turns white from fear, mine ought to be perfectly white today, because I don’t think anyone condemned to death ever suffered more in a night than I did; and even now, though I feel a bit easier than in the night, this is what goes on inside!” he added, turning his fist about before his chest. “And what is funny is that while a most fearful tragedy is being enacted, here one sits eating cutlets and onions and making believe that it is great fun.—Have we any wine, Nikolayev?” he added, yawning.
“That’s him, my lads!” came the excited voice of one of the soldiers, and all eyes turned towards the border of the distant forest.
In the distance a puff of bluish smoke expanded and rose, blown about by the wind. When I had understood that this was a shot fired at us by the enemy, all before my eyes at the moment assumed a sort of new and majestic character. The piles of arms, the smoke of the fires, the blue sky, the green gun-carriages, Nikolayev’s sunburnt, moustached face—all seemed telling me that the ball that had already emerged from the smoke and was at that moment flying through space, might be directed straight at my breast.
“Where did you get the wine?” I asked Bolhov lazily, while deep in my soul two voices spoke with equal clearness. One said, “Lord receive my soul in peace,” the other, “I hope I shall not stoop, but smile, while the ball is passing,” and at that moment something terribly unpleasant whistled past our heads, and a cannonball crashed down a couple of paces from us.
“There now, had I been a Napoleon or a Frederick, I should certainly have paid you a compliment,” Bolhov remarked, turning towards me quite calmly.
“You have done so as it is,” I answered, with difficulty hiding the excitement produced in me by the danger just passed.
“Well, what if I have?—no one will write it down.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Well, if you do put it down, it will only be ‘for critikism,’ as Mischenkov says,” he added with a smile.
“Ugh! the damned thing!” just then remarked Antonov behind us, as he spat over his shoulder with vexation, “just missed my legs!”
All my attempts to seem calm, and all our cunning phrases, suddenly seemed to me insufferably silly after that simple exclamation.
VII
The enemy had really placed two guns where we had seen the Tartars riding, and they fired a shot every twenty or thirty minutes at our men who were felling the wood. My platoon was ordered forward to the plain to answer the enemy’s fire. A puff of smoke appeared on the outskirts of the forest, then followed a report and a whistle, and a ball fell in front or behind us. The enemy’s shots fell fortunately for us, and we sustained
