“Sometimes they fire as if it were peas they were spilling over you, and nothing happens … and this time only about five shots were fired,” related one of the bearers.
“Each man gets what fate sends!”
“Oh!” groaned Avdéev loudly, trying to master his pain when they began to place him on the bed; but he stopped groaning when he was on it, and only frowned and moved his feet continually. He held his hands over his wound and looked fixedly before him.
The doctor came, and gave orders to turn the wounded man over, to see whether the bullet had passed out behind.
“What’s this?” the doctor asked, pointing to the large white scars that crossed one another on the patient’s back and loins.
“That was done long ago, your honor!” replied Avdéev, with a groan.
They were scars left by the flogging Avdéev had received for the money he drank.
Avdéev was again turned over, and the doctor long probed in his stomach, and found the bullet, but failed to extract it. He put a dressing on the wound, and having stuck plaster over it went away. During the whole time the doctor was probing and bandaging the wound Avdéev lay with clenched teeth and closed eyes, but when the doctor had gone he opened them and looked around as though amazed. His eyes were turned on the other patients and on the surgeon’s orderly, but he seemed to see not them, but something else that surprised him.
His friends, Panóv and Serógin, came in; but Avdéev continued to lie in the same position, looking before him with surprise. It was long before he recognized his comrades, though his eyes gazed straight at them.
“I say, Peter, have you no message to send home?” said Panóv.
Avdéev did not answer, though he was looking Panóv in the face.
“I say, haven’t you any orders to send home?” again repeated Panóv, touching Avdéev’s cold, large-boned hand.
Avdéev seemed to come to.
“Ah! … Panóv!”
“Yes, I’m here. … I’ve come! Have you nothing for home? Serógin would write a letter.”
“Serógin …” said Avdéev moving his eyes with difficulty towards Serógin, “will you write? … Well then, write so: ‘Your son,’ say, ‘Peter, has given orders that you should live long.20 He envied his brother’ … I told you about that today … ‘and now he is himself glad. Don’t worry him. … Let him live. God grant it him. I am glad!’ Write that.”
Having said this he was silent for some time with his eyes fixed on Panóv.
“And did you find your pipe?” he suddenly asked. Panóv did not reply.
“Your pipe … your pipe! I mean, have you found it?” Avdéev repeated.
“It was in my bag.”
“That’s right! … Well, and now give me a candle … I am going to die,” said Avdéev.
Just then Poltorátsky came in to inquire after his soldier.
“How goes it, my lad! Badly?” said he.
Avdéev closed his eyes and shook his head negatively. His broad-cheeked face was pale and stern. He did not reply, but again said to Panóv:
“Bring a candle. … I am going to die.”
A wax taper was placed in his hand, but his fingers would not bend, so it was placed between them, and held up for him.
Poltorátsky went away, and five minutes later the orderly put his ear to Avdéev’s heart and said that all was over.
Avdéev’s death was described in the following manner in the report sent to Tiflis:
“23rd Nov.—Two companies of the Kurín regiment advanced from the fort on a wood-felling expedition. At midday a considerable number of mountaineers suddenly attacked the wood-fellers. The sharpshooters began to retreat, but the 2nd Company charged with the bayonet and overthrew the mountaineers. In this affair two privates were slightly wounded and one killed. The mountaineers lost about a hundred men killed and wounded.”
VIII
On the day Peter Avdéev died in the hospital at Vozdvízhensk, his old father, the wife of the brother in whose stead he had enlisted, and that brother’s daughter—who was already approaching womanhood and almost of age to get married—were threshing oats on the hard-frozen threshing floor.
The day before, there had been a heavy fall of snow followed towards morning by a severe frost. The old man woke when the cocks were crowing for the third time, and seeing the bright moonlight through the frozen windowpanes, got down from the oven-top, put on his boots, his sheepskin coat and cap, and went out to the threshing floor. Having worked there for a couple of hours, he returned to the hut and awoke his son and the women. When the woman and girl came to the threshing floor they found it ready swept, with a wooden shovel sticking in the dry white snow, and beside it birch brooms with the twigs upwards, and two rows of oat sheaves laid ears to ears in a long line the whole length of the clean threshing floor. They chose their flails and started threshing, keeping time with their triple blows. The old man struck powerfully with his heavy flail, breaking the straw; the girl struck the ears from above with measured blows; and his daughter-in-law turned the oats over with her flail.
The moon had set, dawn was breaking, and they were finishing the line of sheaves when Akím, the eldest son, in his sheepskin and cap, joined the threshers.
“What are you lazing about for?” shouted his father to him, pausing in his work and leaning on his flail.
“The horses had to be seen to.”
“ ‘Horses seen to!’ ” the father repeated, mimicking him. “The old woman will look after them. … Take your flail! You’re getting too fat, you drunkard!”
“Have you been standing me treat?” muttered the son.
“What?” said the old man, frowning sternly and missing a stroke.
The son silently took a flail, and they began threshing with four flails.
Trak, tapatam …
