Well, then … Semyonov and I, I and my old dead uncle, myself shaking in the road the other night under the rain! What was to be the issue of all of it?
I, on this lovely evening, saw quite clearly the progress of events that had brought me to this point. One: that drive with Durward on the first day when we had stopped at the trench and heard the frogs. Two: the evening at O⸺, when Marie Ivanovna had been angry and we had first heard the cannon. Three: the day at S⸺ and Marie kneeling on the cart with her hand on Semyonov’s shoulder. Four: her refusal of me, the bodies in the forest, the Retreat, that night Nikitin (getting well into the thick of it now). Five: the talk with Marie in the park. Six: the wet night at Nijnieff. Seven: last night’s little talk with Semyonov. … Yes, I could see now that I had been advancing always forward into the forest, growing ever nearer and nearer, perceiving now the tactics of the enemy, beaten here, frightened there, but still penetrating—not, as yet, retreating … and always, my private little history marching with me, confused with the private little histories of all of the others, all of them penetrating more deeply and more deeply. …
And if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov—and, far beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest. If I had lost my nerve! … Had I? Was it only weariness the other night? But twice now I had been properly beaten, and why, after all, should I imagine that I would be able to put up a fight—I who had never in all my life fought anything successfully? I lay on my back, looked at the sky. I sat up, looked at the country, I set my teeth, looked at Nikitin.
Nikitin grunted. “I’ve had a good nap,” he said. “You should have had one. There’ll be plenty of work for us tonight by the sound of it.” We turned a corner of the road through the wood and one of our own batteries jumped upon us.
“I’m glad it’s not raining,” I said.
“We’ve still some way to go,” said Nikitin, sitting up. “What a lovely evening!” Then he added, quite without apparent connection, “Well, you’re more at home amongst us all now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said I.
“I’m glad of that. And what do you think of Andrey Vassilievitch?”
I answered: “Oh! I like him! … but I don’t think he’s happy at the war,” I added.
“I want you to like him,” Nikitin said. “He’s a splendid man … I have known him many years. He is merry and simple and it is easy to laugh at him, but it is always easy to laugh at the best people. You must like him, Mr. … He likes you very much.”
I felt as though Nikitin were here forming an alliance between the three of us. Well, I liked Nikitin, I liked Andrey Vassilievitch. I listened to the battery, now some way behind us, then said:
“Of course, I am his friend if he wishes.”
Nikitin repeated solemnly: “Andrey Vassilievitch is a splendid fellow.”
Then we arrived. Here, beside the broad path of the forest there was a clearing and above the clearing a thick pattern of shining stars curved like the top of a shell. Here, in the open, the doctors had made a temporary hospital, fastening candles on the trees, arranging two tables on trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. “Noo tak. Fine, our hospital, don’t you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here, golubchik, this way. … Finger, is it? Oh! that’s nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors? … scissors, someone. One moment. … One … moment. Ah! there you are!” The finger that had been hanging by a shred fell into the basin. The soldier muttered something, slipped on to his knees, his face grey under the moon, then huddled into nothing, like a bundle of old clothes, fainted helplessly away.
“Here, water! … No, take him over there! That’s right. Well, Mr.—how are you? Lovely night. … Plenty of work there’ll be, too. Oh! you’re going down to the Vengerovsky Polk? Yes, they’re down to the right there somewhere—across the fields. … Warm over there.”
The noise just then of the batteries was terrific. We were compelled to shout at one another. A battery behind us bellowed like a young bull and the shrapnel falling at some distance amongst the trees had a strange splashing sound as of a stone falling into water.2 The candles twinkled in the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in the dark shadows of the forest.
A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin spoke to them.
“Here, golubchik … tell me! what polk?”
“Moskovsky, your Honour.”
“And the Vengerovsky … they’re to the right, are they?”
“Yes, your Honour. By the high road, when it comes into the forest.”
“What? There where the road turns?”
“Tak totchno.”
“How are things down there just now? Wounded, do you think?”
“Ne mogoo znat. I’m unable to say, your Honour … but there’s been an
