We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded man pitching from side to side. Of the rest of our journey I have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered about my legs. Another step and I shall fall!
I thought. … I shall sleep.
I heard, from a great distance as it seemed, the soldier’s “Na … Na! Na … na!” I replied to him as a nurse to her child. “Na … na! Na … na!” … Then I heard Nikitin’s voice. …
Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy things for any two men to carry. … We had been three hours on our journey!
Well—I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree. Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed, their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and had long black hair.
“Why didn’t they take you for a soldier?” I asked him.
“Consumptive,” he said.
I had washed my face, hitched up my trousers. I sat on the trunk of a tree, watched the dew on the grass and the faint blue like the colour of a bird’s egg flood the sky, staining it pale yellow. All firing had utterly ceased. There was not a sound except the birds in the trees who were beginning to sing. A soldier, a fine grave figure with a black beard, was washing in a little pool at the end of the garden. He was naked save for his white drawers. There was, I repeat, not a sound. Our cottage looked so peaceful—smoke coming from the chimney. No sign of the shambles, no sign except the four dead men, all so grave and quiet. The blue in the sky grew deeper. Then the sun rose, a jolly gold ball with red clouds swinging in streamers away from it.
The birds sang above my head so loudly that the boy who was mowing looked up at them. The soldier finished his washing, put on his shirt. He was a Muhammadan, I perceived, because he prayed, very solemnly, his face to the sun, bowing to the ground. The grass fell before the flashing scythe, the sun flamed behind the trees, and I was happy as I had never known happiness in my life before.
I had done only what all the soldiers are doing every day of their lives. I had been only where they always were. … But I felt that I need never be afraid again. Everyone knows how an early summer morning can give one confidence; in my happiness, God forgive me, I thought that my struggles were at an end, that I had met my enemy and defeated him … that I was worthy and able to defend Marie.
These things may seem foolish now when one knows what followed them, but the happiness of that morning at least was real. Perhaps all over Europe there were men, at that moment, happy as I was, because they had proved something to themselves. Then Nikitin called to me, laughing.
“Tea, Mr. and bulki3 and sausage?”
“All right, I’m coming,” I answered. “Listen, golubchik,” I called to the soldier. “Bring me some water in your kettle. I’ll wash my hands.”
He came, smiling, towards me.
I have given the incidents of this night in great detail for my own satisfaction, because I wish to forget nothing. To others the little adventure must seem trivial, but to myself it represented the climax of a chain of events.
Part II
I
The Lovers
Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna did not offer us a picture of idealised love—they did not offer us a picture of anything, and although they were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves. To expect that of Semyonov at any time showed a lamentable lack of interest in human character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself ashamed of anything, and
