The Dark Forest

seen him, miserable, white-faced, unnerved. I had thought about him a good deal. Those days at the Otriad had been for the rest of us rather pleasantly tranquil. There was no question that we were relieved by the absence of Semyonov and Trenchard. Semyonov was no easy companion at any time and we had the very natural desire to throw off from us the weight of Marie Ivanovna’s unexpected death. I will not speak of myself in this matter, but for the others. She had not been very long in their company, she had been strange and unsettled in her behaviour, she had been engaged to a man, jilted him, and engaged herself to another⁠—all within a very short period of time. I, myself, was occupied incessantly by my thoughts of her, but that was my own affair. The past week then with us had been tranquil and easy. On my arrival at the “Point” in the Forest I was met at once by a new atmosphere. For one thing the war here was on the very top of us. Only a few yards away, towards the end of the garden, they were digging trenches. Somewhere beyond the windows, in the Forest, a battery had established itself near a clearing at the edge of a hill, the guns disguised with leaves and branches. Soldiers were moving incessantly to and fro. The house seemed full of wounded, wagons coming and going. They were digging graves in the garden, and sheeted bodies were lying in the orchard.

My friends greeted me, seemed glad to see me for a moment, and then pursued their business. I was entirely outside their life. Only ten days before I had felt a closer intimacy with Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and Nikitin than I had ever had with any of them. Now I simply did not exist for them. It was not the work that excluded me. The evening that passed then was an easy evening⁠—very little to do. We spent most of the night in playing chemin-de-fer. No, it was not the work. It was quite simply that something was happening to all of them in which I had no concern. They were all changed and about them all⁠—yes, even, I believe, about Semyonov⁠—there was an air of suppressed excitement, rather the excitement that schoolboys have, when they have prepared some secret forbidden defiance or adventure. Trenchard, whom I had left in the depths of a lethargic depression, was most curiously preoccupied. He looked at me first as though he did not perfectly remember me. He, assuredly, was not well. His eyes were lined heavily, his white cheeks had a flush of red that burnt there feverishly, and he seemed extraordinarily thin. He was restless, his eyes were never still, and I saw him sometimes fix them, in a strange way, upon some object as though he would assure himself that it was there. He was obviously under the influence of some deep excitement. He told me that he was sleeping badly, that his head ached, and that his eyes hurt him, but he did not seem distressed by these things. He was too strongly absorbed by something to be depressed. He treated me and everything around him with impatience, as though he could not wait for something that he was expecting.

I have seen in this business of the war strange things that nerves can do with the human mind and body. I have seen many men who remain with their nerves as strong as steel from the first to the last, but this is, I should say, the exception and only to be found with men of a very unimaginative character. As regards Trenchard one must take into account his recent loss, the sudden stress of incessant exhausting work, the flaming weather and the constant companionship of the one human being of all others most calculated to disturb his tranquillity. But in varying degrees I think that everyone in this place was at this time working under a strain of something abnormal and uncalculated. The very knowledge that the attack was now being pressed severely and that we had so little ammunition with which to reply, was enough to strain the nerves of everyone. Trenchard told me, in the course of the conversation, that I had with him during my second day’s stay, that his visit to the lines some days earlier (this is the visit of which he speaks in his diary) had greatly upset him. He had been disturbed apparently by the fact that there were not sufficient wagons. The whole sense of the Forest, he told me, was a strain to him, the feeling that he could not escape from it, the thought of its colour and heat and at the same time its ugliness and horror, the cholera scarecrow in it, and the deserted town and all the horrors of the recent attacks. The dead Austrians and Russians.⁠ ⁠… But I repeat, most emphatically, that he was not depressed by this. It was rather that he wished to keep his energies fresh and clear for some purpose of his own, and was therefore disturbed by anything that threatened his health. He was not quite well, he told me⁠—headaches, not sleeping⁠—but that “he had it well in control.”

And here now is a strange thing. One of the chief purposes of my visit had been to persuade one of the four men to return with me to the Otriad. Molozov had asserted very emphatically that none of them should be compelled against their will to return to Mittövo, but he thought that it would be well if, considering the strain of the work and the Position, they were to take it in turns to have a day or two’s rest and so relieve one another. I had had no doubt that this would be very acceptable to them, but on my proposing it, was surprised to receive from each of them individually an abrupt refusal even