Death too. … How clear now it was to me! During these weeks I had wondered, pursued the thought of Death. Was it this? Was it that? Was it pain? Was it terror? I had feared it, as for instance when I had seen the dead bodies in the Forest, or stood under the rain at Nijnieff. I had laughed at it as when I had gone with the sanitars. I had cursed it as when Marie Ivanovna had died. I had sought it as I had done last night—and always, as I drew closer and closer to it, fancied it some fine allegorical figure, something terrible, appalling, devastating. … How, when I was, as I believed, at last face to face with it, I saw that one was simply face to face with oneself.
Four hours I have been writing, and no sign of the wagons. … I am writing everything down as I remember it, because these things are so clear to me now and yet I know that afterwards they will be changed, twisted.
I was drowsy. I saw Polchester High Street, Garth in Roselands, Clinton, Truxe, best of all Rafiel. I went down the high white hill, deep into the valley, then along the road beside the stream where the houses begin, the hideous Wesleyan Chapel on my right, “Ebenezer Villa” on my left, then the cottages with the gardens, then the little street, the post-office, the butcher’s, the turn of the road and, suddenly, the bay with the fishing boats riding at anchor and beyond the sea. … England and Russia! to their strong and confident union I thought that I would give every drop of my blood, every beat of my heart, and as I lay there I seemed to see on one side the deep green lanes at Rafiel and on the other the shining canals, the little wooden houses, the cobbler and the tufted trees of Petrograd, the sea coast beyond Truxe and the wide snow-covered plains beyond Moscow, the cathedral at Polchester and the Kremlin, breeding their children, to the hundredth generation, for the same hopes, the same beliefs, the same desires.
I slept in the sun and had happy dreams.
I have reread these last pages and I find some very fine stuff about—“giving every drop of blood,” etc., etc. Of course I am not that kind of man. Men, like Durward and myself—he resembles me in many ways, although he is stronger than I am, and doesn’t care what people think of him—are too analytical and self-critical to give much of their blood to anybody or to make their blood of very much value if they did.
I only meant that I would do my best.
Later in the morning the firing began again pretty close. Andrey Vassilievitch came to me and wanted to talk to me. I was rather short with him because I was busy. He wanted to tell me that he hoped I hadn’t misunderstood his quarrel with Nikitin last night. It had been nothing at all. His nerves had been rather out of order. He was very much better today, felt quite another man. He looked another man and I said so. He said that I did. … Strange, but I felt as I looked at him that he was sickening for some bad illness. One feels that sometimes about people without being able to name a cause.
I have an affection for the little man—but he’s an awful fool. Well, so am I. But fools never respect fools. … Strange to see Semyonov. I had expected him for some reason to be different today. Just the same, of course, very sarcastic to me. I had a hole in one of my pockets and was always forgetting and putting money and things into it. This seemed to annoy him. But today nothing matters. Even the flies do not worry me. All the morning Marie has seemed so close to me. I have a strange excitement, the feeling that one has when one is in a train that approaches the place where someone whom one loves is waiting. … I feel exactly as though I were going on a journey. …
Since three o’clock we’ve had a lively time. The attack began about five minutes to three, by a shell splashing into the Forest near our battery. No one killed, fortunately. They’ve simply stormed away since then. I don’t seem to be able to realise it and have been sitting in my room writing as though they were a hundred miles away. One so used to the noise. Everything is ready. We’ve got all the wounded prepared. If only the wagons would come. … Hallo! a shell in the garden—cracked one of these windows. I must go down to see whether anyone’s touched. … I put this in my bag. Tomorrow … and I am so happy that …
The end of Trenchard’s diary.
These are the last words in Trenchard’s journal. It fills about half the second exercise book. The last pages are written in a hand very much clearer and steadier than the earlier ones.
I would like now to make my account as brief as possible.
Upon the afternoon of August 16 we were all at Mittövo, extremely anxious about our friends. Molozov was in a great state of alarm. The sanitars with the wagons that arrived at about four o’clock in the afternoon told us that a violent attack in the intermediate neighbourhood of our white house was expected at any moment. The wagons were to return as quickly as possible, and bring everyone away. They left about five o’clock in charge of Molozov and Goga,
