Short Fiction, Vsevolod Garshin [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

come. There will be just a few lines in the newspapers that our losses were insignificant:⁠—wounded⁠ ⁠… so many; killed⁠—one, Private Ivanoff⁠—no, the names of the men are not given, they simply say killed⁠ ⁠… one. One private, as if it were one dog.

All the details of an incident which happened long ago flash to my mind. By the way, how long ago all my life seems⁠—I mean that life when I was not lying here with my legs shot through.⁠ ⁠…

I was going along the street when I was stopped by a crowd which had gathered and was silently gazing at something white covered with blood lying on the roadway whining piteously⁠—a little dog which had been run over by a tramcar. It was dying, as I am now. A dvornik1 pushed his way through the crowd, picked it up by the back of the neck, and carried it away, and the crowd dispersed. Will anyone take me away? No⁠ ⁠… you will lie here and die. And how good is life! How happy I was that day! I went along as if intoxicated. Recollections! do not torture me! Leave me alone with this present torture, then at least I cannot involuntarily make comparisons. Oh, this longing for home! It is worse than wounds.

However, it is getting hot. The sun is scorching me. I open my eyes and see the same bushes, the same sky, only by daylight⁠ ⁠… and there is my neighbour. Yes, he is a Turk, a corpse. What a huge man! I recognize him as the same man I⁠ ⁠…

Before me lies a man whom I have killed. Why did I kill him? He lies there dead and bloodstained. Why did Fate bring him here? Who is he? Perhaps he has⁠ ⁠… as I have⁠ ⁠… an old mother. She will sit long and alone in the evenings at the door of her miserable hut, gazing towards the north, for her darling son, her protector and breadwinner. And I? I also⁠—would that I could change places with him. He is happy. He hears nothing, feels nothing, no pain from wounds, no awful sickness, no thirst⁠ ⁠… the bayonet went straight through his heart. There is a big black hole in his uniform with blood around it. I did that!

I did not want to do it. I wished no one harm when I volunteered. It somehow never entered my mind that I should have to kill people. I only thought of how I would expose my own breast to the bullets. I came⁠ ⁠… and now⁠ ⁠… fool! fool!

And this unhappy fellah (he was in Egyptian uniform)⁠—he is even less to blame than I. First of all they packed him with others like herrings in a barrel on board a steamer and brought him to Constantinople. He had never heard of Russia or Bulgaria. They ordered him to go, and he came. Had he refused they would have beaten him with sticks, or perhaps some Pascha would have put a bullet into him. He came here by long and difficult marches from Stamboul to Rustchuk. We attacked and he defended himself, but seeing that we terrible people cared not for his patent English rifle, but ever leapt forward, he became terror-stricken, and when he wanted to get away, someone, a little man whom he could have killed with one blow of his big black fist, jumped forward and plunged a bayonet into his heart.

Why is he to blame?

And why am I to blame, even though I did kill him? How am I to blame? Why is this thirst torturing me? Thirst! Who knows what this word means! Even when we came through Romania, making forced marches of fifty versts in the terrific heat, even then I did not feel what I feel now. Oh, if only somebody would come along!

God! Yes⁠—there must be something inside that huge water-bottle of his. But I have to get to it. What will it cost me? Never mind, I will get there.

I crawl, dragging my legs behind me. My arms have grown so weak that they can scarcely help me. It is only a few feet, but for me it is more⁠ ⁠… not more, but worse than tens of versts. Nevertheless, I must crawl there. My throat is burning⁠—burning like fire. Yes, no doubt without water you will die sooner, but still perhaps⁠ ⁠…

And I crawl. My legs seem chained to the ground and every movement causes insufferable pain. I yell, yell, but all the same go on crawling. At last! Yes, there is water in the flask, and what a lot! More than half full. It will last me a long time⁠ ⁠… until I die!

You are saving my life, my victim!

I commenced to unfasten the water-bottle, leaning as I did so on one elbow, when, suddenly losing my balance, I fell face forward on to the body of my deliverer. Already it was becoming unpleasant.

I have drunk. The water was warm, but still unspoilt. Moreover, there is plenty. I shall live several days more. I remember having read in a book that a man can live without food for more than a week if only he has water, and in the same book I read an account of a man who committed suicide by starvation, but lived for ages before he died because he drank water.

But what if I do live another five or six days? What will come of it? Our men have gone. The Bulgarians have dispersed. There is no road near. I have to die, only instead of three days’ agony I have given myself a week. Would it not be better to finish it now? Near my neighbour lies his rifle. I need only stretch out my hand⁠—then a flash and the end. There are cartridges lying there. He had no time to use them all. Shall I end it, then?⁠ ⁠… or wait? Which? Deliverance? death? Wait until the Turks come and commence to tear the skin from my wounded legs? Better