Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

passed⁠—a second during which a whole world of feelings, thoughts, hopes, and memories flashed before his imagination.

“Whom will it kill⁠—Miháylof or me? Or both of us? And if it’s me, where? In the head? then I’m done for; and if in the leg, they’ll cut it off (I’ll certainly ask for chloroform), and I may survive it. But perhaps only Miháylof will be killed; then I shall relate how we were going side by side, and how he was killed, and I was splashed with his blood. No, it’s nearer to me⁠ ⁠… it will be I.”

Then he remembered the twelve roubles he owed Miháylof, remembered also a debt in Petersburg that should have been paid long ago, and the gipsy song he had sung that evening. The woman he loved rose in his imagination, wearing a cap with lilac ribbons; he recollected a man who had insulted him five years ago and whom he had not paid out; and yet, inseparable from all these and from thousands of other recollections, the present thought, the expectation of death, did not leave him for a moment. “Perhaps it won’t explode,” and with desperate decision he wished to open his eyes. But at that instant a red flame pierced through the still closed lids, and with a terrible crash something struck him in the middle of his chest. He jumped up and began to run, but stumbling over the sabre that got between his legs, he fell on his side.

“Thank God, I’m only bruised!” was his first thought, and he wished to touch his chest with his hand; but his arms seemed tied to his sides, and it felt as if a vice were squeezing his head. Soldiers fitted past him, and he counted them unconsciously⁠—“one, two, three soldiers; and there’s an officer with his cloak tucked up,” he thought. Then lightning flashed before his eyes, and he wondered whether the shot was fired from a mortar or a cannon. “A cannon, probably. And there’s another shot, and here are more soldiers⁠—five, six, seven soldiers: they all pass by.” He was suddenly seized with fear that they would crush him. He wished to shout that he was hurt, but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and a terrible thirst tormented him. He felt it wet about his chest; and this sensation of being wet made him think of water, and he longed to drink even this that made him feel wet. “I suppose I hit myself in falling and bled,” thought he, and giving way more and more to fear lest the soldiers who kept fitting past might trample on him, he gathered all his strength and tried to shout “Take me with you!” but instead of that he uttered such a terrible groan that he was frightened to hear it. Then some other red fires began dancing before his eyes, and it seemed to him that the soldiers put stones on him; the fires danced less and less, but the stones they put on him pressed more and more heavily. He made an effort to push off the stones⁠—stretched himself⁠—and saw and heard and felt nothing more. He had been killed on the spot by a bomb-splinter in the middle of his chest.

XIII

When Miháylof saw the bomb and fell down, he too, like Praskoúhin, lived through an infinitude of thoughts and feelings in the two seconds that passed before the bomb burst. He prayed mentally, and repeated, “Thy will be done.” And at the same time he thought, “Why did I enter the army? and why did I join the infantry to take part in the campaign? Would it not have been better to have remained with the Uhlan regiment at T⁠⸺, and spent my time with my friend Natásha? And now here I am,”⁠ ⁠… and he began to count “one, two, three, four,” deciding that if the bomb burst at an even number he would live, but if at an odd number he would be killed. “It is all over, I’m killed,” he thought when the bomb burst (he did not remember whether at an odd or even number), and he felt a blow and a cruel pain in his head. “Lord, forgive me my trespasses!” he muttered, folding his hands; he rose, but fell on his back senseless.

When he came to, his first sensation was that of the blood trickling down his nose and the pain in his head, which was much less violent. “That’s the soul passing,” he thought. “How will it be there? Lord! receive my soul in peace.⁠ ⁠… Only it’s strange,” thought he, “that, dying, I should hear so distinctly the steps of the soldiers and the sounds of the firing.”

“Bring stretchers! Eh, the Captain is killed!” shouted a voice above his head, which he involuntarily recognised as the voice of the drummer, Ignátyef.

Someone took him by the shoulders. With an effort he opened his eyes, and saw the sky above him, the groups of stars, and two bombs racing one another as they few above him. He saw Ignátyef, soldiers with stretchers and guns, the embankment, the trenches, and suddenly realised that he was not yet in the other world.

He was slightly wounded in the head by a stone. His first feeling was one almost of regret: he had prepared himself so well and calmly to go there, that the return to reality, with its bombs, stretchers, and blood, seemed unpleasant. The second feeling was unconscious joy at being alive; and the third, a wish to get away from the bastion as quickly as possible. The drummer tied a handkerchief round his Commander’s head, and taking his arm led him towards the Ambulance Station.

“But why, and where, am I going?” thought the Lieutenant-Captain when he had collected his senses. “My duty is to remain with the company, and not to leave it behind, especially,” whispered a voice, “as the company will soon be