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

“Kaloúgin must know,” said Gáltsin. “By the way, V⁠⸺ told me today that you are a trump⁠—”

“But the losses, the losses are terrible!” said the Colonel. “In my regiment we had four hundred casualties. It is astonishing that I am still alive.”

Just then the figure of Miháylof, with his head bandaged, appeared at the end of the boulevard and came towards these gentlemen.

“What, are you wounded, Captain?” said Kaloúgin.

“Yes, slightly, with a stone,” answered Miháylof.

“Est-ce que le pavillon est baissé déja?”47 asked Prince Gáltsin, glancing at the Lieutenant-Captain’s cap, and not addressing anyone in particular.

“Non, pas encore,”48 answered Miháylof, who wished to show that he understood and spoke French.

“Do you mean to say the truce still continues?” said Gáltsin, politely addressing him in Russian, and thereby intimating (so it seemed to the Lieutenant-Captain): “It must, no doubt, be difficult for you to have to speak French, so hadn’t we better simply⁠ ⁠…” and thereupon the Adjutants left him. The Lieutenant-Captain again felt exceedingly lonely, as he had done the day before. After bowing to various people⁠—some of whom he did not wish, and some of whom he did not venture, to join⁠—he sat down near Kazársky’s monument and smoked a cigarette.

Baron Pesth also turned up on the boulevard. He related that he had been present at the parley, and how he had spoken with the French officers. According to his account, one of them had said to him, “Sil n’avait pas fait clair encore pendant une demi-heure, les embuscades auraient été reprises,”49 and he replied, “Monsieur! je ne dis pas non, pour ne pas vous donner un démenti,”50 and he told how well it had come out, etc. etc.

In reality, though he had been at the parley, he had not managed to say anything particular, though he much wished to speak with the French (for it’s awfully jolly to speak with those fellows). Junker Baron Pesth had long paced up and down the line asking the Frenchmen near to him, “De quel régiment éles-vous?”51 He got his answer and nothing more. When he went too far beyond the line, the French sentry, not suspecting that “that soldier” knew French, abused him in the third person singular: “Il vient regarder nos travaux, ce sacré⁠—”52 In consequence of which Junker Baron Pesth, finding nothing more to interest him at the parley, rode home, and on his way back composed the French phrases he was now repeating.

Captain Zóbof, who spoke so loud, was on the boulevard, the shabbily-dressed Captain Obzhógof, the artillery captain who never curried favour with anyone, a Junker fortunate in his love affairs⁠—all the same faces as the day before, and all with the same recurring motives.

Only Praskoúhin, Nefyórdof, and a few more were missing, and hardly anyone now remembered or thought of them, though there had not been time for their bodies to be washed, laid out, and put into the ground.

On our bastions and on the French parallels white flags are hung out, and between them in the flowery valley lie heaps of bootless, mangled corpses, clad in grey and blue, which workmen are removing and piling onto carts. The air is filled with the smell of decaying corpses. From Sevastopol and from the French camp crowds of people have poured out to see the sight, and with eager and amicable curiosity draw near one another.

Listen to what these people are saying to each other.

Here, in a circle of Russians and Frenchmen who have collected round him, a young officer, who speaks French badly but sufficiently to be understood, is examining a Guardsman’s pouch.

“Eh sussy, poor quah se waso lié?”53

“Parce que c’est une giberne d’un régiment de la garde, Monsieur, qui porte l’aigle impérial.”54

“Eh voo de la guard?”55

“Pardon, Monsieur, du 6-ème de ligne.”56

“Eh sussy oo ashtay?”57 pointing to a cigarette-holder of yellow wood in which the Frenchman is smoking a cigarette.

“A Balaclava, Monsieur! C’est tout simple en bois de palme.”58

“Joli,”59 says the officer, guided in his remarks not so much by his own free will as by the French words he knows.

“Si vous voulez bien garder cela comme souvenir de cette rencontre, vous m’obligerez.”60

And the polite Frenchman puts out his cigarette and presents the holder to the officer with a slight bow. The officer gives him his, and all present, both Frenchmen and Russians, smile and seem pleased.

Here is a brisk infantryman in a pink shirt, with cloak thrown over his shoulders, accompanied by others who stand by him, with their hands at their backs, and merry, inquisitive faces. He approaches a Frenchman and asks a light for his pipe. The Frenchman draws at, and stirs up the tobacco in his own short pipe, and shakes a light into that of the Russian.

“Tabac boon?” says the soldier in the pink shirt, and the spectators smile. “Oui, bon tabac, tabac turc,” says the Frenchman. “Chez vous autre tabac⁠—Russe? bon?”

“Roos boon,” says the soldier in the pink shirt, while the onlookers shake with laughter. “Fransay not boon, bongjour mossier!” says the soldier in the pink shirt, letting off his whole stock of French at once, and he slaps the Frenchman on the stomach and laughs. The French also laugh.

“Ils ne sont pas jolis ces b⁠⸺ de Russes,”61 says a Zouave among the French.

“De quoi de ce qu’ils rient donc?”62 says another, a dark man with an Italian accent, coming up to our men.

“Coat boon,” says the cheeky soldier, examining the embroidery