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

the horse, and then we’ll go on at once: today,” said the officer. II

At the entrance to a street of remains of ruined stone Tartar houses in Douvánka, Lieutenant Kozeltsóf was stopped by a convoy of bombs and cannonballs on its way to Sevastopol, which blocked the road.

Two foot-soldiers sat on the stones of a ruined wall in the midst of a cloud of dust eating a watermelon and bread.

“Going far, comrade?” asked one of them, with his mouth full of bread, as another soldier with a little bag on his back stopped near them.

“Going to join our regiment,” answered the soldier, looking past the watermelon and readjusting his bag: “We have been nigh on three weeks in the province looking after hay for our company, but now we’ve all been recalled, but we don’t know where the regiment is. Some say it crossed to the Korábelnaya last week. Perhaps you have heard, good people?”

“In the town, friend, it’s quartered in the town,” muttered the other, an old convoy soldier, who was digging with a clasp-knife into an unripe, whitish watermelon. “We’ve only come from there since noon. Ah, it’s awful there, my lad!”

“How so, good people?”

“Why, can’t you hear? They’re firing from all sides today, there’s not a place left whole. As for the likes of us as has been killed⁠—there’s no counting ’em!” And making an expressive gesture with his hand the speaker put his cap straight.

The soldier who had stopped shook his head meditatively and clicked his tongue, then he took a pipe out of his bootleg, and, without filling it, merely loosened the scorched tobacco in it, and lit a bit of tinder at the pipe of one of the soldiers. Then he raised his cap and said⁠—

“One can’t get away from God, good people! Forgive me.” And straightening his bag with a jerk he went his way.

“Ah, it would be far better to wait!” said with conviction he who was digging into the watermelon.

“It all comes to the same!” muttered the soldier, squeezing between the wheels of the crowded carts.

III

The posting-station was full of people when Kozeltsóf drove up. The first person he met in the porch was a very young, lean man, the superintendent, bickering with two officers who were following him.

“It’s not three days, but maybe ten you’ll have to wait⁠ ⁠… even generals have to wait, sirs!” said the superintendent, wishing to hurt the travellers’ feelings: “I can’t harness myself for you, can I?”

“Then don’t give horses to anybody if you have none! Why did you give them to that lackey with the baggage?” shouted the elder of the officers, who had a tumbler of tea in his hand.

“Just consider a moment, Mr. Superintendent,” said the other, a very young officer, hesitatingly: “we are not going for our own pleasure. You see we too must be needed there, since we are summoned. I shall really have to report it to the General. It will never do, you know⁠ ⁠… you, it seems, don’t respect an officer’s position.”

But the elder interrupted him crossly. “You always spoil everything! You only hamper me; one must know how to speak to these people. There now, he has lost all respect.⁠ ⁠… Horses, I say, this very minute!”

“Willingly, my dear sir, but where am I to get them from?”

The superintendent was silent for a few moments. Then he suddenly flared up, and waving his arms he began:⁠—

“I know it all very well, my dear sir, and fully understand it, but what’s one to do? You give me but” (a ray of hope appeared on the faces of the officers)⁠ ⁠… “let me but hold out to the end of the month, and I’ll remain here no longer. I’d rather go to the Maláhof Hill than remain here, I swear I would! Let them do what they please. There’s not one sound vehicle in the whole place, and it’s the third day the horses haven’t had a wisp of hay.” And the superintendent disappeared behind the gate.

Kozeltsóf entered the room together with the officers.

“Well,” said the elder very calmly to the younger, though the moment before he had seemed quite beside himself, “we’ve been three months on our way already; let’s wait a little longer. Where’s the harm? there’s time enough!”

The dirty, smoky room was so full of officers and trunks that Kozeltsóf with difficulty found a seat on the windowsill. While observing the faces and listening to the conversation of the others, he began making himself a cigarette. To the right of the door, round a crooked, greasy table on which two samovars stood with verdigris showing here and there, and sugar lay on various bits of paper, sat the principal group. A young moustacheless officer in a new quilted Caucasian coat was filling a teapot, and there were four other such young officers in different parts of the room. One of them with some kind of a fur coat rolled up under his head, was sleeping on the sofa; another was standing cutting up some roast mutton for a one-armed officer who was sitting at the table. Two officers, one in an Aide-de-camp’s cloak, the other in infantry uniform made of fine cloth, and with a satchel across his shoulders, were sitting by the stove; and the way they looked at the others, and the manner in which the one with the satchel smoked his cigarette, proved that they were not infantry officers of the line, and were glad they were not. Their manner did not show contempt, but rather a certain calm self-satisfaction, founded partly on money and partly on intimacy with generals⁠—a consciousness of superiority reaching even to a desire to conceal it. Then there was a thick-lipped young doctor, and an artillery officer who looked like a German⁠—these were sitting on the sofa, almost on the feet of the sleeping officer, counting money. There were also several orderlies, some dozing, others busy with bundles and trunks near the door. Among all