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

“A bottle of Simferópol porter!” he cried.

The orderly entered the shed with an expression of pride as it seemed to Volódya, and in getting the porter from under the seat he jostled Volódya.

The bottle of porter had been emptied, and the conversation had continued for some time in the same strain, when the flap of the tent opened, and out stepped a rather short, fresh-looking man in a blue dressing-gown with tassels, and a cap with a red band and a cockade. He came twisting his little black moustaches and looking somewhere in the direction of one of the carpets, and answered the greetings of the officers with a scarcely perceptible movement of his shoulders.

“I think I’ll also have a glass,” he said, sitting down to the table.

“Is it from Petersburg you’ve come, young man?” he remarked, addressing Volódya in a friendly manner.

“Yes, sir, and I’m going to Sevastopol.”

“At your own request?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, what do you do it for, gentlemen? I don’t understand it,” remarked the commissioner. “I’d be ready to walk to Petersburg on foot, I think, if they’d let me go. My word, I’m sick of this damned life!”

“What have you to complain of?” asked the elder Kozeltsóf, “as if you were not well enough off here.”

The contractor gave him a look and turned away.

“The danger, privations, lack of everything,” continued he, addressing Volódya. “And what induces you to do it? I do not at all understand you, gentlemen. If you got any profit out of it; but no. Now would it be nice, at your age, to be crippled for life?”

“Some want to make a profit and others serve for honour’s sake,” said the elder Kozeltsóf crossly, again intervening in the conversation.

“Where’s the honour of it if you have nothing to eat?” said the contractor, laughing disdainfully and addressing the commissary officer, who also laughed. “Wind up and let’s have the tune from Lucia,” he said, pointing to the music-box; “I like it.”

“What sort of a fellow is that Vasíly Miháylovitch?” asked Volódya when, in the dusk of the evening, he and his brother had left the shed and were driving to Sevastopol.

“So-so, only terribly stingy. But that contractor, I can’t bear to look at.⁠ ⁠… I’ll give him a thrashing some day.”

It was almost night when they reached Sevastopol. Driving towards the large bridge across the Roadstead Volódya was not exactly dispirited, but his heart felt heavy. All he had seen and heard was so different from his past, still recent, experiences⁠—the large, light, parquet-floored examination hall, the jolly, friendly voices and laughter of his comrades, the new uniform, the beloved Tsar whom he had been accustomed to see for the last seven years, and who at parting from them had, with tears in his eyes, called them his children⁠—and all he saw now was so little like his beautiful, radiant, high-souled dreams.

“Well, here we are,” said the elder brother when they reached the Michael Battery and dismounted from their trap. “If they let us cross the bridge we will go at once to the Nicholas Barracks. You can stay there till the morning, and I’ll go to the regiment and find out where your battery is and come for you tomorrow.”

“Oh, why? Let’s go together,” said Volódya. “I’ll go to the bastion with you. It doesn’t matter; one must get used to it sooner or later. If you go, so can I.”

“Better not.”

“No, please. I shall at least find out how⁠ ⁠…”

“My advice is, don’t go; but however⁠ ⁠…”

The sky was clear and dark; the stars, the ever-moving fire of the bombs and the flash of the guns, already showed up brightly in the darkness. The large white building of the battery, and the beginning of the bridge,72 loomed out in the darkness. Literally every second, several artillery shots and explosions ever more loudly and distinctly shook the air in quick succession. Through this roar, and as if answering it, came the dull murmur of the Roadstead. A slight breeze blew in from the sea and the air smelled moist. The brothers reached the bridge. A recruit, awkwardly striking his gun against his hand, called out, “Who goes there?”

“Soldier!”

“No one’s allowed to pass!”

“How is that? We must.”

“Ask the officer.”

The officer, who was sitting on an anchor dozing, rose and ordered that they should be allowed to pass.

“One may go there, but not back.”

“Where are you driving, all of a heap!” he shouted to the regimental wagons, which, laden high with gabions, were crowding the entrance.

As the brothers were descending to the first pontoon, they came upon some soldiers going in the opposite direction and talking loudly.

“If he’s had his outfit money his account is squared⁠—that’s so.”

“Eh, lads,” said another, “when one gets to the North Side one sees light again. My word! it’s different air altogether.”

“Get along,” said the first. “Why, the other day a damned shot came flying here and tore off two soldiers’ legs for them, so that⁠ ⁠…”

Waiting for the trap, the brothers, after crossing the first pontoon, stopped on the second, onto which the waves washed here and there. The wind, which seemed gentle on land, was strong and gusty here; the bridge swayed, and the waves broke noisily against beams, anchors, and ropes, and washed over the boards. To the right, the sea, divided by a smooth, endless black line from the starry, light, bluish-grey horizon, roared dark, misty, and hostile. Far off in the distance gleamed the lights of the enemy’s fleet. To the left loomed the black bulk of one of our ships, against the sides of which the waves beat audibly. A steamer, too, was visible, moving quickly and noisily from the North Side. The flash of a bomb exploding near the steamer lit up, for a moment, the gabions piled high on its deck, two men standing on the paddle-box, and the white foam and splash of the greenish waves cut by the vessel. On the edge of the bridge, his feet