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

dangling in the water, sat a man in his shirt repairing the pontoon. In front, above Sevastopol, the same fires were flying, and louder and louder came the terrible sounds. A wave flowing in from the sea washed over the right side of the bridge and wetted Volódya’s boots, and two soldiers passed by him splashing their feet through the water. Suddenly something came crashing down which lit up the bridge ahead of them, a cart driving over it, and a horseman; and bomb fragments fell whistling and splashing into the water.

“Ah, Michael Semyónitch!”73 said the rider, stopping his horse in front of the elder Kozeltsóf, “have you recovered?”

“As you see. And where is fate taking you?”

“To the North Side for cartridges. You see, I’m taking the place of the regimental adjutant today.⁠ ⁠… We are expecting an attack from hour to hour.”

“And where is Mártsof?”

“His leg was torn off yesterday while he was sleeping in his room in town.⁠ ⁠… Did you know him?”

“Is it true the regiment is now at the Fifth Bastion?”

“Yes; we have taken the place of the M⁠⸺ regiment. You’d better call at the Ambulance; you’ll find some of our fellows are there; they’ll show you the way.”

“Well, and my lodgings in the Morskáya Street, are they safe?”

“Eh, my dear fellow! they’ve long since been shattered by the bombs. You’ll not know Sevastopol again; not a woman left, not a restaurant, no music: the last brothel left yesterday. It’s melancholy enough now. Goodbye!”

And the officer trotted away.

Terrible fear suddenly overcame Volódya; he felt as if a ball or a bomb-splinter would come at once and hit him straight on the head. The damp darkness, all these sounds, especially the murmur of the splashing water⁠—all seemed to tell him to go no farther, that no good awaited him here, that he would never again set foot on this side of the bay, that he should turn back at once and run somewhere, as far as possible from this dreadful place of death. “But perhaps it is too late, it is already now decided,” thought he, shuddering partly at the idea and partly because the water had soaked through his boots and was wetting his feet.

Volódya sighed deeply and moved a few steps from his brother.

“O Lord! shall I really be killed⁠—just I? Lord, have mercy on me!” he whispered, and made the sign of the cross.

“Well, Volódya, come!” said the elder brother when the trap had driven onto the bridge. “Did you see the bomb?”

On the bridge the brothers met carts loaded with wounded men, with gabions, and one with furniture driven by a woman. No one stopped them at the further side.

Keeping instinctively under the wall of the Nicholas Battery, and listening to the bombs that were here bursting overhead and to the howling of the falling fragments, the brothers came silently to that part of the battery where the icon hangs. Here they heard that the Fifth Light Artillery, to which Volódya was appointed, was stationed at the Korábelnaya,74 and they decided that Volódya, in spite of the danger, should spend the night with his elder brother at the Fifth Bastion, and go from there to his battery next morning. After turning into a corridor and stepping across the legs of the soldiers who lay sleeping all along the wall of the battery, they at last reached the Ambulance Station.

X

Entering the first room, lined with beds on which wounded men were lying, and the air of which was permeated with a horribly disgusting hospital smell, they met two Sisters of Mercy just going out.

One, a woman of fifty, with black eyes and a stern expression, was carrying bandages and lint and giving orders to a young lad, a medical assistant, who was following her. The other, a very pretty girl of about twenty, whose pale, tender, fair face looked with a peculiarly sweet helplessness from under her white cap, was walking with her hands in her apron pockets by the side of the elder woman, and seemed afraid of being left behind.

Kozeltsóf asked them if they knew where Mártsof was, whose leg had been torn off the day before.

“He is of the P⁠⸺ regiment, I think?” asked the elder. “Is he a relation of yours?”

“No, a comrade.”

“Take them to him,” said she in French to the young Sister. “It is this way,” and she herself, followed by the assistant, went to one of the patients.

“Come along; what are you looking at?” said Kozeltsóf to Volódya, who stood with raised brows and a look of suffering on his face, unable to tear his eyes from the wounded. “Come now!”

Volódya followed his brother, but still kept looking back and repeating unconsciously, “O my God! my God!”

“I suppose he has not been here long?” the Sister remarked to Kozeltsóf, with reference to Volódya, who followed them along the corridor with exclamations and sighs.

“He has only just come.”

The pretty Sister looked at Volódya, and suddenly began to cry.

“My God! my God! when will it end?” she said, with despair in her voice.

They entered the officers’ ward. Mártsof was lying on his back, his sinewy arms, bare to the elbow, thrown behind his head, and an expression on his yellow face as of a man who has clenched his teeth to keep himself from screaming with pain. His sound leg with a stocking on showed from under the blanket, and one could see the toes moving spasmodically.

“Well, how are you?” asked the Sister, raising his slightly bald head with her slender delicate fingers (on one of which Volódya noticed a gold ring) and arranging his pillow.

“In pain, of course!” he answered angrily. “That’ll do⁠—the pillow’s all right!” and the toes in the stocking moved still faster. “How d’you do? What’s your name?”⁠—“Excuse me,” he said, when Kozeltsóf had told him. “Ah yes, I beg pardon! one forgets everything here. Why, we lived together,” he added, without any sign of pleasure, and