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

house with an entrance from the yard. The faint light of a candle shone through a window patched up with paper. An orderly sat on the steps smoking his pipe. He went in to inform the battery Commander of Volódya’s arrival, and then showed him into the room. In the room, under a broken mirror between two windows, stood a table littered with official papers, and there were several chairs, and an iron bedstead with clean bedding and a little rug beside it.

Just at the door stood a handsome man with large moustaches, a sergeant-major, wearing his side-arms and with a cross and an Hungarian medal75 on his uniform. A staff-officer, a short man of about forty, in a thin old cloak and with a swollen cheek tied round with a bandage, was pacing up and down the room.

“I have the honour to report myself, Ensign Kozeltsóf 2nd, ordered to join the 5th Light Artillery,” said Volódya on entering the room, repeating the sentence he had been taught.

The Commander answered his greeting dryly, and, without shaking hands, asked him to take a seat.

Volódya sat down shyly on a chair by the writing table, and began playing with a pair of scissors his hand happened to fall on. The Commander, with his hands at his back and with drooping head, continued to pace the room in silence as if trying to remember something, only now and then glancing at the hand that was playing with the scissors.

The Commander was a rather stout man, with a large bald patch on his head, thick moustaches hanging straight down over his mouth, and pleasant, hazel eyes. His hands were well shaped, clean and plump, his small feet were much turned out, and he trod with firmness and in a way that indicated that the Commander of the battery was not a diffident man.

“Yes,” he said, stopping opposite the Sergeant-major, “the ammunition horses must have an extra peck, beginning from tomorrow; they are getting very thin. Don’t you think so?”

“All right! one can add it, your honour! Oats are a bit cheaper now,” answered the Sergeant-major, standing at attention, but moving his fingers, which evidently liked to help his conversation by gestures. “Then our forage-master, Frantchúk, sent me a note from the convoy yesterday that we must be sure, y’r excellency, to buy axles there; they say they can be got cheap. Will you give the order?”

“Well, let him buy them⁠—he has money,” and the Commander again began to pace the room. “And where are your things?” he asked, suddenly stopping in front of Volódya.

Poor Volódya was so overcome by the thought that he was a miserable coward, that he seemed to see contempt for himself as such in each look and word. He felt as if the Commander of the battery had already discerned his secret and were chaffing him. He was abashed, and replied that his things were at the Gráfskaya, and that his brother had promised to send them on next day.

The Commander did not stop to hear him out, but, turning to the Sergeant-major, asked, “Where could we put up the Ensign?”

“The Ensign, sir?” said the Sergeant-major, making Volódya still more confused by casting a rapid glance at him, which seemed to ask, “What sort of an Ensign is that?”

“Why, downstairs, your Excellency. We can put his honour up in the Lieutenant-Captain’s room;” he continued after a moment’s thought; “the Lieutenant-Captain is at the baksion at present, so there’s his bed empty.”

“Well, then, if you don’t mind for the present,” said the Commander. “I should think you are tired, and we’ll make better arrangements tomorrow.”

Volódya rose and bowed.

“Would you like a glass of tea?” said the Commander of the battery when Volódya had nearly reached the door; “the samovar can be lit.”

Volódya bowed and went out. The Orderly showed him downstairs into a bare, dirty room, where, with all sorts of rubbish lying about, stood a bed without sheets or blankets, on which, covered with a thick cloak, a man in a pink shirt was sleeping. Volódya took him for a soldier.

“Peter Nikoláyitch,” said the Orderly, shaking the sleeper by the shoulder, “the Ensign will sleep here⁠ ⁠… This is our Cadet,” he added, turning to Volódya.

“Oh, please don’t let me disturb you!” said Volódya; but the Cadet, a tall, solid young man, with a handsome but very stupid face, rose from the bed, threw the cloak over his shoulders, and, evidently not yet awake, left the room saying, “Never mind; I shall lie down in the yard.”

XIII

Left alone with his thoughts, Volódya’s first feeling was one of fear at the disorderly, cheerless state of his own soul. He longed to fall asleep and forget all that surrounded him, but especially himself. Putting out the candle, he took off his cloak and lay down on the bed; and to get rid of the darkness, of which he had been afraid from childhood upwards, he drew the cloak over his head. But suddenly the thought occurred to him that now, immediately, a bomb would crash through the roof and kill him, and he began to listen. Just above his head he heard the steps of the Commander of the battery.

“If it does come,” he thought, “it will first kill those upstairs and then me⁠—anyway not me alone.” This thought comforted him a little, and he was about to fall asleep.

“But supposing that all of a sudden, tonight, Sevastopol is taken, and the French break in here? What shall I defend myself with?” He rose and went up and down the room. The fear of real danger drove away the fanciful fear of the darkness. A saddle and a samovar were the only hard things in the room.

“What a wretch I am⁠—a coward, a despicable coward!” he thought again, and once more the oppressive feeling of contempt, even disgust of himself, came over him. He lay down again, and tried not to think. Then, under the influence