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

himself the duty of waiting upon the officer. The bombardiers and men who had medals came next, and farther on, in the shadow nearer the entrance, sat the meeker folk. It was these last who started the conversation. The cause of it was the noise made by a man who came tumbling hastily into the bombproof.

“Hullo, old fellow! how’s it you don’t stay outside? Don’t the lasses play merrily enough out there?” said a voice.

“They’re playing such tunes as we never hear in our village,” laughingly answered the man who had just run in.

“Ah! Vásin don’t like bombs⁠—ah! he don’t,” said someone in the aristocratic corner.

“If there were any need it would be quite a different thing,” slowly replied Vásin; and when he spoke all the others were silent. “On the 24th at least we were working the guns; but what’s there to find fault with now? If we get killed uselessly the authorities won’t thank the likes of us for it.”

At these words all laughed.

“There’s Mélnikof⁠—he’s out there now, I fancy,” said someone.

“Go and send that Mélnikof in here,” said the old sergeant, “or else he’ll really get killed uselessly.”

“Who is Mélnikof?” asked Volódya.

“Oh, it’s a poor, silly soldier of ours, your honour. He’s just afraid of nothing, and he’s now walking about outside. You should have a look at him; he’s just like a bear.”

“He knows a charm,” came Vásin’s long-drawn accents from the other corner.

Mélnikof entered the bombproof. He was stout (which is extremely rare among soldiers), red-haired and red-faced, and had an enormous bulging forehead and prominent, clear, blue eyes.

“Aren’t you afraid of the bombs?” asked Volódya.

“What’s there to be afraid of in them bombs?” answered Mélnikof, shrugging and scratching himself; “they’ll not kill me with a bomb, I know.”

“So you would like to live here?”

“In course I should. It’s gay here,” he said, and burst out laughing.

“Oh, then they should take you for a sortie! Shall I speak to the General about it?” said Volódya, though he did not know a single General here.

“Like, indeed! In course I should!” And Mélnikof hid behind the others.

“Let’s have a game of ‘noses,’ lads! Who has got cards?” his voice was heard to say hurriedly.

And soon the game had started in the far corner: one could hear laughter, noses being smacked, and trumps declared. Volódya drank some tea⁠—the drummer having heated the samovar for him⁠—treated the noncommissioned officers to some, joked and talked with them, wishing to gain popularity, and felt very pleased at the respect paid him. The soldiers also, seeing that the gentleman gave himself no airs, became talkative. One of them explained that the siege of Sevastopol would not last much longer, because a reliable fellow in the fleet had told him that Constantine, the Tsar’s brother, was coming with the ’Merican fleet to help us; and also that there would soon be an agreement not to fire for a fortnight, but to have a rest, and that if anyone did fire he’d have to pay a fine of seventy-five kopecks for each shot. Vásin, who, as Volódya had already observed, was small, and had whiskers and kind, large eyes, related, first amid general silence and then amid roars of laughter, how he had gone home on leave, and at first everyone was glad to see him; but then his father began sending him to work, and the Forester-Lieutenant sent a horse and trap to fetch his wife! All this amused Volódya very much. He not only felt no fear, or discomfort from the overcrowding and bad air in the bombproof, but, on the contrary, felt exceedingly bright and contented.

Many of the soldiers were already snoring. Vlang also lay stretched on the floor, and the old sergeant, having spread his cloak on the ground, was crossing himself and muttering prayers before going to sleep, when Volódya felt inclined to go out of the bombproof and see what was going on outside.

“Draw in your legs!” the soldiers called to one another as soon as he rose, and the legs, drawing in, made room for him.

Vlang, who had seemed to be asleep, suddenly raised his head and seized Volódya by the skirts of his cloak.

“Now don’t; don’t go⁠—how can you?” he began in a tearfully persuasive voice. “You do not yet know; out there the cannonballs are falling all the time. It’s better in here.”

But in spite of Vlang’s entreaties, Volódya made his way out of the bombproof and sat down on the threshold, where Mélnikof was already sitting.

The air was pure and fresh, especially compared with that in the bombproof; the night was clear and calm. Amid the booming of the cannons one could hear the wheels of carts bringing gabions, and the voices of men at work in the powder-vault. High overhead was the starry sky, across which ran the fiery trails of the bombs. To the left was another bombproof, through the small entrance to which the legs and backs of the sailors who lived there could be discerned and their voices heard. In front was the roof of the powder-vault, past which flitted the figures of stooping men, while on it a tall form in a black cloak stood, with his hands in his pockets, under the bullets and bombs that incessantly flew past the spot, and kept treading down with his heel the earth that other men brought there in sacks. Many a bomb flew past and exploded near the vault. The soldiers who were carrying the earth stooped and stepped aside; but the black figure continued calmly to stamp the earth down with his feet, and remained on the spot in the same position.

“Who is that black fellow there?” said Volódya to Mélnikof.

“Can’t say. I’ll go and see.”

“No, don’t; there’s no need.”

But Mélnikof rose without heeding him, approached the black figure and for a long time stood by it equally indifferent and immovable.

“That’s the powder-master, your honour!” he said when he returned. “The vault has been knocked in by a bomb,