Short Fiction, Vsevolod Garshin [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

“Lonely?” I asked.

“How not lonely?”

“Where are you going?”

“Who knows! I suppose to kill the Turk.”

“And do you want to go to the war?”

“What are we going to do there?”

I began to question them about our local town, and these recollections of home loosened their tongues. They commenced to tell me of a recent wedding for which a pair of bullocks had been sold, and how almost directly afterwards they had taken the young husband for a soldier. They told me about the pristav⁠—the devil stick in his throat!⁠—the lack of land, and how in consequence of this some hundreds had decided to leave the village and go to the Amur.⁠ ⁠… The conversation was only of the past, no one referred to the future, to those hard times, dangers, and sufferings which awaited us all. No one took any interest in the Turks or Bulgars, or troubled himself about the question for which he was perhaps going to die.

A drunken young recruit of a local contingent, passing us, stopped at our group, and when I again began to talk of the war authoritatively said:

“This Turk must be wiped out.”

“Must be?” I inquired, smiling involuntarily at the assurance of the decision.

“Of course, Barin, so that nothing shall remain of the unclean brute. Because through his mutinying how much suffering are we to undergo? Had he, for instance, kept quiet and behaved⁠—I should be at home now with my parents and in a better state. But he is fractious, and there is grief for us. Be assured I am speaking the truth. Give me a cigarette, barin, please.” And he suddenly stopped short, straightened himself in front of me, and put his hand to his cap.

I gave him a cigarette, said goodbye to my countrymen, and went back to barracks, as my leave was up.

“He is fractious, and there is grief for us,” and his drunken voice rang in my ears. Short and vague, but at the same time it covers all there is to be said.

Heartsickness and depression reign at the Lvoffs. Kuzma is very bad, and although the wound is clean, has very high fever, delirium, and great pain. Both brother and sister remain with him all the time I am engaged in learning my work. Now, when they know I am going to the war, the sister has grown still more depressed, and her brother still more surly.

“Already in uniform?” he had muttered when I said “How do you do?” to him in his room, littered with books and reeking of smoke. “Oh, you people!”

“Why, Vassili Petrovich?”

“Because you will not let me study⁠—that’s why. And as there is no time, they will not let me finish my course, but will send me to the war, and there is so much I cannot learn, and then there are you and Kuzma.”

“Well, Kuzma is dying, but what about me?”

“And are you not going to die? If they do not kill you, you will go out of your mind, or put a bullet through your head. I know you, and there are examples.”

“What examples? Do you really know of any like that? Tell me, Vassili Petrovich?”

“Stop talking. Is it so necessary further to disillusionize you? It is bad for you. I know nothing. I was only talking.”

But I was persistent, and then he told me of the example as follows:

“A wounded artillery officer told me,” he commenced. “They had only just left Kishinieff, in April, directly after the declaration of war. The rain was unceasing, and the roads disappeared. Only a sea of mud remained into which the guns and baggage-train sank up to the axles. It became so bad that the horses could do nothing, so they hitched on drag-ropes with which the men pulled. The second half of the road was awful. We had twelve ridges to get over in seventeen versts, and the whole distance was a perfect quagmire. They got into it and stuck. The rain lashed them, and there was not a dry thread on any of them. They were half starving and completely worn out, but it was necessary to drag the guns along. Well, of course, the men pulled and pulled until they fell senseless, face downwards, into the mud. Finally it was impossible to move ahead, but all the same they continued to toil. It was awful, said the officer; it is dreadful to think of it. They had a young surgeon with them, a nervous fellow who wept, and exclaiming that he could not stand such a sight, said he would go on ahead, which he did. The soldiers cut down branches and made what was almost a raft, and finally succeeded in getting out of the bog. They dragged the battery on to the mountain, and there saw the surgeon hanging on a tree. There is the example. If the man could not stand even seeing such suffering, how will you be able to stand it?”

“Vassili Petrovich, is it not easier to bear torture than to hang oneself like the surgeon?”

“Well, I do not know. What is there good in the fact that they will harness you to a shaft?”

“Conscience will not prick me, Vassili Petrovich.”

“Well, that is hairsplitting. Talk with my sister on that point⁠—she is well up in such fine distinctions.” Saying which he held out his hand and smilingly bade me goodbye.

“Where are you off to?”

“To the hospital.”

I went into Kuzma’s room. He was not asleep, and, as Mary Petrovna explained to me, felt better than usual. He had not yet seen me in uniform, and my appearance was an unpleasant surprise to him.

“Will they leave you here or send you to the army?” he asked.

“They will send me; surely you know?”

He was silent.

“I knew,” he said after a pause, “but I had forgotten.