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

in order to be able to judge the extent of their moral suffering. This cadet, or reduced officer, judging by his restless look and the purposely varying expression of his face, seemed to be far from stupid, but full of self-love, and therefore very pitiable.

Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺ proposed another game of Gorodki, the losers, besides carrying the winners pickaback, to stand a couple of bottles of claret, with rum, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, to make mulled wine, which was very popular in our detachment that winter because of the cold weather. Guskantini, as S⁠⸺ again called him, was also asked to join, but before beginning, evidently wavering between the pleasure this invitation gave him and fear of some kind, he led Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺ aside and whispered something into his ear. The good-natured Lieutenant-Captain slapped him on the stomach with the palm of his big fat hand, and answered aloud, “Never mind, old chap, I’ll give you credit!”

When the game was finished, and when, the side of the lower-grade stranger having won, he should have ridden on one of our officers, Ensign D⁠⸺, the latter blushed, turned aside to the seats, and offered the stranger some cigarettes by way of ransom. When the mulled wine had been ordered, and one could hear Nikita’s bustling arrangements in the orderlies’ tent, and how he sent a messenger for cinnamon and cloves, and could then see his back, first here and then there, bulging the dirty sides of the tent⁠—we, the seven of us, sat down by the little table, drinking tea in turns out of the three tumblers, and looking out over the plain, which began to veil itself in evening twilight, while we talked and laughed over the different incidents of the game. The stranger in the sheepskin coat took no part in the conversation, persistently refused the tea I repeatedly offered him, and, sitting on the ground Tartar-fashion, made cigarettes one after the other out of tobacco-dust and smoked them, evidently not so much for his own pleasure as to give himself an appearance of being occupied. When it was mentioned that a retreat was expected next day, and that perhaps we should have a fight, he rose to his knees and, addressing only Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺, said that he had just been at home with the Adjutant and had himself written out an order to move next day. We all were silent while he spoke, and, though he was evidently abashed, we made him repeat this communication⁠—highly interesting to us. He repeated what he had said, adding, however, that at the time the order arrived, he was with, and sat with, the Adjutant, with whom he lived.

“Mind, if you are not telling us a lie, old chap, I must be off to my company to give some orders for tomorrow,” said Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺.

“No.⁠ ⁠… Why should?⁠ ⁠… Is it likely?⁠ ⁠… It is certain⁠ ⁠…” began the stranger, but stopped suddenly, having evidently determined to feel hurt, frowned unnaturally and, muttering something between his teeth, again began making cigarettes. But the dregs of tobacco-dust that he could extract from his pouch being insufficient, he asked S⁠⸺ to favour him with the loan of a cigarette. We long continued among ourselves that monotonous military chatter familiar to all who have been on campaign. We complained, ever in the same terms, of the tediousness and duration of the expedition; discussed our commanders in the same old way; and, just as often before, we praised one comrade, pitied another, were astonished that So-and-so won so much, and that So-and-so lost so much at cards, and so on, and so on.

“Our Adjutant has got himself into a mess, and no mistake,” said Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺. “He always used to win when he was on the staff⁠—whoever he sat down with he’d pluck clean⁠—but now these last two months he does nothing but lose. He has not hit it off this campaign! I should think he’s lost 2,000 rubles in money, and things for another 500: the carpet he won of Mukhin, Nikitin’s pistols, the gold watch from Sada’s that Vorontsov gave him⁠—have all gone.”

“Serves him right,” said Lieutenant O⁠⸺; “he gulled everybody; it was impossible to play with him.”

“He gulled everybody, and now he himself is gravelled,” and Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺ laughed good-naturedly. “Guskov, here, lives with him⁠—the Adjutant nearly lost him one day at cards!⁠—Really.⁠—Am I not right, old chap?” he said, turning to Guskov.

Guskov laughed. It was a pitifully sickly laugh which completely changed the expression of his face. This change suggested to me the idea that I had seen and known the man before; besides, Guskov, his real name, was familiar to me. But how and when I had seen him I was quite unable to recollect.

“Yes,” said Guskov, who kept raising his hand to his moustaches and letting it sink again without touching them, “Paul Dmitrich has been very unlucky this campaign: such a veine de malheur,”80 he added, in carefully spoken but good French, and I again thought I had met, and even often met, him somewhere. “I know Paul Dmitrich well; he has great confidence in me,” continued he; “we are old acquaintances⁠—I mean he is fond of me,” he added, evidently alarmed at his own too bold assertion of being an old acquaintance of the Adjutant. “Paul Dmitrich plays remarkably well, but now it is incomprehensible what has happened to him; he seems quite lost⁠—la chance a tourné,”81 he said, addressing himself chiefly to me.

At first we had listened to Guskov with condescending attention; but as soon as he uttered this second French phrase we all involuntarily turned away from him.

“I have played hundreds of times with him,” said Lieutenant O⁠⸺, “and you won’t deny that it is strange” (he put a special emphasis on the word “strange”), “remarkably strange, that I never once won even a twenty-kopeck piece of him. How is it I win when playing with others?”

“Paul Dmitrich plays admirably: I have