Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

with its beautifully chiselled nose and lips, was as regular in its features as if it had been the work of some sculptor. His chin was covered with a fair curly beard, and there was a merry twinkle in his blue eyes. When the command was “Singers to the front!” he used to be the leader of our company. He was the possessor of a tenor voice, and would sing falsetto when high notes were necessary. He was a native of the Vladimir Government, but had lived since childhood in St. Petersburg. Contrary to the general rule, Petersburg “education” had not spoilt him, but had merely polished him, and had taught him to read the papers and to speak “wise words.”

“Of course, Vladimir Mikhailovich,” he used to say to me, “I can judge better than ‘Uncle’ Jitkoff, because ‘Peter’8 has set its mark on me. There is a civilization in ‘Peter,’ but nothing but ignorance and savagery in the provinces. However, as he is not a young man, but, so to speak, has seen things and undergone various vicissitudes of fate, I cannot shout at him. He is forty, and I am only in my twenty-third year. But I am a corporal.”

“Uncle” Jitkoff was a gnarled-looking peasant of extraordinary strength and a perpetually morose visage.

His face was swarthy. He had prominent cheekbones and little eyes, which looked out from under his eyebrows.

He never smiled, and rarely spoke. He was a carpenter by trade, and was on “indefinite leave” when the mobilization order was issued. He had only a few months more to serve in the reserve when the war broke out and compelled him to take part in the campaign, leaving a wife and five small children behind him at home. In spite of an unprepossessing exterior and perpetual moroseness, there was something attractive in him⁠—something kind and strong. Now, as I have said, it seems quite unintelligible to me how I could ever have mixed up these two neighbours, but for the first two days they seemed alike to me. Each was grey; each was tired and benumbed with the cold.

The rain was unceasing during the whole first half of May, and we were marching without tents. The seemingly never-ending sticky road rose over hills and dipped into gullies almost every verst. It was heavy marching. Clumps of mud stuck to our feet, a leaden grey sky hung low and threateningly over us, and rained a continual fine drizzle on us, and there was no end to it. There was no hope of drying and warming ourselves when we reached the night’s camp. The Romanians would not let us into their cottages, and, indeed, there was no room anywhere for such a mass of men. We used to march through the town or village and camp anywhere on the common.

“Halt!⁠ ⁠… Pile arms!”

And there was nothing for it, when we had eaten our hot broth, but to lie down actually in the mud. Water below, water above. It seemed as if one’s whole body was permeated with water.

Shivering, we wrapped ourselves up in our greatcoats, and, gradually getting warm with a moist warmth, slept soundly until again awakened by the universally detested “assembly.” Then again the grey column, the grey sky, muddy road, and dismal dripping hills and valleys. It was hard on us.

“They have opened all the windows of heaven,” said, with a sigh, our squad leader, a N.C.O. named Karpoff, a veteran who had served through the Khiva campaign. “We are soaked and soaked without end.”

“We shall get dry, Vasil Karpich! Look, there is the sun peeping out; it will dry us all. The march will be a long one. We shall have time to get dry and wet again before we reach the end of it. Mikhailich!” said my neighbour, turning to me, “is it far to the Danube?”

“Another three weeks yet.”

“Three weeks! But we shall get there in two weeks.⁠ ⁠…”

“We are going straight into the clutches of the devil,” muttered “Uncle” Jitkoff.

“What are you growling about, you old blackguard? You are only making mischief. Where the devil are we going to? Why do you say things like that?”

“Well, are we going on a holiday?” snarled Jitkoff.

“No, not on a holiday, but as our duty calls us, to carry out our oath.⁠ ⁠… What did you say when you were sworn in? Not sparing your life. You old fool! Take care what you are saying!”

“But what did I say, Vasil Karpich? Am I not going? If to die, then to die.⁠ ⁠… It’s all the same.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, don’t let’s hear any more of it.”

Jitkoff relapsed into silence. His face became still more morose. For the matter of that, it was no time for talking. The going was too heavy. The feet kept slipping, and men kept constantly falling into the sticky mud. Deep swearing resounded through the battalion. Only Feodoroff did not hang his head, but kept unwearyingly relating to me story after story of Petersburg and the country.

However, there is an end to all things. One day, when I woke up in the morning in our bivouac near a village where a halt had been arranged, I saw a blue sky, huts with white plastered walls, and vineyards bathed in the bright morning sun, and heard gay, animated voices. All had already risen, had dried their clothes, and had recovered from the arduous ten days’ march in the rain without tents. During the halt they were brought up. The soldiers immediately stretched them out, and, having pitched them properly, driven in the tent-pegs, and tightened the canvas, were almost all lying in their shade.

“They did not help us when it was raining. They will guard us from the sun.”

“Yes, so the ‘Barin’s’ face shan’t get burnt,” joked Feodoroff, slyly winking towards me.

II

We had only two officers in our company⁠—the company commander, Captain Zaikin, and a subaltern officer, a lieutenant of the reserve named Stebelkoff. The company commander was a man