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

of middle age, rather stout, and of jovial disposition. Stebelkoff was a youth only just out of the Academy. They lived on good terms with each other. The Captain took care of the Lieutenant, messed him, and during the rain even sheltered him under his own waterproof cloak. When they issued out the tents our officers camped together, and as the officers’ tents were spacious, the Captain decided to take me in with him.

Tired out by a sleepless night, our company had been told off to help the transport, and had spent the whole night in dragging it out of gullies, and had even pulled the carts and wagons out of swollen streams by singing.

I was sleeping soundly after dinner, when the Captain’s servant awoke me by cautiously touching my shoulder.

“Sir, Mr. Ivanoff, Mr. Ivanoff⁠—” he whispered, as if he did not want to awake me, but rather was trying all he could not to disturb my sleep.

“What’s the matter?”

“The Captain wants you.” Then, seeing me putting on my belt and bayonet, added: “He said I was to bring you just as you were.”

A whole crowd had assembled in Zaikin’s tent. Besides its usual occupants there were two more officers⁠—the regimental Adjutant and the commander of the rifle company, named Ventzel. In 1877 a battalion did not consist, as now, of four companies, but of five. On service the rifle company brought up the rear, so that the rear files of our company were in touch with their front files. I often marched almost amongst the riflemen, and I had already several times heard from them the most uncomplimentary remarks about Staff-Captain Ventzel. All four officers were seated around a box which took the place of a table, and on which stood a samovar, plates and dishes, etc., and a bottle, and were drinking tea.

“Mr. Ivanoff! Come in, please,” cried out the Captain. “Nikita! Bring a cup, mug, or glass, or whatever you have. Ventzel, move up a bit, and let Ivanoff sit down.”

Ventzel stood up and bowed very courteously. He was a short, rawboned, pale, and nervous-looking young man. What restless eyes! and what thin lips! were the thoughts which came into my head when I first saw him. The Adjutant, without rising, stretched out his hand. “Lukin,” he said briefly, introducing himself.

I felt awkward. The officers were silent. Ventzel was sipping tea in which was some rum. The Adjutant was pulling at a short pipe, and Stebelkoff, the Lieutenant, having nodded to me, went on reading a battered volume, a translation of some novel which went through the march from Russia to the Danube with him in a portmanteau and subsequently returned home in a still more battered state. My host poured out some tea into a large earthenware mug and added an enormous go of rum.

“How are you, Mr. Student? Don’t be angry with me. I am a plain man. Yes, and all of us here, you know, are just common folk. But you are an educated man, so you must excuse us. Isn’t that so?”

And he seized my hand with his huge fist as a bird of prey seizes its booty, and waved it several times in the air, looking at me with a kind expression in his prominent round little eyes.

“Are you a student?” inquired Ventzel.

“Yes, sir, I was.”

He smiled and raised his restless eyes on me. I recalled the soldiers’ stories I had heard about him, and doubted their truth.

“Why ‘sir’? Here in this tent we are all alike. Here you are simply an intelligent man amongst others like yourself,” he said quietly.

“An intelligent man! Yes, that’s true,” exclaimed Zaikin. “A student! I like students, although they are such insubordinate beggars. I should have been a student myself if it had not been for fate.”

“What was your particular fate, Ivan Platonich?” inquired the Adjutant.

“Why, I simply could not work up for exams. Mathematics were not so bad, but as for the rest⁠ ⁠… it was hopeless. Literature, composition. I never learnt to write properly when I was a cadet. Honestly!”

“Do you know, Mr. Student,” said the Adjutant between two gigantic puffs of smoke, “how Ivan Platonich makes four spelling mistakes in one simple word?”

“Come, come, don’t tell lies, old chap,” said Zaikin with a wave of his hand.

“It’s quite true; I am not lying,” said the Adjutant, laughing heartily as he spelt the word à la Zaikin.

“Laugh away! But the Adjutant himself is no better,” said Zaikin, giving a specimen in his turn.

The Adjutant roared with laughter. Stebelkoff, who happened to have his mouth full of tea, spluttered it over his novel and put out one of the two candles which lighted the tent. I too could not help laughing. Ivan Platonich, thoroughly pleased with his witticism, went off into peals of deep laughter. Only Ventzel did not laugh.

“It was literature, then, Ivan Platonich?” he inquired quietly as before.

“Literature.⁠ ⁠… Yes, and other things. It reminds me of a man who only knew of the equator in geography and the meaning of the word ‘era’ in history. But, no, I am speaking rot. That wasn’t the reason. It was simply that I had money and would never do any work. I, Ivanoff⁠ ⁠… I beg your pardon, what’s your name?”

“Vladimir Mikhailich.”

“Vladimir Mikhailich? Thank you.⁠ ⁠… Well, I was a lightheaded fellow from the very first, and what tricks I used to play! You know the song about the boy who had money.

“I entered this famous, although a purely line regiment, as a junker. They sent me to school. I only just passed, and now I have been twenty years slaving in the service. Now we are dodging after the Turk. Drink up, gentlemen⁠—drink properly! Is it worth while spoiling good tea? Let us drink, gentlemen, to ‘Food for powder.’ ”

“Chair à canon,” said Ventzel.

“Well, all right, in French, if you like. Our Captain, Vladimir Mikhailich, is a clever man. He knows several languages, and can repeat a lot of German poetry by heart. Look here, young man, I sent for