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

you to propose you should transfer yourself into my tent. Where you are now there are six of you, and it is stifling and crowded with soldiers. Besides, they are not over clean. In any case, you will be better off with us.”

“Thank you, but please allow me to refuse your offer.”

“Why? Bosh! Nikita! Go and fetch his knapsack! Which tent are you in?”

“The second on the right. But please allow me to stay there. I have to be more with the men, and it is better I should be altogether with them.”

The Captain looked at me attentively, as if desirous of reading my thoughts. Having pondered a little, he said:

“What is it? You want to make friends with the men?”

“Yes, if it is possible.”

“That’s right. Don’t change. I respect you for it.”

And he grabbed my hand and once more waved it in the air.

Soon afterwards I took farewell of the officers and left the tent. It had grown dark. The men were putting on their greatcoats in preparation for evening prayers. The companies were drawn up in their lines, so that each battalion formed a closed square, within which were the tents and piled arms. Owing to the halt, the whole of our division had got together. The drums were beating tattoo, and from afar could be heard the words of the command preparatory to prayers:

“Remove caps!”

And twelve thousand men bared their heads. “Our Father which art in Heaven,” began our company. The chant was taken up around us. Sixty choirs of two hundred men each, and each choir singing independently. There were discordant notes to be heard, but, nevertheless, the hymn produced a stirring and solemn effect. Gradually the choirs came to an end. Finally, the last company of the battalion at the far end of the camp sang, “But deliver us from evil.” The drums gave a short roll, and the order:

“Put on headdress!” was given.

The soldiers laid themselves down to sleep. In our tent, where, as in the other tents, six men occupied a space of two square sajenes, my place was near the walls of the tent, and for a long time I lay gazing at the stars, at the campfires of other troops far from us, and listening to the low, confused murmur of a large camp. In the neighbouring tent someone was telling a fairytale, everlastingly interspersed with “And after that⁠ ⁠…” “and after that this prince went to his spouse and began to scold her about everything. And after that she⁠ ⁠… Lutikoff, are you asleep? Well, sleep, then, and God be with you,” murmured the narrator of the tale, and lapsed into silence.

The sound of conversation was audible from the officers’ tent also, and the movements of the officers sitting there were revealed in distorted form against the canvas by the light of the candles. From time to time could be heard the noisy laugh of the Adjutant. An armed sentry was pacing his beat in our lines. Opposite, and not far from us, was the artillery camp, with yet another sentry with drawn sword. The stamping of the horses picketed in their lines, and their deep breathing as they quietly chewed their oats, could be plainly heard, a sound which recalled nights passed at post-stages in now faraway homeland on just such quiet starlight nights as this one.

The Great Bear constellation was shining low down on the horizon, much lower down than with us in Russia. Gazing at the North Star, I pondered as to the exact direction in which St. Petersburg lay, where I had left my mother, friends, and all dear to me. Above my head familiar star groups were shining. The Milky Way shone in a bright, majestically calm, band of light. Towards the South burned the great stars of some constellations unknown to me, one with a red, and the other with a greenish fire. I wondered whether I should see any other strange stars when we were across the Danube and Balkans, and into Constantinople.

As I did not feel sleepy, I got up and commenced to stroll along the damp grass between our lines and the artillery. A dark figure came up with me, and, guessing by the clinking of a sword that it was an officer, I turned to my front. It proved to be Ventzel.

“Not asleep, Vladimir Mikhailich?” he inquired in a soft, quiet voice.

“No, sir.”

“My name is Peter Nicolaievitch⁠ ⁠… and I also cannot sleep.⁠ ⁠… I sat and sat with your Captain. But it was boring. They sat down to cards, and were all drinking too much.⁠ ⁠… Ah, what a night!”

He walked alongside me, and, reaching the end of our lines, we turned and continued to pace backwards and forwards in this manner several times, neither of us saying anything. Ventzel was the first to break the silence.

“Tell me, you have started on this campaign voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“What induced you to do so?”

“How can I explain?” I replied, not wishing to go into details. “Chiefly, of course, a desire to experience and see things personally.”

“And probably to study the people in the person of its representative⁠—the soldier?” inquired Ventzel. It was dark, and I could not see the expression on his face, but I detected the irony in his tone.

“How could one study here? How can one study when one only thinks of how to get to the night’s camp and sleep?”

“No; without joking, tell me why you would not transfer yourself to your Captain’s tent? Surely you do not value the opinion of a muzhik?”

“Certainly I value the opinion of anyone whose opinion I have no reason not to respect.”

“I have no reason to disbelieve you. Besides, it is the fashion nowadays. Even literature presents the muzhik as a masterpiece of creation.”

“But who is speaking of masterpieces of creation, Peter Nicolaievitch? If only they would recognize him as a man.”

“Enough of such sentimentality, please! Who does not recognize him as a man? A man? Well, granted he is a man, but what sort is another