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

We did, in fact, talk a great deal. Ventzel had evidently read a great deal, and, as Zaikin had said, “knew languages.”

The Captain’s remark that he could recite poetry also proved to be true. We talked about French writers, and Ventzel, having censured the “Realist” school, went back to the thirties and forties, and even recited with feeling Alfred de Musset’s A December Night. His rendering of it was good, simple, and expressive, and with a good accent. Having recited it, he was silent, and then added:

“Yes, it is good, but all the French authors put together are not worth ten lines of Schiller, Goethe, or Shakespeare.”

Until he got his company, he had charge of the regimental library, and had followed Russian literature closely.

Talking of it, he expressed himself strongly against what he termed its “boorish tendency.” The conversation then reverted to the old subject. Ventzel argued heatedly:

“When I was almost a boy, I entered the regiment, and I did not then think what I am telling you now. I tried to act by mere force of word. I endeavoured to obtain some moral influence over the men. But after a year they had exhausted me. All that remained from the so-called good books coming into contact with actuality proved to be sentimental bosh, and now I am convinced that the only way of making oneself understood is⁠—that!”

He made some sort of gesture with his hand. But it was so dark that I did not understand it.

“What, Peter Nicolaievitch?”

“A clenched fist!” he interjected.

“But good night; it is time to sleep.”

I saluted and went back to my own tent, sorry and disgusted.

They were apparently all asleep, but a minute later, when I had laid down, Feodoroff, who was sleeping alongside me, asked quietly:

“Mikhailich, are you asleep?”

“No, why?”

“Were you walking with Venztel?”

“Yes.”

“How was he? Quiet?”

“All right⁠—quiet and even kind.”

“Well, well. What it means to be a brother Barin! He isn’t like that with us.”

“What do you mean? Is he really very bad-tempered?”

“I should just think so⁠—awful. He makes their teeth rattle in the second rifle company, the beast!”

And Feodoroff forthwith fell asleep, so that in reply to my next question I heard only his even and calm breathing. I wrapped myself up more tightly in my big cloak. My thoughts became at first confused, and then disappeared in sound sleep.

The rain was followed by heat. About this time we left the little village where our feet used to stick in the slippery mud, and came on to the main road leading from Yass to Bukarest. Our first march along this road from Tekuch to Berlada will always be remembered by those who made it. It was thirty-five degrees (Réaumur)9 in the shade, and the distance was forty-eight versts. It was perfectly still. A fine dust, full of lime, which was being raised by thousands of feet, hung over the road. It got into our noses and mouths, and powdered our hair so thickly that it was impossible to distinguish its colour.

Settling all over our perspiring faces, it became mud, and turned us into niggers. For some reason we marched in our tunics instead of in our shirtsleeves. The black cloth drew the sun, which literally baked our heads through our black shakos. The almost red-hot stones of the metalled road could be felt through the soles of our boots. The men kept on “falling out.” To add to our misfortunes, there were few wells along the route, and there was for the most part so little water in them that the head of our column (it was a whole division) exhausted the supply, and after frightful crushing and pushing at the wells, we found only a sticky liquid more resembling mud than water. When there was not even this, the men used to fall, utterly done up. On this day in our battalion alone about ninety men fell out along the road. Three died from sunstroke.

Compared with my comrades, this trial affected me but lightly. Possibly because the majority of my battalion hailed from the North, whereas I had been accustomed from childhood to the heat of the Steppe. Perhaps, also, there was another cause. I had occasion to note that the common soldier, speaking generally, takes physical suffering more to heart than is the case with those drawn from the so-called privileged classes. (I am referring only to those who went to the war as volunteers.) To the ordinary soldier physical misfortunes were a source of genuine grief, capable of producing depression and, in general, mental torture. Those who were going to the war as volunteers of course suffered, physically speaking, no less, but rather more, than the soldier drawn from the lower class⁠—owing to a more tender upbringing, comparative bodily weakness, etc., but inwardly were calmer. Their spiritual world could not be disturbed by bleeding feet, insufferable heat, and deadly tiredness. Never have I experienced such complete spiritual calm, such peace within myself, and such contentment with life as when I was undergoing these hardships, and went forward under a rain of bullets to kill people. All this may seem wild and strange, but I am only writing the truth.

However that may be, when others fell by the roadside I still kept up.

In Tekuch I supplied myself with an enormous calabash water-bottle, holding at least four flaskfuls. It often cost me dear to fill it. Half of the water I used to keep for myself, and the other half I shared out to my comrades. A man would force himself to plod along, but in the end the heat would claim him. His legs would begin to bend under him, his body reel as if drunk. Through the thick layer of grime and dust could be seen the apoplectic hue of his face as his trembling hands gripped his rifle. A gulp of water would revive him for a few minutes, but eventually the