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

man would fall senseless into the road thick with lime-dust. Hoarse voices would cry out “Orderly!” It was the orderly’s duty to drag the fallen man to one side, and assist him although he was himself almost in the same condition. The ditches along the road were sown with prostrate men.⁠ ⁠… Feodoroff and Jitkoff were marching alongside me, and, though obviously suffering, were endeavouring to hold out. The heat was affecting each reversely, according to his temperament. Talkative Feodoroff kept silent, merely giving an occasional deep sigh, and a piteous look was in his beautiful but now dust-inflamed eyes. “Uncle” Jitkoff, on the other hand, kept up a continuous flow of abuse and argument.

“Look at him, tumbling down⁠—he will stick me with his bayonet, d⁠⸺⁠n him!⁠ ⁠…” he would cry angrily, avoiding some fallen soldier, the point of whose bayonet had nearly caught him in the eye. “Lord! why are you sending this on us? If it wasn’t for that brute I should fall myself.”

“Who is the brute, ‘Uncle’?” I asked.

“Niemtseff, the Staff-Captain. He is orderly officer today, and is in the rear. Better to go ahead or else he will beat me black and blue.”

I already knew that the men had changed the name Ventzel into Niemtseff. The two names were not unlike in Russian. I stepped out of the ranks. It was a little easier marching along the side of the road. There was less dust and not so much jostling. Many were doing this. On this unfortunate day nobody cared about keeping the ranks. Gradually I dropped behind my company, and found myself at the tail of the column.

Ventzel, worn out and breathless but excited, caught me up.

“How are you getting on?” he inquired, in a hoarse voice. “Let us go along the side of the road. I am absolutely worn out.”

“Do you want some water?”

He greedily took several gulps from my water-bottle. “Thank you, I feel better now. What a day!” For a little time we marched side by side in silence.

“By the way,” he said, “you have not transferred yourself to Ivan Platonich?”

“No.”

“More fool you. Excuse my outspokenness. Au revoir. I am wanted at the tail of the column. For some reason many of these tender creations are falling down.”

Having gone a few paces farther, I turned my head and saw Ventzel bend over a fallen soldier, and drag him by the shoulder.

“Get up, you blackguard! Get up!”

I literally did not recognize my educated conversationalist. He was pouring out an endless flow of the coarsest abuse. The soldier was almost senseless, and his lips were murmuring something as he gazed up with a hopeless expression at the infuriated officer.

“Get up! Get up immediately, Aha! you won’t? Then take that, and that, and that!”

Ventzel had seized his sword, and was dealing blow after blow with its iron scabbard over the wretched man’s shoulders, all blistered and aching from the weight of his knapsack and rifle. I could stand it no longer, and went up to Ventzel.

“Peter Nicolaievitch!”

“Get up!⁠ ⁠…” His arm with the sword was once more raised for a blow, when I succeeded in seizing it firmly.

“For God’s sake, Peter Nicolaievitch, leave him alone!”

He turned a frenzied face towards me. He was a terrifying sight with his eyes half out of his head, and a distorted mouth, which was convulsively twitching. With a sharp movement he wrenched his arm from my hold. I thought that he would roar at me for my boldness (to seize an officer by the arm was certainly most daring), but he restrained himself.

“Listen, Ivanoff; never do this. If, in my place, there was some other brute, such as Schuroff or Timothieff, you would have paid dearly for your pleasantry. You must remember that you are a private, and that for such action you could be without further words⁠—shot.”

“It is all the same to me. I could not see and not interfere.”

“It does honour to your tender feelings. But apply them elsewhere. Can one act otherwise with these?⁠ ⁠…” (His face assumed an expression of contempt⁠—nay, more, hatred.) “Perhaps ten of these scores who have given way and fallen down like a lot of old women are really absolutely played out. I am doing this not from cruelty. I have none in my nature. But one must maintain discipline. If it was possible to reason with them, I would talk, but words have no effect on them. They understand and feel only physical pain.”

I did not hear him out, but started to overtake my company, which was already far away. I caught up Feodoroff and Jitkoff as our battalion debouched from the road into a field and was halted.

“What were you talking about, Mikhailich, with Staff-Captain Ventzel?” asked Feodoroff, when, thoroughly exhausted, I threw myself down near him, after having with difficulty piled my arm.

“Talking,” muttered Jitkoff.

“Can you call it talking? He seized him by the arm.”

“Take care, Ivanoff, sir. Be careful of Niemtseff. Don’t be misled because he likes to talk with you. It will cost you dear.”

IV

Late that evening we reached Fokshan, passed through the unlighted, silent, and dusty little town, and came out somewhere into a field. It was as dark as pitch; the battalions were camped anyhow, and worn-out men slept as if dead. Scarcely anyone cared to eat the “dinner” which had been prepared. The soldier’s food is always dinner, whether it is early morning, daytime, or night. All night long stragglers were coming in. At dawn we were again on the march, but consoled ourselves with the act that at the end of it there was to be a day’s halt.

Once again the moving ranks, once again the knapsack presses benumbed shoulders, once again the pain of sore and bleeding feet. But the first ten versts were performed in a kind of stupor. The short sleep we had had was not able to destroy the fatigue of yesterday, and the men practically slept as they marched. I slept so soundly that when we had