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

found a beehive there, and all that happened from this find. Then followed the historic song about Peter the Great and the Senate, and, finally, a song of some fifty verses, an effort by the local talent of our battalion.

“Feodoroff,” I asked one day, “why do you sing all that bosh about Liza?”

I mentioned several other songs, idiotic and cynical to a degree.

“Orders, Vladimir Mikhailich. But why? Do you really call it singing? It is really a kind of screeching, just to work the chest and to make marching more lively.”

The singers tire themselves out, and the band begins to play. It is much easier to step out to the measured, loud, and, for the most part, lively marches. All, even the most tired, pull themselves together, march strictly in step, and keep their dressing. It is difficult to recognize the battalion. I remember how once we marched more than six versts in an hour without feeling tired, thanks to the band. But when the exhausted bandsmen ceased playing, the influence of the music went, and I felt as if I should drop straightaway, and so I should have done had not there been an opportune halt.

About five versts from our halt we came upon an obstacle. We were marching through the valley of some little river. On the one side there were mountains and on the other a narrow and somewhat high railway embankment. The recent rains had flooded the valley and converted our road into a kind of lake about thirty sajenes wide. The bed of the railway rose above it like a dam, and we had to cross over by it. A ganger on the line let the first battalion over, which thus successfully avoided the lake, but then declared that a train was due in five minutes’ time, and we must wait. We halted and had just piled arms, when the well-known carriage of the Brigadier-General appeared at the turn of the road.

He was a great man. I have never heard such a voice as he possessed, either on the operatic stage or amongst cathedral choirs. The echoes of his bass resounded in the air like a trumpet, his big well-fed figure, with its red, big head, enormous dark-coloured whiskers waving in the breeze, and heavy black eyebrows surmounting tiny little eyes, which shone like needles, was a most inspiring sight as he sat on his horse giving commands to the brigade. On one occasion on the manoeuvre-ground at Moscow during some evolutions, his appearance and general demeanour were so martial and inspiring that an old man in the crowd in a fit of enthusiasm shouted out:

“Bravo! That’s the sort we want!”

Since which occasion the General has always been known as “Bravo.”

He had ambitions. He carried several small volumes on military history throughout the campaign. His favourite topic of conversation with his officers was criticism of the Napoleonic campaigns. I, of course, only knew of this from hearsay, as we seldom saw our General. Generally he caught us up midway in the day’s march in his carriage, drawn by a troika. Having arrived at the quarters for the night, he would occupy a lodging and stay there until late the next morning and again catch us up during the day, when the men would always remark on the particular degree of purple in the face and the hoarseness accompanying his deafening salute to us:

“Health to you, Starobieltzi!”

“We wish Your Excellency health,” the men would reply, adding to themselves: “Old Bravo is off for another booze.”

And the General would go ahead, sometimes without any incident, and sometimes bestowing en route a thunderous “head-washing” on some poor company commander.

Noticing that the battalion had halted, the General rushed at us and jumped out of his carriage as quickly as his corpulency would admit. The Major went up to him.

“What’s this? Why have you halted? Who gave you leave?”

“Your Excellency, the road is under water, and a train is expected shortly over the rails.”

“Road under water? Train? Bosh! You are making old women of the men, teaching them to be mollycoddles. Don’t halt without orders! Consider yourself, sir, under arrest⁠ ⁠…”

“Your Excellency⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t answer me!”

The General raised his eyes threateningly and turned his attention on another victim.

“Why, what’s this? Why is the commander of the second rifle company not in his place? Staff-Captain Ventzel, come here, please!”

Ventzel went forward, and the General poured a torrent of rage on him. I heard how Ventzel tried to reply, raising his voice, but the General shouted him down, and it was only possible to guess that Ventzel had said something disrespectful.

“You dare to reply? To be impertinent?” thundered the General. “Hold your tongue! Take his sword from him. Go to the money-chest, under arrest! An example to the men.⁠ ⁠… Afraid of water! My men, after me! Remember Suvoroff!”

The General went rapidly past the battalion with the cramped gait of one who has been sitting for a long time in a carriage.

“Follow me! Children! Remember Suvoroff!” he repeated, and waded in his patent-leather jackboots into the water. The Major, with a malicious expression on his face, glanced back and went forward with the General. The battalion moved after them. At first the water was knee-high, then it reached the waist, then higher and higher. The tall General moved freely, but the little Major was already striking out with his arms. The men, just like a flock of sheep when crossing a stream, jostled each other and staggered from side to side as they pulled their feet out of the soft clayey bottom in which they kept sticking. The company commanders and the battalion Adjutant, who were riding, and could have, in consequence, crossed over very comfortably, seeing the example set by the General, followed it, dismounted, and, leading their horses, waded into the muddy water, which had been churned up by hundreds of soldiers’ feet. Our company, composed of the tallest men in the battalion, crossed with comparative comfort, but the eighth company, which