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

windows. But all had the blinds drawn. A Cossack and an officer, standing on the platform of the last carriage, were the sole persons on the train whom we saw. We stood gazing after the faster and faster receding train for another three minutes, and then returned to our bivouac. The men were disappointed, and expressed their disappointment.

“When shall we ever see him now?”

But we were soon to see him. They told us that the Emperor would review us before the town of Ploeshti.

We marched past before him, as on the march, in the same dirty white shirts and trousers, in the same browned and dusty boots, with the same ugly strapped-on knapsacks, ration-bags, and bottles on string. The soldier had nothing of the young dandy or dashing hero in appearance. Each much more closely resembled a simple common muzhik. Only the rifle and ammunition-pouches showed that this muzhik was off to the war. We were drawn up in columns of fours, as we could not have marched through the narrow streets of the town in any other formation. I marched by the side, and tried above all not to get out of step and to keep my dressing, and reflected that if the Emperor and his suite chanced to be standing on my side, I should pass close to him, right under his eyes. Chancing to glance at Jitkoff marching abreast of me, at his face, as always, severe and sombre, but now flushed, I became infected with the general excitement, and my heart beat quicker, and I suddenly felt that it all depended on us as to how the Emperor regarded us. I felt much the same sort of sensation the first time I came under fire.

The men marched faster and faster, the pace became longer and the gait freer and more firm. There was no need for me to adapt myself to the general pace. All tiredness had vanished just as if we had all grown wings which were bearing us forward to that point whence already we could hear the crash of bands and deafening hurrahs. I don’t remember the streets through which we passed, nor the people in them, or whether they looked at us. I remember only the excitement which possessed me, and the consciousness of the compelling, tremendous strength of the mass of which I was a member. One felt that nothing was impossible for this mass, that the torrent of which I was a struggling component part could know no obstacle, but could smash, extirpate, destroy all in its path, and each one thought that He, past whom this torrent was streaming, could, with one word, by one wave of the hand, alter its courses, turn it back, or again hurl it at terrifying obstacles. Each one wished to find in the word of this one man, and in the movement of his hand, the unknown something which was sending us to death. “Thou art sending us”⁠—each one thought⁠—“and we are giving thee our lives. Look at us and rest assured. We are ready to die.”

And He knew we were ready to die for him. He saw the terrifying rows of determined men which were passing him almost at the double, the men of his own poor country, poorly clad, simple soldiers, they were all going to death calm and free of responsibility.

He was sitting on a grey horse which stood motionless with ears pricked alert at the music and the mad, enthusiastic shouts. A brilliant suite was round him. But I do not remember any of the brilliant crowd of horsemen excepting that one man on a grey horse in simple uniform and white cap. I remember his pale worn face⁠—worn with the consciousness of the weighty decision taken. I remember how tears like big raindrops were running down his cheeks, falling on the dark cloth of his uniform in bright glistening splashes. I remember the trembling lips murmuring something which was doubtless a welcome to the thousands of young lives about to perish and for whom he was weeping. All this appeared and disappeared, lighted up with the rapidity of lightning, as I, breathless, not from running, but from mad, delirious enthusiasm, doubled past him with rifle raised high in one hand, and with the other waving my cap above my head, yelling a deafening hurrah, which, however, I could not even hear in the general roar.

All this flashed up and disappeared. The dusty streets bathed in a scorching heat, the exhausting excitement, the soldiers worn out by excitement and from having doubled for a distance of nearly one verst under a baking sun. The shouts of the officers calling on the men to keep formation and in step⁠—that is all I saw and heard five minutes later.

After we had marched a further two versts through the stifling town and reached the common on which we were to bivouac, I threw myself to the ground, utterly worn out, body and soul.

VI

Difficult marches, dust, heat, fatigue, bleeding feet, brief halts by day, deathlike slumber by night, the hated bugle waking us at scarce dawn, and all the time fields⁠—fields. Not like those in our own country, but covered with high, green, loudly-rustling, long, silky leaves of maize or wheat, already in places turning yellow.

The same faces, the same regimental life, the same topics of conversation and tales of home, of the halt in the provincial town, and criticisms of the officers.

Of the future we seldom and unwillingly spoke. We only knew vaguely that we were going to war, notwithstanding the fact that we had halted not far from Kishineff for a whole six months, although quite ready to march. It would have been possible during that time to have explained why we were preparing for war, but I suppose it was not considered necessary. I remember a soldier one day asked me:

“Vladimir Mikhailich, shall we soon arrive in Bokhara?”

I thought at first that I had not heard