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

with food did not find us, and we were obliged to starve, making our two days’ ration of biscuit last over five and more days. The hungry men used to thresh unripe wheat with sticks on outstretched sheets of our tents, and made a disgusting soup from it and sour wild apples, without salt (because we could not get any), and got sick from it. Battalions faded away, although not in action.

In the middle of June our brigade, with several squadrons of cavalry and two batteries of artillery, arrived at a ruined and half-burned Turkish village which had been abandoned by its inhabitants. Our camp was situated on a high, precipitous mountain. The village was below, in the depth of the valley along which a little river wound its course. Steep, high cliffs rose on the other side of the valley. It was, as we imagined, the Turkish side, but no Turks were, as a matter of fact, near us. We camped several days on our mountain, almost without bread, only obtaining with great difficulty any water, as it was necessary to descend far below for it to a spring which came out at the bottom of the cliff. We were absolutely detached from the army, and did not know in the least what was going on in the world. Fifteen versts in front of us were Cossack patrols. Two or three sotnias of them were distributed over a distance of twenty versts. There were no Turks there either.

Notwithstanding the fact that we could not find the enemy, our little column took every precautionary measure. Day and night a strong chain of advanced posts surrounded the camp. Owing to the nature of the ground its line was a long one, and every day several companies were told off for this inactive but very tiring work. Inaction, almost constant starvation, and ignorance of the state of affairs acted prejudicially on the men.

The regimental hospitals became overflowing. Each day men, weakened and tortured by fever and dysentery, were sent to the divisional hospital. The companies were only one-half or two-thirds of their proper strength. All were gloomy, and everyone longed to come to grips. Anyhow, it would have been a change.

At length it came. A Cossack orderly came galloping in from the commander of a Cossack squadron with the information that the Turks had begun to advance and that he had been compelled to call in his men and fall back five versts. Afterwards it appeared that the Turks went back without thinking of continuing the attack, and we could have quietly remained on the spot, the more so as nobody had ordered us to advance. But the General commanding us then, who had but recently arrived from St. Petersburg, felt, as did all of us in the column, that it was insufferable to the men to sit with folded arms or stand for whole days on guard against an invisible and, as all were convinced, nonexistent enemy, to eat horrible food, and await their turn to fall sick. All were eager for the fray; and the General ordered an attack.

We left half the column in camp. The situation was so little known that there was a possibility of being attacked from both sides. Fourteen companies, the Hussars, and four guns moved out after midday. Never had we marched so fast and light-heartedly, with the exception of the day on which we marched past the Emperor.

We marched along the valley, passing, one after another, deserted Turkish and Bulgarian villages. In the narrow thoroughfares bordered by hedges higher than a man nothing was to be met⁠—neither human beings, cattle, nor dogs. Only clucking hens flew away on our approach, on to the hedges and roofs, and geese, with a cry, raised themselves ponderously in the air and endeavoured to fly away. In the gardens could be seen plum-trees of every description, the branches of which were literally obscured by ripe fruit. In the last village, five versts from the spot we imagined the Turks to be in, we halted for half an hour. During this spell the half-starved men shook down quantities of plums, ate them, and crammed their ration bags with them. A few would catch and kill the hens and geese, pluck them, and bring them along in their knapsacks. I remembered how the same soldiers before the crossing at Sistovo, in anticipation of a fight, had thrown everything out of their knapsacks, and I mentioned it to Jitkoff, who was at the moment busily engaged in plucking an enormous goose.

“Well, Mikhailich, although we have not been in action we have become accustomed to wait. It seems as if you will only march and not take any part in the fighting. And even if you do you need not necessarily be killed.”

“Are you frightened?” I asked him involuntarily.

“But perhaps nothing will happen,” he answered slowly, frowning, and assiduously plucking out the last remnants of white down.

“But if it does?”

“If it does, frightened or not frightened, its all the same, one has to go. They don’t ask us. Go, and God help you. Lend me your knife. It is such a good one.” I gave him my big hunting-knife. He cut the goose in two, and held out one half to me.

“Take it in case. And about being frightened or not frightened, don’t think of it, sir. It is better not to think of it. All rests with God. You cannot get away from what He designs.”

“If a bullet or shell comes at you, where can you go?” added Feodoroff, who was lying near us. “I think this, Vladimir Mikhailich, that it is even more dangerous to run away, because a bullet must travel like that”⁠—he showed with his finger⁠—“and the heaviest fire comes from the rear.”

“Yes,” said I, “especially with the Turks. They say they fire high.”

“Well, clever one,” said Jitkoff to Feodoroff, “go on talking. There they will show you a trajectory. Yes, certainly,” he added, thinking, “it is