These simple words expressed much love and sadness.
‘Why do you serve here?’ I asked.
‘One has to serve,’ he answered with conviction.
[‘You should transfer to Russia. You would then be nearer to her.’
‘To Russia? To Russia?’ repeated the captain, dubiously swaying his head and smiling mournfully. ‘Here I am still of some use, but there I should be the least of the officers. And besides, the double pay we get here also means something to a poor man.’
‘Can it be, Pável Ivánovich, that living as you do the ordinary pay would not suffice?’
‘And does the double pay suffice?’ interjected the captain. ‘Look at our officers! Have any of them a brass farthing? They all go on tick at the sutler’s, and are all up to their ears in debt. You say “living as I do” … Do you really think that living as I do I have anything over out of my salary? Not a farthing! You don’t yet know what prices are like here; everything is three times dearer …’]
The captain lived economically, did not play cards, rarely went carousing, and smoked the cheapest tobacco (which for some reason he called home-grown tobacco). I had liked him before – he had one of those simple, calm, Russian faces which are easy and pleasant to look straight in the eyes – and after this talk I felt a sincere regard for him.
Chapter II
NEXT morning at four o’clock the captain came for me. He wore an old threadbare coat without epaulettes, wide Caucasian trousers, a white sheepskin cap the wool of which had grown yellow and limp, and had a shabby Asiatic sword strapped round his shoulder. The small white horse he rode ambled along with short strides, hanging its head down and swinging its thin tail. Although the worthy captain’s figure was not very martial or even good-looking, it expressed such equanimity towards everything around him that it involuntarily inspired respect.
I did not keep him waiting a single moment, but mounted my horse at once, and we rode together through the gates of the fort.
The battalion was some five hundred yards ahead of us and looked like a dense, oscillating, black mass. It was only possible to guess that it was an infantry battalion by the bayonets which looked like needles standing close together, and by the sound of the soldiers’ songs which occasionally reached us, the beating of a drum, and the delightful voice of the Sixth Company’s second tenor, which had often charmed me at the fort. The road lay along the middle of a deep and broad ravine by the side of a stream which had overflowed its banks. Flocks of wild pigeons whirled above it, now alighting on the rocky banks, now turning in the air in rapid circles and vanishing out of sight. The sun was not yet visible, but the crest of the right side of the ravine was just beginning to be lit up. The grey and whitish rock, the yellowish-green moss, the dew-covered bushes of Christ’s Thorn, dogberry, and dwarf elm, appeared extraordinarily distinct and salient in the golden morning light, but the other side and the valley, wrapped in thick mist which floated in uneven layers, were damp and gloomy and presented an indefinite mingling of colours: pale purple, almost black, dark green, and white. Right in front of us, strikingly distinct against the dark-blue horizon, rose the bright, dead-white masses of the snowy mountains, with their shadows and outlines fantastic and yet exquisite in every detail. Crickets, grasshoppers, and thousands of other insects, awoke in the tall grasses and filled the air with their clear and ceaseless sounds: it was as if innumerable tiny bells were ringing inside our very ears. The air was full of the scent of water, grass, and mist: the scent of a lovely early summer morning. The captain struck a light and lit his pipe, and the smell of his cheap tobacco and of the tinder seemed to me extraordinarily pleasant.
To overtake the infantry more quickly we left the road. The captain appeared more thoughtful than usual, did not take his Daghestan pipe from his mouth, and at every step touched with his heels his horse, which swaying from side to side left a scarcely perceptible green track in the tall wet grass. From under its very feet, with the cry and the whirr of wings which involuntarily sends a thrill through every sportsman, a pheasant rose, and flew slowly upwards. The captain did not take the least notice of it.
We had nearly overtaken the battalion when we heard the thud of a horse galloping behind us, and that same moment a good-looking youth in an officer’s uniform and white sheepskin cap galloped past us. He smiled in passing, nodded to the captain, and flourished his whip. I only had time to notice that he sat his horse and held his reins with peculiar grace, that he had beautiful black eyes, a fine nose, and only the first indications of a moustache. What specially pleased me about him was that he could not repress a smile when he noticed our admiration. This smile alone showed him to be very young.
‘Where is he galloping to?’ muttered the captain with a dissatisfied air, without taking the pipe from his mouth.
‘Who is he?’ I replied.
‘Ensign Alánin, a subaltern in my company. He came from the Cadet Corps only a month ago.’
‘I suppose he is going into action for the first time,’ I said.
‘That’s why he is so delighted,’ answered the captain, thoughtfully shaking his head. ‘Youth!’
‘But how could he help being pleased? I can fancy how interesting it must be for a young officer.’
The captain remained silent for a minute or two.
‘That is just why I say “youth”,’ he added in a deep voice. ‘What is there to be pleased at without ever having seen the thing? When one has seen it many times one is not so pleased. There are now, let us say, twenty of us officers here: one or other is sure to be killed or wounded, that is quite certain. Today it may be I, to-morrow he, the next day a third. So what is there to be pleased about?’
Chapter III
AS soon as the bright sun appeared above the hill and lit up the valley along which we were marching, the wavy clouds of mist cleared and it grew hot. The soldiers, with muskets and sacks on their shoulders, marched slowly along the dusty road. Now and then Ukrainian words and laughter could be heard in their ranks. Several old soldiers in white blouses (most of them noncommissioned officers) walked together by the roadside, smoking their pipes and conversing gravely. Heavily laden wagons drawn by three horses moved steadily along, raising thick clouds of dust that hung motionless in the air. The officers rode in front: some of them caracoled – whipping their horses, making them take three or four leaps and then, pulling their heads round, stopping abruptly. Others were occupied with the singers, who in spite of the heat and sultriness sang song after song.
With the mounted Tartars, about two hundred yards ahead of the infantry, rode a tall handsome lieutenant in Asiatic costume on a large white horse. He was known in the regiment as a desperate dare-devil who would spit the truth out at anybody. He wore a black tunic trimmed with gold braid, leggings to match, soft closely fitting gold-braided oriental shoes, a yellow coat and a tall sheepskin cap pushed back from his forehead. Fastened to the silver strap that lay across his chest and back, he carried a powder-flask, and a pistol behind him. Another pistol and a silver-mounted dagger hung from his girdle, and above these a sword in a red leather sheath, and a musket in a black cover, were slung over his shoulder. By his clothing, by the way he sat his horse, by his general bearing, in fact by his every movement, one could see that he tried to resemble a Tartar. He even spoke to the Tartars with whom he was riding in a language I did not know, and from the bewildered and amused looks with which they glanced at one another I surmised that they did not understand him either. He was one of our young officers, dare-devil braves who shape their lives on the model of Lérmontov’s and Marlínsky’s heroes. These officers see the Caucasus only through the prism of such books as A Hero of our Time, and Mullah-Nur,1 and are guided in their actions not by their own inclinations but by the examples of their models.