The fourth soldier was an insignificant-looking boy recruited the year before and this was his first campaign. He stood surrounded by the smoke and so near the flames that his threadbare cloak seemed in danger of catching fire, yet judging by the way he extended the skirts of his cloak and bent out his calves, and by his quiet self-satisfied pose, he was feeling highly contented.
The fifth and last of the soldiers was Daddy Zhdánov. He sat a little way off, cutting a stick. Zhdánov had been serving in the battery longer than anyone else, had known all the others as recruits, and they were all in the habit of calling him ‘daddy’. It was said of him that he never drank, smoked, or played cards (not even ‘noses’), and never used bad language. He spent all his spare time boot-making, went to church on holidays where that was possible, or else put a farthing taper before his icon and opened the book of psalms, the only book he could read. He seldom kept company with the other soldiers. To those who were his seniors in rank though his juniors in years he was coldly respectful; with his equals he had few opportunities of mixing, not being a drinker. He liked the recruits and the youngest soldiers best: he always took them under his protection, admonished them, and often helped them. Everyone in the battery considered him a capitalist because he had some twenty-five rubles, out of which he was always ready to lend something to a soldier in real need.
The same Maksímov who was now gun-sergeant told me that ten years ago, when he first came as a recruit and drank all he had with the old soldiers who were in the habit of drinking, Zhdánov, noticing his unfortunate position, called him up, severely reprimanded him for his conduct and even beat him, delivered a lecture on how one should live in the army, and sent him away after giving him a shirt (which Maksímov lacked) and half-a-ruble in money. ‘He made a man of me,’ Maksímov always used to say with respect and gratitude. He also helped Velenchúk (whom he had taken under his protection since he was a recruit) at the time of his misfortune. When the coat was stolen he helped him as he had helped many and many another during the twenty-five years of his service.
One could not hope to find a man in the service who knew his work more thoroughly or was a better or more conscientious soldier than he; but he was too meek and insignificant-looking to be made a gun-sergeant, though he had been bombardier for fifteen years. Zhdánov’s one enjoyment and passion was song. He had a few favourite songs, always collected a circle of singers from among the younger soldiers, and though he could not sing himself he would stand by them, his hands in the pockets of his cloak, his eyes closed, showing sympathy by the movements of his head and jaw. I don’t know why, but that regular movement of the jaws below the ears, which I never noticed in anyone else, seemed to me extremely expressive. His snow-white head, his blackened moustaches, and his sunburnt, wrinkled face, gave him at first sight a stern and harsh expression; but on looking closer into his large round eyes, especially when they smiled (he never laughed with his lips), you were suddenly struck by something remarkable in their unusually mild, almost childlike look.
Chapter IV
‘I’LL be blowed! I’ve gone and forgot my pipe. Here’s a go, lads!’ repeated Velenchúk.
‘You should smoke cikars, old fellow!’ began Chíkin, drawing his mouth to one side and winking. ‘There, now, I always smoke cikars when I’m at home – them’s sweeter.’
Of course everybody burst out laughing.
‘Forgot your pipe, indeed!’ interrupted Maksímov without heeding the general mirth, and beating the tobacco out of his pipe into the palm of his left hand with the proud air of a superior; ‘where did you vanish to – eh, Velenchúk?’
Velenchúk, half turning round to him, was about to raise his hand to his cap, but dropped it again.
‘Seems to me you hadn’t your sleep out after yesterday – falling asleep when you are once up! It’s not thanks the likes of you get for such goings on.’
‘May I die, Theodor Maksímov, if a drop has passed my lips; I don’t myself know what happened to me,’ answered Velenchúk. ‘Much cause I had for revelling,’ he muttered.
‘Just so; but we have to answer to the authorities because of the likes of you, and you continue – it’s quite scandalous!’ the eloquent Maksímov concluded in a calmer tone.
‘It’s quite wonderful, lads,’ Velenchúk went on after a moment’s silence, scratching his head and addressing no one in particular; ‘really quite wonderful, lads! Here have I been serving for the last sixteen years and such a thing never happened to me. When we were ordered to appear for muster I was all right, but at the “park”, there it suddenly clutches hold of me, and clutches and clutches, and down it throws me, down on the ground and no more ado – and I did not myself know how I fell asleep, lads! That must have been the trances,’ he concluded.
‘True enough, I hardly managed to wake you,’ said Antónov as he pulled on his boot. ‘I had to push and push just as if you’d been a log!’
‘Fancy now,’ said Velenchúk, ‘if I’d been drunk now!…’
‘That’s just like a woman we had at home,’ began Chíkin; ‘she hardly got off the stove for two years. Once they began waking her – they thought she was asleep – and she was already dead. She used to be taken sleepy that way. That’s what it is, old fellow!’
‘Now then, Chíkin, won’t you tell us how you set the tone during your leave of absence?’ said Maksímov, looking at me with a smile as if to say: ‘Would you, too, like to hear the stupid fellow?’
‘What tone, Theodor Maksímov?’ said Chíkin, giving me a rapid side-glance. ‘In course I told them what sort of a Cawcusses we’d got here.’
‘Well, yes, how did you do it? There! don’t give yourself airs; tell us how you administrated it to them.’
‘How should I administrate it? In course they asked me how we live,’ Chíkin began rapidly with the air of a man recounting something he had repeated several times before. ‘ “We live well, old fellow,” says I. “Provisions in plenty we get: morning and night a cup of chokelad for every soldier lad, and at noon barley broth before us is set, such as gentle-folks get, and instead of vodka we get a pint of Modera wine from Devirier, such as costs forty-four – with the bottle ten more!” ’
‘Fine Modera,’ Velenchúk shouted louder than anyone, rolling with laughter: ‘that’s Modera of the right sort!’
‘Well, and what did you tell them about the Asiaites?’ Maksímov went on to ask when the general mirth had subsided a little.
Chíkin stooped over the fire, poked out a bit of charcoal with a stick, put it to his pipe, and long continued puffing at his shag as though not noticing the silent curiosity awakened in his hearers. When he had at last drawn enough smoke he threw the bit of charcoal away, pushed his cap yet farther back, and, stretching himself, continued with a slight smile —
‘Well, so they asked, “What’s that Cherkés fellow or Turk as you’ve got down in your Cawcusses”, they say, “as fights?” and so I says, “Them’s not all of one sort; there’s different Cherkéses, old fellow. There’s the Wagabones, them as lives in the stony mountains and eat stones instead of bread. They’re big,” says I, “as big as a good-sized beam, they’ve one eye in the forehead and wear burning red caps,” just such as yours, old fellow,’ he added, turning to the young recruit, who really wore an absurd cap with a red crown.