‘Oh, if it were mine! But it’s Government money, my dear fellow.… And who is that with you?’ he asked, placing the money in a cash-box that stood near him and looking at Volódya.
‘It’s my brother, straight from the training college. We’ve come to learn from you where our regiment is stationed.’
‘Take a seat, gentlemen. Won’t you have something to drink? A glass of porter perhaps?’ he said, and without taking any further notice of his visitors he rose and went out into the tent.
‘I don’t mind if I do, Vasíli Mikháylovich.’
Volódya was struck by the grandeur of the commissariat officer, his off-hand manner, and the respect with which his brother addressed him.
‘I expect this is one of their best officers, whom they all respect – probably simple-minded but hospitable and brave,’ he thought as he sat down modestly and shyly on the sofa.
‘Then where is our regiment stationed?’ shouted the elder brother across to the tent.
‘What?’
The question was repeated.
‘Seifert was here this morning. He says the regiment has gone over to the Fifth Bastion.’
‘Is that certain?’
‘If I say so of course it’s certain. Still, the devil only knows if he told the truth! It wouldn’t take much to make him tell a lie either. Well, will you have some porter?’ said the commissariat officer, still speaking from the tent.
‘Well, yes, I think I will,’ said Kozeltsóv.
‘And you, Osip Ignátevich, will you have some?’ continued the voice from the tent, apparently addressing the sleeping contractor. ‘Wake up, it’s past four!’
‘Why do you bother me? I’m not asleep,’ answered a thin voice lazily, pronouncing the ls and rs with a pleasant lisp.
‘Well, get up, it’s dull without you,’ and the commissariat officer came out to his visitors.
‘A bottle of Simferópol porter!’ he cried.
The orderly entered the shed with an expression of pride as it seemed to Volódya, and in getting the porter from under the seat he even jostled Volódya.
[‘Yes, sir,’ said the commissariat officer, filling the glasses. ‘We have a new commander of the regiment now. Money is needed to get all that is required.’
‘Well, this one is quite a special type of the new generation,’ remarked Kozeltsóv, politely raising his glass.
‘Yes, of a new generation! He’ll be just as close-fisted as the battalion-commander was. How he used to shout when he was in command! But now he sings a different tune.’
‘Can’t be helped, old fellow. It just is so.’
The younger brother understood nothing of what was being said, but vaguely felt that his brother was not expressing what he thought, and spoke in that way only because he was drinking the commissariat officer’s porter.]
The bottle of porter was already emptied and the conversation had continued for some time in the same strain, when the flap of the tent opened and out stepped a rather short, fresh-looking man in a blue satin dressing-gown with tassels and a cap with a red band and a cockade. He came in twisting his little black moustaches, looking somewhere in the direction of one of the carpets, and answered the greetings of the officers with a scarcely perceptible movement of the shoulders.
‘I think I’ll have a glass too,’ he said, sitting down to the table.
‘Have you come from Petersburg, young man?’ he remarked, addressing Volódya in a friendly manner.
‘Yes, sir, and I’m going to Sevastopol.’
‘At your own request?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now why do you do it, gentlemen? I don’t understand it,’ remarked the commissioner. ‘I’d be ready to walk to Petersburg on foot, I think, if they’d let me go. My God, I’m sick of this damned life!’
‘What have you to complain of?’ asked the elder Kozeltsóv – ‘As if you weren’t well enough off here!’
The contractor gave him a look and turned away.
‘The danger, privations, lack of everything,’ he continued, addressing Volódya. ‘Whatever induces you to do it? I don’t at all understand you, gentlemen. If you got any profit out of it – but no! Now would it be pleasant, at your age, to be crippled for life?’
‘Some want to make a profit and others serve for honour,’ said the elder Kozeltsóv crossly, again intervening in the conversation.
‘Where does the honour come in if you’ve nothing to eat?’ said the contractor, laughing disdainfully and addressing the commissariat officer, who also laughed. ‘Wind up and let’s have the tune from Lucia,’ he added, pointing to a musical box. ‘I like it.’
‘What sort of a fellow is that Vasíli Mikháylovich?’ asked Volódya when he and his brother had left the shed and were driving to Sevastopol in the dusk of the evening.
‘So-so, but terribly stingy! [You know he gets at least three hundred rubles a month, but lives like a pig, as you saw.] But that contractor I can’t bear to look at. I’ll give him a thrashing some day! [Why, that rascal carried off some twelve thousand rubles from Turkey.…’
And Kozeltsóv began to enlarge on the subject of usury, rather (to tell the truth) with the bitterness of one who condemns it not because it is an evil, but because he is vexed that there are people who take advantage of it.]
X
IT was almost night when they reached Sevastopol. Driving towards the large bridge across the Roadstead Volódya was not exactly dispirited, but his heart was heavy. All he saw and heard was so different from his past, still recent, experience: the large, light examination hall with its parquet floor, the jolly, friendly voices and laughter of his comrades, the new uniform, the beloved Tsar he had been accustomed to see for the past seven years, and who at parting from them with tears in his eyes had called them his children – all he saw now was so little like his beautiful, radiant, high-souled dreams.
‘Well, here we are,’ said the elder brother when they reached the Michael Battery and dismounted from their trap. ‘If they let us cross the bridge we will go at once to the Nicholas Barracks. You can stay there till the morning, and I’ll go to the regiment and find out where your battery is and come for you to-morrow.’
‘Oh, why? Let’s go together,’ said Volódya. ‘I’ll go to the bastion with you. It doesn’t matter. One must get used to it sooner or later. If you go, so can I.’
‘Better not.’
‘Yes, please! I shall at least find out how.…’
‘My advice is don’t go … however —’
The sky was clear and dark. The stars, the flash of the guns and the continual flare of the bombs already showed up brightly in the darkness, and the large white building of the battery and the entry to the bridge6 loomed out. The air was shaken every second by a quick succession of artillery shots and explosions which became ever louder and more distinct. Through this roar, and as if answering it, came the dull murmur of the Roadstead. A slight breeze blew in from the sea and the air smelt moist. The brothers reached the bridge. A recruit, awkwardly striking his gun against his hand, called out, ‘Who goes there?’
‘Soldier!’
‘No one’s allowed to pass!’
‘How is that? We must.’
‘Ask the officer.’
The officer, who was sitting on an anchor dozing, rose and ordered that they should be allowed to pass.
‘You may go there, but not back.’
‘Where are you driving, all of a heap?’ he shouted to the regimental wagons which, laden high with gabions, were crowding the entrance.
As the brothers were descending to the first pontoon, they came upon some soldiers going the other way and talking loudly.
‘If he’s had his outfit money his account is squared – that’s so.’
‘Ah, lads,’ said another, ‘when one gets to the North Side one sees light again. It’s a different air altogether.’