‘You have been under treatment a long time,’ said the colonel, with a cold look at Kozeltsóv.
‘I have been ill, Colonel. The wound is not thoroughly closed even now.’
‘Then it’s a pity you’ve come,’ said the colonel, looking suspiciously at the officer’s solid figure. ‘But still, you are capable of taking duty?’
‘Certainly sir, I am.’
‘I am very glad to hear it. Then you’ll take over from Ensign Záytsev the Ninth Company that you had before. You will receive your orders at once.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Be so good as to send the regimental adjutant to me when you go.’ The commander finished with a slight bow, thereby intimating that the audience was at an end.
On leaving the casemate Kozeltsóv muttered something to himself several times, and shrugged his shoulders as if he were hurt, or uncomfortable, or provoked – and provoked not with the colonel (he had no ground to be so) but with himself, and he felt dissatisfied with everything around him.
[Discipline and the subordination that goes with it, like every legalized relationship, is pleasant only when it rests on a mutual consciousness of its necessity, and of a superiority in experience, military worth, or simply on a moral superiority recognized by the inferior. But if the discipline is founded on arbitrary or pecuniary considerations, as is often the case among us, it always turns into pretentiousness on the one side and into suppressed envy and irritation on the other, and instead of a useful influence uniting the mass into one whole it produces a quite opposite effect. A man who does not feel that he can inspire respect by his own worth, instinctively fears intimacy with his subordinates and tries by ostentation to keep criticism at a distance. The subordinates, seeing only this external side which is offensive to themselves, suppose (often unjustly) that there is nothing good behind it.]
XVI
BEFORE going to join his fellow officers Kozeltsóv went to greet the men of his company and to see where it was stationed. The breastworks of gabions, the plan of the trenches, the cannon he passed, and even the fragments and bombs he stumbled over on the way, all lit up incessantly by the flashes of the firing, were quite familiar to him. All this had vividly impressed itself on his memory three months before, when he had spent two consecutive weeks at this bastion. Though there was much that was dreadful in the recollection, a certain charm of old times was mingled with it and he recognized all the familiar places and objects with pleasure, as if the fortnight spent there had been an agreeable one. His company was stationed against the wall of defence on the side towards the Sixth Bastion.
Kozeltsóv entered a long bomb-proof, quite open on the entrance side, where he was told he would find the Ninth Company. There was literally no room to set one’s foot in the whole shelter: it was crowded with soldiers from the very entrance. At one side burned a crooked tallow candle which a soldier, lying on the ground, held over the book another was reading from, spelling out the words. Through the smoky atmosphere of the place, in the dim light near the candle, heads were visible, raised eagerly to listen to the reader. The book was a primer, and on entering the bomb-proof Kozeltsóv heard the following:
‘Pra-yer af-ter les-sons. We Thank Thee, O Cre-a-tor.…’
‘Snuff the candle!’ said a voice. ‘It’s a fine book.’
‘God … is’ … continued the reader.
When Kozeltsóv asked for the sergeant-major the reader stopped and the soldiers began moving, coughing and blowing their noses, as is usual after a restrained silence. The sergeant-major, buttoning his uniform, rose not far from the reader’s group, and stepping over and onto the legs of those who could not get out of his way for lack of room, came up to the officer.
‘Good evening, friend! Is this the whole of our company?’
‘We wish your Honour health. Welcome back, your Honour!’ answered the sergeant-major with a cheerful and friendly look at Kozeltsóv. ‘How is your health getting on, your Honour? Thank God you’re better! We have missed you.’
It was easy to see that Kozeltsóv was liked by his company.
Far back in the bomb-proof voices were heard saying: ‘Our old company-commander has come back!’ ‘Him that was wounded.’ ‘Kozeltsóv.’ ‘Michael Semënich,’ and so on. Some men even moved nearer to him, and the drummer greeted him.
‘How do you do, Obantchúk?’ said Kozeltsóv. ‘Still whole? Good evening, lads!’ he added, raising his voice.
The answer, ‘Wish your Honour health!’ resounded through the casemate.
‘How are you getting on, lads?’
‘Badly, your Honour. The French are getting the better of us. They give it us hot from behind their ‘trenchments, but don’t come out into the open.’
‘Perhaps it will be my luck to see them coming out into the open, lads,’ said Kozeltsóv. ‘It won’t be the first time … you and I will give them a thrashing.’
‘We’ll do our best, your Honour,’ several voices replied.
‘Yes, he’s really brave!’ said a voice.
‘Awfully brave!’ said the drummer to another soldier, not loud but so as to be heard, and as if justifying the commander’s words to himself and proving that there was nothing boastful or unlikely in what he had said.
From the soldiers, Kozeltsóv went to join his fellow officers in the Defence Barracks.
XVII
IN the large caserne there was a crowd of naval, artillery, and infantry officers. Some slept, others talked, sitting on a chest of some kind and on the carriage of a garrison gun, but the largest and noisiest group sat on two Cossack cloaks spread out on the floor beyond the arch, and were drinking porter and playing cards.
‘Ah, Kozeltsóv! Kozeltsóv! … So you’ve come! That’s good.… You’re a brick.… How’s your wound?’ It was evident that he was liked here also, and that his return gave pleasure.
When he had shaken hands with those he knew, Kozeltsóv joined the noisy group of officers playing cards. With some of them he was acquainted. A thin, dark, handsome man, with a long thin nose and large moustaches which joined his whiskers, was keeping the bank and dealt the cards with thin white fingers on one of which he wore a large seal-ring with a crest. He dealt straight ahead and carelessly, being evidently excited about something, and only trying to appear at ease. On his right lay a grey-haired major leaning on his elbows who with affected coolness kept staking half-rubles and paying at once. On his left squatted an officer with a red perspiring face, smiling unnaturally and joking. When his cards lost he kept fumbling with one hand in his empty trouser pocket. He was playing high, but evidently no longer for ready money, and it was this that upset the handsome dark man. A bald, thin, pale officer with a huge nose and mouth paced the room with a large bundle of paper money in his hand and continually staked va-banque for ready money and won. Kozeltsóv drank a glass of vodka and sat down with the players.