‘No I shan’t!’
‘Viang, get me my pipe and fill it,’ said Kraut, turning to the cadet, who rose at once and readily ran for the pipe.
Kraut brightened them all up: he talked of the bombardment, asked what had been going on in his absence, and spoke to everybody.
XIX
‘WELL, have you established yourself satisfactorily among us?’ Kraut asked Volódya. ‘Excuse me, what is your name and patronymic? You know that’s our custom in the artillery.… Have you a horse?’
‘No,’ said Volódya, ‘I don’t know what I’m to do. I was telling the captain … I have no horse nor any money until I get my forage-money and travelling expenses paid. I thought meanwhile of asking the commander of the battery to let me have a horse, but I’m afraid he’ll refuse.’
‘Apollón Sergéich …?’ and Kraut made a sound with his lips expressive of strong doubt, and looking at the captain added, ‘Hardly!’
‘Well, if he does refuse there’ll be no harm done,’ said the captain. ‘To tell you the truth, a horse is not much wanted here. Still, it’s worth trying. I will ask him to-day.’
‘How little you know him,’ Dyádenko put in: ‘he might refuse anything else, but not that.… Will you bet?’
‘Oh, we know you can’t help contradicting!’
‘I contradict because I know. He’s close in other matters, but he’ll give a horse because he gains nothing by refusing.’
‘Gains nothing when oats are eight rubles?’ said Kraut. ‘The gain is not having to keep an extra horse.’
‘You ask for Skvoréts, Vladímir Semënich,’ said Vlang, returning with Kraut’s pipe. ‘He’s a capital horse.’
‘Off which you fell into a ditch in Soróki, eh, Vlánga?’ remarked the lieutenant-captain.
‘What does it matter if oats are eight rubles, when in his estimates they figure at ten and a half?10 That’s where the gain comes in,’ said Dyádenko, continuing to argue.
‘Well naturally you can’t expect him to keep nothing. When you’re commander of a battery I daresay you won’t let a man have a horse to ride into town.’
‘When I’m commander of a battery my horses will get four measures each and I shan’t make an income, no fear!’
‘We shall see if we live …’ said the lieutenant-captain. ‘You’ll act in just the same way – and so will he,’ pointing to Volódya.
‘Why do you think that he too would wish to make a profit?’ said Tchernovítski to Kraut. ‘He may have private means, then why should he want to make a profit?’
‘Oh no, I … excuse me, Captain,’ said Volódya, blushing up to his ears, ‘but I should think such a thing dishonourable.’
‘Dear me! What a severe fellow he is!’ said Kraut.
‘No, I only mean that I think that if the money is not mine I ought not to take it.’
‘But I’ll tell you something, young man,’ began the lieutenant-captain in a more serious tone. ‘Do you know that if you are commanding a battery you have to conduct things properly, and that’s enough. The commander of a battery doesn’t interfere with the soldiers’ supplies: that’s always been the custom in the artillery. If you are a bad manager you will have no surplus. But you have to spend over and above what’s in the estimates: for shoeing – that’s one’ (he bent down one finger), ‘and for medicine – that’s two’ (and he bent down another finger), ‘for office expenses – that’s three: then for off-horses one has to pay up to five hundred rubles my dear fellow – that’s four: you have to supply the soldiers with new collars, spend a good bit on charcoal for the samovars, and keep open table for the officers. If you are in command of a battery you must live decently: you must have a carriage and a fur coat, and one thing and another.… It’s quite plain!’
‘And above all,’ interrupted the captain, who had been silent all the time, ‘look here, Vladímir Semënich – imagine a man like myself say, serving for twenty years with a pay of first two hundred, then three hundred rubles a year. Can one refuse him a crust of bread in his old age, after all his service?’
‘Ah, what’s the good of talking,’ began the lieutenant-captain again. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to judge, but live and serve.’
Volódya felt horribly confused and ashamed of what he had so thoughtlessly said. He muttered something, and then listened in silence while Dyádenko began very irritably to dispute and to argue the contrary of what had been said. The dispute was interrupted by the colonel’s orderly who came to call them to dinner.
‘Ask Apollón Sergéich to give us some wine to-day,’ said Tchernovítski to the captain, buttoning his uniform. ‘Why is he so stingy? If we get killed, it will all be wasted.’
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘Oh no, you’re the senior officer. We must observe order in everything.’
XX
IN the room where Volódya had presented himself to the colonel the evening before, the table had been moved away from the wall and covered with a dirty table-cloth. To-day the commander of the battery shook hands with him and asked him for the Petersburg news, and about his journey.
‘Well, gentlemen, who takes vodka? Please help yourselves.… Ensigns don’t take any,’ he added with a smile.
Altogether he did not seem at all as stern as the night before; on the contrary he seemed a kind and hospitable host and an elder comrade among fellow officers. But in spite of it all, the officers from the old captain down to Ensign Dyádenko showed him great respect, if only by the way they addressed him, politely looking him straight in the eyes, and by the timid way they came up one by one to the side-table to drink their glass of vodka.
The dinner consisted of Polish cutlets with mustard, dumplings with butter that was not very fresh, and a large tureen of cabbage-soup in which floated pieces of fat beef with an enormous quantity of pepper and bay-leaves. There were no napkins, the spoons were of tin or wood, there were only two tumblers, and there was only water on the table, in a bottle with a broken neck; but the meal was not dull and the conversation never flagged. At first they talked about the battle of Inkerman, in which the battery had taken part, and each gave his own impressions of it and reasons for our reverse, but all were silent as soon as the commander spoke. Then the conversation naturally passed to the insufficient calibre of our field-guns, and to the subject of the new lighter guns, which gave Volódya an opportunity to show his knowledge of artillery. But the conversation never touched on the present terrible condition of Sevastopoclass="underline" it was as if each man had thought so much on this subject that he did not wish to speak of it. Nor to Volódya’s great surprise and regret was there any mention at all of the duties of the service he would have to perform. It was as if he had come to Sevastopol solely to discuss lighter guns and to dine with the commander of the battery. During dinner a bomb fell near the house they were in. The floor and walls shook as if from an earthquake, and the windows were darkened by the powder smoke.
‘You didn’t see that sort of thing in Petersburg, I fancy, but here we get many such surprises,’ said the commander of the battery. ‘Vlang, go and see where it burst.’
Vlang went out to see, and reported that it had fallen in the square, and no more was said about the bomb.
Just before dinner ended, a little old man, the battery clerk, came into the room with three sealed envelopes and handed them to the commander: ‘This one is very important: a Cossack has just brought it from the Chief of the Artillery.’
The officers all watched with eager impatience as the commander with practised fingers broke the seal and drew out the very important paper. ‘What can it be?’ each one asked himself. It might be an order to retire from Sevastopol to recuperate, or the whole battery might be ordered to the bastions.
‘Again!’ said the commander, angrily throwing the paper on the table.