Yet at the start of the war, it was the capriciousness of it that had carried him away. The commissars' talk was all of the new world, and the first novelty was that you could give up plowing. Just like that, on a whim. He was twenty-four at the time and not easily imposed on, but the freedom they offered him was too tempting: to do no plowing! It was intoxicating. They also said the bloodsuckers must be killed. Nikolai remembered Dolshansky, the landowner to whom their village had once belonged. Dolshanka, it was called. And he tried to picture this ancient nobleman as a bloodsucker. It was not easy. Among the peasants only the oldest had experienced serfdom. The village was rich. Dolshansky, long since ruined, lived in more poverty than some of the peasants, and had only one obsession: he spent his time carving the wood for his own coffin. No, it was better to picture the bloodsuckers in general, then one's anger mounted and slashing, shooting, and killing became simpler.
The horse lowered his head. His pace slowed and Nikolai felt a slight jolt: the filly walking behind, attached to a rope, was moving sleepily along and each time they slowed down it bumped its head against his horse's hindquarters. Nikolai smiled and thought he could hear something like a stifled laugh in the horse's brief snort. He did not scold him, simply whispered, "Come along, Fox, we've not far to go. Once we're past the forest we can rest!"
It was not his red coat but his cunning that had earned the horse this name. To begin with Nikolai had thought he was simply stubborn. In one of the first battles Fox had refused to launch into the attack with the others. Some fifty cavalrymen were due to come surging out of a copse and bear down on the soldiers preparing to ford a river with a convoy of wagons. The commanding officer had given the sign, the cavalry hurtled forward, accompanied by a whirlwind of broken branches. But Nikolai's horse reared up, pranced about on the spot, wheeled around, and would not go. He had beaten him savagely, kicking his sides with his heels, whipped him furiously, smacked his muzzle. The worst of it was that the success of the attack seemed a foregone conclusion. On the riverbank the soldiers, taken by surprise, did not even have time to pick up their rifles. And he, meanwhile, was still struggling with that damned horse. The cavalry were a hundred yards from the enemy, they were already crowing with delight when two machine guns, in a terrible flank assault, began to mow them down with the precision of an aim calculated in advance. The cavalrymen were falling before they realized it was a trap. Those who succeeded in turning around were pursued by a squadron that emerged from the scrub covering the bank. It was with only a handful of survivors that Nikolai returned to the camp. He still believed the business with his horse was pure coincidence and that he would have to get used to its peevish temperament. Later the coincidence repeated itself. Once, then twice, then three times. His horse would come to him, recognizing his whistle above the din of a camp of a thousand men and thousands of animals. Would lie down, obeying his word of command, would stop or break into a gallop, as if reading his mind. It was then that Nikolai began to call him "Fox" and to have that grim affection for him that arises in war, amid the mud and the gore, when in the first minutes after a battle each becomes violently aware that the other is still alive, silently close at hand, something even more astonishing than his own survival.
Along the trails of war Fox had seen horses drowning, horses ripped apart by shells, a stallion with its front legs torn off attempting to stand up again in a monstrous leap, and a team abandoned in the peaty depths of a bog: the horses sinking deeper and deeper, the prisoners of a useless gun they were hauling. And a White officer, a rope around his neck, being dragged along the ground by a horse gathering speed under the blows of a whip and the bawling of the soldiers. Fox must have understood in his own way that everything happening around him had long since eluded the grasp of these men, as they killed one another, beat their horses, made speeches. He also understood that his master was not fooled.
Nikolai did not seek to judge. Greatly aged over these two years, he was content to reach this very simple conclusion: it was certainly possible to give up plowing and sowing, but then the fields became covered in corpses.
The sleepy filly gently bumped into Fox's hindquarters with her muzzle again, for he had once more imperceptibly slowed his pace. There seemed to be a reassuring aura of happiness about the trust shown by this drowsy young animal. Nikolai inhaled deeply, recognizing the subtle sharpness of the snows hidden in the ravines and the dry scent of the meadows as they gave off the warmth of the day. Night had not yet fallen, to the west the sky was still a translucent purple, but, most important, close in front of them the density of the forest was already lightening, heralding the freedom of the plain and the road that led to Dolshanka. Nikolai coughed and began whispering to himself the questions and answers he was preparing, just to be on the safe side, afraid he might be interrogated about his sudden appearance by some local revolutionary tribunal or, more simply, by curious neighbors.
The story he had composed during his ride passed over one crucial fact in silence. He had fled his regiment because of a machine. An apparatus placed on the big black desk in the building occupied by staff headquarters for the front. Nikolai arrived in this town as a dispatch-rider, with a letter from the commanding officer of their regiment. In the courtyard he had noticed a score of civilians, old men and women with children, guarded by several soldiers. He had been told to wait in the corridor. The door to the office was half open and he could listen to the argument between the commissars. They had to decide whether or not to execute the hostages, the civilians in the courtyard, by way of reprisals. One of the commissars was shouting, "Not till we receive instructions from Moscow." Then suddenly an object sprang into life on the big black wooden desk. It was that strange apparatus around which they were all gathered. Nikolai, his curiosity getting the better of him, peered around the door. The machine was vomiting forth a long strip of paper that the commissars pulled out and read like a newspaper. "There! It's clear now," an invisible voice behind the door had proclaimed. "Read it! 'Shoot them as enemies of the revolution. Display notices in public places…' "
Nikolai had handed over his letter, leaped onto his horse and, as he left the courtyard, had seen the "enemies of the revolution" being led behind the building. He no longer knew how many executions of this type he had already seen during those two years of war. But that white snake coming out of the machine constricted his throat with an anger and a grief that were of a quite different order. He was choking, tugging at the collar of his jacket, then suddenly brought his horse to a halt in the middle of the road and said aloud, "No, Fox, wait. Let's cut off across the fields instead."
To banish this memory, which constantly returned to him, Nikolai reached with his left hand behind his back, to feel the handles of the two new pails fastened to the saddle. Along with several sets of shirts and pants of coarse cotton they were his only spoils. He shook the buckets softly, the zinc made a reassuring, domestic clatter. It was his dream to come back from the war with two buckets, something really useful, and he never wearied of picturing them being carried on a yoke by a young woman, his future wife. There had already been one in his kit, which he had abandoned when he deserted. Going to sleep amid soldiers wandering about in the darkness and horses passing between sleeping bodies, he used to put his head in the pail to protect himself from being kicked by a hoof, which happened from time to time in these nocturnal caravans. And also to ensure it was not stolen. Leaving it behind was his greatest regret at the moment of flight. However, lose one, find ten. Passing through a burned-out village he had found these two new buckets discarded beside the well, at the bottom of which, seeing the swollen face of the drowned man, he had thought he was glimpsing his own reflection. And as he was leaving that place of death he had caught sight of a filly fastened to a tree. She could scarcely remain upright. The grass around the trunk was eaten down to the ground and for as high as she could reach the tree had no bark left. She must have been there for several days.