“Your action deserves a reward.”
The man began to bow gratefully.
“There’s nothing to be grateful for,” Kokoshkin continued. “I will report on your selfless action to the sovereign emperor, and your chest may be decorated with a medal this very day. You can go home now, drink something warm, and don’t go out anywhere, because you may be needed.”
The invalid officer beamed, bowed out, and left.
Kokoshkin followed him with his eyes and said:
“It’s possible the sovereign himself will want to see him.”
“Yes, sir,” the quick-witted police chief replied.
“I no longer need you.”
The police chief went out and, having closed the door behind him, at once, out of pious habit, crossed himself.
The invalid officer was waiting for him downstairs, and they left the place together, in much warmer relations than when they had entered it.
In the superintendent’s office there remained only Svinyin, on whom Kokoshkin at first fixed a long, intent gaze and then asked:
“You haven’t gone to the grand duke?”
At that time, when there was mention of a grand duke, everyone knew it referred to the grand duke Mikhail Pavlovich.
“I came straight to you,” replied Svinyin.
“Who is the officer of the guard?”
“Captain Miller.”
Kokoshkin again looked Svinyin over and then said:
“It seems you were saying something different to me earlier.”
Svinyin did not even understand what this had to do with, and kept silent. Kokoshkin added:
“Well, never mind: I bid you good night.”
The audience was over.
XIII
At one o’clock in the afternoon, the invalid officer was indeed summoned again to Kokoshkin, who very affably announced to him that the sovereign was highly pleased that among the officers of his palace’s invalid command there were such vigilant and selfless people, and that he was bestowing on him the medal for lifesaving. At that, Kokoshkin handed the medal to the hero with his own hands, and the man went off to flaunt it. The affair, therefore, could be considered over and done with, yet Lieutenant Colonel Svinyin felt some sort of inconclusiveness in it and considered himself called upon to put le point sur les i.*
He was so alarmed that he lay ill for three days, but on the fourth he got up, went to Peter’s Little House,7 had prayers of thanksgiving offered before the icon of the Savior, and, returning home with a quieted soul, sent to ask Captain Miller to come to him.
“Well, thank God, Nikolai Ivanovich,” he said to Miller, “now the storm that has been hanging over us is quite gone, and our unfortunate affair with the sentry is completely settled. Now, it seems, we can breathe easy. We owe it all, without doubt, first to God’s mercy, and then to General Kokoshkin. They may say he’s unkind and heartless, but I’m filled with gratitude for his magnanimity and with esteem for his resourcefulness and tact. With astonishing skill he made use of the boasting of that shifty invalid, who, in truth, should have been rewarded for his insolence not with a medal, but with a thorough thrashing behind the woodpile, but there was no other choice: he had to be made use of for the salvation of many, and Kokoshkin turned the whole affair so intelligently that no unpleasantness came of it for anybody—on the contrary, everybody’s very glad and pleased. Just between us, it has been conveyed to me through a trustworthy person that Kokoshkin himself is also very pleased with me. He liked it that I did not go anywhere else, but came straight to him and didn’t argue with that rascal who got the medal. In short, no one has suffered, and everything has been done with such tact that there’s nothing to fear in the future. But there’s one small omission on our part. We should also tactfully follow Kokoshkin’s example and finish the matter on our side, so as to protect ourselves in any case later on. There is one more person whose position has not been regularized. I’m speaking of Private Postnikov. He’s still in the punishment cell under arrest, and he’s no doubt tormented, waiting for what will happen to him. We must put an end to his racking torment.”
“Yes, it’s high time!” Miller put in happily.
“Well, of course, you are in the best position to do that: please go to the barracks at once, gather your company, release Private Postnikov from arrest, and punish him before the ranks with two hundred strokes of the birch.”
XIV
Miller was dumbfounded and made an attempt to persuade Svinyin, for the joy of all, to spare and pardon Private Postnikov altogether, since he had already suffered much without that, waiting in the punishment cell for the decision on what was to be done with him; but Svinyin flared up and did not even let Miller continue.
“No,” he interrupted, “drop that: I’ve just been talking about tact, and right away you start your tactlessness! Drop it!”
Svinyin changed his tone to a more dry and official one and added firmly:
“And since you yourself are also not entirely in the right in this affair, and are even very much to blame, because there’s a softness in you unbecoming to a military man, and this defect in your character is reflected in the subordination of the men under you, I order you to be personally present during the execution of the sentence and to insist that the flogging be performed in earnest … as severely as possible. To that end, kindly see to it that the birching is done by young soldiers newly arrived from the army, because in this respect our old-timers have all been infected by the guardsmen’s liberalism: they don’t whip a comrade as they should, but just scare the fleas off his back. I’ll stop by and see for myself how the culprit’s been done.”
Deviation from any official orders given by superiors could not, of course, take place, and the softhearted N. I. Miller had to carry out with precision the order he had received from his battalion commander.
The company was lined up in the courtyard of the Izmailovsky barracks, the birch rods were brought from the reserve in sufficient quantity, and Private Postnikov, led out from the punishment cell, was “done” with the zealous assistance of his young comrades newly arrived from the army. These men, uncorrupted by the guardsmen’s liberalism, made a perfect job of putting all the points sur les i on him, in the full measure prescribed by the battalion commander. Then the punished Postnikov was picked up and immediately carried, on the same greatcoat on which he had been flogged, from there to the regimental infirmary.
XV
Battalion commander Svinyin, on receiving notice of the carried-out punishment, at once paid Postnikov a fatherly visit in the infirmary, and was convinced to his satisfaction that his order had been carried out to perfection. The tenderhearted and nervous Postnikov had been “done properly.” Svinyin remained pleased and ordered that the punished Postnikov be given on his behalf a pound of sugar and a quarter pound of tea, to sweeten his recovery. Postnikov, lying on his cot, heard this order about the tea and replied:
“Very pleased, sir, thanks for your fatherly kindness.”
And indeed he was “pleased,” because, while sitting for three days in the punishment cell, he had been expecting something much worse. Two hundred strokes, in those harsh times, amounted to very little compared with the punishments people endured under sentencing from the courts-martial; and that was precisely the sort of punishment Postnikov would also have received, if, luckily for him, all those bold and tactical evolutions recounted above had not taken place.
But the number of all who were pleased by the incident we have recounted was not limited to these.
XVI
On the quiet, Private Postnikov’s exploit spread through various circles of the capital, which at that time of voiceless print lived in an atmosphere of endless gossip. In oral transmissions, the name of the real hero—Private Postnikov—was lost, but to make up for it the épopée itself was blown up and acquired a very interesting, romantic character.