... Nearly all the horses and men. The same in the eighth battery. In
our twelfth battery, towards the end of the third day, there remained
only three guns--all the others being disabled--six men and one
officer, myself. We had neither slept nor eaten for twenty hours; for
three days and nights a Satanic roar and howl enveloped us in a cloud
of insanity, isolated us from the earth, the sky and ourselves--and we,
the living, wandered about like lunatics. The dead--they lay still,
while we moved about doing our duty, talking and laughing, and we
were--like lunatics. All our movements were quick and certain, our
orders clear, the execution of them precise, but if you had suddenly
asked any one of us who we were, undoubtedly we should not have been
able to find an answer in our troubled brain. As in a dream all faces
seemed familiar, and all that was going on seemed quite familiar and
natural--as if it had happened before; but when I looked closely at any
face or gun, or began listening to the din, I was struck by the novelty
and endless mystery of everything. Night approached imperceptibly, and
before we had time to notice it and wonder where it had come from, the
sun was again burning above our heads. And only from those who came
to our battery we learnt that it was the third day of the battle that
was dawning, and instantly forgot it again: to us it appeared as one
endless day without any beginning, sometimes dark, sometimes bright,
but always incomprehensible and blind. And nobody was afraid of death,
for nobody understood what death was.
On the third or fourth night--I do not remember which--I lay down for
a minute behind the breastwork, and, as soon as I shut my eyes, the
same familiar and extraordinary picture stood before them: the scrap
of light-blue wall-paper and the dusty untouched water-bottle on my
table. While in the next room--and I could not see them--were my wife
and little son. But this time a lamp with a green shade was burning on
the table, so it must have been evening or night. The picture stood
motionless, and I contemplated it very calmly and attentively for a
long time, letting my eyes rest on the light reflected in the crystal
of the water-bottle, and on the wall-paper, and wondered why my son
was not asleep: for it was night and time for him to go to bed. Then
I again began examining the wall-paper: every spiral, silvery flower,
square and line--and never imagined that I knew my room so well. Now
and then I opened my eyes and saw the black sky with beautiful fiery
stripes upon it, then shut them again and saw once more the wall-paper,
the bright water-bottle, and wondered why my son was not asleep, for
it was night and time for him to go to bed. Once a shell burst not far
from me, making my legs give a jerk, and somebody cried out loudly,
louder than the bursting of the shell, and I said to myself: "Somebody
is killed," but I did not get up and did not tear my eyes away from the
light-blue wall-paper and the water-bottle.
Afterwards I got up, moved about, gave orders, looked at the men's
faces, trained the guns, and kept on wondering why my son was not
asleep. Once I asked the sergeant, and he explained it to me at length
with great detail, and we kept nodding our heads. And he laughed, and
his left eyebrow kept twitching, while his eye winked cunningly at
somebody behind us. Behind us were somebody's feet--and nothing more.
By this time it was quite light, when suddenly there fell a drop of
rain. Rain--just the same as at home, the most ordinary little drops of
rain. But it was so sudden and out of place, and we were so afraid of
getting wet, that we left our guns, stopped firing, and tried to find
shelter anywhere we could.
The sergeant with whom I had only just been speaking got under the
gun-carriage and dozed off, although he might have been crushed any
minute; the stout artilleryman, for some reason or other, began
undressing a corpse, while I began running about the battery in
search of something--a cloak or an umbrella. And the same instant
over the whole enormous area, where the rain-cloud had burst, a
wonderful stillness fell. A belated shrapnel-shot shrieked and burst,
and everything grew still--so still that one could hear the stout
artilleryman panting and the drops of rain splashing upon the stones
and guns. And this soft and continuous sound, that reminded one of
autumn--the smell of the moist earth and the stillness--seemed to
tear the bloody, savage nightmare asunder for an instant; and when
I glanced at the wet, glistening gun it unexpectedly reminded me of
something dear and peaceful--my childhood, or perhaps my first love.
But in the distance a gun boomed forth particularly loud, and the spell
of the momentary lull disappeared; the men began coming out of their
hiding-places as suddenly as they had hid themselves; a gun roared,
then another, and once again the weary brain was enveloped by bloody,
indissoluble gloom. And nobody noticed when the rain stopped. I only
remember seeing the water rolling off the fat, sunken yellow face of
the killed artilleryman; so I supposed it rained for rather a long
time....
* * * * *
... Before me stood a young volunteer, holding his hand to his cap
and reporting to me that the general wanted us to retain our position
for only two hours more, when we should be relieved. I was wondering
why my son was not in bed, and answered that I could hold on as much
as he wished. But suddenly I became interested in the young man's
face, probably because of its unusual and striking pallor. I never saw
anything whiter than that face: even the dead have more colour than
that young, beardless face had. I suppose he became terrified on his
way to us, and could not recover himself; and in holding his hand to
his cap he was only making an effort to drive away his mad fear by a
simple and habitual gesture.
"Are you afraid?" I asked, touching his elbow. But his elbow seemed as
if made of wood, and he only smiled and remained silent. Better to say,
his lips alone were twitching into a smile, while his eyes were full of
youth and terror only--nothing more.
"Are you afraid?" I repeated kindly. His lips twitched, trying to frame
a word, and the same instant there happened something incomprehensible,
monstrous and supernatural. I felt a draught of warm air upon my right
cheek that made me sway--that is all--while before my eyes, in place of
the white face, there was something short, blunt and red, and out of it
the blood was gushing as out of an uncorked bottle, such as is drawn on
badly executed signboards. And that short, red and flowing "something"
still seemed to be smiling a sort of smile, a toothless laugh--a red
laugh.
I recognised it--that red laugh. I had been searching for it, and I had
found it--that red laugh. Now I understood what there was in all those
mutilated, torn, strange bodies. It was a red laugh. It was in the
sky, it was in the sun, and soon it was going to overspread the whole
earth--that red laugh!
While they, with precision and calmness, like lunatics....