This morning, looking through the endless list of killed in the
newspaper, I saw a familiar name; my sister's affianced husband,
an officer called for military service at the same time as my dead
brother, was killed. And, an hour later, the postman handed me a
letter addressed to my brother, and I recognised the handwriting of the
deceased on the envelope: the dead was writing to the dead. But still
it was better so than the dead writing to the living. A mother was
pointed out to me who kept receiving letters from her son for a whole
month after she had read of his terrible death in the papers: he had
been torn to pieces by a shell. He was a fond son, and each letter was
full of endearing and encouraging words and youthful, naïve hopes of
happiness. He was dead, but wrote of life with a fearful accuracy every
day, and the mother ceased to believe in his death; and when a day
passed without any letter, then a second and a third, and the endless
silence of death ensued, she took a large old-fashioned revolver
belonging to her son in both hands, and shot herself in the breast. I
believe she survived, but I am not sure; I never heard.
I looked at the envelope for a long time, and thought: He held it
in his hands, he bought it somewhere, he gave the money to pay for
it, and his servant went to fetch it from some shop; he sealed and
perhaps posted it himself. Then the wheel of the complex machine called
"post" came into action, and the letter glided past forest, fields
and towns, passing from hand to hand, but rushing infallibly towards
its destination. He put on his boots that last morning, while it went
gliding on; he was killed, but it glided on; he was thrown into a pit
and covered up with dead bodies and earth, while it still glided on
past forests, fields and towns, a living phantom in a grey, stamped
envelope. And now I was holding it in my hands.
Here are the contents of the letter. It was written with a pencil on
scraps of paper, and was not finished: something interfered.
"... Only now do I understand the great joy of war, the ancient,
primitive delight of killing man--clever, scheming, artful man,
immeasurably more interesting than the most ravenous animal. To be
ever taking life is as good as playing at lawn-tennis with planets
and stars. Poor friend, what a pity you are not with us, but are
constrained to weary away your time amidst an unleavened daily
existence! In the atmosphere of death you would have found all that
your restless, noble heart yearned for. A bloody feast--what truth
there is in this somewhat hackneyed comparison! We go about up to our
knees in blood, and this red wine, as my jolly men call it in jest,
makes our heads swim. To drink the blood of one's enemy is not at all
such a stupid custom as we think: they knew what they were doing....
"... The crows are cawing. Do you hear, the crows are cawing. From
whence have they all gathered? The sky is black with them; they settle
down beside us, having lost all fear, and follow us everywhere; and
we are always underneath them, like under a black lace sunshade or a
moving tree with black leaves. One of them approached quite close to my
face and wanted to peck at it: he thought, most probably, that I was
dead. The crows are cawing, and this troubles me a little. From whence
have they all gathered?...
"... Yesterday we stabbed them all sleeping. We approached stealthily,
scarcely touching the ground with our feet, as if we were stalking wild
ducks. We stole up to them so skilfully and cautiously that we did not
touch a corpse and did not scare one single crow. We stole up like
shadows, and the night hid us. I killed the sentry myself--knocked him
down and strangled him with my hands, so as not to let him cry out. You
understand: the slightest sound, and all would have been lost. But he
did not cry out; he had no time, I believe, even to guess that he was
being killed.
"They were all sleeping around the smouldering fires--sleeping
peacefully, as if they were at home in their beds. We hacked about
us for more than an hour, and only a few had time to awake before
they received their death-blow. They howled, and of course begged for
mercy. They used their teeth. One bit off a finger on my left hand,
with which I was incautiously holding his head. He bit off my finger,
but I twisted his head clean off: how do you think--are we quits? How
they did not all wake up I cannot imagine. One could hear their bones
crackling and their bodies being hacked. Afterwards we stripped all
naked and divided their clothes amongst ourselves. My friend, don't get
angry over a joke. With your susceptibility you will say this savours
of marauding, but then we are almost naked ourselves; our clothes are
quite worn-out. I have been wearing a woman's jacket for a long time,
and resemble more a ... than an officer of a victorious army. By the
bye, you are, I believe, married, and it is not quite right for you
to read such things. But ... you understand? Women. D--n it, I am
young, and thirst for love! Stop a minute: I believe it was you who
was engaged to be married? It was you, was it not, who showed me the
portrait of a young girl and told me she was your promised bride?--and
there was something sad, something very sad and mournful underneath
it. And you cried. That was a long time ago, and I remember it but
confusedly; there is no time for softness at war. And you cried. What
did you cry about? What was there written that was as sad and mournful
as a drooping flower? And you kept crying and crying.... Were you not
ashamed, an officer, to cry?
"... The crows are cawing. Do you hear, friend, the crows are cawing.
What do they want?"
Further on the pencil-written lines were effaced and it was impossible
to decipher the signature. And strange to say the dead man called forth
no compassion in me. I distinctly pictured to myself his face, in which
all was soft and delicate as a woman's: the colour of his cheeks,
the clearness and morning freshness of the eyes, the beard so bushy
and soft, that a woman could almost have adorned herself with it. He
liked books, flowers and music, feared all that was coarse, and wrote
poetry,--my brother, as a critic, declared that he wrote very good
poetry. And I could not connect all that I knew and remembered of him
with the cawing crows, bloody carnage and death.
... The crows are cawing....
And suddenly for one mad, unutterably happy instant, I clearly saw
that all was a lie and that there was no war. There were no killed,
no corpses, there was no anguish of reeling, helpless thought. I was
sleeping on my back and seeing a dream, as I used to in my childhood:
the silent dread rooms, devastated by death and terror, and myself with
a wild letter in my hand. My brother was living, and they were all
sitting at the tea-table, and I could hear the noise of the crockery.
... The crows are cawing....
No, it is but true. Unhappy earth, it is true. The crows are cawing.
It is not the invention of an idle scribbler, aiming at cheap effects,
or of a madman, who has lost his senses. The crows are cawing. Where
is my brother? He was noble-hearted and gentle and wished no one evil.
Where is he? I am asking you, you cursed murderers. I am asking you,
you cursed murderers, crows sitting on carrion, wretched, imbecile
animals, before the whole world. For you are animals. What did you kill
my brother for? If you had a face, I would give you a blow upon it, but
you have no face, you have only the snout of a wild beast. You pretend
that you are men, but I see claws under your gloves and the flat skull
of an animal under your hat; hidden beneath your clever conversation I
hear insanity rattling its rusty chains. And with all the power of my
grief, my anguish and dishonoured thought--I curse you, you wretched,
imbecile animals!