When later the staff-captain crossed the threshold of his quarters,
entirely different thoughts entered his mind. He looked around his
little chamber, with its uneven earth floor, and saw the windows all
awry, pasted over with paper, his old bed, with a rug nailed over
it, upon which was depicted a lady on horseback, and over which hung
two Tula pistols, the dirty couch of a cadet who lived with him, and
which was covered with a chintz coverlet; he saw his Nikita, who, with
untidy, tallowed hair, rose from the floor, scratching his head; he saw
his ancient cloak, his extra pair of boots, and a little bundle, from
which peeped a bit of cheese and the neck of a porter bottle filled
with vodka, which had been prepared for his use on the bastion, and all
at once he remembered that he was obliged to go with his company that
night to the fortifications.
“It is certainly foreordained that I am to be killed to-night,” thought
the captain.... “I feel it. And the principal point is that I need not
have gone, but that I offered myself. And the man who thrusts himself
forward is always killed. And what's the matter with that accursed
Nepshisetsky? It is quite possible that he is not sick at all; and they
will kill another man for his sake, they will infallibly kill him.
However, if they don't kill me, I shall be promoted probably. I saw how
delighted the regimental commander was when I asked him to allow me to
go, if Lieutenant Nepshisetsky was ill. If I don't turn out a major,
then I shall certainly get the Vladímir cross. This is the thirteenth
time that I have been to the bastion. Ah, the thirteenth is an unlucky
number. They will surely kill me, I feel that I shall be killed; but
some one had to go, it was impossible for the lieutenant of the corps
to go. And, whatever happens, the honor of the regiment, the honor of
the army, depends on it. It was my _duty_ to go ... yes, my sacred
duty. But I have a foreboding.”
The captain forgot that this was not the first time that a similar
foreboding had assailed him, in a greater or less degree, when it had
been necessary to go to the bastion, and he did not know that every
one who sets out on an affair experiences this foreboding with more or
less force. Having calmed himself with this conception of duty, which
was especially and strongly developed in the staff-captain, he seated
himself at the table, and began to write a farewell letter to his
father. Ten minutes later, having finished his letter, he rose from the
table, his eyes wet with tears, and, mentally reciting all the prayers
he knew, he set about dressing. His coarse, drunken servant indolently
handed him his new coat (the old one, which the captain generally wore
when going to the bastion, was not mended).
“Why is not my coat mended? You never do anything but sleep, you
good-for-nothing!” said Mikhaïloff, angrily.
“Sleep!” grumbled Nikita. “You run like a dog all day long; perhaps you
stop—but you must not sleep, even then!”
“You are drunk again, I see.”
“I didn't get drunk on your money, so you needn't scold.”
“Hold your tongue, blockhead!” shouted the captain, who was ready to
strike the man. He had been absent-minded at first, but now he was, at
last, out of patience, and embittered by the rudeness of Nikita, whom
he loved, even spoiled, and who had lived with him for twelve years.
“Blockhead? Blockhead?” repeated the servant. “Why do you call me a
blockhead, sir? Is this a time for that sort of thing? It is not good
to curse.”
Mikhaïloff recalled whither he was on the point of going, and felt
ashamed of himself.
“You are enough to put a saint out of patience, Nikita,” he said, in a
gentle voice. “Leave that letter to my father on the table, and don't
touch it,” he added, turning red.
“Yes, sir,” said Nikita, melting under the influence of the wine which
he had drunk, as he had said, “at his own expense,” and winking his
eyes with a visible desire to weep.
But when the captain said: “Good-by, Nikita,” on the porch, Nikita
suddenly broke down into repressed sobs, and ran to kiss his master's
hand.... “Farewell, master!” he exclaimed, sobbing. The old sailor's
wife, who was standing on the porch, could not, in her capacity of a
woman, refrain from joining in this touching scene, so she began to
wipe her eyes with her dirty sleeve, and to say something about even
gentlemen having their trials to bear, and that she, poor creature, had
been left a widow. And she related for the hundredth time to drunken
Nikita the story of her woes; how her husband had been killed in the
first bombardment, and how her little house had been utterly ruined
(the one in which she was now living did not belong to her), and so on.
When his master had departed, Nikita lighted his pipe, requested the
daughter of their landlord to go for some vodka, and very soon ceased
to weep, but, on the contrary, got into a quarrel with the old woman
about some small bucket, which, he declared, she had broken.
“But perhaps I shall only be wounded,” meditated the captain, as he
marched through the twilight to the bastion with his company. “But
where? How? Here or here?” he thought, indicating his belly and his
breast.... “If it should be here (he thought of the upper portion of
his leg), it might run round. Well, but if it were here, and by a
splinter, that would finish me.”
The captain reached the fortifications safely through the trenches,
set his men to work, with the assistance of an officer of sappers, in
the darkness, which was complete, and seated himself in a pit behind
the breastworks. There was not much firing; only once in a while
the lightning flashed from our batteries, then from _his_, and the
brilliant fuse of a bomb traced an arc of flame against the dark,
starry heavens. But all the bombs fell far in the rear and to the right
of the rifle-pits in which the captain sat. He drank his vodka, ate his
cheese, lit his cigarette, and, after saying his prayers, he tried to
get a little sleep.