“But, do you know, Praskukhin has been killed,” said Pesth,
accompanying Kalugin, on the way back.
“It cannot be!”
“But it can. I saw him myself.”
“Farewell; I am in a hurry.”
“I am well content,” thought Kalugin, as he returned home; “I have had
luck for the first time when on duty. That was a capital engagement,
and I am alive and whole. There will be some fine presentations, and I
shall certainly get a golden sword. And I deserve it too.”
After reporting to the general all that was necessary, he went to his
room, in which sat Prince Galtsin, who had returned long before, and
who was reading a book, which he had found on Kalugin's table, while
waiting for him.
It was with a wonderful sense of enjoyment that Kalugin found himself
at home again, out of all danger, and, having donned his night-shirt
and lain down on the sofa, he began to relate to Galtsin the
particulars of the affair, communicating them, naturally, from a point
of view which made it appear that he, Kalugin, was a very active and
valiant officer, to which, in my opinion, it was superfluous to refer,
seeing that every one knew it and that no one had any right to doubt
it, with the exception, perhaps, of the deceased Captain Praskukhin,
who, in spite of the fact that he had considered it a piece of
happiness to walk arm in arm with Kalugin, had told a friend, only the
evening before, in private, that Kalugin was a very fine man, but that,
between you and me, he was terribly averse to going to the bastions.
No sooner had Praskukhin, who had been walking beside Mikhaïloff,
taken leave of Kalugin, and, betaking himself to a safer place, had
begun to recover his spirits somewhat, than he caught sight of a flash
of lightning behind him flaring up vividly, heard the shout of the
sentinel, “Mortar!” and the words of the soldiers who were marching
behind, “It's flying straight at the bastion!”
Mikhaïloff glanced round. The brilliant point of the bomb seemed to
be suspended directly over his head in such a position that it was
absolutely impossible to determine its course. But this lasted only
for a second. The bomb came faster and faster, nearer and nearer, the
sparks of the fuse were already visible, and the fateful whistle was
audible, and it descended straight in the middle of the battalion.
“Lie down!” shouted a voice.
Mikhaïloff and Praskukhin threw themselves on the ground. Praskukhin
shut his eyes, and only heard the bomb crash against the hard earth
somewhere in the vicinity. A second passed, which seemed an hour—and
the bomb had not burst. Praskukhin was alarmed; had he felt cowardly
for nothing? Perhaps the bomb had fallen at a distance, and it merely
seemed to him that the fuse was hissing near him. He opened his eyes,
and saw with satisfaction that Mikhaïloff was lying motionless on the
earth, at his very feet. But then his eyes encountered for a moment the
glowing fuse of the bomb, which was twisting about at a distance of an
arshin from him.
A cold horror, which excluded every other thought and feeling, took
possession of his whole being. He covered his face with his hands.
Another second passed—a second in which a whole world of thoughts,
feelings, hopes, and memories flashed through his mind.
“Which will be killed, Mikhaïloff or I? Or both together? And if it is
I, where will it strike? If in the head, then all is over with me; but
if in the leg, they will cut it off, and I shall ask them to be sure
to give me chloroform,—and I may still remain among the living. But
perhaps no one but Mikhaïloff will be killed; then I will relate how
we were walking along together, and how he was killed and his blood
spurted over me. No, it is nearer to me ... it will kill me!”
Then he remembered the twenty rubles which he owed Mikhaïloff, and
recalled another debt in Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long
ago; the gypsy air which he had sung the previous evening recurred
to him. The woman whom he loved appeared to his imagination in a cap
with lilac ribbons, a man who had insulted him five years before, and
whom he had not paid off for his insult, came to his mind, though
inextricably interwoven with these and with a thousand other memories
the feeling of the moment—the fear of death—never deserted him for an
instant.
“But perhaps it will not burst,” he thought, and, with the decision
of despair, he tried to open his eyes. But at that instant, through
the crevice of his eyelids, his eyes were smitten with a red fire, and
something struck him in the centre of the breast, with a frightful
crash; he ran off, he knew not whither, stumbled over his sword, which
had got between his legs, and fell over on his side.
“Thank God! I am only bruised,” was his first thought, and he tried
to touch his breast with his hands; but his arms seemed fettered, and
pincers were pressing his head. The soldiers flitted before his eyes,
and he unconsciously counted them: “One, two, three soldiers; and there
is an officer, wrapped up in his cloak,” he thought. Then a flash
passed before his eyes, and he thought that something had been fired
off; was it the mortars, or the cannon? It must have been the cannon.
And there was still another shot; and there were more soldiers; five,
six, seven soldiers were passing by him. Then suddenly he felt afraid
that they would crush him. He wanted to shout to them that he was
bruised; but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to his palate
and he was tortured by a frightful thirst.
He felt that he was wet about the breast: this sensation of dampness
reminded him of water, and he even wanted to drink this, whatever it
was. “I must have brought the blood when I fell,” he thought, and,
beginning to give way more and more to terror, lest the soldiers who
passed should crush him, he collected all his strength, and tried to
cry: “Take me with you!” but, instead of this, he groaned so terribly
that it frightened him to hear himself. Then more red fires flashed in
his eyes—and it seemed to him as though the soldiers were laying stones
upon him; the fires danced more and more rarely, the stones which they
piled on him oppressed him more and more.
He exerted all his strength, in order to cast off the stones; he
stretched himself out, and no longer saw or heard or thought or felt
anything. He had been killed on the spot by a splinter of shell, in the
middle of the breast.