“Did you know that Praskoukine is dead?” said Pesth to Kalouguine on the
way back.
“It isn’t possible!”
“Why not? I saw him myself.”
“Good-by; I am in a hurry.”
“A lucky day!” thought Kalouguine, as he was entering his quarters. “For
the first time I am lucky. It has been a brilliant affair; I have come
out of it safe and sound; there must be recommendations for decoration.
A sword of honor will be the least they can give me. Faith, I have well
deserved it!”
He made his report to the general, and went to his room. Prince Galtzine
was reading a book at the table, and had been waiting for him a long
time.
It was with an inexpressible joy that Kalouguine found himself at home,
far from danger. Lying on his bed in his nightshirt, he related to
Galtzine the incidents of the fight. These incidents naturally arranged
themselves so as to make it appear how he, Kalouguine, was a brave and
capable officer. He discreetly touched on this because no one could be
ignorant of it, and no one, with the exception of the defunct captain
Praskoukine, had the right to doubt it. The latter, although he felt
very much honored to walk arm-in-arm with the aide-de-camp, had told one
of his friends in his very ear the evening before that Kalouguine--a
very good fellow, however--did not like to walk on the bastions.
We left Praskoukine coming back with Mikhaïloff. He reached a less
exposed place and began to breathe again, when he perceived, on turning
around, the sudden light of a flash. The sentinel shouted, “Mor--tar!”
And one of the soldiers who followed added, “It is coming straight into
the bastion!” Mikhaïloff looked. The luminous point of the bomb-shell
seemed to stop directly over his head, exactly the moment when it was
impossible to tell what direction it was going to take. That was for the
space of a second. Suddenly, redoubling its speed, the projectile came
nearer and nearer. The sparks of the fuse could be seen flying out, the
dismal hissing was plainly audible. It was going to drop right in the
midst of the battalion. “To earth!” shouted a voice. Mikhaïloff and
Praskoukine obeyed. The latter, with shut eyes, heard the shell fall
somewhere on the hard earth very near him. A second, which appeared to
him an hour, passed, and the shell did not burst. Praskoukine was
frightened; then he asked himself what cause he had for fear. Perhaps it
had fallen farther away, and he wrongly imagined that he heard the fuse
hissing near him. Opening his eyes, he was satisfied to see Mikhaïloff
stretched motionless at his feet; but at the same time he perceived, a
yard off, the lighted fuse of the shell spinning around like a top. A
glacial terror, which stifled every thought, every sentiment, took
possession of his soul. He hid his face in his hands.
Another second passed, during which a whole world of thoughts, of hopes,
of sensations, and of souvenirs passed through his mind.
“Whom will it kill? Me or Mikhaïloff, or indeed both of us together? If
it is I, where will it hit me? If in the head, it will be all over; if
on the foot, they will cut it off, then I shall insist that they give me
chloroform, and I may get well. Perhaps Mikhaïloff alone will be killed,
and later I will tell how we were close together, and how I was covered
with his blood. No, no! it is nearer me--it will be I!”
Then he remembered the twelve rubles he owed Mikhaïloff, and another
debt left at Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long ago. A
Bohemian air that he sang the evening before came to his mind. He also
saw in his imagination the lady he was in love with in her lilac trimmed
bonnet; the man who had insulted him five years before, and whom he had
never taken vengeance on. But in the midst of these and many other
souvenirs the present feeling--the expectation of death--did not leave
him. “Perhaps it isn’t going to explode!” he thought, and was on the
point of opening his eyes with desperate boldness. But at this instant a
red fire struck his eyeballs through the closed lids, something hit him
in the middle of the chest with a terrible crash. He ran forward at
random, entangled his feet in his sword, stumbled, and fell on his side.
“God be praised, I am only bruised.”
This was his first thought, and he wanted to feel of his breast, but his
hands seemed as if they were tied. A vice griped his head, soldiers ran
before his eyes, and he mechanically counted them:
“One, two, three soldiers, and, besides, an officer who is losing his
cloak!”
A new light flashed; he wondered what had fired. Was it a mortar or a
cannon? Doubtless a cannon. Another shot, more soldiers--five, six,
seven. They passed in front of him, and suddenly he became terribly
afraid of being crushed by them. He wanted to cry out, to say that he
was bruised, but his lips were dry, his tongue was glued to the roof of
his mouth. He had a burning thirst. He felt that his breast was damp,
and the sensation of this moisture made him think of water.... He would
have liked to drink that which drenched him.
“I must have knocked the skin off in falling,” he said to himself, more
and more frightened at the idea of being crushed by the soldiers who
were running in crowds before him. He tried again to cry out,
“Take me!--”
But instead of that he uttered a groan so terrible that he was
frightened at it himself. Then red sparks danced before his eyes; it
seemed as if the soldiers were piling stones on him. The sparks danced
more rapidly, the stones piled on him stifled him more and more. He
stretched himself out, he ceased to see, to hear, to think, to feel. He
had been killed instantly by a piece of shell striking him full in the
breast.