With the exception of a few ambitious men bent on making a career for
themselves, all the officers regarded the service as an intolerable
slavery to which they must needs submit. The younger of them behaved
like veritable schoolboys; they came late to the drills, and wriggled
away from them as soon as possible, provided that could be done without
risk of serious consequences to themselves afterwards. The captains,
who, as a rule, were burdened with large families, were immersed in
household cares, scandals, money troubles, and were worried the whole
year through with loans, promissory notes, and other methods of raising
the wind. Many ventured--often at the instigation of their
wives--secretly to divert to their own purposes the moneys belonging to
the regiment and the soldiers' pay--nay, they even went so far as
"officially" to withhold their men's private letters when the latter
were found to contain money. Some lived by gambling--vint, schtoss,
lansquenet--and certain rather ugly stories were told in connection with
this--stories which high authorities had a good deal of trouble to
suppress. In addition to all this, heavy drinking, both at mess and in
their own homes, was widespread amongst the officers.
With regard to the officers' sense of duty, that, too, was, as a rule,
altogether lacking. The non-commissioned officers did all the work; the
pay-sergeants set in motion and regulated the inner mechanism of the
company, and were held responsible for the despatch of it; hence very
soon, and quite imperceptibly, the commander became a mere marionette in
the coarse, experienced hands of his subordinates. The senior officers,
moreover, regarded the exercises of the troops with the same aversion as
did their junior comrades, and if at any time they displayed their zeal
by punishing an ensign, they only did it to gain prestige or--which was
more seldom the case--to satisfy their lust of power or desire for
revenge.
Captains of brigades and battalions had, as a rule, absolutely nothing
to do in the winter. During the summer it was their duty to inspect the
exercises of the battalion, to assist at those of the regiment and
division, and to undergo the hardships of the field-manoeuvres. During
their long freedom from duty they used to sit continually in their
mess-room, eagerly studying the _Russki Invalid_,[7] and savagely
criticizing all new appointments; but cards were, however, their alpha
and omega, and they most readily permitted their juniors to be their
hosts, though they but very rarely exercised a cautious hospitality in
their own homes, and then only with the object of getting their numerous
daughters married.
But when the time for the great review approached, it was quite another
tune. All, from the highest to the lowest, were seized by a sort of
madness. There was no talk of peace and quiet then; every one tried, by
additional hours of drill and an almost maniacal activity, to make up
for previous negligence. The soldiers were treated with the most
heartless cruelty, and overtaxed to the last degree of sheer exhaustion.
Every one was tyrant over some wretch; the company commanders, with
endless curses, threatened their "incompetent" subalterns, and the
latter, in turn, poured the vials of their wrath over the "non-coms.,"
and the "non-coms.," hoarse with shouting orders, oaths, and the most
frightful insults, struck and misused the soldiers in the most ferocious
manner. The whole camp and parade-ground were changed into a hell, and
Sundays, with their indispensable rest and peace, loomed like a heavenly
paradise in the eyes of the poor tortured recruits.
This spring the regiment was preparing for the great May parade. It was
at this time common knowledge that the review was to take place before
the commander of the corps--a strict old veteran, known throughout
military literature by his works on the Carlist War and the
Franco-German Campaign of 1870, in which he took part as a volunteer.
Besides, he was known throughout the kingdom for his eccentric general
orders and manifestoes that were invariably couched in a lapidary style
à la Savóroff. The reckless, sharp, and coarse sarcasm he always infused
into his criticism was feared by the officers more than even the
severest disciplinary punishment.
It was not to be wondered at that for a fortnight the whole regiment
worked with feverish energy, and Sunday was no less longed for by the
utterly worn-out officers than by the men, who were well-nigh tortured
to death.
But to Romashov, who sat idle under arrest, Sunday brought neither joy
nor repose. As he had tried in vain to sleep during the night, he got up
early, dressed slowly and unwillingly, drank his tea with undisguised
repugnance, and refreshed himself at last by hurling a few insults at
Hainán, who did not heed them in the least, but continued to stalk about
the room as happy, active, and clumsy as a puppy.
Romashov sauntered up and down his narrow room in his unbuttoned,
carelessly donned undress uniform. Now he bumped his knee against the
foot of the bed, now his elbow against the rickety bookcase. It was the
first time now for half a year--thanks to a somewhat unpleasant
accident--that he found himself alone in his own abode. He had always
been occupied with drill, sentry duty, card-playing, and libations to
Bacchus, dancing attendance on the Peterson woman, and evening calls on
the Nikoläievs. Sometimes, if he happened to be free and had nothing
particular in view, Romashov might, if worried by moping and laziness,
and as if he feared his own company, rush aimlessly off to the club, or
some acquaintance, or simply to the street, in hopes of finding some
bachelor comrade--a meeting which infallibly ended with a drinking-bout
in the mess-room. Now he contemplated with dread the long, unendurable
day of loneliness and boredom before him, and a crowd of stupid,
extraordinary fancies and projects buzzed in his brain.
The bells in the town were ringing for High Mass. Through the inner
window, which had not been removed since the winter began, forced their
way into the room these trembling tones that were produced, as it were,
one from the other, and in the melancholy clang of which, on this
sentimental spring morning, there lay a peculiar power of charm.
Immediately outside Romashov's window lay a garden in which many
cherry-trees grew in rich abundance, all white with blooms, and all
soft and round as a flock of snow-white sheep whose wool was fine.
Between them, here and there, arose slim but gigantic poplars that
stretched their boughs beseechingly towards heaven, and ancient,
venerable chestnut-trees with their dome-like crests. The trees were
still bare, with black, naked boughs, but on these, though the eye could
hardly discern them, the first yellowish verdure, fresh as the dew,
began to be visible. In the pure, moisture-laden air of the
newly-awakened spring day, the trees rocked softly here and there before
the cool, sportive breezes that murmured from time to time among the
flowers, and bowed them to the ground with a roguish kiss.
From the windows one could discern, on the left, through a gateway, a
part of the dirty street, which on one side was fenced off. People
passed alongside of the fence from time to time, walking slowly as they
picked out a dry place for their next step. "Lucky people," thought
Romashov, as he enviously followed them with his eyes, "they need not
hurry. They have the whole of the long day before them--ah! a whole,
free, glorious day."
And suddenly there came over him a longing for freedom so intense and
passionate that tears rushed to his eyes, and he had great difficulty in
restraining himself from running out of the house. Now, however, it was
not the mess-room that attracted him, but only the yard, the street,
fresh air. It was as if he had never understood before what freedom was,
and he was astonished at the amount of happiness that is comprised in
the simple fact that one may go where one pleases, turn into this or
that street, stop in the middle of the square, peep into a half-opened
church door, etc., etc., all at one's own sweet will and without having
to fear the consequences. The right to do, and the possibility of doing,
all this would be enough to fill a man's heart with an exultant sense of
joy and bliss.
He remembered in connection with this how, in his earliest youth, long
before he entered the Cadet School, his mother used to punish him by
tying him tightly to the foot of the bed with fine thread, after which
she left him by himself; and little Romashov sat for whole hours
submissively still. But never for an instant did it occur to him to flee
from the house, although, under ordinary circumstances, he never stood
on ceremony--for instance, to slide down the water-pipe from other
storys to the street; to dangle, without permission, after a military
band or a funeral procession as far as the outskirts of Moscow; or to
steal from his mother lumps of sugar, jam, and cigarettes for older
playfellows, etc. But this brittle thread exercised a remarkable
hypnotizing influence on his mind as a child. He was even afraid of
breaking it by some sudden, incautious movement. In that case he was
influenced by no fear whatsoever of punishment, neither by a sense of
duty, nor by regret, but by pure hypnosis, a superstitious dread of the
unfathomable power and superiority of grown-up or older persons, which
reminds one of the savage who, paralysed by fright, dares not take a
step beyond the magic circle that the conjurer has drawn.
"And here I am sitting now like a schoolboy, like a little helpless,
mischievous brat tied by the leg," thought Romashov as he slouched
backwards and forwards in his room. "The door is open, I can go when I
please, can do what I please, can talk and laugh--but I am kept back by
a thread. _I_ sit here; _I_ and nobody else. Some one has ordered me to
sit here, and I shall sit here; but who has authorized him to order
this? Certainly not _I_.
"I"--Romashov stood in the middle of the room with his legs straddling
and his head hanging down, thinking deeply. "_I, I, I!_" he shouted in a
loud voice, in which there lay a certain note of astonishment, as if he
now was first beginning to comprehend the meaning of this short word.
"Who is standing here and gaping at that black crack in the floor?--Is
it really I? How curious--I"--he paused slowly and with emphasis on the
monosyllable, just as if it were only by such means that he could grasp
its significance.
He smiled unnaturally; but, in the next instant, he frowned, and turned
pale with emotion and strain of thought. Such small crises had not
infrequently happened to him during the last five or six years, as is
nearly always the case with young people during that period of life when
the mind is in course of development. A simple truth, a saying, a common
phrase, with the meaning of which he has long ago been familiar,
suddenly, by some mysterious impulse from within, stands in a new light,
and so receives a particular philosophical meaning. Romashov could still
remember the first time this happened to him. It was at school during a
catechism lesson, when the priest tried to explain the parable of the
labourers who carried away stones. One of them began with the light
stones, and afterwards took the heavier ones, but when at last he came
to the very heaviest of all his strength was exhausted. The other worked
according to a diametrically different plan, and luckily fulfilled his
duty. To Romashov was opened the whole abyss of practical wisdom that
lay hidden in this simple picture that he had known and understood ever
since he could read a book. Likewise with the old saying: "Seven times
shalt thou measure, once shalt thou cut." In a happy moment he suddenly
perceived the full, deep import of this maxim; wisdom, understanding,
wise economy, calculation. A tremendous experience of life lay concealed
in these few words. Such was the case now. All his mental individuality
stood suddenly before him with the distinctness of a lightning flash.
"My Ego," thought Romashov, "is only that which is within me, the very
kernel of my being; all the rest is the non-Ego--that is, only secondary
things. This room, street, trees, sky, the commander of my regiment,
Lieutenant Andrusevich, the service, the standard, the soldiers--all
this is non-Ego. No, no, this is non-Ego--my hands and feet." Romashov
lifted up his hands to the level of his face, and looked at them with
wonder and curiosity, as if he saw them now for the first time in his
life. "No, all this is non-Ego. But look--I pinch my arm--that is the
Ego. I see my arm, I lift it up--_this_ is the Ego. And what I am
thinking now is also Ego. If I now want to go my way, that is the Ego.
And even if I stop, that is the Ego.
"Oh, how wonderful, how mysterious is this. And so simple too. Is it
true that all individuals possess a similar Ego? Perhaps it is only I
who have it? Or perhaps nobody has it. Down there hundreds of soldiers
stand drawn up in front of me. I give the order: 'Eyes to the right,' to
hundreds of human beings who has each his own Ego, and who see in me
something foreign, distant, i.e. non-Ego--then turn their heads at once
to the right. But I do not distinguish one from the other; they are to
me merely a mass. And to Colonel Schulgovich both I and Viätkin and
Lbov, and all the captains and lieutenants, are likewise perhaps merely
a 'mass,' viz., he does not distinguish one of us from the other, or, in
other words, we are entirely outside his ken as individuals to him."
The door was opened, and Hainán stole into the room. He began at once
his usual dance, threw up his legs into the air, rocked his shoulders,
and shouted--
"Your Honour, I got no cigarettes. They said that Lieutenant Skriabin
gave orders that you were not to have any more on credit."
"Oh, damn! You can go, Hainán. What am I to do without cigarettes?
However, it is of no consequence. You can go, Hainán."
"What was it I was thinking of?" Romashov asked himself, when he was
once more alone. He had lost the threads, and, unaccustomed as he was to
think, he could not pick them up again at once. "What was I thinking of
just now? It was something important and interesting. Well, let us turn
back and take the questions in order. Also, I am under arrest; out in
the street I see people at large; my mother tied me up with a
thread--_me, me_. Yes, so it was. The soldier perhaps has an Ego,
perhaps even Colonel Shulgovich. Ha, he! now I remember; go on. Here I
am sitting in my room. I am arrested, but my door is open. I want to go
out, but I dare not. Why do I not dare? Have I committed any
crime--theft--murder? No. All I did was merely omitting to keep my heels
together when I was talking to another man. Possibly I was wrong. Yet,
why? Is it anything important? Is it the chief thing in life? In about
twenty or thirty years--a second in eternity--my life, my Ego, will go
out like a lamp does when one turns the wick down. They will light
life--the lamp--afresh, over and over again; but my Ego is gone for
ever. Likewise this room, this sky, the regiment, the whole army, all
stars, this dirty globe, my hands and feet--all, all--shall be
annihilated for ever. Yes, yes; that is so. Well, all right--but wait a
bit. I must not be in too much of a hurry. I shall not be in existence.
Ah, wait. I found myself in infinite darkness. Somebody came and lighted
my life's lamp, but almost immediately he blew it out again, and once
more I was in darkness, in the eternity of eternities. What did I do?
What did I utter during this short moment of my existence? I held my
thumb on the seam of my trousers and my heels together. I shrieked as
loud as I could: 'Shoulder arms!' and immediately afterwards I thundered
'Use your butt ends, you donkeys!' I trembled before a hundred tyrants,
now miserable ghosts in eternity like my own remarkable, lofty Ego. But
why did I tremble before those ghosts and why could they compel me to do
such a lot of unnecessary, idiotic, unpleasant things? How could they
venture to annoy and insult my Ego--these miserable spectres?"
Romashov sat down by the table, put his elbows on it, and leaned his
head on his hands. It was hard work for him to keep in check these wild
thoughts which raced through his mind.
"H'm!--my friend Romashov, what a lot you have forgotten--your
fatherland, the ashes of your sire, the altar of honour, the warrior's
oath and discipline. Who shall preserve the land of your sires when the
foe rushes over its boundaries? Ah! when I am dead there will be no
more fatherland, no enemy, no honour. They will disappear at the same
time as my consciousness. But if all this be buried and brought to
naught--country, enemies, honour, and all the other big words--what has
all this to do with _my Ego_? I am more important than all these phrases
about duty, honour, love, etc. Assume that I am a soldier and my Ego
suddenly says, 'I won't fight,' and not only _my own_ Ego, but millions
of other Egos that constitute the whole of the army, the whole of
Russia, the entire world; all these say, 'We won't!' Then it will be all
over so far as war is concerned, and never again will any one have to
hear such absurdities as 'Open order,' 'Shoulder arms,' and all the rest
of that nonsense.
"Well, well, well. It must be so some day," shouted an exultant voice in
Romashov. "All that talk about 'warlike deeds,' 'discipline,' 'honour of
the uniform,' 'respect for superiors,' and, first and last, the whole
science of war exists only because humanity will not, or cannot, or dare
not, say, 'I won't.'"
"What do you suppose all this cunningly reared edifice that is called
the profession of arms really is? Nothing, humbug, a house hanging in
midair, which will tumble down directly mankind pronounces three short
words: 'I will not.' My Ego will never say, 'I will not eat,' 'I will
not breathe,' 'I will not see,' But if any one proposes to my Ego that
it shall die, it infallibly replies: 'I will not.' What, then, is war
with all its hecatombs of dead and the science of war, which teaches us
the best methods of murdering? Why, a universal madness, an illusion.
But wait. Perhaps I am mistaken. No, I cannot be mistaken, for this 'I
will not' is so simple, so natural, that everybody must, in the end, say
it. Let us, however, examine the matter more closely. Let us suppose
that this thought is pronounced this very moment by all Russians,
Germans, Englishmen, and Japanese. Ah, well, what would be the
consequence? Why, that war would cease for ever, and the officers and
soldiers would go, every man, to his home. And what would happen after
that? I know: Shulgovich would answer; Shulgovich would immediately get
querulous and say: 'Now we are done for; they can attack us now whenever
they please, take away our hearths and homes, trample down our fields,
and carry off our wives and sisters.' And what about rioters,
socialists, revolutionaries? But when the whole of mankind without
exception has shouted: 'We will no longer tolerate bloodshed,' who will
then dare to assail us? No one! All enemies would be reconciled, submit
to each other, forgive everything, and justly divide among themselves
the abundance of the earth. Gracious God, when shall this dream be
fulfilled?"
Whilst Romashov was indulging in these fancies, he failed to notice that
Hainán had quietly stolen in behind his back and suddenly stretched his
arm over his shoulder. Romashov started in terror, and roared out
angrily--
"What the devil do you want?"
Hainán laid before him on the table a cinnamon-coloured packet. "This is
for you," he replied in a friendly, familiar tone, and Romashov felt
behind him his servant's jovial smile. "They are cigarettes; smoke now."
Romashov looked at the packet. On it was printed, "The Trumpeter,
First-class Cigarettes. Price 3 kopecks for 20."
"What does this mean?" he asked in astonishment. "Where did this come
from?"
"I saw that you had no cigarettes, so I bought these with my own money.
Please smoke them. It is nothing. Just a little present."
After this, to conceal his confusion, Hainán ran headlong to the door,
which he slammed after him with a deafening bang. Romashov lighted a
cigarette, and the room was soon filled with a perfume that strongly
reminded one of melted sealing-wax and burnt feathers.
"Oh, you dear!" thought Romashov, deeply moved. "I get cross with you
and scold you and make you pull off my muddy boots every evening, and
yet you go and buy me cigarettes with your few last coppers. 'Please
smoke them.' What made you do it?"
Again he got up and walked up and down the room with his hands behind
him.
"Our company consists of at least a hundred men, and each of them is a
creature with thoughts, feelings, experience of life, personal
sympathies and antipathies. Do I know anything about them? No, nothing,
except their faces. I see them before me as they stand in line every
day, drawn up from right to left: Sóltyss, Riaboschápka, Yégoroff,
Yaschtschischin, etc., etc.--mere sorry, grey figures. What have I done
to bring my soul nearer to their souls, my Ego to theirs? Nothing."
He involuntarily called to mind a rough night at the end of autumn, when
(as was his custom) he was sitting drinking in the mess-room with a few
comrades. Suddenly the pay-sergeant Goumeniuk, of the 9th Company,
rushed into the room, and breathlessly called to his commander--
"Your Excellency, the recruits are here."
Yes, there they stood in the rain, in the barrack-yard, driven together
like a herd of frightened animals without any will of their own, which
with cowed, suspicious glances gazed at their tormentors. "Each
individual," thought Romashov, as he slowly and carefully inspected
their appearance, "has his own characteristic expression of countenance.
This one, for instance, is most certainly a smith; that is, doubtless, a
jolly chap who plays his accordion with some talent; that one with the
shrewd features can both read and write, and looks as if he were a
_polevói_."[8] And one felt that these poor recruits who, a few days
ago, had been violently seized whilst their wives and children were
crying and lamenting, had tried, with tears in their voices, to join in
the coarse songs of their wild, drunken brothers in misfortune. But a
year later they stood like soldiers in long rigid rows--grey, sluggish,
apathetic figures, all cast, as it were, in the same mould. But they
never left their homes of their own free will. Their Ego resented it.
And yet they went. Why all this inconsistency? How can one not help
thinking of that old and well-known story about the cock who fought
desperately with his wings and resisted to the uttermost when his beak
was pressed against a table, but who stood motionless, hypnotized, when
some one drew a thick line with a piece of chalk across the table from
the tip of his beak.
Romashov threw himself on the bed.
"What is there left for you to do under the circumstances?" he asked
himself in bitter mockery. "Do you think of resigning? But, in that
case, where do you think of going? What does the sum of knowledge amount
to that you have learnt at the infants' school, the Cadet School, at
the Military Academy, at mess? Have you tried the struggle and
seriousness of life? No, you have been looked after and your wants
supplied, as if you were a little child, and you think perhaps, like a
certain schoolgirl, that rolls grow on trees. Go out into the world and
try. At the very first step you would slip and fall; people would
trample you in the dust, and you would drown your misery in drink. And
besides, have you ever heard of an officer leaving the service of his
own free will? No, never. Just because he is unfit for anything he will
not give up his meagre bread-and-butter. And if any one is forced into
doing this, you will soon see him wearing a greasy old regimental cap,
and accepting alms from people in the street. I am a Russian officer of
gentle birth, _comprenez-vous_? Alas, where shall I go--what will become
of me?"
"Prisoner, prisoner!" cried a clear female voice beneath the window.
Romashov jumped up from his bed and rushed to the window. Opposite him
stood Shurochka. She was protecting her eyes from the sun with the palm
of her hand, and pressing her rosy face against the window pane,
exclaiming in a mocking tone:--
"Oh, give a poor beggar a copper!"
Romashov fumbled at the window-catch in wild eagerness to open it, but
he remembered in the same moment that the inner window had not been
removed. With joyous resolution he seized the window-frame with both
hands, and dragged it to him with a tremendous tug. A loud noise was
heard, and the whole window fell into the room, besprinkling Romashov
with bits of lime and pieces of dried putty. The outer window flew up,
and a stream of fresh air, charged with joy and the perfume of flowers,
forced its way into the room.
"Ha, at last! Now I'll go out, cost what it may," shouted Romashov in a
jubilant voice.
"Romashov, you mad creature! what are you doing?"
He caught her outstretched hand through the window; it was closely
covered by a cinnamon-coloured glove, and he began boldly to kiss it,
first upwards and downwards, and after that from the finger-tips to the
wrist. Last of all, he kissed the hole in the glove just below the
buttons. He was astonished at his boldness; never before had he ventured
to do this. Shurochka submitted as though unconscious to this passionate
burst of affection, and smilingly accepted his kisses whilst gazing at
him in shy wonderment.
"Alexandra Petrovna, you are an angel. How shall I ever be able to thank
you?"
"Gracious, Romochka! what has come to you? And why are you so happy?"
she asked laughingly as she eyed Romashov with persistent curiosity.
"But wait, my poor prisoner, I have brought you from home a splendid
_kalátsch_ and the most delicious apple puffs."
"Stepan, bring the basket here."
He looked at her with devotion in his eyes, and without letting go her
hand, which she allowed to remain unresistingly in his, he said
hurriedly--
"Oh, if you knew all I have been thinking about this morning--if you
only knew! But of this, later on."
"Yes, later on. Look, here comes my lord and master. Let go my hand. How
strange you look to-day! I even think you have grown handsome."
Nikoläiev now came up to the window. He frowned, and greeted Romashov
in a rather cool and reserved way.
"Come, Shurochka," he said to his wife, "what in the world are you
thinking about? You must both be mad. Only think, if the Commander were
to see us. Good-bye, Romashov; come and see us."
"Yes, come and see us, Yuri Alexievich," repeated Shurochka. She left
the window, but returned almost at once and whispered rapidly to
Romashov. "Don't forget us. You are the only man here whom I can
associate with--as a friend--do you hear? And another thing. Once for
all I forbid you to look at me with such sheep's eyes, remember that.
Besides, you have no right to imagine anything. You are not a coxcomb
yet, you know."