One day towards the end of May, a young soldier belonging to Captain
Osadchi's company hanged himself. Curiously enough, this suicide
happened on the same date as a similar dreadful event in the previous
year, and that, too, in Osadchi's company.
About this time drinking-bouts were arranged in the regiment. These, in
spite of their quasi-official character, were not one whit inferior in
coarseness to the regular and more private gatherings _inter pocula_. It
is highly probable that such stimulating entertainments were felt a
special necessity when men, who have been tied to one another by fate,
through a soul-destructive inactivity or senseless cruelty towards their
kind, have chanced to look somewhat more deeply into each other's
hearts, and then--in spite of prejudices, unscrupulousness, and
spiritual darkness--suddenly realize in what a bottomless pit of
darkness they all are. In order to deaden the pangs of conscience and
remorse at a life ruined and thrown away, all their insidious, brutish
instincts have to be let loose at once and all their passions satisfied.
Shortly after the suicide in question, a similar crisis occurred among
the officers. Osadchi, as might be expected, became the instigator and
high-priest of the orgies. In the course of several days he organized in
the mess, games of hazard more recklessly than ever, during which
fearful quantities of spirit were consumed. Strangely enough, this wild
beast in human form soon managed to entice pretty nearly all the
officers of his regiment into a whirl of mad dissipations. And during
all these carousals Osadchi, with unparalleled cynicism, insolence, and
heartlessness, tried to provoke expressions of disapproval and
opposition, by invoking all the powers of the nether-world to insult the
name and memory of the unhappy man who had taken his own life.
It was about 6 p.m., Romashov was sitting at his window with his legs
resting on the window-sill, and whistling softly a waltz out of _Faust_.
The sparrows and magpies were making a noise and laughing at each other
in the garden. It was not yet evening, but the shadows beneath the trees
grew longer and fainter.
Suddenly a powerful voice was heard outside singing, not without a
certain spirit, but out of tune--
"The chargers are champing, snorting, and neighing.
The foam-covered bridle still holds them in sway."
Immediately afterwards the door was flung wide open, and Viätkin rolled
into Romashov's room with a loud peal of laughter. Although it was all
he could do to stand on his legs, he kept on singing--
"Matrons and maidens with sorrowful glances
Watch till their hero is lost to their sight."
Viätkin was still completely intoxicated from the libations of the
preceding day, and his eyelids were red and swollen from a night
without sleep. His hat was half off his head, and his long, waxed
moustache hung down like the tusks of a walrus.
"R-romuald, Syria's holy hermit, come, let me kiss you!" he roared in a
way that echoed through the whole house. "How long do you intend to sit
brooding here? Come, let us go. There's wine and play and jolly fellows
down there. Come!"
Viätkin gave Romashov a sounding kiss and rubbed his face with his wet
moustache.
"Well, well, that will do, Pavel Pavlich. Is that the way to go on?"
Romashov tried to defend himself against Viätkin's repeated caresses,
but in vain.
"Hold out your hand, my friend. Osadchi is kicking up a row down there,
so there's not a pane of glass unbroken. Romashevich, I love you. Come
here and let me give you a real Russian kiss, right on the mouth--do you
hear?"
Viätkin with his swollen face, glassy eyes, and stinking breath was
unspeakably forbidding to Romashov, but, as usual, the latter could not
ward off such caresses, to which he now responded by a sickly and
submissive smile.
"Wait and you shall hear why I came," shrieked Viätkin, hiccupping and
stumbling about the room. "Something important, you may well believe.
Bobetinski was cleaned out by me to his last copeck. Then he wanted, of
course, to give an IOU. 'Much obliged, dear boy, but that cock won't
fight. But perhaps you have something left to pledge.' Then he drew out
his revolver--here it is, by the way." Viätkin drew from his breeches
pocket, which followed, turned inside out, a choice little,
well-constructed revolver protected by a chamois-leather case. "As you
see, dear boy, the Mervin type. 'Well,' I said to him, 'how much will
you venture on that--twenty--ten--fifteen?' And can you imagine such a
curmudgeon? The first time only a rouble, on the 'colour,' of course.
But all the same--hey, presto! slap-bang! After five raisings the
revolver was mine and the cartridges too. And now you shall have it,
Romashevich, as a keepsake of our old friendship. Some day you will
always think of me thus: 'Viätkin was always a brave and generous
officer.' But what are you doing? Are you writing verses?"
"Well, well, what have you brought this for, Pavel Pavlich? Put it
away."
"All right. Perhaps you think it's no good? I could kill an elephant
with it. Will experiment with it at once. Where's that slave of yours?
He shall get us a target on the spot. Wait a second.
Hainán!--slave!--squire-at-arms!--hi!"
Viätkin rolled out of the door and then into Hainán's closet, where for
several minutes he was heard kicking up a row. Suddenly he returned in
triumph with Pushkin's bust under his arm.
"Well I never, Pavel Pavlich! Don't make a fool of yourself. Let that
alone." But there was not sufficient force in Romashov's objections, and
Viätkin went on as he pleased.
"Rubbish! You chatter like a starling. Now we'll put this on the
_tabouret_. Stand up, you ass. I'll teach you, by Jove!"
With these adjurations to poor Pushkin, Viätkin returned to Romashov,
took his stand at the window-sill, and cocked his revolver. As he was
not sober, he swung the muzzle of the weapon here and there, and
Romashov expected every second that one of them would be killed.
The distance was about five paces. Viätkin was long in taking aim,
during which the muzzle described some dangerous curves in the air. At
last the shot rang out, and in Pushkin's right cheek appeared a big
black, irregular hole. Romashov was for some moments deafened by the
report.
"Well aimed!" shrieked Viätkin, rejoicing. "Here's your revolver, and
don't forget my friendship. Hurry on now with your uniform jacket and
come with us to the mess. Long live the glorious Russian Army!"
"Pavel Pavlich, I really cannot to-day," protested Romashov weakly. He
could not defend himself. In his resistance to the other's strenuous
pressing, he neither found the proper decisive word nor the tone of
voice requisite for enforcing respect, and, blaming himself inwardly for
his despicable passive weakness, he wearily followed Viätkin, who with
his shaky legs bravely stumbled among the cucumbers and turnips in the
kitchen-garden.
* * * * *
The officers' meeting that night was more than usually noisy and stormy,
and finally assumed an absolutely mad character. First they caroused at
mess, then drove to the railway station to drink wine, after which the
orgy proceeded in the officers' casino. Romashov held aloof at first,
was angry with himself for yielding, and experienced the feeling of
loathing that overcomes every sober individual in a company of
drunkards. The laughter struck him as being artificial, the witticisms
poor, and the singing out of tune. But the hot red wine he drank at the
station mounted to his head and produced in him a noisy, nervous
merriment. A curtain of millions, as it were, of grains of sand dancing
round each other was spread before his eyes, which were heavy with wine,
and at the same time everything seemed to him so enjoyable, comic, and
humorous.
The hours flew like seconds, and it was only when the lamps of the
_salle-à-manger_ were lighted that Romashov began to realize how the
time had sped and that night had set in.
"Gentlemen," called some one, "the ladies are waiting for us. Let us be
off to Schleyfer's."
"Hurrah!--to Schleyfer's, to Schleyfer's."
The proposal was hailed with laughter and jubilation. All got up and the
chairs danced along the floor. This evening everything, moreover, went
off, as it were, automatically. Outside the mess-room door stood a whole
row of phaetons, but nobody knew who ordered them and how they came
there. Romashov was for some time tossed between moments of
semi-consciousness and the fully wide-awake state and alertness of mind
of a sober man. Suddenly he found himself sitting in a carriage beside
Viätkin. On the front seat sat a third person whose features Romashov
could not distinguish in the darkness of the night, however much he
might, by violent jerks of his body sidewards, bend forward to look
closely at the unknown. The latter's face was quite dark. Now it shrunk
up to the size of a man's fist, at another time it stretched itself out
awry, and then seemed to Romashov extraordinarily familiar. Romashov
suddenly burst out into a roar of laughter that sounded unnatural and
idiotic, and did not seem to come from himself, but from some stranger
in his immediate vicinity.
"You're lying, Viätkin. I know very well, my dear fellow, where we are
going to," babbled Romashov, in a drunken, chaffing tone. "You're taking
me to the girls, you rascal."
At that moment a carriage passed them with a deafening noise. By the
light of the lamp the outlines of a couple of brown country horses
dragging quickly along in an awkward and ridiculous gallop an open
carriage with a drunken coachman slashing his whip in a frantic way, and
four no less intoxicated officers, were reproduced for a second.
Consciousness and the faculty of reflection returned to Romashov for a
moment. Yes, it could not be disputed; he was actually on his way to a
place where women surrendered their bodies to caresses and embraces for
payment in cash. "Ugh! after all, it's perhaps the same thing in the
end. Women are women," shouted a wild, brutish, impatient voice within
him. At the same time, there rang in his soul a lovely, far-away,
scarcely audible music--the memory of Shurochka, but in this unconscious
coincidence there was nothing low, defiling, or insulting. On the
contrary, the thought of her at this moment had a refreshing, soothing,
and at the same time exciting and inflaming effect on his heart.
In a short time he would then find himself in close contact with that
curious, mysterious, and much-vaunted species of women that he had never
gazed on before. He dreamt of how he would meet their glances, take
their hands, and listen to their merry laughter and joyous songs, and he
felt that all this would bring him relief and consolation in his
incessant longing and torturing desire for Shurochka, the only woman in
the world who existed for him. In all these dreams, however, there was
not a trace of degraded, sensual lust. As a dead-tired bird on the wing
rushes, in the cold and darkness of an autumn night, blindly against the
irresistibly attractive flood of light from the lighthouse, so, too,
his soul, tortured by a cruel and capricious woman, was drawn into this
sphere of undisguised, sensual tenderness and careless, boisterous
merriment.
Suddenly the horses made a sharp swerve to the right, and at once the
noise of the carriage and the squeaking of the wheel-tyres ceased. The
carriage rocked here and there in the shallow cavities of the deep,
sandy road. Romashov opened his eyes. Far beneath him and on a wide
stretch of land, a multitude of small lights or lamps here and there
cast their faint, uncertain glimmer. Now they disappeared behind
invisible trees and houses, now they bobbed up before his eyes, and it
looked as if a huge, fantastic, disordered crowd of people or a
procession with torches and lanterns was moving forward down the road.
An acrid smell of wormwood, a big dark branch slowly waved up and down
over the heads of the parties who were being driven along, and, at the
same time, they found themselves suddenly environed by a new
atmosphere--cold, raw, and moist, as if it had arisen from a vault.
"Where are we?" asked Romashov.
"At Savalie," shrieked in reply the dark figure sitting on the box-seat,
in whom Romashov now recognized Lieutenant Epifanov. "We're at
Schleyfer's, you know. Haven't you ever been here before?"
"Go to hell," grumbled Romashov. Epifanov kept on laughing.
"Hark you, Yuri Alexievich, shall we tell the little darlings in a
whisper what an innocent you are? Later on, you'll put all our noses out
of joint."
Again Romashov felt, half-unconsciously, that he had sunk back into
impenetrable darkness, until he, as suddenly, found himself standing in
a large room with parqueted floor and Vienna chairs along the walls.
Over the entrance to the room, and over three other doors leading to
small, dark chambers, lay hangings of red and yellow flowered cotton.
Curtains of the same stuff and colour flickered in the draught from the
windows opened on a gloomy backyard. Lamps were burning on the walls,
but the great room was filled with smoke and the smell of meat from the
adjacent kitchen; and the fumes were only dispersed occasionally by the
balmy spring air entering through the window, and by the fresh scent of
the white acacias that bloomed outside the house.
About ten officers took part in this excursion. All seemed bent on
solving the delicate problem of contriving to shriek, laugh, and bawl at
the same time. Romashov strolled about the room with a feeling of naïve,
unreflecting enjoyment, and, with a certain astonishment and delight,
gradually recognized all his boon-companions--Biek-Agamalov, Lbov,
Viätkin, Epifanov, Artschakovski, Olisár, etc. Even Staff-Captain
Lieschtschenko was discovered there. He sat huddled up in a window with
his usual, eternal, resigned _Weltschmerz_ grin. On a table stood a
respectable row of bottles containing ale and a dark, thick, syrupy
cherry-cordial. No one knew who had ordered all these bottles. They were
thought--like so much else that night--to have come of their own accord.
Romashov drank, proposed healths, and embraced every one he met, and
began to feel sticky and messy about his lips and fingers.
There were five or six women in the room. One of them--a girl of
fourteen dressed as a page, with rose-coloured stockings--sat on
Biek-Agamalov's knee and played with his epaulettes. Another--a big,
coarse blonde in a red silk _basquine_ and dark skirt, and with powdered
face, and broad, black, painted eyebrows--went straight up to Romashov.
"Gracious, my good sir, why do you look so miserable? Come with me into
that room," she added in a whisper.
She threw herself carelessly on a table, and there sat with one leg over
the other. Romashov noticed how the strong outlines of her well-formed
knee were shown off by the thin skirt. A shudder thrilled him, and his
hands trembled.
"What's your name?"
"Mine? Malvina." She turned away with an air of indifference, and began
swinging her legs. "Order me a cigarette."
Two Jewish musicians came on the scene, one with a violin, the other
with a tambourine. Soon a vulgar, hackneyed, screeching polka tune was
heard in the room, whereupon Olisár and Artschakovski at once began to
dance the _cancan_. They hopped round the room first on one leg, then on
the other, snapped their fingers, wagged their hips, and bent backwards
and forwards with vulgar, cynical gestures. This unattractive ballet was
suddenly interrupted by Biek-Agamalov, who jumped off the table,
shrieking in his sharp, penetrating voice--
"To hell with the _starar_! Out with the ragtag and bobtail!"
Down by the door stood two young exquisites, both of whom had many
acquaintances among officers, and had even been guests at the regimental
soirées. One of them was a Treasury official, the other a landed
proprietor and brother of the police magistrate of the town. They both
belonged to the so-called "cream" of Society.
The Treasury official turned white, but forced a smile, and answered in
an affable tone--
"Excuse me, gentlemen, but can't we join? We are old acquaintances, you
know. My name is Dubiezki. We should not interfere with you at all."
"Possibly in making love, but not when the fight begins," added the
magistrate's brother, who tried to adopt a good-humoured tone.
"Out of this!" screamed Biek-Agamalov. "March to the door!"
"Gentlemen, by all means, put the _starar_ out," sneered Artschakovski.
A horrible confusion arose in the room. Tables and chairs were thrown
over; the men shrieked, laughed, and stamped with all their might. The
flames of the lamps rose like fiery tongues on high. The cold night air
penetrated through the open windows, but without any cooling or calming
effect on all these half-demented fighting-cocks. The two civilians had
already been thrown into the backyard, where they were heard fiercely
screeching and threatening with tears in their voices--
"_Opritschniker_,[20] brigands! This affair will cost you dear. We shall
lodge a complaint with your commander, with the Governor."
"Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo," Viätkin sneered in mockery, whilst stretching out of
the window. "Go to blazes!"
It seemed to Romashov as if all the events of the day had followed one
another without a break, but also without the least intelligible
connection, just as if a series of wild pictures in loud and motley
colours had been unrolled before his eyes. Again were heard the scraping
of the violin and the tambourine's blustering noise. One of the
"partners" had now gone so far as to pirouette on the floor with nothing
but his shirt on. A pretty, slender woman, who had up to then escaped
Romashov's notice, with dishevelled hair over her bare neck, and sharp,
prominent shoulder-blades, wound her arms round poor Lieschtschenko's
neck and sang in his ear in her shrill soprano, and in unison with the
violin's awful melody:
"When consumption sets its mark,
And you're lying pale and stark,
And doctors are seen fumbling round your couch."
Bobetinski slung a glass of ale between the curtains of one of the
little, dark _cabinets_, whence very soon proceeded an angry, but
sleepy, thick voice--
"Aren't you ashamed, sir? Who dares ...? Such a low swine!"
"I say! how long have you been here?" asked Romashov of the lady in the
red _basquine_, whilst, as it were, in an absent-minded way, he rested
his hand on her strong, warm knee.
She made some answer, but he did not hear it. A fresh scene of savagery
had absorbed all his attention. Sub-lieutenant Lbov was driving before
him one of the musicians, and banging him on the head all the time with
the tambourine. The poor Jew, terrified out of his wits, ran from corner
to corner, screaming and babbling his unintelligible jargon, with wholly
ineffectual attempts to catch his long, fluttering coat-tails, and
incessantly glancing behind him from the corners of his eyes at his
unmerciful persecutor. Everybody was laughing. Artschakovski fell flat
on the floor, and wriggled with tears in his eyes and in alarming
convulsions of laughter. Directly afterwards the other Jew's piercing
yells were audible. Another of the company had snatched the violin, and
thrown it down with fearful violence. With a crashing sound that
harmonized, in an almost touching way, with the musician's desperate
cries for help, the instrument broke into a thousand fragments. What
followed this Romashov never perceived, inasmuch as, for several
minutes, he was in a sort of dark "nirvana." When he had somewhat
regained the use of his reason, he saw, as though in a fever-dream, that
all in the room were running round each other with wild shrieks and
gestures of despair. For an instant the whole swarm gathered round
Biek-Agamalov, only in the next instant to be scattered like chaff in
all directions. The majority sought safety in the little, dark
_cabinets_.
"Out of it! I won't stand a single one!" shrieked Biek-Agamalov in
Berserker fury. He ground his teeth, stamped on the floor, and struck
about him with his clenched fists. His face was crimson; the veins in
his forehead from the roots of his hair to his nose stood like strained
ropes; his head was lowered like a bull's, and his unnaturally prominent
eyes with their bloodshot whites were terrifying. He was unable to utter
any human sounds, but groaned, like a wild beast, in a vibrating voice--
"Ah-ah-ah-ah!"
Suddenly, whilst bending the upper part of his body to the left with the
suppleness of a panther, he drew his sabre, as quick as lightning, from
its sheath. The broad, sharp blade described, with a whistling sound,
several rapid circles over his head.
In frantic terror every living creature fled helter-skelter from the
room through doors and windows, the women screaming hysterically, the
men trampling down all that lay in their way. Romashov was carried by
the current irresistibly towards the door, where an officer rushing past
caused him, by the sharp facet of his uniform-button, a long, bleeding
scratch on his face. The next moment all stood whooping and yelling in
the yard, except Romashov, who alone remained by the door of the room.
He felt his heart beating with increased force and quickness; but the
murderous, unbridled scene filled him not only with terror, but also
with an intoxicating feeling of savage, exulting defiance.
"I will have blood!" screamed Biek-Agamalov, with gnashing teeth. The
sight of the terror he inspired deprived him of the last remains of
understanding and reflection. With frantic strength and rage he smashed,
with a few strokes, all the furniture nearest to him, and, after that,
hurled his sabre with such force at a large mirror that the glass
splinters hailed on all sides. With another blow he laid waste the
table, which was crowded with a number of bottles and glasses, the
fragments and contents of which were thrown all over the floor.
But just at that moment cried a piercing voice of indescribable fury and
boldness--
"Fool! Cad!"
This insult was hurled by the same bare-headed woman with naked arms as
had just embraced Lieschtschenko. This was the first time that Romashov
had noticed her. She was standing in a recess behind the stove, leaning
forward with clenched hands tightly pressed against her hips, and
pouring out an uninterrupted flow of "Billingsgate" with a rapidity and
readiness which the vilest market-woman might have envied.
"Fool! Cad! Scum! I am not afraid of you! Fool! Fool! Fool!"
Biek-Agamalov lowered his sabre, and seemed, for a moment, to lose all
power over himself. Romashov saw how his face grew whiter and whiter,
how his eyebrows puckered, and how the yellow pupils first darkened and
then hurled a blinding flash of diabolical hatred and rage which no
longer knew bounds. His knees gave way, and his head fell on his chest.
At that moment, Biek-Agamalov was no longer a human being. He was
transformed into a bloodthirsty wild beast straining every nerve for the
fatal leap.
"Silence!" It sounded as if he had spat out the word. Speak he could
not.
"Scoundrel, brute, beast, I shall not be silent!" shrieked the fury in
the stove corner, her body trembling all over at every word she hurled.
Romashov felt himself getting whiter and whiter every moment. He felt a
sensation of void in his brain, a sensation of release from every
oppressive act of thought or reflection. A curious mixture of joy and
terror arose in his soul, just as the bubbles of sparkling wine ascend
to the edge of a goblet. He saw Biek-Agamalov, whilst continually
following the woman with his eyes, slowly raise his sabre above his
head. An irresistible flow of frantic jubilation, fear, inconsiderate
boldness, carried Romashov away. He rushed forward so rapidly that he
did not even hear Biek-Agamalov hiss his last question--
"Will you be silent? For the last time----"
Romashov, with a force he never thought he was capable of, gripped
Agamalov's wrist. During the course of a few seconds and at a distance
of a couple of inches between their faces, the two officers eyed one
another without moving, stiff as if carved out of stone. Romashov heard
his comrade's quick, panting breath; he saw his eyes glitter with hate
and a thirst for revenge, and his lips foam with the spasmodic movements
of his lower jaw; but he felt that the fire of wrath would, in a few
minutes, be extinguished in this man who had never yet sought, of his
own accord, to curb his passions. But to Romashov this feeling of proud
triumph in a game of life and death, from which he now knew he should
come out the victor, was almost intolerable. He knew that all those who
were anxiously watching this scene from outside also realized in what
deadly danger he stood. Out in the yard and by the open windows there
brooded such a hush and quiet that, all of a sudden, a nightingale a few
paces off began to trill her joyous lay.
"Let me go," came at last like a hoarse whisper from Biek-Agamalov's
bitten lips.
"Biek, you must never strike a woman," replied Romashov calmly. "You
would blush for it as long as you lived."
The last sparks of rage and madness now died out in Agamalov's eyes.
Romashov drew a deep breath as if from a long swoon. His heart beat
irregularly and quick, and his head was again heavy and feverishly hot.
"Let me go!" shrieked Biek-Agamalov once more in a fierce tone, and
tried to release himself. Romashov felt he would no longer be able to
keep his hold of him; but he had no further dread of his wrath. He said
in a caressing brotherly tone, as he laid his hand on his comrade's
shoulder--
"Forgive me, Biek, but I know that a day will come when you will thank
me for this."
Biek-Agamalov with a loud snap stuck his sabre into its sheath.
"All right, confound you!" he screamed in an angry tone, in which,
however, there was a note of shame and confusion. "We'll settle this
matter afterwards. But what right have you----?"
The valiant crowd in the yard now understood that all danger was over
for the present. With loud, but not quite natural, peals of laughter,
the lot now rushed into the room. But he now seemed extinguished, his
strength exhausted, and there was something apathetic and ironically
contemptuous about him.
Now Madame Schleyfer herself--a massive lady with a hard look, small
dark pouches under her eyes, disappearing eyelashes, and great layers of
fat on her neck and bosom--entered the room. She attacked first one and
then the other of the officers; took tight hold of one by a button, of
another by a sleeve, and howled to each of them who could stand and
listen her everlasting song--
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, who will make good all this? Who will pay for the
mirror, the furniture, the bottles, the girls?"
All this meanwhile was settled to the satisfaction of the authorities by
the same mysterious "benefactor" who had provided for everything else in
the course of this memorable excursion. The officers left the room in
groups. Every one of them inhaled with delight the mild, pure air of the
May night. Romashov felt all his being thrilled with a certain joyous
agitation. It seemed to him as if all traces of the day's orgies had
vanished from his brain, as if a pair of innocent fresh lips had
repurified and refreshed him by a soft kiss on his brow.