The violent emotion felt by every member of the company during the wild
scene we have just depicted found expression in a nervous irritability
which, on their return to the mess-room, took the form of reckless
arrogance and gross misbehaviour to all who happened to come across the
officers on their way home. A poor Jew coming along was stopped and
deprived of his cap. Olisár got up in the carriage, and insulted, in the
outskirts of the town, in the middle of the street, all passers-by in a
manner which cannot be decently described. Bobetinski whipped his
coachman for no reason whatever. The others sang and bawled with all
their might; only Biek-Agamalov, who rode beside Romashov, sat all the
time angry, silent, and taciturn.
Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the mess-rooms were
brilliantly illuminated and full of people. In the card and
billiard-rooms and at the buffet creatures with unbuttoned coats,
flaming faces, vacantly staring eyes and of uncertain gait, helplessly
collided with each other, heavily fuddled by the fumes of wine and
tobacco smoke. Romashov, who was walking about and nodding to several of
the officers, also found among them, to his great astonishment,
Nikoläiev. He was sitting by Osadchi, red in face and intoxicated, but
holding himself upright. On seeing Romashov approaching he eyed him
sharply for a few seconds, but afterwards turned abruptly aside, so as
to avoid holding out his hand to the latter, meanwhile conversing with
his neighbour with increased interest.
"Viätkin, come here and sing," bellowed Osadchi over the heads of the
rest.
"Yes, come let us sing," chanted Viätkin, in reply, parodying,
imitating, and caricaturing a melody from the Church ritual--
"Three small boys found lurching
Got an awful birching
At the parson's stile."
Viätkin imitated in quick succession and in the same tone the strophes
recited in the remainder of the antiphon at Mass--
"Sexton, parson, and his clerk
Thought the smacking quite a lark.
Then the beadle said, 'By hell,
Nikifor, you smack right well.'"
"Nikifor, you smack right well!"
answered _pianissimo_ in complete harmony the hastily improvised choir
of drunken officers, seconded by Osadchi's softly rumbling bass voice.
Viätkin conducted the singing, standing on a table in the middle of the
room, whilst stretching his arms in an attitude of benediction over the
heads of the "congregation." Now his eyes flashed terrifying glances of
threat and condemnation; at another time they were raised to heaven with
a languishing expression of infinite beatitude; then he hissed with rage
at those who sang out of tune; again he stopped in time by a scarcely
perceptible _tremolo_ of the palm of his hand a run to a misplaced
_crescendo_.
"Staff-Captain Lieschtschenko, you're singing damnably. Damn it, what a
wretched ear!" roared Osadchi. "Keep quiet in the room, gentlemen. No
noise, please, when there's singing."
"Once on a time a farmer so rich--
Who used to like iced punch"--
continued Viätkin, in his improvised service of the Church. His eyes,
however, now began to smart dreadfully from the dense tobacco smoke.
Romashov was reminded by the wet and sticky tablecloth that he had not
washed his hands since dinner. He went out and made his way across the
yard to a side room called the "Officers' Shelter," which served as a
sort of lavatory. It was a cold, dismal little crib with only one
window. Several common cupboards stood along the wall, and between them,
in hospital fashion, were placed two beds, the sheets, etc., of which
were never changed. Not a man in the entire regiment could recollect
when this room was swept and cleaned. There was an intolerable stench
there, the main ingredients of which were rotting bedclothes, stinking
boots, and bad tobacco. The room was originally intended for officers of
other regiments who happened to be visiting the garrison town, but it
gradually became converted into a sort of _morgue_ for those who got
dead drunk at mess. It was almost officially designated as "the
mortuary," which name, by a dreadful irony of fate, received its full
justification from the fact that no less than two officers and one
soldier had committed suicide in it during the few years the regiment
had been garrisoned in the town. Moreover, not a year elapsed without
one suicide taking place among the officers of this regiment.
When Romashov entered "the mortuary" he found two men sitting there on a
bed near the window. The room was dark, and it was some time before
Romashov recognized in one of the "guests" ex-Staff-Captain Klodt,
alcoholist and thief, and on those grounds expelled from the command of
his company. The other was a certain Ensign Solotuchin--a tall, lean,
bald-headed, worn-out rake and gambler, feared and despised wherever he
went for his evil, lying tongue and his conversation interlarded with
coarse cynicisms and improprieties--a veritable type of the ensigns of
the storybooks.
Between these two worthy "birds of a feather" might be seen on the table
the dim outline of a schnapps bottle, an empty plate, and two full
glasses. The pair of boon companions were silent when Romashov entered
the room, and tried, as it were, to hide themselves in the darkness; but
when he leaned over them, they looked at him with a sly smile.
"What, in the name of goodness, are you two doing here?" asked Romashov,
in alarm.
"Hush!" Solotuchin made a mysterious warning gesture with his
forefinger. "Wait here, and don't disturb us."
"Hold your jaw!" ordered Klodt in a whisper.
At the same moment the rattling noise of a _telega_ was heard somewhere
in the distance. Then the two strangers raised their glasses, clicked
them together, and drained the contents.
"But answer me. What is the meaning of it all?" repeated Romashov in the
same anxious tone.
"My little greenhorn," replied Klodt in a significant whisper, "if you
must know, it's only our usual little morning repast; but now I hear
the _telega_, Ensign," Klodt went on to say as he turned to Solotuchin.
"It's time then to finish our drink and be off. What do you think of the
moonlight? Will it suit?"
"My glass is empty already," replied Solotuchin, glancing out of the
window at the moon's slender, pointed sickle that stood drowsy and
sleepy in the sky, and hung down over the little slumbering town. "But
let's just wait a wee bit. S-sh! I thought I heard a dog barking."
And again they bent towards one another to resume their mysterious
conversation, carried on in a low voice; the spluttering tone and
evident lack of coherence witnessed clearly enough that the schnapps had
begun to take effect. From the _salle-à-manger_ hard by came now and
then the melancholy, hollow tones of Viätkin's and Osadchi's improvised
Mass for the Dead, which had a weird and threatening ring about it in
the silent night.
Romashov seized his head with both hands.
"I beseech you, gentlemen, to stop this. I can't stand it any longer."
"Go to the devil!" roared Solotuchin. "No, stop, dear boy--whither away?
But, by all that's unholy, you shall first drink a glass with two fine
fellows. Catch tight hold of him, Captain, I'll shut the door."
With a yell of laughter the two scoundrels jumped up to seize Romashov;
but the latter's self-command was exhausted. The whole hideous
situation--this disgusting drinking-bout in the weird, dark room with
its insufferable, stifling atmosphere--this mysterious midnight meeting
between two individuals who were a danger to society--the vulgar
bellowing of the drunken officers and their blasphemous parody of the
Russian Mass--all this filled him with frantic terror and nausea. With
a piercing shriek, he thrust Solotuchin from him, and, trembling in
every limb, rushed deliberately from the mortuary.
Common sense now urged him to go home, but a strange, unfathomable
inward force again drove him, against his will, to the mess-room. There
some of the wine-soaked company were asleep on the window-sills and
chairs. A stifling heat prevailed, and, in spite of the wide-open
windows, the drowsily burning lights and lamps were never reached by a
quickening draught of air. The poor, dead-tired soldiers who attended to
the waiting could scarcely stand on their legs, and every moment stifled
a yawn, but as yet none of the champion boozers had entertained a
thought of breaking up.
Viätkin had again taken his place on a table, and was singing in his
high, caressive tenor voice--
"Swift as the ocean's
Roaring billows,
Vanishes life in eternity."
There were several officers in the regiment with really beautiful
voices, which even now were very effective in spite of the drink.
This simple, plaintive melody exercised, at this moment, an ennobling
influence on all, and more than one of them experienced a pricking,
remorseful feeling at the thought of his worthless, sinful life.
"Once you're in your coffin,
Soon the world forgets your name,"
continued Viätkin in a voice of emotion, and his sleepy but good eyes
were dimmed with tears. Artschakovski seconded him with unimpeachable
care. To make his voice thrill he grasped his larynx with two fingers
and shook it. Osadchi accompanied it all with his heavy, long-drawn,
organ notes.
After the singing there reigned a deep silence for a few moments.
Suddenly Osadchi began again to recite in a subdued tone and eyes cast
down--
"All ye who wander in sorrow's heavy, narrow road----"
"No, that's enough of it," a voice exclaimed. "This is now, I suppose,
the tenth time we have taken up this cursed Mass of Requiem----"
But the rest had already intoned the solemn melody that divides the
recitative of the antiphon, and once more, in the reeking and dirty
room, resounded the requiem over St. John of Damascus in clear,
full-voiced strains that express in so masterly a way the inconsolable
sorrow for death's inexorable cruelty--
"All ye who believe in Me enter into the joy of My Father."
Artschakovski, who was as familiar with the ritual as the most
experienced choir-singer, at once repeated the following answer in
accordance with the text--
"With our whole soul we all praise," etc.
And so the whole antiphon was chanted; but when Osadchi's turn came to
take up the recitation for the last time, he lowered his head like an
infuriated bull, the veins in his neck swelled, and as he directed his
melancholy, cruel, and threatening glances towards those present, he
declaimed in a half-singing tone, and in a voice that resembled the roar
of distant thunder--
"Give, O Lord, Thy departed slave, Nikifor,
A blessed departure hence and eternal rest."
In the midst of this lofty and pious invocation he stopped short, and,
to the horror of the bystanders, uttered two words of the most
blasphemous, cynical, and disgusting import.
Romashov jumped up, and thumped his fist, like a madman, on the table.
"Be silent! I forbid this," he roared in a voice trembling with anger
and pain. "What are you laughing at, Captain Osadchi? You ought to be
ashamed. Your eyes are mocking, but I see and know that remorse, terror,
and the tortures of hell are raging in your heart."
A hideous silence on the part of all followed this outbreak of temper.
Then a voice from the crowd was heard to exclaim--
"Is he drunk?"
These three words relaxed all the terrible tension of the situation; but
at the same moment let loose afresh--just as a few hours previously in
Schleyfer's den of infamy--all the evil spirits of orgy. There was
shrieking, hooting, stamping, jumping, and dancing; the whole room was
turned in a trice into an indescribable, savage, motley chaos. Viätkin,
who jumped on to a table, hit his head against the big hanging lamp,
which then swayed in awful zigzag curves, producing for some time a
fantastic series of dissolving views on the ceiling and walls, on which
drunken, frantic human beings were depicted as marvellous, gigantic
shapes, or as huddled, dwarfish figures resembling embryos.
The debauch seemed at last to reach its height. All these wretched
creatures were possessed, as it were, by a savage, exultant, ruthless
fiend who, mocking at all the laws of sense and decency, forced his
victims, by blasphemies, oaths, and all kinds of shamelessness, to
abdicate the last shreds of their human dignity.
Romashov, in the smoke and stuffiness, suddenly caught sight of a person
with features distorted by rage and incessant hooting, which for that
reason seemed to him, in the first instant, unrecognizable. It was none
other than Nikoläiev, who, now foaming with hate and fury, roared to his
enemy:
"You're a disgrace to the whole regiment, you and Nasanski! Not a word
or, by God! I'll----"
Romashov felt that some one was pulling him, gently and cautiously, a
few paces backwards. He turned round and recognized Agamalov, but at the
same instant forgot him, and turned quickly round to Nikoläiev. White
with suppressed rage, he answered in a low, hoarse voice and a forced
and bitter smile--
"What reason have you to mention Nasanski's name? But perhaps you have
some private, secret cause for hating him?"
"Rascal, scoundrel, your hour is come!" screamed Nikoläiev in a loud,
trembling voice. With flashing eyes he raised his tightly clenched fist
to Romashov's face, but the expected blow never fell. Romashov
experienced a momentary fear, together with a torturing, sickening
sensation in his chest and ribs, and he now noticed, for the first time,
that he was grasping some object with the fingers of his right hand.
Then with a rapid movement he threw the remains of his half-emptied
glass of ale into Nikoläiev's face.
Instantly after this a violent blow in the region of his left eye struck
him like a deafening thunderclap, and with the howl of a wounded wild
beast, Romashov rushed at his foe. A heavy fall, and the two rolled over
one another on the ground with furious blows and kicks. A thick cloud of
dust eddied round the combatants; chairs and tables were flung in all
directions, but the two continued, with unabated fury, to force, in
turn, each other's head against the filthy floor, and panting and with
rattling throats, tried to tear each other to pieces. Romashov knew he
had managed somehow or other to get his fingers well into Nikoläiev's
mouth at one of the corners, and he strove with all his might to rend
Nikoläiev's cheek, with the object of destroying those hateful features
for all time. He himself, however, felt no pain when his head and elbows
were bumped time after time, in the course of the fight, against the
hard floor.
He had not the slightest notion as to how the battle finally ended. He
suddenly found himself standing in a corner, plucked from the fight by
kindly hands, and, by the same well-meaning helper, prevented from
renewing his attack on Nikoläiev. Biek-Agamalov handed Romashov a glass
of water, and his teeth could be heard chattering, through the
convulsive twitchings of his lower jaw, against the side of the glass.
His uniform was torn to tatters in the back and elbows, and one
shoulder-strap swung hither and thither on its torn fastening. Romashov
was unable to speak, but his silent lips moved incessantly in fruitless
efforts to whisper audibly--
"I'll--show--him. I challenge him."
Old Liech, who had been in a delightful slumber at the edge of his table
during all that fearful row, now arose fully awake, sober, and severe in
countenance, and, in a bitter and hectoring tone rarely employed by him,
said--
"Gentlemen, in my capacity as the eldest here present, I order you all
to leave the mess instantly, and to go to your respective quarters. A
report of what has taken place here to-night is to be handed in to the
commander of the regiment to-morrow."
The order was obeyed without the slightest demur. All departed, cowed
and shamefaced, and consequently shy at meeting each other's glances.
Each individual dreaded to read in his comrade's eyes his own shame and
self-contempt, and they all gave one the impression of dirty little
malicious animals, to whose dim and undeveloped brains a gleam of human
understanding had suddenly managed to grope its way.
Day began to dawn. A delightful, glorious morning with a clear,
fleckless sky, refreshing coolness, and infinite harmony and peace. The
moist trees, wrapped in thin, curling exhalations arising from the
earth, and scarcely visible to the eye, had just awakened silently and
imperceptibly from their deep, mysterious, nocturnal sleep. And when
Romashov, on his way home, glanced at them, at the sky, and at the grass
faintly sparkling like silver in the dew, he felt himself so low, vile,
degenerate, and disgusting that he realized, with unutterable
melancholy, how unworthy he was to be greeted by the innocent, smiling
child-eyes of awakening Nature.