The colonel sat on the edge of his rumpled-up peasant's bed and with
an impatient movement knocked the ashes from his cigar. On the dirty
table before him lay the last number of a Russian weekly, which had
just arrived by field post in Galicia--a little crumpled, but otherwise
fresh looking, and with pictures which made one's mouth water.
The devil! Was it still going so comfortably back in Petersburg (he
stopped suddenly and substituted Petrograd) with those rascals of
civilians and war cripples? Did such attractive girls still come in
and sing and dance as those whose pictures stared at him out of the
pages of the last number of the _Nida_? They must be damnably well off,
those dogs, able to frequent the Varieties, where people sit in cozy
warmth about the tables and worry about nothing more serious than the
genuineness of the labels on the wine bottles.
And he, Gabriel Gabrilovitch! He had lain with his regiment for
nearly two weeks in this miserable Galician hole and was forced to
congratulate himself that a single windproof hut remained in which to
stop for breath after all those futile attacks--that he was able at
night to throw himself on a bundle of straw under this foul roof and
drink punch brewed from whiskey stolen from the Jews.
For this time no headway was to be made against the devils opposite.
Not even once as far as their barbed wire defences! So well was their
artillery posted. To such a raking fire was every moving object exposed
which came in sight within an area several hundred meters wide!
A tiresome game that--an accursedly tiresome game--and if Gabriel
Gabrilovitch himself should be one of the victims! He sprang up and
began to pace with heavy steps the uneven clay floor. He knew of better
things than that!
Those Petrogradians--look, look!
The slender, willowy, singing girl there in the _Nida_, with that
smile which was in itself a seduction! She evoked another image in his
excited fancy. It was his last evening of pleasure in golden Petrograd.
In a variety cabaret, too.
The stage is already empty, the programme finished. But in a room off
the stage reserved for the performers and their guests he sees just
such a piquant little creature take form in the thin smoke clouds of
his cigarette. Exactly the same smile--acquired in Paris, and then
carried triumphantly from stage to stage, from banquet to banquet.
The imitation diamonds glitter in the deep corsage of her dress. The
coquettish curls hang like golden orchids over her ears. The atrophied
stare of the wide pupils has the fascination of a serpent's eye. Before
her stands a tall, narrow glass vase, out of which nod the blood-red,
long-stemmed pinks which he had brought her. He, Gabriel Gabrilovitch!
It is a picture imprinted so vividly on his senses by the warm rush of
recollection that he thinks he really sees it--not least of all the
purplish red of the vase of flowers.
They take it easy, those Nevsky Prospekt loungers--they take it easy!
He reaches for the glass--already cold, curse it! Not very long now and
it will be day again and a new assault, as vain as the others, will
bring them face to face with death.
A cold draft strikes his neck. He turns around, half angry, to see who
has entered.