The Duel. Александр Куприн
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officer here?”
Romashov stepped forward and touched his cap.
“I am, Colonel.”
“Ha – Sub-lieutenant Romashov, you evidently train your men well. Stand at attention and stretch your legs,” bawled Shulgovich suddenly, his eyes rolling. “Don’t you know how to stand in the presence of your commanding officer? Captain Sliva, I beg to inform you that your subaltern officer has been lacking in the respect due to his chief. And you, you miserable cur,” he now turned towards the unhappy Sharafutdinov, “tell me the name of your Commander.”
“I don’t know,” replied Sharafutdinov quickly, but in a firm tone in which, nevertheless, a melancholy resignation might be detected.
“Oh, I ask you the name of your Colonel. Do you know who I am? I – I – I!” and Shulgovich drummed with the flat of his hand several times on his broad chest.
“I don’t know.”
The Colonel delivered himself of a string of about twenty words of cynical abuse. “Captain Sliva, I order you at once to exhibit this son of a sea-cook, so that all may see him, with rifle and heavy accoutrements, and let him stand there till he rots. And as for you, Sub-lieutenant, I know well enough that loose women and flirtation interest you more than the service does. In waltzing and reading Paul de Kock you’re said to be an authority, but as to performing your duties, instructing your men – that, of course, is beneath your dignity. Just look at this creature” (he gave Sharafutdinov a sound slap on the mouth) – “is this a Russian soldier? No, he’s a brute beast, who does not even recognize his own commanding officer. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Romashov stared speechlessly at his chief’s red and rage-distorted countenance. He felt his heart threatening to burst with shame and indignation. Suddenly, almost unconsciously, he burst out in a hollow voice —
“Colonel, this fellow is a Tartar and does not understand a word of our language, and besides…”
But he did not finish his sentence. Shulgovich’s features had that very instant undergone a ghastly change. His whole countenance was as white as a corpse’s, his withered cheeks were transfused with sharp, nervous puckers, and his eyes assumed a terrible expression.
“Wh-at!” roared he in a voice so unnatural and awe-inspiring that a little crowd of Jew boys, who, some distance from the causeway, were sitting on the fence on which they had swarmed, were scattered like sparrows – “you answer back? Silence! A raw young ensign permits himself to – Lieutenant Federovski, enter in my day-book that I have ordered Sub-lieutenant Romashov four days’ arrest in his room for breach of discipline. And Captain Sliva is to be severely rebuked for neglecting to instil into his junior officers ‘a true military spirit.’”
The Adjutant saluted respectfully without any sign of fear. Captain Sliva stood the whole time bending slightly forward, with his hand to his cap, and quivering with emotion, though without altering a feature of his wooden face.
“I cannot help being surprised at you, Captain Sliva,” again grunted Shulgovich, who had now to some extent regained his self-control. “How is it possible that you, who are one of the best officers in the regiment, and, moreover, old in the service, can let your youngsters run so wild? They want breaking in. It is no use to treat them like young ladies and being afraid of hurting them.”
With these words he turned his back on the Captain, and, followed by the Adjutant, proceeded to the carriage awaiting him. Whilst he was getting into the carriage, and till the latter had turned round behind the corner of the regimental school, a dull, painful silence reigned in the parade-ground.
“Ah! you dear old ducky,” exclaimed Captain Sliva in a dry tone and with deep contempt, when the officers had, some minutes later, separated. “Now, gentlemen, I suppose I, too, ought to say a couple of loving words to you. Learn to stand at attention and hold your jaw even if the sky falls – etc. To-day I’ve had a wigging for you before the whole of my company. Who saddled me with you? Who asked for your services? Not I, at any rate. You are, for me and my company, about as necessary as a fifth leg is to a dog. Go to the deuce, and return to your feeding-bottle.”
He finished his bitter lecture with a weary, contemptuous movement of his hand, and dragged himself slowly away in the direction of his dark, dirty, cheerless bachelor quarters. Romashov cast a long glance at him, and gazing at the tall, thin figure, already bent with age, as well as by the affront just endured, he felt a deep pity for this lonely, embittered man whom nobody loved, who had only two interests in the whole world – correct “dressing” of the 6th Company when marching at a review, and the dear little schnapps bottle which was his trusty and sole companion till bedtime.
And whereas Romashov also had the absurd, silly habit, which is often peculiar to young people, viz. in his introspection to think of himself as a third party, and then weave his noble personality into a sentimental and stilted phrase from novelettes, our soft-hearted lieutenant now expressed his opinion of himself in the following touching manner —
“And over his kindly, expressive eyes fell the shadow of grief.”
II
THE soldiers marched home to their quarters in platoon order. The square was deserted. Romashov stood hesitating for a moment at the causeway. It was not the first time during the year and a half he had been in the service he had experienced that painful feeling of loneliness, of being lost among strangers either hostile or indifferent, or that distressful hesitation as to where one shall spend the evening. To go home or spend the evening at the officers’ mess was equally distasteful to him. At the latter place, at that time of day, there was hardly a soul, at most a couple of ensigns who, whilst they drank ale and smoked to excess and indulged in as many oaths and unseemly words as possible, played pyramids in the wretched little narrow billiard-room; in addition to all this, the horrible smell of food pervading all the rooms.
“I shall go down to the railway-station,” said Romashov at last. “That will be something to do.”
In the poor little town, the population of which mainly consisted of Jews, the only decent restaurant was that at the railway-station. There were certainly two clubs – one for officers, the other for the civilian “big-wigs” of the community. They were both, however, in a sorry plight, and on these grounds the railway restaurant had become the only place where the inhabitants assembled to shake off the dust of everyday life, and to get a drink or a game at cards. Even the ladies of the place accompanied their male protectors there, chiefly, however, to witness the arrival of the trains and scrutinize the passengers, which always offered a little change in the dreary monotony of provincial life.
Romashov liked to go down to the railway-station of an evening at the time when the express arrived, which made its last stop before reaching the Prussian frontier. With a curious feeling of excitement and tension, he awaited the moment when the train flashed round a sharp curve of the line, the locomotive’s fiery, threatening eye grew rapidly in size and intensity, and, at the next second, thundered past him a whole row of palatial carriages. “Like a monstrously huge giant that suddenly checks himself in the middle of a furious leap,” he thought, the train came to an abrupt stop before the platform. From the dazzling, illuminated carriages, that resembled a fairy palace, stepped beautiful and elegant ladies in wonderful hats, gentlemen dressed according to the latest Paris fashion, who, in perfect French or German, greeted one another with compliments or pointed witticisms. None of the passengers took the slightest notice of Romashov, who saw in them a striking little sample of that envied and unattainable world where life is a single, uninterrupted, triumphal feast.
After an interval of eight minutes a bell would ring, the engine would whistle, and the train de luxe would flit away into the darkness. The station would be soon deserted after this, and the lights lowered in the buffet and on the platform, where Romashov would remain gazing with melancholy eyes, after the lurid gleam of the red lamp of the rear coach, until it disappeared in the gloom like an extinguished spark.
“I shall go to the station for a while,” Romashov repeated to himself once more, but when he cast a glance at his big, clumsy goloshes, bespattered with clay and filth, he experienced a keen sense of shame.