The Duel. Александр Куприн
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He is virtually an outlaw. If he succeeds in his purpose, honours and rewards of all kinds await him. Should he be unmasked, he will be condemned straight off to be shot or hanged. He sees himself standing in the dark and gloomy trench, confronted by his executioners. Out of compassion they fasten a white cloth before his eyes; but he tears it away and throws it to the ground with the proud words, “Do you not think an officer can face death?” An old Colonel replies, in a quivering voice: “Listen, my young friend. I have a son of the same age as you. I will spare you. Tell us your name – tell us, at any rate, your nationality, and the death sentence will be commuted to imprisonment.” “I thank you, Colonel; but it is useless. Do your duty.” Then he turns to the soldiers, and says to them in a firm voice in German: “Comrades, there is only one favour I would crave: spare my face, aim at my heart.” The officer in command, deeply moved, raises his white pocket-handkerchief – a crashing report – and Romashov’s story is ended.
This picture made such a lively impression on his imagination that Romashov, who was already very excited and striding along the road, suddenly stopped short, trembling all over. His heart beat violently, and he clenched his hands convulsively. He gained, however, command over himself immediately, and smiling compassionately at himself, he continued on his way in the darkness.
But it was not long before he began to conjure up fresh pictures in his imagination. The cruel war with Prussia and Austria, long expected and prepared for, had come. An enormous battlefield, corpses everywhere, havoc, annihilation, blood, and death. It was the chief battle, on the issue of which the whole war depended. The decisive moment had arrived. The last reserves had been brought up, and one was waiting anxiously for the Russian flanking column to arrive in time to attack the enemy in the rear. At any cost the enemy’s frantic attack must be met without flinching. The most important and threatened position on the field was occupied by the Kerenski regiment, which was being decimated by the concentrated fire of the enemy. The soldiers fight like lions without yielding an inch, although the whole line is being mowed down by a murderous fire of shells. Every one feels that he is passing through an historical moment. A few more seconds of heroic endurance and victory will be snatched out of the enemy’s hands. But Colonel Shulgovich wavers. He is a brave man – that must be admitted – but the perils of a fight like this are too much for his nerves. He turns pale and trembles. The next moment he signals to the bugler to sound the retreat, and the latter has already put the bugle to his lips, when, that very moment, Colonel Romashov, chief of the Staff, comes dashing from behind the hill on his foaming Arab steed. “Colonel, we dare not retreat. The fate of Russia will be decided here.” Shulgovich begins blustering. “Colonel Romashov, it is I who am in command and must answer to God and the Tsar. The regiment must retire – blow the bugle.” But Romashov snatches the bugle from the bugler’s hand and hurls it to the ground. “Forward, my children!” he shouts; “the eyes of your Emperor and your fellow-countrymen are fixed on you.” “Hurrah!” With a deafening shout of joy the soldiers, led by Romashov, rush at the foe. Everything disappears in a chasm of fire and smoke. The enemy wavers, and soon his lines are broken; but behind him gleam the Russian bayonets. “The victory is ours! Hurrah, comrades” —
Romashov, who no longer walked but ran, gesticulating wildly, at last stopped and gradually became himself again. It seemed to him as if some one with fingers cold as ice had suddenly passed them over his back, arms, and legs, his hair bristled, and his strong excitement had brought tears to his eyes. He had no notion how he suddenly found himself near his quarters, and, as he recovered from his mad fancies, he gazed with astonishment at the street door he knew so well, at the neglected fruit-garden within which stood the little whitewashed wing where he lodged.
“How does all this nonsense get into my head?” said he, with a sense of shame and a shrug of his shoulders in self-contempt.
III
WHEN Romashov reached his room he threw himself, just as he was, with cap and sabre, on his bed, and for a long time he lay there motionless, staring up at the ceiling. His head burned, his back ached; and he suffered from a vacuum within him as profound as if his mind was incapable of harbouring a feeling, a memory, or a thought. He felt neither irritation nor sadness, but he was sensible of a suffocating weight on his heart, of darkness and indifference.
The shades of a balmy April night fell. He heard his servant quietly occupied with some metal object in the hall.
“Curiously enough,” said he to himself, “I have read somewhere or other that one cannot live a single second without thinking. But here I lie and think about absolutely nothing. Isn’t that so? Perhaps it is just this: I am thinking that I am thinking about nothing. It even seems as if a tiny wheel in my brain is in motion. And see here a new reflection, an objective introspection – I am also thinking of – ”
He lay so long and tortured himself with such forced mental images that returned in an eternal circle that it finally became physically repulsive to him. It was just as if a great loathsome spider, from which he could not extricate himself, was softly groping about under his brain. At last he raised his head from the pillows and called out —
“Hainán.”
At that very moment was heard a tremendous crash of something falling and rolling on the floor. It was probably the funnel belonging to the samovar which had dropped. The door was opened hastily and shut again with a loud bang. The servant burst into the room, making as much noise in opening and shutting the door as if we were running away from some one.
“It is I, your Honour,” shrieked Hainán in a fear-stricken voice.
“Has there been any message from Lieutenant Nikoläiev?”
“No, your Excellency,” replied Hainán in the same shrieking tone.
Between the officer and his servant there existed a certain simple, sincere, affectionately familiar relationship. When the question only required the usual stereotyped, official answer, e.g. “Yes, your Excellency,” “No, your Excellency,” etc., then Hainán shrieked the words in the same wooden, soulless, and unnatural way as soldiers always do in the case of their officers, and which, from their first days in the recruit school, becomes ineradicably ingrained in them as long as they live.
Hainán was by birth a Circassian, and by religion an idolater. This latter circumstance gave great satisfaction to Romashov, because among the young officers of the regiment the silly and boyish custom prevailed of training their respective servants to be something unique, or of teaching them certain semi-idiotic answers and phrases.
For instance, when his friends paid him a visit, Viätkin used to say to his orderly, a Moldavian, “Busioskul, have we any champagne in the cellar?” And Busioskul would answer with imperturbable gravity, “No, your Excellency. Last night you were pleased to drink up the last dozen.” Another officer, Sub-lieutenant Epifanov, amused himself by putting to his servant learned and difficult questions which he himself could hardly answer. “Listen, my friend, what are your views on the restoration of the monarchy in France at the present day?” The servant answers, “Your Honour, it will, I think, succeed.” Lieutenant Bobetinski had written down a whole catechism for his flunkey, and the latter trained genius replied frankly and unhesitatingly to the most absurd questions, e.g. “Why is this important for the third?” Answer – “For the third this is not important.” “What is Holy Church’s opinion about it?” Answer – “Holy Church has no opinion about it.” The same servant would declaim, with the quaintest, semi-tragical gestures, Pinen’s rôle in “Boris-Gudunov.” It was also usual and much appreciated to make him express himself in French: “Bong shure, musseur. Bon nuite, moussier. Vulley vous du tay, musseur?” etc. etc., in that style. All these follies naturally arose from the dullness of that little garrison town, and the narrowness of a life from which all interests were excluded except those belonging to the service.
Romashov often talked to Hainán about his gods – about whom the Circassian had only dim and meagre ideas; but it amused him greatly to make Hainán tell the story of how he took the oath of allegiance to the Tsar and Russia – a story well worth hearing now and then. At that time the oath of allegiance was, for the Orthodox, administered by a priest of the Greek Church; for Catholics, by the ksends3;
Roman Catholic priests are so called in Lithuania and Poland.