Where shall I go?”
Nasanski looked at him with a gentle smile.
“Listen, Romashov, and look me straight in the face—that’s right.
No, don’t turn away, look at me, and answer on your honour and conscience.
Do you really think that you are now serving any good, useful, and reasonable purposes?
I know you much better than all the rest—yes, I know your inmost soul, and I know you do not think so.”
“No,” replied Romashov, in a firm voice, “you are right.
But what will become of me?”
“Well, be calm.
Only look at our officers.
Oh, I’m not talking now of the fops of the Emperor’s lifeguards who dance at the Court balls, talk French, and are kept by their parents or by their more or less lawful wives.
No, I’m thinking of ourselves—poor officers in the line who, nevertheless, constitute the very ‘pick’ of the irresistible and glorious Russian Army. What are we?
Well, mere fag-ends—le beau reste, despised pariahs; at best the sons of poor, poverty-stricken infantry Captains, ruined in body and soul, but for, by far, the most part consisting of collegians, seminarists, etc., who have failed.
Look, for instance, at our regiment.
What are they who remain for any time in the service?
Poor devils burdened with large families, veritable beggars ready for every villainy and cruelty—ah, even for murder—and are not even ashamed of abstracting the poor soldier’s scanty pay so that, at any rate, cabbage soup may not be lacking on their table at home.
Such an individual is commanded to shoot. Whom? And for what?
It is all the same to him.
He only knows that at home there are hungry mouths, dirty, scrofulous, rickety children, and with dull countenance he splutters, like another woodpecker, his eternal, unvarying answer,
‘My oath.’
And if there’s a spark of ability or talent in any one, it is extinguished in schnapps.
Seventy-five per cent. of our officers are diseased through vice.
If any one in the regiment happens to scrape through his entrance examination for the Staff College—which, by the way, hardly happens with us once in five years—he is pursued by hatred.
The most servile and fawning individuals, or those who have managed to obtain a little patronage, as a rule, get into the police or gendarmes.
Should they have in their veins a few drops of noble blood, they may perhaps get a circuit-judgeship in the country.
Let us suppose that a man of education, fine feeling, and heart is forced to remain in the regiment. What do you suppose is his fate?
To him the service is an intolerable yoke and a perpetual source of humiliation, suffering, and self-contempt.
Every one tries to procure an occupation of another sort which soon entirely engrosses him.
One is seized with a mania for collecting; another watches impatiently for the evening so that he may, with great trouble and waste of time, embroider small crosses and other gewgaws for an absolutely unnecessary ornamental mat. A third fills his life by the help of a little metal saw, and produces at last an exquisite, perforated frame for his own portrait.
And the thought of all this absurd and worthless work secretly occupies their minds during the insufferable hours of drill.
Cards, drinking-bouts, disgusting swagger about the favours women have bestowed on them—all this I might be able to pass over in silence.
The most repulsive thing, however, is the cruel eagerness, conspicuous in so many officers, to gain a name as martinets and brutes to their men, as, for instance, Osadchi and Company, who with impunity knock out the teeth and eyes of their young recruits.
Perhaps you are not aware that Artschakovski so maltreated his servant in my presence that it was all I could do to help the victim away alive.
Blood splashed over the floor and walls.
Well, how do you think the affair ended?
You shall hear. The soldier complained to the Captain of his company; the latter sent him with a sealed order to the pay-sergeant, who, in strict obedience to his superior’s orders, further belaboured with his fists the soldier’s swollen and bleeding face for the space of half an hour.
The same soldier complained twice at the General Inspection, but without redress.”
Nasanski stopped and began nervously rubbing his temples with the palm of his hand.
“Wait,” he went on to say. “Ah, how one’s thoughts fly!
Isn’t it an unpleasant sensation to know that our thoughts lead us, and not we our thoughts? Well, to resume what we were talking about.
Among our senior remaining officers we have also other types, for instance, Captain Plavski.
On his petroleum stove he cooks his own beastly food, goes about in rags, and, out of his monthly forty-eight roubles twelve times a year, he puts twenty-five in the bank, where he has a sum of 2,000 roubles on deposit, which he lends to his brother officers at an outrageously usurious rate of interest.
And you think, perhaps, that this is innate or inherited greed?
Certainly not; it is only a means of filling up the soul-destroying hours of garrison service. Then we have Captain Stelikovski, a strong, able, talented man.
Of what does his life consist?
Oh, in seducing young, inexperienced peasant girls.
Finally, our famous oddity, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Brehm.’
A good-natured, kindly ass—a thoroughly good fellow, who has but one interest in life—the care of his animals.
What to him signify the service, the colours, the parades, censures of his superiors, or the honour of the warrior?
Less than nothing.”