“We’ll manage that in a minute.”
smoking in ambush was forbidden, but this ambush hardly deserved the name. It was rather an outpost to prevent the mountaineers from bringing up a cannon unobserved and firing at the fort as they used to. Panov did not consider it necessary to forego the pleasure of smoking, and therefore accepted the cheerful soldier’s offer. the latter took a knife from his pocket and made a small round hole in the ground.
Having smoothed it, he adjusted the pipe stem to it, then filled the hole with tobacco and pressed it down, and the pipe was ready.
A sulphur match flared and for a moment lit up the broadcheeked face of the soldier who lay on his stomach, the air whistled in the stem, and Panov smelt the pleasant odor of burning tobacco.
“Fixed ut up?” said he, rising to his feet.
“Why, of course!”
“What a smart chap you are, Avdeev! . . .
As wise as a judge!
Now then, lad.”
Avdeev rolled over on his side to make room for Panov, letting smoke escape from his mouth. Panov lay down prone, and after wiping the mouthpiece with his sleeve, began to inhale.
When they had had their smoke the soldiers began to talk.
“They say the commander has had his fingers in the cashbox again,” remarked one of them in a lazy voice. “He lost at cards, you see.”
“He’ll pay it back again,” said Panov.
“Of course he will! He’s a good officer,” assented Avdeev.
“Good! good!” gloomily repeated the man who had started the conversation. “In my opinion the company ought to speak to him. ‘If you’ve taken the money, tell us how much and when you’ll repay it.’”
“That will be as the company decides,” said Panov, tearing himself away from the pipe.
“Of course. ‘The community is a strong man,’” assented Avdeev, quoting a proverb.
“There will be oats to buy and boots to get towards spring. the money will be wanted, and what shall we do if he’s pocketed it?” insisted the dissatisfied one.
“I tell you it will be as the company wishes,” repeated Panov.
“It’s not the first time; he takes it and gives it back.”
In the Caucasus in those days each company chose men to manage its own commissariat. they received 6 rubles 50 kopeks a month per man from the treasury, and catered for the company. They planted cabbages, made hay, had their own carts, and prided themselves on their well-fed horses.
The company’s money was kept in a chest of which the commander had the key, and it often happened that he borrowed from the chest.
This had just happened again, and the soldiers were talking about it.
The morose soldier, Nikitin, wished to demand an account from the commander, while Panov and Avdeev considered that unnecessary.
After Panov, Nikitin had a smoke, and then spreading his cloak on the ground sat down on it leaning against the trunk of the plane tree.
The soldiers were silent.
Far above their heads the crowns of the trees rustled in the wind and suddenly, above this incessant low rustling, rose the howling, whining, weeping and chuckling of jackals.
“Just listen to those accursed creatures — how they caterwaul!”
“They’re laughing at you because your mouth’s all on one side,” remarked the high voice of the third soldier, an Ukrainian.
All was silent again, except for the wind that swayed the branches, now revealing and now hiding the stars.
“I say, Panov,” suddenly asked the cheerful Avdeev, “do you ever feel dull?”
“Dull, why?” replied Panov reluctantly.
“Well, I do. . . . I feel so dull sometimes that I don’t know what I might not be ready to do to myself.”
“There now!” was all Panov replied.
“That time when I drank all the money it was from dullness.
It took hold of me . . . took hold of me till I thought to myself,
‘I’ll just get blind drunk!’”
“But sometimes drinking makes it still worse.”
“Yes, that’s happened to me too.
But what is a man to do with himself?”
“But what makes you feel so dull?”
“What, me? . . .
Why, it’s the longing for home.”
“Is yours a wealthy home then?”
“No; we weren’t wealthy, but things went properly — we lived well.”
And Avdeev began to relate what he had already told Panov many times.
“You see, I went as a soldier of my own free will, instead of my brother,” he said.
“He has children.
They were five in family and I had only just married.
Mother began begging me to go.