They had already oiled their boots and rifle-locks with it.
'What's that you've got?' I asked.
'It's some sort of oil, sir. We put some of it in our gruel but it's no good — rasps the tongue — but it smells all right.'
I gave them a ruble and they gladly let me have it.
The bottle was no more than half-full, but considering the high price of the stuff it would fetch at least two hundred rubles.
The soldiers were quite content, and they said,
'Here's another thing, sir. Peas of some kind. We tried hard to boil them, but the accursed stuff won't get soft.'
It was coffee-beans, so I told them,
'That's only good for the Turks — it's of no use to soldiers.'
Fortunately they hadn't eaten any opium.
In some places I had seen opium tablets trampled into the mud."
"Tell us frankly, Grandad," said Anna, "did you ever know fear in battle?
Were you afraid?"
"How strangely you talk, Anna.
Of course I was afraid.
Please don't believe those who say they weren't afraid and think the whizzing of bullets the sweetest music on earth.
Only cranks or braggarts can talk like that.
Everybody's afraid, only some shake in their boots with fear, while others keep themselves in hand.
And though fear always remains the same, the ability to keep cool improves with practice; hence all the heroes and brave men.
That's how it is.
But once I was frightened almost to death."
"Tell us about it, Grandad," both sisters begged in unison.
They still listened to Anosov's stories with the same rapture as in their early childhood.
Anna had spread out her elbows on the table quite like a child, propping her chin on her cupped hands.
There was a sort of cosy charm about his unhurried, simple narrative.
The somewhat bookish words and figures of speech which he used in telling his war memories sounded strange and clumsy.
You would have thought he was imitating some nice ancient story-teller.
"It's a very short story," he responded. "It happened at Shipka in winter, after I was shell-shocked.
There were four of us in our dug-out.
That was when something terrible befell me.
One morning when I rose from bed, I fancied I was Nikolai and not Yakov, and I couldn't undeceive myself, much as I tried.
Sensing that my mind was becoming deranged, I shouted for some water to be brought to me, wet my head with it, and recovered my reason."
"I can imagine how many victories you won over women there, Yakov Mikhailovich," said Jennie Reiter, the pianist. "You must have been very handsome in your youth."
"Oh, but our Grandad is handsome - even now!" cried Anna.
"I wasn't handsome," said Anosov, with a calm smile. "But I wasn't shunned, either.
There was a moving incident in Bucharest.
When we marched into the city, the people welcomed us in the main square with gunfire, which damaged many windows; but where water had been placed in glasses the windows were unharmed.
This is how I learned that.
Coming to the lodgings assigned to me, I saw on the window-sill a low cage and on the cage a large cut-glass bottle with clear water that had goldfish swimming in it, and a canary perched among them.
A canary in water! I was greatly surprised, but inspecting it I saw that the bottle had a broad bottom with a deep hollow in it, so that the canary could easily fly in and perch there.
"I walked into the house and saw a very pretty Bulgarian girl.
I showed her my admission slip and took the opportunity to ask her why the panes in the house were undamaged after the gunfire, and she told me it was because of the water.
She also told me about the canary; how dull-witted I had been!
While we were talking, our eyes met, a spark flew between us like electricity, and I felt that I had fallen headlong in love — passionately and irrevocably."
The old man paused and slowly sipped the black wine.
"But you confessed it to her afterwards, didn't you?" asked the pianist.
"Well, yes, of course.
But I did it without words.
This is how it came about — "
"I hope you won't make us blush, Grandad?" Anna remarked, smiling slyly.