His thoughts touched upon the idea of suicide. The army, of which he had been the sole commander, was melting like tin soldiers thrown into a stove.
But this dull, fearless man was as obstinate as a bull.
About a score of wounded officers sat in the burning sun on the church steps in the village of Elizavetinskaya.
The sound of cannon fire, now louder, now softer, came from the east.
But here, pigeons were rising into the cloudless sky above the shell-shattered belfry.
The square in front of the church was empty.
The huts with their broken windows were abandoned.
A half-buried corpse, covered with flies, lay beside the Wattle fence, where the buds were bursting on the lilac bushes.
A subdued conversation was going on on the church steps.
"I had a sweetheart, a lovely girl, a darling. I can just see her, in her pink, frilly dress.
Where she is now, I don't know."
"Love.... It seems incredible.... And how one longs for the old life.... Clean women, oneself well dressed, sitting quietly in a restaurant. Ah, how good it was, gentlemen...."
"The little Bolshevik is stinking.
It is time he was buried."
"The flies will eat him up."
"Sh! Listen, gentlemen! Hurricane fire again."
"It's the end, believe me! Our chaps are in the town already!"
Silence.
All turned, looking towards the east, where a greyish yellow cloud of smoke and dust hung over Ekaterinodar.
A red-haired officer, thin as a skeleton, hobbled up and sat down beside them.
"Valka's just died..." he said. "He kept crying:
'Mamma, Mamma, can you hear me?'"
A harsh voice came from the top of the steps:
"Love!
Girls in frilly dresses.... R-r-rubbish!
Camp-fire talk!
My wife was prettier than your sweetheart with her frills... and I sent her to..." (he snorted angrily). "And it's all a pack of lies, you never had any sweetheart. A revolver in your jacket, a sword at your side—that's your entire family and belongings."
Roshchin, on sentry duty in front of the church, halted in his pacing to and fro to gaze steadily at the speaker, a blond fellow with a boyish face and snub nose, harsh lines on either side of his mouth, heavy, old-looking, clouded blue eyes, the eyes of a sleepless murderer.
Roshchin leaned on his rifle—his leg still ached—and importunate thoughts besieged him.
The memory of the forsaken Katya returned with a rush of pity.
He pressed his forehead against the cold steel of the bayonet.
"Enough! This is weakness,—it's not what's wanted...." Giving himself a shake he strode on again over the fresh green grass.
"These are no times for pity or for love...."
A stocky, frowning individual stood beside a shell-shattered brick wall, looking through field glasses.
His smart leather jacket, leather breeches, and soft Cossack riding boots, were bespattered with dried mud.
Every now and then a bullet struck the brick wall beside him with a click.
Below him,-about a hundred paces away, were a battery, and piles of green munition cases.
Some horses which had just been led up to the wall stood with their heads hanging down, dropping steaming excrements.
The gun crew perched laughing and smoking on a gun carriage, glanced every now and then towards the commander with the field glasses.
Almost all the men were sailors, with the exception of three ragged and bearded artillerymen who had got among them.
The horizon, the lines of trenches, folds in the earth, orchards, were veiled in smoke and dust.
Whatever it was that the commander saw, kept appearing and reappearing in his field of vision.
A copper-coloured sailor, clad in a vest and trousers, came out of the house in front of which the commander was standing, slunk catlike along the wall, and squatted down at the feet of the stocky man, embracing his knees with strong, tattooed arms.
"See those two trees right on the bank?" he asked, screwing up his amber, hawklike eyes.
"Well?"
"There's a little house just behind them, you can see its white walls."
"Well?"
"It's a farm."
"I know."
"And to the right, there's a grove.