"What's a man nowadays—an army coat and a rifle, is that all?
Oh, no it isn't! I want... God knows what I want....
I don't know myself.... I ask myself—is it a pile of money?
No.
The human being in me suffers.... Especially now—when we have a revolution, a civil war.
My feet are sore, I suffer from cold, from my wounds—and all out of class consciousness, for my own class. In March I had to lie half the day in an ice-hole, under machine-gun fire all the time.... That makes me a hero as regards the front, doesn't it?
But in my own eyes—on the quiet— who am I?
A main half crazy with drink, angry with the world and himself; pulling a knife out of his boot top...."
Mishka once again straightened himself, inhaling, the freshness of the night.
His face looked sad, almost feminine.
His hands were thrust deep in his greatcoat pockets, and he seemed now to be addressing, not Katya, but some shade floating before him.
"Education... I know all about that... my mind is like a savage's....
My children will get education.
But I'll always be what I am now—a bad lot. That's my fate.... They write books about intellectuals.
Oh, what a lot of fine words!
Why doesn't anybody write a book about me?
D'you think only an intellectual can go mad?
I hear shrieks in my sleep.... I wake up, ready to kill all over again...."
Horsemen came galloping out of the darkness, shouting from far away:
"Halt! Halt!" Mishka seized his rifle in his hands.
"Halt your....
Don't you know your own people?"
Leaving Katya's side, he went up to the horsemen and held a long consultation with them.
The prisoners stood about, whispering anxiously to one another.
Katya sat down on the ground, dropping her face on to her knees.
From the east, where the dawn was turning a lighter green, came a whiff of damp air, laden with the smoke of burning dung, the immemorial smell of steppe villages.
The stars of this endless night began to pale and disappear.
Katya had to get up and go on again.
Soon the barking of dogs could be heard, and strawricks, well-sweeps, and the roofs of the village, came into sight.
The sleeping geese looked like patches of snow on the fields.
The rosy dawn was reflected on (the flat surface of the lake.
Mishka strode on, frowning.
"Don't go with the rest, I'll look after you myself."
"All right," replied Katya. His voice seemed to reach her from a great distance.
She did not care where she went, so long as she could lie down and sleep....
Through half-shut lids she made out tall sunflowers against a background of green shutters, on which were painted flowers and birds.
Mishka tapped with his nails on the flawed glass of the window.
A door in the white wall of the hut opened slowly and the tousled head of a peasant peeped out.
The ends of his moustache moved upwards as he bared his teeth in a yawn.
"You can come in, if you like," he said.
Katya staggered into the hut, which rang with the alarmed buzzing of flies.
The peasant took a sheepskin coat and pillow from behind a partition wall.
"Sleep," he said, and went away.
The next thing Katya knew she was on a bed behind the partition.
It seemed to her that Mishka was bending over her, settling the pillow under her head.
Then she sank blissfully into oblivion.
The sound of wheels penetrated her dreams.
They clattered on and on.
Innumerable carriages rolled by.
And the sun was reflected back on them by the windows of towering buildings.