XVIII
ONE day towards the end of May, a young soldier belonging to Captain Osadchi’s company hanged himself. Curiously enough, this suicide happened on the same date as a similar dreadful event in the previous year, and that, too, in Osadchi’s company.
About this time drinking-bouts were arranged in the regiment. These, in spite of their quasi-official character, were not one whit inferior in coarseness to the regular and more private gatherings inter pocula. It is highly probable that such stimulating entertainments were felt a special necessity when men, who have been tied to one another by fate, through a soul-destructive inactivity or senseless cruelty towards their kind, have chanced to look somewhat more deeply into each other’s hearts, and then—in spite of prejudices, unscrupulousness, and spiritual darkness—suddenly realize in what a bottomless pit of darkness they all are. In order to deaden the pangs of conscience and remorse at a life ruined and thrown away, all their insidious, brutish instincts have to be let loose at once and all their passions satisfied.
Shortly after the suicide in question, a similar crisis occurred among the officers. Osadchi, as might be expected, became the instigator and high-priest of the orgies. In the course of several days he organized in the mess, games of hazard more recklessly than ever, during which fearful quantities of spirit were consumed. Strangely enough, this wild beast in human form soon managed to entice pretty nearly all the officers of his regiment into a whirl of mad dissipations. And during all these carousals Osadchi, with unparalleled cynicism, insolence, and heartlessness, tried to provoke expressions of disapproval and opposition, by invoking all the powers of the nether-world to insult the name and memory of the unhappy man who had taken his own life.
It was about 6 p.m., Romashov was sitting at his window with his legs resting on the window-sill, and whistling softly a waltz out of Faust. The sparrows and magpies were making a noise and laughing at each other in the garden. It was not yet evening, but the shadows beneath the trees grew longer and fainter.
Suddenly a powerful voice was heard outside singing, not without a certain spirit, but out of tune—
“The chargers are champing, snorting, and neighing.
The foam-covered bridle still holds them in sway.”
Immediately afterwards the door was flung wide open, and Viätkin rolled into Romashov’s room with a loud peal of laughter. Although it was all he could do to stand on his legs, he kept on singing—
“Matrons and maidens with sorrowful glances
Watch till their hero is lost to their sight.”
Viätkin was still completely intoxicated from the libations of the preceding day, and his eyelids were red and swollen from a night without sleep. His hat was half off his head, and his long, waxed moustache hung down like the tusks of a walrus.