“What is that?”
In the green field, among the barbed wire, a regular bazaar was going on. A group of Germans and of our men were bartering vodka, tobacco, lard, bread. Some way off a German officer reclined on the grass—red-faced, sturdy, with an arrogant look on his face—and carried on a conversation with a soldier named Soloveytchick; and, strange to say, the familiar and insolent Soloveytchick stood before the Lieutenant respectfully.
The Colonel pushed the observer aside and, taking his rifle from him, put it through the loop-hole. A murmur was heard among the soldiers. They began to ask him not to shoot. One of them, in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, remarked:
“This is provocation.”
The Colonel, crimson with fury, turned to him for a moment and shouted:
“Silence!”
All grew silent and pressed to the loop-hole. A shot was heard, and the German officer convulsively stretched himself out and was still; blood was running from his head. The haggling soldiers scattered.
The Colonel threw the rifle down and, muttering through his teeth “Scoundrels!” strode further along the trenches. The “truce” was infringed.
The Lieutenant went off to his hut. His heart was sad and empty. He was oppressed by the realisation of his unwantedness and uselessness in these absurd surroundings, which perverted the whole meaning of that service to his country, which alone justified all his grave troubles and the death which might perhaps be near. He threw himself on his bed, where he lay for an hour, for two hours, striving to think of nothing, to forget himself.
But from beyond the mud wall, where the shelter lay, there crept someone’s muffled voice, which seemed to wrap his brain in a filthy fog: