“What is the meaning of this? Call the mess-sergeant.”
The mess-sergeant came, and began to justify himself in a bewildered manner; he had sent in a request that morning for two pouds of bread. The head of the Commissariat had endorsed it “to be issued,” but the clerk, Fedotov, a member of the Commissariat Committee, had endorsed it in his turn “not to be issued.” So the storehouse would not issue any bread.
No one made any objection, so painfully ashamed was everyone both of the mess-sergeant and of those depths of inanity which had suddenly broken into their life and swamped it with a grey, filthy slime. Only Yassny’s bass voice rang out distinctly under the arches of the mess-room:
“What swine!”
Albov was just preparing for a nap after dinner when the flap of his tent was lifted, and through the aperture appeared the bald head of the Chief of the Commissariat—a quiet, elderly Colonel, who had joined the Army again from the retired list.
“May I come in?”
“I beg your pardon, Colonel.”
“Never mind, my dear fellow, don’t get up. I have just come in for a second. You see, to-day at six o’clock there is to be a regimental meeting. It will hear the Report of the Committee for verifying the Commissariat, and apparently they will go for me. I am no speech-maker, but you are a master of it. Take my part, should it be necessary.”
“Certainly. I did not intend going, but once it is necessary, I shall be there.”
“Thank you, then, my dear fellow.”