“And Lukáshka, will he recover?” asked Olénin.
“Heaven only knows! There’s no doctor. They’ve gone for one.”
“Where will they get one? From Gróznoe?” asked Olénin.
“No, my lad. Were I the Tsar I’d have hung all your Russian doctors long ago. Cutting is all they know! There’s our Cossack Bakláshka, no longer a real man now that they’ve cut off his leg! That shows they’re fools. What’s Bakláshka good for now? No, my lad, in the mountains there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vórchik, he was on an expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well, your doctors gave him up, but one of theirs came from the mountains and cured him! They understand herbs, my lad!”
“Come, stop talking rubbish,” said Olénin. “I’d better send a doctor from head-quarters.”
“Rubbish!” the old man said mockingly. “Fool, fool! Rubbish. You’ll send a doctor!—If yours cured people, Cossacks and Chéchens would go to you for treatment, but as it is your officers and colonels send to the mountains for doctors. Yours are all humbugs, all humbugs.”
Olénin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was humbug in the world in which he had lived and to which he was now returning.
“How is Lukáshka? You’ve been to see him?” he asked.
“He just lies as if he were dead. He does not eat nor drink. Vodka is the only thing his soul accepts. But as long as he drinks vodka it’s well. I’d be sorry to lose the lad. A fine lad—a brave, like me. I too lay dying like that once. The old women were already wailing. My head was burning. They had already laid me out under the holy icons. So I lay there, and above me on the oven little drummers, no bigger than this, beat the tattoo. I shout at them and they drum all the harder.” (The old man laughed.) “The women brought our church elder. They were getting ready to bury me. They said, ‘He defiled himself with worldly unbelievers; he made merry with women; he ruined people; he did not fast, and he played the balaláyka. Confess,’ they said. So I began to confess. ‘I’ve sinned!’ I said. Whatever the priest said, I always answered ‘I’ve sinned.’ He began to ask me about the balaláyka. ‘Where is the accursed thing,’ he says. ‘Show it me and smash it.’ But I say, ‘I’ve not got it.’ I’d hidden it myself in a net in the outhouse. I knew they could not find it. So they left me. Yet after all I recovered. When I went for my balaláyka—What was I saying?” he continued. “Listen to me, and keep farther away from the other men or you’ll get killed foolishly. I feel for you, truly: you are a drinker—I love you! And fellows like you like riding up the mounds. There was one who lived here who had come from Russia, he always would ride up the mounds (he called the mounds so funnily, ‘hillocks’). Whenever he saw a mound, off he’d gallop. Once he galloped off that way and rode to the top quite pleased, but a Chéchen fired at him and killed him! Ah, how well they shoot from their gun-rests, those Chéchens! Some of them shoot even better than I do. I don’t like it when a fellow gets killed so foolishly! Sometimes I used to look at your soldiers and wonder at them. There’s foolishness for you! They go, the poor fellows, all in a clump, and even sew red collars to their coats! How can they help being hit! One gets killed, they drag him away and another takes his place! What foolishness!” the old man repeated, shaking his head. “Why not scatter, and go one by one? So you just go like that and they won’t notice you. That’s what you must do.”
“Well, thank you! Good-bye, Daddy. God willing we may meet again,” said Olénin, getting up and moving towards the passage.