Upon this day of icy cold, as I write these words, I am afraid that my account may be taken as an extravagant and unjustified conceit. But that I do most honestly believe it not to be. I myself felt, during my two days' stay in that place, the strangest contact with new experiences, new developments, new relationships. Normal life had been left utterly behind and there was nothing to remind one of it save perhaps that "Report on New Mexico" still there on the dusty table. But there was the heat; there were the wheeling, circling clouds of flies, now in lines, now in squares, now broken like smoke, now dim like vapour; there was that old familiar smell of dust and flesh, chemicals and blood; there were the men dying and broken, fighting like giants, defeating fears and terrors that hung like grey shadows about the doors and windows of the house.... Every incident and experience that we had had at the war, every incident and experience that I have related in these pages seemed to be gathered into this house.... As I look back upon it now it seems, without any extravagance at all, the very heart of the fortress of the enemy. I do not mean in the least that life was solemn or pretentious or heavy. It was careless, casual, as liable to the ridiculous intervention of unimportant things as ever it had been; but it was life pressed so close to the fine presence of Fate that you could hear the very beating of his heart. And in this Fortress it seemed to me that I, who was watching, outside the lives of these others, an observer only whom, perhaps, this same Fate despised, asked of God a sign. I saw suddenly here the connexion, for which I had been waiting, between the four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and Trenchard—Two Wise Men and Two Fools—surely the rivalry was ludicrous in its inequality ... and yet God does not judge as men do. Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard? Who would be taken and who left? I recalled Semyonov's jesting words: "Even though it's the wise men succeed in this world I don't doubt it's the fools have their way in the next."
I waited for my Sign....
Last of all I can hear it objected that every one was surely too busy to attend to relationships or shades of relationships. But it was this very thing that contributed to the situation, namely, that, in the very stress of the work, there were hours, many hours, when there was simply nothing to be done. Then if one could not sleep times were bad indeed. Moreover, even in the throng of work itself one would be conscious of that slipping off from one of all the trappings of reality. One by one they would slip away and then, bewildered, one would doubt the evidence of one's eyes, one's brain, one's ears, the fatigue hammering, hammering at one's consciousness.... I have known what that kind of strain can be.
I left on the second morning after my arrival and returned to Mittövo alone.
Trenchard's Diary. Tuesday, August 10. Durward has been here for two days. He's a good fellow but I seem rather to have lost touch with him during these last days. Then he's rather bloodless—a little more humour would cheer him up wonderfully. We've all been in mad spirits to-day as though we were drunk. The battery officers have got a gramophone that we turned on. We danced a bit although it's hot as hell.... Then in the evening my spirits suddenly went; Andrey Vassilievitch gets on one's nerves. His voice is tiresome and I'm tired of his wife. He tells me that he thinks he sees her at night. "Do I think it likely?" Silly little ass—just the way to rot his nerves. Funny thing to-night. We were playing chemin-de-fer. Suddenly Semyonov said:
"Supposing Molozov says that only one of us is to stay on here." There was silence after that. We all four looked at one another. All I knew was nothing was going to move me away from this place if I could help it. Then Semyonov said:
"Of course I would have to stay."
We went for him then. You should have heard Nikitin! I didn't believe that he had it in him. Semyonov was quiet, of course, smiling that beastly smile of his.
Then at last he said:
"Suppose we play for it?"