The entire picture now comes to mind. It happened long ago; in fact, everything, all my life, that life, before I lay here with wounded legs, seems to have been such a long time ago.... I remember strolling along the street. Seeing a crowd of people, I stopped. The crowd stood and silently looked upon something white, bloody, piteously whining. It was a handsome little dog which had been run over by a tram-car. It was dying, as I am now. A house-porter made his way through the crowd, picked the dog up by the collar, and carried it away. The crowd dispersed.
Will some one carry me away? No, you lie here and die. But how good it is to live!... Upon that particular day—when the little dog met misfortune—I was happy. I was walking along in a kind of intoxication; and there was good cause. Oh, my memories, don’t torture me, leave me! My past was happiness; my present is agony.... If only my sufferings alone remained, and my memories ceased to torture me—for they compel comparisons. Ah, longings, longings! You are wounded worse.
It is becoming hot. The sun is scorching me. I open my eyes, see the same bushes, the same sky—only, in the light of day. And here, too, is my neighbor. Yes, it is the Turk—his body. What a huge fellow! I recognize him—it is the very same one.
Before my eyes lies a man I have killed. Why have I killed him?
He lies here dead, blood-stained. What fate brought him here? Who is he? Perhaps, like myself, he has an old mother. Long will she sit evenings at the door of her wretched hut, looking ever towards the north: is he coming home, he, her beloved son, her protector and provider?...
And I? Yes, I also.... I would even change places with him. How happy he is! He hears nothing; neither does he feel pain from wounds, nor terrible longing, nor thirst.... The bayonet entered his very heart.... There is a large black hole in his uniform, and blood all around it. That is my work.
I did not wish to do it. I did not wish to harm any one when I volunteered. The thought that I too should have to kill somehow escaped me. I only imagined how I would expose my own breast to bullets. And I did expose it.
Well, and what has it come to? Fool, fool! This unfortunate fellah, in Egyptian uniform, he is even less to blame than you are. Before he and others were packed, like herrings in a barrel, into a steamer and brought to Constantinople, he had not even heard of Russia or of Bulgaria. He was commanded to go, and he went. Had he refused to go, he would have been beaten with sticks, and perhaps some Pasha or other would have fired a bullet into him. It was a long, difficult march for him from Stamboul to Rustchuk. We attacked, he defended himself. Seeing, however, that we were a fearless people, and that, unafraid of his English carbine, we rushed forward and still moved forward, he was seized with terror. Just as he was trying to get away, some sort of little man, whom he could have killed with one blow of his dark fist, ran forward and plunged a bayonet into his heart.
Of what had he been guilty?
And of what am I guilty, even though I have killed him? Of what am I guilty? Why am I tortured by thirst? Thirst! Who knows the meaning of this word? Even during the days when we marched through Roumania, fifty versts at a stretch, through unbearable heat, I did not feel what I feel now. If only some one came along this way!