I am lying now in complete exhaustion. The sun is scorching my face and hands. There is nothing to cover oneself with. If only night would come! I think this will be the second night.
My thoughts wander, and I am losing consciousness.
I must have slept a long time, because when I awoke it was already night. As before, the wounds ache, and my neighbor lies beside me—the same huge, motionless figure.
I cannot help thinking of him. Have I really left behind me all that is pleasant and dear to me, and marched here at the speed of four versts an hour, hungered, froze, suffered from the heat, only to undergo this final torture—for no other reason than that this unfortunate should cease to live? And have I really accomplished anything useful for my country except this murder?
This is murder—and I am a murderer.
When I first got the idea into my head to go and fight, Mother and Masha did not try to dissuade me, although they both wept much. Blinded by my idea, I did not understand those tears. Only now I understand what I have done to those so near to me.
Why recall all this? There is no returning to the past.
And what a singular attitude my acquaintances assumed towards my action! “What a madman! He is meddling without knowing why!” How could they say that? How could they reconcile their words with their ideas of heroism, love of mother country, and other such things? Surely I earned their admiration for living up to these virtues. Yet I am a “madman.”
Presently I am on my way to Kishinev; I am supplied with a knapsack and all the other military accoutrements. I go with thousands of others; among them a few, like myself, are volunteers. The rest would have preferred to remain at home, if they were permitted. Nevertheless, they go along just like we “conscious ones,” march thousands of versts, and fight as well as ourselves, or even better. They fulfil their obligations notwithstanding the fact that they would on the instant drop everything and go home if permission were given them.