Short Fiction by Vsevolod Garshin (always you kirsty moseley TXT) 📕

his company. He said something to the men which I did not hear.

“We will try, we will try!” resounded the voices of the men.

I looked at him from below. He was pale, and it seemed to me, sorrowful, but calm. Seeing Ivan Platonich and Stebelkoff, he waved to them with his handkerchief, and then looked towards us as if in search of something. I guessed that he wished to bid me farewell, and I stood up so that he should notice me. Ventzel smiled, nodded his head several times at me, and ordered his men to go up into the fire. The men extended right and left, forming a long line, and were at once lost to sight in the bushes, with the exception of one man, who suddenly bounded forward, threw up his hands, and fell heavily to the ground. Two of ours jumped out of the gully and brought in his body.

There was a torturing half-hour of suspense.

The fight developed. Rifle-fire became more frequent and became one menacing howl. Guns boomed on our right flank. Blood-bespattered men, some walking, some crawling, commenced to appear from out of the bushes. At first only a few, but their numbers increased every moment. Our company assisted them down into the gully, gave them water, and dressed their wounds waiting the arrival of the stretcher-bearers. A rifleman with a shattered wrist, crying out terribly and rolling his eyes, his face pallid from loss of blood and pain, arrived by himself and sat down by the stream. They tied up his arm and placed him on his great coat. The bleeding stopped. He was in a highly feverish state. His lips trembled, and he was sobbing nervously and convulsively.

“Mates, mates!⁠ ⁠… dear comrades!⁠ ⁠…”

“Are many killed?”

“Yes, they are falling.”

“Is the company commander all right?”

“Yes, as yet. But for him we would have been beaten back. We will take it. With him they will take it,” said the wounded man in a weak voice. “Three times he led, and they beat us back. He led for the fourth time. They (the Turks) are sitting in a gully. They have heaps of ammunition, and go on firing and firing.⁠ ⁠… But no!” the wounded man screamed suddenly, rising and waving his injured hand. “You are joking, it cannot be.⁠ ⁠… They must⁠ ⁠…”

Then, rolling his delirious eyes and shouting out the most awful curses, he fell forward senseless.

Lukin appeared on the bank of the gully.

“Ivan Platonich!” he shouted out in an unnatural voice, “Bring them on!”

Smoke, reports, groans, and a mad “hurrah.” A smell of blood and powder.⁠ ⁠… Strange men with pale faces enveloped in smoke.⁠ ⁠… A savage, monstrous, inhuman struggle. Thank God that such moments are remembered only as in a dream, mistily.

When we reached them Ventzel had led the remnant of his company for the fifth time at the Turks, who were raining lead on him. This time the riflemen gained the village. The few Turks still defending it succeeded in getting away. (The second rifle company lost in the two hours’ fighting fifty-two men out of a little over one hundred.) Our company, having taken but little part in the action, lost only a few.

We did not remain on the position we had won, although the Turks had been defeated all along the line. When our General saw battalion after battalion take the road out of the village, when he saw masses of cavalry move off and long lines of guns, he was horrified. It was evident the Turks did not know our strength, concealed by the bushes. Had they known that only fourteen companies in all had driven them out of the deep roads, gullies, and hedges surrounding the village, they would have returned and annihilated us. They were three times as many as ourselves.

By the evening we were back again at our old camp. Ivan Platonich called me in to have some tea.

“Have you seen Ventzel?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Go to him. He is in his tent. Tell him we want him. He is killing himself. ‘Fifty-two! fifty-two!’ is all you can hear. Go to him.”

A thin piece of candle was feebly illuminating Ventzel’s tent. He was crouching in one of the corners with his bowed head resting on some boxes, and sobbing bitterly.

“Make Believe” (That Which Was Not)

One beautiful June day⁠—and it was beautiful because there were twenty-eight degrees Réamur10⁠—one beautiful June day it was hot everywhere, but on a little plot in the garden, where there stood a mound of recently-mown hay, it was still hotter, because this spot was screened from any breeze by a thick, extremely thick, cherry orchard. Almost everything was sleeping. The men and women, having had their midday fill, were lying on their sides busily engaged in that profound meditation which generally follows the noonday meal. The birds were silent; even numbers of the insects were hiding from the heat, and as regards the domestic animals, “it goes without the saying.” The cattle, large and small, were taking refuge under eaves. A dog which had dug a hole under a barn had betaken himself thither, and with half-closed eyes was stretched out, breathing spasmodically, and showing nearly half an arshin11 of crimson tongue. From time to time, no doubt from boredom caused by the stifling heat, he yawned to such an extent as to give little yelps. The pigs, mamma with thirteen children, had gone off to the river, and were lying embedded in greasy black ooze, showing only a row of sniffling, grunting snouts, long dirty backs, and huge flapping ears. Only the hens, fearless of the heat, were endeavouring to kill time by scratching up the dust opposite the kitchen door, in which there was not, as they well knew, even one single tiny grain, and things must have been going very badly with one of the cocks, because from time to time he assumed a ridiculous attitude, and at the top of his voice called