Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/208

182 greater courage to flee than to go forward; for the bullets and the shells are behind, while, as you move ahead, they fly over your head, and when you are close to your enemy, the only question is to break through, i. e., escape danger altogether.

When I hear the signal, I cease to know, to understand what is to be done, to see what I am doing, and yet it seems that I am doing exactly what should be done.

And what I have to do is to run a few steps, lie down, and dig myself in. Then jump up, run a few more steps, lie down again, and again dig myself in as deeply as possible. The little shovel seems to be throwing up the ground of its own accord, the little mound seems to rise up of itself, for my thoughts have nothing to do with war, or with my present occupation; I am thinking about the blue sky, about myself, about everything, except what is going on around me. Of that I must not think.

For I, with all my thoughts, feelings, and fears, and the blue sky I see above me,—all this may die any instant. And then I shall be no more, and the blue sky will cease to exist, and the war, and the little mound that I have just heaped up. And not I alone, but Zverev, and the former lawyer Tomilin, and all others think about this with sinking hearts.

"Oh, may " curses Zverev, as he brushes away with his shovel the bullets that are flying around like flies.

"Why do you swear? Maybe you'll die soon," says Maximov to him.

"Why? Because it makes you feel better. Just see what they're doing there."

"My, what a tongue you've got, Zverev! Can't do without cursing."

"No, I can't; that's the way I was made."

"Well, well, get along, now," breaks in Lozhkin, never missing an opportunity to put in his favorite saying.

And this conversation takes place under a rain of bullets, in the first line of the enemy's trenches that we captured during the night.

We do not know how soon we may be ordered to go into action. Just now artillery is doing its best. In the meantime, we have to remake the captured trenches, "turn them the other way around," as the soldiers say; i. e., remove the earth-bank from one side of the trench to the other.

We are in the midst of a whole labyrinth of trenches. We are in the first line, the cover line, that temporarily shelters the attacking infantry. The trenches are very deep, in places