Short Fiction

A Volunteer’s Story

On the twelfth of July, Captain Hlopov entered the low door of my earth-hut. He was wearing epaulettes and carrying a sword, which I had never seen him do before since I had reached the Caucasus.

“I come straight from the colonel’s,” he said in answer to my questioning look. “Tomorrow our battalion is to march.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“To N—— N——. The forces are to assemble there.”

“And from there, I suppose, they will go into action?”

“I expect so.”

“In what direction? What do you think?”

“What’s there to think about? I am telling you what I know! A Tartar galloped here last night and brought orders from the general for the battalion to march with two days’ rations of rusks. But where to? Why, and for how long? We do not ask, my friend; we are told to go—and that’s enough!”

“But if you are to take only two days’ rations of rusks, it proves that the troops won’t be out longer than that.”

“It proves nothing at all!”

“How’s that?” I asked with surprise.

“Because it is so. We went to Dargo, and took one week’s rations of rusks, but we stayed there nearly a month.”

“Can I go with you?” I asked after a pause.

“You could, no doubt. But my advice is, don’t. Why run risks?”

“Oh, but you must allow me not to take your advice. I have been here a whole month, solely on the chance of seeing an action, and you wish me to miss it!”

“Well, if you like! But really you had better stay behind. You could wait for us here, and might go hunting—and we would go our way and it would be splendid,” he said with such conviction that for a moment it really seemed to me too that it would be “splendid.” However, I told him decidedly that nothing would induce me to stay behind.

“And what is there for you to see?” the captain went on, still trying to dissuade me. “Do you want to know what battles are like? Read Mikhaylovsky Danilevsky’s Description of War. It’s a fine book; it gives a detailed account of everything. It gives the position of every corps, and describes how battles are fought.”

“All that does not interest me,” I replied.

“What is it then? Do you simply wish to see how people are killed?—In 1832 we had a fellow here, also a civilian, a Spaniard I think he was. He took part with us in two campaigns, wearing some kind of blue mantle. Well, they did for the fine fellow. You won’t astonish anyone here, friend!”

Humiliating though it was that the captain so misjudged my motives, I did not try to disabuse him.

“Was he brave?” I asked.

“Heaven only knows: he always used to ride in front; and where there was firing, there he always was.”

“Then he must have been brave,” said I.

“No. Pushing oneself in where you are not needed, does not prove you to be brave.”

“Then what do you call brave?”

“Brave?—Brave?—” repeated the captain, with the air of one to whom such a question presents itself for the first time. “He who does what he ought to do is brave,” he said, after thinking awhile.

I remembered that Plato defines courage as “The knowledge of what should and what should not be feared,” and despite the looseness and vagueness of the captain’s definition, I thought that the fundamental ideas of the two were not so different as they might appear, and that the captain’s definition was even more correct than that of the Greek philosopher. For if the captain had been able to express himself like Plato, he would no doubt have said that, “He is brave, who fears only what should be feared and not what should not be feared.”

I wished to explain my idea to the captain.

“Yes,” …