|
Published
as Avgust chetyrnadtsatogo in Paris in 1971 and translated by Michael
Glenny in 1972: |
| From Chapter 25 |
. .The regiment was fresh; it had been brought
up by rail, there had been no interruptions in its food supply, and it
had suffered practically no casualties during the day’s fighting. The
men were working with a will, as one could tell from the busy, muffled
clink of spades and pickaxes and from the jokes and laughter. |
| . .Savitsky had a clear perception of the weaknesses and dangers of his position. There was no unit to his immediate right, leaving a gap in the line; furthermore, for this vital sector he had been allotted too little artillery: a regiment of light field artillery and, almost as a bad joke, two medium howitzers. The other ten corps howitzers and the complete army heavy-artillery regiment were far away on the left. Artamonov, however, had no time to intervene if he was to complete his tour of the positions that night. Breaking off his conversation with Savitsky and Vorotyntsev, he ordered a platoon to be paraded in front of him—“that one over there from the nearest trench, as they are, in working kit.” (After all, he had once been in charge of the defensive works of Kronstadt!). The platoon put down its tools, clambered out of the trench, and fell into line without arms. Artamonov strode along the ranks. |
| . .“Well, lads—are we going to beat the Germans off?” |
| . .In a mumbled, ragged chorus the men replied that they would. |
| . .“Easy job, eh?” |
| . .They agreed. |
| . .“Your regiment captured Berlin in 1813, and for that battle honour you have a set of silver trumpets! You there,” he asked a broad-shouldered private. “What’s your name?” |
| . .“Agafon, your ex’ency,” the man replied promptly and smartly. |
| . .“Which Agafon? When’s your name day?” |
| . .“The Threshing Floor, your ex’ency,“ answered the soldier, unabashed. |
| . .“Fool! Threshing Floor indeed! Why threshing floor?” |
| . .“Because it’s the autumn one, your ex’ency! That’s when we bring the stooks in from the fields, and start threshing.”* |
| . .“You fool, you should know all about your saint—who he was and what he did. And you should pray to him before battle. Have you read the lives of the saints?” |
| . .“I, er . . . yes, your ex’ency . . .” |
| . .“Your saint’s your guardian angel, you see. He keeps you and protects you. And you don’t know anything about him. When’s the patronal feast in your village, then? Or don’t you know that either?” |
| . .“I know it, your ex’ency! It’s around the time of Mary Minor Day.” |
| . .“And what is Mary Minor Day?” |
| . .“Agafon faltered, but from behind him came a shout from another soldier, who from his way of speaking was obviously literate. “The Nativity of the Most Pure Mother of God, your excellency!” |
| . .“Well then, pray to the Mother of God while there’s life in you,” said Artamonov with finality. Bypassing the third man in the rank, he asked the same question of the fourth soldier, who turned out to be named after St. Methodius the Quail Hunter† and knew nothing of the life of his saint either. |
| . .“But at least you’re all wearing crosses?” |
| . .“Of course! Every one of us!” Holy Russia answered him as one man, even sounding offended that he should ask such a question. |
| . .“Well, then—pray! The enemy will start bombarding us in the morning—so if I were you, I should pray!” |
| . .It might have occurred to Vorotyntsev that this performance had been staged for his benefit, but this was not so: Artamonov always behaved like that. It was impossible to tell whether he did it out of genuine conviction or because, having served for so long in the Petersburg Military District, he knew how much it pleased the grand-duke to see an icon lamp burning in every soldier’s tent. One learned nothing from his face on these occasions: his features were a smooth, solid wall, his nose was like a false door handle which opened nothing, and his eyes were equally blank. |
| . .Looking up at the sky, he crossed himself. Just as it was his habit to rush headlong from left to right of his corps, so he crossed himself with a hurried, sweeping gesture, tapping his forehead and chest and ending with a violent movement to his left shoulder as though brushing off a gadfly. Then he made the sign of the cross over Savitsky and embraced him, saying: “God bless you! God bless your Vyborg regiment!” He might have given the regiment its full title, though that would scarcely have been appropriate, since it was “His Imperial and Royal Majesty Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia’s Own Regiment.” The title had now fallen out of use and a new one had not been devised. |
 |
| Note that some of his characters are real, and some fictitious: | ||
| Historical Figures | ||
| Hermann von François | ||
| Paul von Rennenkampf | ||
| Maximillian von Prittwitz | ||
| Alexandr Samsonov | ||
| Paul von Hindenburg | ||
| Erich Ludendorff | ||
| Alfred von Schlieffen | ||
| August von Mackensen | ||
| Fictional Characters | ||
| Vortyntsev | ||
| Savitsky | ||
| Agafon | ||
| Artamov | ||
| Other notes: | |
| * | In pre-revolutionary rural Russia, the peasant’s life was regulated by the Orthodox Church calendar; generally the peasants did not know the times of the year by month and date but simply by saints’ days, many of which marked the start or finish of phases of work in the farming cycle. Since there were often three or four saints of the same name, they were given extra distinguishing names or nicknames. There are three Saint Agafons in the Orthodox calendar; the feast of this man’s patron saint—St. Agafon Ogumennik (ogumennik = threshing floor)—was August 28. Because the Orthodox Church used (and still uses) the Julian calendar, which in the twentieth century is thirteen days behind the Western (Gregorian) calendar, the equivalent date of St. Agafon’s feast day is September 10. By this date the harvest was in full swing and the sheaves of grain were being taken to be threshed on the village’s communal threshing floor. |
| † | This saint’s feast day in June 20, O.S. (July 3, N.S.). |
