The Kiss

On the 20th of May, at eight o’clock in the evening, all six batteries of the N—— Reserve Artillery Brigade, on their way to camp, stopped for the night in the village of Mestechki. In the very thick of the confusion, while some officers were busy around the guns and others, gathered in the square by the churchyard fence, were listening to the billeting officers, a horseman in civilian dress, mounted on a strange horse, appeared from behind the church. The horse was small and dun-colored, with a handsome neck and a short tail, and it did not go straight but somehow sideways, making little dancing movements with its legs, as if someone were striking it on the legs with a whip. Riding up to the officers, the horseman raised his hat and said:

"His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbeck, the landowner here, invites the gentlemen officers to come to him this very minute for tea..."

The horse bowed, danced, and backed sideways; the horseman raised his hat once more and, in an instant, vanished behind the church together with his strange horse.

"The devil knows what’s going on!" some of the officers grumbled, dispersing to their quarters. "One wants to sleep, and here’s this von Rabbeck with his tea! We know what kind of tea that is!"

The officers of all six batteries vividly recalled an incident from the previous year, when, during maneuvers, they, along with the officers of a certain Cossack regiment, had in just the same way been invited to tea by a landowner, a count, a retired military man; the hospitable and cordial count had made much of them, fed them, given them drink, and would not let them go to quarters in the village, but kept them for the night at his own house. All this, of course, was very well, one could wish for nothing better, but the trouble was that the retired military man had rejoiced in the young men’s company beyond all measure. Till dawn he had told the officers episodes from his glorious past, led them through the rooms, shown them costly paintings, old engravings, rare weapons, read them genuine letters from highly placed persons, while the exhausted, weary officers listened, looked, and, longing for their beds, yawned cautiously into their sleeves; when at last their host let them go, it was too late to sleep.

Might not this von Rabbeck be just such another? Whether he was or was not, there was nothing to be done. The officers spruced themselves up, brushed off the dust, and set off in a crowd to look for the manor house. In the square, by the church, they were told that one could reach the gentry’s house by the low road — going behind the church down to the river and following the bank all the way to the garden, where the avenues would lead one where one needed — or on horseback, straight from the church along the road, which, half a verst from the village, ran into the manor’s granaries. The officers decided to go on horseback.

"Which von Rabbeck is this, I wonder?" they discussed along the way. "Isn’t he the one who commanded the N—— Cavalry Division at Plevna?"

"No, that one wasn’t von Rabbeck, just plain Rabbe, without the ’von’."

"What splendid weather, though!"

At the first of the manor’s granaries the road forked: one branch went straight on and vanished into the evening haze, the other turned right, toward the manor house. The officers turned right and began to speak more softly... On both sides of the road stretched stone granaries with red roofs, heavy and grim, very much like the barracks of a county town. Ahead the windows of the manor house glowed with light.

"Gentlemen, a good omen!" said one of the officers. "Our setter’s out in front of everyone; that means he scents game ahead!.."

Lieutenant Lobytko, walking ahead of everyone else — tall and stout, but entirely without a mustache (he was past twenty-five, but for some reason no hair had yet appeared on his round, well-fed face), famous throughout the brigade for his flair and his knack of sensing the presence of women at a distance — turned around and said:

"Yes, there must be women here. I feel it by instinct."

At the threshold of the house the officers were met by von Rabbeck himself, a dignified old man of about sixty, dressed in civilian clothes. Shaking his guests’ hands, he said that he was very glad and happy, but begged the gentlemen officers most earnestly, for God’s sake, to excuse him for not inviting them to spend the night; two of his sisters had come with their children, along with his brothers and neighbors, so that he had not a single free room left.

The general shook everyone’s hand, asked to be excused, and smiled, but it was plain from his face that he was nowhere near as glad of his guests as the count of the year before had been, and that he had invited the officers only because, in his opinion, decency required it. And the officers themselves, climbing the soft-carpeted stairs and listening to him, felt that they had been invited into this house only because it would have been awkward not to invite them, and at the sight of the footmen hurrying to light the lamps below at the entrance and above in the anteroom, it began to seem to them that they had brought disturbance and alarm into this house with them. In a place where, evidently for the sake of some family occasion or celebration, two sisters with their children, brothers, and neighbors had gathered, could the presence of nineteen unfamiliar officers possibly be welcome?

Upstairs, at the entrance to the drawing room, the guests were met by a tall, slender old woman with a long, dark-browed face, very much resembling the Empress Eugénie. Smiling graciously and majestically, she said she was glad and happy to have guests, and apologized that she and her husband were this time deprived of the possibility of inviting the officers to spend the night. From her beautiful, majestic smile, which vanished instantly from her face every time she turned away from her guests for something, it was plain that in her time she had seen a great many officers, that she had no particular interest in them now, and that if she had invited them into her house and was apologizing, it was only because her upbringing and her position in society required it.

In the large dining room into which the officers came, at one end of the long table some ten men and ladies, elderly and young, sat over tea. Behind their chairs, wrapped in a light haze of cigar smoke, a group of men showed darkly; among them stood some thin young man with reddish side-whiskers who, speaking with a lisp, was talking loudly about something in English. Through the group, through a doorway, a bright room with light-blue furniture could be seen.

"Gentlemen, there are so many of you that it’s quite impossible to introduce you all!" said the general loudly, trying to seem very merry. "Get acquainted, gentlemen, simply among yourselves!"

The officers — some with very serious, even stern faces, others smiling stiffly, and all of them feeling very awkward together — bowed as best they could and sat down to tea.

More than anyone, Staff-Captain Ryabovich felt awkward — a small, round-shouldered officer, in spectacles, with side-whiskers like a lynx’s. While some of his comrades put on serious faces and others smiled stiffly, his face, his lynx-like whiskers and spectacles, seemed to say: "I am the shyest, the most modest, and the most colorless officer in the whole brigade!" At first, on entering the dining room and afterward while sitting over tea, he simply could not fix his attention on any one face or object. Faces, dresses, the cut-glass decanters of cognac, the steam rising from the glasses, the molded cornices — all this merged into one general, enormous impression that filled Ryabovich with alarm and a wish to hide his head. Like a reader appearing before an audience for the first time, he saw everything that was before his eyes, but what he saw was somehow poorly understood (physiologists call this condition, in which a subject sees but does not comprehend, "psychic blindness"). A little later, however, having grown accustomed to it, Ryabovich came to his senses and began to observe. Being a shy and unsociable man, the first thing that struck him was something he himself had never possessed, namely — the extraordinary boldness of his new acquaintances. Von Rabbeck, his wife, two elderly ladies, some young lady in a lilac dress, and the young man with the reddish side-whiskers, who turned out to be Rabbeck’s younger son, seated themselves among the officers as cunningly as if they had rehearsed it beforehand, and at once started an animated argument in which the guests could not help but join. The young lady in lilac began hotly maintaining that artillerymen had a far easier life than the cavalry or the infantry, while Rabbeck and the elderly ladies insisted on the contrary. A crossfire of talk began. Ryabovich looked at the young lady in lilac, who was arguing very heatedly about something that was foreign and altogether uninteresting to her, and watched insincere smiles appear and vanish on her face.

Von Rabbeck and his family skillfully drew the officers into the argument, while all the while keeping a sharp eye on their glasses and mouths, to see whether everyone was drinking, whether everyone had enough sugar, and why so-and-so was not eating biscuits or not drinking cognac. And the more Ryabovich looked and listened, the more he came to like this insincere but splendidly disciplined family.

After tea the officers went into the ballroom. Lieutenant Lobytko’s instinct had not deceived him: the ballroom was full of young ladies and young married women. The setter-lieutenant was already standing beside a very young blonde in a black dress and, bending rakishly, as though leaning on an invisible saber, was smiling and coquettishly working his shoulders. He was saying, probably, some very uninteresting nonsense, for the blonde looked condescendingly at his well-fed face and asked indifferently: "Really?" And from that indifferent "Really?" the setter, had he been clever, might have concluded that he was hardly likely to be given the order "Fetch!"

The piano thundered out; a melancholy waltz flew from the ballroom out through the windows, flung wide open, and everyone, for some reason, remembered that outside it was now spring, a May evening. Everyone felt that the air smelled of young poplar leaves, of roses and lilac. Ryabovich, in whom the cognac he had drunk was beginning to speak under the influence of the music, glanced sidelong at the window, smiled, and began watching the women’s movements, and it now seemed to him that the scent of roses, poplar, and lilac came not from the garden, but from the women’s faces and dresses.

Rabbeck’s son invited some thin young lady and made two turns with her around the room. Lobytko, gliding over the parquet, flew up to the young lady in lilac and swept off with her across the ballroom. The dancing began... Ryabovich stood near the door among those who were not dancing and watched. In his whole life he had never once danced, and never once in his life had he had occasion to put his arm around the waist of a respectable woman. He was tremendously fond of seeing a man, before everyone’s eyes, take an unfamiliar young woman by the waist and offer her his shoulder for her hand, but to imagine himself in that man’s position he simply could not. There had been a time when he had envied his comrades their boldness and their dash, and it had grieved his soul; the awareness that he was shy, round-shouldered, and colorless, that he had a long waist and lynx-like whiskers, had deeply wounded him, but with the years this awareness had become a habit, and now, looking at the dancers or at those talking loudly, he no longer envied them, but only felt a melancholy tenderness.

When the quadrille began, young von Rabbeck came up to those who were not dancing and invited two officers to play billiards. The officers agreed and went with him out of the ballroom. Ryabovich, having nothing to do and wishing to take at least some part in the general movement, trailed after them. From the ballroom they passed into the drawing room, then into a narrow glazed corridor, and from there into a room where, at their appearance, three sleepy footman figures leapt up quickly from the sofas. At last, after passing through a whole row of rooms, young Rabbeck and the officers entered a small room where a billiard table stood. The game began.

Ryabovich, who had never in his life played anything but cards, stood by the billiard table and looked indifferently at the players, who, in unbuttoned coats, cues in hand, paced about, made puns, and shouted incomprehensible words. The players took no notice of him, and only now and then would one of them, jostling him with an elbow or accidentally catching him with a cue, turn round and say: "Pardon!" The first game had not even finished before he grew bored, and it began to seem to him that he was superfluous and in the way... He was drawn back to the ballroom, and he went out.

On the way back he had a small adventure to live through. Halfway there he noticed that he was going the wrong way. He remembered perfectly that he should encounter three sleepy footman figures along the way, but though he passed through five or six rooms, these figures seemed to have vanished into thin air. Noticing his mistake, he went back a little, turned right, and found himself in a half-dark study he had not seen when going to the billiard room; having stood there half a minute, he irresolutely opened the first door he happened to see and entered a room that was completely dark. Straight ahead a crack of the door could be seen, through which bright light streamed; from beyond the door came the muffled sounds of a melancholy mazurka. Here, just as in the ballroom, the windows were flung wide open, and there was a smell of poplar, lilac, and roses...

Ryabovich stopped, lost in thought... At that moment, unexpectedly for him, he heard hurried footsteps and the rustle of a dress, a woman’s breathless voice whispered: "At last!" and two soft, fragrant, unmistakably feminine arms embraced his neck; a warm cheek pressed against his own, and at the same instant came the sound of a kiss. But at once the woman who had kissed him gave a faint cry and, as it seemed to Ryabovich, sprang back from him with revulsion. He too very nearly cried out and rushed toward the bright crack of the door...

When he came back into the ballroom, his heart was pounding and his hands trembled so noticeably that he hastened to hide them behind his back. At first he was tormented by shame and fear, that the whole room knew that a woman had just embraced and kissed him; he shrank into himself and glanced about uneasily on all sides, but, having convinced himself that in the ballroom people were still calmly dancing and chattering as before, he gave himself over entirely to the new sensation, never once experienced in his life until now. Something strange was happening to him... His neck, which soft, fragrant arms had just been embracing, seemed to him to have been smeared with oil; on his cheek, near his left mustache, where the unknown woman had kissed him, a slight, pleasant chill trembled, like that from peppermint drops, and the more he rubbed the spot, the stronger the chill grew; and his whole self, from head to foot, was filled with a new, strange feeling that kept growing and growing... He wanted to dance, to talk, to run into the garden, to laugh loudly... He quite forgot that he was round-shouldered and colorless, that he had lynx-like whiskers and an "indeterminate appearance" (so his appearance had once been called in a conversation among ladies which he had accidentally overheard). When Rabbeck’s wife passed by him, he smiled at her so broadly and warmly that she stopped and looked at him inquiringly.

"I like your house tremendously!.." he said, adjusting his spectacles.

The general’s wife smiled and told him that this house had belonged to her own father; then she asked whether his parents were living, how long he had been in the service, why he was so thin, and so on... Having received answers to her questions, she went on her way, and after his conversation with her he began to smile still more warmly, thinking that he was surrounded by the most splendid people...

At supper Ryabovich mechanically ate whatever was offered him, drank, and, hearing nothing, tried to explain to himself his recent adventure... This adventure had a mysterious, romantic character, but it was not hard to explain. No doubt some young lady or married woman had arranged a rendezvous with someone in the dark room, had waited a long time, and, being nervously overwrought, had mistaken Ryabovich for her hero; this was all the more probable in that Ryabovich, passing through the dark room, had stopped, lost in thought — that is, had had the appearance of a man who was also waiting for something... So Ryabovich explained to himself the kiss he had received.

"And who might she be?" he thought, scanning the women’s faces. "She must be young, for old women don’t go to rendezvous. Then, that she is a woman of intelligence, one could sense that from the rustle of her dress, from her scent, from her voice..."

He fixed his gaze on the young lady in lilac, and he liked her very much; she had beautiful shoulders and arms, an intelligent face, and a lovely voice. Looking at her, Ryabovich began to wish that it was she, and no other, who had been the unknown woman... But she laughed somehow insincerely and wrinkled her long nose, which now struck him as looking old; then he turned his gaze to the blonde in the black dress. This one was younger, simpler, more sincere, had lovely temples, and drank very gracefully from her glass. Ryabovich now wished that it had been she. But he soon decided that her face was flat, and turned his eyes to her neighbor...

"It’s hard to guess," he thought, daydreaming. "If one took only the shoulders and arms from the lilac one, added the temples of the blonde, and took the eyes from that one sitting to the left of Lobytko, then..."

He made the addition in his mind, and there came out an image of the girl who had kissed him, the very image he wanted, but which he simply could not find anywhere at the table...

After supper the guests, well-fed and tipsy, began to say their goodbyes and give their thanks. The hosts again began apologizing for being unable to keep them for the night.

"Very, very glad, gentlemen!" said the general, and this time sincerely (probably because, when seeing guests off, people are much more sincere and kind than when receiving them). "Very glad! You’re welcome to call again on your way back! No ceremony! Where are you off to? Do you want to go on horseback? No, go through the garden, the low way — it’s nearer from here."

The officers went out into the garden. After the bright light and noise, the garden seemed very dark and quiet to them. They walked all the way to the little gate in silence. They were half drunk, merry, content, but the darkness and stillness made them, for a moment, fall to thinking. Each of them, like Ryabovich, probably had one and the same thought: would the time ever come for them too, when, like Rabbeck, they would have a great house, a family, a garden, when they too would have the possibility, even if insincerely, of being kind to people, of making them well-fed, tipsy, content?

Going out through the little gate, they all began talking at once and, for no reason, burst out laughing loudly. Now they were walking along the path that went down to the river and then ran right along the water, skirting the riverside bushes, the washouts, and the willows leaning over the water. The bank and the path were barely visible, while the other bank was entirely swallowed in darkness. Here and there stars were reflected in the dark water; they trembled and blurred — and only by this could one guess that the river was running swiftly. It was quiet. On the far bank sleepy sandpipers were crying, and on this one, in one of the bushes, paying not the slightest attention to the crowd of officers, a nightingale was pouring out its song loudly. The officers stood by the bush, touched it, but the nightingale went on singing.

"Just listen to him!" came approving exclamations. "We’re standing right next to him, and he doesn’t care in the least! What a rascal!"

At the end of the way the path went uphill and, near the churchyard fence, ran into the road. Here the officers, tired from climbing the hill, sat down for a while and had a smoke. On the far bank a dull red light showed itself, and, having nothing better to do, they spent a long time deciding whether it was a bonfire, a light in a window, or something else... Ryabovich too looked at the light, and it seemed to him that this light was smiling and winking at him, as though it knew about the kiss.

Reaching his quarters, Ryabovich undressed quickly and lay down. In the same hut with him were quartered Lobytko and Lieutenant Merzlyakov, a quiet, taciturn fellow considered in his circle an educated officer, who read the Vestnik Evropy (European Herald) whenever he possibly could and carried it with him everywhere. Lobytko undressed, walked for a long while from corner to corner with the air of a man who was not satisfied, and sent his orderly for beer. Merzlyakov lay down, set a candle by his pillow, and buried himself in reading the Vestnik Evropy.

"Who can she be?" thought Ryabovich, gazing at the sooty ceiling.

His neck, it still seemed to him, was smeared with oil, and near his mouth he could feel a chill, as of peppermint drops. In his imagination flickered the shoulders and arms of the young lady in lilac, the temples and the sincere eyes of the blonde in black, waists, dresses, brooches. He tried to fix his attention on these images, but they leapt about, blurred, flickered. When, against the broad black background that every man sees when he closes his eyes, these images vanished altogether, he began to hear hurried footsteps, the rustle of a dress, the sound of a kiss — and a strong, groundless joy took hold of him... Given over to this joy, he heard the orderly return and report that there was no beer to be had. Lobytko was terribly indignant and began pacing again.

"Well, isn’t he an idiot?" he was saying, stopping now before Ryabovich, now before Merzlyakov. "What a blockhead and a fool one has to be, not to find beer! Eh? Well, isn’t he a scoundrel?"

"Of course you can’t find beer here," said Merzlyakov, not lifting his eyes from the Vestnik Evropy.

"Oh? You think so?" Lobytko persisted. "Good Lord, maroon me on the moon, and I’d still find you beer and women there in no time! Now watch, I’ll go this minute and find some... Call me a scoundrel if I don’t."

He spent a long time dressing and pulling on his big boots, then silently smoked a cigarette and went out.

"Rabbeck, Grabbeck, Labbeck," he muttered, stopping in the entryway. "Don’t much feel like going alone, devil take it. Ryabovich, care to take a stroll with me? Eh?"

Receiving no answer, he came back, slowly undressed, and lay down. Merzlyakov sighed, thrust the Vestnik Evropy aside, and put out the candle.

"H’m, yes..." muttered Lobytko, lighting a cigarette in the darkness.

Ryabovich pulled the blanket over his head and, curling up like a ball, began gathering the flickering images in his imagination and joining them into one whole. But nothing came of it. Soon he fell asleep, and his last thought was that someone had been kind to him and had made him glad, that something extraordinary, foolish, but exceedingly good and joyful had happened in his life. This thought did not leave him even in his sleep.

When he woke, the sensation of oil on his neck and of peppermint chill near his lips was gone, but joy, as on the day before, still moved in waves through his chest. He looked with delight at the window frames, gilded by the rising sun, and listened to the stir going on in the street. Just outside the windows people were talking loudly. Ryabovich’s battery commander, Lebedetsky, who had just caught up with the brigade, was talking very loudly, from lack of the habit of speaking quietly, with his sergeant major.

"What else?" the commander was shouting.

"During yesterday’s reshoeing, your high nobility, Golubchik was overreached. The feldsher applied clay and vinegar. He’s being led along by hand now, off to the side. And also, your high nobility, yesterday the craftsman Artemyev got drunk, and the lieutenant ordered him seated on the limber of the spare gun carriage."

The sergeant major further reported that Karpov had forgotten the new cords for the trumpets and the pegs for the tents, and that the gentlemen officers had spent yesterday evening as guests of General von Rabbeck. In the middle of the conversation Lebedetsky’s red-bearded head appeared at the window. He narrowed his near-sighted eyes at the sleepy faces of the officers and bade them good morning.

"All well?" he asked.

"The near wheel-horse rubbed its withers raw," Lobytko answered, yawning, "with the new collar."

The commander sighed, thought a moment, and said loudly:

"And I’m thinking of going to see Alexandra Yevgrafovna as well. Ought to pay her a visit. Well, farewell. I’ll catch up with you by evening."

A quarter of an hour later the brigade set out on its way. As it moved along the road past the manor’s granaries, Ryabovich looked to the right, at the house. The windows had their shutters closed. Evidently everyone in the house was still asleep. She, too, was asleep — the one who had kissed Ryabovich the evening before. He wanted to imagine her sleeping. The window of her bedroom flung wide open, the green branches peering in at that window, the morning freshness, the scent of poplar, lilac, and roses, the bed, the chair with a dress on it that had rustled the evening before, the little slippers, the little watch on the table — all this he pictured to himself clearly and distinctly, but the features of her face, the sweet, sleepy smile, precisely what mattered and was characteristic, slipped away from his imagination like mercury from under a finger. Having ridden half a verst, he glanced back: the yellow church, the house, the river, and the garden were all bathed in light; the river, with its bright green banks, reflecting the blue sky and here and there gleaming silver in the sun, was very beautiful. Ryabovich cast a last glance at Mestechki, and he felt so sad, as though he were parting with something very close and dear to him.

And on the road ahead there lay only long-familiar, uninteresting scenes... To right and left, fields of young rye and buckwheat with rooks hopping about; look ahead — you see dust and the backs of heads, look back — you see the same dust and faces... Marching ahead of everyone are four men with sabers — this is the vanguard. Behind them a crowd of singers, and behind the singers the mounted trumpeters. The vanguard and the singers, like torchbearers in a funeral procession, keep forgetting the regulation distance and straying far ahead... Ryabovich is stationed by the first gun of the fifth battery. He can see all four batteries marching ahead of him. To a man who is not a soldier, this long, heavy line, which is what a marching brigade looks like, seems a baffling and hardly comprehensible jumble; it is not clear why there are so many men around one gun and why it is drawn by so many horses, entangled in strange harness, as though it were truly so terrible and heavy a thing. To Ryabovich, though, everything is understood, and therefore utterly uninteresting. He has long known why a solid gunner rides beside the officer at the head of each battery, and why he is called the leader; behind this gunner’s back can be seen the riders of the first, then the middle team; Ryabovich knows that the left-hand horses, on which they sit, are called the saddle horses, and the right-hand ones the off horses — this is very uninteresting. After the rider come two shaft horses. On one of them sits a rider with yesterday’s dust on his back and with a clumsy, quite comical wooden peg on his right leg; Ryabovich knows the purpose of that wooden peg, and it does not strike him as funny. The riders, all of them, mechanically wave their whips and now and then call out. The gun itself is unlovely. On the limber lie sacks of oats, covered with a tarpaulin, and the gun is hung all over with kettles, soldiers’ bags, and little sacks, and has the look of a small, harmless animal that people and horses have, for some unknown reason, surrounded. On its sides, on the lee side, six gun-crew men march, swinging their arms. Behind the gun begin again new leaders, riders, shaft horses, and behind them stretches a new gun, just as unlovely and unimpressive as the first. After the second comes the third, the fourth; near the fourth an officer, and so on. There are six batteries in all in the brigade, and four guns in each battery. The line stretches for half a verst. It ends with the baggage train, near which, pensively, its long-eared head hanging low, walks an exceedingly likable mug — the donkey Magar, brought back from Turkey by one of the battery commanders.

Ryabovich gazed indifferently ahead and behind, at the backs of heads and at faces; at another time he would have dozed off, but now he was wholly immersed in his new, pleasant thoughts. At first, when the brigade had only just set out, he had tried to convince himself that the story of the kiss could be interesting only as a small, mysterious adventure, that in essence it was trifling and that to think of it seriously was, at the very least, foolish; but he soon waved logic aside and gave himself up to daydreams... Now he pictured himself in Rabbeck’s drawing room, beside a girl resembling the young lady in lilac and the blonde in black; now he closed his eyes and saw himself with another, an entirely unknown girl with very indistinct features; in his mind he spoke to her, caressed her, leaned toward her shoulder, pictured to himself war and separation, then a reunion, supper with his wife, children...

"To the traces!" the command rang out every time they went downhill.

He too shouted "To the traces!" and was afraid that this shout might tear his dream apart and call him back to reality...

Passing by some landowner’s estate, Ryabovich looked through the fence into the garden. His eye fell on a long avenue, straight as a ruler, strewn with yellow sand and lined with young birches... With the greed of a man given over to dreaming, he pictured to himself little women’s feet walking along the yellow sand, and quite unexpectedly, in his imagination, there rose up clearly the one who had kissed him and whom he had managed to picture the evening before at supper. This image lodged itself in his brain and would not leave him now.

At noon, from behind, near the baggage train, a shout rang out:

"Attention! Eyes left! Officers!"

In a carriage, drawn by a pair of white horses, the brigade general drove past. He stopped near the second battery and shouted something that no one understood. Several officers galloped up to him, Ryabovich among them.

"Well, how are things? What’s new?" asked the general, blinking his red eyes. "Any sick men?"

Having received his answers, the general, a small, lean man, chewed his lips, thought a moment, and said, turning to one of the officers:

"Your wheel-horse rider on the third gun has taken off his knee-guard and hung it, the rascal, on the limber. Have him punished for it."

He raised his eyes to Ryabovich and went on:

"And your traces, it seems, are too long..."

Having made a few more tedious remarks, the general looked at Lobytko and smirked.

"And you, Lieutenant Lobytko, look very melancholy today," he said. "Pining for Lopukhova, are you? Eh? Gentlemen, he’s pining for Lopukhova!"

Lopukhova was a very stout, very tall lady, long past forty. The general, who had a partiality for large women, of whatever age they might be, suspected the same partiality in his officers. The officers smiled respectfully. The brigadier, pleased with having said something very witty and cutting, laughed loudly, touched the coachman’s back, and saluted. The carriage rolled on further...

"Everything I’m dreaming of now, everything that now seems impossible and unearthly to me, is in essence very ordinary," thought Ryabovich, looking at the clouds of dust running behind the general’s carriage. "All this is very ordinary and is lived through by everyone... This general, for instance, was in love once in his time, is married now, has children. Captain Vakhter is married too, and loved, though he has a very ugly red neck and no waist to speak of... Salmanov is coarse and altogether too much of a Tatar, but he had a love affair that ended in marriage... I am just like everyone else, and sooner or later I shall live through the very same thing as everyone else..."

And the thought that he was an ordinary man and that his life was ordinary gladdened and heartened him. He now boldly, as he pleased, pictured her and his own happiness, and set no bounds at all on his imagination...

When, in the evening, the brigade arrived at its destination and the officers were resting in their tents, Ryabovich, Merzlyakov, and Lobytko sat around a trunk and had supper. Merzlyakov ate unhurriedly and, chewing slowly, read the Vestnik Evropy, which he held on his knees. Lobytko talked without ceasing and kept pouring beer into his glass, while Ryabovich, whose head, after a whole day of dreaming, was in a fog, was silent and drank. After three glasses he grew tipsy, weakened, and felt an irresistible urge to share his new sensation with his comrades.

"A strange thing happened to me at that Rabbecks’ place..." he began, trying to give his voice an indifferent and mocking tone. "I went, you see, into the billiard room..."

He began telling the story of the kiss in great detail and, a minute later, fell silent... In that minute he had told the whole of it, and it struck him with astonishment how little time the telling had taken. It had seemed to him that one could talk about the kiss till morning. Having heard him out, Lobytko, who lied a great deal himself and therefore believed no one, looked at him distrustfully and smirked. Merzlyakov moved his eyebrows and, calmly, without lifting his eyes from the Vestnik Evropy, said:

"God knows what to make of it!.. Throws herself on a man’s neck, without even calling out first... Must have been some sort of hysteric."

"Yes, must have been a hysteric..." Ryabovich agreed.

"A similar thing happened to me once..." said Lobytko, making a frightened face. "I was traveling last year to Kovno... I take a second-class ticket... The carriage is packed full, and it’s impossible to sleep. I give the conductor half a ruble... He takes my luggage and leads me to a compartment... I lie down and cover myself with a blanket... It’s dark, you understand. Suddenly I feel someone touch my shoulder and breathe on my face. I made some sort of movement with my hand and feel someone’s elbow... I open my eyes, and, if you can imagine it — a woman! Black eyes, lips red as good salmon, nostrils breathing passion, bosom — buffers..."

"Allow me," Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, "as for the bosom, I follow you, but how could you see her lips, if it was dark?"

Lobytko began wriggling out of it and laughing at Merzlyakov’s obtuseness. This grated on Ryabovich. He got up from the trunk, lay down, and vowed to himself never again to speak frankly of such things.

Camp life began... The days flowed by, very much like one another. In all these days Ryabovich felt, thought, and carried himself like a man in love. Every morning, when his orderly brought him water to wash, and he poured the cold water over his head, he would remember, every time, that there was something good and warm in his life.

In the evenings, when his comrades would begin talking of love and of women, he would listen, draw nearer, and put on the sort of expression that is seen on soldiers’ faces when they listen to a story of a battle in which they themselves took part. And on those evenings when the somewhat tipsy senior officers, with Lobytko the setter at their head, would make Don-Juanish raids on the "settlement," Ryabovich, who took part in these raids, would every time feel sad, feel himself deeply guilty, and would mentally ask her forgiveness... In hours of idleness, or on sleepless nights, when the fancy took him to remember his childhood, his father, his mother, everything that was native and dear to him, he would inevitably remember, too, Mestechki, the strange horse, Rabbeck, his wife who resembled the Empress Eugénie, the dark room, the bright crack in the door...

On the 31st of August he was returning from camp, though now not with the whole brigade, but with only two batteries. The whole way he dreamed and was agitated, exactly as though he were traveling home. He longed passionately to see again the strange horse, the church, the insincere Rabbeck family, the dark room; the "inner voice," which so often deceives those in love, whispered to him, for some reason, that he would certainly see her again... And he was tormented by questions: how would he meet her? What would he say to her? Had she forgotten about the kiss? At the very worst, he thought, even if he should not happen to meet her, it would still be pleasant for him merely to walk once more through the dark room and remember...

Toward evening the familiar church and the white granaries appeared on the horizon. Ryabovich’s heart began to pound... He was not listening to the officer riding beside him and saying something to him, had forgotten everything, and was gazing greedily at the river gleaming in the distance, at the roof of the house, at the dovecote, over which pigeons were circling, lit by the setting sun.

Riding up to the church and then listening to the billeting officer, he waited every second for a horseman to appear from behind the fence and invite the officers to tea, but... the billeting officers’ report came to an end, the officers dismounted and wandered off into the village, and no horseman appeared...

"Rabbeck will find out from the peasants any moment now that we’ve arrived, and will send for us," thought Ryabovich, entering the hut and not understanding why his comrade was lighting a candle and why the orderlies were hurrying to set up the samovars...

A heavy uneasiness took hold of him. He lay down, then got up and looked out the window, to see whether a horseman was coming. But there was no horseman. He lay down again, and half an hour later got up, and, unable to bear the uneasiness any longer, went out into the street and walked toward the church. In the square, by the fence, it was dark and deserted... Some three soldiers stood together at the very top of the slope and were silent. Seeing Ryabovich, they stirred and saluted. He returned the salute and began going down the familiar path.

On the far bank the whole sky was flooded with a crimson color: the moon was rising; some two peasant women, talking loudly, were walking about the kitchen garden, picking cabbage leaves; behind the gardens a few huts showed dark... And on this bank everything was just as it had been in May: the path, the bushes, the willows leaning over the water... only the bold nightingale could no longer be heard, and there was no scent of poplar and young grass.

Reaching the garden, Ryabovich looked in through the little gate. In the garden it was dark and quiet... Only the white trunks of the nearest birches could be seen, and a small stretch of the avenue; everything else merged into a black mass. Ryabovich listened and peered eagerly, but, having stood for a quarter of an hour and waited in vain for a sound or a gleam of light, trudged back...

He went down to the river. Before him showed white the general’s bathing house and the sheets hanging on the railing of the little bridge... He climbed onto the bridge, stood a while, and, without any need to, touched a sheet. The sheet proved rough and cold. He looked down at the water... The river ran swiftly and murmured faintly around the piles of the bathing house. The red moon was reflected near the left bank; small waves ran over its reflection, stretching it out, tearing it into pieces, and seeming to want to carry it away...

"How foolish! How foolish!" thought Ryabovich, watching the running water. "How senseless all this is!"

Now, when he no longer expected anything, the story of the kiss, his impatience, his vague hopes and his disappointment, appeared to him in a clear light. It no longer seemed strange to him that he had not waited in vain for the general’s horseman, and that he would never see the woman who had kissed him by mistake for another; on the contrary, it would have been strange had he seen her...

The water ran on, no one knew where or why. It had run in just the same way in May too; out of the little river in the month of May it had flowed into the great river, out of the river into the sea, then had evaporated, turned into rain, and, perhaps, this very same water was now again running before Ryabovich’s eyes... To what end? Why?

And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovich an unintelligible, aimless jest... And, turning his eyes away from the water and glancing up at the sky, he remembered again how fate, in the person of an unknown woman, had by chance been kind to him, remembered his summer dreams and images, and his life seemed to him extraordinarily meager, wretched, and colorless...

When he returned to his hut, he found not a single comrade there. His orderly reported to him that they had all gone off to "General Fontryabkin," who had sent a horseman for them... For an instant joy flared up in Ryabovich’s breast, but he at once put it out, lay down on his bed, and, to spite his own fate, as though wishing to vex it, did not go to the general’s.