by Andreev Leonid
Written in Russian and published in the Russian Empire at the end of 1904, inspired by Russo-Japanese War (2/1904-8/1905)
Translated into English from Russian by Russian Pilgrim in 2024
From a found diary
Part 1
Excerpt 1
….Madness and horrid.
The first time I felt it was when we walked through that road for ten hours without pauses, without stopping, without slowing down, without picking up the fallen and leaving them to our opponents, who with a huge mass moved behind us and after three hours erased our prints from our feet with its own. It was hot. No idea how many degrees: forty, fifty, or more; only know that it’s without stopping, helpless, even, and deep. The sun was so huge, so fiery and scary, as if the ground was moving towards and soon would burn out in its merciless fire.
And eyes couldn’t see. Small, shrinking pupil, small as a poppy seed, in vain looked for darkness under the shade of closed eyelids: the sun penetrated through the thin membrane with its bloody light reaching the exhausted brain. However, that way it was better, and for a long time, perhaps several hours, I walked with closed eyes, hearing the movements of the surrounding crowd: that heavy and uneven clucking of feet, people and horses, gnashing of metal wheels pushing through small rocks, someone’s heavy, uneven breathing and dry chewing with burned lips. But I didn’t hear words. Everyone was silent as if the mute army moved through, and when someone fell, he fell silently, and others stumbled on his body, fell, and silently got up, and without looking back, walked farther as if these mutes were deaf and blind.
I stumbled and fell a few times, and that’s when my eyes opened up, and what I saw looked like a wild imagination, sullen delirium of devastated land. Overheated air trembled, and silently, as if it was ready to flow, trembled rocks; and farther, rows of people by the bend, weapons, and horses separated from the ground and silently moved as if they were not live people, but an army of fleshless shadows. Huge, near, scary sun lightened up thousands of small blinding suns of our weapons, every metallic buckle, and from all over, from sides and bottom, they pushed into eyes, fiery-white, sharp like the whiteness of forged bayonets. That drying, burning heat penetrated to the depth of a body, to the bones and brain, and sometimes it seemed that there was no head between shoulders but a strange and unusual ball, heavy and light, foreign and scary.
At that time, at that moment, I would remember home, the corner of my room, a piece of blue wallpaper, and a dusted carafe with water on my night table, the one that has one leg shorter than two others and underneath has a folded piece of paper. In the next room, I don’t see them, are my wife and son. If I could scream, I would scream; that’s how unusual that simple and peaceful image, a piece of blue wallpaper and a dusted, untouched carafe.
I knew that I stopped and lifted my hand, but someone pushed me from behind; I walked faster forward, going through the crowd, hurrying up somewhere, this time not feeling the heat or fatigue. I walked for a long time through the never-ending silent rows, passing by red, burned napes, almost touching lowered hot bayonets, when I thought about what I was doing, where I was hurrying to stopped me. I swiftly moved to the side, reached free space, got through the ravine, and sat down on a rock as if this rough, hot rock was the end destination.
And that’s when, for the first time, I felt that. I clearly realized that the people silently walking in the sunshine, dying from fatigue and heat, stumbling and falling, that they are mad people. They don’t know where they are going; they don’t know why there is sun; they don’t know anything. They don’t have heads on their shoulders, but a strange and scary ball. There is one, like me, hurriedly moved through the rows and falls, then another and a third. A horse raised its head above the crowd with its red mad eyes and contracted mouth hinting at a scary and strange scream, got up and fell, and at that moment, people got thick, paused, and heard rusty, deaf voices and then a short shot, and then again silent, never-ending movement.
For an hour, I’m sitting on the rock. Everyone is passing by, and ground, air, and ghostly rows continue to tremble as before. Again, drying heat penetrated me, and I don’t remember what I saw a second ago. Everyone was walking and walking past me, and I didn’t understand who they were. An hour ago, I was by the rock alone, and now there is a crowd around me of gray people: they lie down and are unmovable; maybe they died; others are sitting and absentmindedly watching people pass just like I am. They have weapons, and they look like soldiers; others are half-naked, and their skin is the scarlet color that no one wants to see. Nearby, someone naked is lying prone. The way his motionless face pushed against the sharp and hot rock, and by the whiteness of his palm, it’s clear that he’s dead, but his back is red as if he was alive and only a light yellowing hue, like on smoked meat is a telling sign of his death. I want to move away from him, but I have no strength, and I am wobbly as I watch the never-ending people passing by, ghostly stumbling rows. By the condition of my head, I know that pretty soon I will have a heat stroke, but I’m waiting for it with a calm like in a sleep where death becomes only a stage of wonderful and tangled visions.
Then, I see a soldier coming out of the crowd and decisively moving toward us. In a minute, he falls into the ravine, and when he crawls out of that, his steps are not strong, and he tries to gather his torn body. He walked straight to me, and through the heavy dream that locked my brain, I felt frightened and asked, “What do you need?”
He stopped as if he had waited for a word and now stood huge, bearded with a ripped collar. He has no rifle, and his pants are holding on one button, and through an open zipper, I see his white body. His hands and leg are thrown apart, and he tries to gather them together, but he can’t: he puts his hands together, and they immediately fall apart.
“What’s going on? You better sit down,” I say.
He stands, silently watching me. I get up from the rock and wobbly look into his eyes- and I see their abyss of devastation and madness. All have narrow pupils, but his are huge, covering the whole eye; what a sea of fire he must see through the huge black windows. Maybe I was mistaken; perhaps, in his eye, I could see death. I wasn’t mistaken; in his black, bottomless pupils, encircled by narrow orange like a bird, had more death, even more than the agony of death.
“Go away,” I yell, moving away. “Go away!”
As he waited for that, he fell on me, pushing me down, still huge, falling apart, and silent. With a shudder, I moved my pressed legs, got up, and wanted to run somewhere away from people to the sunny, empty, trembling distance, when from the left on the peak, goes off a shot and right after that as an echo two others. Happy, loud yelling and howling sweeps a grenade somewhere over our heads. It passed us!
There are no more dying heads, no fear, no fatigue. My thoughts are clear, impressions are defined and sharp. When breathless, I reach the setting of rows, I see light, almost happy faces; I hear their rusty but loud voices, orders, and jokes. The sun climbed higher, in order not to bother us, got dull and quiet- and that moment, with a happy howl like a witch, cut through the air a grenade. I stepped closer.
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