Chapter 42 - Page 2

the morning I could not unbend
myself anyhow--'

'Was it very painful?' repeated Olenin, thinking that now he would
at last get an answer to his question.

'Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but
I could not bend and could not walk.'

'And then it healed up?' said Olenin, not even laughing, so heavy
was his heart.

'It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!' And
lifting his shirt he showed his powerful back, where just near the
bone a bullet could be felt and rolled about.

'Feel how it rolls,' he said, evidently amusing himself with the
bullet as with a toy. 'There now, it has rolled to the back.'

'And Lukashka, will he recover?' asked Olenin.

'Heaven only knows! There's no doctor. They've gone for one.'

'Where will they get one? From Groznoe?' asked Olenin. 'No, my
lad. Were I the Tsar I'd have hung all your Russian doctors long
ago. Cutting is all they know! There's our Cossack Baklashka, no
longer a real man now that they've cut off his leg! That shows
they're fools. What's Baklashka good for now? No, my lad, in the
mountains there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vorchik, he
was on an expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well,
your doctors gave him up, but one of theirs came from the
mountains and cured him! They understand herbs, my lad!'

'Come, stop talking rubbish,' said Olenin. 'I'd better send a
doctor from head-quarters.'

'Rubbish!' the old man said mockingly. 'Fool, fool! Rubbish.
You'll send a doctor!--If yours cured people, Cossacks and
Chechens would go to you for treatment, but as it is your officers
and colonels send to the mountains for doctors. Yours are all
humbugs, all humbugs.'

Olenin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was
humbug in the world in which he had lived and to which he was now
returning.

'How is Lukashka? You've been to see him?' he asked.

'He just lies as if he were dead. He does not eat nor drink. Vodka
is the only thing his soul accepts. But as long as he drinks vodka
it's well. I'd be sorry to lose the lad. A fine lad--a brave, like
me. I too lay dying like that once. The old women were already
wailing. My head was burning. They had already laid me out under
the holy icons. So I lay there, and above me on the oven little
drummers, no bigger than this, beat the tattoo. I shout at them
and they drum all the harder.' (The old man laughed.) 'The women
brought our church elder. They were getting ready to bury me. They
said, "He defiled himself with worldly unbelievers; he made merry
with women; he ruined people; he did not fast, and he played the
balalayka. Confess," they said. So I began to confess.