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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Mikhail Sholokhov: Selections on war
Russian writers on war
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Mikhail Sholokhov
From And Quite Flows the Don (1928-32)
Translated by Stephen Garry
Overhead an aeroplane was circling low. Its powerful engine roared menacingly.
“Lie down under the fence. They’ll be dropping a bomb in a minute. There’s a battery billeted next door to us,” Uriupin shouted. “Someone go and wake Yegor up. They’ll kill him as he lies on a soft mattress!”
Soldiers ran along the street, their bodies bent to the ground. From the next yard came the neighing of horses and a curt order. Grigori glanced over the fence; the gunners were hurriedly wheeling a gun under a shed. Screwing up his eyes at the prickly blue of the sky, he stared at the roaring, swooping bird. At that moment something suddenly fell from it and glittered sharply in the sunlight.
Uriupin ran down the steps, Grigori behind him, and they threw themselves down by the palings. One wing of the aeroplane glittered as it turned. From the street came irregular shots. Grigori had just thrust a charge of cartridges into the magazine of his rifle when a shattering explosion threw him six feet away from the fence. A lump of earth struck him on the head, filling his eyes with dust and crushing him with its weight.
Uriupin lifted him to his feet. A sharp pain in the left eye prevented Grigori from seeing. With difficulty opening the right eyelid, he saw that half of the house was demolished; the bricks were scattered in a horrible confusion, a rosy cloud of dust hovered over them.
As he stood staring, Yegor Zharkov crawled from under the steps. His entire face was a cry; bloody tears were raining from his eyes torn out of their sockets. With his head buried in his shoulders he crawled along, screaming without opening his deathly blackening lips.
“A-i-i-i-i-. A-i-i-ii…A-i-i…”
Behind him one leg, torn away at the thigh, dragged along by a shred of skin; the other leg was gone completely. He crawled slowly along on his hands, a thin, almost childish scream coming from his lips. The cry stopped and he fell over on his side, pressing his face right against the harsh, unkind brick- and dung-littered earth. No one attempted to go to him.
“Pick him up!” Grigori shouted, not removing his hand from his left eye.
Infantry ran into the yard; a two-wheeled cart with telephone operators stopped at the gate. Two women, and an old man in a long black coat, came up. Zharkov was quickly surrounded by a little crowd. Pressing through them, Grigori saw that he was still breathing, whimpering and violently shivering. A beady, granular sweat stood out on his deathly yellow brow.
“Pick him up! What are you, men or devils?…”
“What are you howling about?” a tall infantryman snapped. “Pick him up, pick him up! But where are we to take him to? You can see he’s dying.”
“And he’s still conscious.”
Uriupin touched Grigori on the shoulder from behind. “Don’t move him,” he whispered. “Come around the other side and look.”
He drew Grigori along by the sleeve and pushed the crowd aside. Grigori took one glance, then with huddled shoulders turned away and went to the gate. Under Zharkov’s belly the rosy and blue intestines hung smoking. The end of the intertwined mass was poured out on the sand and dung, stirring and swelling. The dying man’s head lay at the side as though raking the ground.
“Cover his face,” someone proposed.
Zharkov suddenly rose on his hand and, throwing his head back until it beat between the shoulder-blades, shouted in a hoarse, inhuman voice:
“Brothers, kill me…Brothers!…What are you standing looking for?…Ah!…Ah!…Brothers, kill me!”
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