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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Russian writers on war
Mikhail Sholokhov: People worse than wolves. And it was called a heroic exploit.
Mikhail Sholokhov: War’s bitter harvest
Mikhail Sholokhov: Who was he calling for in his hour of death?
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Mikhail Sholokhov
From And Quite Flows the Don (1928-32)
Translated by Stephen Garry
A high personage, one of the Imperial family, came to pay a visit to the hospital. Informed of this in the morning, the personnel of the hospital scurried about like mice in a burning granary. They re-dressed the wounded, changed the bedclothes before the time appointed, and one young doctor even tried to instruct the men how to reply to the personage and how to conduct themselves in conversation with her. The anxiety was communicated to the patients also, and some of them began to talk in whispers long before the time fixed for the visit. At noon a motor horn sounded at the front door, and, accompanied by the usual number of officials and officers, the personage passed through the hospital portals. She went the round of the wards, asking the stupid questions characteristic of one in her position and circumstances. The wounded, their eyes staring out of their heads, replied in accordance with the instructions of the junior surgeon. “Exactly so, Your Imperial Highness,” and “Not at all, Your Imperial Highness.” The chief surgeon supplied commentaries to their answers, squirming like a grass-snake nipped by a fork. The regal personage distributed little ikons to the soldiers. The throng of brilliant uniforms and the heavy wave of expensive perfumes came toward Grigori. He stood by his bed, unshaven, gaunt, with feverish eyes. The slight tremor of the brown skin over his angular cheekbones revealed his agitation.
“There they are!” he was thinking. “These are the people for whose pleasure we have been driven from our native villages and flung to death. Ah, the reptiles! Curse them! There are the lice on our backs. Was it for them we trampled other people’s grain with our horses and killed strangers? And I crawled over the stubble and shouted? And our fear? They dragged us away from our families, starved us in barracks. Their bellies filled till they shine! I’d send you out there, curse you! Put you on a horse, under a rifle, load you with lice, feed you on rotten bread and maggoty meat!”
Grigori’s eyes wandered over the officers of the retinue and rested on the marsupial cheeks of the royal personage.
“A Don Cossack, Cross of St. George,” the chief surgeon smirked as he pointed to Grigori, and from the tone of his voice one would have thought it was he who had won the cross.
“From what district?” the personage inquired, holding an ikon ready.
“Vieshenska, Your Imperial Highness.”
“How did you win the cross?”
Boredom and satiation lurked in the clear, empty eyes of the royal personage. Her left eyebrow was artificially raised, this being intended to give her face greater expression. For a moment Grigori felt cold, and a queer chopping sensation went on inside him. He had felt a similar sensation when going into attack. His lips twisted and quivered irresistibly.
“Excuse me, I badly want to – Your Imperial – Just a little need.” Grigori swayed as though broken, and pointed under the bed.
The personage’s left eyebrow rose still higher. The hand holding the ikon half-extended toward Grigori was frozen stiff. Her querulous lips hanging with astonishment, the personage turned to a grey-haired general at her side and asked him something in English. A hardly perceptible embarrassment troubled the members of her suite. A tall officer with a snow-white glove thrust under his epaulet looked askance, a second looked silly; a third glanced inquiringly at his neighbour. The grey-haired general smiled respectfully and replied in English to Her Imperial Highness, and the personage was pleased to thrust the ikon into Grigori’s hand and even bestow on him the highest of honours, a touch in the shoulder.
After the guests had departed, Grigori dropped on his bed and, burying his face in the pillow, lay for some minutes, his shoulders shaking. It was impossible to tell whether he was crying or laughing. Certain it is that he rose with dry eyes. He was immediately summoned to the room of the chief surgeon.
“You’re a canaille,” the doctor began, grasping his beard in his fingers.
“I’m not a canaille, you reptile!” Grigori replied, striding toward the doctor. “You’re not at the front!” Then, recovering his self-control, he said quietly: “Send me home.”
The doctor turned and went to his writing-table, saying more gently:
“We’ll send you! You can go to the devil!”
Grigori went out, his lips trembling with a smile, his eyes glaring. For his monstrous, unpardonable behaviour in the presence of the royal personage he was deprived of his food for three days. But the cook and his comrades in the ward kept him supplied.
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