The Duel

Alexander Kuprin was born in 1870. He passed through the Cadet School and Military College at Moscow entered the Army as lieutenant in 1890 and resigned after seven years to devote himself to literature. The 6th Company’s afternoon drill was nearly over and the junior officers looked with increasing frequency at their watches and with growing impatience. The rank and file of the new regiment were being instructed in garrison duty. Along the whole of the extensive parade-ground the soldiers stood in scattered groups: by the poplars that bordered the causeway by the gymnastic apparatus by the door of the company’s school and in the neighbourhood of the butts. All these places were to represent during the drill the most important buildings in the garrison—the commander’s residence the headquarters the powder magazine the administration department etc. Sentries were posted and relieved; patrols marched here and there shouting at and saluting each other in military fashion; harsh non-commissioned officers visited and examined the sentries on duty trying sometimes by a trick sometimes by pretended threats to fool the soldiers into infringing the rules e.g. to quit their posts give up their rifles to take charge of contraband articles etc. The older men who had had previous experience of such practical jokes were very seldom taken in but answered rudely “The Tsar alone gives orders here” etc. etc. The young recruits on the other hand often enough fell into the snare set for them.“Khliabnikov!” a stout little “non-com.” cried angrily in a voice which betrayed a passion for ruling. “What did I tell you just now simpleton? Did I put you under arrest? What are you sticking there for then? Why don’t you answer?”In the third platoon a tragi-comic scene took place. Moukhamedjinov a young soldier Tartar by birth was not yet versed in the Russian language. He got more and more confused under the commander’s irritating and insidious questions. At last he lost his head entirely brought his rifle to the charge and threatened all the bystanders with the bayonet.“Stop you madman!” roared Sergeant Bobuilev. “Can’t you recognize your own commander your own captain?”“Another step and you are a dead man!” shouted the Tartar in a furious rage. His eyes were bloodshot and he nervously repelled with his bayonet all who approached him. Round about him but at a respectful distance a crowd of soldiers flocked together accepting with joy and gratitude this interesting little interlude in the wearisome drill.Sliva the captain of the company approached to see what was going on. While he was on the opposite side of the parade-ground where with bent back and dragging steps he tottered slowly backwards and forwards a few young officers assembled in a small group to smoke and chatter. They were three all told: Lieutenant Viätkin a bald moustached man of thirty-three a jovial fellow chatterbox singer and particularly fond of his glass; Sub-Lieutenant Romashov who had hardly served two years in the regiment; and lastly Sub-Ensign Lbov a lively well-shaped young man with an expression of shrewd geniality in his pale eyes and an eternal smile on his thick innocent lips. He passed for a peripatetic storehouse of anecdotes specially crammed with old and worn-out officers’ stories.“This is an out-and-out scandal” said Viätkin as he looked at his dainty little watch the case of which he angrily closed with a little click. “What the devil does he mean by keeping the company all this time?”“You should ask him that question Pavel Pavlich” replied Lbov with a sly look.