The Light and the Dark

by Shishkin, Mikhail

  We’re in Tientsin. How long have we been here already? Only three days. But it feels like three years. Or thirty-three.

  Now I’ll try to tell you about everything that’s happening here. Our detachment has combined with Colonel Anisimov’s detachment, who managed to hold out until we arrived. They have many casualties. The wounded are a really terrible sight.

  The soldiers, absolutely exhausted after their time under siege, were led out from under the bombardment to our bivouac. For the first time since they set out from Port Arthur they were given a chance to catch up on their sleep, have a hot meal and take a wash. You should have seen how happily they washed their own underclothes in the murky waters of the Pei Ho.

  We encamped on the left bank of the river, outside the city’s earth wall, on a level, open area, but when grenades started flying in from the Chinese positions in the suburbs of Tientsin, we were ordered to move the camp further away. Our tents are pitched a verst from the Pei Ho and two versts from the settlement – that’s what they call the European part of the city.

  There’s still no news from Seymour’s combined detachment. He took with him to Peking about two thousand Englishmen, Russians, Germans, Americans and Italians. They set off along the railway, repairing the line as they went, but they have been surrounded somewhere, the lines have been cut off and ruined again.

  As for the foreign embassies in Peking, it is already known for certain that they have been destroyed and the entire European population, together with the Chinese Christians, has been slaughtered. A Chinese who worked at the German embassy managed to escape by a miracle and told us what happened to the Russian legation in Peking; they burned the church and the church mission with its library, hospital and school. Their hatred is so strong that they even desecrated the Orthodox cemetery, dug up all the graves and scattered the bones about. In front of his very eyes they slit open the stomachs of a Russian family living at the mission and decapitated them.

  There are various other rumours going around, each more terrible than the last. Nobody knows anything for certain.

  I haven’t been involved in the present battle yet and haven’t seen the enemy from close up, or rather I’ve only seen bodies. The soldiers have a strange uniform – blue jackets, over which they wear sleeveless jerkins with red trimming and gilded buttons. And on their backs and their chests they have circles of white oiled cloth with black hieroglyphs on them that say what unit a soldier belongs to – they take the place of our epaulettes. On their legs and feet they wear breeches and cloth boots with thick felt soles. But it’s rare to see anyone lying in full uniform – more often I see the corpses semi-naked. And for some reason all their mouths are open. I walk past and clouds of flies shoot up into the air.

  The weather is unbearably hot, and everyone is tormented by the shortage of water. The soldiers have started digging wells, but there isn’t enough water, the wounded suffer especially badly.

  Yesterday they transferred the Russian infirmary to us from the besieged city. It used to be in the French hospital. Their tents are right beside ours. I can hear someone groaning at this very moment. And the doctor swearing at him. Our surgeon is called Zaremba. He often swears at the patients, but that’s just for show. He tries to seem coarse, but in reality he’s a warm-hearted man – he has shown everybody a photograph of his wife and son. He is simply very tired.

  All day long they kept bringing more and more wounded on stretchers, I thought there would never be any end to it. Swarms of flies hovered over every one of them. There were no faces – they had sunk deep into the canvas. And all they could see from there was the sky. Many of them groaned at the jolting and one kept repeating over and over, just like a child:

  ‘My leg, careful with my leg!’

  How terrible that at any moment I could find myself being carried like that.

  I’ve spoken with the wounded, they tell me appalling things about what happened here. One officer – Rybakov, both of his feet are crushed – has been here since spring, and he said that even before the start of events, Tientsin was teeming with Yihetuan, or ‘Boxer Rebels’, who organised clamorous meetings and pasted up exhortations to give short shrift to foreigners everywhere. Neither the army nor the police did anything to stop them, although until the allies took the Taku Forts by storm, the government was officially pursuing the rebels. In the Chinese section of the city marks made in blood appeared on houses in which Europeans or Chinese Christians lived – they slit dogs’ throats, plastered their entrails on the gates and threw them in through the windows. Chinese who worked for foreigners started asking to be allowed into the concessions with their families, but they were not admitted at first. The gates were only opened to them after the Yihetuan started butchering entire families in the night. Sometimes they spared the children, but they cut their hands off. That was probably to intimidate others.

  Sashenka, I realise I shouldn’t write to you about all this but I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I saw one boy myself – he had attached himself to the French hospital. They gave him a dry biscuit and he was sucking on it, clutched between his bandaged stumps.

  Well then, on the very first night of the disorders, this Rybakov and his men were on duty in the gatehouse, defending the French concession. They heard a loud clamour from the Chinese section of the city and a bright glow filled the air there – that was the Catholic cathedral blazing. Frightened people started running towards their gatehouse. The Yihetuan had started setting fire to the houses of the Chinese Christians, hundreds of people had been killed. The senior priest of the cathedral managed to flee to the French concession. That same night brought the first attempt to storm the settlement, but it was beaten back.

  It was already impossible for the European population to leave the city – the railway had been cut off, hundreds of women and children were besieged. In addition to Russians, Tientsin was defended by Germans, Englishmen, Japanese, Frenchmen, Americans, Austrians and Italians. Not even a thousand fighting men in all. This mere handful had to stand against tens of thousands of Yihetuan and a regular army. They couldn’t withdraw, either to retreat or simply to move out of shelling range. The inhabitants of the concessions who were left in the city had to take up arms and defend themselves. Trenches were dug everywhere, streets that were being bombarded from across the river and from the direction of the Chinese city were barricaded off.

  The Russians found themselves defending the railway station on the left bank of the river – the most unfavourable position of all. It had been decided to hold the station at any cost, because if it fell the Chinese would take the entire left bank and would be able to bombard the concessions, hiding behind the mounds of salt that cluttered the approaches, and the defenders wouldn’t have held out even for a day.

  Rybakov and his men spent several days at the station, where the fighting went on day and night. They made sorties to prevent any weapons that could fire directly over open sights from being brought in, and during one of these sorties he was wounded. He says he had already chosen the moment to shoot himself – he was terrified of being taken prisoner. But our men rescued him and carried him out of the line of fire.

  Sashenka, I’ve seen that railway station through my binoculars – all that’s left of it now is a scorched, bullet-scarred ruin.

  The bombardment of Tientsin has not stopped even now, we can hear explosions in the city as the Chinese army shells the European quarters. The French concession has suffered worst of all – that was where the Catholic missionaries hated so much by the Yihetuan lived. And that was where the Russian consulate was located, and the Russo-French hospital.

  The shelling comes from the outskirts of the city and the artillery school, located on a high embankment by the river opposite the German concession. They say about three hundred young Chinese officers were studying there, the Germans had supplied them with the very latest guns. The European instructors fled, but one who tried to damage the sights was torn to pieces and his head is still display
ed on a bamboo pole. That is what they say, at least, and the head could be seen through binoculars only yesterday. Today the Germans and the English took the school by storm. Our allies and the Chinese both suffered heavy losses.

  Another wounded man, by the name of Verigo, spent all this time in the concession. There was incessant fighting there too. People kept their clothes on night and day and barely slept at all. They couldn’t set up a camp – as soon as they pitched the tents, shells started falling on them. The firing was directed from the city – the Chinese there signalled to their men where to fire. People and horses had to be hidden behind walls, along the streets and in the buildings, and spread out as thinly as possible. But even then they suffered almost as many losses as when they were in battle position, because in all the concessions there wasn’t a single corner that wasn’t covered by artillery or small-arms fire. The buildings provided poor protection. Bullets flew in through the windows and doors and shells pierced straight through the walls. Women and children hid in the basements.

  Both of Verigo’s hands are strapped to his chest. The unfortunate man can’t do anything himself, his wounded comrades help him, but still he jokes about his helplessness. He was wounded by a burst of shrapnel on the bridge.

  Surprisingly enough, the Chinese have better weaponry than we do. Here is what Verigo said, word for word:

  ‘They have the latest artillery and a large stock of shells, supplied by the Germans, and we have obsolete guns. We fired only one shot in reply to five of theirs. And as for rifles, now every coolie has a Mauser or a Mannlicher!’

  The railway station is connected to the city by a floating bridge that is made out of wooden barges so that it can be opened up to allow junks through. The bridge was bombarded constantly and many of our soldiers were killed there. Every day burning boats loaded with dry reeds were launched downstream against it, and the barges had to be moved apart under fire.

  The nurse who was caring for the wounded Russians in the French hospital has come to our field infirmary with them. She’s a Parisienne and they call her simply Lucie. Very pleasant, straight-forward and competent, with her hands all red from mercuric chloride. She seems frail, but she can easily change a bed under the wounded man lying in it. She has a large, ugly mole on her neck, which she feels embarrassed about. She keeps putting her hand over it without realising. I don’t know how she came to be in China. She speaks almost no Russian, but everyone here has really fallen in love with her.

  Last night one soldier in the infirmary started screaming despairingly. Our tents are very close by. It was impossible to sleep and I went out to see what was happening. The unfortunate young man screaming had had both legs amputated the day before. They tried to calm him down, but he only yelled even louder and lashed out, so that he had to be restrained by force. They gave him an injection of morphine, but he didn’t settle down and he woke all the wounded men. Dr Zaremba flew into a fury and stalked out, saying:

  ‘Let him scream. He’ll soon stop when he gets hoarse!’

  Then Lucie sat down beside him, took his head in her arms and started comforting him, in French at first, and then she repeated the few Russian words that she knew:

  ‘Yes? No? Good! Good! Papa! Mama!’

  The poor legless man, who had probably never been caressed by any woman’s hand before, apart from his mother’s, gaped at her with his insane eyes, then calmed down, fell silent and went to sleep.

  Every night someone dies in the infirmary. They are taken to a separate tent, but in this heat they don’t keep them there for long. Today they buried eight men. I saw two of them alive and well only yesterday morning, and in the evening they were brought back on stretchers: one had been hopelessly wounded by a bullet that passed straight through his throat, and the other in the stomach. The first one died that evening, but the second, Captain Popov, carried on suffering until the morning, groaning and wheezing both when he was delirious and when he came round. He had got married recently.

  There were no planks for coffins – they were buried in sacks. The soldiers carrying the dead men hid their noses in their forage caps. One of the sacks looked too small – after the shell exploded, only the shoulders, arms and head were left intact, everything else had been blown to pieces.

  They buried them half a verst from the camp on a low hill. Nailed together one cross for all of them and stuck it in the dry clay. The grave the dead were buried in was shallow – the men didn’t have the strength to dig a deep pit in the blazing-hot sun.

  You know, Sashenka, as I listened to the muttering of the funeral service and looked at the soldiers shooting over the grave, thoughts that were quite inappropriate to the moment crept into my mind. The American Indians fired arrows into the air from their bows in order to drive away evil spirits, and we call shooting our guns at military funerals a farewell salute. But it’s the same ritual that the Indians observed when they shot arrows into the sky. And the men lying in the sacks under the clay don’t need any of it.

  We walked back in silence, every man thinking the same thing: perhaps tomorrow he would be carried off in an empty oats sack and the soldiers would hide their faces from the stink in their forage caps.

  While I was just writing these lines to you, my comrade Kirill Glazenap came into the tent. He is totally despondent. He told me that he had interpreted at the interrogation of a Chinese captured by our soldiers in a nearby village. The man had protested to them that he wasn’t a Yihetuan, but he had just been shot all the same.

  Sashenka, I have to get used to everything here.

  Now everything all around has gone quiet, I can’t hear any more shots or explosions. Only someone groaning in the infirmary and snoring from the next tent. A mouse gambolling about in a crate of provisions.

  It has got dark, but even now it is still hot and stuffy and the mosquitoes have launched their attack again. I’m bitten all over from my head to my feet. There’s no comparison with our simple mosquito, who warns of his approach from a distance. These are invisible and inaudible, just a sudden bite. No escape. And they transmit malaria. They gave out special nets today, but they turned out to be too small. Now the soldiers are sitting and sewing themselves canopies out of two nets each, so that they can sleep under them.

  My dearest, I’m not complaining, don’t think that, it’s just that I’m very tired after these last days, because in the daytime I’m always thinking of staying alive and at the same time I desperately want to sleep – I sit down for a moment and I start dreaming – but at night, when I lie down to rest, it’s impossible to free myself of the impressions of the day.

  I close my eyes, but I still see that boy with the stumps, holding them out to a mug of tea that has been offered to him. I turn over onto my other side, and the bridge leading to the ruined railway station is there in front of my eyes again. I was there yesterday and I saw them open it to let through the dead bodies that had accumulated overnight. I don’t know what’s happening there, upstream, but the current brings an endless procession of dead. One had his hands tied behind his back. I only saw the twisted fingers, I thought they were moving, but that was the effect of a wave.

  My darling, forgive me for having to describe such sad and terrible things. But this is my life now.

  I long so much to get away from all of this, to hide somewhere, lose myself in something else – to remember something from my childhood, my room, the books, you and me. To think about something good and dear to me.

  There now, I started rereading my letter and it has made me sad – there is so little tender feeling for you in it and I have so much in me.

  Now I reproach myself because when we were together I had so many opportunities to show you my love and I didn’t think about it. And now you are so far away that I can’t do anything for you – I can’t hug you or kiss you or run my hand over your hair. Love requires demonstration, not proof. How I long to buy you flowers! I never bought you any, did I? Only once, remember, I picked some lilac for you in our park.
And I want to go with you and buy you something unnecessary, feminine – a ring, a brooch, earrings, a handbag. I always used to think all that was stupid nonsense, only now have I realised how important it is and what it’s all needed for. Only here has the understanding dawned of why unnecessary things are so essential!

  Now that I’ve mentioned how essential unnecessary things are, I’ve remembered a neighbour I used to call round to see when I was little. She seemed a hundred years old to me then. Probably she was. She had thick, bandaged legs, on which she could barely even walk, leaning on the back of a chair. She pushed the chair forward and then dragged her legs up to it. Mum said she had water in her legs, a bucketful in each one. I can see her as if it was now. The pins sticking out of her grey bob of hair, her eyes watering, her trembling fingers, swollen at the joints. Her ears were huge, with the lobes stretched from wearing earrings, and there was always cotton wool sticking out of them, because they suppurated. I wasn’t afraid of her, she always had a sweet or a honey cake ready for me, but what I really went there for was the chemist’s rubber bands from the potions and powders – she kept them for me on the window handles, and I needed them for the catapults that I crafted out of bobbins and pencils.

  She was strange and she always spoke about things that I didn’t understand. She used to sit down slowly on her chair in front of the mirror and start telling me that in there, in the mirror, she wasn’t real, but once she had been real and pretty. I nod, but she can see I don’t believe her and she starts showing me old photographs. But the only thing I remember from them is the gondolas. She used to tell me how a gondolier guides his gondola though a narrow channel and pushes off from the walls of the houses with his foot.

  One time she said:

  ‘I forget what I ought to remember, but that gesture, the gondolier pushing off with his foot, I remember that.’

  She often used to tell me something and then add:

  ‘You won’t understand now. Just remember it.’