.. into bayonets ... that
is, to cut, to kill, to slaughter one another--men! They turned the
machine-guns on us, and this is what happened: the private Kuzmin and
I were together, when suddenly two bullets struck him. He fell, and,
losing all sense of distinction, forgetting that I was his officer,
he stretched out his arms towards me in a sort of half-conscious way,
and cried: 'Towny, bayonet me!' You understand? 'Towny, bayonet me!'
But you cannot understand.... Do not laugh!"
He told me this, now whispering, now shrieking. He told me that I
could not understand; but I can . . . "Towny, bayonet me!" Those
words express all the terror of war for me--Georgie's death,
Alexander's wound, the mother's grief; all, all that the War has
brought: they express it with such force that my temples ache with an
almost physical sense of anguish,
"Towny, bayonet me!" How simple, how superhuman!
I remember those words every day, especially when in the hall waiting
for the post. Alexander writes seldom and his letters are very dry,
merely telling me that he is well, that either there are no dangers
or that they have passed; he writes to us all at the same time, to
mother, to Asya, and to me.
It was like that to-day. I was waiting for the postman. He came and
brought several letters, one of them from Alexander. I did not open
it at once, but waited for Mother.
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