It Happened at Daybreak

I

IVAN KARASS, a private in the second squad of the first platoon, was, according to general opinion in his company, a queer man. But if any one of the soldiers were asked in what consisted Karass’s peculiarities he would be at loss to state. And yet the company was right: Ivan Karass was queer.

For instance, he never talked, even when off duty. He always spent his free hours all by himself, either sitting paralyzed of all motion and vacant of all conscious life, or lying stretched on the ground and gazing for hours at the sky. What was going on in his mind no one knew, just as no one knew whether there was anything at all, and just as no one knew whether Karass was a thinker or merely a fool. From his behavior he might have been either, if only fools can have such sober, expressive faces, such clear, scrutinizing eyes, smiling now gently, now bitterly; now greeting you friendlily, now piercing you with a long, tormenting look.

Karass must have been forty. He was married and the father of half a dozen children, they said. From the first day of his life he had lived continually in a small village somewhere in the middle Ukrainian steppes; lived knowing nothing of the world, separated from it by great roadless spaces, by lack of common interests, by his own complete illiteracy, and by the illiteracy of his neighbors. From that drowsy and undisturbed existence, by the order of the invisible Tsar and his sinister generals, he was taken away and transferred to perpetual crash and collision.

However, Karass had quickly learned the soldier’s duty and the ways of war. In fact, the ease with which he could grasp everything new and the quickness of his apprehension were matters of great astonishment to the rest of the men. The more so because of an extreme forgetfulness and a most amazing absent-mindedness which he displayed at times. During one of these spells, the soldiers knew without looking who was the man out of step, or who was the man whose head, appearing above the parapet, had attracted the enemy’s fire. Too often it was Karass, and too often the poor devil was thrashed by sergeants, and even by commissioned officers sometimes. That punishment the soldiers watched in silence, tapping their foreheads significantly.

But at times their contempt for Ivan Karass would give place to a quite different feeling. This would happen when, coining out of his long silence, he would start to sing his songs.

He knew only three of them, three old melodious ballads. But each time he sang them with new variations in words, tune, and expression, as if they were songs entirely new. He sang sitting on the ground in his usual pose, his hands about his knees, his eyes closed, and swaying slightly to and fro. And all the men around him, forgetting his peculiarities, forgetting time and place, listened to Karass reverently.

Karass sang of their homes, of their villages surrounded by cherry orchards, of fields of swaying wheat, of clear streams flowing by, and of azure sky overhead. He sang of a hero-Cossack, of his exploits, of his black-eyed, whitefaced, tender-hearted girl, and of other girls, and of other Cossacks, and of Tatar unbelievers, their fierce enemy. He sang, and in many a soldier’s eye large drops of tears would glitter. Even the sour top-sergeant, leaving his perpetual bookkeeping, would put his chin in the palms of his hands, would close his eyes, and, lost in reveries, would listen to Karass. And Karass would stop all of a sudden, just as suddenly as he had begun. But the silence which he had commanded would still continue a long time, and only gradually the soldiers would resume their interrupted occupations, whispering to each other: ‘There’s a God’s gift in that man.’

Thus, in a mixed atmosphere of admiration and contempt, lived Karass at the front for over a year, among thousands of men, yet all by himself. Then he found a friend.

II

It happened at daybreak late in the fall. That morning, as usual, a voluminous fusillade greeted the sun slowly mounting in the multicolored sky. A small rabbit, which somehow had found its way into No Man’s Land, was racing back and forth, bewildered by the racket and spurred up by the sound of bullets whizzing about him. The soldiers from both sides, noticing the little fellow, were following it with the fire of their rifles. But luck was with the rabbit this time: it escaped what seemed an inevitable end by hurling itself into the flare of Karass’s loophole at the very moment when Karass, who knew nothing about the chase of the rabbit by the joined armies, was about to pull the trigger of his rifle. Instantly realizing, however, what had happened, Karass pushed his rifle aside, in no time enlarged the loophole by taking out one of the bags filled with earth, and took the shivering rabbit in his hands.

The fusillade continued. Karass gazed for a moment at the poor beast, then gently put it into the bosom of his shirt, repaired the loophole, and resumed firing. Meanwhile the rabbit, still trembling, had crawled around Karass and remained behind his back tightly pressing against him.

When the skirmish was over, Karass reached for the rabbit, pushed it through the loophole, and gave it a slight shove. The rabbit did not move. Karass gave it another shove, but with no more result. Not only did the rabbit show no intention of leaving the loophole, but it was stubbornly backing, trying to regain the trench. Karass watched it in silence. A shot banged somewhere close by. The rabbit doubled and darted through the hole into the trench. Karass again took the little fellow into his hands, lifted it to the level of his eyes, and smiled bitterly.

The rabbit was a beautiful little creature, barely a month old. Its gray, red-rimmed eyes were open wide; its nostrils and its graceful upper lip moved nervously, giving to the dainty muzzle an amusing expression. Karass put his hands up to his mouth and gently blew into the rabbit’s face. The rabbit closed its eyes, threw back its ears, shook its head, and pressed closer into Karass’s hands. Karass smiled again, but this time brightly and happily.

The sun was hanging already well above the forest-covered hills. The chill of the morning was changing into the exquisite warmth of an autumn day. A few pearly clouds were spread high in the sky, making by contrast its blueness still more striking. Greener and greener became the forest beyond the enemy lines and bluer grew the peaks of the Carpathian Mountains still farther away in the west. A sparrow twittered, here a cricket chirruped, and there some insect buzzed. But the men made no sound. Weary, suspicious, irritated, they watched the enemy.

Karass kept the rabbit and tended it as only a very fond mother would look after her child. Was it a paternal feeling, or merely an inherited age-long habit of caring for animals, or else a need for friendship, which thus found an object? Who can tell? The rabbit, in turn, became closely attached to Karass. It followed its master like a pup around the trenches, its muzzle almost touching Karass’s heels. They stood watch together, and together slept.

To keep a pet in the trenches is not an easy task. The men themselves had often but little to eat. And moreover the little they had was of no use to the rabbit, who cared not for cold soup, hard bread, and tea. Yet the very hardship through which Karass had to go to provide his nursling with food seemed to make the rabbit still dearer to him. Happily smiling, he watched his pet devour greedily the grass and foliage which, risking his life, he had plucked the preceding night. But vegetation was becoming scarcer and scarcer with the approach of the winter and Karass would have been in a quandary, were it not for the constant assistance of his company mates, who, returning from duty in the rear of the lines, would bring with them all they could find.

Even in the midst of most comfortable surroundings, it is hard at times to bear the last days of the fall, the gray sunless days, days of cold, of penetrating mist, of moaning and wailing winds. No wonder that to the men in the trenches those days seemed despairing, torturing, insupportable. Not a flutter of life could be seen for miles around. All was either withered or buried alive in the maze of underground excavations. Only the first lines were guarded, and those by single soldiers placed widely apart. All other posts were abandoned and the men were ordered into dugouts. Here, in semiobscurity, some slept on a thin layer of straw covering the cold and wet ground; others sat for hours around the smoky fires, hungry, tired, miserable. Only on Karass the general gloom seemed to have no effect. As usual, he showed no interest in what was going on around him, his attention being absorbed by the crackling fire, by the fantastic rivulets of smoke slowly rising in the air, and by the rabbit in his hands.

One day, late in the afternoon, a story spread from one dugout to another that Emelian, the captain’s orderly, ceding to long-assailing temptation, had stolen a bottle of his master’s cognac, had drunk it all by himself, and had made an attempt to kiss the sergeant major. There were many details to that story, both amusing and sad. Sad, when they concerned the mannerin which the furious sergeant major had covered Emelian’s face with black-and-blue patches. And while the soldiers were speculating on Emelian’s future, and Emelian himself was sleeping at the bottom of the trench on the very spot where justice had found him, the captain and the sergeant major were conferring together. First they decided to put Emelian back in the ranks, and then, on the sergeant’s suggestion, to give the job of captain’s orderly to Ivan Karass.

Easy, compared with the life of other soldiers, is the life of a captain’s orderly. His duties are simple, his leisure is large, his food good; during the fight he can get into a safe place; he has but one master, and this master the captain himself! But what pleased Karass in his new situation was the fact that three times a day he had to go to the officers’ mess, where he could get for his rabbit the green stuff he wanted.

Contrary to everyone’s expectation, Karass made a fine orderly. He was conscientious and thoughtful, and he looked after his master as a nurse would after her charge. And, what was still more surprising, he somewhat changed. He no more kept apart so persistently; he began to show interest in what men talked around him, and at times he even ventured a word in the general conversation.

III

The first snow fell that year on the fifteenth of November. It started at midnight in tiny, widely separated flakes, but soon it became thicker, and in the morning, when the men emerged from the dugouts, they could see nothing but a white, dancing screen. They found the trenches half filled with snow and immediately set to work. By noon the trenches were clear, but by evening they were filled again. Thus it went on for three days.

On the morning of the fourth day, the news spread about that the regiment was to be relieved that night and was to proceed to some distant, place. And indeed that night the regiment was relieved, and when the day broke it was marching miles away toward Rumania.

Partly by train, partly by foot in deep snow, the journey was made in thirty days, and in the middle of December the regiment had arrived at the assigned positions and had relieved a Rumanian unit. Gradually the soldiers changed the Rumanian dugouts to suit their taste, and resumed their usual life. No, not exactly the usual; for wine in Rumania was more than abundant, the men had found thousands of ways to smuggle it into the trenches, and there was no more gloom, no more unhappiness, although there remained still plenty of causes for both. The officers tried to stop the drinking, but their efforts were not successful; they too were busy with wine. Karass, with his rabbit, had made the march with the light-baggage train which immediately followed the regiment. Arriving at the new positions, he arranged with much care a dugout for his master and a hole for himself and his pet.

The change which had started in Karass while he was still in Galicia kept on developing here. He became sociable, if one can be called ‘sociable’ who in company scarcely says a word. However, Karass’s silence was not uncomfortable now. It seemed as if he wanted to say something and yet could find no words. ’Just like a horse or a dog,’ commented the soldiers in his absence, but tapped their foreheads no longer. They began to like Karass. But again, if someone had asked them what made them change their opinion, they would not have been able to tell. Often they treated him to a cup of wine. Karass drank willingly, yet he never drank excessively, nor did he ever try to get wine for himself. Now and then, at the request of the soldiers, he sang, but somehow, in the cold and confinement of the dugout, he was not at his best.

The eve of Christmas came. All along the line the soldiers were getting ready to celebrate the holiday. They brought in much wine and were ransacking the country for food. The officers too had some plans regarding that evening. Soon after supper they began to assemble in small groups in the more spacious dugouts. The captain himself went to a ‘party.’ But before he left he told Karass to take a note to an officer in the village close by, who next morning was leaving for Russia.

Karass put the sealed envelope under his hat, took the rabbit in his hands, walked out from the trenches, and took the road toward the village. The night was light, cold, and still, He easily found the officer, handed him the note, and started on his way back. But hardly had he passed half of the village when he met a small party of soldiers stealthily following the dark side of the street. Had not one of the soldiers, who recognized Karass, hailed him in a subdued voice, he would have passed the party without noticing it at all. But being hailed, he stopped, then hesitatingly approached the men. There were six of them, all of the liaison company — a company generally known to be made up of daring and unruly fellows. Karass knew no one of them; yet, having heard him sing many a time, they all knew him.

‘Where are you going, Karass?’ asked the man who hailed him.

’To the trenches.’

‘You have been there long enough already, and you are going to be there the rest of your life, so what is the use of hurrying? Come with us; we’ll give you a drink of wine that would make the Rumanian king himself kick up his heels.’

Karass hesitated. He was shy of new company and yet he wished to go.

‘Well, are you coming?’ asked another man impatiently.

Karass looked at him and noticed two pailfuls of wine crusted over with ice, which the soldier was carrying. He turned his eyes to the other men and saw that each of them carried a pail, or a kettle, or both.

‘Well, yes, I’ll go,’ Karass answered in a voice which betrayed indecision. He was not sure that it would be the right thing to do.

The house used by the off-duty liaison men stood by itself a mile behind the village. It must have been an uninviting place even when its proprietors lived in it, but now, when they had left it, fleeing the daily cannonade, and when first the Rumanian and then our soldiers had ravaged it, the place looked appalling. The scanty furniture had been used as fuel. The fence, the benches, the inside doors, and the greater part of the partitions — all were having the same fate. Only the smoke-covered dirty walls and still dirtier floor remained intact.

When Karass, following the soldiers, entered the house, he found there half a score of other men, sprawling on muddy straw in front of an open fire. The dim, reddish flame, the only light in the room, playing on the faces and figures of the soldiers, created a bizarre yet exquisite picture. The arrival of the newcomers made the men jump to their feet and stirred up a noisy movement. Order was soon established, however. The wine was placed in the middle of the room, and all the men sat down in a tight circle around it. They talked, laughed, joked, but touched not the wine, waiting for something else. Karass too, after placing his rabbit and his overcoat in one of the dark corners, took a seat in the circle and with marked self-consciousness and awkwardness observed his new companions.

A few minutes later four more men entered the house. These brought a beheaded cock and a small trench bag of potatoes. There was another commotion among the seated soldiers. But this time the joy did not last. It became at once evident to all that the party’s search for food had not been successful. Is there any hungry man whose heart would not fall at the sight of one meagre cock and five pounds of potatoes on one side, and a score of hungry men on the other? True, there was some mouldy black bread. But not bread the men’s stomachs craved.

The soldiers retook their seats around the wine and, cursing energetically, heard the misadventures of the returning party. Meanwhile three of its members carried their spoils over to that part of the house which once had been the kitchen, and began cooking the supper.

The original plan was not to drink the wine till the supper was ready. But the temptation was too great. The cups were in their hands and the wine stood only an arm’s length away. First with apologies, later without them, one man after another began to help himself. The cooks, realizing what was going on, appeared from the kitchen, took one of the kettles, and started an affair of their own. Presently all were gay, happy, talked all at a time, drank to Christmas, to their homes, and to each other.

Karass, like the rest of the men, drank cup after cup. The expression of his face, his pose, his behavior, everything changed entirely. His usual sadness and shyness were gone. He smiled knowingly; his eyes streamed enthusiasm; he was beautiful; he was Olympian.

At last he put away his filled cup as if he had made up his mind not to drink any more, and he began to talk. Astonished, the soldiers hushed, lowered their cups, and listened.

‘Do you know what I think?’ he asked in his musical, soothing voice. ‘I think,’ he continued softly, receiving no answer, ’I think the war is wrong. And not only the war, but everything is wrong around us. I think that the officers, the priests, and the people in the cities know that there is no God, but they fool us telling that there is. At times it seems to me I know why they do it; but then again I can’t understand. Why should there be a Tsar? I wish I could read. I have heard people saying that everything is explained in the books. I wish I knew what makes the aeroplanes fly, and what makes a man’s voice go through a wire in the telephone. . . .’

A long time Karass thus talked, now making statements, strange, amazing statements, betraying much eager thought and much brooding over everything he saw and everything he heard; now exposing the enigmas of his mind, all kinds of them, from striking, significant inquiries to naïve metaphysical questions which are so often asked by children. Karass talked quietly. Not a single time he raised his voice. The words were coming out of his mouth smoothly, as if he had repeated them to himself thousands upon thousands of times. But Karass was not calm. He lived intensely these moments. In the semiobscurity of the room his eyes glittered mysteriously, and he passed them from one face to another as if trying to find in his audience answers to the thoughts that assailed him.

But alas! This was the wrong place to look for deeply hidden truth. Puzzled and perplexed, the soldiers regarded Karass, and they wondered what would happen if officers, policemen, or priests heard him talk this way.

IV

And while Karass talked and the soldiers, forgetting their wine, listened, there was one man, Doobov, who was absorbed by entirely different matters. For a long while he looked attentively into the corner where Karass had left his pet. Finally he rose, nonchalantly crossed the room a few times, went into that corner, sat down, and covered the rabbit with Karass’s overcoat. Neither Karass nor anyone else noticed Doobov’s manœuvre. And Doobov, seeing that his trick had succeeded, picked up the overcoat with the rabbit in it and carried it out to the kitchen. For a minute or two there was heard an argument, then a sudden laughter, and a clatter of cups. Then Doobov appeared and retook his place.

Karass was still talking, but his unwonted enthusiasm was diminishing. He glanced once more at the faces of soldiers about him, waved his hand as if in disgust, ceased talking, and gathered himself into his usual pose — his head lowered and his hands around his knees.

‘Say, Karass!’ Doobov broke the silence. ‘Why don’t you sing us something?’

Karass did not answer, but the rest of the soldiers resumed their hubbub, which eventually grew to a higher intensity than caution warranted. They continued to drink. The pails were almost empty.

Seeing that Karass drank no more, they began to pass him filled cups. He accepted the wine, but drank only one or two cups, emptying the rest on the floor behind him. The soldiers talked, laughed, argued. Someone started a song, which was taken up by the others. Karass too joined in, and his voice stood out in the chorus. Then, one by one, the soldiers dropped out, leaving him alone.

What a power there was in Karass’s voice! How easily could he, by means of a simple melody, in one moment fill the soul with warmth and longing, and rout the created illusions in the next moment, frustrating the awakened expectations, and sending the soul to a torture!

Unattended, the fire became dim. Darker became the room and still more fantastic appeared the figures who sat close to the fireplace. They sat with their heads lowered, their eyes closed, their wine forgotten. And Karass sang and sang.

It seems that in every gathering of men there is one whom nothing can affect. So was it here. A loud yawn, followed by the exclamation, ‘I wish the supper was ready,’ interrupted Karass. Karass stopped his song without bringing the last sentence to an end.

‘Well, it’s ready,’ declared the cooks, who also had been listening to Karass from the threshold of the kitchen. In less than a minute the fire was made higher; everyone had found his wooden spoon and the remnant of his daily allotment of bread; then two circles were formed, and in the centre of each were set down a dish of steaming potatoes and meat and a new pailful of wine, foresightedly concealed by someone at the beginning of the feast.

The food was quickly gone, but the wine lasted still. The men were already drunken. They shouted, swore, while one or two wept pitifully.

But Karass neither laughed nor wept. He was serious and composed. Wine seemed to have no further effect on him. He carefully wiped his spoon with the last piece of bread, ate the bread, returned the spoon to the man who had lent it to him, slowly arose, and picked his way into the corner where he had left his pet and his overcoat.

The overcoat he found easily, but the rabbit he could not find. For a moment he stood motionless as if trying to remember something; then he went into another corner. Failing there also, he rushed into the third, and then the fourth, and then finally began to crawl all over the floor, spreading the straw apart and looking everywhere.

The hubbub in the room continued. Of all the crowd only four men seemed to remember that Karass was there. These were Doobov and the three cooks, and these followed his movements with much interest. And Karass, having covered all the floor twice, straightened up, returned to his place in front of the fire, and timidly asked the soldiers: —

‘Countrymen, have n’t you seen my rabbit? He was right there in that corner.’

The noise dwindled away. The soldiers turned their heads toward Karass, looking at him vacantly. Karass repeated his question, this time even more timidly.

‘Your rabbit is in your belly,’ came Doobov’s voice from the dark. ‘Peace — be—to — his — soul,’ he added a second later, in a praying manner. To which a dozen other voices solemnly responded: ‘A — m — e — n.’

Karass seemed to understand nothing. With an expression of inquietude on his face, he stood in the midst of the silenced soldiers, passing his eyes from one to another. ‘Where is my rabbit?’ he asked the third time.

No one answered.

A quiver passed over Karass’s face. His eyes opened wide, his lips began to tremble, then two large tears rolled out from his eyes and crept down his cheeks.

Sobered and perplexed, the soldiers looked at Karass, daring to ask no questions.

V

Day was breaking. The stars had already begun to pale and the sky was gray. In the east a strip of orange light appeared above a chain of low hills. Then a rich red glow spread higher up, while a delicate green band took the place of the orange light. Then a thread of gold advanced along the crests of the hills. The sky was growing bluer.

Karass was walking slowly across the soft white snow, his eyes staring straight before him. He entered the tortuous communication pass leading into the trenches, went by the first line, and stopped in a forepost. Here he put his arm on the parapet and, fixing his eyes on some distant point, remained motionless.

The sun had cleared the top of a hill.

The shadow of a small animal crossed the field of Karass’s vision. Karass started violently. In an instant he had leaped over on the other side of the parapet, and was racing wildly toward the German trenches and shouting, ‘ My rabbit! My rabbit! ’

A score of rifles snapped in front of him. Hundreds of others immediately joined. Not knowing what was going on, our soldiers began to answer. Then machine guns entered into the action, and finally artillery, ours and the enemy’s.

But Karass heard nothing. For him at last the war was over.