The Belogorsk fortress was situated at a distance of forty versts from Orenburg. The road lay along the steep bank of the Yaik. The river was not yet frozen over, and its leaden current showed dark and dreary between the monotonous snow-covered banks. ON either side stretched the Kirghisz steppe. I was plunged in meditation, for the greaer part melancholy. Garrison life held few attractions for me. I tried to imagine what Captain Mironov, my future superior officer, would be like, and formed a picture of a severe, bad-tempered old man, oblivious to all but the service, and ready to arrest me and put me on bread and water for the most trivial offence. The dusk was beginning to fall. We were driving at a fair speed. “Is it far to the fortress?” I asked my driver. “Not very,” he replied. “It’s just comming into sight, yonder.” I looked all around me, expecting to see formidable bastions, turrets, and ramparts; but I could see nothing but a huddle of wooden buildings surrounded by a log fence. On one side of the road were three or four haystacks, half- covered with snow, on the other a tumble-down mill with idly drooping bark sails. “Where’s the fortress?” I asked in surprise. “There it is,” replied the driver, pointing to the hamlet into which we were turning at that moment.

At the gate I saw an ancient iron cannon; the streets were narrow an crooked; the houses low and ost of them had straw thatches. I ordered the driver to go on to the commandant’s office, and a minute later the sleigh drew up befor a small wooden house, standing on high ground, next to a wooden church.

The Cat’s Funeral

Nobody came to meet me. I went into the porch and opened the door into the passage. An invalided soldier was perched on a table putting a blue patch on the elbow of a green uniform. I told him to announce my arrival. “You can go in, Sir” he replied. “They’re at home.” I went into a clean little room, furnished in the old-fashioned style. In one corner was a crockery cupboard, on the wall hung an officer’s diploma, framed and glazed; next to it were crude pictures representing the storming of Kistrin and Ochakov, “The Choice of a Bride”, and “The Cat’s Funeral”. At the window sat an old lady in a waddded jacket with a kerchief on her head. She was winding wool which a one-eyed ancient in officer’s uniform held up for her aroun his outstrethced hands. “What can I do for you, Sir?” asked the old woman going on with her occupation. I repied that I had come to serve in the army and considered it my duty to report to the captian, and here I turned to the on-eyed old man, whom I took for the commnadant. But the mistress of the house interrupted the speech I had prepared beforehand. “Ivan Kuzmich is out,” she said. “He had gone to visit Father Gerasim; but it is no matter, Sir. I am his wife, an you are very welcome. Take a seat, Sir.” She called a servant-girl, whom she told to go for the sergeant. The old man observed me inquisitively from his solitary eye. “May I venture to enquire what regiment you were in?” he asked. I satisfied his curiosity. “And may I ask,” he continued, “what caused you to leave the Guards for a garrison?” I replied that such had been the will of my superiors. “For conduct unworthy of an officer of the Guards I presume,” continued my importunate interrogator. “Enough of you prattle,” said the captain’s lady, “can’t you see the young man is tired from his journey - let him alone! (Hold your hands up, do!) And you, Sir,” she went on, addressing me, “don’t grieve at having been packed off to this out-of-the-way spot, You’re not the first, you won’t be the last. You won’t mind it, after you get used to it. It’s over four years since Alexei Ivanovich Shvabrin was transferred to us for manslaughter. The Lord knows what made him do it; you see, he and some lieutenant went to the outskirts of the town, and took their swords with them, and started prodding at each other; and Alexei Ivanovich ran the lieutenant throught the body, and that in the presence of two witnesses. Can’t be helped! It might happen to anybody.”

Just then the sergeant, a stalwart young Cossack, entered the room. “Maximich,” said the old lady, “find quarters for the officer, clean ones.” “Yes, Vasilissa Yegorovna,” replied the sergeant. “Shall I quarter His Honour on Ivan Polezhaev?” “No, no, Maximich,” said the captian’s lady. “It’s crowded enough there as it is, but Polezhaev is my friend, and understands that we are his superiors” Take the officer … what’s your name, Sir? Pyotr Andreich. Take Pyotr Andreich to Semen Kuzov. He let his horse into my vegetable garden, the rascal! Well, Maximich, is everything in order?”