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Updated: June 2, 2025
When Nikitin had to argue against anything that seemed to him narrow, conventional, or something of that kind, he usually leaped up from his seat, clutched at his head with both hands, and began with a moan, running from one end of the room to another. And it was the same now: he jumped up, clutched his head in his hands, and with a moan walked round the table, then he sat down a little way off.
We were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not "a strong lot." Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come down from his dreams and see things as they were. But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position.
But in the midst of these shifting fortunes there were certain alliances and relationships that never changed. Amongst these was the alliance of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch. Friendship it could not be called. Nikitin, although apparently he was kindly to the little man, yielded him no intimacy.
"Stand by this gate five minutes," Nikitin whispered to me. "I must find the Colonel. The sanitars will come and fetch you when I've settled the spot for our bandaging." Nikitin disappeared and I was quite alone. I felt terribly desolate.
After school Nikitin went straight to give his private lessons, and when at last by six o'clock he got home, he felt excited and anxious, as though he had been away for a year.
I had an impulse to run out into the street, find Trenchard, and make him comfortable. I felt furiously indignant with the girl. We all looked at her, I suppose, with indignation, because she regarded us with a fierce, insulting smile, then turned her back upon us and went to a window. At that moment Molozov with Trenchard, Nikitin and Semyonov, entered.
I heard of Nikitin and others as her friends, and that was all. Then, quite suddenly, two months before the beginning of the war, she died.
She hated Nikitin: when she saw him she put her head on one side, showed her teeth, and began: "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . rrr . . . !" Then she would get under his chair, and when he would try to drive her away she would go off into piercing yaps, and the family would say: "Don't be frightened. She doesn't bite. She is a good dog."
The soldiers they met saluted the officers, the schoolboys bowed to Nikitin, and all the people who were hurrying to the gardens to hear the band were pleased at the sight of the party. And how warm it was!
I remember, on the first day that I watched, the forest beyond was black and dense like a cloud resting on the hill; the Nestor and our own country was soaked with sun. "That's a fine forest," I said to my companion. "Yes, the forest of S , stretches miles back into Galicia." It was Nikitin that day who spoke to me. We turned carelessly away.
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