The little fort of Belogorsk lay about forty versts[28] from Orenburg.
From this town the road followed along by the rugged banks of the R.
Yaik. The river was not yet frozen, and its lead-coloured waves looked
almost black contrasted with its banks white with snow. Before me
stretched the Kirghiz Steppes. I was lost in thought, and my reverie was
tinged with melancholy. Garrison life did not offer me much attraction.
I tried to imagine what my future chief, Commandant Mironoff, would be
like. I saw in my mind's eye a strict, morose old man, with no ideas
beyond the service, and prepared to put me under arrest for the smallest
trifle.
Twilight was coming on; we were driving rather quickly.
"Is it far from here to the fort?" I asked the driver.
"Why, you can see it from here," replied he.
I began looking all round, expecting to see high bastions, a wall, and a
ditch. I saw nothing but a little village, surrounded by a wooden
palisade. On one side three or four haystacks, half covered with snow;
on another a tumble-down windmill, whose sails, made of coarse limetree
bark, hung idly down.
"But where is the fort?" I asked, in surprise.
"There it is yonder, to be sure," rejoined the driver, pointing out to
me the village which we had just reached.
I noticed near the gateway an old iron cannon. The streets were narrow
and crooked, nearly all the izbas[29] were thatched. I ordered him to
take me to the Commandant, and almost directly my kibitka stopped
before a wooden house, built on a knoll near the church, which was also
in wood.
No one came to meet me. From the steps I entered the ante-room. An old
pensioner, seated on a table, was busy sewing a blue patch on the elbow
of a green uniform. I begged him to announce me.
"Come in, my little father," he said to me; "we are all at home."
I went into a room, very clean, but furnished in a very homely manner.
In one corner there stood a dresser with crockery on it. Against the
wall hung, framed and glazed, an officer's commission. Around this were
arranged some bark pictures,[30] representing the "Taking of Kustrin"
and of "Otchakof,"[31] "The Choice of the Betrothed," and the "Burial of
the Cat by the Mice." Near the window sat an old woman wrapped in a
shawl, her head tied up in a handkerchief. She was busy winding thread,
which a little, old, one-eyed man in an officer's uniform was holding on
his outstretched hands.
"What do you want, my little father?" she said to me, continuing her
employment.
I answered that I had been ordered to join the service here, and that,
therefore, I had hastened to report myself to the Commandant. With these
words I turned towards the little, old, one-eyed man, whom I had taken
for the Commandant. But the good lady interrupted the speech with which
I had prepared myself.