The Daughter of the Commandant

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.