The Shield/The Wounded Soldier

by Leonid Andreyev

THE WOUNDED SOLDIER

By LEONID ANDREYEV

A SAD and disquieting image often rises before my eyes.

It happened in Petrograd, on the staircase of a large, new building, one apartment of which was transformed into a private ward. When I entered the porter's lodge, on my way to a friend, I saw that it was filled with wounded soldiers, who had just arrived, while curious spectators crowded near the plate-glass door. The house was new and luxuriously furnished, and the elevator on which the wounded soldiers were taken up, was carefully covered with some kind of cloth, for fear that the velvet would be soiled and the insects would get into the seams. Upstairs the wounded were cordially greeted by a priest and a man dressed in white. After having kissed the priest's hand, the wounded, evidently embarrassed by the bright light and the luxury of the place, entered the ward awkwardly and silently. There were no seriously wounded on stretchers among them, all were able to walk; yet it was painful to look at them.

There was a wounded soldier in one of the last groups taken up by the elevator who strangely attracted everybody's attention. He was a short, young, lean, ghastly pale Jew. All the wounded were pale, but there was something sinister about the pallor of his face; it was a paleness of an utterly exhausted, anæmic or fatally sick man. He was walking alone, feebly moving his feet, and like everybody else bent to kiss the hand of the priest, but he hardly knew what he was doing, and his kiss was strangely indifferent and meaningless. He was evidently wounded in his arm, which he held stretched out. Several fingers were wrapped up, the others, which were not injured, were covered with a crust of dirt and blood. But on his coat, on the back, there was a large brown blotch of blood, a very large one, covering almost half of his back and in the midst of the soft cloth it bulged stiffly as if starched. And this horrible spot told the simple story of the battle and the wound. But it was not the stain that made him so peculiarly conspicuous—other soldiers had similar blotches—it was rather his unusual pallor, thinness and smallness, and, above all, an expression of peculiar timidity, as if he was not at all sure whether his behaviour was appropriate and whether he had come to the right place. The faces of the other wounded soldiers, non-Jews, expressed nothing of the kind. These men were confused, but not afraid, and walked straight ahead, into the ward.

And then I recollected how a military sanitarian, whose duty it is to escort a train of wounded soldiers, had told me that the wounded Jews actually try not to moan. It was hardly credible, and at first I did not believe it; how was it possible, that a wounded soldier, freshly picked up from the battlefield and lying among wounded soldiers should try not to moan, as all do? But the sanitarian confirmed his statement and added: they are afraid to attract attention to themselves.

The Jewish soldier entered the ward after the others, and the door was closed, but his image, sorrowful and disquieting, lingered before my eyes. Of course, he, too, tried not to attract attention—and therein is the cause of his shyness; and when his wound will be dressed and he will be put into bed, he will also try not to moan. For, what right has he to moan aloud?

It is very possible, that he has no right of settlement in Petrograd and is allowed to stay there only as one of the wounded; a rather precarious right! And that which is home for others is nothing but a kind of honourable imprisonment for him; he will be kept for a while, then they will let him go, saying: "Go away, you must not be here."

And what if his mother, or sister, or father, who also have no right of settlement, will desire to come to him and kiss his bloodstained hand which has defended Russia—vague, distant Russia? But these reflections and questions came to my mind later. At the moment, I beheld, with the eyes of a peaceful citizen, the bloody, hardened blotch and the dreadful pallor of war, and the needless terror before that which, after all, is your own, and I felt an overwhelming depression and sadness.