were the most ignorant, and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be clever. And I grew bored… Soon I was transferred to the Caucasus – this was the happiest time of my life. I hoped that boredom would not survive under Chechen bullets – but it’s no use. In a month I had become so accustomed to their whine and the breath of death that, to tell the truth, the mosquitoes bothered me more, and life became more boring than ever because I had now lost practically my last hope. When I saw Bela in my quarters, when I held her on my lap and first kissed her raven locks, I foolishly thought she was an angel sent down to me by a compassionate Providence… Again I was mistaken: the love of a savage girl is little better than that of a well-born lady. The ignorance and simplicity of the one are as boring as the coquetry of the other. I still love her, if you want to know. I am grateful to her for a few rather blissful moments. I am ready to die for her even, but I am really bored with her… I don’t know whether I am a fool or a scoundrel, but the fact is that I am to be pitied as much, if not more than she. My soul has been warped by the world, my mind is restless, my heart insatiable – nothing satisfies me. I grow accustomed to sorrow as readily as to joy, and my life becomes emptier from day to day. Only one thing is left for me, and that is to travel. As soon as possible I’ll set out – not for Europe, God forbid – but for America, Arabia, India – and maybe I’ll die somewhere on the road! Ar least I’m sure that with the help of storms and bad roads this consolation won’t soon cease to be a last resort.’ He talked long in this vein and his words seared themselves in my memory for it was the first time I had heard such talk from a man of twenty-five, and, I hope to God, the last. Amazing! You probably were in the capital recently; perhaps you can tell me,” the captain went on, talking to me, “whether the young people there are all like that?”
I replied that there are many who speak in the same way, and that most likely some of them are speaking the truth; but that disillusionment, having begun like all vogues in the upper strata of society, had descended to the lower, which wear it out, and that nowadays those who are really the most bored try hard to conceal that misfortune as if it were a vice. The captain didn’t understand these subtleties, and he shook his head and smiled shyly. “It was the French, I suppose, who made boredom fashionable?”
“No, the English.”
“Ah, so that’s it!” he replied. “Of course, they’ve always been habitual drunks!”
Involuntarily I recalled one Moscow lady who claimed Byron was nothing more than a drunkard. The captain’s remark, however, was more excusable, for in order to abstain from drink he naturally tried to reassure himself that all the misfortunes in the world are caused by intemperance.
“Kazbich did not come again,” he went on with his story. “Still, for some unknown reason, I couldn’t get rid of the idea that his visit was to some purpose and that he was scheming something evil.
“One day Pechorin persuaded me to go hunting wild boar with him. I tried to resist, for what was a wild boar to me, but finally he did drag me with him. We set out early in the morning, taking five soldiers with us. Until ten o’clock we poked about the reeds and the woods without seeing a single animal. ‘What do you say to turning back?’ said I. ‘What’s the use of being stubborn? You can see for yourself it’s an unlucky day.’ But Pechorin didn’t want to return emptyhanded in spite of the hear and fatigue… That’s how he was: if he set his mind on something, he had to get it – his mother must have spoiled him as a child… At last around noon we came upon the cussed boar-bang!… bang!… but no: the beast slipped into the reeds… yes, it was indeed our unlucky day. After a short rest we set out for home.
“We rode side by side, in silence, reins hanging loose, and had almost reached the fort, though we couldn’t yet see it for the brush, when a shot rang out. We looked at each other, and the same suspicion flashed through our minds. Galloping in the direction of the sound, we saw a group of soldiers huddled together on the rampart, pointing to the field where a horseman was scooting off into the distance at breakneck speed with something white across his saddle. Pechorin yelled not a bit worse than any Chechen, drew his pistol from its holster and dashed in pursuit, and I after him.
“Luckily, because of our poor hunting luck, our horses were quite fresh. They strained under the saddle, and with every moment we gained on our target. Finally I recognized Kazbich, though I couldn’t make out what he was holding in front of him. I drew up next to Pechorin and shouted to him: ‘It’s Kazbich!’ He looked at me, nodded and struck his horse with the stick.
“At last we were within gunshot range of Kazbich. Whether his horse was exhausted or whether it was worse than ours I don’t know, but he wasn’t able to get much speed out of the animal in spite of his efforts to urge it on. I am sure he was thinking of his Karagyoz then…
“I looked up and saw Pechorin aiming on the gallop. ‘Don’t shoot!’ I yelled. ‘Save the charge, we’ll catch up with him soon enough.’ But that’s youth for you: always foolhardy at the wrong time… The shot rang out and the bullet wounded the horse in a hind leg. The animal made another dozen leaps before it stumbled and fell on its knees. Kazbich sprang from the saddle, and now we saw he was holding a woman bound in a veil in his arms. It was Bela… poor Bela! He shouted something to us in his own language and raised his knife over her… There was no time to waste and I fired impulsively. I must have hit him in the shoulder, for his arm suddenly dropped. When the smoke blew away there was the wounded horse lying on the ground and Bela next to it, while Kazbich, who had thrown away his gun, was scrambling up a cliff through the bushes like a cat. I wanted to pick him off but my gun needed reloading now. We slipped out of the saddle and ran toward Bela. The poor girl lay motionless, blood streaming from her wound. The villain! Had he struck her in the heart, it all would have been over in a moment, but to stab her in the back in the foulest way! She was unconscious. We tore the veil into strips and bandaged the wound as tightly as we could. In vain did Pechorin kiss her cold lips – nothing.
“Pechorin mounted his horse and I raised her up from the ground, somehow managing to place her in front of him in the saddle. He put his arm around her and we started back. After several minutes of silence, Grigoriy Aleksandrovich spoke: ‘Listen, Maksim Maksimich, we’ll never get her home alive at this pace.’ ‘You’re right,’ I said, and we spurred the horses to full gallop. At the fort gates a crowd was awaiting us. We carried the wounded girl gently into Pechorin’s quarters and sent for the surgeon. Although he was drunk, he came at our summons, and after examining the wound said the girl could not live more than a day. But he was wrong…
“She recovered, then?” I asked the captain, hanging onto his arm, glad in spite of myself.
“No,” he replied, “the surgeon was wrong only in that she lived another two days.”
“But, tell me, how did Kazbich manage to kidnap her?”
“It was like this: disobeying Pechorin’s instructions, she had left the fort and gone to the river. It was very hot, you know, and she had sat down on a rock and dipped her feet into the water. Kazbich crept up, grabbed and gagged her, dragged her into the bushes, jumped on his horse and galloped off. She managed to scream, however, and the sentries gave the alarm, fired after him but missed, and that’s when we arrived on the scene.”
“Why did Kazbich want to carry her off?”
“My dear sir! These Circassians are notorious thieves. Their fingers itch for anything that lies unguarded. Whether they need it or not, they steal – they just can’t help themselves! Besides he had long had his eye on Bela.”
“And she died?”
“Yes, but she suffered a great deal, and we too suffered enough watching her. About ten o’clock at night she regained consciousness. We were sitting at her bedside. As soon as she opened her eyes, she asked for Pechorin. ‘I am here,
