Пиковая дама / The Queen of Spades. Александр Пушкин

it done me to have been a sergeant in the Guard from my cradle? Where has it brought me? To the ::th Regiment, and to a fort stranded on the frontier of the Kirghiz-Kaïsak Steppes!”

      I dined at Andréj Karlovitch’s, in the company of his old aide de camp. Strict German economy was the rule at his table, and I think that the dread of a frequent guest at his bachelor’s table contributed not a little to my being so promptly sent away to a distant garrison.

      The next day I took leave of the General, and started for my destination.

      Chapter III. The Little Poet

      The little fort of Bélogorsk lay about forty versts[28] from Orenburg. From this town the road followed along by the rugged banks of the R. Yaïk. 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 izbás[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 “Otchakóf”[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.