Third group, the other sanitars, the strangest collection of
faces, wild, savage and eastern: Tartars, Lithuanians, Mongolian, mild
and northern, cold and western, merry and human from Little Russia,
gigantic and fierce from the Caucasus, small and frozen from
Archangel, one or two civilised and superior _and_ uninteresting from
Petrograd and Moscow.
Over the wall a long row of interested Galician peasants and soldiers
passing in carts or on horseback. Seeing the ikon, the priest, the
blowing candles, hearing the singing they would take off their hats,
cross themselves, for a moment their eyes would go dreamy, mild,
forgetful, then on their hats would go again, back they would turn
their horses, cursing them up the hill, chaffing the Galician women,
down deep in the everyday life again.
The service ended. The priest turns to us, the gold Cross is raised,
we advance one by one: the generals, the colonels, the lieutenants,
the Sisters, Semyonov, Nikitin, Goga, then the choir, then the
sanitars, even to hunch-backed Alesha, who is always given the
dirtiest work to do and is only half a human being; one by one we kiss
the Cross, the candles are blown out, the ikon folded up and put away
in a cardboard box, we are introduced to the generals, there is
general conversation, and the stars and the moon come out "blown
straight up, it seems, out of the bosom of the Nestor.
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