“As for our teachers, there were perhaps ten out of sixty who were of any use at all. The worst were the French, nicknamed ‘The Drums,’ and the Germans, whom we called ‘The Butchers.’ Even the cadets who spoke one of their languages when they arrived at the school managed to forget it in their presence. Our masters taught us the art of strategy with a strangely nationalistic bent. They informed us that our arms were the most sophisticated in all of Europe and that our uniforms were suitable for the North Pole as well as an equatorial climate. And that the Emperor’s long greatcoat—that famous gray tunic His Majesty wore all the time—offered equally adequate protection from the sun and the cold. In sum, every element of our army had been so perfectly and intelligently planned, down to the last detail, that a Russian soldier could travel the world without ever enduring any discomfort.

“Our days began at six with the bugle sounding reveille and ended at ten with a group prayer. The cafeteria food was disgusting and the schedule inordinately heavy. Our courses included military history, the art of fortification, geography, topography, horsemanship, mechanics, chemistry, and on and on. And that doesn’t even include art, music, and dance, or fencing, equitation, and maneuvers.

“In spite of this impressive curriculum, we learned nothing. Our only real interest was a close study of our masters’ weaknesses and how to exploit them. Apart from the first-year hazing, we were very united as a group, a solid bloc against the adversary. I don’t know if the famous motto of Alexander Dumas was inspired by ours, but if I were to sum up my youth, it would be with those words that were carved on every step of the stairway: All for one, and one for all. We, the First Corps cadets every one of us, were occasionally bad sons, sometimes bad brothers, perhaps bad fathers and husbands, but we were never bad comrades. In this respect, I daresay that Jamal Eddin was an exemplary cadet. He placed the honor of the Corps above personal considerations, and there were no limits to his capacity for self-sacrifice in the name of friendship.

“As for vices, we didn’t drink and we didn’t gamble much, which suited him. But we gave blow for blow and insult for insult, and that suited him too. And we knew that we could get rid of an instructor by bungling our exercises on the parade ground, knowing it would result in his demotion.

“When Argamakov unjustly punished Buxhöwden one time too many, we decided the time had come to exact revenge. It was springtime, and the grass in the fields was high. We split up into two groups. One group ripped out the grass by the handful, and the others used the bunches of grass to write on the school wall: ARGAMAKOV, BASTARD. This inscription in bright green, which could be seen from one end of the garden to the other, upset our superiors. You never knew when the Czar might show up, and he would have immediately observed that the letters were not the work of a single culprit. He would have noted that we would have had to have climbed by the dozens, one on top of another’s shoulders, tufts of grass in hand, to write those words so high up. It was obvious that this huge BASTARD, visible from all over, was the work of the entire Corps.

“The incident reached the ears of our inspector, the Grand Duke Mikhaïl Pavlovitch, who in turn told his brother, the Czar. A few days later, His Majesty arrived and called the entire Corps into the yard. He had us do a few exercises, which we accomplished to perfection, as usual. His reaction was to shout, ‘Terrible! Unacceptable! Get them out of here.’

“He was furious and immediately went to see the director. He had barely crossed the threshold of his office before raging at the director, ‘Things are not going well at all here! Laxity is rampant! It’s time for them to shape up, and it’s up to you to see that they do!’

“Shaping up began immediately. Our teachers made the transition from harsh to cruel, and there was no reprieve. But when Argamakov made the mistake of calling one of the cadets an imbecile, the insult shook the entire company. All the cadets, on all sides, began shouting, ‘Imbecile yourself! Out with The Beast!’

“We started tapping the floor with our stools and shaking the tables. And when he cried, ‘Attention!’, we answered him with whistles of disapproval. In short, the word the Czar dreaded most—revolution—seemed to be materializing.

“Word of the incident spread throughout Saint Petersburg. Soon there were rumors that the First Corps cadets had thrown stools at an officer’s head, that they had broken his arm, beaten him on the head, and all kinds of other wild tales.

The Czar demoted all of us, forbade us from going out on Sundays, and from receiving visitors for the remainder of the school year. The Grand Duke Mikhaïl Pavlovitch hurried to the school. He had the Corps line up in three rows in the courtyard.

“‘Rebels, you have forgotten your discipline. Do you want to become soldiers? On your knees!’

“A murmur rippled through the lines, ‘Not on our knees! Not on our knees!’

“For the cadets of the First Corps, being forced to kneel was the pinnacle of shame. One brave cadet had recently opted to be beaten to death rather than go down on his knees. Another had agreed to serve as a soldier for twenty-five years rather than to kneel. It was a rule of honor. Those among our superiors who had been cadets themselves never inflicted this abject punishment; it was an indignity that no cadet could accept without dying of shame. Didn’t the Grand Duke Mikhaïl Pavlovitch know this?

“He continued to shout the order, the only one we could not obey. ‘On the ground before me, band of traitors! On your knees, all of you!’

“Thank heavens, he saved the day himself. He demonstrated by example, falling to his knees and crossing himself, as though he were kneeling before an icon. Before God, we gladly debased ourselves. Before God, we could kneel with humility. The entire Corps, including the Cherkesses, knelt submissively around the Grand Duke.

“‘Only God can help you obtain the pardon of the Emperor now. Pray to the Lord that the Czar will pardon you.’

“After praying, he ordered us to get up and gather around him for a sincere discussion. We knew that this was a trap designed to ferret out the leaders and that we should not enter into any kind of discussion with him. Mikhaïl Pavlovitch had a horror of any disorder or lack of discipline. Even more than the Czar, his contempt for anything resembling criticism or resistance was boundless. Anyone who attempted to justify our conduct would be subjected to the severest punishment. In his eyes, we were guilty of the ultimate crime: insubordination.

“Jamal Eddin stepped forward. With his usual poise and courtesy, he assured His Imperial Highness that we were not rebels. He knew he was taking a great risk. He knew that we all feared what might happen to him, that he might be expelled and, in his case, subjected to even further sanction. He explained that there had been no conspiracy on our part, that this was not a revolt but a spontaneous protest against the cruelty of the officers, whose harassment the cadets had been putting up with for many long years. He pointed out that the honor of the Cadet Corps was continuously scorned by our uncouth, ill-bred officers. He, a man of normally so few words, pleaded our case so eloquently that the Grand Duke listened to him. Jamal Eddin ended his discourse brilliantly by begging the Grand Duke to please tell the Czar that the cadets were praying to the Almighty that His Majesty might forgive them.

“A month later, the Czar appeared again. He inspected the school and seemed satisfied with the order of things. Officially, nothing had changed. But as a result of Jamal Eddin’s speech, the officers were ordered to temper their zeal and behave in a more civilized fashion. A few months after the Czar’s visit, we were forgiven. Our demotions were lifted and we regained our original ranks. The story of the grass-painted letters was forgotten.

“But for Jamal Eddin, the opportunity to present his precious letter to the Czar never occurred again. He kept writing nevertheless. Did he really think that the Emperor would have it delivered to his father, when Shamil had made his reappearance in Chechnya and was massacring our soldiers with unprecedented efficiency? The order had come from higher up to hush up news of our enormous losses in the Caucasus, so we knew nothing of what was taking place down there. Not yet.

“I spent nearly three years as Jamal Eddin’s roommate in the Cherkess dormitory. Though he said little during the day, he was a real chatterbox at night. He dreamed out loud, and his muttering, in Russian, with Avar mixed in, often kept me awake. I never wanted to tell him that. And I never, never dared to ask him the meaning of the word that kept recurring in his dreams, that he kept repeating over and over. He wouldn’t have answered me, and I know that he would scarcely have slept after that had I done so. When I tried to repeat the word to my brother Dmitri, he didn’t understand it. I confess, I did not look any further. Today, sixty years later, I present it to our readers, the way I believe I heard it. I’d be grateful if someone could tell me what it means.

“The word was bachou […].”

The First Cadet Corps of Saint Petersburg March 1845

“Bahou, Bahou-Messadou, are you the mountain torrent that I dream of every night?

“No day passes without my heart crying out your name. Every time the cane whistles through the air, every time the lash cuts into the skin of one of my comrades, it is your back that takes the blows, your flesh they gash. Every time blood spurts from those wounds, I see you in my mind’s eye, kneeling beneath the pillory at Akulgo. I hear you weep and my lost soul sobs with you.