“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, beside you, my dzhanechka,’ (that is, “darling” in our language) he replied, taking her hand. ‘I will die,’ she said. We began to reassure her, saying that the surgeon had promised to cure her without fail, but she shook her head and turned to the wall. She didn’t want to die!
“During the night she grew delirious. Her head was on fire and every now and then she shook with fever. She was now talking incoherently about her father and brother. She wanted to go back to her mountains and home… Then she also talked about Pechorin, calling him all kinds of tender names or reproaching him for not loving his dzhanechka any more…
“He listened in silence, his head resting on his hands. But throughout it all I didn’t notice a single tear on his lashes – whether he held himself in deliberately, I don’t know. As for myself, I had never witnessed anything more heart-breaking.
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