War and Peace (132 page)

“I guarantee that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest danger, and it is improbable that it should be threatened in any way. I myself from one side, and Prince Bagration from the other, will effect a junction before Smolensk on the 22nd instant, and both armies will proceed with their joint forces to defend their compatriots of the province under your government, till their efforts beat back the enemies of our country, or till their gallant ranks are cut down to the last warrior. You will see from this that you have a perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolensk, as they are defended by two such valiant armies and can be confident of their victory.

(“By order of Barclay de Tolly to the civil governor of Smolensk. Baron Ash. 1812.”)

Crowds of people were moving uneasily about the streets. Waggons, loaded up with household crockery, chairs, and cupboards, were constantly emerging from the gates of houses, and moving along the streets. Carts were standing at the entrance of the house next to Ferapontov’s, and women were wailing and exchanging good-byes. The yard dog was frisking about the horses, barking.

Alpatitch’s step was more hurried than usual as he entered the yard, and went straight under the shed to his horses and cart. The coachman was asleep; he waked him up, told him to put the horses in, and went
into the outer room of the house. In the private room of the family, he heard the wailing of children, the heartrending sobs of a woman, and the furious, husky shouting of Ferapontov. The cook came fluttering into the outer room like a frightened hen, just as Alpatitch walked in.

“He’s beating her to death—beating the mistress!… He’s beaten her so, thrashed her so!…”

“What for?” asked Alpatitch.

“She kept begging to go away. A woman’s way! Take me away, says she; don’t bring me to ruin with all my little children; folks are all gone, says she, what are we about? So he fell to beating her … beating and thrashing her!”

Alpatitch nodded his head, apparently in approval at those words; and not caring to hear more he went towards the door on the opposite side leading to the room in which his purchases had been left.

“Wretch, villain,” screamed a thin, pale woman, bursting out at that moment with a child in her arms and her kerchief torn off her head. She ran down the steps into the yard. Ferapontov was going after her, but seeing Alpatitch, he pulled down his waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned and followed Alpatitch into the room.

“Do you want to be getting off already?” he asked. Without answering the question or looking round at him, Alpatitch collected his purchases and asked how much he owed him.

“We’ll reckon up! Been at the governor’s, eh?” asked Ferapontov. “What did you hear?”

Alpatitch replied that the governor had told him nothing definite.

“How are we to pack up and go with our business?” said Ferapontov. “Seven roubles to pay for cartage to Dorogobuzh. What I say is: they have no conscience!” said he. “Selivanov, he did a good turn on Friday, sold flour to the army for nine roubles the sack. What do you say to some tea?” he added. While the horses were being harnessed, Alpatitch and Ferapontov drank tea and discussed the price of corn, the crops, and the favourable weather for the harvest.

“It’s getting quieter though,” said Ferapontov, getting up after drinking three cups of tea. “I suppose, our side has got the best of it. It’s been said they won’t let them in. So we’re in force it seems.… The other day they were saying Matvey Ivanitch Platov drove them into the river Marina: eighteen thousand of them he drowned in one day.”

Alpatitch gathered up his purchases, handed them to the coachman,
and settled his accounts with Ferapontov. There was the sound of wheels and hoofs and the ringing of bells as the gig drove out of the gates.

It was by now long past midday, half the street lay in shadow, while half was in brilliant sunshine. Alpatitch glanced out of the window and went to the door. All of a sudden there came a strange sound of a faraway hiss and thump, followed by the boom of cannons, mingling into a dim roar that set the windows rattling.

Alpatitch went out into the street; two men were running along the street towards the bridge. From different sides came the hiss and thud of cannon balls and the bursting of grenades, as they fell in the town. But these sounds were almost unheard, and the inhabitants scarcely noticed them, in comparison with the boom of the cannons they heard beyond the town. It was the bombardment, which Napoleon had ordered to be opened upon the town at four o’clock from one hundred and thirty cannons. The people did not at first grasp the meaning of this bombardment.

The sounds of the dropping grenades and cannon balls at first only excited the curiosity of the people. Ferapontov’s wife, who had till then been wailing in the shed, ceased, and with the baby in her arms went out to the gate, staring in silence at the people, and listening to the sounds.

The cook and shopman came out to the gate. All of them were trying with eager curiosity to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over their heads. Several persons came round the corner in eager conversation.

“What force!” one was saying; “roof and ceiling were smashed up to splinters.”

“Like a pig routing into the earth, it went!” said another.

“Isn’t it first-rate? Wakes one up!” he said laughing.

“It’s as well you skipped away or it would have flattened you out.”

Others joined this group. They stopped and described how a cannon ball had dropped on a house close to them. Meanwhile other projectiles—now a cannon ball, with rapid, ominous hiss, and now a grenade with a pleasant whistle—flew incessantly over the people’s heads: but not one fell close, all of them flew over. Alpatitch got into his gig. Ferapontov was standing at the gate.

“Will you never have done gaping!” he shouted to the cook, who in her red petticoat, with her sleeves tucked up and her bare elbows swinging, had stepped to the corner to listen to what was being said.

“A wonder it is!” she was saying, but hearing her master’s voice, she came back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.

Again something hissed, but very close this time, like a bird swooping down; there was a flash of fire in the middle of the street, the sound of a shot, and the street was filled with smoke.

“Scoundrel, what are you about?” shouted Ferapontov, running up to the cook.

At the same instant there rose a piteous wailing from the women; the baby set up a terrified howling, and the people crowded with pale faces round the cook. Above them all rose out of the crowd the moans and cries of the cook.

“O-o-oy, good kind souls, blessed friends! don’t let me die! Good kind souls!…”

Five minutes later no one was left in the street. The cook, with her leg broken by the bursting grenade, had been carried into the kitchen. Alpatitch, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children and the porter were sitting in the cellar listening. The thunder of the cannon, the hiss of the balls, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which rose above all the noise, never ceased for an instant. Ferapontov’s wife alternately dandled and soothed her baby, and asked in a frightened whisper of every one who came into the cellar where was her husband, who had remained in the street. The shopman told her the master had gone with the crowd to the cathedral, where they were raising on high the wonder-working, holy picture of Smolensk.

Towards dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatitch came out of the cellar and stood in the doorway.

The clear evening sky was all overcast with smoke. And a new crescent moon looked strange, shining high up in the sky, through that smoke. After the terrible thunder of the cannons had ceased, a hush seemed to hang over the town, broken only by the footsteps, which seemed all over the town, the sound of groans and distant shouts, and the crackle of fires. The cook’s moans had ceased now. On two sides black clouds of smoke from fires rose up and drifted away. Soldiers in different uniforms walked and ran about the streets in different directions, not in ranks, but like ants out of a disturbed ant heap. Several of them ran in Ferapontov’s yard before Alpatitch’s eyes. He went out to the gate. A regiment, crowded and hurrying, blocked up the street, going back.

“The town’s surrendered; get away, get away,” said an officer noticing
his figure; and turning immediately to the soldiers, he shouted, “I’ll teach you to run through the yards!”

Alpatitch went back to the house, and calling the coachman told him to set off. Alpatitch and the coachman were followed out by all the household of Ferapontov. When they saw the smoke and even the flames of burning houses, which began to be visible now in the dusk, the women, who had been silent till then, broke into a sudden wail, as they gazed at the fires. As though seconding them, similar wails rose up in other parts of the street. Alpatitch and the coachman with trembling hands pulled out the tangled reins and the traces of the horses under the shed.

As Alpatitch was driving out of the gate, he saw about a dozen soldiers in loud conversation in Ferapontov’s open shop. They were filling their bags and knapsacks with wheaten flour and sunflower seeds. At that moment Ferapontov returned and went into the shop. On seeing the soldiers, he was about to shout at them, but all at once he stopped short, and clutching at his hair broke into a sobbing laugh.

“Carry it all away, lads! Don’t leave it for the devils,” he shouted, snatching up the sacks himself and pitching them into the street. Some of the soldiers ran away in a fright, others went on filling up their bags. Seeing Alpatitch, Ferapontov turned to him.

“It’s all over with Russia!” he shouted. “Alpatitch! it’s all over! I’ll set fire to it myself. It’s over …” Ferapontov ran into the house.

An unbroken stream of soldiers was blocking up the whole street, so that Alpatitch could not pass and was obliged to wait. Ferapontov’s wife and children were sitting in a cart too, waiting till it was possible to start.

It was by now quite dark. There were stars in the sky, and from time to time the new moon shone through the veil of smoke. Alpatitch’s and his hostess’s vehicles moved slowly along in the rows of soldiers and of other conveyances, and on the slope down to the Dnieper they had to halt altogether. In a lane not far from the cross-roads where the traffic had come to a full stop, there were shops and a house on fire. The fire was by now burning down. The flame died down and was lost in black smoke, then flared up suddenly, lighting up with strange distinctness the faces of the crowd at the cross-roads. Black figures were flitting about before the fire, and talk and shouts could be heard above the unceasing crackling of the flames. Alpatitch, seeing that it would be some time before his gig could move forward, got out and went back to the lane to look at the fire. Soldiers were scurrying to and fro before the fire;
and Alpatitch saw two soldiers with a man in a frieze coat dragging burning beams from the fire across the street to a house near, while others carried armfuls of hay.

Alpatitch joined a great crowd of people standing before a high corn granary in full blaze. The walls were all in flames; the back wall had fallen in; the plank roof was breaking down, and the beams were glowing. The crowd were evidently watching for the moment when the roof would fall in. Alpatitch too waited to see it.

“Alpatitch!” the old man suddenly heard a familiar voice calling to him.

“Mercy on us, your excellency,” answered Alpatitch, instantly recognising the voice of his young master.

Prince Andrey, wearing a cape, and mounted on a black horse, was in the crowd, and looking at Alpatitch.

“How did you come here?” he asked.

“Your … your excellency!” Alpatitch articulated, and he broke into sobs.… “Your, your … is it all over with us, really? Master …”

“How is it you are here?” repeated Prince Andrey. The flames flared up at that instant, and Alpatitch saw in the bright light his young master’s pale and worn face. Alpatitch told him how he had been sent to the town and had difficulty in getting away.

“What do you say, your excellency, is it all over with us?” he asked again.

Prince Andrey, making no reply, took out his note-book, and raising his knee, scribbled in pencil on a leaf he had torn out. He wrote to his sister:

“Smolensk has surrendered,” he wrote. “Bleak Hills will be occupied by the enemy within a week. Set off at once for Moscow. Let me know at once when you start; send a messenger to Usvyazh.”

Scribbling these words, and giving Alpatitch the paper, he gave him further directions about sending off the old prince, the princess and his son with his tutor, and how and where to let him hear, as soon as they had gone. Before he had finished giving those instructions, a staff officer, followed by his suite, galloped up to him.

“You a colonel,” shouted the staff officer, in a voice Prince Andrey knew speaking with a German accent. “Houses are being set on fire in your presence and you stand still! What’s the meaning of it? You will answer for it,” shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the head of the staff of the assistant of the chief officer of the staff of the commander of
the left flank of the infantry of the first army, a very agreeable and prominent position, so Berg said.

Prince Andrey stared at him, and without making any reply went on addressing Alpatitch.

“Tell them then that I shall wait for an answer till the 10th, and if I don’t receive news by the 10th, that they have all gone away, I shall be obliged to throw up everything and go myself to Bleak Hills.”

“Prince,” said Berg, recognising Prince Andrey, “I only speak because it’s my duty to carry out my instructions, because I always do exactly carry out … You must please excuse me,” Berg tried to apologise.

There was a crash in the fire. The flames subsided for an instant; black clouds of smoke rolled under the roof. There was another fearful crash, and the falling of some enormous weight.

“Ooo-roo!” the crowd yelled, as the ceiling of the granary fell in, and a smell of baked cakes rose from the burning wheat. The flames flared up again, and lighted up the delighted and careworn faces of the crowd around it.