War and Peace (182 page)

When they bound up his eyes, of himself he straightened the knot, which hurt the back of his head; then, when they propped him against the blood-stained post, he staggered back, and as he was uncomfortable in that position, he shifted his attitude, and leaned back quietly, with his feet put down symmetrically. Pierre never took his eyes off him, and did not miss the slightest movement he made.

The word of command must have sounded, and after it the shots of the eight muskets. But Pierre, however earnestly he tried to recollect it afterwards, had not heard the slightest sound from the shots. He only saw the factory lad suddenly fall back on the cords, saw blood oozing in two places, and saw the cords themselves work loose from the weight
of the hanging body, and the factory lad sit down, his head falling unnaturally, and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the post. No one hindered him. Men with pale and frightened faces were doing something round the factory lad. There was one old whiskered Frenchman, whose lower jaw twitched all the while as he untied the cords. The body sank down. The soldiers, with clumsy haste, dragged it from the post and shoved it into the pit.

All of them clearly knew, beyond all doubt, that they were criminals, who must make haste to hide the traces of their crime.

Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying there with his knees up close to his head, and one shoulder higher than the other. And that shoulder was convulsively, rhythmically rising and falling. But spadefuls of earth were already falling all over the body. One of the soldiers, in a voice of rage, exasperation, and pain, shouted to Pierre to stand aside. But Pierre did not understand him, and still stood at the post, and no one drove him away.

When the pit was quite filled up, the word of command was heard, Pierre was taken back to his place, and the French troops, standing in ranks on both sides of the post, faced about, and began marching with a measured step past the post. The twenty-four sharpshooters, standing in the middle of the circle, with uncharged muskets, ran back to their places as their companies marched by them.

Pierre stared now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters, who were running two together out of the circle. All of them had joined their companies except one. A young soldier, with a face of deathly pallor, still stood facing the pit on the spot upon which he had shot, his shako falling backwards off his head, and his fuse dropping on to the ground. He staggered like a drunken man, taking a few steps forward, and then a few back, to keep himself from falling. An old under-officer ran out of the ranks, and, seizing the young soldier by the shoulder, dragged him to his company. The crowd of Frenchmen and Russians began to disperse. All walked in silence, with downcast eyes.

“That will teach them to set fire to the places,” said some one among the French. Pierre looked round at the speaker, and saw that it was a soldier who was trying to console himself somehow for what had been done, but could not. Without finishing his sentence, he waved his hand and went on.

After the execution Pierre was separated from the other prisoners and left alone in a small, despoiled, and filthy church.

Towards evening a patrol sergeant, with two soldiers, came into the church and informed Pierre that he was pardoned, and was now going to the barracks of the prisoners of war. Without understanding a word of what was said to him, Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. He was conducted to some sheds that had been rigged up in the upper part of the meadow out of charred boards, beams, and battens, and was taken into one of them. Some twenty persons of various kinds thronged round Pierre. He stared at them, with no idea of what these men were, why they were here, and what they wanted of him. He heard the words they said to him, but his mind made no kind of deduction or interpretation of them; he had no idea of their meaning. He made some answer, too, to the questions asked him, but without any notion who was hearing him, or how they would understand his replies. He gazed at faces and figures, and all seemed to him equally meaningless.

From the moment when Pierre saw that fearful murder committed by men who did not want to do it, it seemed as though the spring in his soul, by which everything was held together and given the semblance of life, had been wrenched out, and all seemed to have collapsed into a heap of meaningless refuse. Though he had no clear apprehension of it, it had annihilated in his soul all faith in the beneficent ordering of the universe, and in the soul of men, and in his own soul, and in God. This state of mind Pierre had experienced before, but never with such intensity as now. When such doubts had come upon him in the past they had arisen from his own fault. And at the very bottom of his heart Pierre had been aware then that salvation from that despair and from these doubts lay in his own hands. But now he felt that it was not his fault that the world was collapsing before his eyes, and that nothing was left but meaningless ruins. He felt that to get back to faith in life was not in his power.

Around him in the darkness stood men. Probably they found something very entertaining in him. They were telling him something, asking him something, then leading him somewhere, and at last he found himself in a corner of the shed beside men of some sort, who were talking on all sides, and laughing.

“And so, mates … that same prince who” (with a special emphasis
on the last word) … some voice was saying in the opposite corner of the shed.

Sitting in the straw against the wall, mute and motionless, Pierre opened, and then closed, his eyes. As soon as he shut his eyes he saw the fearful face of the factory lad, fearful especially from its simplicity, and the faces of the involuntary murderers, still more fearful in their uneasiness. And he opened his eyes again and stared blankly about him in the darkness.

Close by him a little man was sitting bent up, of whose presence Pierre was first aware from the strong smell of sweat that rose at every movement he made. This man was doing something with his feet in the darkness, and although Pierre did not see his face, he was aware that he was continually glancing at him. Peering intently at him in the dark, Pierre made out that the man was undoing his foot-gear. And the way he was doing it began to interest Pierre.

Undoing the strings in which one foot was tied up, he wound them neatly off, and at once set to work on the other leg, glancing at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first leg-binder, the other was already beginning to untie the other leg. In this way, deftly, with rounded, effective movements following one another without delay, the man unrolled his leg-wrappers and hung them up on pegs driven in over-head, took out a knife, cut off something, shut the knife up, put it under his bolster and settling himself more at his ease, clasped his arms round his knees, and stared straight at Pierre. Pierre was conscious of something pleasant, soothing, and rounded off in those deft movements, in his comfortable establishment of his belongings in the corner, and even in the very smell of the man, and he did not take his eyes off him.

“And have you seen a lot of trouble, sir? Eh?” said the little man suddenly. And there was a tone of such friendliness and simplicity in the sing-song voice that Pierre wanted to answer, but his jaw quivered, and he felt the tears rising. At the same second, leaving no time for Pierre’s embarrassment to appear, the little man said, in the same pleasant voice:

“Ay, darling, don’t grieve,” he said, in that tender, caressing singsong in which old Russian peasant women talk. “Don’t grieve, dearie; trouble lasts an hour, but life lasts for ever! Ay, ay, my dear. And we get on here finely, thank God; nothing to vex us. They’re men, too, and bad and good among them,” he said; and, while still speaking, got with a supple movement on his knees to his feet, and clearing his throat walked away.

“Hey, the hussy, here she is!” Pierre heard at the end of the shed the same caressing voice. “Here she is, the hussy; she remembers me! There, there, lie down!” And the soldier, pushing down a dog that was jumping up on him, came back to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something wrapped up in a cloth.

“Here, you taste this, sir,” he said, returning to the respectful tone he had used at first, and untying and handing to Pierre several baked potatoes. “At dinner we had soup. But the potatoes are first-rate!”

Pierre had eaten nothing the whole day, and the smell of the potatoes struck him as extraordinarily pleasant. He thanked the soldier and began eating.

“But why so, eh?” said the soldier smiling, and he took one of the potatoes. “You try them like this.” He took out his clasp-knife again, cut the potato in his hand into two even halves, and sprinkled them with salt from the cloth, and offered them to Pierre.

“The potatoes are first-rate,” he repeated. “You taste them like that.”

It seemed to Pierre that he had never eaten anything so good.

“No, I am all right,” said Pierre; “but why did they shoot those poor fellows?… The last was a lad of twenty.”

“Tss … tss …” said the little man. “Sin, indeed,… sin …” he added quickly, just as though the words were already in his mouth and flew out of it by accident; he went on: “How was it, sir, you came to stay in Moscow like this?”

“I didn’t think they would come so soon. I stayed by accident,” said Pierre.

“But how did they take you, darling; from your home?”

“No, I went out to see the fire, and then they took me up and brought me to judgment as an incendiary.”

“Where there’s judgment, there there’s falsehood,” put in the little man.

“And have you been here long?” asked Pierre, as he munched the last potato.

“I? On Sunday they took me out of the hospital in Moscow.”

“Who are you, a soldier?”

“We are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We were never told anything. There were twenty of us lying sick. And we had never a thought, never a guess of how it was.”

“Well, and are you miserable here?” asked Pierre.

“Miserable, to be sure, darling. My name’s Platon, surname Karataev,”
he added, evidently to make it easier for Pierre to address him. “In the regiment they called me ‘the little hawk.’ How can one help being sad, my dear? Moscow—she’s the mother of cities. One must be sad to see it. Yes, the maggot gnaws the cabbage, but it dies before it’s done; so the old folks used to say,” he added quickly.

“What, what was that you said?” asked Pierre.

“I?” said Karataev. “I say it’s not by our wit, but as God thinks fit,” said he, supposing that he was repeating what he had said. And at once he went on: “Tell me, sir, and have you an estate from your fathers? And a house of your own? To be sure, your cup was overflowing! And a wife, too? And are your old parents living?” he asked, and though Pierre could not see him in the dark, he felt that the soldier’s lips were puckered in a restrained smile of kindliness while he asked these questions. He was evidently disappointed that Pierre had no parents, especially that he had not a mother.

“Wife for good counsel, mother-in-law for kind welcome, but none dear as your own mother!” said he. “And have you children?” he went on to ask. Pierre’s negative reply seemed to disappoint him again, and he added himself: “Oh well, you are young folks; please God, there will be. Only live in peace and concord.”

“But it makes no difference now,” Pierre could not help saying.

“Ah, my dear man,” rejoined Platon, “the beggar’s bag and the prison walls none can be sure of escaping.” He settled himself more comfortably, and cleared his throat, evidently preparing himself for a long story. “So it was like this, dear friend, when I used to be living at home,” he began, “we have a rich heritage, a great deal of land, the peasants were well off, and our house—something to thank God for, indeed. Father used to go out to reap with six of us. We got along finely. Something like peasants we were. It came to pass …” and Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into another man’s copse for wood, and had been caught by the keeper, how he had been flogged, tried, and sent for a soldier. “And do you know, darling,” said he, his voice changing from the smile on his face, “we thought it was a misfortune, while it was all for our happiness. My brother would have had to go if it hadn’t been for my fault. And my younger brother had five little ones; while I, look you, I left no one behind but my wife. I had a little girl, but God had taken her before I went for a soldier. I went home on leave, I must tell you. I find them all better off than ever. The yard full of beasts, the women folk at home, two brothers out earning wages. Only Mihailo, the
youngest, at home. Father says all his children are alike; whichever finger’s pricked, it hurts the same. And if they hadn’t shaved Platon for a soldier, then Mihailo would have had to go. He called us all together—would you believe it—made us stand before the holy picture. ‘Mihailo,’ says he, ‘come here, bend down to his feet; and you, women, bow down; and you, grandchildren. Do you understand?’ says he. Yes, so you see, my dear. Fate acts with reason. And we are always passing judgment; that’s not right, and this doesn’t suit us. Our happiness, my dear, is like water in a dragnet; you drag, and it is all puffed up, but pull it out and there’s nothing. Yes, that’s it.” And Platon moved to a fresh seat in the straw.

After a short pause, Platon got up.

“Well, I dare say, you are sleepy?” he said, and he began rapidly crossing himself, murmuring:

“Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nikola, Frola and Lavra; Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nikola, Frola and Lavra; Lord Jesus Christ—have mercy and save us!” he concluded, bowed down to the ground, got up, sighed, and sat down on his straw. “That’s right. Let me lie down like a stone, O God, and rise up like new bread!” he murmured, and lay down, pulling his military coat over him.

“What prayer was that you recited?” asked Pierre.

“Eh?” said Platon (he was already half asleep). “Recited? I prayed to God. Don’t you pray, too?”

“Yes, I do,” said Pierre. “But what was it you said—Frola and Lavra?”

“Eh, to be sure,” Platon answered quickly. “They’re the horses’ saints. One must think of the poor beasts, too,” he said. “Why, the little hussy, she’s curled up. You’re warm, child of a bitch!” he said, feeling the dog at his feet; and, turning over again, he fell asleep at once.