War and Peace (190 page)

Napoleon is represented to us as the leader in all this movement, just as the figurehead in the prow of a ship to the savage seems the force that guides the ship on its course. Napoleon in his activity all this time was like a child, sitting in a carriage, pulling the straps within it, and fancying he is moving it along.

Early in the morning of the 6th of October, Pierre came out of the shed, and when he went back, he stood in the doorway, playing with the long bandy-legged, purplish-grey dog, that jumped about him. This dog lived in their shed, sleeping with Karataev, though it sometimes went off on its own account into the town, and came back again. It had probably never belonged to any one, and now it had no master, and no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev called it “Grey-coat,” and sometimes “Floppy.” The lack of a master, of a name, of any particular breed, and even of a definite colour, by no means troubled the purplish-grey dog. Its fluffy tail stood up firm and round like a plume; its bandy legs served it so well that often, as though disdaining to use all four, it would hold one hind-leg gracefully up, and run very quickly and smartly on three paws. Everything was a source of satisfaction to it. At one moment, it was barking with joy, then it would bask in the sun, with a dreamy and thoughtful air, then it would frolic about, playing with a chip or a straw.

Pierre’s attire now consisted of a dirty, tattered shirt, the sole relic left of his previous wardrobe, a pair of soldier’s drawers, tied with string round the ankles by Karataev’s advice, for the sake of warmth, a full peasant’s coat and a peasant’s cap. Physically Pierre had changed greatly during this period. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had that look of solidity and strength that was characteristic of the Bezuhov family. The lower part of his face was overgrown with beard and moustaches; his long, tangled hair, swarming with lice, formed a mat of curls on his head. His eyes had a look of firmness, calm, and alert readiness, such as had never been seen in Pierre’s face before. All his old slackness, which had shown even in his eyes, was replaced now by a vigorous, alert look of readiness for action and for resistance. His feet were bare.

Pierre looked over the meadow, across which waggons and men on horseback were moving that morning, then far away beyond the river, then at the dog, who was pretending to be meaning to bite him in earnest, then at his bare feet, which he shifted with pleasure from one position to another, moving the dirty, thick, big toes. And every time he looked at his bare feet, a smile of eager self-satisfaction flitted across his face. The sight of those bare feet reminded him of all he had passed through and learned during this time; and the thought of that was sweet to him.

The weather had for several days been still and clear, with light frosts in the mornings—the so-called “old granny’s summer.”

It was warm out of doors in the sunshine, and that warmth was particularly pleasant, with the bracing freshness of the morning frost still in the air.

Over everything, over all objects near and far, lay that magical, crystal-clear brightness, which is only seen at that time in the autumn. In the distance could be seen the Sparrow Hills, with the village, the church, and the great white house. And the leafless trees, and the sand and the stones and roofs of the houses, the green spire of the church, and the angles of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the most delicate outlines with unnatural distinctness in the limpid air. Close at hand stood the familiar ruins of a half-burnt mansion, occupied by French soldiers, with lilac bushes still dark-green by the fence. And even this charred and ruined house, which looked revoltingly hideous in bad weather, had a sort of soothing comeliness in the clear, still brightness.

A French corporal, in a smoking-cap, with his coat comfortably unbuttoned, came round the corner of the shed, with a short pipe between his teeth, and with a friendly wink, approached Pierre.

“What sunshine,
hein
, M. Kiril?” (This was what all the French soldiers called Pierre.) “One would say it was spring.” And the corporal leaned against the door, and offered Pierre his pipe, though he was always offering it, and Pierre always declined it.

“If one were marching in weather like this,” he began.

Pierre questioned him what he had heard of the departure of the French, and the corporal told him that almost all the troops were setting out, and that to-day instructions were expected in regard to the prisoners. In the shed in which Pierre was, one of the Russian soldiers, Sokolov, was dangerously ill, and Pierre told the corporal that something ought to be done about this soldier. The corporal said that Pierre
might set his mind at rest, that they had both travelling and stationary hospitals for such cases, that instructions would be given in regard to the sick, and that in fact every possible contingency was provided for by the authorities.

“And then, M. Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain, you know. Oh, he is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain when he makes his round; he will do anything for you.”

The captain of whom the corporal spoke used often to have long conversations with Pierre, and did him all kinds of favours.

“ ‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day, ‘Kiril is a man of education, who speaks French; he is a Russian lord who has had troubles, but he is a man. And he understands … If he wants anything, let him tell me, he shall not meet with a refusal. When one has studied, one likes education, you see, and well-bred people.’ It’s for your own sake I tell you that, M. Kiril. In the affair that happened the other day, if it hadn’t been for you, things would have ended badly.”

(The corporal was alluding to a fight a few days before between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in pacifying his companions.) After chatting a little time longer the corporal went away.

Several of the prisoners had heard Pierre talking to the corporal, and they came up immediately to ask what the latter had said. While Pierre was telling his companions what the corporal had said about setting off from Moscow, a thin, sallow, ragged French soldier came up to the door of the shed. With a shy and rapid gesture he put his fingers to his forehead by way of a salute, and addressing Pierre, asked him if the soldier, Platoche, who was making a shirt for him, were in this shed.

The French soldiers had been provided with linen and leather a week previously, and had given out the materials to the Russian prisoners to make them boots and shirts.

“It’s ready, darling, it’s ready!” said Karataev, coming out with a carefully folded shirt. On account of the heat and for greater convenience in working, Karataev was wearing nothing but a pair of drawers and a tattered shirt, as black as the earth. He had tied a wisp of bast round his hair, as workmen do, and his round face looked rounder and more pleasing than ever.

“Punctuality is own brother to good business. I said Friday, and so I have done it,” said Platon, smiling and displaying the shirt he had made.

The Frenchman looked about him uneasily, and as though overcoming
some hesitation, rapidly slipped off his uniform and put on the shirt. Under his uniform he had no shirt, but a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next his bare, yellow, thin body. The Frenchman was evidently afraid that the prisoners, who were looking at him, would laugh at him, and he made haste to put his head through the shirt. None of the prisoners said a word. “To be sure, it fits well,” Platon observed, pulling the shirt down. The Frenchman, after putting his head and arms through, looked down at the shirt, and examined the stitching without lifting his eyes.

“Well, darling, this isn’t a tailor’s, you know, and I had no proper sewing materials, and there’s a saying without the right tool you can’t even kill a louse properly,” said Karataev, still admiring his own handiwork.

“Very good, thanks; but you must have some stuff left …” said the Frenchman.

“It will be more comfortable as it wears to your body,” said Karataev, still admiring his work. “There, you’ll be nice and comfortable.”

“Thanks, thanks, old fellow; but what is left …?” repeated the Frenchman, giving Karataev a paper note. “Give me the pieces that are over.”

Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman said, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked him for the rouble and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman persisted in asking for what was left, and asked Pierre to translate what he said.

“What does he want with the pieces?” said Karataev. “They would have made me capital leg wrappers. Oh well, God bless the man.”

And, looking suddenly crestfallen and melancholy, Karataev took a bundle of remnants out of his bosom and gave it to the Frenchman without looking at him. “Ach-ma!” he cried, and walked away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, he hesitated, glanced inquiringly at Pierre, and as though Pierre’s eyes had told him something:

“Here, Platoche!” he cried in a shrill voice, suddenly blushing. “Keep them yourself,” he said, and giving him the remnants, he turned and went out.

“There, look’ee now,” said Karataev, shaking his head. “They say they’re not Christians, but they have souls too. It’s true what the old folks used to say: a sweating hand is an open hand, but a dry hand is closefisted. His own back’s bare, and yet he has given me this.” Karataev
paused for a while, smiling dreamily and gazing at the cuttings of linen. “But first-rate leg binders they’ll make me, my dear,” he added, as he went back into the shed.

Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner. Although the French had offered to transfer him from the common prisoners’ shed to the officers’, he had remained in the same shed as at first.

In Moscow, wasted by fire and pillage, Pierre passed through hardships almost up to the extreme limit of privation that a man can endure. But, owing to his vigorous health and constitution, of which he had hardly been aware till then; and still more, owing to the fact that these privations came upon him so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he was able to support his position, not only with ease, but with positive gladness. And it was just at this time that he attained that peace and content with himself, for which he had always striven in vain before. For long years of his life he had been seeking in various directions for that peace, that harmony with himself, which had struck him so much in the soldiers at Borodino. He had sought for it in philanthropy, in freemasonry, in the dissipations of society, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, in his romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by the path of thought; and all his researches and all his efforts had failed him. And now without any thought of his own, he had gained that peace and that harmony with himself simply through the horror of death, through hardships, through what he had seen in Karataev. Those fearful moments that he had lived through during the execution had, as it were, washed for ever from his imagination and his memory the disturbing ideas and feelings that had once seemed to him so important. No thought came to him of Russia, of the war, of politics, or of Napoleon. It seemed obvious to him that all that did not concern him, that he was not called upon and so was not able to judge of all that. “Russia and summer never do well together,” he repeated Karataev’s words, and those words soothed him strangely. His project of killing Napoleon, and his calculations of the cabalistic numbers, and of the beast of the Apocalypse struck him now as incomprehensible and positively ludicrous. His anger with his wife, and his dread of his name being disgraced by her, seemed to him trivial and amusing. What business of his was it,
if that woman chose to lead somewhere away from him the life that suited her tastes? What did it matter to any one—least of all to him—whether they found out or not that their prisoner’s name was Count Bezuhov?

He often thought now of his conversation with Prince Andrey, and agreed fully with his friend, though he put a somewhat different construction on his meaning. Prince Andrey had said and thought that happiness is only negative, but he had said this with a shade of bitterness and irony. It was as though in saying this he had expressed another thought—that all the strivings towards positive happiness, that are innate in us, were only given us for our torment. But Pierre recognised the truth of the main idea with no such undercurrent of feeling. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of needs, and following upon that, freedom in the choice of occupation, that is, of one’s manner of life, seemed to Pierre the highest and most certain happiness of man. Only here and now for the first time in his life Pierre fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he was hungry, of drinking when he was thirsty, of sleep when he was sleepy, of warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow creature when he wanted to talk and to hear men’s voices. The satisfaction of his needs—good food, cleanliness, freedom—seemed to Pierre now that he was deprived of them to be perfect happiness; and the choice of his occupation, that is, of his manner of life now that that choice was so limited, seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the conveniences of life destroys all happiness in satisfying the physical needs, while a great freedom in the choice of occupation, that freedom which education, wealth, and position in society had given him, makes the choice of occupations exceedingly difficult, and destroys the very desire and possibility of occupation.

All Pierre’s dreams now turned to the time when he would be free. And yet, in all his later life, Pierre thought and spoke with enthusiasm of that month of imprisonment, of those intense and joyful sensations that could never be recalled, and above all of that full, spiritual peace, of that perfect, inward freedom, of which he had only experience at that period.

On the first day, when, getting up early in the morning, he came out of the shed into the dawn, and saw the cupolas and the crosses of the New Monastery of the Virgin, all still in darkness, saw the hoar frost on the long grass, saw the slopes of the Sparrow Hills and the wood-clad banks of the encircling river vanishing into the purple distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the sounds of the rooks crying
out of Moscow across the fields, and when flashes of light suddenly gleamed out of the east and the sun’s rim floated triumphantly up from behind a cloud, and cupolas and crosses and hoar frost and the horizon and the river were all sparkling in the glad light, Pierre felt a new feeling of joy and vigour in life such as he had never experienced before.