الفصل الفصل 195 · 第195章

From Smolénsk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the enemy.

On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was marching

along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat and

drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day fleecy clouds

floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the sun, but toward

evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in reddish-brown mist.

Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The unreaped corn was

scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up. The cattle lowed from

hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched meadows. Only at night and

in the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the

road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there was no such

freshness even at night or when the road passed through the forest; the

dew was imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches

deep. As soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery and baggage

wagons moved noiselessly through the deep dust that rose to the very

hubs of the wheels, and the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft,

choking, hot dust that never cooled even at night. Some of this dust

was kneaded by the feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a

cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and

worst of all in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that

road. The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and

through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked

eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded

sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless

atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and

mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to the wells

and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.

Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of that

regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving

and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolénsk and its

abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against

the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely devoted to the

affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to his men and

officers. In the regiment they called him “our prince,” were proud

of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to those of his

regiment, to Timókhin and the like—people quite new to him, belonging

to a different world and who could not know and understand his past. As

soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone from the

staff, he bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and

contemptuous. Everything that reminded him of his past was repugnant to

him, and so in his relations with that former circle he confined himself

to trying to do his duty and not to be unfair.

In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to

Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolénsk on the sixth

of August (he considered that it could and should have been defended)

and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to

pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled.

But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew had something to

think about entirely apart from general questions. Two days previously

he had received news that his father, son, and sister had left for

Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince

Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided that

he must ride there.

He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on the

march, rode to his father’s estate where he had been born and spent his

childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to be dozens

of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden

beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and that

the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half submerged, was

floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He rode to the keeper’s

lodge. No one was at the stone entrance gates of the drive and the door

stood open. Grass had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and

horses and calves were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode

up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the

trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for

Tarás the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner

of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden

fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with

the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often

seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast

shoe.

He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting on

the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him strips of

bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a magnolia.

Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old garden had

been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were wandering in front of

the house among the rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at

one window which was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran

into the house. Alpátych, having sent his family away, was alone at

Bald Hills and was sitting indoors reading the Lives of the Saints. On

hearing that Prince Andrew had come, he went out with his spectacles on

his nose, buttoning his coat, and, hastily stepping up, without a word

began weeping and kissing Prince Andrew’s knee.

Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to report

on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable had been

removed to Boguchárovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted

away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpátych said there had been

a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered by the troops and

mown down while still green. The peasants were ruined; some of them too

had gone to Boguchárovo, only a few remained.

Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:

“When did my father and sister leave?” meaning when did they leave for

Moscow.

Alpátych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for

Boguchárovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again went

into details concerning the estate management, asking for instructions.

“Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for them?

We have still six hundred quarters left,” he inquired.

“What am I to say to him?” thought Prince Andrew, looking down on the

old man’s bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the expression on

his face that the old man himself understood how untimely such questions

were and only asked them to allay his grief.

“Yes, let them have it,” replied Prince Andrew.

“If you noticed some disorder in the garden,” said Alpátych, “it was

impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent

the night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their

commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it.”

“Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy

occupies the place?” asked Prince Andrew.

Alpátych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and suddenly

with a solemn gesture raised his arm.

“He is my refuge! His will be done!” he exclaimed.

A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow toward

the prince.

“Well, good-by!” said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpátych. “You

must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go to the

Ryazán estate or to the one near Moscow.”

Alpátych clung to Prince Andrew’s leg and burst into sobs. Gently

disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the

avenue at a gallop.

The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly

impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last on

which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running out

from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked from

the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young master,

the elder one with frightened look clutched her younger companion by the

hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick up some

green plums they had dropped.

Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them

see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty frightened

little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible

desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him

when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of other human

interests entirely aloof from his own and just as legitimate as those

that occupied him. Evidently these girls passionately desired one

thing—to carry away and eat those green plums without being caught—and

Prince Andrew shared their wish for the success of their enterprise. He

could not resist looking at them once more. Believing their danger past,

they sprang from their ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill

little voices and holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned

feet scampered merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.

Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the dusty

highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from Bald Hills

he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment at its halting

place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one o’clock. The sun,

a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his back intolerably

through his black coat. The dust always hung motionless above the buzz

of talk that came from the resting troops. There was no wind. As he

crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and freshness of the

pond. He longed to get into that water, however dirty it might be, and

he glanced round at the pool from whence came sounds of shrieks and

laughter. The small, muddy, green pond had risen visibly more than a

foot, flooding the dam, because it was full of the naked white bodies

of soldiers with brick-red hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing

about in it. All this naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking,

floundered about in that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering

can, and the suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered

it specially pathetic.

One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince Andrew

knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed himself,

stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water; another,

a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood up to his

waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure and snorted

with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head with hands

blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men slapping one another,

yelling, and puffing.

Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was healthy,

white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timókhin, with his red little nose,

standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing

the prince, but made up his mind to address him nevertheless.

“It’s very nice, your excellency! Wouldn’t you like to?” said he.

“It’s dirty,” replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.

“We’ll clear it out for you in a minute,” said Timókhin, and, still

undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.

“The prince wants to bathe.”

“What prince? Ours?” said many voices, and the men were in such haste

to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He decided that he

would rather wash himself with water in the barn.

“Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!” he thought, and he looked at his own

naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust

and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that

immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.

On the seventh of August Prince Bagratión wrote as follows from his

quarters at Mikháylovna on the Smolénsk road:

Dear Count Aléxis Andréevich—(He was writing to Arakchéev but knew that

his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore weighed every

word in it to the best of his ability.)

I expect the Minister (Barclay de Tolly) has already reported the

abandonment of Smolénsk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and

the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been

wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most urgently

and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to consent. I swear

to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as never before and

might have lost half his army but could not have taken Smolénsk. Our

troops fought, and are fighting, as never before. With fifteen thousand

men I held the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him; but he

would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain

on our army, and as for him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If

he reports that our losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about

four thousand, not more, and not even that; but even were they ten

thousand, that’s war! But the enemy has lost masses....

What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They would

have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water for men

or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but suddenly sent

instructions that he was retiring that night. We cannot fight in this

way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow....

There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you

should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats! You

would set all Russia against you and everyone of us would feel ashamed

to wear the uniform. If it has come to this—we must fight as long as

Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand....

One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may perhaps

be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad but

execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I

am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear

that the man who advocates the conclusion of a peace, and that the

Minister should command the army, does not love our sovereign and

desires the ruin of us all. So I write you frankly: call out the

militia. For the Minister is leading these visitors after him to Moscow

in a most masterly way. The whole army feels great suspicion of the

Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be more Napoleon’s man

than ours, and he is always advising the Minister. I am not merely civil

to him but obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior. This is

painful, but, loving my benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am

sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts our fine army to such as he.

Consider that on our retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the

hospital more than fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would

not have happened. Tell me, for God’s sake, what will Russia, our mother

Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning our

good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings of

hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom

are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating,

a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The whole army

bewails it and calls down curses upon him....