Chapter Chapter 292 · 第292章

The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh

of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops

and baggage trains started.

At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos

and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front

of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all

along the lines.

In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited

the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolóv, pale and thin with dark

shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed.

His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly

at his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he moaned

regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much his sufferings that

caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being

left alone.

Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karatáev had

made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest

and brought to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and

squatted down beside him.

“You know, Sokolóv, they are not all going away! They have a hospital

here. You may be better off than we others,” said Pierre.

“O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!” moaned the man in a

louder voice.

“I’ll go and ask them again directly,” said Pierre, rising and going to

the door of the shed.

Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a

pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and

soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal

straps, and these changed their familiar faces.

The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners

had to be counted before being let out.

“Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...” Pierre began.

But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal

he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that

moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums

was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s

words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed

became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned

the sick man’s groans.

“There it is!... It again!...” said Pierre to himself, and an

involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal’s changed face,

in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the

drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled

people against their will to kill their fellow men—that force the effect

of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to

escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who

served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait

and endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look at

him, but stood frowning by the door of the hut.

When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one

another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed

his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal had

assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also in

marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre

had recognized in the corporal’s words and in the roll of the drums.

“Pass on, pass on!” the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and

looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.

Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.

“What now?” the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing

Pierre.

Pierre told him about the sick man.

“He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!” said the captain. “Pass on, pass

on!” he continued without looking at Pierre.

“But he is dying,” Pierre again began.

“Be so good...” shouted the captain, frowning angrily.

“Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...” rattled the drums, and Pierre understood

that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it

was now useless to say any more.

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march

in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and

about three hundred men.

The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to

Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his

shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major

with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazán dressing

gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of

his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco

pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his

pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and

growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that

they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were

all surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.

Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing

where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An

official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from

side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his

observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part

of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent

was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was

mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.

“What are you disputing about?” said the major angrily. “What does it

matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it’s burned

down, and there’s an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the

road wide enough?” said he, turning to a man behind him who was not

pushing him at all.

“Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?” the prisoners on one side and another

were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. “All beyond the

river, and Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... Just look! There’s not half of

it left. Yes, I told you—the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it

is.”

“Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?” said the

major.

As they passed near a church in the Khamóvniki (one of the few unburned

quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one

side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.

“Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And

smeared with something!”

Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these

exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings

surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better

than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright

against the palings with its face smeared with soot.

“Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...” the convoy

guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,

drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at

the dead man.