Kabanata Kabanata 214 · 第214章

On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on his

elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkóvo at the further

end of his regiment’s encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he

could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty-year-old birches

with their lower branches lopped off, a field on which shocks of

oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose the smoke of

campfires—the soldiers’ kitchens.

Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed to

him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable as

he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.

He had received and given the orders for next day’s battle and had

nothing more to do. But his thoughts—the simplest, clearest, and

therefore most terrible thoughts—would give him no peace. He knew that

tomorrow’s battle would be the most terrible of all he had taken

part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of death

presented itself to him—not in relation to any worldly matter or with

reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to

his own soul—vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as a certainty. And

from the height of this perception all that had previously tormented and

preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold white light without

shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outline. All life

appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which he had long been

gazing by artificial light through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those

badly daubed pictures in clear daylight and without a glass. “Yes,

yes! There they are, those false images that agitated, enraptured,

and tormented me,” said he to himself, passing in review the principal

pictures of the magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold

white daylight of his clear perception of death. “There they are, those

rudely painted figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious.

Glory, the good of society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself—how

important these pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they

seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the

cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me.” The

three great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his

love for a woman, his father’s death, and the French invasion which had

overrun half Russia. “Love... that little girl who seemed to me brimming

over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made romantic plans

of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I was!” he said aloud

bitterly. “Ah me! I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her

faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove

in the fable she was to pine apart from me.... But it was much simpler

really.... It was all very simple and horrible.”

“When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his

land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,

unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his path,

and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says

it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when he is not

here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is the trial

intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And tomorrow I

shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one of our own

men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as one of them

did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by head and heels

and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses, and new

conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others

and about which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist....”

He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with their

motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. “To die... to be

killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this should still

be, but no me....”

And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the

smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed

terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose

quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.

After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. “Who’s that?”

he cried.

The red-nosed Captain Timókhin, formerly Dólokhov’s squadron commander,

but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the

shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.

Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come

about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss

them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.

“Devil take it!” said the voice of a man stumbling over something.

Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped

over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It was

unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in general,

and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful moments of

his last visit to Moscow.

“You? What a surprise!” said he. “What brings you here? This is

unexpected!”

As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness—they

expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached

the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew’s face he felt

constrained and ill at ease.

“I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me,” said

Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word

“interesting.” “I wish to see the battle.”

“Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would they

stop it?” said Prince Andrew sarcastically. “Well, and how’s Moscow? And

my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?” he asked seriously.

“Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskáya told me so. I went to see them, but

missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow.”