Kabanata Kabanata 293 · 第293章

Through the cross streets of the Khamóvniki quarter the prisoners

marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons

belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they

came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with

private vehicles.

At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across.

From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage

trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kalúga road turns

near Neskúchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into

the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais’ corps which had started

before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the

Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.

Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the

Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kalúga road.

But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’

train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kalúga road when

the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the Great Ordýnka

Street.

When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps

forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men

crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces

that separated the bridge from the Kalúga road, taking more than an

hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the

Transmoskvá ward and the Kalúga road converge, and the prisoners jammed

close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all

sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the

tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood

pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise

which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.

To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of

the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.

“What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve loaded goods even on

the cannon! Look there, those are furs!” they exclaimed. “Just see what

the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind

in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by

heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded

himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they’ve even grabbed those

chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens!

They’re fighting.”

“That’s right, hit him on the snout—on his snout! Like this, we

shan’t get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be

Napoleon’s own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It’s

like a portable house.... That fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see

it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either!

Yes, I dare say, that’s the way they’ll let you pass.... Just look,

there’s no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In

carriages—see how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!”

Again, as at the church in Khamóvniki, a wave of general curiosity

bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to

his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their

curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, closely

squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring

colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.

From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious

force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse

smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned

ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression

on him—as if his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to

receive impressions that might weaken it.

The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,

wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts,

more soldiers, and now and then women.

Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.

All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible

power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from

the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly;

they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white

teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from

side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute

and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the

corporal’s face when the drums were beating.

It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort

collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among

the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged

onto the Kalúga road.

They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun

began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men

began to prepare for their night’s rest. They all appeared angry and

dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could

be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran

into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several

soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the

carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among

themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head

by a sword.

It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields

in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same

feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on

that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed

to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that

much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.

During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they

had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time

received horseflesh for their meat ration.

From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like

personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to

their former friendly relations.

This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of

prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian

soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw

a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from

the road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to

court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the

Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s excuse that the prisoner was

ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot

those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had

crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his

imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but

he felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush

him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent

of it.

He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his

comrades.

Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in

Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the

order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction

against the worsening of their position they were all particularly

animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing

scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of

their present situation.

The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the

sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the

rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray

haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet

come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the

campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the

common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On

the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an

unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and

dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the

cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he

burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that

men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and

evidently solitary laughter could mean.

“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldier

did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.

What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...” and he laughed

till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at

all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from

the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the

crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the

red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light

sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen

before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond

those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance

lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling

stars in its faraway depths. “And all that is me, all that is within me,

and it is all I!” thought Pierre. “And they caught all that and put it

into a shed boarded up with planks!” He smiled, and went and lay down to

sleep beside his companions.