PART ONE
XXIV-XXVI
XXXVI - XXXVII
In the face of death
"thoughts are the simplest, clearest and therefore terrible thoughts"
On this clear August evening on the 25th, Prince Andrei was lying, leaning on his arm, in a broken shed in the village of Knyazkov, on the edge of his regiment. Through the hole in the broken wall, he looked at the strip of thirty-year-old birch trees with their lower branches cut off along the fence, at the arable land with smashed heaps of oats on it, and at the bushes, along which the smoke of fires - soldiers' kitchens - could be seen.
XXXVI
Regiment of Prince Andrei. Non-resistance.
The regiment of Prince Andrei was in reserves, which until the second hour stood behind Semenovsky in inactivity, under heavy artillery fire. In the second hour, the regiment, which had already lost more than two hundred people, was moved forward to the worn-out oatmeal field, to that gap between Semenovsky and the kurgan battery, on which thousands of people were beaten that day and on which, in the second hour of the day, intensely concentrated fire was directed. from several hundred enemy guns.
Without leaving this place and without releasing a single charge, the regiment lost another third of its people here . Front and especially with right side, in the smoke that did not dissipate, cannons boomed, and from the mysterious area of \u200b\u200bsmoke that covered the entire area ahead, without ceasing, with a hissing quick whistle, shot out cannonballs and slowly whistling grenades. Sometimes, as if giving rest, a quarter of an hour passed, during which all the cannonballs and grenades flew over, but sometimes for a minute several people were pulled out of the regiment, and the dead were constantly dragged away and the wounded carried away.
With each new blow, fewer and fewer accidents of life were left for those who had not yet been killed. . The regiment stood in battalion columns at a distance of three hundred paces, but, despite the fact, all the people of the regiment were under the influence of the same mood. All the people of the regiment were equally silent and gloomy. Rarely was a conversation heard between the rows, but this conversation fell silent every time a blow was heard and a cry: "Stretcher!" Most of the time, the people of the regiment, by order of the authorities, sat on the ground. Who, having removed the shako, diligently disbanded and again gathered the assemblies; some with dry clay, spreading it in their palms, polished the bayonet; who kneaded the belt and tightened the buckle of the sling; who diligently straightened and bent the heels in a new way and changed their shoes. Some built houses from Kalmyk arable land or wove braids from stubble straw. Everyone seemed quite immersed in these activities. When people were wounded and killed, when stretchers were dragged, when our people were returning back, when large masses of enemies were visible through the smoke, no one paid any attention to these circumstances. When the artillery and cavalry rode forward, the movements of our infantry could be seen, approving remarks were heard from all sides. But the events that were completely extraneous, which had nothing to do with the battle, deserved the greatest attention. As if the attention of these morally tormented people rested on these ordinary, everyday events. The artillery battery passed in front of the front of the regiment. In one of the artillery boxes, the tie-down line intervened. "Hey, the tie-down! .. Straighten it! It will fall ... Eh, they don’t see! .." - they shouted from the ranks in the same way throughout the regiment. Another time, a small brown dog with a firmly raised tail drew general attention, which, God knows where it came from, ran in an anxious trot in front of the ranks and suddenly squealed from a close-hitting shot and, tail between its legs, rushed to the side. There were chuckles and squeals all over the regiment. But this kind of entertainment lasted minutes, and for more than eight hours people had been standing without food and doing nothing under the unceasing horror of death, and pale and frowning faces became more and more pale and frowning..
Wound
Prince Andrei, just like all the people of the regiment, frowning and pale, walked up and down the meadow near the oat field from one boundary to the other, with his hands folded back and his head bowed. There was nothing for him to do or order. Everything was done by itself. The dead were dragged behind the front, the wounded were carried away, the ranks closed. If the soldiers ran away, they immediately hurriedly returned. At first, Prince Andrei, considering it his duty to arouse the courage of the soldiers and set an example for them, walked along the rows; but then he became convinced that he had nothing and nothing to teach them. All the strength of his soul, just like that of every soldier, was unconsciously aimed at refraining from contemplating the horror of the situation in which they were.. He walked across the meadow, dragging his feet, roughening the grass and watching the dust that covered his boots; then he walked with long strides, trying to get into the tracks left by the mowers in the meadow, then he, counting his steps, made calculations, how many times he had to go from boundary to boundary in order to make a verst,then he sneered wormwood flowers growing on the boundary, and He rubbed these flowers in his palms and sniffed the fragrant, bitter, strong smell. From all yesterday's work, there was nothing left of thought. He didn't think about anything. He listened with a tired ear to the same sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flights from the rumble of shots, looked at the closely watched faces of the people of the 1st battalion and waited. "Here it is... this one is here again!" he thought, listening to the approaching whistle of something from the closed area of smoke. "No, it did. But this is horrible." And he again began to walk, trying to do big steps in order to reach the boundary in sixteen steps.
Whistle and blow! In five steps from him, the dry earth blew up and the core disappeared. An involuntary cold ran down his back. He looked again at the ranks. Probably vomited many; a large crowd gathered at the 2nd Battalion.
Adjutant,” he shouted, “tell them not to crowd. - The adjutant, having fulfilled the order, approached Prince Andrei. On the other side, the battalion commander rode up on horseback.
Watch out! - a frightened cry of a soldier was heard, and, like a bird whistling on a fast flight, crouching on the ground, a few steps from Prince Andrei, near the horse of the battalion commander, a grenade plopped softly . The first horse, without asking whether it was good or bad to express fear, snorted, soared, almost dropping the major, and galloped off to the side. The horror of the horse was communicated to people.
Get down! - shouted the voice of the adjutant, lying on the ground. Prince Andrew stood in indecision. A grenade, like a top, smoking, spun between him and the recumbent adjutant, on the edge of arable land and meadows, near a sagebrush bush.
"Is this death? - thought Prince Andrei, looking with a completely new, envious look at the grass, at the wormwood and at the wisp of smoke curling from the spinning black ball. “I can’t, I don’t want to die, I love life, I love this grass, earth, air ...” He thought this and at the same time remembered that they were looking at him .
Shame on you, officer! he said to the adjutant. - What ... - he did not finish. At the same time, an explosion was heard, the whistle of fragments of a broken frame, as it were, the stuffy smell of gunpowder - and Prince Andrei rushed to the side and, raising his hand up, fell on his chest.
Several officers ran up to him. On the right side of the abdomen, a large bloodstain spread across the grass.
The militia brought Prince Andrei to the forest, where the wagons stood and where there was a dressing station. The dressing station consisted of three spread out tents with rolled-up floors on the edge of a birch forest. In the birch forest stood: wagons and horses. Horses in the ridges ate oats , and sparrows; flew to them and picked up spilled grains. Crows, smelling blood, cawing impatiently, flew over on birches. Around the tents, more than two acres of space, lay, sat, stood bloody people in various clothes. Around the wounded, with sad and attentive faces, crowds of porter soldiers stood, who were vainly driven away from this place by the officers in charge of order. Not listening to the officers, the soldiers stood leaning on the stretcher and intently, as if trying to understand the difficult meaning of the spectacle, looked at what was happening in front of them. Loud, angry cries, then plaintive moans were heard from the tents. From time to time paramedics ran out of there for water and pointed to those that had to be brought in. The wounded, waiting at the tent for their turn, wheezed, moaned, cried, shouted, cursed, asked for vodka. Some were delusional. Prince Andrei, as a regimental commander, walking over the unbandaged wounded, was carried closer to one of the tents and stopped, waiting for orders. Prince Andrei opened his eyes and for a long time could not understand what was happening around him. Meadow, wormwood, arable land, a black spinning ball and his passionate outburst of love for life came to his mind. Two paces from him, speaking loudly and drawing general attention to himself, stood leaning on a bough and with his head tied, a tall, handsome, black-haired non-commissioned officer. He was wounded in the head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his speech, a crowd of wounded and porters gathered.
We fucked him up like that, so we threw everything away, they took the king himself! shouted the soldier, shining with black, heated eyes and looking around him. - Come only at that very time, the reserve, it would be, my brother, there is no rank left, therefore I tell you right ...
Prince Andrei, like everyone around the narrator, looked at him with a brilliant look and experienced a consoling feeling. “But isn’t it all the same now,” he thought. “But what will be there and what was it here? Why did I feel so sorry for losing my life? There was something in this life that I did not understand and do not understand.
XXXVII
One of the doctors, wearing a bloody apron and bloodied small hands, in one of which he held a cigar between his little finger and thumb (so as not to stain it), left the tent. This doctor raised his head and began to look around, but above the wounded. He obviously wanted to rest a little. Moving his head to the right and left for some time, he sighed and lowered his eyes.
Well, now, ”he said to the words of the paramedic, who pointed him to Prince Andrei, and ordered him to be carried to the tent.
A murmur arose from the crowd of waiting wounded.
It can be seen that in the next world the masters live alone, - said one.
Prince Andrey was brought in and placed on a table that had just been cleared, from which the paramedic was rinsing something. Prince Andrei could not make out separately what was in the tent. Plaintive groans from all sides, excruciating pain in the thigh, abdomen and back entertained him. Everything that he saw around him merged for him into one general impression of a naked, bloody human body, which seemed to fill the entire low tent, just as a few weeks ago on this hot August day this same body filled a dirty pond along the Smolensk road. . Yes, it was that same body, that same chair à canon, the sight of which even then, as if predicting the present, had aroused horror in him.
There were three tables in the tent. Two were occupied, Prince Andrei was placed on the third. For some time he was left alone, and he involuntarily saw what was being done on the other two tables. A Tatar, probably a Cossack, was sitting on the near table - according to his uniform, thrown beside him. Four soldiers held him. A doctor with glasses was cutting something in his brown, muscular back.
Wow, wow, wow! .. - the Tatar seemed to be grunting, and suddenly, raising his big-cheeked black snub-nosed face upwards, baring his white teeth, he began to tear, twitch and screech with a piercing, ringing, drawn-out squeal. On another table, around which a lot of people crowded, on the back lay a large, fat man with his head thrown back (curly hair, their color and shape of the head seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrei). Several paramedics fell on the man's chest and held him. A large, white, plump leg quickly and often, without ceasing, twitched with feverish flutters. This man sobbed convulsively and choked. Two doctors silently - one was pale and trembling - were doing something on the other, red leg of this man.
The very first distant childhood was remembered by Prince Andrei, when the paramedic, with his hastily rolled up hands, unbuttoned his buttons and took off his dress. The doctor bent low over the wound, felt it, and sighed heavily. Then he made a sign to someone. And the excruciating pain inside the abdomen made Prince Andrei lose consciousness. When he woke up, the broken bones of the thigh were taken out, shreds of meat were cut off, and the wound was bandaged. They threw water in his face. As soon as Prince Andrei opened his eyes, the doctor bent over him, silently kissed him on the lips, and hurried away.
After suffering
After suffering, Prince Andrei felt bliss that he had not experienced for a long time. All the best, happiest moments in his life, especially the most distant childhood, when they undressed him and put him to bed, when his nurse sang over him, lulling him to sleep, when, burying his head in imagination, not even as the past, but as reality.
Near that wounded man, whose head outlines seemed familiar to Prince Andrei, the doctors fussed; lifted him up and calmed him down.
Show me... Ooooh! O! ooooh! - his groan, interrupted by sobs, frightened and resigned to suffering, was heard. Listening to these moans, Prince Andrei wanted to cry. Is it because he was dying without glory, because it was a pity for him to part with his life, or because of these irretrievable childhood memories, or because he suffered, that others suffered, and this man groaned so pitifully before him, but he wanted to cry childish, kind, almost joyful tears.
The wounded man was shown a severed leg in a boot with gore.
ABOUT! Oooooh! he sobbed like a woman. The doctor, who was standing in front of the wounded man, blocking his face, moved away.
In the unfortunate, sobbing, exhausted man, whose leg had just been taken away, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. They held Anatole in their arms and offered him water in a glass, the rim of which he could not catch with his trembling, swollen lips. Anatole sobbed heavily. " Yes, it is; yes, this man is somehow closely and heavily connected with me, thought Prince Andrei, not yet clearly understanding what was before him. “What is the connection of this man with my childhood, with my life?” he asked himself, finding no answer. And suddenly a new, unexpected memory from the world of childhood, pure and loving, presented itself to Prince Andrei. He remembered Natasha as he saw her for the first time at the ball of 1810, with a thin neck and sagging hands, with a ready to delight, frightened, happy face, and love and tenderness for her, even more alive and stronger than ever. woke up in his soul. He remembered now the connection that existed between him and this man, through the tears that filled his swollen eyes, looking at him dully. Prince Andrei remembered everything, and enthusiastic pity and love for this man filled his happy heart.
Prince Andrei could no longer restrain himself and wept tender, loving tears over people, over himself and over their and his own delusions.
"Compassion, love for brothers, for those who love, love for those who hate us, love for enemies - yes, that love that God preached on earth, which Princess Mary taught me and which I did not understand; that's why I felt sorry for life,this is what was left for me if I were alive. But now it's too late. I know it!"
Sky of Austerlitz
What is this? I'm falling! my legs give way, ”he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the fight between the French and the artillerymen ended, and wishing to know whether the red-haired artilleryman had been killed or not, whether the guns had been taken or saved. But he didn't take anything. Above him there was nothing now but the sky—a high sky, not clear, but still immeasurably high, with gray clouds quietly creeping across it. “How quiet, calm and solemn, not at all the way I ran,” thought Prince Andrei, “not the way we ran, shouted and fought; not in the same way as the Frenchman and the artilleryman dragged each other's bannik with angry and frightened faces - not at all like the clouds crawling across this high, endless sky. How could I not have seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I finally got to know him. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a lie, except for this endless sky. Nothing, nothing but him. But even that is not even there, there is nothing but silence, calmness. And thank God!.. "
Description of oak
There was an oak at the edge of the road. Probably ten times older than the birches that made up the forest, it was ten times thicker and twice as tall as each birch. It was a huge oak tree in two girths with broken branches, which can be seen for a long time, and with broken bark, overgrown with old sores. With his huge clumsy, asymmetrically spread out clumsy hands and fingers, he stood between the smiling birches like an old, angry and contemptuous freak. Only he alone did not want to submit to the charm of spring and did not want to see either spring or the sun.
"Spring, and love, and happiness!" - as if said this oak. - And how not to get tired of you all the same stupid and senseless deceit. Everything is the same, and everything is a lie! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness. There, look, crushed dead firs are sitting, always alone, and there I spread my broken, peeled fingers, wherever they grew - from the back, from the sides; as I grew up, so I stand, and I do not believe your hopes and deceptions.
Prince Andrei looked back at this oak tree several times as he rode through the forest, as if he was expecting something from him. There were flowers and grass under the oak, but he still, frowning, motionless, ugly and stubbornly, stood in the middle of them.
“Yes, he is right, this oak is a thousand times right,” thought Prince Andrei, let others, young ones, again succumb to this deception, and we know life, our life is over! Whole new row hopeless thoughts, but sadly pleasant in connection with this oak, arose in the soul of Prince Andrei. During this journey, it was as if he thought over his whole life again, and came to the same calming and hopeless conclusion that he had no need to start anything, that he should live his life without doing evil, without worrying and desiring nothing.
An old oak (Volume II, Part III, Chapter 3)
“Yes, here, in this forest, there was this oak, with which we agreed,” thought Prince Andrei. “Yes, where is he,” thought Prince Andrei again, looking at the left side of the road and, without knowing it, not recognizing him , admired the oak he was looking for. The old oak, all transformed, spread out like a tent of juicy, dark greenery, was thrilled, slightly swaying in the rays of the evening sun. No clumsy fingers, no sores, no old distrust and grief - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves broke through the tough, hundred-year-old bark without knots, so that it was impossible to believe that this old man had produced them. “Yes, this is the same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrei, and an unreasonable spring feeling of joy and renewal suddenly came over him. All the best moments of his life were suddenly remembered to him at the same time. And Austerlitz with a high sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon - and he suddenly remembered all this.
“No, life is not over at the age of 31,” Prince Andrei suddenly decided, finally, invariably. Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary that everyone knows this: both Pierre and this girl who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary for everyone to know me, so that my life does not go on for me alone, so that they do not live so independently of my life, so that it is reflected on everyone and that they all live with me together!
Natasha's dance
Natasha threw off the handkerchief that was thrown over her, ran ahead of her uncle and, propping her hands on her hips, made a movement with her shoulders and stood.
Where, how, when she sucked into herself from that Russian air that she breathed - this Countess, brought up by a French emigrant - this spirit, where did she get these tricks that dances with a shawl should long ago have supplanted? But the spirit and methods were the same, inimitable, unstudied, Russian, which her uncle expected from her. As soon as she stood up, she smiled solemnly, proudly and cunningly cheerfully, the first fear that gripped Nikolai and all those present, the fear that she would do something wrong, passed, and they were already admiring her.
She did the same thing, and so exactly, so quite exactly, that Anisia Fyodorovna, who immediately handed her the handkerchief necessary for her work, shed tears through laughter, looking at this thin, graceful, so alien to her, educated countess in silk and velvet. who knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, and in Anisya's father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian person.
