|
In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the Pavlograds
did not take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed.
Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no news
of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound
and the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice
to get leave to visit Denisov in hospital.
The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice
devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer,
when it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented
a particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences,
its foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken
soldiers wandering about.
The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window
frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains
of a wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged
soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about
in the sunshine in the yard.
Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell
of putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian
army doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian
assistant.
"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was
saying. "Come to Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall
be there."
The assistant asked some further questions.
"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?"
The doctor noticed Rostov coming upstairs.
"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What
do you want? The bullets having spared you, do you want to try
typhus? This is a pesthouse, sir."
"How so?" asked Rostov.
"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev
and I" (he pointed to the assistant), "keep on here.
Some five of us doctors have died in this place.... When a new
one comes he is done for in a week," said the doctor with
evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been invited
here, but our allies don't like it at all."
Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the
hussars, who was wounded.
"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am
alone in charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred
patients! It's well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us
two pounds of coffee and some lint each month or we should be
lost!" he laughed. "Four hundred, sir, and they're always
sending me fresh ones. There are four hundred? Eh?" he asked,
turning to the assistant.
The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and
impatient for the talkative doctor to go.
"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was
wounded at Molliten."
"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor,
in a tone of indifference.
The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.
"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.
Rostov described Denisov's appearance.
"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if
pleased. "That one is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up
our list. We had a list. Have you got it, Makeev?"
"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant.
"But if you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for
yourself," he added, turning to Rostov.
"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor,
"or you may have to stay here yourself."
But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the
assistant to show him the way.
"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after
him.
Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The
smell was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to
pause and collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened
to the right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot
and in underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost,
looked with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing.
Glancing in at the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded
were lying on the floor on straw and overcoats.
"May I go in and look?"
"What is there to see?" said the assistant.
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him
to go in, Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to
which he had already begun to get used in the corridor, was still
stronger here. It was a little different, more pungent, and one
felt that this was where it originated.
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large
windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads
to the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them
were unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those
who were conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow
faces, and all looked intently at Rostov with the same expression
of hope, of relief, reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov
went to the middle of the room and looking through the open doors
into the two adjoining rooms saw the same thing there. He stood
still, looking silently around. He had not at all expected such
a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the passage
on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge
by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms
and legs outstretched. His face was purple, his eyes were rolled
back so that only the whites were seen, and on his bare legs and
arms which were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He
was knocking the back of his head against the floor, hoarsely
uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov listened and
made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov
glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back
in his place and bring him water.
"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.
Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came
in from the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front
of Rostov.
"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his
eyes at Rostov and evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital
authorities.
"Get him to his place and give him some water,"
said Rostov, pointing to the Cossack.
"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently,
and rolling his eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter,
but did not move.
"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought
Rostov, lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware
of an intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close
to the corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded
soldier as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes
intently fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered
something to him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old
man wanted to speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old
man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been amputated
above the knee. His neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless
some distance from him with his head thrown back, was a young
soldier with a snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled
and his eyes were rolled back. Rostov looked at the young soldier
and a cold chill ran down his back.
"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the
assistant.
"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the
old soldier, his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning.
After all we're men, not dogs."
"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away- taken
away at once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us
go, your honor."
"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and
lowering his eyes and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between
the rows of reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him,
and went out of the room.
|
