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The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder
smoke, hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was
growing dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous.
The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind
and on the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin
with his guns, continually driving round or coming upon wounded
men, was out of range of fire and had descended into the dip,
he was met by some of the staff, among them the staff officer
and Zherkov, who had been twice sent to Tushin's battery but had
never reached it. Interrupting one another, they all gave, and
transmitted, orders as to how to proceed, reprimanding and reproaching
him. Tushin gave no orders, and, silently- fearing to speak because
at every word he felt ready to weep without knowing why- rode
behind on his artillery nag. Though the orders were to abandon
the wounded, many of them dragged themselves after troops and
begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty infantry officer
who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's wattle shed
was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's"
carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting
one hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.
"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he
said timidly. "For God's sake... I can't walk. For God's
sake!"
It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked
for a lift and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous
voice.
"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"
"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak
for him to sit on, lad," he said, addressing his favorite
soldier. "And where is the wounded officer?"
"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.
"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread
out the cloak, Antonov."
The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other;
he was pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was
placed on "Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed
the dead officer. The cloak they spread under him was wet with
blood which stained his breeches and arm.
"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching
the gun on which Rostov sat.
"No, it's a sprain."
"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired
Tushin.
"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered
the artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve,
as if apologizing for the state of his gun.
It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise
aided by the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf
they halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish
the uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside.
Suddenly, near by on the right, shouting and firing were again
heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last
French attack and was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the
village houses. They all rushed out of the village again, but
Tushin's guns could not move, and the artillerymen, Tushin, and
the cadet exchanged silent glances as they awaited their fate.
The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly, streamed out
of a side street.
"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.
"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another
push now," said another.
"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own
fellows! Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there
something to drink?"
The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again
and again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward,
surrounded by the humming infantry as by a frame.
In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river
was flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and
talk and the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble,
the groans and voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard
than any other sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that
enveloped the army was filled with their groans, which seemed
to melt into one with the darkness of the night. After a while
the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on a white
horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing: "What
did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?"
came eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began
pressing closer together and a report spread that they were ordered
to halt: evidently those in front had halted. All remained where
they were in the middle of the muddy road.
Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain
Tushin, having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to
find a dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down
by a bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too,
dragged himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish
shivering shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering
him, but he kept awake kept awake by an excruciating pain in his
arm, for which he could find no satisfactory position. He kept
closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire, which seemed
to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure
of Tushin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
Tushin's large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy
and commiseration on Rostov, who saw that Tushin with his whole
heart wished to help him but could not.
From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry,
who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around.
The sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving
in mud, the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into
one tremulous rumble.
It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing
through the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding
after a storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what
passed before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire,
squatted on his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned
away his face.
"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've
lost my company, your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"
With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek
came up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have
the guns moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone,
two soldiers rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and
fighting desperately, each trying to snatch from the other a boot
they were both holding on to.
"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!"
one of them shouted hoarsely.
Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained
leg band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for
water.
"Must one die like a dog?" said he.
Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful
soldier ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck
to you, fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we'll return it
with interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness
a glowing stick.
Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak,
and passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.
"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled
he.
"He's dead- why carry him?" said another.
"Shut up!"
And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.
"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
"Yes."
"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the
hut here," said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.
"Coming, friend."
Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
walked away from the fire.
Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been
prepared for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with
some commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The
little old man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing
a mutton bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for
twenty-two years, flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner;
and the staff officer with the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily
glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed
lips and feverishly glittering eyes.
In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the
French, and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its
texture, shaking his head in perplexity- perhaps because the banner
really interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry
as he was, to look on at a dinner where there was no place for
him. In the next hut there was a French colonel who had been taken
prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look
at him. Prince Bagration was thanking the individual commanders
and inquiring into details of the action and our losses. The general
whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was informing the
prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn from
the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing
the French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions
and had broken up the French troops.
"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion
was disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let
them come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'-
and that's what I did."
The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had
not managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really
happened. Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly
make out amid all that confusion what did or did not happen?
"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,"
he continued- remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov
and his last interview with the gentleman-ranker- "that Private
Dolokhov, who was reduced to the ranks, took a French officer
prisoner in my presence and particularly distinguished himself."
"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,"
chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the
hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry
officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency."
Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting
one of his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded
to the glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a
serious expression, though many of them knew that what he was
saying was a lie devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned
to the old colonel:
"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his
eyes for someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns
on the left flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned
at the very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?"
he added, turning to the staff officer on duty.
"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and
the other I can't understand. I was there all the time giving
orders and had only just left.... It is true that it was hot there,"
he added, modestly.
Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close
to the village and had already been sent for.
"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration,
addressing Prince Andrew.
"Of course, we only just missed one another," said
the staff officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.
"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince
Andrew, coldly and abruptly.
All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made
his way timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped
past the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he
always was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the
staff of the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present
laughed.
"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration,
frowning, not so much at the captain as at those who were laughing,
among whom Zherkov laughed loudest.
Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities,
did his guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet
remaining alive present themselves to Tushin in all their horror.
He had been so excited that he had not thought about it until
that moment. The officers' laughter confused him still more. He
stood before Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly
able to mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had
no men... your excellency."
"You might have taken some from the covering troops."
Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though
that was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer
into trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy
who has blundered looks at an examiner.
The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently
not wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did
not venture to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from
under his brows and his fingers twitched nervously.
"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence
with his abrupt voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain
Tushin's battery. I went there and found two thirds of the men
and horses knocked out, two guns smashed, and no supports at all."
Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at
Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my
opinion," he continued, "we owe today's success chiefly
to the action of that battery and the heroic endurance of Captain
Tushin and his company," and without awaiting a reply, Prince
Andrew rose and left the table.
Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to
show distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling
able fully to credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he
could go. Prince Andrew went out with him.
"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said
Tushin.
Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away.
He felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what
he had hoped.
"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want?
And when will all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the
changing shadows before him. The pain in his arm became more and
more intense. Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings
danced before his eyes, and the impression of those voices and
faces and a sense of loneliness merged with the physical pain.
It was they, these soldiers- wounded and unwounded- it was they
who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting the sinews and
scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To rid himself
of them he closed his eyes.
For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable
things appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white
hand, Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter,
Denisov with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that
affair with Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing
as this soldier with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and
this soldier that were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and
pressing his arm and always dragging it in one direction. He tried
to get away from them, but they would not for an instant let his
shoulder move a hair's breadth. It would not ache- it would be
well- if only they did not pull it, but it was immpossible to
get rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night
hung less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of
falling snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned,
the doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier
who was sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his
thin yellow body.
"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is
no one to help me or pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong,
happy, and loved." He sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier,
shaking his shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer
he gave a grunt and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled
today- frightful!"
Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his
warm, bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh,
his healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family.
"And why did I come here?" he wondered.
Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the
remnant of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.
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