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Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were
confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where
he remained for four weeks.
When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty
figures to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in
his mind a most vivid and precious memory and the personification
of everything Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his
neighbor next morning at dawn the first impression of him, as
of something round, was fully confirmed: Platon's whole figure-
in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and
bast shoes- was round. His head was quite round, his back, chest,
shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever ready to
embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile and his large,
gentle brown eyes were also round.
Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories
of campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did
not himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it.
But his brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken
semicircles when he laughed- as he often did- were all sound and
good, there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and
his whole body gave an impression of suppleness and especially
of firmness and endurance.
His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression
of innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But
the chief peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness.
It was evident that he never considered what he had said or was
going to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his
intonation had an irresistible persuasiveness.
His physical strength and agility during the first days of
his imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue
and sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord,
lay me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every
morning on getting up, he said: "I lay down and curled up,
I get up and shake myself." And indeed he only had to lie
down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he only had to shake himself,
to be ready without a moment's delay for some work, just as children
are ready to play directly they awake. He could do everything,
not very well but not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed,
and mended boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed
himself conversation- of which he was fond- and songs. He did
not sing like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but
like the birds, evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same
way that one stretches oneself or walks about to get rid of stiffness,
and the sounds were always high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and
almost feminine, and his face at such times was very serious.
Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow,
he seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him-
everything military and alien to himself- and had returned to
his former peasant habits.
"A soldier on leave- a shirt outside breeches,"
he would say.
He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though
he did not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been
flogged once during the whole of his army service. When he related
anything it was generally some old and evidently precious memory
of his "Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence.
The proverbs, of which his talk was full, were for the most part
not the coarse and indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk
sayings which taken without a context seem so insignificant, but
when used appositely suddenly acquire a significance of profound
wisdom.
He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said
on a previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk
and he talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment
and with folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself,
but the chief charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest
events- sometimes just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking
notice of them- assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness.
He liked to hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell
of an evening (they were always the same), but most of all he
liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when
listening to such stories, now and then putting in a word or asking
a question to make the moral beauty of what he was told clear
to himself. Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love,
as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately
with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly
with man- not any particular man, but those with whom he happened
to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the French, and Pierre
who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite of Karataev's
affectionate tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave
Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not have grieved for
a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in the
same way toward Karataev.
To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary
soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha,"
chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre
he always remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable,
rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and
truth.
Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers.
When he began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.
Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would
ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he
had said a moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre
the words of his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart
is sick occurred in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning
could be got out of it. He did not, and could not, understand
the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and
action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to
him, which was his life. But his life, as he regarded it, had
no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as part of
a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions
flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance
exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance
of any word or deed taken separately.
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