|
AFTER THE EXECUTION Pierre was separated from the other prisoners and left
alone in a small, despoiled, and filthy church.
Towards evening a patrol sergeant, with two soldiers, came into the church
and informed Pierre that he was pardoned, and was now going to the barracks of
the prisoners of war. Without understanding a word of what was said to him,
Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. He was conducted to some sheds that
had been rigged up in the upper part of the meadow out of charred boards, beams,
and battens, and was taken into one of them. Some twenty persons of various
kinds thronged round Pierre. He stared at them, with no idea of what these men
were, why they were here, and what they wanted of him. He heard the words they
said to him, but his mind made no kind of deduction or interpretation of them;
he had no idea of their meaning. He made some answer, too, to the questions
asked him, but without any notion who was hearing him, or how they would
understand his replies. He gazed at faces and figures, and all seemed to him
equally meaningless.
From the moment when Pierre saw that fearful murder committed by men who did
not want to do it, it seemed as though the spring in his soul, by which
everything was held together and given the semblance of life, had been wrenched
out, and all seemed to have collapsed into a heap of meaningless refuse. Though
he had no clear apprehension of it, it had annihilated in his soul all faith in
the beneficent ordering of the universe, and in the soul of men, and in his own
soul, and in God. This state of mind Pierre had experienced before, but never
with such intensity as now. When such doubts had come upon him in the past they
had arisen from his own fault. And at the very bottom of his heart Pierre had
been aware then that salvation from that despair and from these doubts lay in
his own hands. But now he felt that it was not his fault that the world was
collapsing before his eyes, and that nothing was left but meaningless ruins. He
felt that to get back to faith in life was not in his power.
Around him in the darkness stood men. Probably they found something very
entertaining in him. They were telling him something, asking him something, then
leading him somewhere, and at last he found himself in a corner of the shed
beside men of some sort, who were talking on all sides, and laughing.
“And so, mates…that same prince who” (with a special emphasis on the last
word)…some voice was saying in the opposite corner of the shed.
Sitting in the straw against the wall, mute and motionless, Pierre opened,
and then closed, his eyes. As soon as he shut his eyes he saw the fearful face
of the factory lad, fearful especially from its simplicity, and the faces of the
involuntary murderers, still more fearful in their uneasiness. And he opened his
eyes again and stared blankly about him in the darkness.
Close by him a little man was sitting bent up, of whose presence Pierre was
first aware from the strong smell of sweat that rose at every movement he made.
This man was doing something with his feet in the darkness, and although Pierre
did not see his face, he was aware that he was continually glancing at him.
Peering intently at him in the dark, Pierre made out that the man was undoing
his foot-gear. And the way he was doing it began to interest Pierre.
Undoing the strings in which one foot was tied up, he wound them neatly off,
and at once set to work on the other leg, glancing at Pierre. While one hand
hung up the first leg-binder, the other was already beginning to untie the other
leg. In this way, deftly, with rounded, effective movements following one
another without delay, the man unrolled his leg-wrappers and hung them up on
pegs driven in over-head, took out a knife, cut off something, shut the knife
up, put it under his bolster and settling himself more at his ease, clasped his
arms round his knees, and stared straight at Pierre. Pierre was conscious of
something pleasant, soothing, and rounded off in those deft movements, in his
comfortable establishment of his belongings in the corner, and even in the very
smell of the man, and he did not take his eyes off him.
“And have you seen a lot of trouble, sir? Eh?” said the little man suddenly.
And there was a tone of such friendliness and simplicity in the sing-song voice
that Pierre wanted to answer, but his jaw quivered, and he felt the tears
rising. At the same second, leaving no time for Pierre's embarrassment to
appear, the little man said, in the same pleasant voice:
“Ay, darling, don't grieve,” he said, in that tender, caressing sing-song in
which old Russian peasant women talk. “Don't grieve, dearie; trouble lasts an
hour, but life lasts for ever! Ay, ay, my dear. And we get on here finely, thank
God; nothing to vex us. They're men, too, and bad and good among them,” he said;
and, while still speaking, got with a supple movement on his knees to his feet,
and clearing his throat walked away.
“Hey, the hussy, here she is!” Pierre heard at the end of the shed the same
caressing voice. “Here she is, the hussy; she remembers me! There, there, lie
down!” And the soldier, pushing down a dog that was jumping up on him, came back
to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something wrapped up in a
cloth.
“Here, you taste this, sir,” he said, returning to the respectful tone he had
used at first, and untying and handing to Pierre several baked potatoes. “At
dinner we had soup. But the potatoes are first-rate!”
Pierre had eaten nothing the whole day, and the smell of the potatoes struck
him as extraordinarily pleasant. He thanked the soldier and began eating.
“But why so, eh?” said the soldier smiling, and he took one of the potatoes.
“You try them like this.” He took out his clasp-knife again, cut the potato in
his hand into two even halves, and sprinkled them with salt from the cloth, and
offered them to Pierre.
“The potatoes are first-rate,” he repeated. “You taste them like that.”
It seemed to Pierre that he had never eaten anything so good.
“No, I am all right,” said Pierre; “but why did they shoot those poor
fellows?…The last was a lad of twenty.”
“Tss…tss…” said the little man. “Sin, indeed,…sin…” he added quickly, just as
though the words were already in his mouth and flew out of it by accident; he
went on: “How was it, sir, you came to stay in Moscow like this?”
“I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed by accident,” said
Pierre.
“But how did they take you, darling; from your home?”
“No, I went out to see the fire, and then they took me up and brought me to
judgment as an incendiary.”
“Where there's judgment, there there's falsehood,” put in the little
man.
“And have you been here long?” asked Pierre, as he munched the last
potato.
“I? On Sunday they took me out of the hospital in Moscow.”
“Who are you, a soldier?”
“We are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We were
never told anything. There were twenty of us lying sick. And we had never a
thought, never a guess of how it was.”
“Well, and are you miserable here?” asked Pierre.
“Miserable, to be sure, darling. My name's Platon, surname Karataev,” he
added, evidently to make it easier for Pierre to address him. “In the regiment
they called me ‘the little hawk.' How can one help being sad, my dear?
Moscow—she's the mother of cities. One must be sad to see it. Yes, the maggot
gnaws the cabbage, but it dies before it's done; so the old folks used to say,”
he added quickly.
“What, what was that you said?” asked Pierre.
“I?” said Karataev. “I say it's not by our wit, but as God thinks fit,” said
he, supposing that he was repeating what he had said. And at once he went on:
“Tell me, sir, and have you an estate from your fathers? And a house of your
own? To be sure, your cup was overflowing! And a wife, too? And are your old
parents living?” he asked, and though Pierre could not see him in the dark, he
felt that the soldier's lips were puckered in a restrained smile of kindliness
while he asked these questions. He was evidently disappointed that Pierre had no
parents, especially that he had not a mother.
“Wife for good counsel, mother-in-law for kind welcome, but none dear as your
own mother!” said he. “And have you children?” he went on to ask. Pierre's
negative reply seemed to disappoint him again, and he added himself: “Oh well,
you are young folks; please God, there will be. Only live in peace and
concord.”
“But it makes no difference now,” Pierre could not help saying.
“Ah, my dear man,” rejoined Platon, “the beggar's bag and the prison walls
none can be sure of escaping.” He settled himself more comfortably, and cleared
his throat, evidently preparing himself for a long story. “So it was like this,
dear friend, when I used to be living at home,” he began, “we have a rich
heritage, a great deal of land, the peasants were well off, and our
house—something to thank God for, indeed. Father used to go out to reap with six
of us. We got along finely. Something like peasants we were. It came to pass…”
and Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into another man's
copse for wood, and had been caught by the keeper, how he had been flogged,
tried, and sent for a soldier. “And do you know, darling,” said he, his voice
changing from the smile on his face, “we thought it was a misfortune, while it
was all for our happiness. My brother would have had to go if it hadn't been for
my fault. And my younger brother had five little ones; while I, look you, I left
no one behind but my wife. I had a little girl, but God had taken her before I
went for a soldier. I went home on leave, I must tell you. I find them all
better off than ever. The yard full of beasts, the women folk at home, two
brothers out earning wages. Only Mihailo, the youngest, at home. Father says all
his children are alike; whichever finger's pricked, it hurts the same. And if
they hadn't shaved Platon for a soldier, then Mihailo would have had to go. He
called us all together—would you believe it—made us stand before the holy
picture. ‘Mihailo,' says he, ‘come here, bend down to his feet; and you, women,
bow down; and you, grandchildren. Do you understand?' says he. Yes, so you see,
my dear. Fate acts with reason. And we are always passing judgment; that's not
right, and this doesn't suit us. Our happiness, my dear, is like water in a
dragnet; you drag, and it is all puffed up, but pull it out and there's nothing.
Yes, that's it.” And Platon moved to a fresh seat in the straw.
After a short pause, Platon got up.
“Well, I dare say, you are sleepy?” he said, and he began rapidly crossing
himself, murmuring:
“Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nikola, Frola and Lavra; Lord Jesus Christ,
holy Saint Nikola, Frola and Lavra; Lord Jesus Christ—have mercy and save us!”
he concluded, bowed down to the ground, got up, sighed, and sat down on his
straw. “That's right. Let me lie down like a stone, O God, and rise up like new
bread!” he murmured, and lay down, pulling his military coat over him.
“What prayer was that you recited?” asked Pierre.
“Eh?” said Platon (he was already half asleep). “Recited? I prayed to God.
Don't you pray, too?”
“Yes, I do,” said Pierre. “But what was it you said—Frola and Lavra?”
“Eh, to be sure,” Platon answered quickly. “They're the horses' saints. One
must think of the poor beasts, too,” he said. “Why, the little hussy, she's
curled up. You're warm, child of a bitch!” he said, feeling the dog at his feet;
and, turning over again, he fell asleep at once.
Outside shouting and wailing could be heard somewhere far away, and through
the cracks in the walls could be seen the glow of fire; but within the shed all
was dark and hushed. For a long while Pierre did not sleep, and lay with open
eyes in the darkness, listening to Platon snoring rhythmically as he lay beside
him, and he felt that the world that had been shattered was rising up now in his
soul, in new beauty, and on new foundations that could not be shaken.
|
