War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [109]
Going into the house, Prince Andrei saw Nesvitsky and another adjutant having something to eat. They hastily turned to Bolkonsky with the question whether he had any fresh news. On their familiar faces Prince Andrei read the expression of alarm and anxiety. This expression was especially noticeable on the always laughing face of Nesvitsky.
“Where’s the commander in chief?” asked Bolkonsky.
“Here, in that house,” the adjutant replied.
“Well, so, is it true there’s peace and capitulation?” asked Nesvitsky.
“I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that I had a hard time getting to you.”
“And what’s going on with us, brother! Terrible! I confess, brother, we laughed at Mack, and yet it’s going much worse for us,” said Nesvitsky. “But sit down, eat something.”
“Now, Prince, you’ll find no wagons, nothing, and God knows where your Pyotr is,” said the other adjutant.
“Where are headquarters?”
“We’ll spend the night in Znaim.”
“What I did was repack everything I need onto two horses,” said Nesvitsky, “and I had excellent packs made for me. I could skip off over the Bohemian Mountains now. It’s bad, brother. But you’re surely unwell, the way you’re shivering?” asked Nesvitsky, noticing how Prince Andrei twitched as if he had touched a Leiden jar.16
“It’s nothing,” replied Prince Andrei.
He had just recalled his recent encounter with the doctor’s wife and the convoy officer.
“What is the commander in chief doing here?” he asked.
“I understand nothing,” said Nesvitsky.
“I understand one thing, that it’s all vile, vile, vile,” said Prince Andrei, and he went to the house where the commander in chief was staying.
Going past Kutuzov’s carriage, the winded riding horses of the suite, and the Cossacks talking loudly among themselves, Prince Andrei came to the entryway. Kutuzov himself, as Prince Andrei was told, was inside the cottage with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was an Austrian general who had replaced the slain Schmidt. In the entryway, little Kozlovsky was crouching in front of a scribe. The scribe, the cuffs of his tunic turned up, was writing hurriedly on an overturned tub. Kozlovsky’s face looked exhausted—obviously he also had not slept that night. He glanced at Prince Andrei and did not even nod to him.
“Second line…Have you written that?” he went on dictating to the scribe. “The Kievsky grenadiers, the Podolsky…”
“Don’t rush, Your Honor,” the scribe replied disrespectfully and crossly, looking up at Kozlovsky.
From behind the door just then came the animated and displeased voice of Kutuzov, interrupted by another, unknown voice. From the sound of that voice, from the inattention with which Kozlovsky had glanced at him, from the disrespectfulness of the exhausted scribe, from the fact that the scribe and Kozlovsky were sitting so close to the commander in chief on the floor by the tub, and from the fact that the Cossacks who tended the horses were laughing loudly outside the window—from all that Prince Andrei could feel that something grave and unfortunate must be happening.
Prince Andrei plied Kozlovsky with insistent questions.
“One moment, Prince,” said Kozlovsky. “A disposition for Bagration.”
“And capitulation?”
“Nothing of the sort; orders have been issued for battle.”
Prince Andrei went to the door, behind which voices could be heard. But just as he was about to open the door, the voices in the room fell silent, the door opened by itself, and Kutuzov, with his eagle’s beak on his plump face, appeared in the doorway. Prince Andrei was standing directly in front of Kutuzov; but from the expression in the commander in chief’s one good eye, it was clear that his thoughts and concerns occupied him so greatly that it was as if they interfered with his vision. He looked directly at his adjutant’s face and did not recognize him.
“Well, what, are you finished?” he addressed Kozlovsky.
“This second, Your Excellency.”
Bagration, of medium height, with a firm and immobile face of the Oriental type, dry, not yet an old man, came out after the commander in chief.
“I have