War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [113]
“Soldiers say it’s nimbler barefoot,” said Captain Tushin with a timorous smile, evidently wishing to turn his awkward position into a joke.
But before he finished, he felt that his joke was unsuccessful and had not gone over. He became embarrassed.
“Kindly go,” said the staff officer, trying to maintain his seriousness.
Prince Andrei looked once more at the little figure of the artillerist. There was something special in it, totally unmilitary, slightly comical, but extremely attractive.
The staff officer and Prince Andrei got on their horses and rode further.
Having left the village, constantly meeting and going ahead of walking soldiers, officers of various detachments, they saw to their left the reddish, fresh, newly dug clay of the fortification under construction. Several battalions of soldiers in nothing but their shirts, despite the cold wind, were swarming like white ants over this fortification; someone invisible kept shoveling out red clay from behind the rampart. They rode up to the fortification, examined it, and rode on. Just behind the fortification they ran into several dozen soldiers, constantly replacing each other, running down the rampart. They had to hold their noses and set their horses at a trot to get away from that poisoned atmosphere.
“Voilà l’agrément des camps, monsieur le prince,”*218 said the staff officer on duty.
They rode to the opposite hill. From this hill they could already see the French. Prince Andrei stopped and began to examine.
“Here’s where our battery stands,” said the staff officer, indicating the highest point, “the one of that odd bird who was sitting there without boots. You can see everything from there: let’s go, Prince.”
“I humbly thank you, I’ll go by myself now,” said Prince Andrei, wishing to rid himself of the staff officer, “don’t trouble yourself, please.”
The staff officer stayed behind, and Prince Andrei rode on alone.
The further ahead he moved, the closer to the enemy, the more orderly and cheerful the troops looked. The greatest disorder and despondency had been in that baggage train before Znaim, which Prince Andrei had circled around in the morning, and which was some seven miles away from the French. In Grunt there was also a feeling of a certain alarm and fear of something. But the closer Prince Andrei rode to the French line, the more self-assured our troops looked. Lined up in ranks, the soldiers stood in their greatcoats, and a sergeant major and a company commander counted heads, jabbing a finger towards the last soldier in the row and ordering him to raise his hand; scattered all over the area, soldiers were carrying firewood and brushwood and building little lean-tos, laughing merrily and talking among themselves; some sat by the campfires, dressed or naked, drying their shirts and foot cloths, or mending boots and greatcoats, crowding around the cauldrons and cooks. In one company, dinner was ready, and the soldiers looked greedily at the steaming cauldrons, waiting until an officer who was sitting on a log facing his lean-to had tried the kasha brought to him in a wooden bowl by a quartermaster sergeant.
In another, more fortunate company, since not all of them had vodka, soldiers crowded around a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major, who, tipping a keg, poured into the canteen caps that the soldiers held out in turn. The soldiers, with pious faces, brought the caps to their mouths, upended them, and, rinsing their mouths and wiping them on their greatcoat sleeves, walked away from the sergeant major with cheered faces. All the faces were as calm as though everything was happening not in view of the enemy, prior to an action in which at least half the division would be left on the field, but somewhere in their home country, in expectation of a peaceful stay. Having passed the regiment of chasseurs, and through the lines of the Kievsky grenadiers—brave folk, occupied with the same peaceful affairs—Prince Andrei drew