War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [453]
“If there’s anything…you come back, Yakov Alpatych; for Christ’s sake, have pity on us,” his wife cried to him, hinting at the rumors about the war and the enemy.
“Women, women, women’s preparations,” Alpatych said to himself and drove off, looking at the fields around him, some with already yellow rye, some with bushy, still-green oats, some still black where the cross-plowing was just beginning. Alpatych drove along, admiring the rare yield of this year’s spring crops, looking attentively at the strips of rye, in which the reaping was beginning here and there, and having a steward’s thoughts about sowing and harvesting, and about not forgetting any of the prince’s orders.
Having fed his horses twice on the way, on the evening of the fourth of August Alpatych arrived in town.
On his way, Alpatych met and passed baggage trains and troops. Driving up to Smolensk, he heard distant shooting, but these sounds did not strike him. What struck him most strongly was when, nearing Smolensk, he saw a beautiful field of oats, which some soldiers were mowing, evidently for fodder, and on which they had pitched their camp; this circumstance struck Alpatych, but he soon forgot it, thinking about his own business.
All the interests of Alpatych’s life for the past thirty years had been confined to the prince’s will alone, and he never went outside that circle. Anything that did not concern the fulfilling of the prince’s orders not only did not interest Alpatych, but did not exist for him.
Alpatych, arriving in Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August, stopped across the Dnieper, in the suburb of Gachena, at the inn kept by the innkeeper Ferapontov, where he had been accustomed to stay for the past thirty years. Twelve years before, Ferapontov, with a bit of a hand from Alpatych, had bought a woods from the prince, went into commerce, and now owned a house, an inn, and a flour shop in the provincial capital. Ferapontov was a fat, black-haired, red-faced forty-year-old man, with thick lips, a fat lump of a nose, similar lumps on his forehead over his black, beetling brows, and a fat belly.
Ferapontov, in a waistcoat and a chintz shirt, was standing in the street by the door to his shop. Seeing Alpatych, he went up to him.
“Welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folk are leaving, and you come,” said the innkeeper.
“Leaving? Why so?” asked Alpatych.
“And I say they’re stupid folk. Always afraid of the French.”
“Women’s talk, women’s talk!” said Alpatych.
“I reason the same way, Yakov Alpatych. I say there’s orders not to let them in—it’s a sure thing. And the peasants are asking three roubles for a cart—that’s heathenish!”
Yakov Alpatych listened inattentively. He asked for a samovar and some hay for the horses and, having had his tea, went to bed.
All night troops moved down the street past the inn. The next day, Alpatych put on the tunic that he wore only in town and went about his business. The morning was sunny, and by eight o’clock it was already hot. A precious day for harvesting, Alpatych thought. Outside town, shooting had been heard since early morning.
By eight o’clock, cannon fire had joined the musket shots. There were many people in the streets, hurrying somewhere, and many soldiers, but the cabbies drove around as usual, shopkeepers stood by their shops, and services went on in the churches. Alpatych went to the shops, to the government offices, to the post office, and to the governor. In the government offices, in the shops, at the post office, everyone was talking about the troops, about the enemy, who was already attacking the town; they were all asking each other what to do, and they were all trying to reassure each other.
At the governor’s house, Alpatych found a large number of people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage belonging to the governor. On the porch, Yakov Alpatych met two gentlemen, one of whom he knew. The gentleman he knew, a former district police captain, was speaking vehemently.
“It’s no joking matter,” he said. “It’s all right if you’re alone.