War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [456]
“What a wonder!” she kept saying, but, hearing the innkeeper’s voice, she came back, straightening her tucked-up skirt.
Again, very close this time, something whistled, like a bird flying down from above, fire flashed in the middle of the street, something went off, and the street was covered with smoke.
“Villain, what did you do that for?” cried the innkeeper, running to the cook.
At the same moment, women wailed pitifully on all sides, a frightened child wept, and people with pale faces silently crowded around the cook. In this crowd, the cook’s moaning and pleading were heard most of all.
“Ahh, my dear hearts! My dear, kind hearts! Don’t let me die! My dear, kind hearts!…”
Five minutes later there was no one left in the street. The cook, her hip smashed by a shell splinter, had been carried to the kitchen. Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children, the yard porter were sitting in the cellar listening. The noise of the guns, the whistle of projectiles, and the pitiful moaning of the cook rising above all the other sounds, did not stop for a moment. The innkeeper’s wife now rocked and comforted the baby, now asked each person who came to the cellar what had become of her husband, who had stayed outside. The shop clerk, who came to the cellar, told her that the innkeeper had gone with other people to the cathedral, where the miracle-working icon of Smolensk had been taken up.6
Towards dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych came out of the cellar and stopped in the doorway. The previously clear evening sky was all covered with smoke. And through this smoke the light of the young crescent moon, high in the sky, shone strangely. After the terrible roar of the guns ceased, silence seemed to hang over the town, broken only by the rustle of footsteps, groans, distant shouts, and the crackle of fires spread all over town. The cook’s moans now subsided. On two sides, the black smoke of fires rose and spread. Soldiers walked and ran down the streets, not in ranks, but like ants from a demolished anthill, in various uniforms and in various directions. Several of them ran into Ferapontov’s yard before Alpatych’s eyes. Alpatych went to the gate. Some regiment, crowding and hurrying, blocked the street on its way out of town.
“The town has surrendered—leave, leave,” an officer said, noticing his figure, and at once turned to the soldiers, shouting:
“I’ll teach you to go running into yards!”
Apatych went back to the cottage and, calling the coachman, told him to set off. After Alpatych and the coachman, Ferapontov’s entire household came out. Seeing the smoke and even the flames of the fires that had now become visible in the falling twilight, the women, so far silent, suddenly began to howl, looking at the fires. As if seconding them, the same lamenting came from the ends of the street. In the shed, Alpatych and the coachman, with trembling hands, straightened the tangled reins and harness of the horses.
As Alpatych was driving through the gate, he saw some ten soldiers in Ferapontov’s open shop, talking loudly and filling sacks and bags with wheat flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov came into the shop from the street. Seeing the soldiers, he was about to shout something, but suddenly stopped and, clutching his hair, burst into sobbing laughter.
“Take it all, lads! Don’t leave it for those devils!” he shouted, seizing the sacks himself and throwing them outside. Some of the soldiers got frightened and ran away, some went on pouring. Seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him.
“Done for! Russia!” he cried. “Alpatych! She’s done for! I’ll set the fire myself! She’s done for!” Ferapontov ran out to the yard.
A constant stream of soldiers went down the street, blocking it entirely, so that Alpatych could not drive out and had to wait. Ferapontov’s wife and children were also sitting on a cart waiting until they could leave.
It was already night. There were stars in