War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [496]
One wounded old soldier with his arm in a sling, who had been walking behind the cart, took hold of it with his good hand and glanced at Pierre.
“Well, countryman, are they setting us down here? Or taking us to Moscow?” he said.
Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question. He looked first at the cavalry regiment that had now run into the train of the wounded, then at the cart he was standing near and on which two wounded men were sitting and one was lying, and it seemed to him that there, in them, lay the solution to the problem that preoccupied him. One of the soldiers sitting on the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was bound in rags, and one cheek was swollen as big as a baby’s head. His mouth and nose were askew. This soldier was looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. The second, a young boy, a recruit, fair-haired and as white as though there was no blood at all in his delicate face, looked at Pierre with a fixed, kindly smile. The third lay prone and his face could not be seen. The cavalry singers were just passing by the cart.
Ah, lost and gone…this bristly head…
Now living in some foreign land…
they poured out a soldiers’ dance song. As if seconding them, but with another sort of merriment, the metallic ringing of the bells throbbed on high. And, with yet another sort of merriment, the sun’s hot rays bathed the top of the slope opposite. But under the slope, by the cart with the wounded men, near the panting little horse, where Pierre was standing, it was damp, bleak, and sad.
The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry singers.
“Some songbirds!” he said reproachfully.
“Today it wasn’t just soldiers, I saw peasants, too! They even drive peasants to it,” a soldier standing behind the cart said with a sad smile, addressing Pierre. “No sorting them out nowadays…They want the whole people to throw their weight into it—Moscow, in short. They want to make an end of it.” Despite the vagueness of the soldier’s words, Pierre understood everything he meant to say and nodded approvingly.
The road cleared, and Pierre went down the hill and drove on.
Pierre drove along, looking on both sides of the road, searching for familiar faces, and everywhere meeting only the unfamiliar military faces of various kinds of troops, who stared with identical surprise at his white hat and green tailcoat.
Having gone about three miles, he met a first acquaintance and joyfully addressed him. This acquaintance was one of the chief doctors of the army. He was coming towards Pierre in a britzka, with a young doctor sitting beside him, and, recognizing Pierre, told his Cossack, who sat on the box in place of a coachman, to stop.
“Count! Your Excellency, what are you doing here?” asked the doctor.
“I just wanted to have a look…”
“Yes, yes, there’ll be plenty to look at…”
Pierre got out and stopped to talk with the doctor, explaining to him his intention of taking part in the battle.
The doctor advised Bezukhov to address himself directly to his serenity.
“Why should you be God knows where, in obscurity, during the battle?” he said, exchanging glances with his young colleague. “And his serenity does know you, after all, and would receive you graciously. That’s the thing to do, old boy,” said the doctor.
The doctor seemed tired and hurried.
“You think so?…And I also wanted to ask you, where is the actual