War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [499]
A church procession from Borodino was coming up the hill. Ahead of them all on the dusty road moved orderly ranks of infantry, their shakos off and their muskets pointing down. From behind the infantry came the sound of church singing.
Overtaking Pierre, soldiers and militiamen were running, hatless, to meet the procession.
“It’s our Mother they’re carrying! Our intercessor!…The Iverskaya…”
“The Smolenskaya Mother of God,”26 another corrected.
The militiamen—both those who were in the village and those who were working on the battery—dropped their shovels and ran to meet the church procession. Behind the battalion that marched down the dusty road came priests in vestments, an old man in a cowl, other clergy, and a choir. Behind them, soldiers and officers carried a large, dark-faced icon in a case. This was the icon brought out of Smolensk, which had since been carried around with the army. Behind the icon, around it, in front of it, on all sides, crowds of bareheaded soldiers walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.
Having come up the hill, the icon stopped; the people who were holding the icon on towels were replaced, the servers lit the censers, and the prayer service began. The sun’s hot rays beat down vertically from above; a faint, fresh breeze played with the hair of the bared heads and the ribbons that decorated the icon; the singing sounded subdued under the open sky. A huge crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and the deacon, on a cleared space, stood men of higher rank. One bald general with a St. George on his neck stood directly behind the priest’s back and, not crossing himself (obviously a German), waited patiently for the end of the service, which he considered it necessary to hear out, probably to arouse the patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial pose and kept fluttering his hand in front of his chest, glancing around. Among this high-ranking circle, Pierre, who was standing in the crowd of muzhiks, recognized some acquaintances; but he was not looking at them: his whole attention was absorbed by the serious expression of the faces in this crowd of soldiers and militiamen who gazed with uniform eagerness at the icon. As soon as the weary servers (who were singing their twentieth prayer service) began lazily and habitually to sing: “Deliver thy servants from affliction, O Mother of God,” and the priest and deacon picked up: “For in God we flee unto thee as a steadfast wall and intercessor”—all the faces lit up again with the same expression of awareness of the solemnity of the present moment that he had seen on the faces at the foot of the hill in Mozhaisk and had glimpsed on many, many faces he had met that morning: heads were bowed more frequently, hair was tossed, and sighs and the thump of crossings on breasts were heard.
The crowd surrounding the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre. Someone, probably a very important person, judging by the haste with which people made way for him, was approaching the icon.
It was Kutuzov going the rounds of the position. On his way back to Tatarinovo, he came up to the prayer service. Pierre recognized Kutuzov at once by his peculiar figure, which distinguished him from everyone else.
In a long coat on an immensely fat body, with a somewhat rounded back, an uncovered white head, a blinded white eye in a puffy face, Kutuzov entered the circle with his dipping, swaying gait, and stopped behind the priest. He crossed himself with a habitual gesture, touched the ground with his hand, and, sighing deeply, bowed his gray head. Behind Kutuzov came Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence of the commander in chief, who drew the attention of all the higher ranks, the militiamen and soldiers, without looking at him, went on praying.
When the service was over, Kutuzov went up to the icon, knelt down heavily, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried