War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [517]
XXXI
The general whom Pierre was galloping after, having gone down the hill, turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, rode into the ranks of some infantry who were marching ahead of him. He tried to get out of them to the right, to the left; but everywhere there were soldiers with equally preoccupied faces, busy with some invisible but obviously important matters. They all looked with equally displeased and questioning eyes at this fat man in a white hat, who for some unknown reason was trampling them with his horse.
“Why go riding into the middle of a battalion?” one cried to him. Another shoved his horse with the butt of his musket, and Pierre, clinging to the pommel, barely controlling the shying horse, galloped out ahead of the soldiers, where there was more room.
Ahead of him was a bridge, and at the bridge more soldiers stood shooting. Pierre rode up to them. Without knowing it himself, Pierre had come as far as the bridge over the Kolocha, which was between Gorki and Borodino, and which the French (having taken Borodino) attacked in the first action of the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge ahead of him, and that on both sides of the bridge, and on the meadow, among those rows of mowed hay he had noticed the day before, soldiers were doing something in the smoke; but, despite the incessant shooting that was going on there, it never occurred to him that this was precisely the field of battle. He did not hear the sounds of the bullets whining on all sides, and of the shells that flew over his head, did not see the enemy on the other side of the river, and for a long time did not see the dead and wounded, though many fell not far from him. With a smile that never left his face, he looked about him.
“What’s that one doing riding in front of the line?” someone again cried to him.
“Go left, go right,” they shouted at him.
Pierre pulled to the right and unexpectedly ran into General Raevsky’s adjutant, whom he knew. This adjutant also glanced angrily at Pierre, was obviously about to shout at him, but, recognizing him, nodded his head.
“What are you doing here?” he said and rode on.
Pierre, feeling out of place and having nothing to do, afraid of getting in someone’s way again, rode after the adjutant.
“Is it here, or what? Can I come with you?” he asked.
“One moment, one moment,” replied the adjutant and, riding up to a fat colonel who was standing in the meadow, he said something to him, and only then turned to Pierre.
“How did you end up here, Count?” he said to him with a smile. “Still curious?”
“Yes, yes,” said Pierre. But the adjutant, turning his horse, was riding on.
“Here it’s not bad, thank God,” said the adjutant, “but on the left flank, with Bagration, it’s getting terribly hot.”
“Really?” asked Pierre. “Where’s that?”
“Come to the barrow with me, you can see it from there. It’s still bearable at our battery,” said the adjutant. “Are you coming?”
“Yes, I’ll come with you,” said Pierre, looking around, his eyes seeking his groom. Only here for the first time did Pierre see the wounded, trudging on foot or carried on stretchers. On the same little meadow with the fragrant rows of hay over which he had ridden the day before, across the rows, his head twisted awkwardly, a soldier lay motionless, his shako fallen off. “Why didn’t they pick up that one?” Pierre began; but seeing the stern face of the adjutant, who was looking in the same direction, he fell silent.
Pierre did not find his groom, and rode with the adjutant along the hollow towards the Raevsky barrow. Pierre’s horse lagged behind the adjutant’s and jolted him rhythmically.
“You’re evidently not used to riding horseback, Count?” asked the adjutant.
“No, it’s all right, but she’s somehow bouncing a lot,” Pierre said in perplexity.
“Ehh!…she’s wounded,” said the adjutant, “in the right foreleg, above the knee. Must have been a bullet. Congratulations, Count,” he said, “le baptême du feu.”*492
Having ridden in smoke through the sixth corps, behind