War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [572]
“Moscou déserte. Quel événement invraisemblable!”*548 he said to himself.
He did not drive into the city, but stayed at an inn in the suburb of Dorogomilovo.
Le coup de théâtre avait raté.†549
XXI
Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o’clock at night until two o’clock in the afternoon and carrying along with them the last departing inhabitants and the wounded.
The biggest crush during this movement of troops occurred on the Kamenny, Moskvoretsky, and Yauzsky bridges.
At the time when, after dividing in two around the Kremlin, the troops jammed together on the Moskvoretsky and Kamenny bridges, a great number of soldiers, taking advantage of the pause and the congestion, turned back from the bridges and darted furtively and silently past Basil the Blessed and under the Borovitsky gate, back up the hill to Red Square, where by some intuition they sensed that other people’s things could be taken without trouble. The same crowd of people as at cut-rate sales filled all the passes and passageways of the Shopping Arcade. But there were no caressingly sweet, enticing voices of shopkeepers, there were no peddlers or motley crowds of women shoppers—there were only the uniforms and greatcoats of soldiers without guns, silently coming out of the rows laden and going in unladen. The shopkeepers and assistants (there were few of them) walked among the soldiers like lost men, unlocking and locking up their shops, and carrying their goods off somewhere themselves with the help of some stalwart young men. On the square by the Shopping Arcade drummers stood and beat to muster. But the sound of the drum did not make the looting soldiers come running to the call as formerly, but, on the contrary, made them run further away from the drum. Among the soldiers, in the shops and passageways, people in gray kaftans and with shaved heads could be seen. Two officers, one with a sash over his uniform, on a lean, dark gray horse, the other in a greatcoat, on foot, were standing at the corner of Ilyinka Street and talking about something. A third officer rode up to them.
“The general orders them all driven away at whatever cost. Who has ever seen the like! Half the men are scattered around.”
“Where are you going?…And you two?…” he shouted at three infantrymen without guns, who, hoisting the skirts of their greatcoats, slipped past him into the rows. “Stop, you rascals!”
“Yes, go round them up, if you please!” the other officer replied. “There’s no rounding them up; we must get a move on, so that the last of them don’t escape, that’s all!”
“How, get a move on? They’re standing there jammed on the bridge, not moving. Or shall we set up a cordon so that the last ones don’t run for it?”
“Go in there! Drive them out!” cried the senior officer.
The officer in the sash got off his horse, called the drummer, and went into the arcade with him. A group of several soldiers broke into a run. A shopkeeper, with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose, with a calmly unshakeable expression of calculation on his well-fed face, went up to the officer hastily and jauntily, swinging his arms.
“Your Honor,” he said, “be so good as to protect us! We won’t count any trifles, it’s our pleasure! If you please, I’ll bring out a bolt of cloth right now, even two for an honorable person, it’s our pleasure! Because we’ve got feelings; and this is—sheer robbery! Please! Set a watch or something, at least let us lock up…”
Several shopkeepers crowded around the officer.
“Eh! why blather for nothing!” said one of them, a lean man with a stern face. “Why weep for your hair when your head’s cut off. Let them take what they like!” And with an energetic wave of the hand, he turned sideways to the officer.
“It’s all right for you to talk, Ivan Sidorych,” the first shopkeeper said angrily. “Please, Your Honor.”
“It’s all right for me to talk, is it!” the lean one cried. “I’ve got a hundred thousand worth of goods in three shops here. As if I can keep it when the army’s gone! Eh, you folk, man proposes, God disposes!