War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [573]
“Please, Your Honor,” the first shopkeeper repeated, bowing. The officer stood perplexed, and hesitation could be seen in his face.
“Ah, what business is it of mine!” he cried suddenly and walked with quick steps down the row. From one open shop came the sound of blows and abuse, and just as the officer reached it, a man in a gray coat and with a shaved head was sent flying out of the door.
This man, bending double, flashed past the shopkeepers and the officer. The officer fell upon the soldiers who were in the shop. But just then the terrible cries of an enormous crowd came from the Moskvoretsky bridge, and the officer ran out to the square.
“What is it? What is it?” he asked, but his comrade was already galloping in the direction of the cries, past Basil the Blessed. The officer got on his horse and followed him. When he rode up to the bridge, he saw two cannon dismounted from their carriages, infantry going across the bridge, several overturned wagons, several frightened faces, and the laughing faces of soldiers. Near the cannon stood a cart hitched to two horses. Behind the cart, four wolfhounds in collars pressed up close to the wheels. The cart was heaped with chattels, and on the very top, next to a child’s chair turned legs up, sat a woman, shrieking piercingly and desperately. His comrades told the officer that the cries of the crowd and the shrieking of the woman came from the fact that General Ermolov had come upon this crowd and, learning that the soldiers had scattered to the shops and crowds of inhabitants were blocking the bridge, had ordered the cannon dismounted from their carriages, and had pretended that he was about to fire on the bridge. The crowd, overturning carts, crushing each other, crying desperately, shoving, had cleared the bridge, and the troops were now moving forward.
XXII
The city itself, meanwhile, was empty. There was almost no one in the streets. The gates and shops were all locked; here and there around the pot-houses, solitary shouts or drunken singing could be heard. No one drove through the streets, and the footsteps of pedestrians were rarely heard. Povarskaya Street was completely quiet and deserted. In the huge courtyard of the Rostovs’ house, leftover hay and dung from the cart horses lay about, and not a single person was to be seen. In the big drawing room of the Rostovs’ house, where all their belongings had been left behind, there were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat and the servant boy Mishka, Vassilyich’s grandson, who had stayed in Moscow with his grandfather. Mishka opened the clavichord and played on it with one finger. The yard porter, arms akimbo, smiling joyfully, stood before the big mirror.
“That’s neat, though! Eh, Uncle Ignat?” said the boy, suddenly beginning to bang on the keys with both hands.
“See there!” replied Ignat, marveling at the smile spreading across his face in the mirror.
“Shameless! Really shameless!” the voice of Mavra Kuzminishna, who had come in quietly, spoke behind them. “Look at you, fat mug, baring your teeth. That’s all you’re good for! Nothing’s been tidied up, Vassilyich is running his feet off. Just you wait!”
Ignat stopped smiling and, straightening his belt and lowering his eyes obediently, started out of the room.
“I did it gently, auntie,” said the boy.
“I’ll give it to you gently. Rapscallion!” shouted Mavra Kuzminishna, swinging her arm at him. “Go start the samovar for your grandfather.”
Mavra Kuzminishna, wiping the dust off, closed the clavichord and, with a heavy sigh, left the drawing room and locked the door.
Going out to the courtyard, Mavra Kuzminishna pondered where to go next: to have tea with Vassilyich in the wing, or to the pantry to put away what had not been put away yet?
In the quiet street there was the sound of quick footsteps. The footsteps stopped by the door in the gate; the latch rattled under a hand that tried to open it.
Mavra Kuzminishna went up to the gate.
“Who do you want?”
“The count, Count Ilya Andreich Rostov.”
“But who are you?”
“I’m an officer. I must see him,” said