War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [662]
By the bridge they all stopped, waiting for those who were ahead to move on. From the bridge the prisoners could see endless lines of moving carts behind and ahead of them. To the right, where the Kaluga road curved around the Neskuchny Garden, endless lines of troops and carts stretched out, disappearing into the distance. These were the troops of Beauharnais’s corps, which had started out before all the rest; behind, along the embankment and across the Kamenny Bridge, stretched the troops and trains of Ney.
The troops of Davout, to which the prisoners belonged, went across the Krymsky Ford and some had already entered Kaluga Street. But the trains were so strung out that the last trains of Beauharnais had not yet come out of Moscow onto Kaluga Street, and the head of Ney’s troops was already leaving Bolshaya Ordynka.
Having crossed the Krymsky Ford, the prisoners moved on several steps, then stopped, then moved on again, and on all sides the people and vehicles grew more and more dense. It took them an hour to walk the several hundred steps that separated the bridge from Kaluga Street, and, having reached the square where Zamoskvoretskaya and Kaluga streets met, the prisoners, pressed together in a mass, stopped and stood at that intersection for several hours. On all sides could be heard the rumble of wheels, incessant as the roar of the sea, and the tramp of feet, and incessant angry shouts and curses. Pierre stood pressed to the wall of a charred house, listening to that sound, which merged in his imagination with the sounds of a drum.
Several captive officers, in order to see better, climbed the wall of the charred house by which Pierre was standing.
“People! So many people!…Even the cannon are piled high! Look at those furs…” they said. “See what the vultures have looted…Behind there, on the cart…It’s from an icon, by God. Must be Germans. And our peasants, too, by God!…Ah, the scoundrels!…See, he’s loaded himself down, he can hardly walk! They even stole a droshky—really!…See, that one’s sitting on some trunks. Good God!…They’re fighting!…”
“That’s it, in the mug, right in the mug! Like this we’ll be waiting till evening. Look, look…that must be Napoleon’s. See, what horses! with monograms and a crown. It’s a folding house. He’s dropped a sack and doesn’t see it. Fighting again…A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking. Oh, yes, of course they’ll let you pass…Look, there’s no end to it. Russian wenches, by God, wenches! Sitting so comfortably in their caleches!”
Again a wave of general curiosity, as by the church in Khamovniki, pushed all the prisoners towards the road, and Pierre, thanks to his height, saw over the heads of the others what had attracted the prisoners’ curiosity. In three carriages, mixed up among the ammunition caissons, sitting tightly packed together, rode women decked out in bright colors, heavily rouged, shouting something in squeaky voices.
From the moment Pierre recognized the appearance of the mysterious force, nothing seemed strange or frightful to him: not the corpse smeared with soot for the fun of it, not these women hurrying somewhere, not the charred ruins of Moscow. Everything that Pierre now saw made almost no impression on him—as if his soul, preparing for a difficult struggle, refused to receive impressions that might weaken it.
The train with the women passed by. Behind them again drew carts, soldiers, wagons, soldiers, flatbeds, carriages, soldiers, caissons, soldiers, and occasionally women.
Pierre did not see people separately, but saw their movement.
All these people and horses were as if driven by some invisible force. All of them, in the course of the hour during which Pierre observed them, came sailing out of various streets with one and the same desire to move on quickly; all of them, in the same way, running into the others, began to get angry and fight; white teeth were bared; brows frowned, the same oaths were exchanged,