War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [678]
“That’s nimble,” said the esaul.
“What a rogue!” Denisov said with the same expression of vexation. “What’s he been up to all this time?”
“Who is he?” asked Petya.
“Our plastun.*715 I sent him to take a ‘tongue.’”
“Ah, yes,” said Petya, nodding his head at Denisov’s first words as if he understood everything, though he decidedly did not understand a single word.
Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most necessary men in the party. He was a muzhik from Pokrovskoe, near Gzhat. When, at the beginning of his operations, Denisov had come to Pokrovskoe and, as usual, summoned the headman and asked what they knew about the French, the headman had answered as all headmen would, as if defending himself, that he knew nothing, had seen nothing. But when Denisov explained that his aim was to kill the French and asked whether the French had happened to come there, the headman said that, in fact, some “marowders” had been there, but that in their village only Gap-toothed Tishka concerned himself with such doings. Denisov told him to summon Tikhon and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words in front of the headman about loyalty to the tsar and the fatherland, and the hatred for the French that the sons of the fatherland should observe.
“We do no harm to the French,” said Tikhon, clearly cowed by these words of Denisov’s. “We just went hunting and had some fun with the lads. We did kill some couple of dozen ‘marowders,’ but otherwise we did no harm…” The next day, when Denisov, forgetting entirely about this muzhik, left Pokrovskoe, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached himself to the party and asked to be allowed to stay with it. Denisov said he could stay.
Tikhon, who at first did the dirty work of making campfires, carrying water, skinning horses, and so on, soon showed great zeal and ability for partisan warfare. At night he went after booty, and came back each time bringing some French clothing or weapons, and, when told to, also brought in prisoners. Denisov relieved Tikhon from work, began taking him with him on patrol, and enlisted him as a Cossack.
Tikhon did not like riding and always went on foot, never lagging behind the cavalry. His weapons were a musketoon, which he strapped on mainly for amusement, a pike, and an ax, which he used as a wolf does its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or biting through thick bones. Tikhon, with equal precision, would swing his ax to split logs or, taking it by the butt, whittle thin pegs or carved spoons. In Denisov’s party, Tikhon occupied his own exceptional place. When there was a need to do something especially difficult and nasty—to haul a cart out of the mud with one’s shoulder, to pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail or skin it, to slip right into the middle of the French, to walk thirty miles a day—everyone pointed, chuckling, at Tikhon.
“What harm will it do the devil—he’s sturdy as an ox,” they said of him.
Once a Frenchman Tikhon was about to capture shot at him with a pistol and hit him in the soft hindquarters. This wound, which Tikhon treated only with vodka, internally and externally, was the object of the merriest jokes in the whole party, jokes to which Tikhon willingly yielded.
“Never again, eh, brother? All doubled up?” the Cossacks laughed at him, and Tikhon, doubling up on purpose and making faces, pretending to be angry, denounced the French with the funniest oaths. The only influence this incident had on Tikhon was that, after his wound, he rarely brought in prisoners.
Tikhon was the bravest and most useful man in the party. Nobody found more chances for attacking than he, no one captured or killed more of the French; and as a result of that, he was a buffoon for all the Cossacks and hussars, and willingly accepted that rank. Now Tikhon had been sent by Denisov to Shamshevo during the night, in order to take a “tongue.” But, either because he was not satisfied with one prisoner, or because he had slept through the night, he had slipped by day into some bushes,