War And Peace

‘This is it! . . . It’s back again!’ Pierre said to himself, and an involuntary shiver ran down his spine. In the change that had come over the corporal’s face, the sound of his voice and the rousing, deafening drum-tattoo Pierre recognized the mysterious, inhuman force that drove people against their will to murder their fellow men, the force he had seen working to full effect during the execution. There was no point in panicking, or trying to avoid this force, or appealing on bended knee to the men who were acting as its implements. This much Pierre had learnt. You just had to wait and stick it out. Pierre didn’t go anywhere near the sick man and didn’t look round at him. He stood there in silence by the shed door, scowling.

When the doors of the shed were flung open, and the prisoners crammed the doorway, scrambling over one another like a flock of sheep, Pierre elbowed his way to the front, and got through to the captain, the man who was ready to do anything for him, if the corporal’s words were anything to go by. The captain was also in marching order, and his icy features betrayed the thing Pierre had recognized in the corporal’s words and the drum-roll.

‘Come on! Get a move on!’ the captain was saying, grim-faced and scowling, as he watched the prisoners scramble past.

Pierre knew it wasn’t worth trying, but he still went up to him.

‘Well, what is it?’ said the officer, scanning him coldly, as if he didn’t recognize him. Pierre mentioned the sick prisoner.

‘He can walk, damn him!’ said the captain.

‘Come on! Get a move on!’ he kept on calling out, ignoring Pierre.

‘Well, no, he’s in terrible pain!’ Pierre was trying to say.

‘Get out of the way!’ shouted the captain with a vicious scowl.

Trum-ti-ti-tum-tum-tum went the rattling drums. Pierre could see that the mysterious force now had total control over these men, and there was no point in saying anything more.

The officers among the prisoners were split off from the men and ordered to march in front.

There were about thirty officers, including Pierre, and a good three hundred men.

The officers, who had emerged from the other sheds, were all strangers to Pierre, and much better dressed than he was. They looked at him in his funny foot-gear with cold eyes full of suspicion. Not far from Pierre walked a portly major with a bloated, sallow, irritable-looking face. He was wearing a Kazan dressing-gown, with a towel for a belt, and he was obviously looked up to by his fellow prisoners. He had one hand thrust inside his dressing-gown, clutching a tobacco-pouch, while the other gripped his pipe by its stem. Puffing and panting, he growled at them all and rounded on them angrily for shoving against him, as he saw it, and for rushing on when there was nowhere to rush to, and gawping in amazement when there was nothing to gawp at. Another officer, a thin little man, spoke to all and sundry, holding forth about where he thought they were being taken, and how far they would get that day. A commissariat official wearing his uniform and a pair of high felt boots kept running from side to side to have a good look at what was left after the burning of Moscow, opining in a loud voice on what had been burnt and telling them what district of the town they were in as it hove into view. A third officer, of Polish extraction to judge by his accent, took issue with the commissariat official, pointing out that he was getting things wrong as he identified the various districts of Moscow.

‘Why bother?’ said the major testily. ‘Makes no difference whether it’s St Nikolay or St Vlas. Look, it’s all burnt down, and that’s it . . . And will you stop shoving? There’s plenty of road,’ he said, turning furiously on a man walking behind him who certainly hadn’t pushed him.

‘Oh, no, no, no. Look what they’ve done!’ came the prisoners’ voices from every side, despite the major, as they stared at the charred ruins. ‘Look over there across the river. Zubovo. Inside the Kremlin . . . Look, half of it’s gone! I told you it was like that across the river, and I was damn well right.’

‘All right, so it’s all burnt down. No point in going on about it,’ said the major.

On their way through Khamovniki (one of the few Moscow districts that had survived the fire), walking past the church, the whole throng of prisoners suddenly surged to one side, calling out in shock and horror.

‘Absolute swine!’

‘Heathen lot!’

‘Yes he’s dead. It’s a dead man . . . And they’ve wiped something all over him.’

Pierre, too, moved over towards the church to get nearer the thing that was causing the outcry, and he could just make out something leaning on the church fence. Some of his companions had a better view, and from what they said he learnt it was a dead body propped up against the fence in a standing position, with its face smeared with soot.