War And Peace

He never saw or heard straggling prisoners being shot, though more than a hundred had died that way. He never spared a thought for Karatayev, who was fading by the day, and seemed certain to suffer the same fate very soon. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The harder his lot became and the more ghastly his immediate future seemed, the more independent of his present plight were the gladness and consolation that came to him through the pictures provided by his mind, memory and imagination.

CHAPTER 13

At midday on the 22nd Pierre was walking up a muddy, slippery road, looking down at his feet and the rough road-surface. From time to time he glanced at the familiar crowd around him, then he would look down again at his feet. The crowd and the feet had two things in common: they were his, and he knew them well. The lavender-grey, bandy-legged dog was scampering merrily at the side of the road, sometimes lifting a back paw in the air and skipping along on three legs in a display of skill and joie de vivre, or dropping down on all four legs to go charging across and bark at the crows as they perched on carrion. Greycoat looked sleeker and chirpier than she had done in Moscow. On every side lay the flesh of various animals – from men to horses – in various stages of decomposition, and the marching soldiers kept the wolves away, so Greycoat could gorge herself whenever she wanted.

The rain had been coming down since early morning. It looked as if it was going to stop, and the sky seemed likely to clear at any minute, but then they would take a short break and the heavens would open again worse than ever. The road was so saturated with rain it couldn’t take any more, and the ruts were filling up with running streams.

Pierre plodded on, looking from side to side, counting his steps, and marking them off on his fingers in threes. In his mind he talked to the rain, chanting to himself, ‘Come rain, come rain, come away rain!’

He thought his mind was a blank, but no, somewhere in the depths of his soul he was meditating on something deeply serious that carried consolation. This something was a subtle and soulful follow-on from last night’s conversation with Platon Karatayev.

During the halt yesterday evening Pierre had suddenly felt frozen next to a dying fire, so he had got up and moved across to the nearest one that still had some heat in it. Platon was sitting there with a greatcoat over his head like a priest’s robe. His easy, mellifluous voice, softened by his illness, murmured on as he told the soldiers a story Pierre had heard before. It was past midnight, a time when Karatayev’s fever usually abated, and he really came to life. As Pierre got near to the fire and heard Platon’s feeble, sickly voice and saw his pathetic face lit up by the firelight, he felt a nasty pang in his heart. He was scared of the pity he felt for this man and would have gone off somewhere else, but there was no other fire to go to, so he sat down, trying not to look at Platon.

‘Well, how have you been?’ he asked.

‘How have I been? When you’re poorly, don’t cry, or God won’t let you die,’ said Karatayev, and he went straight back to the story he was half-way through.

‘So, listen, brother . . .’ he went on with a smile on his thin, pale face, and a strangely happy light in his eyes. ‘So, listen, brother . . .’

Pierre knew this story well. Karatayev had told it to him half a dozen times before, always with particular pleasure. But even though it was very familiar Pierre listened now as if it was something new, and the gentle sense of rapture that Karatayev was enjoying as he told it communicated itself to Pierre as well. It was the story of an old merchant, a good man who had lived a Godfearing life with his family, and who went off one day to the fair at Makary with a friend of his, a rich merchant.

They had put up at an inn together and gone to bed, and the next morning the rich merchant was discovered with his throat cut and his things stolen. A bloodstained knife was found under the old merchant’s pillow. The merchant was tried and flogged, and had his nostrils slit – all according to the law, as Karatayev said – and he was sent off to hard labour.