War And Peace

His head steward came down to Oryol to see him, and the two of them conducted a general review of his much-changed financial situation. According to the steward’s estimate the fire of Moscow had cost Pierre about two million roubles. By way of consolation for these losses the steward presented a calculation to the effect that Pierre’s income, instead of being allowed to fall, could actually be increased as long as he refused to pay off the countess’s debts – which he couldn’t be forced to honour – and didn’t restore his Moscow house or the country villa, which cost him eighty thousand a year and brought nothing in.

‘Yes, yes, that’s true,’ said Pierre, with the broadest of smiles.

‘No, no, I don’t need any of them. The destruction of the city has made me a much richer man.’

But in January Savelich came down and after telling him about the situation in Moscow, he presented the architect’s estimate for restoring the house and villa as if the whole thing was a foregone conclusion. At the same time Pierre received letters from Prince Vasily and other acquaintances in Petersburg. These referred to his wife’s debts. And Pierre decided that the steward’s plan, despite its great appeal, was not the right one, and he must travel to Petersburg to wind up his wife’s affairs and see to the rebuilding in Moscow. Why this was so, he couldn’t have said, but he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that this was what he had to do. His income would be down by three-quarters as a result of this decision. But it had to be. He could feel it in his bones.

Willarski was going to Moscow, and they arranged to travel together.

Throughout his entire convalescence in Oryol Pierre had been enjoying a new sense of freedom and joie de vivre, but once he found himself travelling the open road and seeing hundreds of new faces this feeling was intensified. During the journey he felt as happy as a schoolboy in the holidays. All the people he came across – his driver, the master of a posting-station, peasants out on the road or in the villages – all of them had a new significance for him. The presence of Willarski and all his comments as he constantly deplored the poverty, ignorance and backwardness of Russia compared with Europe only heightened Pierre’s pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness, Pierre saw vitality, an amazingly powerful force sustaining the life of this indivisible, special, unique people over that immense expanse of snow. Rather than objecting to anything Willarski said, he just smiled with delight as he took it all in and pretended to agree, this being the easiest way of avoiding arguments that were bound to lead nowhere.

CHAPTER 14

Just as it is difficult to explain why ants scurry about over a scattered ant-hill, and where they are off to when some of them drag bits of rubbish, eggs and corpses away from the ant-hill while others hurry back inside, or what object they could possibly have as they bump into each other, overtake and get into fights, so it would be hard to explain the reasons that induced the Russians, after the departure of the French, to swarm back to the place that had once been known as Moscow. But just as when you look at the ants scattered all over a ruined ant-heap you can see from the persistence and the energy of this heaving multitude of busy insects that even in the face of absolute destruction there remains something indestructible and intangible that has given the whole colony its strength, so too the city of Moscow in the month of October, without any government, without its churches and holy objects, without its wealth and its houses, was still the Moscow it had been in August. Everything had been destroyed except something intangible that was also hugely powerful and indestructible.

The motives of the people in rushing back to Moscow from all points of the compass once it had been cleared of the enemy were many and varied, though they were personal and, in the first instance, savage and brutal. Only one impulse was shared by all – they were drawn back home, to the place that had once been known as Moscow, in order to get their activities going again.

Within a week there were fifteen thousand inhabitants back in Moscow, within a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so it went on. The total rose and rose until by the autumn of 1813 the population exceeded that of 1812.