Tushin didn’t say there hadn’t been any cover, although that was the truth. He was afraid that saying this might get another officer into trouble, so without uttering a word he gazed with staring eyes straight into Bagration’s face, like a schoolboy whose mind has gone blank and can only goggle at the examiner.
The silence went on for some time. Prince Bagration clearly did not wish to be severe but couldn’t think of anything to say; nobody ventured to intervene. Prince Andrey was looking askance at Tushin and his fingers were twitching nervously.
‘Sir,’ Prince Andrey broke the silence with his sharp voice. ‘You were kind enough to send me to Captain Tushin’s battery. When I got there I found two-thirds of the men and horses dead or wounded, two guns destroyed and no cover whatever.’
Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at Bolkonsky, who was speaking with controlled emotion.
‘And if your Excellency will allow me to express an opinion,’ he went on, ‘we owe today’s triumph more to the action of that battery and the heroic determination of Captain Tushin and his men than to anything else,’ said Prince Andrey, who then rose and walked away from the table without waiting for a reply.
Prince Bagration glanced at Tushin and, evidently reluctant to express any disbelief in Bolkonsky’s rather impudent comment, yet not quite disposed to believe it entirely, he dismissed Tushin with a nod. Prince Andrey followed him out.
‘My dear fellow, thank you. Got me out of a mess,’ Tushin said to him.
Prince Andrey looked at Tushin, and walked off without a word. He was feeling bitterly disappointed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had been looking forward to.
‘Who are these people? Why are they here? What do they want? When will it all end?’ thought Rostov, staring at the shadowy figures dancing before his eyes. The pain in his arm was more and more agonizing. He was heavy with sleep, crimson circles danced before his eyes, and impressions of these voices and these faces together with a feeling of loneliness all merged into a single sensation of pain. There they were, these soldiers, wounded or not wounded, there they were pressing him and crushing him, twisting the sinews and searing the flesh in his damaged arm and shoulder. To get rid of them he closed his eyes.
He dozed off for a moment, but in that brief span of oblivion he dreamt of things without number. He dreamt of his mother and her large, white hand, Sonya with her slender shoulders, Natasha’s eyes and laughter, Denisov with his voice and his moustache, Telyanin and all that business with Telyanin and Bogdanych. All that business blurred into one soldier with a harsh voice, and together these things, ‘all that business’ and the one soldier were crushing, pulling and twisting his arm so agonizingly, relentlessly, on and on in the same direction. He was trying to get away from them, but they wouldn’t let go of his shoulder, not for anything, not for a second. He would have been free from pain, everything would have been all right if only they would stop twisting it – but there was no getting rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. Night’s black canopy hovered only a couple of feet above the firelight, through which snowflakes were fluttering down. Tushin had not returned; no doctor had come. He was all alone, except for one soldier sitting naked on the other side of the fire, warming his skinny, yellow body.
‘Nobody’s bothered about me!’ thought Rostov. ‘There’s nobody to help me, nobody to feel sorry for me. And to think I was at home only the other day, all strong, and happy, and with people who loved me,’ he sighed, and the sigh turned into an unintended groan.
‘Still hurting, eh?’ asked the soldier, shaking his shirt out over the fire, and without waiting for an answer he wheezed on, ‘Aye, there’s a fair number bought it today – it’s a bad business!’
Rostov couldn’t hear what he was saying. He gazed into the snowflakes swirling above the fire and thought of Russian winters at home, warm and bright, snug in his cosy fur coat, with a speeding sledge, rude health and his family with all their love and tenderness. And he wondered, ‘Why did I ever come here?’
Next day the French decided not to renew the attack, and the remnant of Bagration’s detachment joined up with Kutuzov’s army.
PART III
CHAPTER 1
