The Torzhok pedlar woman was whining away, offering her wares, especially some goatskin slippers. ‘I’ve got hundreds of roubles, money I don’t know what to do with, and she stands there in her tatty coat hardly daring to look at me,’ thought Pierre. ‘And what does she want money for? As if it could give her a hair’s breadth of extra happiness or put her soul at rest. Is there anything in the world that can make her and me any less subject to evil and death? Death, the end of everything, and it must come today or tomorrow – either way it’s a split second on the scale of eternity.’ And again he twisted the screw that wouldn’t bite, and the screw went on turning in the same hole.
His servant handed him a half-cut volume – it was a novel in letters by Madame de Souza.1 He started reading about the trials and struggle for virtue of someone called Amélie de Mansfeld. ‘Why did she resist her seducer,’ he thought, ‘when she loved him? God couldn’t have filled her heart with any desires that went against his will. My ex-wife didn’t, and maybe she was right. Nothing has been discovered,’ Pierre said to himself again, ‘and nothing has been invented. The only thing we can know is that we don’t know anything. And that is the summit of human wisdom.’
Everything within and around him struck him as confused, senseless and disgusting. And yet in his very disgust at everything around him Pierre found a source of nagging enjoyment.
‘If I could just ask your Excellency to squeeze up a little and make room for this gentleman,’ said the station-master, bringing in another traveller delayed by the lack of horses. This traveller was a stocky, large-boned old man, yellow, wrinkled and with grey bushy eyebrows and eyes that gleamed with a greyish colour.
Pierre took his feet down from the table, stood up and went to lie on the bed that had been got ready for him, glancing across now and again at the gloomy and weary newcomer, who did not look back at him as he struggled out of his top-coat assisted by his servant. Keeping on his shabby nankeen-covered sheepskin coat and with felt boots on his thin bony legs, the traveller sat down on the sofa, leaned back his close-cropped head, which was unusually large and broad at the temples, and looked at Bezukhov. He had a shrewd, austere and sharp look that impressed Pierre, who felt like striking up a conversation, but just as he was about to ask him about the roads, the traveller closed his eyes and folded his wrinkled old hands, one finger displaying a large iron ring with a death’s head seal on it. He sat there quite still, either relaxing or, as seemed more likely to Pierre, in a state of profound and tranquil meditation. The newcomer’s servant was also old, yellow and wrinkled. He had no beard or moustache, not because he had shaved them off, but because he had clearly never been able to grow any. The old retainer fussed about, unpacking a hamper and setting up a little tea table, and then went to fetch a boiling samovar. When it was all ready, the traveller opened his eyes, moved over to the table and poured out one glass of tea for himself and another which he handed to the beardless old man. Pierre began to feel restless, as if it was necessary, even inevitable, for him to get into conversation with the traveller.
The servant came back with his empty glass inverted and a half-nibbled piece of sugar beside it, and asked if anything more was required.
‘No. Give me my book,’ said the traveller. The servant passed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional work, and the traveller became engrossed in it. Pierre watched him. Suddenly the stranger marked his place in the book, closed it and put it down. He then shut his eyes, leant back on the sofa and resumed his earlier position. Pierre was still watching him, too late to look away, when the old man opened his austere, resolute eyes and fastened them on Pierre. Pierre felt embarrassed and tried to avoid that look, but the gleaming old eyes kept a magnetic hold on him.
CHAPTER 2
‘I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I’m not mistaken,’ said the stranger in a loud, unhurried voice. Pierre said nothing but looked quizzically over his spectacles at the speaker. ‘I have heard of you,’ continued the stranger, ‘and I have also heard about what has happened to you, sir. Your misfortune.’ He seemed to emphasize the last word as if to say,
‘You have my deepest sympathy, sir.’
Pierre reddened and hurriedly put his legs down from the bed, leaning forward towards the old man with a shy and awkward smile.
