‘But how do you live on with ideas like that? You could just sit there without moving, not taking part in anything . . .’
‘Well, life won’t leave you in peace, will it? I’d be glad to do nothing at all, but for one thing the local nobility have done me the honour of electing me marshal. I only just managed to wriggle out of it. They couldn’t understand that I haven’t got what it takes. I don’t have the good-natured, fussy vulgarity that you must have for that sort of thing. Then there’s this house. It had to be built so I could have a corner of my own to be quiet in. And now there’s this recruiting.’
‘Why aren’t you in the army?’
‘What, after Austerlitz?’ said Prince Andrey darkly. ‘No, thank you. I swore I’d never serve in the Russian army again. And I won’t. If Napoleon was right here outside Smolensk threatening Bald Hills, I wouldn’t serve in the Russian army,’ Prince Andrey went on, pulling himself together. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, there’s this recruitment. My father’s commander-in-chief of the Third District, and the only way I can get out of active service is to serve under him.’
‘So you are in the service, then?’
‘Yes.’ He paused.
‘May I ask why?’
‘I’ll tell you why. My father is one of the most remarkable men of his time. But he’s getting old now, and he’s not exactly cruel, but he’s too forceful. He’s too fierce. He’s got used to having unlimited power, and now he has this new authority from the Emperor as a commander-in-chief of the recruiting. If I had arrived two hours later a couple of weeks ago he’d have strung up the registrar at Yukhnova,’ said Prince Andrey with a smile. ‘So I serve under him now because I’m the only one who has any influence over my father, and there are occasions when I can stop him doing something he’d come to regret.’
‘So that’s what it’s all about!’
‘Well, it’s not quite what you think,’ Prince Andrey went on. ‘It’s not that I wished him any good, that registrar, or do now. He’s a crook who stole some boots from the recruits, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him strung up, but I do feel sorry for my father, and that means for myself.’
Prince Andrey was still getting more and more animated. There was a feverish gleam in his eyes as he tried to show Pierre that he never did anything that was meant to do good to his neighbour.
‘So, you want to liberate your serfs,’ he went on. ‘That’s a very good idea, but not for you – I don’t imagine you’ve ever had a man flogged or sent to Siberia – and certainly not for your peasants. Those who do get beaten, flogged or sent to Siberia – well, I don’t imagine they’re any the worse off for it. Out in Siberia they can go on living like cattle, the stripes on the body heal, and they’ll be as happy as they ever used to be. The men it would be good for are those people who are morally bankrupt and eaten away by remorse, but they suppress the remorse and become callous just from having the ability to inflict punishment on all sides. These are the people I’m sorry for. They’re the ones who make me want to see the serfs liberated. Maybe you haven’t seen it, but I have, I’ve seen good men, raised in the old traditions of unlimited power, getting more and more irritable as the years go by, turning themselves into cruel brutes, aware of what’s happening to them but unable to control themselves and just getting more and more miserable.’
Prince Andrey spoke with such feeling that Pierre couldn’t help thinking that these ideas had something to do with his father. He did not respond.
‘So that’s who I’m sorry for, and I’m sorry for the loss of human dignity, good conscience and innocence – not for the backs and heads of these people, because those things don’t change, however much you thrash them or shave them.’
‘No, no, a thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,’ said Pierre.
CHAPTER 12
That evening Prince Andrey and Pierre took the open carriage and set off for Bald Hills. Prince Andrey kept glancing at Pierre and breaking the silence now and then with remarks that showed he was in a good humour.
Pointing to the fields, he told him of the improvements he was making in the management of his land.
Pierre sat there morose and silent, answering in monosyllables and apparently absorbed in his own thoughts.
Pierre was reflecting on Prince Andrey’s miserable state, how wrong he was, how ignorant of the true light, and thinking that he would have to help him out of this, show him the light and raise him up. But the moment he began working out what to say and how to say it, he could see Prince Andrey dashing his teaching to pieces with a single word, a single argument, and he was wary of even starting, wary of exposing to possible ridicule everything he held dear and sacred.
‘No, but where do you get thoughts like these?’ Pierre suddenly began, lowering his head like a charging bull. ‘What makes you think like this? You ought not to think like this.’
‘Think like what?’ asked Prince Andrey in some surprise.
