War And Peace полностью

Frowning with annoyance at the effort involved in taking off his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, flopped down on his bed and was soon, to all intents and purposes, lost in thought, as he stared down with disgust at his desiccated yellow legs. In fact he wasn’t thinking at all, he was just gathering himself for the enormous effort of lifting his legs up and rolling over on the bed. ‘Ugh, it’s so hard! Ugh, I’ll be glad when this struggle is over. If only you would let me go!’ he kept thinking. Tightening his lips, he made that effort for the twentieth time, and there he was, lying down. But hardly had he managed this when the bed started moving gently backwards and forwards beneath him, as though it was breathing by itself, rocking and knocking. This happened nearly every night. His eyes had been steadily closing; now they were open.

‘Leave me alone, damn you!’ he growled, raging against some unknown presence. ‘Ye-es, there was something important, something very important . . . I saved it up to think about in bed. Was it the bolts? No, I got that off my chest. No, there was something else, something in the drawing-room . . . Princess Marya said something stupid. Dessalles was going on about it, blithering idiot . . . Something in my pocket . . . Oh, I can’t remember.’

‘Tishka! What did we talk about over dinner?’

‘Prince Andrey, Mikhail Ivanych . . .’

‘Shut your mouth.’ The prince slapped his hand down on the table. ‘Yes, I’ve got it, Prince Andrey’s letter. Princess Marya read it out. Dessalles was going on about Vitebsk. I’ll read it now.’

He told Tikhon to get the letter out of his pocket and push the little table with the lemonade and the spiral wax candle on it a bit nearer the bed. Then he put his glasses on and started reading. Only now, in the still of the night, as he went through the letter under the pale glow emanating from the green shade, did he get a momentary glimpse of its meaning.

‘The French are at Vitebsk, and that could mean four days from Smolensk. Maybe they’re already there . . .’

‘Tishka!’

Tikhon leapt up.

‘No, no, it doesn’t matter!’ he cried.

He tucked the letter away under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And in his mind’s eye there it was again – the Danube, high noon, reeds, the Russian camp, and him a young general without a line on his face, a merry, dashing, ruddy-faced figure, striding into Potyomkin’s gaily coloured tent. Again he burns with envy of this highly favoured man, and it hurts as much as it did at the time. And he goes through every word uttered at that first interview with Potyomkin. Then another vision – a dumpy woman, yellowing and jowly, the Dowager Empress, her smiles, all that she said at her first gracious reception of him. And then her face as she lay on the catafalque, and the clash with Zubov over her coffin for the right to go and kiss her hand.

‘Oh, hurry me away, back to that time. Hurry me out of here and now, so I can be left in peace!’

CHAPTER 4

Bald Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky, was situated forty miles east of Smolensk, and a couple of miles off the Moscow road.

On the evening of the day when the old prince had taken so long to give Alpatych his instructions Dessalles asked if he could have a word with Princess Marya, and told her that since the prince was not quite himself and wasn’t taking any precautions to guarantee his own safety, even though Prince Andrey’s letter had made it clear that staying on at Bald Hills would not be without risk, he respectfully advised her to write on her own account, and send a letter via Alpatych to the provincial governor in Smolensk, asking for a statement of how things stood and the degree of risk they were running at Bald Hills. Dessalles had written the letter to the governor and Princess Marya had signed it; now it was handed to Alpatych, who was told to give it to the governor and come back as soon as possible if there was danger.

When he had received all his commissions, Alpatych put on his white beaver hat (a present from the prince), took his stick, just like the prince, walked out to be seen off by the servants, and got into the leather gig harnessed to three sleek roans.

The big bell was tied up and the little ones had been muffled with paper. The prince didn’t allow them to drive with bells at Bald Hills, though out on the road Alpatych loved to hear them all jingling. Alpatych was like a king with his courtiers: there to see him off were the land-office clerk, a scullery maid and a cook, two old women, a boy servant dressed like a Cossack, several coachmen and one or two other servants.

His daughter was busy stuffing chintz-covered feather cushions down behind his back and under his bottom. His old sister-in-law slipped a little bundle in on the sly. One of the coachmen helped him in.