‘We can sort that out later. Been to the governor’s, eh?’ asked Ferapontov. ‘What have they decided to do?’
Alpatych replied that the governor had told him nothing definite.
‘How can we pack up and go with our business to look after?’ said Ferapontov. ‘Cost us seven roubles for cartage to Dorogobuzh. I keeps on saying it: they’ve no conscience! Now, Selivanov, he pulled a good trick on Friday, sold flour to the army at nine roubles a sack. Quick drink of tea?’ he added. While the horses were being harnessed, Alpatych and Ferapontov drank tea together and had a good chat about the price of corn, the crops and good weather for the harvest.
‘I think it’s calming down a bit,’ said Ferapontov, getting to his feet after the third cup of tea. ‘I imagine our boys had the best of it. They said they wouldn’t let them through. That’s our strength for you . . . The other day they were on about Matvey Ivanych Platov – seems he drove ’em into the river Marina. Eighteen thousand drowned in a day.’ Alpatych scooped up his purchases, handed them to the coachman who had just come in and settled up with Ferapontov. From the gateway came the sound of wheels, hooves and jingling bells as a little trap drove out.
Now, well into the afternoon, half the street lay in shadow, with the other half in bright sunshine. Alpatych glanced through the window and went to the door. Suddenly they heard the strange sound of a faraway hiss and crump, followed by booming cannon-fire blending into one dull roar that made the windows rattle.
Alpatych went out into the street; two men were running down the street towards the bridge. From different sides came the whistle and thud of cannonballs and the crash of grenades exploding as they rained down on the town. But these almost inaudible sounds were hardly noticed by the inhabitants against the roaring cannons they could hear just outside the town. This was it, the bombardment ordered by Napoleon and launched on the town by one hundred and thirty cannons at just after four o’clock. It was a bombardment with a significance that the people were slow to appreciate.
At first the crashing cascade of grenades and cannonballs excited nothing but curiosity. Ferapontov’s wife, who had been howling incessantly out in the shed, now walked down to the gate carrying the baby, and stared in silence at the people as she listened to all the noises.
The cook and a shopkeeper also came out to the gate. They were all bright and cheerful, eager to get a glimpse of the shells flying overhead. Several people came round the corner chatting away.
‘Some force!’ one was saying. ‘Roof and ceiling smashed to bits.’
‘Like a pig’s snout digging the ground up!’ said another voice.
‘Terrific stuff! Keeps you on your toes!’ he went on with a laugh. ‘Lucky you skipped to one side or you’d have been flattened.’ Others joined them. They slowed to a stop and talked about cannonballs raining down next door to them. Meanwhile other missiles – hurtling cannonballs with an ominous hiss, or sweetly whistling grenades – were flying incessantly overhead, though none of them fell anywhere near; they all flew on somewhere else. Alpatych was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood by the gate.
‘Haven’t you seen enough?’ he shouted to the cook, who had come out in her red skirt, with her sleeves rolled up and her bare elbows working away, and was now going down to the corner to listen to what people were saying.
‘Marvellous, isn’t it?’ she said time after time, but as soon as she heard her master’s voice, she came back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.
Something whistled over their heads again, this time very near, like a little bird swooping down on them, there was a flash of fire in the middle of the street, a big bang and smoke all over the place.
‘Stupid girl, what do you think you’re doing?’ yelled the innkeeper, running over to the cook.
Immediately women on all sides gave a pathetic, ‘Oh no!’, the baby screamed with shock, and the people crowded round the cook with ashen faces. The cook’s groans and cries rose above the rest of the crowd.
‘A-agh! My lovely friends, dear lovely friends! Don’t let me die! My dear lovely friends! . . .’
Five minutes later the street was deserted. The cook had had her thigh broken by shrapnel from a grenade, and they carried her off into the kitchen. Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children and the porter were down in the cellar, all ears. The roar of the cannons, the whistling shells, and the pathetic whimpering of the cook, loudest of all, were unrelenting. Ferapontov’s wife, rocking and crooning at her baby, asked everybody who came down into the cellar in a frightened whisper where her husband had gone after he had stayed out on the street. A newly arrived shopkeeper told her he had gone off with the crowd to the cathedral, where they were raising on high the holy icon of Smolensk, which had power to work miracles.
