‘What’s happening? Who are they? What have they done?’ he kept asking. But the crowd – clerks, tradesmen, shopkeepers, peasants, women in cloaks and jackets – were so fascinated by what was happening at the Place of Execution that nobody answered. The stout man got to his feet wincing, twisted his shoulders and tried his best with a show of bravery to pull on his jacket without looking round at everybody, but suddenly his lips trembled and he burst into tears, furious with himself, as sometimes happens with grown men, however full-blooded. There were loud comments from the crowd as people stifled their feelings of sympathy – or so Pierre liked to think.
‘Some chef belonging to a prince . . .’
‘Hey, monsewer, Russian sauce a bit sharp for a Froggy? . . . Makes you wince a bit!’ said a wrinkled clerk standing near Pierre at the moment the Frenchman burst into tears. The clerk looked round, obviously expecting applause. Some people did laugh, but others were so dismayed they could not take their eyes off the executioner, who was in the process of stripping the second Frenchman.
Pierre was choking. He screwed up his face, turned away sharply, went back to his carriage and got in, all the time muttering under his breath. As they drove on he got the shudders several times, and yelled out so loud that the coachman asked what he wanted.
‘Where are you going?’ Pierre shouted to the coachman as he turned into Lubyanka Street.
‘You told me to go to the governor general’s,’ answered the coachman.
‘You stupid idiot!’ roared Pierre, a man who rarely abused his coachman. ‘I told you to drive me home. Get going, you blockhead!’ and under his breath he muttered, ‘I’ve got to leave town this very day.’
It was the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd all round the Place of Execution that had brought Pierre to a final decision: he simply could not stay on in Moscow, he must set off that very day to join the army, and as he saw it either he must have told the coachman, or the coachman ought to have known.
When he got home Pierre told his omniscient and omnipotent head coachman, Yevstafyevich, who was famous throughout Moscow, that he was leaving for Mozhaysk that night to join the army and his saddle horses should be sent down there. This was more than could be arranged in a single day, so Pierre yielded to Yevstafyevich’s ministrations and delayed his departure till next day so there would be time for relays of horses to be sent on ahead.
The morning of the 24th dawned bright after a spell of bad weather, and that day after dinner Pierre set out from Moscow. Changing horses during the night at Perkhushkovo, Pierre heard that there had been a huge battle that evening (the battle of Shevardino). He was told that even at Perkhushkovo the ground had been shaking from the cannon-fire. No one could answer Pierre when he asked whether the battle had been won or lost. Dawn was breaking when Pierre got to Mozhaysk.
Every house in Mozhaysk had been taken over by the military, and at the inn where Pierre was met by his coachman and groom there wasn’t a room to be had. The place was full of officers.
The whole of Mozhaysk and the surrounding area was swarming with soldiers standing around or on the march. Cossacks, infantrymen, cavalrymen, wagons, gun-carriages and cannons were all over the place. Pierre pressed on as fast as he could, and the further he moved away from Moscow and the more deeply he became immersed in this ocean of troops, the stronger he was gripped by a thrilling sense of excitement and a totally new feeling of exhilaration. It was not unlike the sensation he had experienced at the Sloboda palace during the Tsar’s visit, a sense of the urgent need to do something positive and make sacrifices. He rejoiced in a new awareness that everything that makes for happiness in life – comfort, wealth, even life itself – was nothing but trash to be thrown away with pleasure when you compare it with . . . well, something else . . . What that something else was Pierre could not have said, and he didn’t even try to work out who or what he was taking such exquisite pleasure in honouring by the ultimate sacrifice. He wasn’t at all worried about why he wanted to start making sacrifices, but the idea of sacrifice itself was a source of new delight.
CHAPTER 19
On the 24th the battle of the Shevardino redoubt was fought; on the 25th not a shot was fired by either side; on the 26th came the battle of Borodino.
