He had done all that was necessary in the receiving and issuing of orders for tomorrow’s battle. There was nothing more to be done. But he was haunted by certain thoughts, the simplest, clearest and therefore the most painful of thoughts, that refused to leave him in peace. He was well aware that tomorrow’s engagement would be the most ghastly battle he had ever taken part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of death presented itself, not in relation to the living world, or any effect it might have on other people, but purely in relation to himself and his own soul, and it seemed so vivid, almost a dependable certainty, stark and terrible. And from the heights of this vision everything that had once tormentingly preoccupied him seemed suddenly bathed in a cold, white light with no shadows, no perspective, no outline. His whole life seemed like a magic-lantern show that he had been staring at through glass by artificial light. Now suddenly the glass was gone, and he could see those awful daubings in the clear light of day. ‘Yes, yes, here they are, these false images that I used to find so worrying, enthralling and agonizing,’ he told himself, giving his imagination a free rein to run over the main pictures in the magic lantern of his life, looked at anew in the cold, white daylight brought on by a clear vision of death. ‘Here they are, these crudely daubed figures that used to seem so magnificent and mysterious. Honour and glory, philanthropy, love of a woman, love of Fatherland – how grand these pictures used to seem, filled with such deep meanings! And now it all looks so simple, colourless and crude in the cold light of the morning I can feel coming upon me.’ There were three main regrets in his life that had a special claim on his attention: his love for a woman, the death of his father, and the invasion of the French, who now held half of Russia. ‘Love! . . . That little girl who seemed to be overflowing with mysterious energies. Oh, how I loved her! And I made all those romantic plans about love and happiness with her! Oh, what a nice little boy I was!’ he spat out aloud. ‘To think I believed in some ideal kind of love that would keep her faithful while I went away for a whole year! Like the gentle turtle-dove in the fable, she was supposed to pine away waiting for me! And now everything’s so much simpler . . . it’s all so horribly simple and ghastly!’
‘My father, too, did all that building at Bald Hills, and he thought it was his place, his land, his air, his peasants. But then along came Napoleon, and without even knowing of his existence he swept him away like a wood-chip on the path, and left Bald Hills and all his life in ruins. Princess Marya says it’s a trial sent from above. What’s the trial for when he’s gone and will never return? Never again! He’s gone for ever! So who’s the trial for? Our country lost and Moscow destroyed! Anyway, tomorrow I’ll get killed, and probably not by a Frenchman, maybe by one of our own men, like that soldier who let his gun go off right next to my ear yesterday, and the French will come along and pick me up by the head and feet and chuck me into a pit so I don’t stink them out, and a whole new way of living will come about, everybody will get used to it, and I shan’t know anything about it because I shall have gone.’
He glanced at the row of birch-trees impassive in their yellows and greens, with their white bark gleaming in the sunshine. ‘To die . . . let me get killed tomorrow and have done with it . . . let everything else carry on, but with me gone.’ He had a clear vision of his own non-existence in this life. And suddenly those birch-trees, with their light and shade, the wispy clouds and the smoke-plumes rising from the fires, everything around him seemed to have been transformed into something terribly ominous. A cold shiver ran down his back. He got quickly to his feet, strode out of the barn and went for a walk.
Back in the barn he heard voices outside.
‘Who’s that?’ called Prince Andrey.
The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, once in charge of Dolokhov’s company but now promoted to battalion-commander because of a shortage of officer material, came in diffidently. He was followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.
Prince Andrey got rapidly to his feet, listened to what the officers had come to talk about, issued one or two instructions, and was just about to send them on their way when he heard a voice outside the barn and its sibilant tones seemed familiar.
‘What the devil was that?’ said the voice of someone in mid-stumble.
Prince Andrey looked out just in time to see Pierre reeling; he had tripped over a stake lying on the ground, and almost lost his feet. Prince Andrey had a great distaste for seeing people from his own circle, and Pierre was particularly unwelcome as a reminder of the moments of anguish he had gone through on his last visit to Moscow.
