War And Peace полностью

Pierre’s head had hardly hit the cushion when he felt himself dropping off to sleep. Then immediately he could hear, just like the real thing, the cannons going boom, boom, boom , men groaning and screaming, and the thump of falling shells, he could smell the blood and gunpowder, and a feeling of horror, the fear of death, swept over him. He opened his eyes in panic and stuck his head out of the cloak. The yard was quiet. The only sounds came from somebody’s servant chatting to the porter at the gate as he squelched through the mud. Over Pierre’s head, under the dark, wooden eaves, he could hear pigeons fluttering, startled by the movement of him sitting up. The whole yard reeked as a tavern should, of hay, dung and tar, and the smell of it all lifted Pierre’s spirits. Between two dark buildings he could see the pure, starlit sky.

‘Thank God it’s all over!’ thought Pierre, burrowing down again. ‘Fear – what a terrible thing it is. It got to me straightaway. I feel so ashamed! But they . . . they were rock-solid and perfectly calm all the way through,’ he thought. They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, soldiers on the battery, soldiers who had fed him, soldiers who had prayed to the icon. They – those strange people, completely unknown to him before – they stood out from everybody else, etched clearly and sharply in his mind.

‘Oh, to be a soldier, just an ordinary soldier!’ thought Pierre as he nodded off. ‘To enter into that communal life with your whole being, to be absorbed into whatever it is that makes them what they are. But how can you cast off everything that doesn’t matter, everything sent by the devil, the whole burden of the outer man? There was a time when I could have been one of them. I could have run away from my father. God knows I wanted to. And after that duel with Dolokhov I could have signed on as a soldier.’

And in his imagination Pierre pictured that dinner at the club when he had challenged Dolokhov, and then his benefactor at Torzhok. And in his mind he saw another picture: a grand dinner at the lodge. In the English Club. And someone he knew, someone close to him, some dear friend, was sitting at the end of the table. Yes, him! My benefactor. ‘But isn’t he dead?’ thought Pierre. ‘Yes, he did die, and I didn’t know he was still alive. I’m so sorry he died, and I’m so glad he’s alive again!’ Down one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitsky, Denisov and others of that ilk (this category of people was as sharply delineated in Pierre’s dream as the other category of men that he had referred to as them), and that lot, Anatole and Dolokhov, were shouting and singing at the tops of their voices, but through all their racket he could just hear the voice of his benefactor that refused to be drowned out, and the sound of his voice was as insistent and meaningful as the roar of the battlefield, though also sweet and soothing. Pierre couldn’t make out what his benefactor was saying, but he knew (the category of his ideas was also sharply delineated in his dream) that he was talking about virtue, and the possibility of being like them. And they with their simple, good, stolid faces stood all round his benefactor. They meant well, but they took no notice of Pierre; they didn’t know him. Pierre wanted them to notice him, and he wanted to speak. He tried to get up, but instantly his legs felt cold and all exposed.

He felt embarrassed, and covered his legs with one arm. In the real world his coat had slipped down. As he pulled it back up Pierre opened his eyes for an instant and caught sight of the same roofs and posts, and the yard, but it was all bathed in a blueish light, and there was a twinkling of dew or frost.

‘It’s getting light,’ thought Pierre. ‘But that’s not it. I’ve got to listen to the benefactor and understand what he’s saying.’

Again he burrowed down under his coat, but the masonic dinner and his benefactor had gone. He was left with mere thoughts, coming out in words, ideas, a voice speaking them, or was it Pierre himself thinking them?

When he remembered these thoughts afterwards, although they had been stimulated by the impressions of that particular day, Pierre was certain they had come to him from outside. He really believed that in his waking moments he could never have thought those thoughts or expressed them in that form.