Seven days had passed since Prince Andrey had come round in the ambulance station on the field of Borodino. All that time he had been in a state of almost continual unconsciousness. The fever and inflammation of his damaged intestines, were, according to the doctor travelling with the wounded man, sure to finish him off. But on the seventh day he enjoyed eating a piece of bread with a drink of tea, and the doctor noticed his temperature was down. Prince Andrey had regained consciousness that morning. The first night after leaving Moscow had been fairly warm, and Prince Andrey had spent the night in his carriage, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself had asked to be taken indoors and given some tea. The pain caused by moving him had made Prince Andrey groan aloud and lose consciousness again. When he had been stretched out on his camp-bed he lay there quite still for a long time with his eyes closed. Then he opened his eyes and whispered softly, ‘What about the tea?’ The doctor was struck by this sudden ability to remember little details of everyday life. He took his pulse, and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found that it was stronger. His dissatisfaction was due to the fact that experience told him Prince Andrey couldn’t survive, and if he didn’t die now he would die later on, in even greater agony. Travelling with Prince Andrey was Timokhin, the red-nosed major from his regiment, who had joined him in Moscow; he had been wounded in the leg, also at Borodino. They were accompanied by the doctor, the prince’s valet, his driver and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrey some tea. He gulped it down, looking with feverish eyes at the door in front of him, as if there was something he couldn’t quite understand or remember.
‘That’s enough. Is Timokhin here?’ he asked.
Timokhin dragged himself along the bench towards him.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How’s your leg?’
‘Oh, I’m all right. What about you?’
Again Prince Andrey thought for a while, as if he was trying to remember something.
‘I need a book,’ he said.
‘What book?’
‘The Bible. I haven’t got one.’
The doctor promised to get hold of a bible, and began asking the prince how he felt. Prince.Andrey answered all the doctor’s questions rationally, though reluctantly, and then said he wanted a bolster pushed under him because he felt uncomfortable and was in a lot of pain. The doctor and the valet removed the greatcoat that was covering him, winced at the nauseating smell of putrefying flesh coming from the wound, and began to examine that terrible place. Something was worrying the doctor. He made a few adjustments that involved turning the wounded man, but the pain was such that Andrey gave another groan and lost consciousness again. He began to ramble, and kept asking for them to bring the book and push it under him. ‘Is it too much trouble?’ he kept saying. ‘I haven’t got it. Fetch one, please, and shove it under me, here. Just for a minute,’ he said pathetically.
The doctor went out to wash his hands.
‘You are a shameless lot,’ the doctor was saying to the valet, who was pouring water over his hands. ‘I can’t take my eyes off you for a minute. You’ve laid him right on top of his wound. He’s in such agony I wonder he can stand it.’
‘I thought we had pushed things under him, by the Lord Jesus Christ,’ said the valet.
For the first time Andrey knew where he was and what was happening to him. He knew he had been wounded and remembered asking to be taken indoors when the carriage had stopped at Mytishchi. He had lost consciousness from the pain and come round again properly in the hut while he was drinking tea. Now here he was again trying to recall everything that had happened to him, and his most vivid recollection was that moment in the ambulance station when, at the sight of a man he had not liked suffering terrible agony, he had been struck by new ideas, ideas that brought the promise of happiness. And these same ideas – vague and fuzzy though they now were – had taken possession of his soul again. He remembered that some new kind of happiness was within his grasp, and it had something to do with the Bible. This was why he had asked for a bible. But the position they had laid him in, which was so bad for his wound, and the agony of being moved, had caused him to drift away again, and it was only in the complete stillness of the night that he had come round for the third time. They were all asleep. A cricket chirped across the passage, there was shouting and singing in the street, cockroaches rustled across the table-top and up the icons, and a big fat autumn fly was buzzing between his pillow and the tallow candle that stood near by with its big wick smouldering.
