‘Marksmen of the Eighty-sixth, forward march!’ someone called. The fifth prisoner standing next to Pierre was led forward – alone. Pierre didn’t realize he had been spared; he and all the rest had been brought here just to witness the execution. With mounting horror and no sense of joy or relief he watched what was being done. The fifth prisoner was the factory worker in the loose coat. The moment they laid hands on him he recoiled in terror and grabbed at Pierre. (Pierre shuddered and tore himself away.) The factory hand couldn’t walk. They held him under his armpits, and he yelled as they dragged him along. When they got him to the post he suddenly went quiet. He seemed to have realized something. Whether he realized it was no good screaming, or thought these people couldn’t possibly kill him, he stood there at the post waiting to be blindfolded just as the others had done, and stared round with the glittering eyes of a wounded animal.
This time Pierre couldn’t bring himself to look away and close his eyes. At this fifth murder curiosity and emotion were at fever pitch for him and the whole crowd. Like the others this fifth man seemed calm enough. He pulled his coat tighter, and rubbed one bare foot against the other.
As they were putting his blindfold on he shifted the knot himself because it was digging into the back of his head, then, when they backed him up against the bloodstained post, he half-fell into an awkward position, pulled himself together, squared his feet and settled back comfortably. Pierre never took his eyes off him and didn’t miss the slightest movement he made.
There must have been a word of command followed by the sound of eight muskets being fired. But, however hard he tried to remember it afterwards, Pierre never heard the slightest sound of a shot. All he saw was the factory hand slumping down on the ropes for some reason, spurts of blood in two places and the ropes themselves giving way under the weight of the sagging body as the factory hand slid down into a sitting position, his head drooping gawkily and with one leg buckled up underneath him. Pierre ran over to the post. No one stopped him. Frightened men with pallid faces were busy doing something round the factory hand. One old Frenchman with a moustache couldn’t stop his jaw trembling as he undid the ropes. The body flopped down. Scrabbling soldiers hurried to heave it past the post and start shoving it down into the pit.
Every last man of them clearly knew beyond doubt they were all criminals, and they had to move quickly to hide all traces of their crime.
Pierre took a glance down into the pit and saw the factory hand lying there with his knees tucked up close to his head, and one shoulder higher than the other. That shoulder was rising and falling rhythmically, and twitching as it did so. But earth was already raining down in shovelfuls all over the body. One soldier roared at Pierre in a voice of savage and feverish fury, ordering him back into line. But Pierre didn’t take it in; he just stood there by the post, and no one drove him away.
Once the pit had been filled up an order rang out. Pierre was taken back to his place, and the French troops that were lined up in ranks on both sides of the post performed a half-turn and set off marching in step past the post. The twenty-four marksmen standing in the middle of the circle with their recently fired muskets doubled back into line as their companies marched past.
Pierre stared now with glazed eyes at these marksmen running out of the circle two by two. They had soon rejoined the ranks – all but one of them. A young soldier, his face deathly white, was still there facing the pit, standing on the spot he had fired the shot from; his shako was skewed back, and his musket rested on the ground. He reeled like a drunken man, staggering a few steps forward and a few steps back to keep himself from falling. A veteran NCO ran out, grabbed the young soldier by the shoulder and hauled him back into the ranks. The crowd of Frenchmen and Russians began to disperse. They all walked off in silence, with their heads bowed.
‘Teach ’em a thing or two about fire-raising . . .’ said one of the Frenchmen. Pierre glanced round at the speaker, and saw it was a soldier trying to console himself somehow for what had been done, and not managing to do so. He left his sentence unfinished, waved his hand and marched on.
CHAPTER 12
After the execution Pierre was separated from the other prisoners and left alone in a little church that had been ruined and befouled.
