‘Who do you think you are?’ cried the officer, turning upon him suddenly in a drunken rage. ‘Just who are you? Are you in charge here?’ he asked with brazen insubordination. ‘No, you’re not, I’m in charge! You get back!’ he repeated, ‘or I’ll cut you to pieces!’ – a phrase which had obviously caught his imagination.
‘One in the eye for our little adjutant,’ came a voice from the background.
Prince Andrey could see the officer was in one of those drunken senseless rages when people don’t remember what they have been saying. He could see that his championing of the doctor’s wife in that odd contraption was exposing him to the one thing he most dreaded – becoming a laughing stock – but instinct spoke differently. Hardly were these last words out of the officer’s mouth when Prince Andrey rode straight up to him, his face distorted with fury, and raised his riding whip.
‘Let – them – through!’
The officer waved at him and galloped off.
‘It’s their fault, these staff officers, all this chaos,’ he grumbled. ‘Do what you want now.’
Prince Andrey, without looking up, hurried to get away from the doctor’s wife, who was calling him her saviour, and with every last detail of this humiliating scene nauseatingly lodged in his memory, he galloped on towards the village where he had been told he would find the commander-in-chief.
Once in the village, he got off his horse and went up to the very first house with the intention of relaxing for a minute or two, finding a bite to eat and somehow sorting out all the hateful impressions that were tormenting him. ‘It’s a gang of crooks, not an army,’ he thought, and he was just going up to a window when he heard a familiar voice calling his name.
He looked round. There before him was the handsome face of Nesvitsky, sticking out of a little window. Nesvitsky was munching something (as his moist lips showed), waving like mad and calling him in.
‘Bolkonsky! Hey, Bolkonsky! Come on in. Quick!’ he shouted.
Prince Andrey went in and found Nesvitsky and another adjutant eating. They turned round quickly to ask Bolkonsky whether he had any news. Prince Andrey read alarm and uneasiness on their familiar features, especially Nesvitsky’s, which were usually so good-humoured.
‘Where’s the commander-in-chief?’ asked Bolkonsky
‘He’s here – over there in that house,’ answered the adjutant.
‘Well, is it true – peace and surrender?’ asked Nesvitsky.
‘I thought you might know. I don’t know anything – beyond the fact that it wasn’t easy to get here.’
‘Wait till you hear about us, my boy! It’s terrible! To think I laughed at Mack. We’re worse off than he ever was,’ said Nesvitsky. ‘But look, sit down and have something to eat.’
‘You won’t find your baggage or anything else here, Prince, and God knows where your man’s gone,’ said the other adjutant.
‘Where are the headquarters?’
‘We’re spending the night in Znaim.’
‘Well, I managed to pack everything I need on two horses,’ said Nesvitsky. ‘Very good packs too. They’d see me over the mountains of Bohemia. We’re up against it, old fellow. But look at you, you don’t look very well. You’re shivering.’ Nesvitsky had seen Prince Andrey jump as if he’d had an electric shock.
‘No, I’m all right,’ answered Prince Andrey. He had just recalled the brush between the doctor’s wife and the transport officer.
‘What is the commander-in-chief doing here?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Nesvitsky.
‘All I know is – it’s a disaster, an absolute disaster,’ said Prince Andrey, and he went over to the house where the commander-in-chief was said to be.
He walked past Kutuzov’s carriage, the weary saddle horses belonging to members of his entourage, and the Cossacks talking loudly together, and approached the entry. He was informed that Kutuzov was in the inner room of the hut with Prince Bagration and Weierother, an Austrian general who had taken Schmidt’s place. There in the entry sat little Kozlovsky squatting on his heels in front of a copying-clerk. The latter was sitting on an upturned tub with the cuffs of his uniform rolled up, writing at speed. Kozlovsky looked worn out, someone else who had obviously not slept all night. He glanced up at Prince Andrey, but didn’t even nod.
‘Line two . . . Have you got that?’ he went on, dictating to the clerk. ‘The Kiev Grenadiers, the Podolyan . . .’
‘You’re going too fast, sir,’ protested the clerk with a brazen, angry glance at Kozlovsky. At that moment he heard Kutuzov’s strong and impatient voice through the door, with another unknown voice interrupting him. The sound of those voices, Kozlovsky’s perfunctory glance at him, the rudeness of the harassed clerk, the fact that he and Kozlovsky were sitting around a tub on the floor at so little distance from the commander-in-chief and those Cossack horse-minders laughing so raucously just outside the window – all of this made Prince Andrey feel that some great and ghastly misfortune was about to descend on them.
He turned to Kozlovsky with some urgent questions.
