And indeed, the battery gave a splendid view of almost the whole spread of the Russian forces, and most of the enemy’s too. Straight across from the battery, on the crest of the opposite hill he could see the village of Schöngrabern, to the left and right of which there were three places where masses of French troops could be seen through the campfire smoke, though it was clear that most of them had been kept back in the village itself and over the hill. To the left of the village something resembling a battery lurked in the smoke, indistinct to the naked eye. Our right flank was deployed on a rather steep hillside dominating the French position. Our infantry had been placed there too, and the dragoons were visible behind them on the very top of the ridge. In the centre stood Tushin’s battery, from which Prince Andrey was now surveying the landscape; here the ground below fell away very steeply before rising towards the stream that separated us from Schöngrabern. On the left our troops stuck close to the woods, and smoke rose up from campfires where our infantry had been detailed to cut wood. The French line was wider than ours, and it would obviously be an easy task for the French to outflank us on both sides. To our rear there was a precipitous ravine, down which retreat with artillery and cavalry would be difficult.
Prince Andrey leant one elbow on the cannon, took out a note-book and sketched a plan of the disposition of the troops. In two places he jotted down some pencilled notes, meaning to bring them up with Bagration. His first proposal would be to concentrate all the artillery in the centre, and the second would involve pulling the cavalry back and sending them to the other side of the ravine. Prince Andrey was used to standing near the commander-in-chief, watching the movements of masses of men and large-scale manoeuvres, and he had long been a student of military history, so now it was inevitable that he would take a generalized view of the impending operations. He always imagined things on a grand scale. ‘If the enemy attacks us on the right flank,’ he told himself, for example, ‘the Kiev Grenadiers and Podolsky Chasseurs will have to hold their positions until reserves from the centre reach them. In this event the dragoons could counter-attack and drive them back. In case of an attack on the centre, though, we should deploy the central battery on this height, and use its cover to withdraw the left flank and effect a staged retreat as far as the ravine.’ This was his way of thinking . . .
As he stood there in the battery next to the cannon, he was aware of officers’ voices emanating from the hut, but, as often happens, he wasn’t taking in a word of what they were saying. Then suddenly he heard someone speak with such feeling that he couldn’t help listening.
‘No, my dear fellow,’ said a pleasant voice that struck him as vaguely familiar, ‘I’m telling you – if we could know what’s going to happen after we’re dead not one of us would be scared of dying. There you have it, old man.’
A younger voice interrupted him to say, ‘Anyway, scared or not, it comes to us all.’
‘But you’re still scared! You lot with your education,’ said a different, mature voice, cutting across the first two. ‘You gunners think you know it all, because you can take everything with you. Never short of a drop to drink or a bite to eat.’
This brought a laugh from the owner of the mature voice, apparently an infantry officer.
‘But we’re still scared,’ insisted the first voice, the one that Prince Andrey half-recognized. ‘We’re scared of the unknown, that’s what it’s all about. It’s all right saying the soul goes up to heaven . . . we know for certain there isn’t any heaven – there’s only the atmosphere up there.’
Once again the mature voice interrupted. ‘Come on, Tushin, give us a drop of your home-made vodka.’
‘Oh, it’s that captain in the canteen with no boots on,’ thought Prince Andrey, delighted to recognize that pleasant voice now so full of philosophy.
‘Yes, have a swig,’ said Tushin, ‘but listen, the idea of a life to come . . .’
He never finished his sentence. At that moment a great whoosh came through the air. Nearer, nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, and a cannonball – also not quite saying everything it wanted to say – thudded into the ground not far away, blasting the earth with superhuman force. The earth seemed to groan at receiving such a terrible blow. Immediately the diminutive Tushin dashed out of the hut before anyone else, with his short pipe stuck in the corner in his mouth and his kind, bright face looking rather pale. Then came the owner of the mature voice, a dashing infantry officer, who rushed off to get back to his company, buttoning up his jacket as he ran.
CHAPTER 17
