'You're off then?' And he went on writing.
'I've come to say goodbye.'
'Kiss me here.' He offered his cheek. 'Thank you very much!'
'What are you thanking me for?'
'For not hanging about and not being tied to your wife's apron strings. Duty comes first. Thank you very much indeed!' And he went on writing, with ink splattering from his scratching pen. 'If you want to say something, say it. I can manage two things at once,' he added.
'Well, my wife . . . I'm rather embarrassed to be leaving her in your hands . . .'
'What are you rambling on about? Say what you mean.'
'When her time comes, please send to Moscow for a specialist . . . I want him here.'
The old prince stopped, bemused, and glared harshly at his son.
'I know no one can help if nature doesn't,' said Prince Andrey, much embarrassed. 'I know it's only a chance in a million, but it's her one nightmare - and mine. She has heard things, she's had bad dreams and she's very scared.'
'Hm . . . hm . . .' mumbled the old prince, going on with his writing. 'I'll see to it.' He signed with a flourish, and then turned sharply to his son and laughed.
'Bad business, eh?'
'What is, father?'
'Wife!' said the old prince, curt but emphatic.
'I don't know what you mean,' said Prince Andrey.
'Can't be helped, dear boy,' said the old prince, 'they're all like that, and you can't get unmarried now. Don't worry, I shan't tell anyone, but you know it's true.'
He grasped his son's hand with bony little fingers and shook it, looking him straight in the face with sharp eyes that seemed to see right through him, and gave another chilling laugh.
The son sighed, inadvertently admitting that his father had seen through him. The old man was busy folding and sealing the letters, helter-skelter as always, snatching up wax, seal and paper and throwing them down again. 'Can't be helped. She's a pretty thing. I'll do everything. Not to worry,' he said in his staccato manner as he finished sealing the letters.
Andrey said nothing, feeling both pleased and displeased that his father had seen through him. The old man got up and gave his son the first letter.
'Listen,' he said. 'Don't worry about your wife. What can be done will be done. Now, keep listening. Give this letter to General Kutuzov. I've written to ask him to use you properly and not leave you long as an adjutant - ghastly job! Tell him I remember him with affection. And let me know how he receives you. If he's all right, serve him well. No son of Nikolay Bolkonsky needs to serve out of charity. Now, come here.'
He was gabbling so much that half his words never got finished, but his son was used to understanding him. He took Prince Andrey over to the bureau, opened the top and pulled out a drawer, taking from it a note-book filled from cover to cover with his big, bold, closely written handwriting.
'I'm sure to die before you do. See, these are my notes, to be given to the Emperor after my death. Now see here, this is a State Lottery Bond and there's a letter with it. It's a prize for the first person to write a history of Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are my notes. They're for you to read when I'm gone. Should be of some use to you.'
Andrey didn't tell his father he probably still had many years to live. He knew it went without saying.
'I shall do what you say, Father,' he said.
'Well, goodbye then!' He gave his son his hand to kiss and then embraced him. 'Remember this, Prince Andrey, if you get killed, it will be a great sadness to me in my old age . . .' He broke off sharply, and then bawled at him, 'but if I hear that you have not behaved like the son of Nikolay Bolkonsky, I shall be . . . ashamed of you.'
'You needn't have told me that, Father,' said his son with a smile.
The old man now said nothing.
'There's just one more thing I wanted to ask you,' went on Prince Andrey. 'If I do get killed, and if I have a son, don't let them take him away from you. As I said yesterday, let him grow up with you . . . please.'
'Don't give him up to your wife?' said the old man with a laugh.
They stood there in silence facing each other. The old man's sharp eyes were fixed firmly on his son's. A kind of tremor ran over the lower part of the old prince's face.
'We've said goodbye . . . Just go!' he said suddenly. 'Go!' he cried in a loud angry voice, opening the study door.
'What is it? What's wrong?' asked the two princesses when they saw Prince Andrey, and caught a glimpse of the old prince without his wig, wearing his white dressing-gown and his old-age spectacles, and heard him shouting angrily.
Prince Andrey sighed and made no reply.
'Come on, then,' he said, turning to his wife, and his 'Come on, then' sounded like a cold rebuke, as if he had said, 'Let's see you put on your little act.'
'Andrey, it can't be time to go!' cried the little princess, turning pale and looking fearfully at her husband. He embraced her. She gave a little cry and fell in a faint on his shoulder.
He eased her away from his shoulder, looked her in the face and carefully sat her down in a chair.
'Goodbye, Masha,' he said softly to his sister, and they kissed hands. Then he strode briskly out of the room.
The little princess flopped back, sprawling across the armchair, and Mademoiselle Bourienne began to massage her temples, while Princess Marya also offered support, but with her tearful eyes still glued to the door through which Prince Andrey had disappeared.
She made the sign of the cross. From the study came the angry sounds of an old man blowing his nose, like one pistol shot after another. The moment Prince Andrey left the room, his study door was flung open and out peered the forbidding figure of the old man in his white dressing-gown.
'Has he gone? Good thing too!' he said, glaring at the swooning princess. He shook his head in disapproval and slammed the door.
PART II
CHAPTER 1
In October 1805 Russian troops were busy occupying towns and villages in the Archduchy of Austria, with new regiments arriving all the time from Russia and settling near the fortress of Braunau, making life hard for the inhabitants on whom they were billeted. Braunau was the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, General Kutuzov.
On the 11th of October 18051 one of the newly arrived infantry regiments had halted half a mile from Braunau, awaiting inspection by the commander-in-chief. The countryside and the general situation may have looked foreign with all those orchards, stone walls, tiled roofs, mountains in the distance and foreign peasants gawking at the Russian soldiers, but the regiment looked just like any Russian regiment getting ready for inspection anywhere in the depths of Russia.
Yesterday evening, on the last stage of the march, an order had been received: the commander-in-chief would inspect the regiment on the march. The wording of the order was not quite clear to the commanding officer, leaving open the question of whether or not the men should be in battle dress or in full dress uniform. It was decided after consultation with the battalion commanders to present the regiment in full dress; as they say, better to bow too low than not low enough. And after marching twenty-five miles the men had been kept up all night mending and cleaning, while the staff officers checked numbers and gave orders. By morning the regiment, a straggling shambles on the eve of the last march, looked like an orderly formation of two thousand men, everyone knowing his place and his duty, buttons firm and straps tight, everything spick and span and gleaming. And not only on the surface; if it should occur to the commander-in-chief to check underneath the uniform he would see that every man was wearing a clean shirt, and in every knapsack he would find the regulation number of articles, the complete soldier's 'soap and sewing kit'. There was only one thing that no one could be happy with - their foot-gear. More than half the boots had holes in them. This was no fault of the commanding officer; in spite of repeated demands the Austrian authorities had left him under-supplied, and the regiment had now marched over seven hundred miles.
Th
e regimental commander was an ageing ruddy-faced general with grizzled whiskers and eyebrows, rather portly, broader from front to back than from side to side. His uniform was brand new and still nicely creased, with great big golden epaulettes which wouldn't lie down properly on his big shoulders. He had the air of a man who was happily fulfilling one of life's most solemn duties. He paraded up and down the front rank and as he did so his body quivered and his back was arched. Here was a general unmistakably proud of his regiment, happy with it and serving it with all his energy and spirit. Even so, his quivering walk seemed to suggest that his personal interests extended well beyond the military to include good society and the fair sex.
'Well now, my good Mikhail Mitrich,' he said, addressing one of the battalion commanders who had stepped forward with a smile on his face. (They were clearly in good spirits, both of them.) 'Last night kept us on our toes, didn't it? . . . Still, the regiment's not too bad now . . . Must be one or two worse than ours, eh?'
The major understood this ironical banter and he laughed.
'Fit for the best parade ground, even Tsaritsyn Field.'2
'What's that?' said the commander.
Two riders had come into view down the road from the town where signalmen had been posted. They were an aide-de-camp with a Cossack riding along behind him. The aide had been sent from staff headquarters to confirm what had not been clearly stated in the previous order, that the commander-in-chief wished to inspect the regiment just as it was on the road - in greatcoats, carrying rucksacks and with no special preparation. A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the previous day with a proposal, nay a demand, that he proceed as soon as possible to join forces with the army of Archduke Ferdinand and General Mack. Kutuzov considered this inadvisable, and now, as part of his supporting argument, he wanted to demonstrate to the Austrian general the pitiable condition the troops were in after marching all the way from Russia. With this in mind he intended to ride out and meet them on the road: the worse the regiment looked, the more delighted the commander-in-chief would be. The aide was not privy to all the details, but he did communicate the commander-in-chief's categorical insistence that the men be in greatcoats and marching order, and that anything other than that would incur his displeasure.
At these words the commanding officer's head sank down; he gave a shrug, and flung up his arms with some passion.
'Now we've done it!' he said. 'Mikhail Mitrich, I told you "on the march" meant dressed in greatcoats,' he rebuked the major. 'Oh, my God!' he added, but then he stepped forward resolutely. 'Company captains!' he roared in a voice well used to bawling commands. 'Sergeant-majors! . . . When will his Excellency be here?' he asked, turning to the aide with an expression of obsequious deference that was really meant for the person he was referring to.
'In an hour's time, I believe.'
'Have we time to change?'
'I couldn't say, General . . .'
The general went down among the ranks to supervise personally the change back into greatcoats. Captains rushed through their companies, sergeant-majors worried about greatcoats that weren't quite right, and it took only a few moments for the solid and silent rectangles to stir, straggle and buzz with talk. Soldiers ran about everywhere - jerking their shoulders to lift up their rucksacks, pulling the straps over their heads, fishing out their greatcoats and reaching up with their arms to pull down the sleeves.
Half an hour later everything was back to normal, but the rectangles were grey rather than black. The general set off with his quivering walk to parade himself before the regiment, scanning it from some way off.
'What the . . . ? What's all this?' he roared, coming to a halt. 'Captain of the third company!'
'Captain of the third company, report to the general! Company captain to the general! . . . Third company to the captain! . . .' Voices rang out down the ranks, and an aide ran off to find the laggardly officer. When this urgent clamour reached its destination, having mixed up all the orders until eventually they were shouting 'General to report to the third company!', the officer in question emerged from the rear of his company, and, although he was an elderly man and no great runner, he managed a fair trot towards the general, tripping over his own toes as he came. The captain looked like a shifty schoolboy who had been told to run through some homework that he hadn't done. His face, already bright red in colour - he was clearly no abstainer - now turned blotchy and his mouth twitched. The general looked him up and down as he ran forward, gasping and slowing down with every step.
'Do you want your men in women's dresses! What's the meaning of this?' roared the general, setting his jaw and pointing in the ranks of the third division to a soldier wearing a different-coloured greatcoat from everyone else's, the colour of factory cloth. 'And where have you been? The commander-in-chief is expected, and you're not where you should be! Eh? . . . I'll teach you to put your men in fancy dress for an inspection! . . . Eh?'
The captain, never taking his eyes off his superior officer, pressed his two fingers harder and harder against the peak of his cap, as if his only hope of safety lay in saluting as hard as he could.
'Well, why don't you say something? Who's that man dressed up like a Hungarian?' The general's joke was a bitter one.
'Your Excellency.'
'What do you mean, "your Excellency?" I'll give you "your Excellency"! You say it, but nobody knows what you mean!'
'Your Excellency, that man is Private Dolokhov. He's been reduced to the ranks,' the captain said softly.
'Are you sure he wasn't reduced to field marshal? If he's a private, he should be dressed like the others, regulation kit.'
'Your Excellency, you gave him permission, on the march.'
'Permission? What permission? There you go, you're all the same, you youngsters,' said the general, cooling down a little. 'Permission? A simple remark, and you take it . . .' He paused. 'Yes, you, er, take it . . . Well, what about it?' he said, newly infuriated. 'Kindly make sure your men are properly turned out . . .'
And the general, looking round at his aide, walked his quivering way back to the regiment, patently delighted with his own show of displeasure and now, as he walked through the ranks, looking for other excuses to blow his top. He tore a strip off one officer for having a dirty badge, and another because his column was out of line; then he came to the third company.
'Call that standing to attention? What's that leg doing? That leg, what's it doing?' the general roared with his long-suffering tone, and he was still five men short of Dolokhov, the man in the blue greatcoat. Dolokhov slowly straightened his leg, and looked brazenly with his clear eyes at the general's face.
'Why are you wearing a blue coat? Get it off! . . . Sergeant-major! Change this man's coat . . . the filthy sw . . .' But he wasn't allowed to complete the word.
'General, I am bound to obey orders, but not to put up with . . .' Dolokhov spoke rapidly.
'No talking in the ranks! . . . No talking there! No talking!'
'. . . not to put up with insults,' Dolokhov persisted in a clear and confident voice. The eyes of general and private met. The general demurred, angrily pulling down on his tight scarf.
'Be so kind as to change your coat,' he said, and walked on.
CHAPTER 2
'He's coming!' came the call from a signalman. The general, red in the face, ran to his horse, grasped the stirrup with trembling hands, swung himself up and across, settled down in the saddle, drew his sword, and with a look of pleasure and determination opened one side of his mouth, ready to shout. The regiment stirred itself like a bird settling its feathers, then all was still and silent.
'Atten-shun!' roared the general in a voice that would shake souls, a voice of personal pleasure, of warning to the regiment and of welcome to the approaching commander-in-chief.
Towards them down the broad, tree-lined country road came a tall, blue Viennese coach drawn by six horses at a smart trot, creaking on its springs. The general's entourage and an escort of
Croats followed on behind the coach. At Kutuzov's side sat an Austrian general in a white uniform that looked out of place among the black Russian ones. The coach drew up before the regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian general were chatting together in low voices, and Kutuzov gave a slight smile as he stepped down ponderously from the carriage step, for all the world as if these two thousand men watching him and the other general with bated breath simply didn't exist.
A command rang out; the regiment jerked into life and presented arms with a ringing clatter. Then through the deathly silence came the reedy voice of the commander-in-chief. The regiment roared its response: 'Long live His Ex - cellency! . . . ency . . . ency!' Then silence again. At first Kutuzov stood rooted to one spot while the regiment changed formation, then he began walking along the ranks, accompanied by the general in white and followed by his entourage.
From the way the regimental commander saluted his commander-in-chief, staring fixedly at him, rigidly to attention and yet somehow cringing, from the way he bent forward eagerly as he followed the generals down the ranks, barely disguising his quivering walk, and jumped nervously at every word and movement of the commander-in-chief, it was evident that he was enjoying his role as a subordinate even more than his role as a commander. Because of his strictness and keenness, the regiment was in fine fettle compared with others that had reached Braunau at the same time. The sick and the stragglers numbered no more than two hundred and seventeen, and everything was in splendid order - except the soldiers' boots.
Kutuzov walked the ranks, stopping occasionally to say a few friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, and sometimes to the other ranks. More than once, looking down at their boots, he shook his head sadly, and pointed them out to the Austrian general, as if to say that, although no one was to blame, he couldn't help noticing how bad things were. Each time this happened the regimental commander sprang forward so as not to miss a single word the commander-in-chief might say about his men. Following on behind Kutuzov, near enough for the slightest whisper to carry, came the twenty-strong entourage. These gentlemen were talking among themselves, and occasionally laughing. Closest of all to the commander-in-chief walked a handsome adjutant. It was Prince Andrey Bolkonsky. Alongside him was his comrade Nesvitsky, a tall and very fat staff-officer with a kind smile, a handsome face and watery eyes. Nesvitsky could hardly help laughing at a dark-skinned hussar near by. This officer, unsmiling and looking ahead doggedly with unblinking eyes, was goggling intently at the commander's back, mimicking his every movement. Each time the commanding officer quivered and bent forward, the hussar officer quivered and bent forward in exactly the same way. Nesvitsky was laughing and nudging the others so they didn't miss him playing the fool.