the quarrel would really end in an duel. 'You know, Count, it is far nobler to acknowledge a mistake than to push things beyond redemption. There was no insult on either side. Why don't I have a word with . . . ?'
'No! There's nothing more to be said,' Pierre insisted. 'I don't care any more . . . Are we ready to proceed?' he added. 'Just tell me where to go and what to shoot at,' he said, forcing a gentle smile. He picked up one of the pistols and asked how to fire it, never having held one before, though he preferred not to admit it. 'Yes, that's it. I do know. I just forgot for a moment,' he said.
'No apology. Definitely not,' Dolokhov was reporting to Denisov, who had made his own attempt at reconciliation on the other side, and he too walked forward to the appointed spot.
The duelling ground was situated about eighty paces from the road where the sledges had been left, in a small clearing in a pine-wood, covered with snow that had been thawing in the warmer weather of recent days. The antagonists stood about forty paces apart, one at each edge of the clearing. Measuring out the paces, the seconds left tracks in the deep, wet snow from the spot where they had been standing to the sabres borrowed from Nesvitsky and Denisov, which were stuck in the ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. The thaw and mist persisted. At forty paces you could hardly see your opponent. All had been ready for a good three minutes, but now they seemed reluctant to start. Nobody spoke.
CHAPTER 5
'Well, shall we begin?' said Dolokhov.
'Why not?' said Pierre, smiling the same smile.
Fear was building up. It was now obvious to all that the affair that had begun so lightly could not now be averted, it had its own momentum nothing to do with anyone's will, and it would have to run its course. Denisov was the first to come forward to the barrier and once there he made his announcement: 'Since the adversawies wefuse all weconciliation we may as well pwoceed. Take your pistols, and at the word "fwee" you may begin to advance . . . O-ne! Tw-o! Fwee! . . .' Denisov roared furiously, and then strode away. The two contestants walked forward over the tracks trodden down for them, coming closer and closer, picking each other out through the mist. They had the right to fire at any point as they approached the barrier. Dolokhov was walking slowly, not raising his pistol, and looking his antagonist straight in the face with his clear, shining blue eyes. His mouth wore its usual hint of a smile.
After the count of three Pierre walked forward quickly, stumbled off the beaten track and had to go on through untrodden snow. He was holding his pistol at arm's length in his right hand, obviously scared of shooting himself with his own weapon. His left arm was deliberately thrust back behind him, because he was tempted to use it to support his right arm, and he knew that this was against the rules. After advancing half-a-dozen paces off the track and into the snow, Pierre glanced down at his feet, looked up at Dolokhov again very quickly, then crooked his finger as he had been told, and fired. Shocked by the loudness of the bang, Pierre jumped at his own shot and came to a halt, grinning at all that was happening to him. The smoke was thicker than it might have been because of the fog and for a moment he could see nothing. The anticipated return shot did not come. All he heard were some rapid footsteps, Dolokhov's, as the figure of his opponent emerged from the smoke, with one hand clutching at his left side and his lowered pistol gripped in the other. His face had gone pale. Rostov ran up and said something to him.
'No-o!' Dolokhov muttered through clenched teeth. 'No, it's not over . . .' He struggled forward a few steps, stumbling and staggering as far as the sabre, where he flopped down in the snow. He rubbed his bloodstained left hand on his coat and propped himself up on it. There was a dark frown on his trembling pale face.
'P-p-p . . .' Dolokhov began, hardly able to speak, but then with a great effort he managed one word: 'Please . . .'
Pierre could hardly to restrain his sobs as ran towards Dolokhov, and he would have crossed the space between the barriers if Dolokhov had not cried out, 'Your barrier!' Realizing what was required of him, Pierre stopped right next to his sabre. They were only ten paces apart. Dolokhov dropped his head down into the snow and had a good bite at it, looked up again, struggled up into a sitting position, wobbling as he searched for a good centre of gravity. He swallowed, sucking down the cold snow, while his trembling lips were still smiling and his hate-filled eyes glinted from the effort as his strength ebbed away. He raised his pistol and took aim.
'Sideways on! Use the pistol for cover!' said Nesvitsky.
'Covah!' yelled Denisov instinctively even though he was supposed to be on Dolokhov's side.
Full of sympathy and remorse, Pierre stood gently smiling, with legs and arms helplessly outstretched and his broad chest fully open to Dolokhov. He looked down at him in great sadness. Denisov, Rostov and Nesvitsky all winced. At that instant they heard a bang followed by an angry shout from Dolokhov.
'Missed!' Dolokhov cried, flopping down helplessly face-down in the snow. Pierre clutched at his head, turning aside, and stumbled off into the wood, away from the path into deep snow, muttering incoherently.
'Stupid . . . stupid! Death . . . all lies . . .' he kept repeating, scowling. Nesvitsky stopped him and took him home.
Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.
Dolokhov lay still in the sledge with his eyes closed and in complete silence, refusing to utter a word in response to any questions put to him. But as they were driving into Moscow, he suddenly recovered, made an effort to raise his head and took hold of Rostov's hand. Rostov, sitting next to him, was struck by the complete change that had come over Dolokhov's face, which had suddenly melted into a kind of rapturous gentleness.
'Well? How do you feel?' asked Rostov.
'Terrible! But that doesn't matter. Listen, my friend,' said Dolokhov, in a shaky voice. 'Where are we? . . . I know we're in Moscow . . . I'm not important, but this will kill her, her . . . She'll never get over it . . . She won't survive . . .'
'Who?' asked Rostov.
'My mother. My mother. She's an angel, an angel, and I adore her, my mother.' Dolokhov squeezed Rostov's hand and burst into tears. He took a few moments to compose himself and then explained to Rostov that he lived with his mother, and if she suddenly saw him half-dead she would never get over the shock. He begged Rostov to go on ahead and prepare her.
Rostov went on ahead to do as he was bidden. To his utter astonishment he found out that the rough, tough Dolokhov, Dolokhov the swaggering bully, lived in Moscow with his old mother and a hunch-back sister. He was a loving son and brother.
CHAPTER 6
In recent days Pierre had rarely been alone with his wife. In Petersburg and in Moscow the house had been constantly full of guests. The night after the duel he avoided the bedroom, as he often did, and spent the night in his vast study, formerly his father's room, the room in which old Count Bezukhov had died. The night before had been sleepless, an agony of inner turmoil; this one would be even more agonizing.
He lay down on the sofa and tried to go to sleep in an effort to forget everything that had happened, but he couldn't manage it. His mind was clouded with such a storm of ideas, emotions and memories that sleep was out of the question. Unable to remain in one place, he was forced to jump to his feet and stride boldly up and down the room. First he conjured up a vision of his wife as she had been in the first days of their marriage, with those naked shoulders and those eyes, languid pools of passion, then suddenly at her side was a handsome, insolent, hard and jeering face - Dolokhov at the banquet - and then a different Dolokhov, pale and trembling, in terrible pain, the man who had spun around and slumped down on to the snow.
'What have I done?' he asked himself. 'I have killed her lover . . . I've killed my wife's lover. I really have. Why? How did I get into all this?'
By marrying her, came an inner voice.
'It's not my fault, is it?' he asked himself.
Yes it is. You weren't in love with her when you got married and you pulled the wool over your own eyes and hers.
All too vividly he recalled the moment after supper at Prince Vasily's when he had found the words 'I love you' so difficult to say. 'That's when it all started. I knew it even then,' he thought. 'Even then I knew it was wrong and I had no right to do it. And that's how it's turned out.' He recalled the honeymoon and blushed at the memory of it. One particularly vivid, humiliating and embarrassing memory haunted him: one morning, not long after the wedding, he had emerged from his bedroom into the study at nearly mid-day still in his silk dressing-gown, and there was his head steward bowing and scraping and looking at Pierre's face and then at his dressing-gown, smiling a little as if to communicate respectful acknowledgement of his master's happiness.
'And I used to be so proud of her, with that majestic beauty and that poise,' he thought, 'so proud of my house when she was entertaining all Petersburg, proud of her aloofness and her beauty. So much for pride! I used to think then that I didn't understand her. Time after time I've thought about her personality and told myself it was my fault for not understanding her, not understanding that perpetual composure and complacency, the lack of any yearning or desire, and it all comes down to one dreadful word - immorality; she's a dissolute woman. Say the word and it all becomes clear.
'Anatole used to come borrowing money from her, and he used to kiss her on her bare shoulders. She didn't give him any money, but she didn't mind being kissed. Her father used to tease her, trying to make her jealous; she would just smile serenely and say she wasn't fool enough to be jealous. Let him do what he wants, she used to say about me. I asked her once if she had noticed any signs of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said she wasn't stupid enough to want children, and she would never have a child by me.'
Then he thought of the sheer coarseness of her thinking and her vulgar way of speaking, even though she had been brought up in the highest aristocratic circles. She would say things like, 'I ain't nobody's fool . . . just you try it . . . get away with you . . .' Often, observing the impact she made on young and old, men and women, Pierre was at a loss to understand why he couldn't love her. 'No, I never loved her,' Pierre told himself. 'I knew she was a dissolute woman,' he repeated to himself, 'but I didn't dare admit it.
'And now Dolokhov sits there in the snow and forces himself to smile and dies with some clever quip on his lips - and that's how he treats my remorse.'
Pierre was one of those characters who seem on the outside to be weak but who do not share their troubles with other people. He worked through his troubles on his own.
'It's her fault,' he said to himself, 'it's all her fault. But what difference does that make? Why did I tie myself to her? Why did I tell her I loved her when it was a lie, worse than a lie?' he asked himself. 'It's my fault. I ought to suffer . . . What? Disgrace and misery? What a load of rubbish,' he thought. 'Disgrace, honour, everything's relative; nothing depends on me.'
'Louis XVI was executed because they said he was a dishonourable criminal,' (the idea suddenly occurred to Pierre) 'and from their point of view they were right. But so were the others who died an excruciating death acknowledging him as a saint. Robespierre was executed for tyranny. Who's right and who's wrong? No one is. Just live for the day . . . tomorrow you die . . . I could have died an hour ago. And why worry when you've only got a second to live on the scale of eternity?' But the moment he began to draw some comfort from this kind of thinking he suddenly had another vision of her, and him too at his most passionate, falsely declaring his love to her, and this brought a rush of blood to his heart, and he felt a need to leap up and walk about smashing and tearing anything that came to hand. 'Oh, why did I say "I love you"?' he asked himself over and over again. At the tenth time of asking a quotation from Moliere occurred to him: 'How the devil was he going to get himself out of a mess like that?'6 and he laughed at himself.
During the night he woke up his valet and told him to pack for Petersburg. He could no longer live under the same roof with her. He couldn't imagine even talking to her now. He would go away in the morning, he decided, and leave a letter telling her they were separating for ever.
When morning came and the valet brought his coffee, Pierre was lying on a low sofa, fast asleep with an open book in his hands.
He woke up and stared around for a long time in some alarm, with no idea where he was.
'The countess has asked me to inquire whether your Excellency is at home,' said the valet.
But before Pierre had time to think of a reply, in walked the countess herself, calmly and majestically, clad in a white satin dressing-gown embroidered with silver, and her hair done up in two huge plaits coiled round her exquisite head like a coronet. Her only disfiguring feature was a tiny line on her rather prominent marble brow, indicating anger. Disciplined and unruffled as always, she kept her counsel while the valet was still in the room. She knew about the duel and had come to discuss it. She waited for the valet to set for coffee and go out. Pierre looked at her diffidently over his spectacles. His attempt to go on reading made him seem like a hare surrounded by the pack, lying there in full view of the enemy with its ears laid back. Sensing that this was absurd and impossible, he launched another diffident glance in her direction. She remained standing and looked down at him with a scornful smile, waiting for the valet to disappear.
'Now what's all this? What have you been up to? Answer me,' she said sternly.
'Me? What do you mean?' said Pierre.
'So you want to be a hero now! What's all this about a duel? What are you trying to prove? Well say something! I asked you a question.' Pierre turned over ponderously on the sofa and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
'If you're not prepared to answer, I'll do the talking . . .' Helene went on. 'You'll believe anything. They told you . . .' Helene laughed, 'that Dolokhov was my lover,' she said in French, with her usual bluntness, pronouncing the word amant like any other word, 'and you believed them! So what does this prove? What have you proved by fighting this duel? That you're a fool, an idiot - but this is common knowledge. Where does it get us? I'm a laughing-stock all over Moscow, everyone's saying you got drunk, didn't know what you were doing and needlessly challenged a man you were jealous of.' Helene's voice was getting louder and louder as she became more and more passionate. 'A better man than you in every way . . .'
'Hm . . . hm . . .' Pierre growled, scowling, looking away from her and not moving a muscle.
'And what made you think he is my lover? . . . Eh? Because I like his company? If you were brighter and a bit nicer to me, I should prefer yours.'
'Please . . . Don't talk to me like that . . .' Pierre muttered huskily.
'Why not? I'll say what I want, and I'm telling you there's not many wives with husbands like you who wouldn't take lots of lovers, but I haven't!' she said. Pierre tried to say something, glanced at her with strange eyes, whose meaning she did not comprehend, and lay down again. He was in physical agony at that moment; he felt a weight on his chest and he couldn't breathe. He knew he must do something to put an end to this agony but what he wanted to do was too horrible for words.
'We . . . er . . . we'd better . . . separate,' he stammered out.
'Yes, let's! As long as you look after me financially,' said Helene. 'Separation! Some threat!'
Pierre sprang up from the sofa and ran at her, staggering.
'I'll kill you!' he yelled, and wrenching the marble top off a table with unprecedented strength he lurched towards her brandishing it.
Horror-stricken, Helene screamed and jumped aside. Pierre was now his father's son, on the rampage, out of control, and enjoying it. He hurled the marble slab away, shattering it to pieces, and went for Helene with outstretched arms, yelling 'Get out!' in a voice so terrible it sent shock-waves through the house. Heaven knows what he might have done to her at that moment if Helene hadn't rushed out of the room.
Within a week Pierre had made over to his wife the title to all his estates in Great Russia, which constituted the larger part of his property, and had gone back to Petersburg alone.
CHAPTER 7
Two months had passed since news of the defeat at Austerlitz and Prince Andrey's disappearance had reached Bald Hills. Despite any number of inquiries and letters through the Russian embassy his body had not been found, nor was he listed as a prisoner-of-war. What made it worse for his family was the lingering hope that he might have been picked up on the battlefield by local people and could even now be on a sick-bed somewhere, alone among strangers, recovering or dying, unable to send word. The old prince had first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz from the newspapers, but as always they had given only brief and vague accounts of how the Russians, after a series of brilliant victories, had been forced into a retreat which had been conducted in perfect order. The old prince read between the lines of this official account and knew our army had been defeated. The newspaper containing news of the defeat was followed a week later by a letter from Kutuzov, who described for the old prince's benefit what had happened to his son.
'I saw your son with my own eyes,' wrote Kutuzov, 'bearing the standard and leading his regiment, and he fell like a hero, a credit to his father and his country. To my own regret and that of the whole army it is still not known whether he is alive or not. I console myself and you with the hope that your son is still alive, since if he were not he would have been listed among the officers found on the battlefield whose names have been given to me under flag of truce.'
The old prince received the news late one evening alone in his study and said not a word to anyone. Next morning he went out for his usual walk, but he remained tight-lipped with the bailiff, the gardener and the architect, glaring at them but saying nothing. When Princess Marya went in to see him at the normal time he was working on the lathe and as usual he didn't look round. 'Ah, Princess Marya!' he snapped in a strained voice, and put down his chisel. (The wheel continued to rotate under its own momentum and Princess Marya would long remember its fading whine for ever associated with what now followed.)