her?'
'Yes, but they're the same as me. They're not other people,' said Prince Andrey. 'Other people - your "neighbours", as you and Marie call them - they're the source of all error and harm. Who are your "neighbours"? Your peasants down in Kiev that you want to do so much good for.' And he mocked Pierre with a challenging look, deliberately provoking him.
'You can't be serious,' said Pierre, more excited than ever. 'What error and harm can there be in my wanting to . . . well, I've not done much and I've done it very badly . . . but still, wanting to do good, and getting a little bit done? Where's the harm if miserable people like our peasants - and they are people like you and me, people living and dying with no idea of God and what truth is beyond icons and ridiculous prayers - now get some education and console themselves by believing in an after-life where there is retribution, reward and consolation? When nobody looks after people dying of disease while it's so easy to give them some real practical help, what harm and error can there be in my providing doctors, and a hospital and a home for old people? And isn't there tangible, incontestable good when a peasant with his wife and child have no rest day or night, and I give them some leisure and rest?' said Pierre, lisping as he gabbled. 'And I've done that - not very well, I admit, and not enough - but I have done something in that direction, and you're not going to persuade me I haven't done something good, and you're also not going to persuade me that you really believe what you're saying. And the main thing is this,' Pierre continued, 'I know, I know for an absolute certainty, that the pleasure of doing good like this is the only real happiness in life.'
'Oh well, if you put it like that, it's different,' said Prince Andrey. 'I'm building a house and garden - you're building hospitals. Either way it passes the time. But what's right and what's good - that'll have to be decided by somebody who knows everything. We can't decide. So, if it's an argument you want,' he added, 'you've got one.'
They got up from the table and sat out on the steps, because there was no verandah.
'Come on, then,' said Prince Andrey. 'You talk about schools,' he went on, bending one finger back. 'Education and all that. In other words, you want to bring him' (he pointed to a passing peasant who was doffing his cap) 'out of his animal condition and give him spiritual needs. Well, as I see it, the only form of happiness is animal happiness, and you want to take that away from him. I envy him, while you're trying to turn him into me, but without giving him my mind, my feelings and my money. Then you talk about giving him less work. But to my mind, he needs his physical labour, it's a condition of his existence, every bit as much as you and I need our intellectual work. You can't help thinking. I go to bed at nearly three in the morning, thoughts keep coming into my mind and I can't get to sleep. I toss and turn and I stay awake till morning because I'm thinking, and I can't help thinking, just as he can't help ploughing and mowing. If he stops he won't be able to go for a drink and he might fall ill. Just as I couldn't stand his terrible physical labour, it would kill me in a week, my idleness would be too much for him, he would grow fat and die. Then the third thing - what was the other thing you said?' Prince Andrey had bent back his third finger.
'Oh yes, I know. Hospitals, medicine. He has a stroke and he's dying, but no, you have him bled and he gets better. Now he's going to be an invalid for the next ten years, a burden to everybody. Let him die - it's a lot simpler and it's easier on him. Lots more like him are being born all the time - there's no shortage of them. I wouldn't mind if you were worried about losing a labourer - that's how I see him - but you want to cure him out of brotherly love. Well, he doesn't need it. And besides, who said medicine ever cured anybody? Killed lots of people - oh yes!' he said, scowling and turning away from Pierre.
Prince Andrey put his arguments so precisely that he had obviously gone through them many times before in his mind. And he was gabbling away like a man who has not spoken for a long time. His eyes shone brighter as his reasoning became more and more despondent.
'Oh, this is awful, awful!' said Pierre. 'I can't see how you can go on living with ideas like these. I used to have my moments when I thought like that, not all that long ago in Moscow or out on the road, but when it happens I feel so low and I'm not really living at all, everything seems vile . . . to me most of all. When it happens I can't eat and I don't wash . . . what's it like with you?'
'Oh, you ought to wash. It's unclean,' said Prince Andrey. 'It's the other way round. You have to try and make your life as enjoyable as you can. Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.'
'But how do you live on with ideas like that? You could just sit there without moving, not taking part in anything . . .'
'Well, life won't leave you in peace, will it? I'd be glad to do nothing at all, but for one thing the local nobility have done me the honour of electing me marshal. I only just managed to wriggle out of it. They couldn't understand that I haven't got what it takes. I don't have the good-natured, fussy vulgarity that you must have for that sort of thing. Then there's this house. It had to be built so I could have a corner of my own to be quiet in. And now there's this recruiting.'
'Why aren't you in the army?'
'What, after Austerlitz?' said Prince Andrey darkly. 'No, thank you. I swore I'd never serve in the Russian army again. And I won't. If Napoleon was right here outside Smolensk threatening Bald Hills, I wouldn't serve in the Russian army,' Prince Andrey went on, pulling himself together. 'Anyway, as I was saying, there's this recruitment. My father's commander-in-chief of the Third District, and the only way I can get out of active service is to serve under him.'
'So you are in the service, then?'
'Yes.' He paused.
'May I ask why?'
'I'll tell you why. My father is one of the most remarkable men of his time. But he's getting old now, and he's not exactly cruel, but he's too forceful. He's too fierce. He's got used to having unlimited power, and now he has this new authority from the Emperor as a commander-in-chief of the recruiting. If I had arrived two hours later a couple of weeks ago he'd have strung up the registrar at Yukhnova,' said Prince Andrey with a smile. 'So I serve under him now because I'm the only one who has any influence over my father, and there are occasions when I can stop him doing something he'd come to regret.'
'So that's what it's all about!'
'Well, it's not quite what you think,' Prince Andrey went on. 'It's not that I wished him any good, that registrar, or do now. He's a crook who stole some boots from the recruits, and I wouldn't mind seeing him strung up, but I do feel sorry for my father, and that means for myself.'
Prince Andrey was still getting more and more animated. There was a feverish gleam in his eyes as he tried to show Pierre that he never did anything that was meant to do good to his neighbour.
'So, you want to liberate your serfs,' he went on. 'That's a very good idea, but not for you - I don't imagine you've ever had a man flogged or sent to Siberia - and certainly not for your peasants. Those who do get beaten, flogged or sent to Siberia - well, I don't imagine they're any the worse off for it. Out in Siberia they can go on living like cattle, the stripes on the body heal, and they'll be as happy as they ever used to be. The men it would be good for are those people who are morally bankrupt and eaten away by remorse, but they suppress the remorse and become callous just from having the ability to inflict punishment on all sides. These are the people I'm sorry for. They're the ones who make me want to see the serfs liberated. Maybe you haven't seen it, but I have, I've seen good men, raised in the old traditions of unlimited power, getting more and more irritable as the years go by, turning themselves into cruel brutes, aware of what's happening to them but unable to control themselves and just getting more and more miserable.'
Prince Andrey spoke with such feeling that Pierre couldn't help thinking that these ideas had something to do with his father. He did not respond.
'So that's who I'm sorry for, and I'm sorry for the loss of human dignity, good conscience and innocence - not for the backs and heads of these people, because those things don't change, however much you thrash them or shave them.'
'No, no, a thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,' said Pierre.
CHAPTER 12
That evening Prince Andrey and Pierre took the open carriage and set off for Bald Hills. Prince Andrey kept glancing at Pierre and breaking the silence now and then with remarks that showed he was in a good humour.
Pointing to the fields, he told him of the improvements he was making in the management of his land.
Pierre sat there morose and silent, answering in monosyllables and apparently absorbed in his own thoughts.
Pierre was reflecting on Prince Andrey's miserable state, how wrong he was, how ignorant of the true light, and thinking that he would have to help him out of this, show him the light and raise him up. But the moment he began working out what to say and how to say it, he could see Prince Andrey dashing his teaching to pieces with a single word, a single argument, and he was wary of even starting, wary of exposing to possible ridicule everything he held dear and sacred.
'No, but where do you get thoughts like these?' Pierre suddenly began, lowering his head like a charging bull. 'What makes you think like this? You ought not to think like this.'
'Think like what?' asked Prince Andrey in some surprise.
'About life. About the destiny of man. It can't be like that. I used to think that way but I found salvation - do you know where? In freemasonry. No, please don't smile. Freemasonry - it's not just a religious sect with lots of ceremonies, as I used to think. Freemasonry is the best expression, the only expression of mankind's noblest, eternal aspirations.' And he launched into a full account of freemasonry as he saw it.
Freemasonry, he claimed, was Christian doctrine freed from the bonds of politics and organized religion, the doctrine of equality, fraternity and love.
'Our holy brotherhood is the only thing that gives a true meaning to life. Everything else is a dream,' said Pierre. 'You must understand, my dear fellow, that outside this fraternity it's all lies and deceit, and I agree there's nothing left for an intelligent and kind man like you to do but go through the motions of living and try not to hurt anybody. But - accept our basic beliefs, enter into our brotherhood, give yourself to us, let us guide you, and straightaway you'll feel what I did, that you are part of a vast, unseen chain which starts in heaven,' said Pierre.
Prince Andrey listened to Pierre in silence, looking ahead. Once or twice he missed something because of the rumbling wheels and asked Pierre to repeat what he had said. Noting a peculiar glint in Prince Andrey's eyes and also his reluctance to speak, Pierre could see that his words were not falling on stony ground and Prince Andrey was not going interrupt or laugh at anything he said.
They came to a river that had burst its banks, making it necessary for them to cross by ferry. While the men saw to the carriage and horses they walked on to the ferry-boat. Prince Andrey leant his elbows on the rail and gazed silently over the flood-water, which gleamed in the setting sun.
'Well, what do you think?' asked Pierre. 'Why don't you say something?'
'What do I think? I have been listening. What you say is all right,' said Prince Andrey. 'But you say, come into our brotherhood and we'll show you the meaning of life and the destiny of man, and the laws that govern the universe. But who are we? Just people. How do you come to know it all? Why am I the only one who can't see what you see? You see the earth as a kingdom of goodness and truth. I don't.'
Pierre interrupted him. 'Do you believe in the after-life?' he asked.
'Oh, the after-life,' repeated Prince Andrey.
But Pierre gave him no time for a proper answer, taking his response as a negative, especially in view of Prince Andrey's atheistic views, which he knew from the past. 'You say you can't see the earth as a kingdom of goodness and truth. Neither can I. Nobody can, not if you see our life as the end of everything. Here on earth, this earth here,' (Pierre pointed to the open country) 'there is no righteousness - it's all false and wicked. But in the universe, the whole vast universe, there is a kingdom of truth, and we are two things - children of earth here and now, and children of the universe in eternity. Don't I feel in my soul that I'm a part of that vast, harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I represent one link, one step on the ladder that runs from lower forms of existence to higher ones in that vast creative infinity which gives token of a Godhead, a Higher Power - call it what you will. If I can see, clearly see, a ladder rising from plants to men, why should I assume that this ladder, with its bottom end invisible, lost in the plant world, breaks off with me and doesn't keep on going up until it reaches higher forms of existence? I feel I can never disappear because nothing disappears in the whole universe, and more than that, I always shall be and always have been in existence. I feel that other spirits exist, far above me, and it's in their world that you will find truth.'
'Yes, this is Herder's doctrine,'11 said Prince Andrey. 'But I'm not convinced by it, my dear fellow. I'm convinced by life and death. I'm convinced by seeing a creature dear to me, bound up with me, that I've treated badly . . . and just when I'm hoping to make it up to her,' (his voice shook and he turned away) 'suddenly she's in pain, she goes through agony and she ceases to be . . . Why? There must be an answer. And I believe there is one . . . That's what I find convincing. It convinced me,' said Prince Andrey.
'Yes, yes, of course' said Pierre, 'isn't that just what I'm saying?'
'No. My point is - you might be persuaded there is an after-life not by arguments, but by going through life hand-in-hand with somebody, and all at once that somebody vanishes there, into nowhere, and you are left standing over the abyss, staring down into it. And I have stared down into it . . .'
'Well, that's it then! You know there is a there and there is a somebody. There is the after-life. That somebody is God.'
Prince Andrey didn't answer. The coach and horses had long been taken over to the other bank and harnessed up again, the sun had half-set and the evening frost was sprinkling the pools near the ferry with stars, but - to the astonishment of the servants, coachmen and ferryhands - Pierre and Andrey were still on the boat, talking.
'If there is a God and an after-life, then there is truth and there is goodness; and man's greatest happiness lies in struggling to achieve them. We must live, love and believe,' said Pierre, 'believe that our life is not only here and now on this little patch of earth, but we have lived before and shall live for ever out there in the wholeness of things.' (He pointed up to the sky.) Prince Andrey was still standing with his elbows on the rail of the ferry, and as he listened to Pierre he never took his eyes off the sun's red reflection on the shining blue water. Pierre stopped talking. There was absolute stillness. The ferry had long since come to the bank, and the only sound came from the river, with waves plashing softly against the bottom of the boat. Prince Andrey half-imagined that the lapping of the water sounded like a chorus echoing what Pierre had been saying: 'This is the truth. Believe it.'
Prince Andrey sighed, and with a tender, radiant, childlike glow in his eyes he glanced at Pierre, whose face was flushed with triumph, though he was still diffident, conscious of his friend's superiority.
'Yes, if only it was true!' he said. 'Anyway, let's get back to the carriage,' added Prince Andrey, and as he walked off the ferry he looked up at the sky where Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz he saw it again, the lofty, eternal sky, just as he had seen it when he lay on the battlefield, and suddenly something inside him that had long lain dormant, something better than before, awoke in his soul with a feeling of youth and joy. It was a feeling that would vanish as soon as Prince Andrey got back to the normal run of everyday life, but he was sure, without knowing what to do with it, that this feeling was still there inside him. Pierre's visit marked a new age for Prince Andrey, a time when his life, although outwardly unchanged, began again in his own inner world.
CHAPTER 13
It was getting dark by the time Prince Andrey and Pierre drove up to the front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they were approaching, Prince Andrey had smiled and drawn Pierre's attention to a commotion going on at the back of the house. A bent little old woman with a bag on her back, and a short man with long hair, dressed in black, had seen the carriage driving and scuttled off back to the gate. Two more women ran out and all four of them hurried up the steps of the back porch, looking round at the carriage with scared faces.
'Those are the Servants of God. Masha's friends,' said Prince Andrey. 'They thought it was my father coming back. It's the one and only way she disobeys him. He says they've got to be sent away, these pilgrims, but she takes them in.'
'What do you mean "Servants of God"?' asked Pierre.
Prince Andrey had no time to answer. The house servants had come out to meet them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he would be home soon. He was still in town, but expected back any minute.
Prince Andrey took Pierre to his own rooms, which were always waiting nicely prepared for him in his father's house, and then went off to the nursery.
'Let's go and see my sister,' he said to Pierre when he returned. 'I haven't seen her yet, she's hiding away, tucked up with her Servants of God. Serve her right. She's going to be really embarrassed, but you'll see her Servants of God. I'm telling you, it's something worth seeing.'
'Who are these "Servants of God"?' asked Pierre.
'You'll see.'
Princess Marya certainly was embarrassed, and her face went red and blotchy when she saw them coming in. Her room looked cosy, with the little lamps burning before the icon-stand, and next to her on the sofa, at the samovar, sat a young boy with a long nose and long hair, dressed in a monk's cassock. In an easy chair near by sat a thin, wrinkled old woman, with a gentle look on her childlike face.
'Andrey, why didn't you warn me?' she said in a tone of mild reproach, standing in front of her pilgrims like a mother hen with chickens.