ield at Austerlitz, the thoughts he had enjoyed discussing with Pierre and had relied on to fill his empty hours first at Bogucharovo, then in Switzerland and Rome, and in fact he now dreaded them and the boundless vistas of light they had once opened up. Now, all he had time for were matters of immediate and practical relevance, quite different from his former interests, and he seized on these with an eagerness that grew in proportion to his success in suppressing the earlier ones. It was as if the infinitely receding firmament that had once arched above him had suddenly turned into a low, fixed vault bearing down on him, perfectly clear but containing nothing eternal or mysterious.
Of all the activities open to him military service was the most straightforward and familiar. He carried out his duties as a staff general with great diligence and enthusiasm, amazing Kutuzov by his appetite for work and his eye for detail. Despite his failure to catch up with Kuragin in Turkey Prince Andrey did not feel impelled to gallop after him back to Russia. Nevertheless, he was certain of one thing: however long it took, whatever his contempt for Kuragin, however many times he could prove to himself that Kuragin wasn't worth stooping to quarrel with, he knew that when they did meet he would be no more able to resist challenging him than a starving man could resist grabbing at food. And it was this continual awareness that the insult had not been avenged, and his heart was still overflowing with unassuaged fury, that poisoned the spurious tranquillity Prince Andrey was managing to enjoy in Turkey by keeping inordinately busy displaying his ambition and expending a great deal of useless energy.
In 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached Bucharest (where Kutuzov had spent two months day and night alongside his Wallachian mistress), Prince Andrey asked to be transferred to the western army. Kutuzov, by now thoroughly sick of Bolkonsky's constant activity, which he took personally as an accusation of idleness, was only too ready to let him go, and sent him off with a commission to Barclay de Tolly.
Before joining the western army, which in May of that year was encamped at Drissa, Prince Andrey called in at Bald Hills, which was only a couple of miles off the Smolensk high road and therefore not out of his way. The last three years of Prince Andrey's life had been so full of ups and downs, and he had experienced so much change in outlook, thought and feeling (after many travels in the west and the east), that it seemed weird and amazing to find life going on at Bald Hills exactly as it always had done, down to the last detail. He drove up the avenue to the stone gates of the house like someone approaching a castle sleeping under an enchanter's spell. It was all as staid as ever, with the same cleanliness, the same silence about the house, the same furnishings, the same walls, the same sounds, the same smell and the same timid faces, just a little older. Princess Marya was just the same plain and timid girl, beginning to show her age, watching her best years go by in a state of dread and constant moral affliction, with no sense of benefit or happiness. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same self-sufficient, flirtatious young girl, enjoying every moment of her life and brimming with happy hopes for the future. But she did seem to have grown in confidence, thought Prince Andrey. The tutor he had brought back from Switzerland, Dessalles, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and he could now converse with the servants in broken Russian, but he was just the same well-intentioned, educated but narrow-minded and nit-picking preceptor. Only one physical change was noticeable in the old prince: he had lost a tooth and the gap showed at one side of his mouth. His character was the same as ever, but his irritability had grown worse, along with his misgivings about the way the world was going. Little Nikolay was the only one who had really changed: he had grown taller, his cheeks were rosier and his hair was a mass of dark curls. When he was happy and laughing he had an unconscious habit of pursing his pretty little mouth and raising his upper lip, just as his dead mother, the little princess, had once done. He was the only who did not conform to the law of no change in this enchanted sleeping castle. But although superficially everything looked the same, deep down the relationships between all the various personalities had altered since Prince Andrey had last observed them. The household was divided into two separate camps who were at daggers drawn, though they had changed their way of living and come together now purely for his benefit. One consisted of the old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne and the architect; Princess Marya, Dessalles, little Nikolay, along with all the nannies and nurses, made up the other.
During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they were ill at ease, and Prince Andrey could sense them making allowances for him as if he was a guest whose presence was an embarrassment. Prince Andrey couldn't help picking this up at dinner on the first day, and he sat at the table saying not a word. The old prince soon noted his strange behaviour and he, too, sat there in sullen silence before stalking off to his room the moment dinner was finished. When Prince Andrey called in to see him later in the evening and tried to stimulate him by talking about young Prince Kamensky and his campaign, the old prince surprised him by launching forth on the subject of Princess Marya, fulminating about her silly superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, the only person, according to him, who had his interests at heart.
The old prince would always claim that if he was ill it was Princess Marya's fault; she went out of her way to torment him and make him angry; she was spoiling little Prince Nikolay by being too soft with him and telling him silly stories. The old prince knew only too well he was a torment to his own daughter, and she had a hard life, but he knew just as well that he couldn't help it, and anyway she deserved what she got. 'Prince Andrey can see all this. Why doesn't he say something about his sister?' the old prince was wondering. 'Does he have me down as a villain or an old fool, with no cause to alienate my daughter and take to this Frenchwoman? He has no idea, so I must have things out with him and he's got to listen,' thought the old prince, and he plunged into a lengthy explanation of why he couldn't put up with his daughter's stupidity.
'If you want my opinion,' said Prince Andrey, avoiding his father's eyes (now that he was about to find fault with him for the very first time), 'I wasn't going to say anything, but if you want my opinion I'll be quite candid about the whole thing. If there's any misunderstanding or incompatibility between you and Masha, I don't think it's her fault. I know how she loves you and respects you. If you want my opinion,' Prince Andrey went on, flying off the handle, as he had been doing all too easily in recent days, 'there's only one thing to be said: if there are any misunderstandings, they're caused by that worthless woman, who is no fit companion for my sister.'
The old man's darting eyes settled into a fixed stare directed at his son, and his forced smile revealed the gap of his lost tooth, something Prince Andrey had not yet managed to get used to.
'So, it's companion, is it, my dear fellow? Aha! You've been talking about it, haven't you? Eh?'
'Father, I had no wish to pass judgement,' said Prince Andrey in a hard and bitter tone, 'but you put me up to it, and I've said what I shall always say - it's not Marie's fault, it's other people . . . it's that Frenchwoman's fault . . .'
'But this is judgement! . . . It is judgement!' said the old man in a low voice, and Prince Andrey thought he detected some embarrassment, but suddenly the old man leapt to his feet and yelled at him, 'Get out! Go on, get out of my house!'
Prince Andrey was all for setting off at once, but Princess Marya persuaded him to stay on one more day. During that day Prince Andrey didn't see his father, who stayed in his room and wouldn't let anyone in but Mademoiselle Bourienne and Tikhon, though he kept asking whether his son had gone. Next morning before setting out Prince Andrey went over to his son's part of the house. The little boy, curly-haired like his mother and a picture of good health, sat on his knee. Prince Andrey started telling him the story of Bluebeard, but his mind began to wander before he got to the end. He wasn't thinking about the pretty little boy sitting on his knee who was his son - he was thinking about himself. He cast around in his mind and was horrified not to discover the slightest feeling of remorse for upsetting his father, or any regret at leaving him with bad blood between them for the first time in his life. Worst of all, he also failed to discover in himself any trace of the tender affection he used to feel for his boy, and had hoped to rekindle by cuddling him on his knee.
'Well, go on,' said the little boy. Prince Andrey put him down without a word and walked out of the room.
The moment Prince Andrey had given up his daily pursuits, and especially when he had gone back to the old surroundings in which he had once been so happy, his old world-weariness had returned with all its intensity, and he now felt an urgent need to flee from these memories and find something to do as soon as possible.
'Are you really going, Andrey?' his sister said to him.
'Thank God I can,' said Prince Andrey. 'I'm just sorry you can't.'
'How can you say such a thing?' said Princess Marya. 'How can you say that, when you're off to that awful war, and he's so old? Mademoiselle Bourienne has told me he keeps on asking about you . . .' At the very mention of these things her lips trembled and tears fell from her eyes. Prince Andrey turned away and began to pace up and down the room.
'Oh, my God! My God!' he said. 'Just think . . . what . . . who . . . what trash can cause so much misery!' he said in a venomous outburst that alarmed Princess Marya.
She understood that when he said 'trash' he meant not only Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also the man who had ruined his own happiness.
'Andrey, please, one thing I beg of you,' she said, catching him by the elbow and looking at him with eyes shining through tears. 'I understand you.' (She looked down.) 'You mustn't think sorrow is the work of men. Men are His instruments.' Her eyes darted across slightly above Prince Andrey's head; it was the kind of easy, familiar glance with which you glance over to a place where a favourite portrait hangs. 'Sorrow is sent by Him, and not by men. Men are His instruments. The fault is not theirs. If you think someone has done you wrong you must forgive and forget. We have no right to punish others. And you will know the joy of forgiveness.'
'If I was a woman, Marie, I would do that. It's a woman's virtue. But a man must not, and cannot, forgive and forget,' he said, and although until then he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his unassuaged fury surged up again in his heart. 'Marie's trying to talk me into forgiveness - that means I ought to have punished him ages ago,' he thought.
And with no further response to Princess Marya, he let his mind stray to the happy moment of vindictive delight when he caught up with Kuragin. He knew he was in the army.
Princess Marya tried to persuade her brother to stay on for one more day, telling him she knew how miserable her father would be if Andrey went away without patching things up. But Prince Andrey said it probably wouldn't be all that long before he came back again from the army, and he would be sure to write to his father, and if he stayed on now their quarrel would only be more embittered.
'Goodbye, Andrey! Remember - sorrows come from God, and men are never to blame.' These were the last words he heard from his sister as they said their goodbyes.
'That's how it has to be!' thought Prince Andrey as he drove down the avenue leaving Bald Hills behind. 'Poor innocent creature, she has to stay there at the mercy of an old man who has outlived his wits. The old man can tell he's in the wrong, but he can't help it. My boy is growing up and enjoying life, but life will let him down, and he'll let other people down just like everybody else. And I'm off to the army. But why? I don't know, but here I am longing to catch up with a man I despise, to give him a chance to kill me and sneer at me!' He had known circumstances like these before, but then they had been all intertwined, and now they were all unravelled, a series of disparate and senseless eventualities coming upon him one after another.
CHAPTER 9
Prince Andrey reached General Headquarters at the end of June. The first army, with the Tsar attached to it, was encamped at Drissa behind fortifications. The second army was in retreat, attempting to rejoin the first army, from which, according to reports, it had been cut off by huge numbers of French troops. Everyone was dissatisfied with the way things were going in the Russian army, but no one even dreamt that the Russian provinces were in danger of being invaded, or imagined the war might be carried beyond the frontiers of the Polish provinces in the western region.
Prince Andrey caught up with Barclay de Tolly, to whom he was being sent, on the bank of the Drissa. Since there was no large village or settlement anywhere near the camp, the vast numbers of generals and courtiers attached to the army were billeted over a wide area in the best houses of villages scattered along several miles on both sides of the river. Barclay de Tolly's quarters were a couple of miles from the Tsar. His welcoming words were curt and frigid, but he did say in his German accent that he would mention Bolkonsky's name to the Tsar so that he could be given a specific appointment, and meanwhile he was to stay on as a member of his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrey had hoped to find here, had gone. He was in Petersburg, and Bolkonsky was pleased to hear it. Thoroughly absorbed in being at the centre of a huge, burgeoning war, he was glad to enjoy a brief respite from the vexation caused by the very thought of Kuragin. For four days no demands were made on him so he spent his time riding right around the entire fortified camp, gathering intelligence and talking to people in the know so that he could form a sound overall impression of things. But he couldn't decide whether a camp like this was of any use or not. If he had learnt one lesson from his military experience it was that in matters of war the most carefully considered plans count for nothing (as he had seen at Austerlitz); everything depends on how you react to unexpected and unpredictable enemy action; everything depends on who takes charge, and how. In order to clarify this last question in his own mind Prince Andrey used his rank and his contacts to penetrate the character of army control and any people and parties who had a hand in it. His overall conclusion about how things stood ran as follows.
Before the Tsar had left Vilna the troops had been divided into three armies, one under the command of Barclay de Tolly, a second under Bagration, and a third under Tormasov. The Tsar was with the first army but not as commander-in-chief. In the official announcement there was no mention of his taking command; it was simply stated that the Tsar would remain with the army. Besides that, he was attended not by the staff of a commander-in-chief, but by men of the imperial headquarters.
Quartermaster-General Prince Volkonsky was the head of his staff, which included generals, aides, diplomatic officials and a large number of foreign nationals, and they were not military personnel. The Tsar could also call on the various services of ex-war minister Arakcheyev; Count Bennigsen, his senior general; the Tsarevich, Konstantin Pavlovich; Count Rumyantsev, the chancellor; Stein, the former Prussian minister; Armfeldt, the Swedish general; Pfuel, his chief campaign planner; Adjutant-General Paulucci, a Sardinian emigre; Wolzogen; and many others. These people may have been without specific army duties, but rank carried influence, and it often happened that a corps commander or even a commander-in-chief couldn't tell whether full authority lay behind some recommendation or inquiry from Bennigsen or the Tsarevich or Arakcheyev or Prince Volkonsky, or whether some command in the form of a recommendation came from the individual concerned or from the Tsar, and whether or not it had to be obeyed. But all this was on the surface; the actual significance of the presence of the Tsar and all these men was as clear as crystal to any courtier - and in the presence of a monarch all men become courtiers. It went as follows: although the Tsar refrained from calling himself commander-in-chief, he was actually in charge of all three armies, and the men around him were his assistants. Arakcheyev was a tried and trusted guardian of law and order, and the Tsar's bodyguard. Bennigsen, as a local landholder, was there ostensibly just to honour the Tsar, though in fact he was a good general, a wise councillor and a useful stand-by replacement for Barclay. The Tsarevich was there because it seemed the right thing for him to do. The former Prussian minister, Stein, was there because his advice might be useful, and the Emperor Alexander valued his personal qualities. Armfeldt was a sworn enemy of Napoleon, and his self-confidence always rubbed off on Alexander. Paulucci was there because he was a powerful speaker who knew his own mind. The adjutant-generals were there because the Emperor was never without them. Last but by no means least, Pfuel was there because he had created the plan of action against Napoleon and persuaded Alexander of its validity, and he was now running the whole campaign. Pfuel was assisted by Wolzogen, a specialist in translating Pfuel's ideas into a more accessible form than Pfuel himself ever could, he being an abrasive academic theorist, full of his own importance and contempt for everyone else.
Besides these Russians and foreigners - the foreigners were a special case, men acting in an alien sphere, who had the nerve to keep coming up with bright ideas every day of the week - there were many more secondary figures, who were with the army because their principals were there.
From all the ideas and opinions circulating in this vast, brilliant, proud and restless realm, Prince Andrey was able to make out the following clearly defined sub-divisions into factions and parties.
The first party consisted of Pfuel and his disciples, military theorists who believed there was such a thing as a science of warfare, a science with its own immutable laws - the law of oblique movement, the law of outflanking, etc. Pfuel and his disciples demanded that the army should retreat into the depths of the country in accordance with the precise laws laid down by the pseudo-science of warfare, any departure from which they saw as outright barbarity, ignorance or evil intent. To this party belonged the Germanic princes Wolzogen, Wintzengerode and others, most of them also Germans.
The second party was diametrically opposed to the first one. As always, where there was one extreme, the opposite extreme found its own representatives. Ever since Vilna men of this party ha