War And Peace: Book 11 - CHAPTER XXXII

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SEVEN DAYS had passed since Prince Andrey had found himself in the ambulance

station on the field of Borodino. All that time he had been in a state of almost

continual unconsciousness. The fever and inflammation of the bowels, which had

been injured, were, in the opinion of the doctor accompanying the wounded,

certain to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with relish a piece of

bread with some tea, and the doctor observed that the fever was going down.

Prince Andrey had regained consciousness in the morning. The first night after

leaving Moscow had been fairly warm, and Prince Andrey had spent the night in

his carriage. But at Mytishtchy the wounded man had himself asked to be moved

and given tea. The pain caused by moving him into the hut had made Prince Andrey

groan aloud and lose consciousness again. When he had been laid on his camp

bedstead, he lay a long while with closed eyes without moving. Then he opened

his eyes and whispered softly, “How about the tea?” The doctor was struck by

this instance of consciousness of the little details of daily life. He felt his

pulse, and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found that the pulse was

stronger. The doctor's dissatisfaction was due to the fact that he felt certain

from his experience that Prince Andrey could not live, and that if he did not

die now, he would only die a little later with even greater suffering. With

Prince Andrey was the red-nosed major of his regiment, Timohin, who had joined

him in Moscow with a wound in his leg received at the same battle of Borodino.

The doctor, the prince's valet, and coachman, and two orderlies were in charge

of them.

Tea was given to Prince Andrey. He drank it eagerly, looking with feverish

eyes at the door in front of him, as though trying to understand and recall

something.

“No more. Is Timohin here?” he asked.

Timohin edged along the bench towards him.

“I am here, your excellency.”

“How is your wound?”

“Mine? All right. But how are you?”

Prince Andrey pondered again, as though he were recollecting something.

“Could not one get a book here?” he said.

“What book?”

“The Gospel! I haven't one.”

The doctor promised to get it, and began questioning the prince about his

symptoms. Prince Andrey answered all the doctor's questions rationally, though

reluctantly, and then said that he wanted a support put under him, as it was

uncomfortable and very painful for him as he was. The doctor and the valet took

off the military cloak, with which he was covered, and puckering up their faces

at the sickly smell of putrefying flesh that came from the wound, began to look

into the terrible place. The doctor was very much troubled about something; he

made some changes, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned again, and

again lost consciousness from the pain when they turned him over. He began to be

delirious, and kept asking for the book to be brought and to be put under him.

“What trouble would it be to you?” he kept saying. “I haven't it, get it me,

please,—put it under me just for a minute,” he said in a piteous voice.

The doctor went outside to wash his hands.

“Ah, you have no conscience, you fellows really,” the doctor was saying to

the valet, who was pouring water over his hands. “For one minute I didn't look

after you. Why, it's such suffering that I wonder how he bears it.”

“I thought we did put it under him right, by the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the

valet.

Prince Andrey had for the first time grasped where he was and what was

happening to him, and had recollected that he had been wounded and how at the

moment when the carriage had stopped at Mytishtchy, and he had asked to be taken

into the hut. Losing consciousness again from the pain, he came fully to himself

once more in the hut while he was drinking tea. And thereupon again, going over

in his memory all that had happened to him, the most vivid picture in his mind

was of that moment at the ambulance station when at the sight of the sufferings

of a man he had not liked, those new thoughts had come to him with such promise

of happiness. And those thoughts—though vague now and shapeless—took possession

of his soul again. He remembered that he had now some new happiness, and that

that happiness had something to do with the Gospel. That was why he asked for

the Gospel. But the position he had been laid in, without support under his

wound, and the new change of position, put his thoughts to confusion again; and

it was only in the complete stillness of the night that he came to himself again

for the third time. Every one was asleep around him. A cricket was chirping

across the passage; some one was shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches

were rustling over the table, the holy images and the walls; a big fly flopped

on his pillow and about the tallow candle that stood with a great, smouldering

wick beside him.

His soul was not in its normal state. A man in health usually thinks, feels

and remembers simultaneously an immense number of different things, but he has

the power and the faculty of selecting one series of ideas or phenomena and

concentrating all his attention on that series. A man in health can at the

moment of the profoundest thought break off to say a civil word to any one who

comes in, and then return again to his thoughts. Prince Andrey's soul was not in

a normal condition in this respect. All the faculties of his soul were clearer

and more active than ever, but they acted apart from his will. The most diverse

ideas and images had possession of his mind at the same time. Sometimes his

brain suddenly began to work, and with a force, clearness, and depth with which

it had never been capable of working in health. But suddenly the train of

thought broke off in the midst, to be replaced by some unexpected image, and the

power to go back to it was wanting. “Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me,

that could not be taken away from man,” he thought, as he lay in the still,

half-dark hut, gazing before him with feverishly wide, staring eyes. “Happiness

beyond the reach of material forces, outside material, external influences on

man, the happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of love! To feel it is in

every man's power, but God alone can know it and ordain it. But how did God

ordain this law? Why the Son? …” And all at once that train of thought broke

off, and Prince Andrey heard (not knowing whether in delirium or in actual fact

he heard it) a kind of soft, whispering voice, incessantly beating time:

“Piti-pitt-piti,” and then “i-ti-ti,” and again, “ipiti-piti-piti,” and again

“i-ti-ti.” And to the sound of this murmuring music Prince Andrey felt as though

a strange, ethereal edifice of delicate needles or splinters were being raised

over his face, over the very middle of it. He felt that (hard though it was for

him) he must studiously preserve his balance that this rising edifice might not

fall to pieces; but yet it was falling to pieces, and slowly rising up again to

the rhythmic beat of the murmuring music.

“It is stretching out, stretching out, and spreading and stretching out!”

Prince Andrey said to himself. While he listened to the murmur and felt that

edifice of needles stretching out, and rising up, Prince Andrey saw by glimpses

a red ring of light round the candle, and heard the rustling of the cockroaches

and the buzzing of the fly as it flopped against his pillow and his face. And

every time the fly touched his face, it gave him a stinging sensation, but yet

it surprised him that though the fly struck him in the very centre of the rising

edifice it did not shatter it. But, apart from all this, there was one other

thing of importance. That was the white thing at the door; that was a statue of

the sphinx, which oppressed him too

“But perhaps it is my shirt on the table,” thought Prince Andrey, “and that's

my legs, and that's the door, but why this straining and moving and

piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti … Enough, cease, be still, please,”

Prince Andrey besought some one wearily. And all at once thought and feeling

floated to the surface again with extraordinary clearness and force.

“Yes, love (he thought again with perfect distinctness), but not that love

that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that

love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved

him. I knew that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul, for

which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love

one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything—to love God in all

His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an

enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when

I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? … Loving with

human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change.

Nothing, not even death, nothing can shatter it. It is the very nature of the

soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have

loved and hated more than her.” And he vividly pictured Natasha to himself, not

as he had pictured her in the past, only with the charm that had been a joy to

him; for the first time he pictured to himself her soul. And he understood her

feeling, her sufferings, her shame, and her penitence. Now, for the first time,

he felt all the cruelty of his abandonment, saw all the cruelty of his rupture

with her. “If it were only possible for me to see her once more … once, looking

into those eyes, to say …”

Piti-piti-piti iti-ti, ipiti-piti—boom, the fly flapped … And his attention

passed all at once into another world of reality and delirium, in which

something peculiar was taking place. In that place the edifice was still rising,

unshattered; something was still stretching out, the candle was still burning,

with a red ring round it; the same shirt-sphinx still lay by the door. But

beside all this, something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and a new

white sphinx appeared standing before the doorway. And that sphinx had the white

face and shining eyes of that very Natasha he had been dreaming of just

now.

“Oh, how wearisome this everlasting delirium is!” thought Prince Andrey,

trying to dispel that face from his vision. But that face stood before him with

the face of reality, and that face was coming closer. Prince Andrey tried to go

back to the world of pure thought, but he could not, and he was drawn back into

the realm of delirium. The soft murmuring voice kept up its rhythmic whisper,

something was oppressing him, and rising up, and the strange face stood before

him. Prince Andrey rallied all his forces to regain his senses; he stirred a

little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his ears and a dimness before his

eyes, and like a man sinking under water, he lost consciousness.

When he came to himself, Natasha, the very living Natasha, whom of all people

in the world he most longed to love with that new, pure, divine love that had

now been revealed to him, was on her knees before him. He knew that it was the

real, living Natasha, and did not wonder, but quietly rejoiced. Natasha, on her

knees, in terror, but without moving (she could not have moved), gazed at him,

restraining her sobs. Her face was white and rigid. There was only a sort of

quiver in the lower part of it.

Prince Andrey drew a sigh of relief, smiled, and held out his hand.

“You?” he said. “What happiness!”

With a swift but circumspect movement, Natasha came nearer, still kneeling,

and carefully taking his hand she bent her face over it and began kissing it,

softly touching it with her lips.

“Forgive me!” she said in a whisper, lifting her head and glancing at him.

“Forgive me!”

“I love you,” said Prince Andrey.

“Forgive …”

“Forgive what?” asked Prince Andrey.

“Forgive me for what I di … id,” Natasha murmured in a hardly audible, broken

whisper, and again and again she softly put her lips to his hand.

“I love thee more, better than before,” said Prince Andrey, lifting her face

with his hand so that he could look into her eyes.

Those eyes, swimming with happy tears, gazed at him with timid commiseration

and joyful love. Natasha's thin, pale face, with its swollen lips, was more than

ugly—it looked terrible. But Prince Andrey did not see her face, he saw the

shining eyes, which were beautiful. They heard talk behind them.

Pyotr, the valet, by now wide awake, had waked up the doctor. Timohin, who

had not slept all night for the pain in his leg, had been long watching all that

was happening, and huddled up on his bench, carefully wrapping his bare person

up in the sheet.

“Why, what's this?” said the doctor, getting up from his bed on the floor.

“Kindly retire, madame.”

At that moment there was a knock at the door; a maid had been sent by the

countess in search of her daughter.

Like a sleep-walker awakened in the midst of her trance, Natasha walked out

of the room, and getting back to her hut, sank sobbing on her bed.

From that day at all the halts and resting-places on the remainder of the

Rostovs' journey, Natasha never left Bolkonsky's side, and the doctor was forced

to admit that he had not expected from a young girl so much fortitude, nor skill

in nursing a wounded man.

Terrible as it was to the countess to think that Prince Andrey might (and

very probably, too, from what the doctor said) die on the road in her daughter's

arms, she could not resist Natasha. Although with the renewal of affectionate

relations between Prince Andrey and Natasha the idea did occur that in case he

recovered their old engagement would be renewed, no one—least of all Natasha and

Prince Andrey—spoke of this. The unsettled question of life and death hanging,

not only over Prince Andrey, but over all Russia, shut off all other

considerations.

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