War And Peace: Book 15 - CHAPTER VIII

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ONE would naturally have expected that in the almost inconceivably wretched

conditions in which the Russian soldiers were placed at that time—without thick

boots, without fur coats, without a roof over their heads in the snow, with a

frost of eighteen degrees, often without full rations—they must have presented a

most melancholy and depressing spectacle.

It was quite the opposite. Never under the most favourable material

conditions had the army worn a livelier and more cheerful aspect. This was due

to the fact that every element that showed signs of depression or weakness was

sifted every day out of the army. All the physically and morally weak had long

ago been left behind. What was left was the pick of the army—in strength of body

and of spirit.

The camp-fire of the eighth company, screened by their wattle fence,

attracted a greater crowd than any. Two sergeants were sitting by it, and the

fire was blazing more brightly than any of them. They insisted on logs being

brought in return for the right of sitting under the screen.

“Hi, Makyev, hullo … are you lost, or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some

wood,” shouted a red-faced, red-haired soldier, screwing up his eyes, and

blinking from the smoke, but not moving back from the fire.

“You run, Crow, and fetch some wood,” he cried, addressing another soldier.

The red-headed man was not a non-commissioned officer, nor a corporal, but he

was a sturdy fellow, and so he gave orders to those who were weaker than

himself. A thin, little soldier, with a sharp nose, who was called the “Crow,”

got up submissively, and was about to obey; but at that moment there stepped

into the light of the fire the slender, hand-some figure of a young soldier,

carrying a load of wood.

“Give it here. Well, that's something like!”

They broke up the wood and threw it on, blew up the fire with their mouths,

and fanned it with the skirts of their coats, and the flame began to hiss and

crackle. The soldiers drew nearer the fire and lighted their pipes. The handsome

young soldier who had brought in the wood put his arms akimbo, and began a smart

and nimble shuffle with his frozen feet as he stood.

“Ah, mother dear, the dew is cold, but yet it is fine, and a musketeer!” … he

began singing, with a sort of hiccup at each syllable of the song.

“Hey, his soles are flying off!” cried the red-haired man, noticing that the

dancer's soles were loose. “He's a rare devil for dancing!”

The dancer stopped, tore off the loose leather, and flung it in the

fire.

“You're right there, brother,” said he, and sitting down he took out of his

knapsack a strip of French blue cloth, and began binding it round his foot.

“It's the steam that warps them,” he added, stretching his feet out to the

fire.

“They'll soon serve us new ones. They say when we finish them off, we are all

to have a double lot of stuff.”

“I say, that son of a bitch, Petrov, has sneaked off, it seems,” said a

sergeant.

“It's a long while since I've noticed him,” said the other.

“Oh, well, a poor sort of soldier …”

“And in the third company, they were saying, there were nine men missing at

the roll-call yesterday.”

“Well, but after all, when one's feet are frozen, how's one to walk?”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense!” said the sergeant.

“Why, do you want to do the same?” said an old soldier; reproachfully

addressing the man who had talked of frozen feet.

“Well, what do you think?” the sharp-nosed soldier, called “Crow,” said

suddenly, in a squeaking and quavery voice, turning himself on one elbow behind

the fire. “If a man's sleek and fat, he just grows thin, but for a thin man it's

death. Look at me, now! I have no strength left,” he said, with sudden

resolution, addressing a sergeant. “Say the word for me to be sent off to the

hospital. I'm one ache with rheumatism, and one only gets left behind just the

same …”

“There, that's enough; that's enough,” said the sergeant calmly.

The soldier was silent, and the conversation went on.

“There's a rare lot of these Frenchies have been taken to-day; but not a pair

of boots on one of them, one may say, worth having; no, not worth mentioning,”

one of the soldiers began, starting a new subject.

“The Cossacks had stripped them of everything. We cleaned a hut for the

colonel, and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, lads,” said the

dancer. “We overhauled them. One was alive, would you believe it, muttering

something in their lingo.”

“They're a clean people, lads,” said the first. “White—why, as white as a

birch-tree, and brave they are, I must say, and gentlemen too.”

“Well, what would you expect? Soldiers are taken from all classes with

them.”

“And yet they don't understand a word we say,” said the dancer, with a

wondering smile. “I says to him, ‘Of what kingdom are you?' and he mutters away

his lingo. A strange people!”

“I'll tell you a wonderful thing, mates,” went on the man who had expressed

surprise at their whiteness. “The peasants about Mozhaisk were telling how, when

they went to take away the dead where the great battle was, why, their bodies

had been lying there a good month. Well, they lay there, as white and clean as

paper, and not a smell about them.”

“Why, from the cold, eh?” asked one.

“You're a clever one! Cold, indeed! Why, it was hot weather. If it had been

from the cold, our men, too, wouldn't have rotted. But they say, go up to one of

ours, and it would all be putrefied and maggoty. They tie handkerchiefs round

their noses, and drag them off, turning their faces away, so they say. They

can't help it. But they're white as paper; not a smell about them.”

There was a general silence.

“Must be from the feeding,” said the sergeant: “they are gorged like

gentry.”

No one replied.

“That peasant at Mozhaisk, where the battle was, was saying that they were

fetched from ten villages round, and at work there for twenty days, and couldn't

get all the dead away. A lot of those wolves, says he …”

“That was something like a battle,” said an old soldier. “The only one worth

mentioning; everything since … it's simply tormenting folks for nothing.”

“Oh, well, uncle, we did attack them the day before yesterday. But what's one

to do? They won't let us get at them. They were so quick at laying down their

arms, and on their knees. Pardon!—they say. And that's only one example.

They have said twice that Platov had taken Polion himself. He catches him, and

lo! he turns into a bird in his hands and flies away and away. And as to killing

him, no manner of means of doing it.”

“You're a sturdy liar, Kiselov, by the look of you!”

“Liar, indeed! It's the holy truth.”

“Well, if you ask me, I'd bury him in the earth, if I caught him. Yes, with a

good aspen cudgel. The number of folk he has destroyed!”

“Any way, we shall soon make an end of him; he won't come again,” said the

old soldier, yawning.

The conversation died away; the soldiers began making themselves comfortable

for the night.

“I say, what a lot of stars; how they shine! One would say the women had been

laying out their linen!” said a soldier admiring the Milky Way.

“That's a sign of a good harvest, lads!”

“We shall want a little more wood.”

“One warms one's back, and one's belly freezes. That's queer.”

“O Lord!”

“What are you shoving for—is the fire only for you, eh? See … there he

sprawls.”

In the silence that reigned snoring could be heard from a few who had gone to

sleep. The rest turned themselves to get warm by the fire, exchanging occasional

remarks. From a fire a hundred paces away came a chorus of merry laughter.

“They are guffawing in the fifth company,” said a soldier. “And what a lot of

them there!”

A soldier got up and went off to the fifth company.

“There's a bit of fun!” he said, coming back. “Two Frenchies have come. One's

quite frozen, but the other's a fine plucky fellow! He's singing songs.”

“O-O! must go and look …” Several soldiers went across to the fifth

company.

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