War And Peace: Book 5 - CHAPTER XVII

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IN THE MONTH of June was fought the battle of Friedland, in which the

Pavlograd hussars did not take part. It was followed by a truce. Rostov, who

sorely felt his friend's absence, and had had no news of him since he left, was

uneasy about his wound and the course his difficulties might be taking, and he

took advantage of the truce to get leave to visit Denisov at the hospital.

The hospital was in a little Prussian town, which had twice been sacked by

Russian and French troops. In the summer weather, when the country looked so

pleasant, this little town presented a strikingly melancholy contrast, with its

broken roofs and fences, its foul streets and ragged inhabitants, and the sick

and drunken soldiers wandering about it.

The hospital was a stone house with remnants of fence torn up in the yard,

and window frames and panes partly broken. Several soldiers bandaged up, and

with pale and swollen faces, were walking or sitting in the sunshine in the

yard.

As soon as Rostov went in at the door, he was conscious of the stench of

hospital and putrefying flesh all about him. On the stairs he met a Russian army

doctor with a cigar in his mouth. He was followed by a Russian trained

assistant.

“I can't be everywhere at once,” the doctor was saying; “come in the evening

to Makar Alexyevitch's, I shall be there.” The assistant asked some further

question. “Oh! do as you think best! What difference will it make?”

The doctor caught sight of Rostov mounting the stairs.

“What are you here for, your honour?” said the doctor. “What are you here

for? Couldn't you meet with a bullet that you want to pick up typhus? This is a

pest-house, my good sir.”

“How so?” asked Rostov.

“Typhus, sir. It's death to any one to go in. It's only we two, Makeev and I”

(he pointed to the assistant) “who are still afoot here. Five of us, doctors,

have died here already. As soon as a new one comes, he's done for in a week,”

said the doctor with evident satisfaction. “They have sent for Prussian doctors,

but our allies aren't fond of the job.”

Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars, who was

lying wounded here.

“I don't know, can't tell you, my good sir. Only think, I have three

hospitals to look after alone—over four hundred patients. It's a good thing the

Prussian charitable ladies send us coffee and lint—two pounds a month—or we

should be lost.” He laughed. “Four hundred, sir; and they keep sending me in

fresh cases. It is four hundred, isn't it? Eh?” He turned to the

assistant.

The assistant looked worried. He was unmistakably in a hurry for the

talkative doctor to be gone, and was waiting with vexation.

“Major Denisov,” repeated Rostov; “he was wounded at Moliten.”

“I believe he's dead. Eh, Makeev?” the doctor queried of the assistant

carelessly.

The assistant did not, however, confirm the doctor's words.

“Is he a long, red-haired man?” asked the doctor.

Rostov described Denisov's appearance.

“He was here, he was,” the doctor declared, with a sort of glee. “He must be

dead, but still I'll see. I have lists. Have you got them, Makeev?”

“The lists are at Makar Alexyevitch's,” said the assistant. “But go to the

officers' ward, there you'll see for yourself,” he added, turning to

Rostov.

“Ah, you'd better not, sir!” said the doctor, “or you may have to stay here

yourself.” But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor, and asked the

assistant to show him the way.

“Don't blame me afterwards, mind!” the doctor shouted up from the stairs

below.

Rostov and the assistant went into the corridor. The hospital stench was so

strong in that dark corridor that Rostov held his nose, and was obliged to pause

to recover his energy to go on. A door was opened on the right, and there limped

out on crutches a thin yellow man with bare feet, and nothing on but his

underlinen. Leaning against the doorpost, he gazed with glittering, anxious eyes

at the persons approaching. Rostov glanced in at the door and saw that the sick

and wounded were lying there on the floor, on straw and on overcoats.

“Can one go in and look?” asked Rostov.

“What is there to look at?” said the assistant. But just because the

assistant was obviously disinclined to let him go in, Rostov went into the

soldiers' ward. The stench, to which he had grown used a little in the corridor,

was stronger here. Here the stench was different; it was more intense; and one

could smell that it was from here that it came. In the long room, brightly

lighted by the sun in the big window, lay the sick and wounded in two rows with

their heads to the wall, leaving a passage down the middle. The greater number

of them were unconscious, and took no notice of the entrance of outsiders. Those

who were conscious got up or raised their thin, yellow faces, and all gazed

intently at Rostov, with the same expression of hope of help, of reproach, and

envy of another man's health. Rostov went into the middle of the room, glanced

in at the open doors of adjoining rooms, and on both sides saw the same thing.

He stood still, looking round him speechless. He had never expected to see

anything like this. Just before him lay right across the empty space down the

middle, on the bare floor, a sick man, probably a Cossack, for his hair was cut

round in basin shape. This Cossack lay on his back, his huge arms and legs

outstretched. His face was of a purple red, his eyes were quite sunk in his head

so that only the whites could be seen, and on his legs and on his hands, which

were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking his head against

the floor, and he uttered some word and kept repeating it. Rostov listened to

what he was saying, and distinguished the word he kept repeating. That word was

“drink—drink—drink!” Rostov looked about for some one who could lay the sick man

in his place and give him water.

“Who looks after the patients here?” he asked the assistant. At that moment a

commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the adjoining room, and,

marching in drill step, drew himself up before him.

“Good day, your honour!” bawled this soldier, rolling his eyes at Rostov, and

obviously mistaking him for one in authority.

“Take him away, give him water,” said Rostov, indicating the Cossack.

“Certainly, your honour,” the soldier replied complacently, rolling his eyes

more strenuously than ever. and drawing himself up, but not budging to do

so.

“No, there's no doing anything here,” thought Rostov, dropping his eyes; and

he wanted to get away, but he was aware of a significant look bent upon him from

the right side, and he looked round at it. Almost in the corner there was,

sitting on a military overcoat, an old soldier with a stern yellow face, thin as

a skeleton's, and an unshaved grey beard. He was looking persistently at Rostov.

The man next the old soldier was whispering something to him, pointing to

Rostov. Rostov saw the old man wanted to ask him something. He went closer and

saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been cut off

above the knee. On the other side of the old man, at some distance from him,

there lay with head thrown back the motionless figure of a young soldier with a

waxen pallor on his snub-nosed and still freckled face, and eyes sunken under

the lids. Rostov looked at the snub-nosed soldier and a shiver ran down his

back.

“Why, that one seems to be …” he said to the assistant.

“We've begged and begged, your honour,” said the old soldier with a quiver in

his lower jaw. “He died early in the morning. We're men, too, not dogs.…”

“I'll see to it directly; they shall take him, they shall take him away,”

said the assistant hurriedly. “Come, your honour.”

“Let us go, let us go,” said Rostov hastily; and dropping his eyes and

shrinking together, trying to pass unnoticed through the lines of those

reproachful and envious eyes fastened upon him, he went out of the room.

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