LITMIR.BIZ

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when they were holding position under fire.

      Nikolai kept his eyes fixed on his enemy, the regimental commander, wishing to discover some confirmation of his guesses in his face, but the colonel did not even glance at Nikolai once and he looked stern and solemn, as he always did at the front. The command rang out.

      “Look lively, lively now!” said several voices around him. Snagging the reins with their sabres, jangling their spurs in their haste, the hussars dismounted, not knowing themselves what they were going to do. The hussars crossed themselves. Rostov was no longer looking at the regimental commander, he had no time for that. He was afraid, his heart was sinking in fear that he might somehow fall behind the hussars. His hand trembled as he handed his horse to the holder, and he could feel the blood pounding as it rushed to his heart. Denisov rode past him, lounging backwards and shouting something. Nikolai could not see anything apart from the hussars running around him, getting their spurs tangled and jangling their sabres.

      “A stretcher!” someone’s voice shouted behind him. Rostov did not think about what the demand for a stretcher meant, he ran, trying only to be ahead of all the others, but just at the bridge, not looking where he was putting his feet, he stepped into the sticky trampled mud, slipped and fell on to his hands. The others ran round him.

      “On both sides, captain,” he heard the regimental commander’s voice say. The commander, having ridden forward, had stopped on his horse not far from the bridge with a triumphant, jolly expression.

      Rostov, wiping his dirty hands on his breeches, glanced round at his enemy and started running further, assuming that the further forward he went, the better it would be. But Bogdanich, even though he had not been looking and did not recognise Rostov, shouted at him:

      “Who’s that running in the middle of the bridge? To the right side! Cadet, come back!” he shouted angrily.

      Even now, however, Karl Bogdanovich did not pay any attention to him: but he did turn to Denisov who, flaunting his courage, had ridden on to the boards of the bridge.

      “Why take a risk, captain! You should dismount,” said the colonel.

      “Eh! It’ll hit whoever it likes,” replied Vaska Denisov, turning round in the saddle.

      Meanwhile Nesvitsky, Zherkov and the officer of the retinue were standing together, out of range, and watching either one or another of the small groups of men in yellow shakos, dark-green jackets decorated with tasselled cords and blue breeches fussing about beside the bridge, or watching the far side, where in the distance the blue coats were drawing nearer, and the groups with horses which could easily be taken for gun crews.

      “Will they fire the bridge or won’t they? Who’ll be first? Will they get there and fire the bridge, or will the French get within grapeshot distance and kill them all?” Every one of the large number of troops who were standing above the bridge had his heart in his mouth and could not help asking himself this question, and in the bright evening light they watched the bridge and the hussars, and the far side where the blue hoods were advancing with bayonets and guns.

      “Oh! The hussars are in for it!” said Nesvitsky. “They’re within grapeshot range now.”

      “He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the suite.

      “No, he really shouldn’t,” said Nesvitsky. “He could have sent two brave lads, it would have been all the same.”

      “Ah, your excellency,” interjected Zherkov, keeping his eyes fixed on the hussars, but still speaking with that naïve manner of his, which made it impossible to guess whether what he said was serious or not. “Ah, your excellency! What a way to think! Send two men, then who’s going to give us an Order of St. Vladimir with a ribbon? But this way, even though they’ll take a drubbing, you can still present the squadron and get a ribbon for yourself. Our Bogdanich knows the ways things are done.”

      “Well,” said the officer of the retinue, “that’s grapeshot.” He pointed to the French artillery pieces which were being uncoupled from their limbers and rapidly moving away.

      “But he’s wrong,” continued Zherkov, “I’ll be presented too, we were under fire as well.”

      At that moment a puff of smoke appeared again in the groups with the artillery pieces, then a second and a third and just as the sound of the first shot reached them, a fourth puff appeared. Two sounds one after the other, then a third.

      “O-oh!” gasped Nesvitsky, as if from some searing pain, clutching at the arm of the officer of the retinue. “Look, one of them has fallen, he’s fallen.”

      “Two, I think.”

      “If I were Tsar, I would never go to war. And why are they taking so long?”

      They were hastily reloading the French field guns. Again, this time at even intervals, the puffs of smoke appeared, and the grapeshot rattled and clattered along the bridge. But this time Nesvitsky could not see what was happening there. Thick smoke rose from the bridge. The hussars had managed to set fire to it, and the French batteries were no longer firing at them simply in order to hinder them, but because the guns were trained and there was someone to shoot at. The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars returned to the horse-holders. Two volleys were fired inaccurately and all the grapeshot carried too far, but the final shot landed in the middle of the group of hussars and felled three of them.

      Nikolai Rostov, obsessed by his relations with Bogdanovich, stayed on the bridge, not knowing what he ought to do. There was no one to hack at (in the way that he had always imagined battle) and he could not help in firing the bridge either, because he had not brought a plaited twist of straw with him, as the other soldiers had done. He was standing there looking around when suddenly there was a rattling sound like nuts being scattered along the bridge and one of the hussars closest to him fell on to the railings with a groan. Nikolai ran over to him together with some others. Again someone shouted: “Stretcher!” Four men grabbed hold of the hussar and began lifting him up.

      “Aaaagh! Leave me, for Christ’s sake,” cried the wounded man, but even so they lifted him and set him down. His cap fell off. They picked it up and threw it on to the stretcher. Nikolai Rostov turned away, as though looking for something, he began looking into the distance, at the water of the Danube, at the sky, at the sun. How good the sky looked, how blue, calm and deep! How bright and triumphant the descending sun was! How tenderly lustrous the gleaming water was in the distant Danube! And even better were the distant blue mountains beyond the Danube, the convent, the mysterious ravines, the pine forests filled up to the crowns of the trees with mist … it was quiet and happy there … “I wouldn’t want anything, anything at all, if only I were there,” thought Nikolai. “In just me and this sun there is so much happiness, but here … groaning, suffering, fear and this uncertainty, this haste … Now they’re shouting something again and again everyone has gone running back somewhere, and I’m running with them, and there it is, there is death above me, around me … another instant and I shall never see this sun again, this water, this ravine …” At that moment the sun began moving behind the clouds; ahead of Nikolai another stretcher appeared. The fear of death and the stretcher, and love of the sun and life, all fused together into a single, painfully disturbing impression.

      “Lord God Almighty! The One who is up there in this sky, save, forgive and protect me!” Nikolai whispered to himself.

      The hussars ran up to the horse-holders, their voices became louder and calmer, the stretcher disappeared from view …

      “Well, bwother, had a whiff of gunpowder?” Vaska Denisov’s voice shouted in his ear.

      “It’s all over, but I’m a coward, I’m a coward,” thought Nikolai, and, sighing deeply, he took his Grachik, who was holding one foot out to the side, and began to mount him.

      “What was that, grapeshot?” he asked Denisov.

      “The weal thing, all wight!” shouted Denisov. “We put up a fine show. And it was a foul job! An attack is pleasant work, you’re all on fire, you forget yourself,

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