All the while he was in the battery by the cannon, as often happens, he had never stopped hearing the sounds of the officers’ voices, talking in the lean-to, but had not understood a single word of what they were saying. Suddenly the sound of voices from the lean-to struck him with such soul-felt tones that he involuntarily began to listen.
“No, dear heart,” spoke a pleasant voice, which seemed familiar to Prince Andrei, “I say that if it were possible to know what there will be after death, none of us would be afraid of death. That’s so, dear heart.”
Another, younger voice interrupted him:
“Afraid or not, all the same you can’t avoid it.”
“But you’re still afraid! Eh, you learned people,” said a third, manly voice, interrupting the two others. “That’s why you artillerists are so learned, because you can tote everything along with you, both vodka and grub.”
And the owner of the manly voice, probably an infantry officer, laughed.
“But you’re still afraid,” the first, familiar voice went on. “Afraid of the unknown, that’s what. However much we say that the soul will go to heaven…we know that there is no heaven, but only atmosphere.”18
Again the manly voice interrupted the artillerist.
“Well, let’s have some of your herb liqueur, Tushin,” it said.
“Ah, it’s that same captain who stood without boots in the canteen,” thought Prince Andrei, glad to have identified the pleasant, philosophizing voice.
“Herb liqueur’s possible,” said Tushin, “but even so, to understand the future life…” He did not finish.
Just then a whistling was heard in the air; closer, closer, faster and louder, louder and faster, and a cannonball, as if not finishing all it had to say, crashed to the ground with inhuman force not far from the lean-to, throwing up a spray of dirt. The earth seemed to gasp from the terrible blow.
At that same moment little Tushin came running out of the lean-to ahead of everyone else, his pipe askew in his teeth; his kindly, intelligent face was slightly pale. After him the owner of the manly voice came out, a dashing infantry officer, and ran to his company, buttoning himself up as he ran.
XVII
Prince Andrei, mounted up, stayed at the battery, looking at the smoke of the cannon from which the cannonball had come flying. His eyes ran over the vast space. He saw only that the previously immobile masses of the French began to sway, and that there was indeed a battery to the left. The smoke there had not yet dispersed. Two French horsemen, probably adjutants, were galloping over the hill. A small column of the enemy, clearly visible, was moving down the hillside, probably to reinforce the line. The smoke of the first shot had not scattered when another puff appeared, followed by a report. The battle had begun. Prince Andrei turned his horse and rode back to Grunt to look for Prince Bagration. Behind him he heard the cannonade growing louder and heavier. Evidently ours had begun to respond. Below, in the place where the envoys had passed, musketfire was heard.
Lemarrois had just come galloping to Murat with the menacing letter from Bonaparte, and the shamed Murat, wishing to smooth over his mistake, at once moved his troops up to the center and around both flanks, hoping before evening and the emperor’s arrival to crush the insignificant detachment that stood facing him.
“It’s begun! Here it is!” thought Prince Andrei, feeling the blood beginning to rush more quickly to his heart. “But where, then? How will my Toulon declare itself?” he thought.
Riding among the same companies that had been eating kasha and drinking vodka a quarter of an hour ago, he saw everywhere the same quick movements of soldiers lining up and taking their muskets, and on all faces he recognized the feeling of animation that was in his heart. “It’s begun! Here it is! Fearful and merry!” spoke the face of every soldier and officer.
Before he reached the still-unfinished fortification, he saw horsemen moving towards him in the evening light of the gray, autumnal day. The foremost, in a felt cloak and peaked astrakhan cap, was riding a white horse. It was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrei stopped to wait for him. Prince Bagration reined in his horse and, recognizing Prince Andrei, nodded to him. He went on looking ahead all the while Prince Andrei was telling him what he had seen.
The expression “It’s begun! Here it is!” was even on the firm, swarthy face of Prince Bagration, with its half-closed eyes, lackluster as if from want of sleep. Prince Andrei peered into that immobile face with anxious curiosity, and wished to know whether this man thought and felt, and what he thought and felt, at that moment. “Is there anything there behind that immobile face?” Prince Andrei asked himself, looking at him. Prince Bagration inclined his head as a sign of assent to Prince Andrei’s words, and said “Very good” with such an expression as if everything that was taking place and that had been reported to him was precisely what he had already foreseen. Prince Andrei, breathless from fast riding, spoke quickly. Prince Bagration pronounced words especially slowly with his Oriental accent, as if to suggest that they were not hurrying anywhere. Nevertheless, he started his horse at a trot towards Tushin’s battery. Prince Andrei and the suite followed behind him. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the prince’s personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty, on a handsome bobtailed horse, and a state councillor, an auditor, who had asked to come to the battle out of curiosity. The auditor, a plump man with a plump face and a naïve smile of joy, looked around him, jolting along on his horse, and made a strange sight in his camlet coat, on a goverment issue saddle, among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants.
“See, he wants to have a look at a battle,” Zherkov said to Bolkonsky, pointing to the auditor, “but he’s got a knot in the pit of his stomach.”
“Well, enough from you,” the auditor said with a beaming smile, naïve and at the same time sly, as if he was flattered to be the butt of Zherkov’s jokes, and as if he was deliberately trying to seem stupider than he really was.
“Très drôle, mon monsieur prince,”*222 said the staff officer on duty. (He remembered that there was some special way of addressing a prince in French, but was unable to get it right.)
Just then they were all approaching Tushin’s battery, and a cannonball landed in front of them.
“What fell?” the auditor asked, smiling naïvely.
“French pancakes,” said Zherkov.
“So that’s what they hit you with?” asked the auditor. “How frightful!”
And he seemed to melt all over with satisfaction. He had barely finished speaking when there again came an unexpected, dreadful whistle, suddenly ending in a thud against something liquid, and f-f-flop—a Cossack, riding a little to the right and behind the auditor, crashed to the ground with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer on duty crouched low to their saddles and turned their horses away. The auditor stopped in front of the Cossack, examining him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, the horse was still thrashing.
Prince Bagration, narrowing his eyes, turned to look and, seeing the cause of the confusion, looked away indifferently, as if saying: “Is it worth bothering with such stupidities?” He stopped his horse the way a good rider does, bent over a little, and straightened his sword, which had caught in his felt cloak. The sword was an old one, not the kind men wore now. Prince Andrei recalled the story of how Suvorov had made a gift of his sword to Bagration in Italy, and this recollection was especially pleasing to him at that moment. They rode up to the battery near which Bolkonsky had stood when he examined the battlefield.
“Whose company?” Prince Bagration asked a fireworker standing by the caissons.
He asked, “Whose company?” but essentially he was asking, “You’re not scared here, are you?” And the fireworker understood that.