It was clear that this junker had already asked for a seat more than once elsewhere and everywhere had been refused. He asked in an irresolute and pitiful voice.
“Tell them to give me a seat, for God’s sake.”
“Give him a seat, give him a seat,” said Tushin. “You, uncle, spread a greatcoat under him,” he turned to his favorite soldier. “And where’s the wounded officer?”
“We unloaded him, he died,” someone answered.
“Give this one a seat. Sit down, my dear, sit down. Spread the greatcoat under him, Antonov.”
The junker was Rostov. He was holding one arm with the other hand, was pale, and his lower jaw was trembling feverishly. He was seated on Matvevna, the same cannon from which they had unloaded the dead officer. The greatcoat spread under him had blood on it, which stained Rostov’s breeches and hands.
“What, are you wounded, dear heart?” asked Tushin, coming to the cannon on which Rostov was sitting.
“No, bruised.”
“Why is there blood on the side plate?” asked Tushin.
“That officer bloodied it, Your Honor,” the artillerist replied, wiping the blood with the sleeve of his greatcoat and as if apologizing for the unclean state the gun was in.
They were barely able, with the help of the infantry, to get the guns up the hill, and having reached the village of Guntersdorf, they halted. It grew so dark that it was impossible to make out the soldiers’ uniforms from ten paces away, and the crossfire began to die down. Suddenly, close by on the right-hand side, shouts and gunfire were heard again. Shots flashed in the darkness. This was the last attack of the French, which was being fought off by soldiers sheltering in the village houses. All rushed out of the village again, but Tushin’s guns could not move, and the artillerists, Tushin, and the junker silently looked at each other, awaiting their fate. The crossfire began to die down, and soldiers, talking animatedly, poured out of a side street.
“Unhurt, Petrov?” asked one.
“We roasted ’em, brother. They won’t try that again,” said another.
“Couldn’t see a thing. What a roasting they gave their own! Couldn’t see, it’s so dark, brother. Got anything to drink?”
The French had been beaten off for the last time. And again, in total darkness, Tushin’s guns, as if framed by the humming infantry, moved on somewhere.
It was as if an invisible, gloomy river were flowing in the darkness, all in one direction, with a hum of whispers, talk, and the sounds of hooves and wheels. In the general hum, the groans and voices of the wounded sounded most clearly of all in the gloom of the night. Their groans seemed to fill all the gloom surrounding the troops. Their groans and the gloom of that night were one and the same. After some time there was a stir in the moving crowd. Someone with a suite rode by on a white horse and said something as he rode by.
“What did he say? Where to now? A halt, or what? Did he thank us, or what?” eager questions came from all sides, and the entire moving mass began to push upon itself (evidently those in front had stopped), and a rumor spread that there was an order to halt. They all halted where they were, in the middle of the muddy road.
Fires were lit and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin, having given orders to his company, sent one of the soldiers to look for a dressing station or a doctor for the junker and sat down by the fire the soldiers had started on the road. Rostov also dragged himself to the fire. A feverish trembling from pain, cold, and dampness shook his whole body. Sleep was coming over him irresistibly, yet he could not fall asleep from the tormenting pain in his arm, which ached and found no comfortable position. Now he closed his eyes, then he gazed at the fire, which seemed a hot red to him, then at the stooping, weak little figure of Tushin, who was sitting next to him Turkish fashion. Tushin’s large, kind, and intelligent eyes were directed at him with compassion and commiseration. He saw that Tushin wanted with all his heart to help him in some way and could not.
On all sides one could hear the footsteps and talk of the infantry walking, driving, and settling themselves around. The sounds of voices, footsteps, and horses’ hooves treading in the mud, the crackling of firewood far and near merged into one rippling hum.
Now it was not, as before, an invisible river flowing in the darkness, but like a gloomy sea subsiding and quivering after a storm. Rostov mindlessly watched and listened to what was happening before him and around him. An infantryman came up to the fire, squatted down, put his hands to the fire, and turned his face away.
“You don’t mind, Your Honor?” he said, turning questioningly to Tushin. “I’ve strayed from my company, Your Honor; I don’t know where myself. Worse luck!”
Along with the soldier, an infantry officer with a bound cheek came up to the campfire and addressed Tushin, asking him to move the guns a little bit to let his wagon pass. After the company commander, two soldiers ran to the campfire. They fought and cursed terribly, pulling some boot from each other.
“Sure you picked it up! What a quick-fingers!” one cried in a hoarse voice.
Then came a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloody footcloth, and in an angry voice demanded water from the artillerists.
“What, is a man to die like a dog?” he said.
Tushin ordered them to give him water. Then a merry soldier ran up, asking for a little fire for the infantry.
“Some hot little fire for the infantry! Keep well, dear countrymen, thanks for the fire, we’ll pay it back with interest,” he said, carrying the burning brand somewhere into the darkness.
After this soldier, four soldiers carrying something heavy on a greatcoat passed by the campfire. One of them tripped.
“The devils left firewood on the road,” he growled.
“He’s dead, why carry him around?” asked one of them.
“Eh, you!”
And they disappeared into the darkness with their burden.
“What? it hurts?” Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
“Yes.”
“The general wants you, Your Honor. He’s staying in a cottage here,” said the fireworker, coming up to Tushin.
“At once, dear heart.”
Tushin got up and, buttoning his greatcoat and smoothing himself out, left the campfire…
Not far from the artillerists’ campfire, in a cottage prepared for him, Prince Bagration was sitting over dinner, talking with some commanders of branches who had gathered with him. There was the little old man with half-closed eyes, greedily gnawing on a lamb bone, and the twenty-two-year irreproachable general, flushed from a glass of vodka and dinner, and the staff officer with the signet ring, and Zherkov, looking around uneasily at them all, and Prince Andrei, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly shining eyes.
In the corner of the cottage stood a captured French standard, and the auditor with the naïve face fingered the fabric of the standard and shook his head in perplexity, perhaps because he was indeed interested in the look of the standard, or perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look at the table where there was no place set for him. In the cottage next door was a French colonel, taken prisoner by the dragoons. Our officers clustered around him, studying him. Prince Bagration thanked particular superiors and asked for details about the action and the losses. The regimental commander who had been reviewed at Braunau reported to the prince that, as soon as the action began, he withdrew from the woods, gathered the woodcutters and, letting them pass by him, started a bayonet attack with two battalions and overwhelmed the French.
“As soon as I saw that the first battalion was in disorder, Your Excellency, I stood there on the road and thought: ‘I’ll let them pass and then meet them with ranged fire,’ and that’s what I did.”
The regimental commander had so wanted to do that, he had been so sorry that he had had no time to do it, that it seemed to him that all this was exactly so. And perhaps it really was so? As if one could make out in that confusion what was and was not so?