24.9.23

A scene on the battlefield . . . from WAR AND PEACE (Pt. 3, Ch. XVI) by Leo Tolstoy

Prince Andrey and the battalion were within twenty paces of the cannons. He heard the bullets whizzing over him incessantly, and continually the soldiers moaned and fell to the right and left of him. But he did not look at them; his eyes were fixed on what was going on in front of him—at the battery. He could now see distinctly the figure of the red-haired artilleryman, with a shako crushed on one side, pulling a mop one way, while a French soldier was tugging it the other way. Prince Andrey could see distinctly now the distraught, and at the same time exasperated expression of the faces of the two men, who were obviously quite unconscious of what they were doing.

“What are they about?” wondered Prince Andrey, watching them; “why doesn’t the red-haired artilleryman run, since he has no weapon? Why doesn’t the Frenchman stab him? He won’t have time to run away before the Frenchman will think of his gun, and knock him on the head.” Another Frenchman did, indeed, run up to the combatants with his gun almost overbalancing him, and the fate of the red-haired artilleryman who still had no conception of what was awaiting him, and was pulling the mop away in triumph, was probably sealed. But Prince Andrey did not see how it ended. It seemed to him as though a hard stick was swung full at him by some soldier near, dealing him a violent blow on the head. It hurt a little, but the worst of it was that the pain distracted his attention, and prevented him from seeing what he was looking at.

“What’s this? am I falling? my legs are giving way under me,” he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds creeping quietly over it. “How quietly, peacefully, and triumphantly, and not like us running, shouting, and fighting, not like the Frenchman and artilleryman dragging the mop from one another with frightened and frantic faces, how differently are those clouds creeping over that lofty, limitless sky. How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! all is vanity, all is a cheat, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even that is not, there is nothing but peace and stillness. And thank God! . . .”


[translated by Constance Garnett]