Читать книгу War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой, Leo Tolstoy, Liev N. Tolstói - Страница 55

Two enemy shots had already flown over the bridge, and on the bridge itself there was a crush. In the middle of the bridge, dismounted from his horse, his fat body pressed against the railings, stood Prince Nesvitsky. He glanced back, laughing, at his Cossack, who was standing a few paces behind him, holding the two horses’ bridles. No sooner did Prince Nesvitsky try to move forward than the soldiers and wagons bore down on him and squeezed him against the railings again, and there was nothing left for him to do but smile.

“Hey, you, little brother!” the Cossack said to a transport soldier with a wagon, who was trying to force his way through the infantry crowding close around his wheels and horse. “Look at you! Can’t be bothered to wait to let the general through.” But the soldier, paying no heed to the title of general, shouted at the soldiers who were blocking his way. “Hey there, brothers! Keep to the left, wait!” But his fellow countrymen, crowding shoulder to shoulder and interlocking bayonets in an unbroken line, moved along the bridge in a single compact mass. Glancing down over the railings, Nesvitsky saw the swift, turbid, low waves of the Enns pursuing and overtaking each other, fusing together, rippling and curving around the piles of the bridge. Glancing at the bridge, he saw the equally uniform, living waves of soldiers, the tasselled cords, shakos with hoods, knapsacks, bayonets and long guns, and under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks and resignedly weary expressions, and feet moving through the sticky mud that had been dragged onto the wooden boards of the bridge. Sometimes among the uniform waves of soldiers, like a splash of white foam in the waves of the Enns, an officer in a cloak squeezed his way through the soldiers, with features that were different from theirs, sometimes, like a chip of wood swirling along the river, a hussar on foot, an orderly or a local resident was carried along the bridge by the waves of infantry, sometimes, like a log floating along the river, a company cart or officer’s cart, loaded up to the top and covered with sheets of leather, floated along the bridge.

“Look at them, like a dam’s burst,” said the Cossack, coming dejectedly to a halt. “Are there many more of you over there?”

“A mellion, nigh on!” said a jolly soldier, winking, as he walked past in a torn greatcoat and was lost to view; behind him came another, old, soldier.

“Just watch how he” (he was the enemy) “starts peppering the bridge now,” the old soldier said gloomily to his comrade, “that’ll stop you scratching yourself.” And the soldier passed on. Behind him came another soldier riding on a cart.

“Where the hell did you stick those puttees?” said an orderly, running after the cart and rummaging in the back of it. And he too passed by with the cart. He was followed by some jolly soldiers who were clearly tipsy.

“The way he let him have it, the darling man, smashed his musket-butt right in his teeth …” one soldier with his greatcoat tucked up high said gleefully, flinging his arms out.

“That’s right enough, sweet, tasty ham,” another chortled. And they passed on by, so that Nesvitsky never did find out who was hit in the teeth and what the ham had to do with anything.

“The rush they’re in, because he fired one shot from a distance. You’d think they were going to kill everyone,” a non-commissioned officer said in angry reproach.

“The moment that thing flew past me, uncle, that shot,” a young soldier with a huge mouth said cheerfully, barely able to stop himself laughing, “I just froze. Really, honest to God, I was that frightened, it was terrible!” this soldier said, as though boasting that he had been frightened.

That soldier also passed by: following behind him came a cart unlike all those that had passed by so far. It was a German Vorspan with a pair of horses pulling a load that seemed to be an entire household: tethered behind the Vorspan, which was driven by a German, was a beautiful brindled cow with an immense udder. Sitting on feather mattresses were a woman with a babe-in-arms, an old woman and a young, healthy German girl with a crimson flush on her cheeks. Evidently these local evacuees had been allowed through by special permission. The eyes of all the soldiers turned to the women and while the cart was passing by, moving along step by step, all of the soldiers’ remarks concerned only the women. All of their faces bore an almost identical smile of obscene thoughts about the one woman.

“What, a kraut clearing out as well.”

“Sell me the missus,” said another soldier, emphasising the last word, to the German who was walking with long strides, angry and frightened, with his eyes cast down.

“Just look how dolled up she is! Devils they are!”

“You ought to get billeted with them, Fedotov!”

“We’ve seen their kind, brother!”

“Where are you going?” asked an infantry officer who was eating an apple, also half-smiling as he looked at the beautiful girl. The German showed by closing his eyes that he did not understand.

RUSSIAN ARMY MARCHING ACROSS THE RIVER ENNS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867

“Take it if you like,” said the officer, handing the apple to the girl. The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitsky, like everyone on the bridge, kept his eyes fixed on the women until they had driven past. When they had driven past, the same kind of soldiers walked by, with the same kind of talk until finally, everyone came to a halt. As often happens, the horses in a company wagon had baulked at the end of the bridge and the entire crowd had to wait.

“What are they stopping for? There’s no order at all!” said the soldiers. “Where are you pushing? Damn you! Can’t be bothered to wait. It’ll be worse again when he sets fire to the bridge. Look, they’ve got an officer jammed in here too,” the halted crowds said on all sides, looking each other over, and they all pressed forward towards the way out. Glancing at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitsky suddenly heard another sound new to him, something drawing closer, something big that plopped into the water.

“Look how far he’s flinging them!” a soldier standing close by said grimly, glancing round at the sound.

“He’s encouraging us to get across quick,” another said agitatedly. The crowd began moving again. Nesvitsky realised that it had been a shot.

“Hey, Cossack, give me my horse!” he said. “Right, you! Stand aside! Stand aside! Make way!”

With a great effort he managed to reach his horse. Still continuing to shout, he began moving forward. The soldiers squeezed together to make way for him, but then bore against him again so strongly that they squeezed his leg tight, and the ones closest to him were not to blame, because they were being crushed even more powerfully.

“Nesvitsky! Nesvitsky! You ugly pig!” a hoarse voice called out from behind at just that moment.

Nesvitsky glanced round and fifteen paces away, separated from him by the living mass of moving infantry, he saw Vaska Denisov, red-faced, black-haired and tousled, with his cap on the back of his head and a hussar’s pelisse thrown dashingly across his shoulder.

“Order these devils to make way,” shouted Denisov, evidently in the throes of a fit of passion, rolling his glittering eyes as black as coal in their inflamed whites and waving his sabre still in its scabbard, holding it in a naked little hand as red as his face.

“Hey! Vasya!” Nesvitsky replied happily. “What are you up to?”

“The squadron can’t get through,” shouted Vaska Denisov, baring his white teeth angrily, spurring on his beautiful black thoroughbred Bedouin, who, twitching his ears as he ran up against bayonets, was snorting and scattering spray around himself from his curb-bit, beating his hooves resoundingly on the boards of the bridge, and seemed ready to leap over the railings of the bridge, if his rider would allow him. “What’s this? Like sheep! Exactly like sheep! Exactly … give way! Stop, over there, you, the cart, damn it! I’ll slice you with my sabre …” he shouted, actually baring his sabre and beginning to wave it about.

The soldiers squeezed against each other with frightened faces, and Denisov joined Nesvitsky.

“Why aren’t you drunk today, then?” Nesvitsky said to Denisov when he rode up to him.

“They won’t even give you time to get drunk!” replied Vaska Denisov. “All day long, dragging the regiment this way and that way. Let’s fight, if we’re going to. But God only knows what’s going on!”

“What a dandy you are today!” said Nesvitsky, examining Denisov’s new pelisse and saddlecloth.

Denisov smiled, took a handkerchief that gave off a smell of perfume out of his flap pocket, and thrust it under Nesvitsky’s nose.

“But of course, I’m going into action! I shaved, brushed my teeth and put on scent.”

The imposing figure of Denisov, accompanied by the Cossack, and Denisov’s determination, waving his sabre and shouting wildly, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through to the other side of the bridge and halted the infantry. At the exit Nesvitsky found the colonel to whom he had to pass on the orders and, having carried out his assignment, set off back.

After clearing the way, Denisov halted at the entrance to the bridge. Casually restraining the stallion that was straining to get to its fellows and stamping its foot, he looked at the squadron moving towards him. The hollow echoing of hoof beats rang along the boards of the bridge, as though there were several horses galloping, and the squadron, riding four men abreast in each row, with the officers in front, stretched out along the bridge and began emerging on to the other side.

Handsome young Peronsky, the finest horseman in the regiment and a rich man, brought up the rear, weaving to and fro on his three-thousand-rouble stallion. The foot soldiers, forced to halt, jostled in the trampled mud by the bridge, watching the clean, dandified hussars riding past them in strict order with that special feeling of spiteful, derisive antipathy with which different kinds of troops meet each other.

“Fine smart lads! Just the thing for the Podnovinskoe Park!”

“What are they good for? They only keep them for show!” said another.

“Don’t kick up the dust, infantry!” joked a hussar whose horse pranced and splashed mud on a foot soldier.

“If I put you through a couple of days’ marching with a knapsack, your fancy laces would soon be looking tattered,” said the infantryman, wiping the mud from his face with his sleeve, “perched up there like a bird, not a man!”

“And if they sat you on a horse, Zinkin, you’d manage really well,” said a corporal, mocking the thin little soldier hunched over under the weight of his knapsack.

“Put a club between your legs, and that will be your steed,” the hussar responded.