A Short Story from War and Peace

(Dear Reader: I offer the following as a placeholder for the piece I am still at work on. For me, it’s an example of what really great writing is. Working Man)

If you haven’t read War and Peace, here is an easy way to get a feeling for it in a few pages. Because War and Peace is partly about contingency, about the accidental nature of the events in our lives, Tolstoy had to invent a way to create narrative tension without a traditional plot. One way he came up with was the stringing together of vignettes, like the following one, which takes place as an interlude against the larger backdrop of the war. Prince Andrei is a major character of War and Peace. Both War and Peace and Anna Karenina are full of these “set pieces.” Translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky.

A Short Story from War and Peace

From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat. The enemy followed after them. On the tenth of August, the regiment under Prince Andrei’s command was going down the high road past the avenue that led to Bald Hills. The heat and drought had lasted for more than three weeks. Every day fleecy clouds crossed the sky, occasionally covering the sun; but towards evening it cleared up again, and the sun set in a reddish brown murk. Only the heavy dews at night refreshed the earth. The standing wheat was scorched and spilled its grains. The swamps dried up. The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food in the sun-parched meadows. It was cool only at night and in the woods, while the dew lasted. But on the road, on the high road along which the troops were marching, there was not that coolness even at night and in the woods. There was no dew to be seen on the sandy dust of the road, churned up more than half a foot deep. As soon as dawn broke, movement began. Baggage trains and artillery went noiselessly, sunk to the hubs, and infantry sunk to the ankles in the soft, suffocating, hot dust that did not cool down overnight. Part of this dust was kneaded by feet and wheels, the rest rose and hung in a cloud over the troops, filling the eyes, hair, ears, nostrils, and, above all, the lungs of the men and animals moving along this road. The higher the sun rose, the higher rose the cloud of dust, and through this fine, hot dust one could look with the naked eye at the sun, not covered by clouds. The sun looked like a large crimson ball. There was no wind, and the men suffocated in this unstirring atmosphere. They walked on, tying handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. When they came to a village, they all rushed to the wells. They fought over the water and drank it down to the mud.

Prince Andrei was in command of a regiment, and the organization of the regiment, the well-being of his men, the necessity of receiving and giving orders, diverted him. The burning and abandoning of Smolensk marked an epoch for Prince Andrei. The new feeling of anger against the foe made him forget his own grief. He was devoted entirely to the affairs of his regiment, he was solicitous of his men and officers and affectionate with them. In his regiment he was known as our prince; they were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and mild only with the men of his regiment, with Timokhin and the rest, totally new people and in strange surroundings, who could not know and understand his past; but as soon as he ran into someone from his former life, some staff officer, he at once bristled up again; he became spiteful, mocking, and contemptuous. He was repulsed by everything that bound him to the memory of the past, and therefore he tried, in relation to his former world, only not to be unfair and to fulfill his duty.

True, everything presented itself in a dark, gloomy light to Prince Andrei—especially after the abandoning of Smolensk (which, to his mind, could and should have been defended) on the sixth of August, and after his ailing father had to flee to Moscow and leave to be pillaged his beloved Bald Hills, which he had built and peopled; but despite that, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrei could think about a subject completely independent of general problems—about his regiment. On the tenth of August, the column of which his regiment formed part drew level with Bald Hills. Two days earlier, Prince Andrei had received news that his father, son, and sister had left for Moscow. Though Prince Andrei had nothing to do there, he, with his own peculiar wish to exacerbate his grief, decided that he had to stop and see Bald Hills.

He ordered a horse saddled for him and while on the march rode to his father’s estate, where he was born and spent his childhood. Going past the pond where there were always dozens of village women talking together, wielding battledores, and rinsing their laundry, Prince Andrei noticed that there was no one at the pond, and a little raft, torn free, half sunk in the water, was floating in the middle of it. Prince Andrei rode up to the watch box. There was no one by the stone gates of the entrance, and the door was open. The footpaths of the garden were already overgrown, and calves and horses wandered over the English park. Prince Andrei rode up to the conservatory: there was broken glass, some of the trees in tubs were overturned, and some were dry. He called out for Taras, the gardener. No one replied. Having ridden around the conservatory to the outdoor beds, he saw that the carved wooden fence was all broken and plums had been pulled off with their branches. An old peasant (Prince Andrei used to see him by the gates in his childhood) was sitting on a little green bench plaiting a bast shoe.

He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrei ride up. He was sitting on the bench on which the old prince had liked to sit, and beside him strips of bast were hanging on the branches of a broken and withered magnolia. Prince Andrei rode up to the house. Several lindens in the old garden had been cut down, a piebald mare with a foal was walking right in front of the house between the rosebushes. The shutters were closed. One window on the ground floor was open. A serf boy, seeing Prince Andrei, ran into the house.

Alpatych, having sent the family away, had remained alone at Bald Hills; he was at home reading The Lives of the Saints. Learning of Prince Andrei’s arrival, he came out of the house with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning himself up, hastily went to the prince and, without saying anything, wept, kissing Prince Andrei on the knee.

Then he turned away, vexed at his own weakness, and began to report on the state of things. Everything valuable and costly had been transported to Bogucharovo. The grain, up to eight hundred bushels, had also been taken there; the hay and this year’s spring crops, remarkable according to Alpatych, had been mowed while still green and taken—by the troops. The peasants were devastated, some had also left for Bogucharovo, a small number had remained.

Prince Andrei, not hearing him out, asked when his father and sister had left, meaning when they had left for Moscow. Alpatych, assuming he had been asked about their departure for Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh, and again expanded on details of the estate management, asking for orders.

“Shall I let the troops have oats on receipt? We still have nearly five thousand bushels left,” asked Alpatych.

“What answer can I give him?” thought Prince Andrei, looking at the old man’s bald head shining in the sun and reading in the expression of his face that he understood how inappropriate his questions were, but that he had asked them just to stifle his own grief.

“Yes, let them,” he said.

“If you’ve been pleased to notice disorders in the garden,” said Alpatych, “it was impossible to prevent them: three regiments passed through and spent the night, dragoons in particular. I wrote down the rank and name of the commander so as to present a petition.”

“Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay if the enemy takes it?” Prince Andrei asked him.

Alpatych, turning his face towards Prince Andrei, looked at him; and suddenly, in a solemn gesture, he raised his arm aloft.

“He is my protector, let His will be done!” he said.

A crowd of peasants and servants walked through the meadow with uncovered heads, approaching Prince Andrei.

“Well, good-bye!” said Prince Andrei, leaning down to Alpatych. “Go away yourself, take whatever you can with you, and tell the people to leave for Ryazan or the estate outside Moscow.” Alpatych pressed himself to his leg and burst into sobs. Prince Andrei carefully removed him and, spurring his horse, galloped down the avenue.

By the outside beds the old man still sat as indifferently as a fly on the face of a dead loved one, tapping the bast shoe on its last, and two girls, their skirts filled with plums picked from the conservatory trees, ran out from there and met Prince Andrei. Seeing the young master, the older girl, with a frightened look on her face, seized her younger friend by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, having no time to pick up the spilled green plums.

Prince Andrei turned away from them in frightened haste, afraid of letting them notice that he had seen them. He felt sorry for this pretty, frightened girl. He was afraid to look at her, but at the same time he had an irresistible desire to do so. A new, comforting, and reassuring feeling came over him when, looking at these girls, he realized the existence of other human interests, totally foreign to him and as legitimate as those that concerned him. These girls obviously had a passionate wish for one thing—to take and finish eating those green plums without being caught—and together with them Prince Andrei wished success to their undertaking. He could not help glancing at them one more time. Supposing themselves out of danger, they left their cover and, piping something in their high little voices, holding up their skirts, ran merrily and quickly with their bare, suntanned little feet over the grass of the meadow.

Prince Andrei had been somewhat refreshed, leaving the dusty area of the high road along which the troops were moving. But not far from Bald Hills, he came back to the road and caught up with his regiment at a stopping place by a dam on a small pond. It was past one in the afternoon. The sun, a red ball in the dust, scorched and burned his back unbearably through his black tunic. Dust, the same as ever, hung motionless over the halted troops buzzing with talk. There was no wind. As he rode across the dam, Prince Andrei smelled the slime and freshness of the pond. He wanted to go into the water—however dirty it was. He glanced around at the pond, from which came shouts and loud laughter. The small, muddy green pond had evidently risen some eight inches, overflowing the dam, because it was filled with the naked human bodies of soldiers flopping about in it, white with brick-red hands, faces, and necks. All that naked, white human flesh, with whoops and guffaws, was flopping about in the dirty puddle like carp in a bucket. This flopping about suggested merriment, and that made it particularly sad.

One fair-haired young soldier—Prince Andrei knew him—from the third company, with a leather band on his ankle, was crossing himself as he backed up to make his run and dive into the water; another, a black-haired, always disheveled noncommissioned officer, up to his waist in the water, his muscular torso twitching, grunted joyfully, raising his black, hairy arms and pouring water over his head. There were sounds of slapping, shrieking, and hooting.

On the banks, on the dam, in the pond, everywhere there was white, healthy, muscular flesh. The officer Timokhin, with a little red nose, was wiping himself on the dam and, seeing the prince, became embarrassed, yet ventured to address him:

“It’s nice, Your Excellency, if you’d be so pleased!” he said.

“It’s dirty,” said Prince Andrei, wincing.

“We’ll clear it for you right away.” And Timokhin, still undressed, ran to clear it.

“The prince wants to.” “Which? Our prince?” voices said and everybody started hurrying, so that Prince Andrei barely managed to calm them down. He decided it would be better to have a shower in the shed.

“Flesh, the body, chair à canon!” he thought, looking at his naked body, and he shuddered, not so much from the cold as from revulsion and horror, incomprehensible to himself, at the sight of this enormous number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.

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