Анатолий Шигапов – Peace, war and peace (страница 7)

He fell silent, leaned back against the cushions, and closed his eyes. The britzka was warm, smelling of leather, horses, and some grass that must have stuck to the wheels. Pierre did not sleep - he thought, and his thoughts were heavy and unwieldy, like those stones he had once seen on a riverbank - big, gray, mossy, that no one would ever move from their place.

Yermolai, turning, saw that the master was not crying but also not smiling. His face was pale and strained, and his eyes, when he opened them, looked inward at his own thoughts, unknown to the coachman.

"Master," said Yermolai, wanting at least to break the silence that was becoming as heavy as before a storm, "don't be sad. The road is long, and in Paris, they say, it is merry. Theaters, balls, all sorts of establishments for the nobility. Your count will surely not stint you - he'll give you money. You'll go out, see people, show yourself."

Pierre heard, but did not understand at once. Then he turned to Yermolai, and something like surprise flashed in his eyes - that a coachman, a simple peasant, should think of theaters and balls.

"Merry?" he repeated. "Only recently they were executing people in the squares there. Every day. Executing them for thinking differently from those in power. C'est la révolution. That's not a time for balls."

Yermolai did not understand the French words. He did not know French at all, because in their village there were no tutors or boarding schools; they were taught only to pray to God and work in the fields. But he noticed that the master's face had grown even paler, and tears were welling in his eyes - not the bitter, loud tears of a punished child, but quiet, sparse tears that flow down the cheeks by themselves, and the one who weeps does not even notice them until he tastes salt on his lips.

"What is this?" thought Yermolai. "The boy is crying. About what? That people were killed in France? Or that he is being sent alone to a foreign land?" He felt sorry for the master - with that simple, artless pity that an old man feels for a young one going where he himself will never go.

He was silent for a moment, then flicked the horses - not hard, just for order - and said, looking straight ahead:

"Never mind, master. Everywhere there are people, everywhere there is death. In Paris there are people, in Moscow as well. And don't cry. You are young, you have your whole life ahead. Perhaps it's for the best that they're sending you abroad. You'll gain wisdom, and without wisdom you're as helpless as without hands."

Pierre wiped his tears with his sleeve - clumsily, like a child - and again stared at the sky. The sky was high, summer, that pure, deep blue that appears only in June, when the earth has already warmed and the rains have not yet come. Clouds ran across the sky, and Pierre watched them, thinking that clouds knew neither grief nor joy, nor fear nor hope - they simply floated, and it was all the same to them who looked at them and what thoughts came to the head of the one lying in the britzka driving to an unknown destination.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine Paris - big, noisy, with tall houses and narrow streets where people had lately been executed. But Paris would not come to mind. Instead, Moscow came to mind - familiar, dear, with the smell of pies and the ringing of bells. And his father, the old count, who remained there on the porch, waving his hand until the britzka disappeared around the bend.

"Will I ever return?" thought Pierre. "Will I see him again?"

And there was no answer. Because no one knew the answer - not he, a twelve-year-old boy, not Yermolai, the old coachman, not Count Kirill Vladimirovich himself, who might die before his son reached the border.

Yermolai drove in silence, only occasionally shouting at the horses and clicking his whip. The road went uphill, then down; the britzka creaked, the wheels rattled over stones, the wind whistled in their ears. The coachman thought of his own - of home, of his wife, of his children left in the village, and that in autumn he would have to mow hay, and he had not yet laid in firewood for the winter. And he also thought how strangely life was arranged: here he was, a peasant, driving a master on a long journey to a foreign land, and the master was crying because people killed people. Yet the master himself, if he wished, could also kill - not with his own hands, but with others', because he had money, and whoever has money has power. And no one would ask him: why did you kill? And why this was so - neither Yermolai, nor Pierre, nor the wisest man could explain.

"Ah, life," thought Yermolai and flicked the horses. "Life is like a road: you drive and you don't know what's around the bend. Maybe a village, maybe a pit, maybe bandits. But you must keep going."

He turned to look at the master. Pierre was asleep, curled up on the threadbare cushions, and his face in sleep was calm, childish, without the thoughtfulness and pain that tormented him by day. Yermolai looked at the sky - high, blue, with swiftly running clouds - crossed himself, and drove the horses faster, because there were still fifteen versts to the night's lodging, and in summer it grows late late, but still it grows late, and he had to make it before it got completely dark and before the master woke and began again to ask questions that had no answers.

The horses broke into a trot; the britzka clattered more quickly; dust rose from under the wheels and for a moment hid the sky, the fields, the forest, and then settled again. Yermolai looked ahead and thought that all of this - dust, road, master's tears - would all pass, only memory would remain, and even that would be erased, as the first rain would erase these wheel tracks on the dusty road. And life would go on, and no one would remember that an old coachman had driven a twelve-year-old boy on a long journey to a foreign land, and that the boy had cried over what could not be mended.

VII

Old cook Karp, who had served in the Bolkonsky kitchen since the time of the late prince, the present prince's father, and remembered days when in Bald Hills they had never heard of Prussian uniforms or parade drills, and everything was done in the old way, by grandfather's custom - stood by the huge stove, built of Dutch brick, stirring sterlet soup in a cast-iron pot - a soup the old prince loved above all other dishes and demanded at table every time he returned from his travels. Karp was fat, red-faced, with gray mustaches and small, quick eyes that seemed to see everything that went on in the kitchen but nothing beyond it. Yet on this day, Karp had to see and hear more than usual, because the kitchen door to the dining room was not fully closed, and through the crack came the voices of the old prince and the young master - Prince Andrei, who had spent the whole summer in Bald Hills, overseeing the estate, and who, as the household said, was very bored and kept looking at the road as if waiting for someone who never came.

The old prince had returned from Petersburg two days earlier - angry, tired, with a face that made even the servants, who had seen all sorts, try to avoid meeting his eye. He beat no one and shouted at no one, but walked about the house, tapping his cane, and spoke in a low voice, repeating one word that Karp could not make out but that he understood was not good. And today, after dinner, the old prince summoned his son to the dining room, and Karp, having put the soup on the fire and ordered his assistant to slice the bread, went himself to listen, because the curiosity he had had since childhood had not dimmed even in old age, though he knew the master would not have liked it.

In the dining room - a large, gloomy chamber with portraits of ancestors on the walls and a long oak table around which on formal days the whole family gathered - the old prince sat in his usual place, in an armchair with a high back. Although no longer in his traveling clothes but in a house coat, he still looked as if he had just come from a parade drill: his face was red, his eyes burned with that special, unkind fire that appeared whenever he spoke of politics. Andrei stood by the window, his hands clasped behind his back, looking not at his father but into the distance, at the garden where the oak was already turning yellow, and at the low autumn sky.

"Paul is mad," said the old prince, not raising his voice but so that every word rang like a taut string. "It is not the madness that doctors treat - no, it is the madness of power, the madness of a man who suddenly realizes that everything is permitted him. C'est un fou dangereux. He wants to clothe the entire army in Prussian uniforms. The entire army, do you hear? Our Suvorov wonder-heroes will walk about in tight jackets and high boots like some Frederickian toy soldiers. And Suvorov - in disgrace. Suvorov, who made Russia famous throughout Europe - in exile. For what? For daring to have his own opinion and not fearing to say: 'Powder is not a cannon, a curl is not a cannon, a tail is not a saber, and I am no German.'"