War and Peace

even days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
ambulance station on the field of Borodinó. His feverish state and the
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor’s
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his
temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
remained in the calèche, but at Mytíshchi the wounded man himself asked
to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into
the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he
had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: “And the tea?”
His remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished
the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew’s pulse, and to his surprise and
dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was dissatisfied because he
knew by experience that if his patient did not die now, he would do so
a little later with greater suffering. Timókhin, the red-nosed major of
Prince Andrew’s regiment, had joined him in Moscow and was being
taken along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the battle of
Borodinó. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s valet, his
coachman, and two orderlies.

They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with
feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and
remember something.

“I don’t want any more. Is Timókhin here?” he asked.

Timókhin crept along the bench to him.

“I am here, your excellency.”

“How’s your wound?”

“Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?”

Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.

“Couldn’t one get a book?” he asked.

“What book?”

“The Gospels. I haven’t one.”

The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he
was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but
reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was
uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak
with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of
mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining that dreadful
place. The doctor was very much displeased about something and made a
change in the dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned
again and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking
them to get him the book and put it under him.

“What trouble would it be to you?” he said. “I have not got one. Please
get it for me and put it under for a moment,” he pleaded in a piteous
voice.

The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.

“You fellows have no conscience,” said he to the valet who was pouring
water over his hands. “For just one moment I didn’t look after you...
It’s such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it.”

“By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!”
said the valet.

The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the
matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked
to be carried into the hut after his calèche had stopped at Mytíshchi.
After growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he
again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled
all that had happened to him, and above all vividly remembered the
moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of the sufferings of
a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to him which promised him
happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again
possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of
happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels.
That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in
which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts,
and when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete
stillness of the night. Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket
chirped from across the passage; someone was shouting and singing in
the street; cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on
the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around the
candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had shaped itself
like a mushroom.

His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to
fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from the
deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can
then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew’s mind was not
in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more
active and clearer than ever, but they acted apart from his will. Most
diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously. At times his
brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had
never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the midst of its
work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength
to turn it back again.

“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived,” he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. “A happiness
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
on man—a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every man
can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only
for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?”

And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a
soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
“piti-piti-piti,” and then “titi,” and then again “piti-piti-piti,” and
“ti-ti” once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out
of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music.
He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so
that this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept
collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic
music—“it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching,” said
Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling
the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice
of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and
heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his
face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not
destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his
face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of
importance. It was something white by the door—the statue of a sphinx,
which also oppressed him.

“But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,” he thought, “and that’s my
legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing
itself out, and ‘piti-piti-piti’ and ‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...?
That’s enough, please leave off!” Prince Andrew painfully entreated
someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of
his mind with peculiar clearness and force.

“Yes—love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves
for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason,
but the love which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy
and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very
essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel
that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love
everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to
love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved
by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I
loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...

“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have
I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did
her.” And he vividly pictured to himself Natásha, not as he had done in
the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but for
the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her
feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for the
first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his
rupture with her. “If only it were possible for me to see her once more!
Just once, looking into those eyes to say...”

“Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!” flopped the fly....
And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of
reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In
that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall,
something was still stretching out, and the candle with its red halo
was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but
besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and
a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had
the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natásha of whom he had just
been thinking.

“Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,” thought Prince Andrew,
trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained
before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew
wished to return to that former world of pure thought, but he could not,
and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice
continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed him and stretched
out, and the strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and
suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and
like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to
himself, Natásha, that same living Natásha whom of all people he most
longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to
him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living
Natásha, and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natásha, motionless
on her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on
him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the
lower part of it something quivered.

Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.

“You?” he said. “How fortunate!”

With a rapid but careful movement Natásha drew nearer to him on her
knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began
kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.

“Forgive me!” she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
“Forgive me!”

“I love you,” said Prince Andrew.

“Forgive...!”

“Forgive what?” he asked.

“Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!” faltered Natásha in a scarcely
audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just
touching it with her lips.

“I love you more, better than before,” said Prince Andrew, lifting her
face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.

Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natásha’s thin pale face, with
its swollen lips, was more than plain—it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew
did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful. They
heard the sound of voices behind them.

Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timókhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare
body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.

“What’s this?” said the doctor, rising from his bed. “Please go away,
madam!”

At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter’s absence, knocked at the door.

Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natásha went out of the room
and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.

From that time, during all the rest of the Rostóvs’ journey, at every
halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natásha never left the
wounded Bolkónski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected
from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a
wounded man.

Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die
in her daughter’s arms during the journey—as, judging by what the doctor
said, it seemed might easily happen—she could not oppose Natásha. Though
with the intimacy now established between the wounded man and Natásha
the thought occurred that should he recover their former engagement
would be renewed, no one—least of all Natásha and Prince Andrew—spoke of
this: the unsettled question of life and death, which hung not only over
Bolkónski but over all Russia, shut out all other considerations.