War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy [interesting novels to read .TXT] 📗

on avoiding the contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous day’s thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited. “Here it comes⁠ ⁠… this one is coming our way again!” he thought, listening to an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. “One, another! Again! It has hit.⁠ ⁠…” He stopped and looked at the ranks. “No, it has gone over. But this one has hit!” And again he started trying to reach the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had been hit⁠—a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.

“Adjutant!” he shouted. “Order them not to crowd together.”

The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince Andréy. From the other side a battalion commander rode up.

“Look out!” came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andréy and close to the battalion commander’s horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing the major, and galloped aside. The horse’s terror infected the men.

“Lie down!” cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.

Prince Andréy hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the field and the meadow.

“Can this be death?” thought Prince Andréy, looking with a quite new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. “I cannot, I do not wish to die. I love life⁠—I love this grass, this earth, this air.⁠ ⁠…” He thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were looking at him.

“It’s shameful, sir!” he said to the adjutant. “What⁠ ⁠…”

He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andréy started to one side, raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several officers ran up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood was welling out making a large stain on the grass.

The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the officers. Prince Andréy lay on his chest with his face in the grass, breathing heavily and noisily.

“What are you waiting for? Come along!”

The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.

“Pick him up, lift him, it’s all the same!” cried someone.

They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.

“Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My God!”⁠—voices among the officers were heard saying.

“It flew a hair’s breadth past my ear,” said the adjutant.

The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing station.

“Keep in step! Ah⁠ ⁠… those peasants!” shouted an officer, seizing by their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly and jolting the stretcher.

“Get into step, Fëdor⁠ ⁠… I say, Fëdor!” said the foremost peasant.

“Now that’s right!” said the one behind joyfully, when he had got into step.

“Your excellency! Eh, Prince!” said the trembling voice of Timókhin, who had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.

Prince Andréy opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from the stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his eyelids drooped.

The militiamen carried Prince Andréy to the dressing station by the wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the officers’ orders, the soldiers stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was taking place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or to point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andréy’s bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up to one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andréy opened his eyes and for a long time could not make out what was going on around him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love