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Book 14 Chapter 15

THE CAVALRY TRANSPORT, and the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage-train, halted at the village of Shamshevo. All crowded together round the campfire. Pierre went up to a fire, ate some roast horse-flesh, lay down with his back to the fire, and at once fell asleep. He fell into the same sort of sleep that he had slept at Mozhaisk, after the battle of Borodino.

Again the facts of real life mingled with his dreams; and again some one, himself or some one else, was uttering thoughts in his ear, and the same thoughts, indeed, as had come in his dream at Mozhaisk.

Life is everything. Life is God. All is changing and moving, and that motion is God. And while there is life, there is the joy of the consciousness of the Godhead. To love life is to love God. The hardest and the most blessed thing is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved suffering.

“Karataev!” flashed into Pierre's mind. And all at once there rose up, as vivid as though alive, the image, long forgotten, of the gentle old teacher, who had given Pierre geography lessons in Switzerland. “Wait a minute,” the old man was saying. And he was showing Pierre a globe. This globe was a living, quivering ball, with no definite limits. Its whole surface consisted of drops, closely cohering together. And those drops were all in motion, and changing, several passing into one, and then one splitting up again into many. Every drop seemed striving to spread, to take up more space, but the others, pressing upon it, sometimes absorbed it, sometimes melted into it.

“This is life,” the old teacher was saying.

“How simple it is and how clear,” thought Pierre. “How was it I did not know that before? God is in the midst, and each drop strives to expand, to reflect Him on the largest scale possible. And it grows, and is absorbed and crowded out, and on the surface it disappears, goes back into the depths, and falls not to the surface again. That is how it is with him, with Karataev; he is absorbed and has disappeared.”

“You understand, my child,” said the teacher.

“You understand, damn you!” shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.

He raised his head and sat up. A French soldier was squatting on his heels by the fire. He had just shoved away a Russian soldier, and was roasting a piece of meat on the end of a ramrod. His sinewy, lean, hairy, red hands, with short fingers, were deftly turning the ramrod. His brown, morose face, with its sullen brows, could be clearly seen in the light of the glowing embers.

“It's just the same to him,” he muttered, quickly addressing a soldier standing behind him. “Brigand! go!”

And the soldier, turning the ramrod, glanced gloomily at Pierre. The latter turned away, gazing into the shadows. A Russian soldier, the one who had been pushed away, was sitting near the fire, patting something with his hand. Looking more closely, Pierre saw the grey dog, who was sitting by the soldier, wagging her tail.

“Ah, she has come …” said Pierre. “And Plat …” he was beginning, but he did not go on. All at once, instantly in close connection, there rose up the memory of the look Platon had fixed upon him, as he sat under the tree, of the shot heard at that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty faces of the soldiers as they ran by, of the smoking gun, of Karataev's absence at that halting-place; and he was on the point of fully realising that Karataev had been killed, but at the same instant, at some mysterious summons, there rose up the memory of a summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the verandah of his house at Kiev. And nevertheless, making no effort to connect the impressions of the day, and to deduce anything from them, Pierre closed his eyes, and the picture of the summer night in the country mingled with the thought of bathing and of that fluid, quivering globe, and he seemed to sink deep down into water, so that the waters closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was wakened by loud and rapid shots and outcries. The French were flying by him.

“The Cossacks!” one of them shouted, and a minute later a crowd of Russians were surrounding Pierre. For a long while Pierre could not understand what had happened to him. He heard all about him his comrades' wails of joy.

“Mates! our own folk! brothers!” the old soldiers cried, weeping, as they embraced the Cossacks and the hussars. The hussars and the Cossacks crowded round the prisoners, pressing on them clothes, and boots, and bread. Pierre sat sobbing in their midst, and could not utter one word; he hugged the first soldier who went up to him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dolohov was standing at the gates of a dilapidated house, letting the crowd of unarmed Frenchmen pass by him. The French, excited by all that had happened, were talking loudly among themselves; but as they passed before Dolohov, who stood switching his boots with his riding-whip, and watching them with his cold, glassy eyes, that boded nothing good, their talk died away. One of Dolohov's Cossacks stood on the other side, counting the prisoners, and marking off the hundreds with a chalk mark on the gate.

“How many?” Dolohov asked him.

“The second hundred,” answered the Cossack.

“Filez, filez,” said Dolohov, who had picked up the expression from the French; and when he met the eyes of the passing prisoners, his eyes gleamed with a cruel light.

With a gloomy face Denisov, holding his high Cossack hat in his hand, was walking behind the Cossacks, who were bearing to a hole freshly dug in the garden the body of Petya Rostov.


军需物资、俘虏兵和元帅的辎重队都驻扎在沙姆舍沃村。大家都围坐在火堆旁。皮埃尔走近火堆,吃了些烤马肉,背着火躺下身子,立刻就睡着了。他又像在波罗底诺战役后在莫扎伊斯克那样睡着了。

现实的事件又和梦境结合在一起,又有一个人,是他自己呢,还是另一个人,对他谈思想,甚至就是在莫扎伊斯克对他所谈的那些思想。

“生命是一切。生命是上帝。一切都在变化和运动,这个运动就是上帝。只要有生命,就有感应神灵的快乐。热爱生命就是热爱上帝。”

比所有一切都更困难和更幸福的是,在苦难中,在无辜的苦难中,热爱这个生命。

“卡拉塔耶夫!”皮埃尔想起了他。

皮埃尔突然像过电影似的在脑子里出现了一位他早已遗忘的、在瑞士教过他地理课的、仁慈的老教师。“等一等。”那个老者说,他给皮埃尔看一个天球仪。这是一个活动的,晃动的,没有一定比例的圆球。圆球表面是密密麻麻、彼此紧挨着的点点。这些点点都在运动着,不断变换位置,时而几个合成一个,时而一个分成若干个。每一个点都极力扩张,抢占最大空间,而别的点也极力扩张,排挤它,有时消灭它,有时和它合在一起。

“这就是生命。”老教师说。

“这是多么简单明了,”皮埃尔想。“我怎么先前就不知道呢。”

“上帝在那中间,每一个点点都在扩大,以便最大限度地反映它自身。它生长,汇合,紧缩,从表面上消失,沉入深渊,又浮上来。这就是他,就是卡拉塔耶夫,你看,他扩散开来了,又消失了。——Vousavezcompris,monenfant.①”

教师说。

“Vousavezcompris,sacrénom.”②一个声音喊道,于是皮埃尔醒了。

他欠身坐了起来。火堆旁边蹲着一个法国人,他推开一个俘虏,拿一根穿着肉的通条,放在火上烘烤。他卷着袖筒,两手青筋暴突,长满茸毛,皮肤发红,手指短粗,他灵活地转动着通条。他紧锁双眉,褐色面孔阴沉沉的,在通红的炭火的光亮中清晰可见。

“Caluiestbiengal……Brigand.Va!”③他迅速转过身子对身后的一个士兵说。

①法语:你懂得了,我的孩子。

②法语:你明白了,该死的。

③法语:他反正一样……是个土匪,没错!


那个士兵转动着通条,冷冷地向皮埃尔瞥了一眼。皮埃尔转过脸去,向黑暗中看去。有一个俘虏,就是被法国人推开的那个人,坐在火边用手拍打着什么。皮埃尔凑近一看,认出了那只雪青的小狗,它摇着尾巴坐在那个士兵身旁。

“啊,你来啦?”皮埃尔说,“啊,普拉东……”他还没有把刚开了头的话说完。

突然间,如烟往事在脑际涌现出来:有普拉东坐在树下投来的目光,有那个地方传来的枪声,狗的叫声,两个法国人从他身旁跑过去时带有犯罪的面部表情,那支还在冒烟的枪,想起在这个宿营地永远也见不着的卡拉塔耶夫,他正要弄清楚卡拉塔耶夫是否已被打死,但是,就在这一刹那,他也不知道为什么,他忽然想起他和一个美丽的波兰姑娘在他在基辅的住宅阳台上度过的那个夏夜。皮埃尔没有把这一天的回忆都联系起来,再从其中作出结论,他闭上眼,于是夏天的自然风光和对游泳以及对流动的液体球的回忆混合在一起,于是他沉入水中,水淹过了他的头顶。

日出之前,他被巨大的密急的枪声和呐喊声惊醒。法国人从他身旁跑过。

“Lescosaques!”①一个法国人喊叫道,一分钟后,皮埃尔周围都是俄国人。

①法语:哥萨克。


皮埃尔有好一阵子没弄明白是怎么一回事,他听见周围同伴们欢喜的哭泣声。

“弟兄们!我的亲人们,亲爱的!”那些老兵边哭边喊叫着拥抱哥萨克和骠骑兵。骠骑兵和哥萨克围着俘虏们,给的给衣服,给的给靴子,给的给面包,皮埃尔坐在他们当中,放声大哭,激动地一句话也说不出来,他紧紧拥抱第一个走到他面前的士兵,一边哭,一边狂吻着。

多洛霍夫站在一所已倒塌的房屋的大门旁边,已缴了械的法国人从他面前走过。那些法国人为刚刚发生的这一切而激动,相互间大声议论着;当他们从多洛霍夫面前走过时,他们看见他用马鞭抽打着靴子,以冷峻的目光在注视他们时,他们不再吭声了。另一边站着一个多洛霍夫部的哥萨克在清点俘虏人数。每数到一百就在门上划个记号。

“多少了?”多洛霍夫问数俘虏的哥萨克。

“二百了。”那个哥萨克回答道。

“Filez,filez,”①多洛霍夫不住地说,这是他从法国人那里学来的话。他的目光一碰到俘虏的目光时,眼睛就突然爆发出残酷的光芒。

①法语:快走,快走。


几个哥萨克抬着彼佳·罗斯托夫的尸体向在花园内已挖好的墓穴走去,杰尼索夫脱下帽子,阴沉着脸跟在后面。



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