War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (best e books to read .TXT) 📖

1807 Rostóv knew by experience that men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski’s tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and crowded Rostóv in the narrow shanty. Rostóv looked at him in silence. “In the first place, there must have been such a confusion and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raévski did lead his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on some dozen men nearest to him,” thought he, “the rest could not have seen how or with whom Raévski came onto the dam. And even those who did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had they to do with Raévski’s tender paternal feelings when their own skins were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did not depend on whether they took the Saltánov dam or not, as we are told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would not have taken my brother Pétya there, or even Ilyín, who’s a stranger to me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under cover,” Nikoláy continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted accordingly.

“I can’t stand this any more,” said Ilyín, noticing that Rostóv did not relish Zdrzhinski’s conversation. “My stockings and shirt⁠ ⁠… and the water is running on my seat! I’ll go and look for shelter. The rain seems less heavy.”

Ilyín went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.

Five minutes later Ilyín, splashing through the mud, came running back to the shanty.

“Hurrah! Rostóv, come quick! I’ve found it! About two hundred yards away there’s a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can at least get dry there, and Márya Hendríkhovna’s there.”

Márya Hendríkhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a standing joke among the hussar officers.

Rostóv threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrúshka to follow with the things, and⁠—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right through it⁠—set off with Ilyín in the lessening rain and the darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.

“Rostóv, where are you?”

“Here. What lightning!” they called to one another.

XIII

In the tavern, before which stood the doctor’s covered cart, there were already some five officers. Márya Hendríkhovna, a plump little blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her. Rostóv and Ilyín, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry shouts and laughter.

“Dear me, how jolly we are!” said Rostóv laughing.

“And why do you stand there gaping?”

“What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don’t make our drawing room so wet.”

“Don’t mess Márya Hendríkhovna’s dress!” cried other voices.

Rostóv and Ilyín hastened to find a corner where they could change into dry clothes without offending Márya Hendríkhovna’s modesty. They were going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but found it completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these officers would on no account yield their position. Márya Hendríkhovna obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that screen Rostóv and Ilyín, helped by Lavrúshka who had brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.

A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Márya Hendríkhovna to preside, they all crowded round her. One offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands, another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep them from the damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft, and yet another waved the flies off her husband’s face, lest he should wake up.

“Leave him alone,” said Márya Hendríkhovna, smiling timidly and happily. “He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night.”

“Oh, no, Márya Hendríkhovna,” replied the officer, “one must look after the doctor. Perhaps he’ll take pity on me someday, when it comes to cutting off a leg or an arm for me.”

There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one could not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar held only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter to take turns in order of seniority to receive one’s tumbler from Márya Hendríkhovna’s plump little hands with their short and not overclean nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the general mood of courting Márya Hendríkhovna. She, seeing herself surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and perturbed as she evidently was