War and Peace
“more-orderers” had really been at their village, but that Tíkhon
Shcherbáty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denísov had
Tíkhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words
in the elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and
the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.
“We don’t do the French any harm,” said Tíkhon, evidently frightened by
Denísov’s words. “We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know!
We killed a score or so of ‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else....”
Next day when Denísov had left Pokróvsk, having quite forgotten about
this peasant, it was reported to him that Tíkhon had attached himself
to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denísov gave
orders to let him do so.
Tíkhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water,
flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude
for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always
brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring
in French captives also. Denísov then relieved him from drudgery and
began taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him
enrolled among the Cossacks.
Tíkhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses
its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching
thick bones. Tíkhon with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at
arm’s length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little pegs
or carve spoons. In Denísov’s party he held a peculiar and exceptional
position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be
done—to push a cart out of the mud with one’s shoulders, pull a horse
out of a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk
more than thirty miles in a day—everybody pointed laughingly at Tíkhon.
“It won’t hurt that devil—he’s as strong as a horse!” they said of him.
Once a Frenchman Tíkhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him
and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tíkhon
treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the
subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment—jokes in which
Tíkhon readily joined.
“Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?” the Cossacks would banter
him. And Tíkhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be
angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect
of this incident on Tíkhon was that after being wounded he seldom
brought in prisoners.
He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more
opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen,
and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars
and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denísov
overnight to Shámshevo to capture a “tongue.” But whether because he
had not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept
through the night, he had crept by day into some bushes right among the
French and, as Denísov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
them.
CHAPTER VI
After talking for some time with the esaul about next day’s attack,
which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he seemed to have
definitely decided on, Denísov turned his horse and rode back.
“Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,” he said to Pétya.
As they approached the watchhouse Denísov stopped, peering into the
forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging arms,
wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazán hat, was approaching
with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax
stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denísov he hastily threw something
into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim, and
approached his commander. It was Tíkhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked
face and narrow little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He
lifted his head high and gazed at Denísov as if repressing a laugh.
“Well, where did you disappear to?” inquired Denísov.
“Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,” answered Tíkhon
boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.
“Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well, why
haven’t you taken one?”
“Oh, I took one all right,” said Tíkhon.
“Where is he?”
“You see, I took him first thing at dawn,” Tíkhon continued, spreading
out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes. “I took him
into the forest. Then I see he’s no good and think I’ll go and fetch a
likelier one.”
“You see?... What a wogue—it’s just as I thought,” said Denísov to the
esaul. “Why didn’t you bwing that one?”
“What was the good of bringing him?” Tíkhon interrupted hastily and
angrily—“that one wouldn’t have done for you. As if I don’t know what
sort you want!”
“What a bwute you are!... Well?”
“I went for another one,” Tíkhon continued, “and I crept like this
through the wood and lay down.” (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) “One turned up and
I grabbed him, like this.” (He jumped up quickly and lightly.) “‘Come
along to the colonel,’ I said. He starts yelling, and suddenly there
were four of them. They rushed at me with their little swords. So I went
for them with my ax, this way: ‘What are you up to?’ says I. ‘Christ
be with you!’” shouted Tíkhon, waving his arms with an angry scowl and
throwing out his chest.
“Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
puddles!” said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.
Pétya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained from
laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tíkhon’s face to the esaul’s
and Denísov’s, unable to make out what it all meant.
“Don’t play the fool!” said Denísov, coughing angrily. “Why didn’t you
bwing the first one?”
Tíkhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
Shcherbáty—the gap-toothed). Denísov smiled, and Pétya burst into a peal
of merry laughter in which Tíkhon himself joined.
“Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,” said Tíkhon. “The clothes
on him—poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why,
he says: ‘I’m a general’s son myself, I won’t go!’ he says.”
“You are a bwute!” said Denísov. “I wanted to question...”
“But I questioned him,” said Tíkhon. “He said he didn’t know much.
‘There are a lot of us,’ he says, ‘but all poor stuff—only soldiers in
name,’ he says. ‘Shout loud at them,’ he says, ‘and you’ll take
them all,’” Tíkhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denísov’s eyes.
“I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashes—that’ll teach you to play the
fool!” said Denísov severely.
“But why are you angry?” remonstrated Tíkhon, “just as if I’d never seen
your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I’ll fetch you any of
them you want—three if you like.”
“Well, let’s go,” said Denísov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse
in silence and frowning angrily.
Tíkhon followed behind and Pétya heard the Cossacks laughing with him
and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.
When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tíkhon’s words and smile
had passed and Pétya realized for a moment that this Tíkhon had killed a
man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt
a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt
it necessary to hold his head higher, to brace himself, and to question
the esaul with an air of importance about tomorrow’s undertaking, that
he might not be unworthy of the company in which he found himself.
The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denísov on the way with the
news that Dólokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.
Denísov at once cheered up and, calling Pétya to him, said: “Well, tell
me about yourself.”
CHAPTER VII
Pétya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined
his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a
large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission,
and especially since he had joined the active army and taken part in
the battle of Vyázma, Pétya had been in a constant state of blissful
excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to
miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was highly delighted
with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time
it always seemed to him that the really heroic exploits were being
performed just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a
hurry to get where he was not.
When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send
somebody to Denísov’s detachment, Pétya begged so piteously to be sent
that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled
Pétya’s mad action at the battle of Vyázma, where instead of riding by
the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had galloped to the
advanced line under the fire of the French and had there twice fired
his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade his taking part in any
action whatever of Denísov’s. That was why Pétya had blushed and grown
confused when Denísov asked him whether he could stay. Before they had
ridden to the outskirts of the forest Pétya had considered he must carry
out his instructions strictly and return at once. But when he saw the
French and saw Tíkhon and learned that there would certainly be an
attack that night, he decided, with the rapidity with which young people
change their views, that the general, whom he had greatly respected till
then, was a rubbishy German, that Denísov was a hero, the esaul a hero,
and Tíkhon a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave
them at a moment of difficulty.
It was already growing dusk when Denísov, Pétya, and the esaul rode up
to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be seen, and
Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and
were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest where the French
could not see the smoke. In the passage of the small watchhouse a
Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some mutton. In the room
three officers of Denísov’s band were converting a door into a tabletop.
Pétya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once began
helping the officers to fix up the dinner table.
In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.
Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Pétya was in an ecstatic
childish state of love for all men, and consequently of confidence that
others loved him in the same way.
“So then what do you think, Vasíli Dmítrich?” said he to Denísov. “It’s
all right my staying a day with you?” And not waiting for a reply he
answered his own question: “You see I was told to find out—well, I am
finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the chief... I
don’t want a reward.... But I want...”
Pétya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head and
flourishing his arms.
“Into the vewy chief...” Denísov repeated with a smile.
“Only, please let me command something, so that I may really command...”
Pétya went on. “What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a knife?” he