War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy
CHAPTER XXXVII
1153 words | Chapter 246
One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,
holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small
bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked
about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a
little respite. After turning his head from right to left for some time,
he sighed and looked down.
“All right, immediately,” he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince
Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.
Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.
“It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have a
chance!” remarked one.
Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only just been
cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince Andrew could not
make out distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all
sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distracted
him. All he saw about him merged into a general impression of naked,
bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as
a few weeks previously, on that hot August day, such bodies had filled
the dirty pond beside the Smolénsk road. Yes, it was the same flesh,
the same chair à canon, the sight of which had even then filled him with
horror, as by a presentiment.
There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, and
on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he was left
alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two
tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by
the uniform thrown down beside him. Four soldiers were holding him, and
a spectacled doctor was cutting into his muscular brown back.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh!” grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his swarthy
snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white teeth,
he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, ringing,
and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many people were
crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his head thrown back.
His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head seemed strangely
familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were pressing on his chest
to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg twitched rapidly all
the time with a feverish tremor. The man was sobbing and choking
convulsively. Two doctors—one of whom was pale and trembling—were
silently doing something to this man’s other, gory leg. When he had
finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an overcoat, the
spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his hands.
He glanced at Prince Andrew’s face and quickly turned away.
“Undress him! What are you waiting for?” he cried angrily to the
dressers.
His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to Prince
Andrew’s mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began hastily to
undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent
down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to
someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused Prince Andrew to
lose consciousness. When he came to himself the splintered portions of
his thighbone had been extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the
wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his face. As soon as Prince
Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed him silently on the
lips, and hurried away.
After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a
blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the
best and happiest moments of his life—especially his earliest childhood,
when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when leaning over him
his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the pillow,
felt happy in the mere consciousness of life—returned to his memory, not
merely as something past but as something present.
The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of whose
head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him up and
trying to quiet him.
“Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!” his frightened moans could
be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.
Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep. Whether because he
was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life,
or because of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or
because he was suffering and others were suffering and that man near him
was groaning so piteously—he felt like weeping childlike, kindly, and
almost happy tears.
The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted blood
and with the boot still on.
“Oh! Oh, ooh!” he sobbed, like a woman.
The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince Andrew
from seeing his face, moved away.
“My God! What is this? Why is he here?” said Prince Andrew to himself.
In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been
amputated, he recognized Anatole Kurágin. Men were supporting him in
their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen
lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. “Yes, it is
he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully connected with me,”
thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping what he saw before him.
“What is the connection of that man with my childhood and life?” he
asked himself without finding an answer. And suddenly a new unexpected
memory from that realm of pure and loving childhood presented itself to
him. He remembered Natásha as he had seen her for the first time at the
ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a frightened happy
face ready for rapture, and love and tenderness for her, stronger
and more vivid than ever, awoke in his soul. He now remembered the
connection that existed between himself and this man who was dimly
gazing at him through tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered
everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy
heart.
Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving
tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.
“Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for those
who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on
earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not understand—that is
what made me sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me had I
lived. But now it is too late. I know it!”
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