War And Peace

‘Yakov. Bring us a bottle, Yakov!’ shouted Anatole himself, a tall, handsome man, standing in his shirtsleeves in the middle of the group, his fine shirt-front unbuttoned down to mid-chest. ‘Hang on, gentlemen. Look who’s come – it’s old Pierre! Good man!’ He had turned towards Pierre.

From the window a blue-eyed man of average height, conspicuously sober amidst the drunken uproar, called out clearly, ‘Come on over here. Sort out your bets!’ This was Dolokhov, an officer in the Semyonov regiment, a notorious gambler and swaggering madcap, at present living with Anatole. Pierre beamed at the company.

‘I don’t get it. What’s happening?’

‘Hang on, he’s not drunk. Get him a bottle!’ said Anatole. He took a glass from the table and walked over to Pierre.

‘First things first. Have a good drink.’

Pierre proceeded to down glass after glass, looking doubtfully at the drunken revellers, who were crowding round the window again, and listening to what they were saying. Anatole kept his glass topped up and told him that Dolokhov had made a bet with an English sailor by the name of Stevens, who was passing through, that he, Dolokhov, could drink a bottle of rum sitting on the third-floor window-sill with his legs dangling outside.

‘Come on, finish that bottle,’ said Anatole, giving Pierre the last glass, ‘or I’m not letting you go!’

‘No, I don’t want it,’ said Pierre, shoving Anatole away, and he went over to the window.

Dolokhov had a grip on the Englishman’s arm and he was meticulously explaining the terms of the bet, looking mainly at Anatole and Pierre.

Dolokhov was a man of average height in his mid-twenties, with curly hair and bright blue eyes. Like all infantry officers he wore no moustache, so that his mouth, the most striking thing about him, was fully revealed. The lines of that mouth were very finely curved. The upper lip closed sharply down in the middle wedge-like over the firm lower one, and at the two corners the mouth always worked itself into something like a double smile. All of this, together with the decisive, brazen, shrewd look in his eyes, was so impressive that no one could fail to notice this face. Dolokhov was a man of few resources and no contacts. And yet somehow, despite the fact that Anatole doled out his money in tens of thousands, Dolokhov lived with him and managed to present himself in such a way that Anatole himself and everybody who knew them admired Dolokhov more than Anatole. Dolokhov gambled on everything, and usually won. However much he drank, he always kept a clear head. Both of them, Kuragin and Dolokhov, were currently infamous figures among the fast-and-loose young men of Petersburg.

The bottle of rum was brought. Two servants, clearly flustered and intimidated by shouts and directions issuing from gentlemen on all sides, were in the process of removing the section of the window-frame that prevented anyone sitting on the outer sill. Anatole swaggered across to the window, eager to smash something. He shoved the servants out of the way and pulled at the frame, but it wouldn’t give. He broke one of the panes.

‘Come on, Hercules, you have a go,’ he said, turning to Pierre. Pierre grabbed hold of the cross-piece and heaved, broke the oak frame with a crash and wrenched it out.

‘Get the lot out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,’ said Dolokhov.

‘The Englishman’s bragging, isn’t he? . . . Is everything all right?’ said Anatole.

‘Yes,’ said Pierre, watching Dolokhov go over to the window, bottle in hand. The light of the sky shone in with the merging of dusk and dawn. Dolokhov jumped up on to the window-sill, still holding his bottle. ‘Listen!’ he shouted, standing there and facing back into the room. Silence fell.

‘I bet you,’ (he spoke in French so the Englishman could understand what he was saying, and his French wasn’t too good) ‘I bet you fifty imperials . . . make it a hundred?’ he added, turning to the Englishman.

‘No, fifty,’ said the Englishman.

‘All right, fifty it is – that I can drink a whole bottle of rum without taking it away from my lips. I’ll drink it sitting outside the window, there,’ (he bent down and pointed to the downward-sloping ledge on the outside) ‘without holding on to anything . . . Is that it?’

‘Yes,’ said the Englishman.

Anatole turned to the sailor, took hold of a button on his coat and looked down at him (he was quite short), and went through the terms of the bet once again in English.

‘Hang on a minute!’ shouted Dolokhov, calling for attention by banging the bottle on the window-sill. ‘Hang on, Kuragin. Listen: if anybody else can do it I’ll pay him a hundred imperials. All right?’ The sailor nodded with no indication of whether he accepted this new bet or not. Anatole hung on to him, and although the sailor nodded to say he fully understood, Anatole kept on translating Dolokhov’s words into English. A skinny young life guardsman, who had lost a lot that evening, climbed up on to the window-sill, stuck his head out and looked down.