War And Peace

Nikolay was sitting well away from Sonya, next to Julie Karagin, and he was talking to her with the same spontaneous smile. Sonya too wore a façade of a smile, but she was visibly tormented with jealousy, her face alternating between deathly pallor and bright crimson as she strained every nerve to catch what Nikolay and Julie were saying to each other. The governess kept looking round uneasily, as though preparing to defend the children against any possible offence. The German tutor was trying to memorize all the various courses, desserts, and wines, in order to write a detailed description of them to his people back home in Germany, and he was most annoyed when the butler with the bottle in the napkin missed him out. The German scowled, making out that he hadn’t wanted that particular wine, but what really annoyed him was the general failure to understand that he had wanted the wine not because he was thirsty or greedy, but out of blameless curiosity.

CHAPTER 16

At the men’s end of the table the conversation was becoming more and more animated. The colonel told them that war had been declared through a manifesto issued in Petersburg and that he had seen with his own eyes a copy sent by courier to the commander-in-chief.

‘But why the devil should we fight Bonaparte?’ said Shinshin. ‘He’s already brought Austria down a peg or two. I’m afraid it could be our turn next.’

The colonel was a stout, tall and florid-faced German, evidently a keen officer and good Russian patriot. He resented Shinshin’s words.

‘Ze reason vy, my goot sir,’ he said, in his German accent, ‘eez just zat ze Emperor knows zis too. In ze proclamation he says zat he cannot stend beck and vatch ze danger treatening Russia, and zat ze security of ze empire, its dignity, and ze sacredness of its alliances . . .’ He emphasized the word ‘alliances’, as if this was what really mattered. And with his typically impeccable memory for bureaucratic detail, he was able to quote verbatim from the Introduction to the proclamation:

‘. . . and the desire, constituting the sole and immutable aim of the Sovereign, to establish peace in Europe on a firm foundation, has determined him this day to dispatch a section of the army abroad, and to renew every effort towards the achievement of that purpose.’

‘Zis is ze reason vy, my dear sir.’ He finished his little homily by tossing off a glass of wine and looking to the count for encouragement.

‘Do you know the saying, “Stay, Jerome, do not roam, there is work to do at home”?’ said Shinshin, smiling through his frown. ‘That suits us down to the ground. Look at Suvorov,³⁰ even he was chopped into little pieces, and where will you find any Suvorovs today? I ask you,’ he said, going in and out of Russian and French as he spoke.

‘Ve must fight to ze last trop of our ploot,’ said the colonel, thumping the table, ‘and die for our Emperor, and zen all vill be vell. And sink about sings as leedle as possible,’ he concluded, turning again to the count, and drawing out the word ‘po-ossible’. ‘Zat ees how ve old zoldiers see it, and zat ees all zere ees to see. You are a younk man and a younk zoldier – how do you see it?’ he added, addressing Nikolay, who had abandoned his conversation with Julie once the subject of war had cropped up, and was now all eyes and all ears on the colonel.

‘I’m in total agreement,’ Nikolay spluttered, turning his plate around and shifting his wine glasses with desperate determination, almost as if he was in dire danger at that very moment. ‘It is my conviction that the Russians must win, or die in the attempt,’ he said. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized as everyone else did that they had been a little too fervent and bombastic for this occasion, and therefore slightly embarrassing.

‘That was a very fine thing, what you’ve just said,’ gushed Julie, sitting beside him. Sonya had trembled all over while Nikolay was speaking and blushed to the roots of her hair, and the colour flooded past her ears and down her neck and shoulders. But Pierre had been listening to the colonel’s remarks, and he nodded his approval.

‘Yes, splendid,’ was his comment.

‘You’re a true zoldier, younk fellow,’ the colonel shouted, thumping the table again.

‘Why are you making all that noise?’ Marya Dmitriyevna’s deep voice rang down the table. ‘Why do you keep banging on the table?’ she asked the colonel. ‘What’s all the noise about? You haven’t got the French here, you know!’

‘I spik ze truce,’ came the smiling reply.

‘It’s war talk,’ the count shouted across the table. ‘My son’s going, Marya Dmitriyevna. He’s off soon.’

‘I have four sons in the army, but I don’t go on about it. We’re all in God’s hands. One man can die in his bed over the stove while God spares another in battle,’ the deep voice boomed back effortlessly from the far end of the table.

‘That is true.’

And the conversation split in two again, one at the ladies’ end and the other at the men’s.