old parents, are they still living?’ he asked.
And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that
a suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier’s lips
as he put these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had
no parents, especially that he had no mother.
‘A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but
there’s none as dear as one’s own mother!’ said he. ‘Well,
and have you little ones?’ he went on asking.
Again Pierre’s negative answer seemed to distress him,
and he hastened to add:
‘Never mind! You’re young folks yet, and please God may
still have some. The great thing is to live in harmony…’
‘But it’s all the same now,’ Pierre could not help saying.
‘Ah, my dear fellow!’ rejoined Karataev, ‘never decline a
prison or a beggar’s sack!’
He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently preparing to tell a long story.
‘Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home,’ he began.
‘We had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants
1819
lived well and our house was one to thank God for. When
Father and we went out mowing there were seven of us. We
lived well. We were real peasants. It so happened..’
And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had
gone into someone’s copse to take wood, how he had been
caught by the keeper, had been tried, flogged, and sent to
serve as a soldier.
‘Well, lad,’ and a smile changed the tone of his voice ‘we
thought it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If
it had not been for my sin, my brother would have had to
go as a soldier. But he, my younger brother, had five little
ones, while I, you see, only left a wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a soldier. I come
home on leave and I’ll tell you how it was, I look and see that
they are living better than before. The yard full of cattle, the
women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only
Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, ‘All my children are the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger
gets bitten. But if Platon hadn’t been shaved for a soldier,
Michael would have had to go.’ called us all to him and, will
you believe it, placed us in front of the icons. ‘Michael,’ he
says, ‘come here and bow down to his feet; and you, young
woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also
bow down before him! Do you understand?’ he says. That’s
how it is, dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, ‘that’s not wellthat’s not right!’ Our luck is
like water in a dragnet: you pull at it and it bulges, but when
you’ve drawn it out it’s empty! That’s how it is.’
And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.
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War and Peace
After a short silence he rose.
‘Well, I think you must be sleepy,’ said he, and began rapidly crossing himself and repeating:
‘Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra!
Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra!
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and save us!’ he concluded, then bowed to the ground, got up, sighed, and sat
down again on his heap of straw. ‘That’s the way. Lay me
down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf,’ he
muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.
‘What prayer was that you were saying?’ asked Pierre.
‘Eh?’ murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep.
‘What was I saying? I was praying. Don’t you pray?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Pierre. ‘But what was that you said: Frola
and Lavra?’
‘Well, of course,’ replied Platon quickly, ‘the horses’
saints. One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now
you’ve curled up and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!’
said Karataev, touching the dog that lay at his feet, and
again turning over he fell asleep immediately.
Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere
in the distance outside, and flames were visible through the
cracks of the shed, but inside it was quiet and dark. For a
long time Pierre did not sleep, but lay with eyes open in the
darkness, listening to the regular snoring of Platon who lay
beside him, and he felt that the world that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a new beauty
and on new and unshakable foundations.
1821
Chapter XIII
Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials
were confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed
and where he remained for four weeks.
When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all
seemed misty figures to him except Platon Karataev, who
always remained in his mind a most vivid and precious
memory and the personification of everything Russian,
kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next
morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round, was fully confirmed: Platon’s whole figurein a
French overcoat girdled with a cord, a soldier’s cap, and bast
shoeswas round. His head was quite round, his back, chest,
shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever ready
to embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile
and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.
Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier.
He did not himself know his age and was quite unable to
determine it. But his brilliantly white, strong teeth which
showed in two unbroken semicircles when he laughedas he
often didwere all sound and good, there was not a gray hair
in his beard or on his head, and his whole body gave an
impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and endurance.
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War and Peace
His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant
and musical. But the chief peculiarity of his speech was its
directness and appositeness. It was evident that he never
considered what he had said or was going to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation had an
irresistible persuasiveness.
His physical strength and agility during the first days of
his imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know
what fatigue and sickness meant. Every night before lying
down, he said: ‘Lord, lay me down as a stone and raise me
up as a loaf!’ and every morning on getting up, he said: ‘I lay
down and curled up, I get up and shake myself.’ And indeed
he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he
only had to shake himself, to be ready without a moment’s
delay for some work, just as children are ready to play directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but
not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended
boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversationof which he was fondand songs. He did not
sing like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but
like the birds, evidently giving vent to the sounds in the
same way that one stretches oneself or walks about to get
rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always high-pitched,
mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at
such times was very serious.
Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to
grow, he seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced
upon himeverything military and alien to himselfand had
1823
returned to his former peasant habits.
‘A soldier on leavea shirt outside breeches,’ he would
say.
He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though
he did not complain, and often mentioned that he had not
been flogged once during the whole of his army service.
When he related anything it was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his ‘Christian’ life, as he called
his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which his talk was
full, were for the most part not the coarse and indecent saws
soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken without
a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely
suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.
He would often say the exact opposite of what he had
said on a previous occasion, yet both would be right. He
liked to talk and he talked well, adorning his speech with
terms of endearment and with folk sayings which Pierre
thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk
lay in the fact that the commonest eventssometimes just
such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of themassumed in Karataev’s a character of solemn fitness. He
liked to hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell
of an evening (they were always the same), but most of all
he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile joyfully
when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a
word or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what
he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no attachments,
friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved
and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in
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War and Peace
contact with, particularly with mannot any particular man,
but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog,
his comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor,
but Pierre felt that in spite of Karataev’s affectionate tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave Pierre’s
spiritual life its due) he would not have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in the
same way toward Karataev.
To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most
ordinary soldier. They called him ‘little falcon’ or ‘Platosha,’
chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But
to Pierre he always remained what he had seemed that first
night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of
the spirit of simplicity and truth.
Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his
prayers. When he began to speak he seemed not to know
how he would conclude.
Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words,
would ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall
what he had said a moment before, just as he never could
repeat to Pierre the
