French captives also. Denisov then relieved him from
drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out
on expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.
Tikhon 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,
1961
which latter he used as a wolf uses its teeth, with equal case
picking fleas out of its fur or crunching thick bones. Tikhon
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 Denisov’s party he held a peculiar
and exceptional position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be doneto 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 dayeverybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.
‘It won’t hurt that devilhe’s as strong as a horse!’ they
said of him.
Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired
a pistol at him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back.
That wound (which Tikhon treated only with internal and
external applications of vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachmentjokes in which Tikhon
readily joined.
‘Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?’ the Cossacks would banter him. And Tikhon, 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 Tikhon 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 Denisov
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overnight to Shamshevo 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
Denisov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
them.
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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, Denisov
turned his horse and rode back.
‘Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,’ he said to Petya.
As they approached the watchhouse Denisov 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 Kazan hat, was approaching with long, light steps. He
had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax stuck in his
girdle. When he espied Denisov he hastily threw something
into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim,
and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed
with self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and
gazed at Denisov as if repressing a laugh.
‘Well, where did you disappear to?’ inquired Denisov.
‘Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,’
answered Tikhon 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 Tikhon.
‘Where is he?’
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‘You see, I took him first thing at dawn,’ Tikhon 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 wogueit’s just as I thought,’ said Denisov to the esaul. ‘Why didn’t you bwing that one?’
‘What was the good of bringing him?’ Tikhon 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,’ Tikhon 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 Tikhon, 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.
Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all
refrained from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from
Tikhon’s face to the esaul’s and Denisov’s, unable to make
out what it all meant.
‘Don’t play the fool!’ said Denisov, coughing angrily.
‘Why didn’t you bwing the first one?’
1965
Tikhon 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 Shcherbatythe gaptoothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a peal of
merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.
‘Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,’ said Tikhon. ‘The clothes on himpoor 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 Denisov. ‘I wanted to question..’
‘But I questioned him,’ said Tikhon. ‘He said he didn’t
know much. ‘There are a lot of us,’ he says, ‘but all poor
stuffonly soldiers in name,’ he says. ‘Shout loud at them,’ he
says, ‘and you’ll take them all,’’ Tikhon concluded, looking
cheerfully and resolutely into Denisov’s eyes.
‘I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashesthat’ll teach you to
play the fool!’ said Denisov severely.
‘But why are you angry?’ remonstrated Tikhon, ‘just as
if I’d never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark
and I’ll fetch you any of them you wantthree if you like.’
‘Well, let’s go,’ said Denisov, and rode all the way to the
watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.
Tikhon followed behind and Petya 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 Tikhon’s
words and smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He
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War and Peace
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 Denisov on
the way with the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and
that all was well with him.
Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him,
said: ‘Well, tell me about yourself.’
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Chapter VII
Petya, 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 Vyazma, Petya 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 Denisov’s detachment,
Petya begged so piteously to be sent that the general could
not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled Petya’s
mad action at the battle of Vyazma, 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
Denisov’s. That was why Petya had blushed and grown
confused when Denisov asked him whether he could stay.
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Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest Petya
had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly
and return at once. But when he saw the French and saw
Tikhon 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 Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon 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 Denisov, Petya, 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 Denisov’s band were converting a door into a tabletop. Petya 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
