War and Peace: Original Version. Лев Толстой

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       RUSSIAN ARMY MARCHING ACROSS THE RIVER ENNS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867

      “Take it if you like,” said the officer, handing the apple to the girl. The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitsky, like everyone on the bridge, kept his eyes fixed on the women until they had driven past. When they had driven past, the same kind of soldiers walked by, with the same kind of talk until finally, everyone came to a halt. As often happens, the horses in a company wagon had baulked at the end of the bridge and the entire crowd had to wait.

      “What are they stopping for? There’s no order at all!” said the soldiers. “Where are you pushing? Damn you! Can’t be bothered to wait. It’ll be worse again when he sets fire to the bridge. Look, they’ve got an officer jammed in here too,” the halted crowds said on all sides, looking each other over, and they all pressed forward towards the way out. Glancing at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitsky suddenly heard another sound new to him, something drawing closer, something big that plopped into the water.

      “Look how far he’s flinging them!” a soldier standing close by said grimly, glancing round at the sound.

      “He’s encouraging us to get across quick,” another said agitatedly. The crowd began moving again. Nesvitsky realised that it had been a shot.

      “Hey, Cossack, give me my horse!” he said. “Right, you! Stand aside! Stand aside! Make way!”

      With a great effort he managed to reach his horse. Still continuing to shout, he began moving forward. The soldiers squeezed together to make way for him, but then bore against him again so strongly that they squeezed his leg tight, and the ones closest to him were not to blame, because they were being crushed even more powerfully.

      “Nesvitsky! Nesvitsky! You ugly pig!” a hoarse voice called out from behind at just that moment.

      Nesvitsky glanced round and fifteen paces away, separated from him by the living mass of moving infantry, he saw Vaska Denisov, red-faced, black-haired and tousled, with his cap on the back of his head and a hussar’s pelisse thrown dashingly across his shoulder.

      “Order these devils to make way,” shouted Denisov, evidently in the throes of a fit of passion, rolling his glittering eyes as black as coal in their inflamed whites and waving his sabre still in its scabbard, holding it in a naked little hand as red as his face.

      “Hey! Vasya!” Nesvitsky replied happily. “What are you up to?”

      “The squadron can’t get through,” shouted Vaska Denisov, baring his white teeth angrily, spurring on his beautiful black thoroughbred Bedouin, who, twitching his ears as he ran up against bayonets, was snorting and scattering spray around himself from his curb-bit, beating his hooves resoundingly on the boards of the bridge, and seemed ready to leap over the railings of the bridge, if his rider would allow him. “What’s this? Like sheep! Exactly like sheep! Exactly … give way! Stop, over there, you, the cart, damn it! I’ll slice you with my sabre …” he shouted, actually baring his sabre and beginning to wave it about.

      The soldiers squeezed against each other with frightened faces, and Denisov joined Nesvitsky.

      “Why aren’t you drunk today, then?” Nesvitsky said to Denisov when he rode up to him.

      “They won’t even give you time to get drunk!” replied Vaska Denisov. “All day long, dragging the regiment this way and that way. Let’s fight, if we’re going to. But God only knows what’s going on!”

      “What a dandy you are today!” said Nesvitsky, examining Denisov’s new pelisse and saddlecloth.

      Denisov smiled, took a handkerchief that gave off a smell of perfume out of his flap pocket, and thrust it under Nesvitsky’s nose.

      “But of course, I’m going into action! I shaved, brushed my teeth and put on scent.”

      The imposing figure of Denisov, accompanied by the Cossack, and Denisov’s determination, waving his sabre and shouting wildly, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through to the other side of the bridge and halted the infantry. At the exit Nesvitsky found the colonel to whom he had to pass on the orders and, having carried out his assignment, set off back.

      After clearing the way, Denisov halted at the entrance to the bridge. Casually restraining the stallion that was straining to get to its fellows and stamping its foot, he looked at the squadron moving towards him. The hollow echoing of hoof beats rang along the boards of the bridge, as though there were several horses galloping, and the squadron, riding four men abreast in each row, with the officers in front, stretched out along the bridge and began emerging on to the other side.

      Handsome young Peronsky, the finest horseman in the regiment and a rich man, brought up the rear, weaving to and fro on his three-thousand-rouble stallion. The foot soldiers, forced to halt, jostled in the trampled mud by the bridge, watching the clean, dandified hussars riding past them in strict order with that special feeling of spiteful, derisive antipathy with which different kinds of troops meet each other.

      “Fine smart lads! Just the thing for the Podnovinskoe Park!”

      “What are they good for? They only keep them for show!” said another.

      “Don’t kick up the dust, infantry!” joked a hussar whose horse pranced and splashed mud on a foot soldier.

      “If I put you through a couple of days’ marching with a knapsack, your fancy laces would soon be looking tattered,” said the infantryman, wiping the mud from his face with his sleeve, “perched up there like a bird, not a man!”

      “And if they sat you on a horse, Zinkin, you’d manage really well,” said a corporal, mocking the thin little soldier hunched over under the weight of his knapsack.

      “Put a club between your legs, and that will be your steed,” the hussar responded.

      VIII