《War And Peace》Book5 CHAPTER XVII

《War And Peace》　Book5 　CHAPTER XVII
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

IN THE MONTH of June was fought the battle of Friedland, in which the
Pavlograd hussars did not take part. It was followed by a truce. Rostov, who
sorely felt his friend's absence, and had had no news of him since he left, was
uneasy about his wound and the course his difficulties might be taking, and he
took advantage of the truce to get leave to visit Denisov at the hospital.

The hospital was in a little Prussian town, which had twice been sacked by
Russian and French troops. In the summer weather, when the country looked so
pleasant, this little town presented a strikingly melancholy contrast, with its
broken roofs and fences, its foul streets and ragged inhabitants, and the sick
and drunken soldiers wandering about it.

The hospital was a stone house with remnants of fence torn up in the yard,
and window frames and panes partly broken. Several soldiers bandaged up, and
with pale and swollen faces, were walking or sitting in the sunshine in the
yard.

As soon as Rostov went in at the door, he was conscious of the stench of
hospital and putrefying flesh all about him. On the stairs he met a Russian army
doctor with a cigar in his mouth. He was followed by a Russian trained
assistant.

“I can't be everywhere at once,” the doctor was saying; “come in the evening
to Makar Alexyevitch's, I shall be there.” The assistant asked some further
question. “Oh! do as you think best! What difference will it make?”

The doctor caught sight of Rostov mounting the stairs.

“What are you here for, your honour?” said the doctor. “What are you here
for? Couldn't you meet with a bullet that you want to pick up typhus? This is a
pest-house, my good sir.”

“How so?” asked Rostov.

“Typhus, sir. It's death to any one to go in. It's only we two, Makeev and I”
(he pointed to the assistant) “who are still afoot here. Five of us, doctors,
have died here already. As soon as a new one comes, he's done for in a week,”
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. “They have sent for Prussian doctors,
but our allies aren't fond of the job.”

Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars, who was
lying wounded here.

“I don't know, can't tell you, my good sir. Only think, I have three
hospitals to look after alone—over four hundred patients. It's a good thing the
Prussian charitable ladies send us coffee and lint—two pounds a month—or we
should be lost.” He laughed. “Four hundred, sir; and they keep sending me in
fresh cases. It is four hundred, isn't it? Eh?” He turned to the
assistant.

The assistant looked worried. He was unmistakably in a hurry for the
talkative doctor to be gone, and was waiting with vexation.

“Major Denisov,” repeated Rostov; “he was wounded at Moliten.”

“I believe he's dead. Eh, Makeev?” the doctor queried of the assistant
carelessly.

The assistant did not, however, confirm the doctor's words.

“Is he a long, red-haired man?” asked the doctor.

Rostov described Denisov's appearance.

“He was here, he was,” the doctor declared, with a sort of glee. “He must be
dead, but still I'll see. I have lists. Have you got them, Makeev?”

“The lists are at Makar Alexyevitch's,” said the assistant. “But go to the
officers' ward, there you'll see for yourself,” he added, turning to
Rostov.

“Ah, you'd better not, sir!” said the doctor, “or you may have to stay here
yourself.” But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor, and asked the
assistant to show him the way.

“Don't blame me afterwards, mind!” the doctor shouted up from the stairs
below.

Rostov and the assistant went into the corridor. The hospital stench was so
strong in that dark corridor that Rostov held his nose, and was obliged to pause
to recover his energy to go on. A door was opened on the right, and there limped
out on crutches a thin yellow man with bare feet, and nothing on but his
underlinen. Leaning against the doorpost, he gazed with glittering, anxious eyes
at the persons approaching. Rostov glanced in at the door and saw that the sick
and wounded were lying there on the floor, on straw and on overcoats.

“Can one go in and look?” asked Rostov.

“What is there to look at?” said the assistant. But just because the
assistant was obviously disinclined to let him go in, Rostov went into the
soldiers' ward. The stench, to which he had grown used a little in the corridor,
was stronger here. Here the stench was different; it was more intense; and one
could smell that it was from here that it came. In the long room, brightly
lighted by the sun in the big window, lay the sick and wounded in two rows with
their heads to the wall, leaving a passage down the middle. The GREater number
of them were unconscious, and took no notice of the entrance of outsiders. Those
who were conscious got up or raised their thin, yellow faces, and all gazed
intently at Rostov, with the same expression of hope of help, of reproach, and
envy of another man's health. Rostov went into the middle of the room, glanced
in at the open doors of adjoining rooms, and on both sides saw the same thing.
He stood still, looking round him speechless. He had never expected to see
anything like this. Just before him lay right across the empty space down the
middle, on the bare floor, a sick man, probably a Cossack, for his hair was cut
round in basin shape. This Cossack lay on his back, his huge arms and legs
outstretched. His face was of a purple red, his eyes were quite sunk in his head
so that only the whites could be seen, and on his legs and on his hands, which
were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking his head against
the floor, and he uttered some word and kept repeating it. Rostov listened to
what he was saying, and distinguished the word he kept repeating. That word was
“drink—drink—drink!” Rostov looked about for some one who could lay the sick man
in his place and give him water.

“Who looks after the patients here?” he asked the assistant. At that moment a
commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the adjoining room, and,
marching in drill step, drew himself up before him.

“Good day, your honour!” bawled this soldier, rolling his eyes at Rostov, and
obviously mistaking him for one in authority.

“Take him away, give him water,” said Rostov, indicating the Cossack.

“Certainly, your honour,” the soldier replied complacently, rolling his eyes
more strenuously than ever. and drawing himself up, but not budging to do
so.

“No, there's no doing anything here,” thought Rostov, dropping his eyes; and
he wanted to get away, but he was aware of a significant look bent upon him from
the right side, and he looked round at it. Almost in the corner there was,
sitting on a military overcoat, an old soldier with a stern yellow face, thin as
a skeleton's, and an unshaved GREy beard. He was looking persistently at Rostov.
The man next the old soldier was whispering something to him, pointing to
Rostov. Rostov saw the old man wanted to ask him something. He went closer and
saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been cut off
above the knee. On the other side of the old man, at some distance from him,
there lay with head thrown back the motionless figure of a young soldier with a
waxen pallor on his snub-nosed and still freckled face, and eyes sunken under
the lids. Rostov looked at the snub-nosed soldier and a shiver ran down his
back.

“Why, that one seems to be …” he said to the assistant.

“We've begged and begged, your honour,” said the old soldier with a quiver in
his lower jaw. “He died early in the morning. We're men, too, not dogs.…”

“I'll see to it directly; they shall take him, they shall take him away,”
said the assistant hurriedly. “Come, your honour.”

“Let us go, let us go,” said Rostov hastily; and dropping his eyes and
shrinking together, trying to pass unnoticed through the lines of those
reproachful and envious eyes fastened upon him, he went out of the room.