【有声英语文学名著】战争与和平 Book 10（37）

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One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron¹, holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear² it. He raised his head and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a little respite³. After turning his head from right to left for some time, he sighed and looked down.

“All right, immediately,” he replied to a dresser who pointed⁴ Prince Andrey out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.

Murmurs⁵ arose among the wounded who were waiting.

“It seems that even in the next world only the gentry⁶ are to have a chance!” remarked one.

Prince Andrey was carried in and laid on a table that had only just been cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince Andrey could not make out distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans⁷ from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh⁸, stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about him merged⁹ into a general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously¹⁰, on that hot August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a canon, the sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a presentiment¹¹.

There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, and on the third they placed Prince Andrey. For a little while he was left alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by the uniform thrown down beside him. Four soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was cutting into his muscular brown back.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh!” grunted¹² the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his swarthy snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white teeth, he began to wriggle¹³ and twitch¹⁴ his body and utter piercing, ringing, and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his head thrown back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrey. Several dressers were pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg twitched¹⁵ rapidly all the time with a feverish¹⁶ tremor¹⁷. The man was sobbing¹⁸ and choking convulsively. Two doctors — one of whom was pale and trembling — were silently doing something to this man’s other, gory¹⁹ leg. When he had finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrey, wiping his hands.

He glanced at Prince Andrey’s face and quickly turned away.

“Undress him! What are you waiting for?” he cried angrily to the dressers.

His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to Prince Andrey’s mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began hastily to undo²⁰ the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent²¹ down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen²² caused Prince Andrey to lose consciousness. When he came to himself the splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his face. As soon as Prince Andrey opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed him silently on the lips, and hurried away.

After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrey enjoyed a blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the best and happiest moments of his life — especially his earliest childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere²³ consciousness of life — returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as something present.

The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrey: they were lifting him up and trying to quiet him.

“Show it to me. . . . Oh, ooh . . . Oh! Oh, ooh!” his frightened moans could be heard, subdued²⁴ by suffering and broken by sobs²⁵.

Hearing those moans Prince Andrey wanted to weep. Whether because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life, or because of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or because he was suffering and others were suffering and that man near him was groaning²⁶ so piteously — he felt like weeping childlike, kindly²⁷, and almost happy tears.

The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted²⁸ blood and with the boot still on.

“Oh! Oh, ooh!” he sobbed²⁹, like a woman.

The doctor who had been standing³⁰ beside him, preventing Prince Andrey from seeing his face, moved away.

“My God! What is this? Why is he here?” said Prince Andrey to himself.

In the miserable³¹, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen³² lips could not grasp its rim³³. Anatole was sobbing painfully. “Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully connected with me,” thought Prince Andrey, not yet clearly grasping what he saw before him. “What is the connection of that man with my childhood and life?” he asked himself without finding an answer. And suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natasha as he had seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a frightened happy face ready for rapture³⁴, and love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever, awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed³⁵ his happy heart.

Prince Andrey could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.

“Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on earth and which Princess Marya taught me and I did not understand — that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!”

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