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“What is there to see?” said the assistant.
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in, Rostv entered the soldiers’ ward. The foul air, to which he had already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where it originated.
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all looked intently at Rostv with the same expression of hope, of relief, reproach, and envy of another’s health. Rostv went to the middle of the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen, and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostv listened and made out the word. It was “drink, drink, a drink!” Rostv glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in his place and bring him water.
“Who looks after the sick here?” he asked the assistant.
Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostv.
“Good day, your honor!” he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostv and evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
“Get him to his place and give him some water,” said Rostv, pointing to the Cossack.
“Yes, your honor,” the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not move.
“No, it’s impossible to do anything here,” thought Rostv, lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed on Rostv. The man’s neighbor on one side whispered something to him, pointing at Rostv, who noticed that the old man wanted to speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled back. Rostv looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his back.
“Why, this one seems...” he began, turning to the assistant.
“And how we’ve been begging, your honor,” said the old soldier, his jaw quivering. “He’s been dead since morning. After all we’re men, not dogs.”
“I’ll send someone at once. He shall be taken away—taken away at once,” said the assistant hurriedly. “Let us go, your honor.”
“Yes, yes, let us go,” said Rostv hastily, and lowering his eyes and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the room.
Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostv to the officers’ wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostv met in the officers’ ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a pipe between his teeth. Rostv looked at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.
“See where we’ve met again!” said the little man. “Tshin, Tshin, don’t you remember, who gave you a lift at Schn Grabern? And I’ve had a bit cut off, you see...” he went on with a smile, pointing to the empty sleeve of his dressing gown. “Looking for Vasli Dmtrich Densov? My neighbor,” he added, when he heard who Rostv wanted. “Here, here,” and Tshin led him into the next room, from whence came sounds of several laughing voices.
“How can they laugh, or even live at all here?” thought Rostv, still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong in the soldiers’ ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.
Densov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though it was nearly noon.
“Ah, Wostv? How are you, how are you?” he called out, still in the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostv noticed sadly that under this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed itself in the expression of Densov’s face and the intonations of his voice.
His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that struck Rostv. What struck him was that Densov did not seem glad to see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostv spoke of these matters did not listen.
Rostv even noticed that Densov did not like to be reminded of the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On Rostv’s inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he began reading his paper and specially drew Rostv’s attention to the stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions, who had gathered round Rostv—a fresh arrival from the world outside—gradually began to disperse as soon as Densov began reading his answer. Rostv noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tshin still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Densov.
