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The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. None of the prisoners said a word.
“See, it fits well!” Platn kept repeating, pulling the shirt straight.
The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.
“You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,” said Platn with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.
“It’s good, quite good, thank you,” said the Frenchman, in French, “but there must be some linen left over.”
“It will fit better still when it sets to your body,” said Karatev, still admiring his handiwork. “You’ll be nice and comfortable....”
“Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?” said the Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and gave it to Karatev. “But give me the pieces that are over.”
Pierre saw that Platn did not want to understand what the Frenchman was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karatev thanked the Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over and asked Pierre to translate what he said.
“What does he want the bits for?” said Karatev. “They’d make fine leg bands for us. Well, never mind.”
And Karatev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the Frenchman without looking at him. “Oh dear!” muttered Karatev and went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre’s look had told him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:
“Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!” And handing back the odd bits he turned and went out.
“There, look at that,” said Karatev, swaying his head. “People said they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It’s what the old folk used to say: ‘A sweating hand’s an open hand, a dry hand’s close.’ He’s naked, but yet he’s given it back.”
Karatev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the pieces.
“But they’ll make grand leg bands, dear friend,” he said, and went back into the shed.
Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though the French had offered to move him from the men’s to the officers’ shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.
In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodin. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natsha; he had sought it by reasoning—and all these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karatev.
Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them and therefore could not do so. “Russia and summer weather are not bound together,” he thought, repeating words of Karatev’s which he found strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner’s name was Count Bezkhov?
He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew’s thoughts somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needs—good food, cleanliness, and freedom—now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is, of his way of life—now that that was so restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life—is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation.
All Pierre’s daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.
