After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest and placed alone in a small ruined church. Toward evening a noncommissioned officer told him he had been pardoned and would go to the prisoners' barracks. Without understanding, he followed soldiers to sheds of charred planks at the upper end of the field. In the dark some twenty men surrounded him. He heard questions and answered, yet faces and words seemed equally meaningless. From the moment he had seen men kill who did not wish to kill, the mainspring of his life had been wrenched out. Faith in the ordering of the universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God had collapsed, and this time not by any fault of his own. When he closed his eyes he saw the factory lad's simple dreadful face and the murderers' disquiet, so he stared into the darkness instead.
Beside him a small man unwound leg bands with deft circular motions, coiled the strings, hung them on pegs, and sat clasping his knees. The well-ordered corner and even the smell of perspiration felt comforting. In a singsong voice the man asked if Pierre had seen a lot of trouble, told him not to fret, and went off to greet a little dog before coming back with baked potatoes wrapped in a rag. He cut one, salted it from the cloth, and Pierre thought he had never eaten anything better. The soldier was Platon Karataev of the Apsheron regiment, taken the previous Sunday from a Moscow hospital where he had been dying of fever. He said Moscow was the mother of cities, that things happen not as we plan but as God judges, and that Pierre should never decline a prison or a beggar's sack.
Then he told how he had been caught taking wood, flogged, and sent as a soldier, which spared his younger brother Michael, who had five children. Fate looks for a head, he said; luck is like water in a dragnet. He crossed himself, prayed to Christ, Saint Nicholas, and Frola and Lavra, the horses' saints, because one must pity the animals too, touched the dog at his feet, and fell asleep at once. Outside there was crying and flame through the cracks. Inside, Pierre lay awake a long time listening to Platon's regular snore, and felt the shattered world stirring again in his soul on new foundations.
Coming Up in Chapter 276
Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials are confined in the shed with Pierre. When he sees his neighbour at dawn the first impression of something round is fully confirmed: Platon Karataev's whole figure, in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and bast shoes, is round.
