Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials shared the shed where Pierre remained for four weeks. Afterwards they all seemed misty to him except Platon Karataev, who stayed vivid as the personification of everything Russian, kindly, and round. At dawn that roundness was confirmed: head, back, chest, shoulders, even the arms held as if ready to embrace, and the large gentle brown eyes. He must have been fifty by his campaign stories, yet he could not name his age. His teeth were sound white semicircles, there was no grey in beard or hair, and his body gave an impression of suppleness and endurance. He never considered what he was going to say, so the justice of his intonation had an irresistible persuasiveness.
Every night he asked to be laid down as a stone and raised as a loaf; every morning he shook himself ready for work like a child waking to play. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots, not very well but not badly, and only at night allowed himself talk and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer but like the birds, high-pitched, mournful, almost feminine, with a serious face. Allowed his beard to grow, he seemed to have thrown off everything military and returned to peasant habits. He did not like talking of army life, though he mentioned he had never been flogged. His folk sayings, used appositely, acquired a sudden wisdom. He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said before, yet both would be right.
He had no attachments as Pierre understood them, but loved whoever life brought: his dog, his comrades, the French, and Pierre his neighbour. Pierre felt that even that tenderness would not have made Platon grieve a moment at parting, and he began to feel the same way. To the others Platon was an ordinary soldier, little falcon or Platosha, sent on errands. To Pierre he remained an unfathomable, rounded personification of simplicity and truth. He knew nothing by heart except his prayers, could not repeat a sentence just spoken, and could not sing his favourite song as speech. His words flowed as fragrance from a flower. He could not understand the value of any word or deed taken separately from the whole of which he was always conscious.
Coming Up in Chapter 277
When Princess Mary hears from Nicholas that her brother is with the Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepares to go there, and to take her nephew with her. Whether it is difficult or easy, possible or impossible, she does not ask: it is her duty to be near her brother who is perhaps dying.
