Chapter 18 Chapter Eighteen

After passing through the corridor, the doctor led Rostov into the officers' ward, which consisted of three rooms, all of which were open.In these rooms were arranged several beds, on which wounded and sick officers lay or sat.Several people in hospital gowns paced up and down the room.The first person Rostov met in the officers' ward was a small, bony, one-armed man in a nightcap and hospital gown, pacing up and down the first room with a pipe in his mouth.Rostov studied him, trying to remember where he had seen him. "I didn't expect to meet you here," said the little man. "Do you remember Tushin, Tushin, I brought you to Schöngraben? You see, I cut off a piece of me..." Showing Rostov the empty sleeve with a smile on his face, he said: "Are you looking for Vasily Dmitrievich Denisov? — the resident." !” He said, knowing whom Rostov was looking for, “here, here.” Then Tushin led him into another room, from which several people laughed loudly.

"How can they not only laugh, but live here?" thought Rostov, still smelling the corpses that he had had enough of in the soldiers' hospital, and seeing the two sides accompanying him from all around him. His jealous eyes and the face of this young soldier who rolled his eyes in pain. Although it was past eleven o'clock in the morning, Denisov was still sleeping on the bed with a quilt covering his head. "Ah, Rostov! How do you do, how do you do!" he cried, his voice still the same as he used to speak in the regiment, but Rostov was sadly aware that he still had the old habit. Some have a presumptuous and active state of mind, but his facial expressions, tone of voice and conversation reveal unprecedented embarrassing emotions hidden deep in his heart.

Although it had been six weeks since he was injured, the injury was not too serious, but it had not healed.His face was pale and swollen, like the sick and wounded in the military hospital.But it wasn't this that surprised Rostov, it was Denisov who, seeing him, seemed very unhappy, and smiled at him unnaturally.Denisov asked neither about the regiment nor the course of the battle.When Rostov talked about it, Denisov did not listen to him. Rostov even found it distasteful to mention to Denisov about the regiments, and in general about a life of freedom other than the military hospital.He seemed to be trying to forget his past life, and only cared about his case with the ration officer.In answer to Rostov's inquiries about the case, he immediately took out from under his pillow a copy of the official letter he had received from the committee and the answer he had drawn up.He grew excited and began to read the document, especially calling Rostov's attention to the sarcastic remarks he had made in it to his enemies.The companions of Denisov in the hospital, who at first surrounded Rostov, a man who had recently come from the free world, gradually left as soon as Denisov began to read his paper. open.Rostov knew from their faces that these gentlemen had more than once heard the whole story which disgusted them.Only the very fat Lancer in the next bed frowned sullenly and sat on his bed smoking a pipe. The short, one-armed Tushin continued to listen to his story, shaking his head disapprovingly, and in the middle of the reading, The Lancers interrupted Denisov.

"In my opinion," he said, turning his face to Rostov, "simply ask for the king's pardon. I heard that there are more rewards in front of us, and he may be pardoned..." "I'm going to ask the king!" said Denisov, trying to give his own voice its former excitement and vigor, but it sounded uselessly edgy. "What do you ask for? If I were a bandit, I would ask for favors, but I was tried because I exposed some bandits. Let them have a trial. I fear no one; I serve the Tsar and my country honestly, No theft! To dismiss me... Listen, I will tell you straight, I will tell you: If I were a thief from the treasury..."

"It's very well written, there's nothing to say," said Tushin, "but that's not the point, Vasily, Dmitrich," he also said to Rostov, "you must obey, you see, Vasily Dmitrich does not want to. You know, the prosecutor told you that your case is bad." "Let it be bad," Denisov said. "The prosecutor wrote the memorial for you," Tushin went on, "you have to sign it, and he will send it. Presumably (he pointed to Rostov) he also has a backer at the headquarters. You can't find a better opportunity. " "I didn't mean to say, I don't want to be servile," Denisov interrupted, and went on reading his own paper.

Rostov did not dare to persuade Denisov, although he felt instinctively that the course proposed by Tushin and several other officers was the most correct, and as long as he could help Denisov, he would consider himself happy. , because he knew Denisov's indomitable will and his honest temper. Denisov read the vicious documents for more than an hour. Rostov said nothing in a sad mood, and several of Denisov's companions who were hospitalized were around him again. Gathered together, Rostov spent the rest of the day among them, telling what he knew and listening to the others.Denisov was sad all evening and said nothing.

Rostov wanted to leave late at night, and asked Denisov if there was anything he was entrusted to do? "Yes, please wait a moment," said Denisov, glancing at the officers, and taking the papers from under his pillow, went to the window where his inkwell stood, and sat down to write. petition. "It seems that the whip does not beat the ax," he said, walking away from the window, handing Rostov a large envelope.Denisov did not say a single word about the fault of the Commissariat, but only asked for a pardon. "Please pass it on, it seems..." He didn't finish his sentence, and smiled morbidly and hypocritically.