He did not feel like sleeping, but the observation of sccnic details was no longer enough. Out of the silent night, sleeping men, and flickering candle flame that lighted the dome of dried, plaited leaves, a feeling of happiness and sorrow arose and spread through him. Suddenly his childhood prayers rose to his lips. "I was not praying." he wrote, "if prayer is taken to mean entreaty or a gush of gratitude. I was yearning for something higher, something perfect. But what? I could not say. And yet, I understood exactly what I wanted. I wanted to become one with the supreme Being. I begged him to forgive my errors. No; I was not begging, because I felt that if he had granted me this minute of ecstasy, that meant he had already forgiven mc. . . . All my fears vanished. Faith, Hope and Love merged into one indissoluble feeling inside mc."
As always, ebb followed flow, fust when Tolstoy thought he was at the summit of mystical bliss, a more profane vision crcpt into his mind: "I could not feel my own body. I was pure spirit. And then, the wretched carnal side took over again, and hardly an hour later I was listening to the voices of vice, ambition, vanity, life. I knew where these voices came from, I knew they were destroying my happiness; I struggled, I lost. I fell asleep dreaming of fame and women. But I am not to blame, it was stronger than I."
These bursts of religion, inspired by the beauty of the land and ending in the arms of an imaginary woman, occurred frequently. Tolstoy also thought about death, and made an effort to treat all things with philosophical detachment, which did not prevent him from eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new saddle or despairing because his mustache rose higher on the left side than on the right. I lis position in camp was highly irregular. As the only civilian in a group of officers, he passed for an idle aristocrat, an irresponsible tourist. lie did not like his brother's comrades, or his superiors. They were rough and ignorant, their only subjects of conversation were horses, women, promotions and deeds of heroism. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexeyev, commander of the battery, was a little fellow with reddish-blond hair, cheeks coarsened by sideburns and a piercing voice. He was a fervent Orthodox who preached temperance and invited his subordinates to dine with him "informally." There was also the young Buycmsky—almost a child, with a candid pink face—and Khilkovsky, captain of the Ural Cossacks—a typical "old soldier, simple but noble, brave and good"*—and a certain Lieutenant Knoring, a tall man with a broad, soft face and high cheekbones, looking a good deal, Tolstoy wrote, like the kind of horse that is known as "hammerhead."0 When he laughed, he looked "simple-minded and slightly mad." His manners were vulgar. lie pummeled Nicholas and callcd him "old snout!" Tolstoy gave him a very cold shoulder for a few days; then he became used to his laughter, his smell of bad tobacco and his fishwife's jokes.
Lieutenant-Colonel Alexeyev might forbid the serving of alcohol at his table, but the men made up for lost time in their tents. Sometimes Nicholas drank himself into a stupor. Leo exercised as much self- restraint as he could, and he also refrained from playing cards. "Several times, when the officers have talked of cards in front of me, I have felt like showing them that I too know how to play; but I resisted. I hope I shall go on refusing, even if they drag me bodily to the table." lie wrote these words in his diary on the morning of June 13, and that evening he owed 850 rubles* to Lieutenant Knoring. "Two hundred rubles of my own, 150 borrowed from Nicholas; leaving 500." How to
• Around $2400.
pay? lie would worry about that later—Knoring had generously taken an 10U for a date in the distant future (January 1852)—but for the moment (well-timed diversion!), the camp was busy preparing for an expedition against the mountain tribes. Eager to see some action, Tolstoy asked for and obtained permission from Prince Baryatinsky, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Army, to take part in the operation as a volunteer.
In the second half of June the tToops began to move: an infantry battalion, all available cavalry, nineteen cannon, supply wagons and ammunition. A long, dark snake bristling with bayonets crawled along a precipitous trail. The drums rolled in the distance. The soldiers sang. Tolstoy, riding near his brother, felt his heart pound with the excitement of the morning of a great ball. At every halt the soldiers stacked their arms and rushed to the stream to drink. Lieutenant-Colonel Alcxcyev, sitting on a drum, invited his subordinates to share his meal. A few officers withdrew to the shade of a tree with vodka, glasses and cards. "I was curious to hear the conversation of the soldiers and officers," Tolstoy wrote in his autobiographical story The Raid: "I watched their faccs closcly; in none of them did I sec any trace of the vague fear I was feeling myself. Joking, laughter, gay banter, gambling and drink expressed a universal indifference to the approaching danger. It was as though it were impossible to imagine that some of these men would not be coming back by this same road—it was as though all of them had already left the world long ago." A little later, when the detachment was slithering through a deep gorge, the enemy outposts opened fire. The hillsmen howled fiercely, but their shots were harmless at that distance. After fording the stream, the Russians regrouped in the forest and the general gave the order to attack. The firing became steady. Men fell. "What a pretty sight!" said Prince Baryatinsky in French. And his aide-de-camp, anxious to please, outdid him—also in French —with: "It's a real pleasure to make war in such beautiful country!"7 The cannon joined in. The cavalry disappeared into the underbrush, raising a cloud of dust. Abandoned by its inhabitants, the enemy aoul was soon plundered. "A roof collapscs, an ax rings out against hard wood, a door bursts open; a heap of straw goes up in flame. ... A Cossack drags a sack of flour and a rug out of a hut; a grinning soldier carries off an iron jug and a towel; another, spreading his arms, tries to catch two hens that are cackling and struggling to get over a palisade; a third has found an enormous crock of milk, and he empties it and hurls it to the ground with a howl of laughter."8
On the way home, the hillsmen duly attacked the column in the forest. The Russians countered and young Tolstoy, aglow with patriotism, noted the great superiority of Russian courage—silent and dignified—over the strained and ostentatious bravery of the French, as exemplified by the heroes of Waterloo. "After that, how is one not to suffer, in his Russian heart, when he hears our young officers uttering tasteless French phrases and trying to imitate the so-called French gallantry which has become so woefully obsolete?"9 he wrote. At last the shooting subsided, the column resumed its march and, once back in camp, Tolstoy learned to his intense delight that Prince Barvatinsky had been pleased at the "young civilian's" composure under fire. lie himself was not altogether satisfied, however. The razing of the aoul preyed on his mind, as did the three dead and thirty-six wounded in the expedition. "It is so good to be alive," lie thought, "nature is so beautiful, and men so evil; they do not know how to appreciate what they have!"10
At Fort Stary Yurt he returned to his book about his childhood, but he thought he would never have the patience to finish it. "You have to sit down at an ink-stained table," he wrote, "take a sheet of gray paper, an inkwell, dirty your fingers, line up letters on the paper in a row; the letters make words, and the words make sentences. But is it possible to translate a feeling? To transmit one's own ideas about nature to someone else? Why are poetry and prose, joy and sorrow so closely related?"11 His thoughts drifted back to Zinaida Molostvov, whom he had left in Kazan without daring to avow his love. Absurd regrets gnawed at him in his solitude. "Is it possible that I shall never see her again?" he wrote. "Is it possible that one day I shall hear she has married some Bekctov or other? Or, still more dreadful, shall I see her again, wearing a bonnet and laughing, with her same wide-open eyes, gay and full of love? I have not given up my plan of going back and marrying her; I am not quite certain that she can make me happy, but I am in love with her. . . . Otherwise, what is the meaning of the sweet memories that fill me? . . . Why not write to her? But I only know her first name and not that of her father.! And all because of that, I may be depriving myself of a great happiness!"12