Along Nikitskiy Street, I came to another constriction in the flow of traffic. A small, flat cart pulled by two grenadiers from the line infantry had come to a halt. On it, lying crossways, side by side, were three of their comrades, their uniforms tattered and bloody. There was an argument between the two men – boys really – who had been pulling the wagon, and two other soldiers – both dragoons, forced to travel on foot. Of these two, one – the one who was in reality doing all the arguing – was in reasonably good shape. His friend was in a sorry condition. His head hung limply, without the desire to look again on anything above the ground. He supported himself on a makeshift crutch; just a conveniently sized branch with a fork in it, which was crammed into his armpit. The need for his crutch became all too apparent as I scanned down his body. His left foot and lower leg hung loosely off the rest of him, just below the knee. Of the shinbone, there was clearly nothing left, and it was only flesh and skin that kept the limb attached. As the cart moved on a little and he took a few steps to keep up, his leg trailed behind him uselessly, dragging in the dirt like the tails of an adult's coat worn by a child. Most likely, the wound had come from a cannonball, bouncing inexorably towards him across the battlefield of Borodino. Whatever the cause, the leg should have been amputated at a dressing station in the field, but at that great battle, the demand for surgery had far outstripped supply, and it looked as though the injured soldier's comrade had helped get him all the way to Moscow in hope of finding room in a hospital. Now, the argument was over a place on the cart.
'But the man's dead!' said the limping dragoon's friend, indicating the middle of the three men lying on the cart. 'Throw him off and give his place to someone who still has a chance.'
'He's not dead,' insisted one of the cart-pullers. 'He's been like that for days, ever since we picked him up. If he was dead he'd be rotting by now. Your mate smells worse than he does.'
It was sadly true. The gangrene that had set in to the man's wound had most likely already spread far enough to take his whole leg, if not his life. I pushed my way forward to examine the man on the wagon.
It was plain enough to see; he was most certainly dead.
His face and arms and neck bore many cuts and scratches, but none that seemed to be the cause of his death. His dark-green uniform was stained with unimaginable amounts of blood, which may well have belonged to others, but, if it was his, explained not only his death, but also the terrible pallor of his skin. There was no sign of breathing, no hint of a heartbeat and his body was as cold as water. I lifted his eyelids and looked into his dead, threatening eyes. The huge black pupils – grown so large that his irises were obliterated – gave no response to the light of the sun.
'He is dead,' I announced, trying to convey an authority which would achieve the end of getting that poor, limping man on to the cart.
'So why doesn't he rot?' asked one of the men who had been hauling him across the city. It certainly was an odd phenomenon. It might have been the case, of course, that he had been alive when they started out and had only died recently, though to judge by his temperature, not all that recently – at least a day ago. But he was undoubtedly dead now.
'I don't know,' I said, giving the accurate impression that I didn't much care either. I began to drag the body from the cart.
'Wait!' The voice belonged to a priest who had emerged from somewhere amongst the onlookers. He spoke softly, but thanks to the resonance of his voice and the eminence of his occupation, he commanded immediate respect from the crowd.
'There may be a reason for this,' he said, approaching the body. He gave it much the same examination as I had done, but with a little more of the showmanship that, I am sorry to have to say, one expects from a priest. 'He is dead. The gentleman is quite correct.' People looked at me and nodded, happier with my conclusion now that it had been confirmed by someone they could trust. 'And he has been dead many days.' This was more than I had been prepared to venture. 'And yet the body does not decay.'
The priest lifted the corpse's hand and kissed it. He then took a step back from the cart and closed his eyes for a moment of silent prayer, opening them again to make his pronouncement.
'When a holy man dies – a man who is without sin or a man whose sins have been forgiven – then there is no need for his sins to leave his corporeal remains. The putrefaction of a man's body is caused by the departure of his sins. If there are no sins to depart, then there cannot be decay. I have seen this in the bodies of many departed priests and monks, but to see it in a common soldier is rare. And yet there is no reason why a soldier cannot be without sin. This man must have led the most saintly of lives.'
I missed the point completely. 'But now he's dead, he can still be removed to make way for the living,' I said.
'No, no, my son,' explained the priest, shaking his head with a paternal smile. 'The body of a man like this deserves greater respect than that of any living sinner. Leave him there. His blessings will spread to the two men who lie on either side of him. And to you too,' he added, turning to the two men pulling the cart.
Once the priest had spoken, there was no room for argument. The two men heaved and the cart trundled along down the street, accompanied by a swarm of believers, interested to see more of the miracle that the priest had just described. They would have been more at home on the streets of Nazareth than on those of Moscow. The wounded man and his companion continued on foot. His footsteps repeated in turn the abrupt click of his crutch, the firm tread of his booted right foot and then the long, pointless scrape of his dangling left.
I walked with them for a while, away from where I should have been heading, stopping every cart and wagon that came past to see if it had any room for an extra, wounded man. It was about the tenth one I asked that did and so we hauled him aboard. His friend thanked me profoundly and walked alongside the wagon with a new spring in his step. The wounded man didn't understand enough even to raise his head and look at me. Whatever last vestige of life remained in him had been wholly focused on walking, on keeping on walking, as he had done all the way from Borodino to Moscow. Perhaps now he was being carried, his last reason to stay alive had been taken from him. I doubted that there would ultimately be much difference in the fate of a dead man whose body did not rot and a live one whose leg was rotting away beneath him.
I turned around and headed back the way I had come. It was already past eleven, so I hurried to make it to my meeting with Vadim and Dmitry. I crossed the once beautiful Red Square which, now deserted, could be seen in all its glory. Yet that glory was reduced to almost nothing by the absence of any people to enjoy it or even to ignore it. Red Square was near the very centre of the city; a city that everyone was trying to leave. And so, like the eye of the most fearful storm, it was the quietest place on earth.
As I passed Saint Vasily's and moved on to the Moskva Bridge, which stood beside the Kremlin spanning the river, the swarming crowds began to increase again. All were heading in the opposite direction from me, slowing my progress. Amongst them were a hundred soldiers with a hundred stories, each as pitiful as that of the men I had just encountered, but none of whom I could help. I realized suddenly how pointless it was for me to fret over issues that affected me and only me when all around the life of every one of my fellow countrymen was in turmoil. My concern for Maks and my concern even for myself seemed to become lost in this sea of faces. What observer, seeing the bridge with any degree of perspective, could single me out from the crowds through which I pushed my way? To any outside viewer, the global impact of this migration of a city's populace would have far greater significance than not just my own story, but the story of any one of us. Moscow was dying, and what was the fate of any single Muscovite against that? One might as well consider the fate of the individual cells in that poor soldier's gangrenous leg and forget the impending death of the whole man. Even the Lord God, Who could see inside the soul of every man on that bridge, would surely see in mine no greater cause for interest than in any other.