IN THIS SHED, where Pierre spent four weeks, there were twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two civilian functionaries, all prisoners.
They were all misty figures to Pierre afterwards, but Platon Karataev remained for ever in his mind the strongest and most precious memory, and the personification of everything Russian, kindly, and round. When next day at dawn Pierre saw his neighbour, his first impression of something round was fully confirmed; Platon’s whole figure in his French military coat, girt round the waist with cord, in his forage-cap and bast shoes, was roundish, his head was perfectly round, his back, his chest, his shoulders, even his arms, which he always held as though he were about to embrace something, were round in their lines; his friendly smile and big, soft, brown eyes, too, were round.
Platon Karataev must have been over fifty to judge by his stories of the campaigns in which he had taken part. He did not himself know and could not determine how old he was. But his strong, dazzlingly white teeth showed in two unbroken semicircles whenever he laughed, as he often did, and all were good and sound： there was not a grey hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole frame had a look of suppleness and of unusual hardiness and endurance.
His face had an expression of innocence and youth in spite of the curving wrinkles on it; his voice had a pleasant sing-song note. But the great peculiarity of his talk was its spontaneity and readiness. It was evident that he never thought of what he was saying, or of what he was going to say; and that gave a peculiar, irresistible persuasiveness to his rapid and genuine intonations.
His physical powers and activity were such, during the first period of his imprisonment, that he seemed not to know what fatigue or sickness meant. Every evening as he lay down to sleep, he said： “Let me lie down, Lord, like a stone; let me rise up like new bread”; and every morning on getting up, he would shake his shoulder in the same way, saying： “Lie down and curl up, get up and shake yourself.” And he had, in fact, only to lie down in order to sleep at once like a stone, and he had but to shake himself to be ready at once, on waking, without a second’s delay, to set to work of some sort; just as children, on waking, begin at once playing with their toys. He knew how to do everything, not particularly well, but not badly either. He baked, and cooked, and sewed, and planed, and cobbled boots. He was always busy, and only in the evenings allowed himself to indulge in conversation, which he loved, and singing. He sang songs, not as singers do, who know they are listened to, but sang, as the birds sing, obviously, because it was necessary to him to utter those sounds, as it sometimes is to stretch or to walk about; and those sounds were always thin, tender, almost feminine, melancholy notes, and his face as he uttered them was very serious.
Being in prison, and having let his beard grow, he had apparently cast off all the soldier’s ways that had been forced upon him and were not natural to him, and had unconsciously relapsed into his old peasant habits.