【有声英语文学名著】战争与和平 Book 11（20）

 Chapter 20 - Moscow, a queenless hive

 
Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.
In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it seems as much alive as other hives.
The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the midday sun as gaily 1 as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper’s tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens 2 threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration 3 of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted 4 hive. From the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant 5 smell of honey and venom 6, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling 7 with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense 8 of the hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing 9 activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant 10 sounds of disorder 11. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared 12 with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly 13 only bees laden 14 with honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy 15 bees — tamed by toil 16, clinging to one another’s legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor 17 — that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive, drowsy 18 shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly 19 glued floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement 20, dying bees scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.
The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super. Instead of serried 21 rows of bees sealing up every gap in the combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected and foul 22. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive 23 and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps 24, and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their strength laboriously 26 drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and fight and smother 27 it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses 28. The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells. In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation, he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary 29 they had guarded and which is now no more. They reek 30 of decay and death. Only a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy’s hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and burns it clean.
So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy, and morose 31, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal, observance of the proprieties 32 — a deputation.
In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people aimlessly moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of what they were doing.
When with due circumspection 33 Napoleon was informed that Moscow was empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently continued to walk to and fro.
“My carriage!” he said.
He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into the suburb. “Moscow deserted!” he said to himself. “What an incredible event!”
He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the Dorogomilov suburb.
The coup 25 de theatre had not come off.