War and Peace (98 page)

On the third day of Christmas week, after dinner, all the members of the household had separated and gone to their respective rooms. It was the dullest time of the day. Nikolay, who had been calling on neighbours in the morning, was asleep in the divan-room. The old count was resting in his own room. In the drawing-room Sonya was sitting at a round table copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon, with a dejected countenance, was sitting in the window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to Sonya, looked at what she was doing, then went up to her mother and stood there mutely.

“Why are you wandering about like an unquiet spirit?” said her mother. “What do you want?”

“I want
him
 … I want
him
at once, this minute,” said Natasha, with a gleam in her eyes and no smile on her lips. The countess raised her head and looked intently at her daughter.

“Don’t look at me, mamma; don’t look at me like that; I shall cry in a minute.”

“Sit down; come and sit by me,” said the countess.

“Mamma, I want
him
. Why should I be wasting time like this, Mamma?” … Her voice broke, tears gushed into her eyes, and to hide them, she turned quickly and went out of the room. She went into the divan-room, stood there, thought a moment and went to the maids’ room. There an old maid-servant was scolding a young girl who had run in breathless from the cold outside.

“Give over playing,” said the old woman; “there is a time for everything.”

“Let her off, Kondratyevna,” said Natasha. “Run along, Mavrusha, run along.”

And after releasing Mavrusha, Natasha crossed the big hall and went to the vestibule. An old footman and two young ones were playing cards. They broke off and rose at the entrance of their young mistress. “What am I to do with them?” Natasha wondered.

“Yes, Nikita, go out, please … Where am I to send him?… Yes, go to the yard and bring me a cock, please; and you, Misha, bring me some oats.”

“Just a few oats, if you please?” said Misha, with cheerful readiness.

“Run along; make haste,” the old man urged him.

“Fyodor, you get me some chalk.”

As she passed the buffet she ordered the samovar, though it was not the right time for it.

The buffet-waiter, Foka, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. Natasha liked to try her power over him. He did not believe in her order, and went to inquire if it were really wanted.

“Ah, you’re a nice young lady!” said Foka, pretending to frown at Natasha.

No one in the house sent people on errands and gave the servants so much work as Natasha. She could not see people without wanting to send them for something. She seemed to be trying to see whether one of them would not be cross or sulky with her; but no one’s orders were so readily obeyed by the servants as Natasha’s. “What am I to do? Where am I to go?” Natasha wondered, strolling slowly along the corridor.

“Nastasya Ivanovna, what will my children be?” she asked the buffoon, who came towards her in his woman’s jacket.

“Fleas, and dragon-flies, and grasshoppers,” answered the buffoon.

“My God! my God! always the same. Oh, where am I to go? What am I to do with myself?” And she ran rapidly upstairs, tapping with her shoes, to see Vogel and his wife, who had rooms on the top floor. The two governesses were sitting with the Vogels and on the table were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing the question which was the cheaper town to live in, Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and dreamy face, and got up. “The island Madagascar,” she said. “Māadagascar,” she repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly; and making no
reply to Madame Schoss’s inquiry into her meaning, she went out of the room.

Petya, her brother, was upstairs too. He was engaged with his tutor making fireworks to let off that night.

“Petya! Petya!” she shouted to him, “carry me downstairs.” Petya ran to her and offered her his back, and he pranced along with her. “No, enough. The island Madagascar,” she repeated, and jumping off his back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tried her power, and made sure that all were submissive, but yet that she was dull, Natasha went into the big hall, took up the guitar, and sat down with it in a dark corner behind a bookcase. She began fingering the strings in the bass, picking out a phrase she recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrey. For other listeners the sounds that came from her guitar would have had no sort of meaning, but these sounds called up in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light that fell from the crack in the pantry door, and listened to herself and recalled the past. She was in the mood for brooding over memories.

Sonya crossed the hall, and went into the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced at her through the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered the light falling through the crack in the pantry door, and Sonya passing with the glass in just the same way. “Yes, and it was exactly the same in every detail,” thought Natasha.

“Sonya, what is this?” called Natasha, twanging the thick cord with her fingers.

“Oh, are you there?” said Sonya starting, and she came up and listened. “I don’t know. A storm?” she said timidly, afraid of being wrong.

“Why, she started in just the same way, and came up and smiled the same timid smile when it all happened before,” thought Natasha; “and just in the same way, too.… I thought there was something wanting in her.”

“No, it’s the chorus from the ‘Water Carrier,’; listen.” And Natasha hummed the air of the chorus, so that Sonya might catch it. “Where were you going?” asked Natasha.

“To change the water in my glass. I am just finishing colouring the design.”

“You always find something to do, but I can’t, you know,” said Natasha. “And where’s Nikolenka?”

“I think he’s asleep.”

“Sonya, do go and wake him,” said Natasha. “Tell him I want him to sing with me.”

She sat a little longer, pondering on what was the meaning of its all having happened before, and not solving that question, and not in the least chagrined at being unable to do so, she passed again in her imagination to the time when she was with him, and he gazed at her with eyes of love.

“Oh, if he would come quickly! I’m so afraid it will never come! And worst of all, I’m getting older, that’s the thing. There won’t be in me what there is in me now. Perhaps he is coming to-day, will be here immediately. Perhaps he has come, and is sitting there in the drawing-room. Perhaps he did come yesterday, and I have forgotten.” She got up, put down her guitar, and went into the parlour. All their domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests were sitting at the tea-table. The servants were standing round the table. But Prince Andrey was not there, and the same old life was still going on.

“Here she is,” said the count, seeing Natasha coming in. “Come, sit by me.” But Natasha stayed by her mother, looking about her as though seeking for something.

“Mamma!” she said. “Give me
him
, give me him, mamma, quickly, quickly,” and again she could hardly suppress her sobs. She sat down to the table and listened to the talk of the elders and Nikolay, who had come in to tea. “My God, my God, the same people, the same talk, papa holding his cup, and blowing it just the same as always,” thought Natasha, feeling with horror an aversion rising up in her for all her family, because they were always the same.

After tea Nikolay, Sonya, and Natasha went into the divan-room to their favourite corner, where their most intimate talks always began.

“Does it happen to you,” said Natasha to her brother, when they were settled in the divan-room, “to feel that nothing will ever happen—nothing; that all that is good is past? And it’s not exactly a bored feeling, but melancholy?”

“I should think so!” said he. “It has sometimes happened to me that when everything’s all right, and every one’s cheerful, it suddenly strikes one that one’s sick of it all, and all must die. Once in the regiment when
I did not go to some merrymaking, and there the music was playing … and I felt all at once so dreary …”

“Oh, I know that feeling; I know it, I know it,” Natasha assented; “even when I was quite little, I used to have that feeling. Do you remember, once I was punished for eating some plums, and you were all dancing, and I sat in the schoolroom sobbing. I shall never forget it; I felt sad and sorry for every one, sorry for myself, and for every—every one. And what was the chief point, I wasn’t to blame,” said Natasha; “do you remember?”

“I remember,” said Nikolay. “I remember that I came to you afterwards, and I longed to comfort you, but you know, I felt ashamed to. Awfully funny we used to be. I had a wooden doll then, and I wanted to give it you. Do you remember?”

“And do you remember,” said Natasha, with a pensive smile, “how long, long ago, when we were quite little, uncle called us into the study in the old house, and it was dark; we went in, and all at once there stood …”

“A Negro,” Nikolay finished her sentence with a smile of delight; “of course, I remember. To this day I don’t know whether there really was a Negro, or whether we dreamed it, or were told about it.”

“He was grey-headed, do you remember, and had white teeth; he stood and looked at us …”

“Do you remember, Sonya?” asked Nikolay.

“Yes, yes, I do remember something too,” Sonya answered timidly.

“You know I have often asked both papa and mamma about that Negro,” said Natasha. “They say there never was a Negro at all. But you remember him!”

“Of course, I do. I remember his teeth, as if it were to-day.”

“How strange it is, as though it were a dream. I like that.”

“And do you remember how we were rolling eggs in the big hall, and all of a sudden two old women came in, and began whirling round on the carpet. Did that happen or not? Do you remember what fun it was?”

“Yes. And do you remember how papa, in a blue coat, fired a gun off on the steps?”

Smiling with enjoyment, they went through their reminiscences; not the melancholy memories of old age, but the romantic memories of youth, those impressions of the remotest past in which dreamland melts into reality. They laughed with quiet pleasure.

Sonya was, as always, left behind by them, though their past had been spent together.

Sonya did not remember much of what they recalled, and what she did remember, did not rouse the same romantic feeling in her. She was simply enjoying their pleasure, and trying to share it.

She could only enter into it fully when they recalled Sonya’s first arrival. Sonya described how she had been afraid of Nikolay, because he had cording on his jacket, and the nurse had told her that they would tie her up in cording too.

“And I remember, I was told you were found under a cabbage,” said Natasha; “and I remember I didn’t dare to disbelieve it then, though I knew it was untrue, and I felt so uncomfortable.”

During this conversation a maid popped her head in at a door leading into the divan-room.

“Miss, they’ve brought you a cock,” she said in a whisper.

“I don’t want it, Polya; tell them to take it away,” said Natasha.

In the middle of their talk in the divan-room, Dimmler came into the room, and went up to the harp that stood in the corner. He took off the cloth-case, and the harp gave a jarring sound. “Edward Karlitch, do, please, play my favourite nocturne of M. Field,” said the voice of the old countess from the drawing-room.

Dimmler struck a chord, and turning to Natasha, Nikolay, and Sonya, he said, “How quiet you young people are!”

“Yes, we’re talking philosophy,” said Natasha, looking round for a minute and going on with the conversation. They were talking now about dreams.

Dimmler began to play. Natasha went noiselessly on tiptoe to the table, took the candle, carried it away, and going back, sat quietly in her place. It was dark in the room, especially where they were sitting on the sofa, but the silver light of the full moon shone in at the big windows and lay on the floor.

“Do you know, I think,” said Natasha, in a whisper, moving up to Nikolay and Sonya, when Dimmler had finished, and still sat, faintly twanging the strings, in evident uncertainty whether to leave off playing or begin something new, “that one goes on remembering, and remembering; one remembers till one recalls what happened before one was in this world.…”

“That’s metempsychosis,” said Sonya, who had been good at lessons, and remembered all she had learned. “The Egyptians used to
believe that our souls had been in animals, and would go into animals again.”

“No, do you know, I don’t believe that we were once in animals,” said Natasha, still in the same whisper, though the music was over; “but I know for certain that we were once angels somewhere beyond, and we have been here, and that’s why we remember everything.…”

“May I join you?” said Dimmler, coming up quietly, and he sat down by them.

“If we had been angels, why should we have fallen lower?” said Nikolay. “No, that can’t be!”

“Not lower … who told you we were lower?… This is how I know I have existed before,” Natasha replied, with conviction: “The soul is immortal, you know … so, if I am to live for ever, I have lived before too, I have lived for all eternity.”

“Yes, but it’s hard for us to conceive of eternity,” said Dimmler, who had joined the young people, with a mildly condescending smile, but now talked as quietly and seriously as they did.

“Why is it hard to conceive of eternity?” said Natasha. “There will be to-day, and there will be to-morrow, and there will be for ever, and yesterday has been, and the day before.…”

“Natasha! now it’s your turn. Sing me something,” called the voice of the countess. “Why are you sitting there so quietly, like conspirators?”

“Mamma, I don’t want to a bit!” said Natasha, but she got up as she said it.

None of them, not even Dimmler, who was not young, wanted to break off the conversation, and come out of the corner of the divan-room; but Natasha stood up; and Nikolay sat down to the clavichord. Standing, as she always did, in the middle of the room, and choosing the place where the resonance was greatest, Natasha began singing her mother’s favourite song.