her strengthher spiritual gaze was fixed.
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One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and
thin, dressed in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a knot, was crouched feet and all in the
corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and smoothing out
the end of her sash while she looked at a corner of the door.
She was gazing in the direction in which he had goneto
the other side of life. And that other side of life, of which she
had never before thought and which had formerly seemed to
her so far away and improbable, was now nearer and more
akin and more comprehensible than this side of life, where
everything was either emptiness and desolation or suffering
and indignity.
She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could
not imagine him otherwise than as he had been here. She
now saw him again as he had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa,
and at Yaroslavl.
She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and
her own, and sometimes devised other words they might
have spoken.
There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak,
leaning his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his shoulders raised. His lips are firmly
closed, his eyes glitter, and a wrinkle comes and goes on his
pale forehead. One of his legs twitches just perceptibly, but
rapidly. Natasha knows that he is struggling with terrible
pain. ‘What is that pain like? Why does he have that pain?
What does he feel? How does it hurt him?’ thought Natasha.
He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to
speak seriously:
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War and Peace
‘One thing would be terrible,’ said he: ‘to bind oneself
forever to a suffering man. It would be continual torture.’
And he looked searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to think what she would say. She
said: ‘This can’t go onit won’t. You will get wellquite well.’
She now saw him from the commencement of that scene
and relived what she had then felt. She recalled his long sad
and severe look at those words and understood the meaning
of the rebuke and despair in that protracted gaze.
‘I agreed,’ Natasha now said to herself, ‘that it would be
dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only
because it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it would be dreadful for
me. He then still wished to live and feared death. And I said
it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I meant.
I thought quite differently. Had I said what I thought, I
should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared
with what I am now. Now there is nothing… nobody. Did he
know that? No, he did not and never will know it. And now
it will never, never be possible to put it right.’ And now he
again seemed to be saying the same words to her, only in her
imagination Natasha this time gave him a different answer.
She stopped him and said: ‘Terrible for you, but not for me!
You know that for me there is nothing in life but you, and to
suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me,’ and he took
her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she
said other tender and loving words which she might have
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said then but only spoke now: ‘I love thee!… thee! I love,
love…’ she said, convulsively pressing her hands and setting
her teeth with a desperate effort…
She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to
whom she was saying this. Again everything was shrouded
in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a strained frown she
peered toward the world where he was. And now, now it
seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery…. But at the
instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck
painfully on her ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the
room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look on her
face and showing no concern for her mistress.
‘Come to your Papa at once, please!’ said she with a
strange, excited look. ‘A misfortune… about Peter Ilynich…
a letter,’ she finished with a sob.
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Chapter II
Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha
was feeling a special estrangement from the members of her
own family. All of themher father, mother, and Sonyawere
so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace, that all their
words and feelings seemed an insult to the world in which
she had been living of late, and she felt not merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha’s words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but
did not grasp them.
‘What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to
them? They just live their own old, quiet, and commonplace
life,’ thought Natasha.
As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly
coming out of her mother’s room. His face was puckered up
and wet with tears. He had evidently run out of that room
to give vent to the sobs that were choking him. When he saw
Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.
‘Pe… Petya… Go, go, she… is calling…’ and weeping like
a child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he
almost fell into it, covering his face with his hands.
Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through
Natasha’s whole being. Terrible anguish struck her heart,
she felt a dreadful ache as if something was being torn in
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side her and she were dying. But the pain was immediately
followed by a feeling of release from the oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. The sight
of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that she
heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and her own grief.
She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm,
pointing to her mother’s door. Princess Mary, pale and
with quivering chin, came out from that room and taking
Natasha by the arm said something to her. Natasha neither
saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing
at the door for an instant as if struggling with herself, and
then ran to her mother.
The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and
awkward position, stretching out and beating her head
against the wall. Sonya and the maids were holding her
arms.
‘Natasha! Natasha!…’ cried the countess. ‘It’s not true…
it’s not true… He’s lying… Natasha!’ she shrieked, pushing
those around her away. ‘Go away, all of you; it’s not true!
Killed!… ha, ha, ha!… It’s not true!’
Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her
mother, embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised
her, turned her face toward herself, and clung to her.
‘Mummy!… darling!… I am here, my dearest Mummy,’
she kept on whispering, not pausing an instant.
She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly
with her, demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened
and tore open her mother’s dress.
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‘My dearest darling… Mummy, my precious!…’ she whispered incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and
feeling her own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling
her nose and cheeks.
The countess pressed her daughter’s hand, closed her
eyes, and became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up
with unaccustomed swiftness, glanced vacantly around her,
and seeing Natasha began to press her daughter’s head with
all her strength. Then she turned toward her daughter’s face
which was wincing with pain and gazed long at it.
‘Natasha, you love me?’ she said in a soft trustful whisper. ‘Natasha, you would not deceive me? You’ll tell me the
whole truth?’
Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her
look there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.
‘My darling Mummy!’ she repeated, straining all the
power of her love to find some way of taking on herself the
excess of grief that crushed her mother.
And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother,
refusing to believe that she could live when her beloved boy
was killed in the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a
world of delirium.
Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that
night, nor the next day and night. She did not sleep and
did not leave her mother. Her persevering and patient love
seemed completely to surround the countess every moment,
not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.
During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a
2037
few minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her
chair and closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was sitting up in bed
and speaking softly.
‘How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won’t you
have some tea?’ Natasha went up to her. ‘You have improved
in looks and grown more manly,’ continued the countess,
taking her daughter’s hand.
‘Mamma! What are you saying..’
‘Natasha, he is no more, no more!’
And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep
for the first time.
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War and Peace
Chapter III
Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the
count tried to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that
she alone was able to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natasha remained constantly
at her mother’s side, sleeping on a lounge chair in her room,
making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed
her mother.
The mother’s wounded spirit could not could not heal.
Petya’s death had torn from her half her life. When the news
of Petya’s death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous
woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no interest in
