War and Peace
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 Natásha 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
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. Dunyásha,
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 Ilýnich... a letter,” she finished
with a sob.
CHAPTER II
Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natásha was feeling a
special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
them—her father, mother, and Sónya—were 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
Dunyásha’s words about Peter Ilýnich 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 Natásha.
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 Natásha he waved his arms despairingly and
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.
“Pe... Pétya... 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 Natásha’s whole being.
Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if
something was being torn inside 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 Natásha by the arm said something to her.
Natásha 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. Sónya and the
maids were holding her arms.
“Natásha! Natásha!...” cried the countess. “It’s not true... it’s not
true... He’s lying... Natásha!” she shrieked, pushing those around her
away. “Go away, all of you; it’s not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!...
It’s not true!”
Natásha 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.
“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 Natásha 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.
“Natásha, you love me?” she said in a soft trustful whisper. “Natásha,
you would not deceive me? You’ll tell me the whole truth?”
Natásha 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.
Natásha 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 few minutes,
and Natásha 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?”
Natásha 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...”
“Natásha, he is no more, no more!”
And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
time.
CHAPTER III
Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sónya and the count tried to
replace Natásha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to
restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natásha
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 heal. Pétya’s death had torn from
her half her life. When the news of Pétya’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 life. But the same blow that
almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored Natásha to life.
A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is like
a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep wound may
heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet
heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within.
Natásha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended,
but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of
life—love—was still active within her. Love awoke and so did life.
Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary and Natásha together;
this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary
put off her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natásha as if
she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom
had strained Natásha’s physical strength.
One afternoon noticing Natásha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took
her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natásha lay down,
but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she
called her back.
“I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.”
“You are tired—try to sleep.”
“No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me.”
“She is much better. She spoke so well today,” said Princess Mary.
Natásha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
Princess Mary’s face.
“Is she like him?” thought Natásha. “Yes, like and yet not like. But she
is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. What
is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What
does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!”
“Mary,” she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s hand to herself,
“Mary, you mustn’t think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love you!
Let us be quite, quite friends.”
And Natásha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.
From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
between women was established between Princess Mary and Natásha. They
were continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and
spent most of their time together. When one went out the other became
restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony
with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone. A
feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive
feeling of life being possible only in each other’s presence.
Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already
in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most
of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her
mother, her father, and her daydreams; and Natásha, who with a passive
lack of understanding had formerly turned away from that life of
devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now
feeling herself bound to Princess Mary by affection, learned to love her
past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to
her. She did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation to her
own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood
and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For
Princess Mary, listening to Natásha’s tales of childhood and early
youth, there also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of
life: belief in life and its enjoyment.
Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him had
the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being
conscious of it.
Natásha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed to
her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.
One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and