The danger of staying on at Bogucharovo was increasing. On all sides there was word of the French getting near, and in one village, barely a dozen miles away, a house and estate had been looted by them. The doctor insisted that the prince must be moved on, and the local marshal sent one of his officials to persuade Princess Marya to get away as soon as possible. The police-chief called and said the same thing: the French were twenty or thirty miles away, French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and if the princess didn't take her father away before the 15th, on their heads be it.
The princess decided to leave on the 15th. She was busy all the previous day with preparations and the issuing of instructions, with everyone now turning to her. Without changing for bed, she spent the night of the 14th as usual in the room next to the one where the old prince lay. Several times she woke hearing a groan or a muttered sound, a creak from the bed, or the footsteps of Tikhon and the doctor going in to turn him over. Several times she listened at the door; he seemed to be more agitated than ever and muttering louder than before. She couldn't sleep, and several times when she went to the door to listen she was tempted to go in, but couldn't bring herself to do so. Even though he could not speak, Princess Marya could tell, and in any case she knew, how he hated any display of anxiety on his behalf. She had noticed him turning away instinctively to avoid her eyes, which, just as instinctively, had been glued on him. She knew that if she were to go in at night at an unusual time it would upset him.
And yet she had never felt more sorry for him, never felt such a dread of losing him. She recalled the whole of her life with him, and in his every word and every action she saw an expression of love for her. Occasionally these memories were encroached upon by temptations of the devil, thoughts about what would happen after his death, and what she would do with her new-found freedom. But she drove these thoughts away with a feeling of revulsion. By morning he had settled down, and she had fallen asleep.
She woke late. The innocence that often comes with the moment of waking showed her only too clearly what worried her most about her father's illness. She woke, listened to what was happening on the other side of the door, heard him still muttering, and told herself with a sigh that nothing had changed.
'But what did I expect? What did I want? I want him to die,' she cried in a fit of self-loathing.
She washed and dressed, ran through her prayers, and went out on to the steps. There were carriages at the entrance, without the horses, and their luggage was being stowed.
The morning was warm and grey. Princess Marya hung about on the steps, still horrified at her own wickedness, and trying to get her thoughts into some kind of order before going in to see him.
The doctor came downstairs and walked out to see her.
'He's a little better this morning,' said the doctor. 'I've been looking for you. You can just about make out what he's saying. His head's a bit clearer. Come on in. He's asking for you . . .'
Princess Marya's heart leapt at this news and the colour drained from her face; she had to lean against the door to keep herself from falling. The thought of seeing him, talking to him, feeling his eyes on her now, when her soul was brimming with these awful, criminal temptations, filled her with an agonizing feeling of delight mixed with horror.
'Shall we go in?' said the doctor.
Princess Marya went into her father's room and walked over to his bed. He was lying well propped up, and his little bony hands with their knotted purple veins were laid across the quilt. His left eye stared straight ahead, while the right eye looked askew, and his lips and eyebrows were without any movement. He looked pathetically small and thin. His face with its shrunken features seemed to have shrivelled up or melted away. Princess Marya went over and kissed him on the hand. His left hand seized hers; he had clearly been waiting for her. He tugged at her hand, and his eyebrows and lips quivered with an angry tremor.
She looked at him in dismay, trying to make out what he wanted of her. When she shifted position so his left eye could see her face he calmed down and for some seconds he kept that one eye glued on her. Then, with a stirring of his lips and tongue, sounds emerged as he struggled to speak, still fixing her with a meek, imploring gaze as if he was worried that she might not understand.
Princess Marya stared back at him, concentrating as hard as she could. The sad comedy of his struggle with his tongue forced Princess Marya to look down, and it cost her an effort to swallow the deep sobs rising in her gorge. He said something, and repeated it several times. Princess Marya could not catch what it was, but she tried to guess by repeating his words and making them sound like questions.
'O-o . . . a-ay,' he said over and over again . . . His words were beyond all understanding. The doctor thought he might have guessed, so he repeated them.
'Don't be afraid?'
The prince shook his head, and said it again.
'Soul - a soul in pain!' came Princess Marya's interpretation. With a mumble of approval he took her hand and pressed it to different parts of his chest as if he could not find the right place for it.
'Thinking! . . . About you!' he managed to get out, much more clearly than before, now that he felt sure he was being understood. Princess Marya pressed her head against his arm, fighting down her sobs and tears.
He stroked her hair.
'I've been calling for you . . . all night . . .' he managed to say.
'If only I'd known . . .' she said, through her tears. 'I was scared to come in.'
He squeezed her hand.
'Weren't you asleep?'
'No, I couldn't sleep,' said Princess Marya, shaking her head.
Instinctively following her father, she was even speaking like him and gesturing with sign language, as if she could not get her words out.
'Dear girl!' Or was it, 'darling! . . .'? Princess Marya could not tell, but the look in his eyes told her beyond doubt it was something full of warmth and affection that she had never heard from him before.
'Why didn't you come?'
'And all I wanted was for him to die!' thought Princess Marya.
There was a short silence.
'Thank you . . . my dear daughter . . . for everything . . . Forgive me . . . Thank you . . . Please forgive me . . .' And tears ran down from his eyes. 'Bring Andrey,' he blurted out, though even as he spoke a look of childish shyness and uncertainty came over his face. He seemed to realize his request was meaningless. Or so she thought.
'I've had a letter from him,' answered Princess Marya.
He seemed taken aback and he gave another shy glance.
'Where is he?'
'He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk.'
He was silent for some time now, lying there with his eyes closed. Then he rallied as if challenged by his own doubts, and, anxious to convince them he could remember and understand, he nodded and opened his eyes.
'Oh yes,' he said, softly but distinctly. 'Russia's gone! Done for!'
And again he was convulsed with sobs, and tears ran down from his eyes. It was too much for Princess Marya; she wept with him, looking him in the face.
He closed his eyes again. He had stopped sobbing. He pointed to his eyes, and Tikhon, quick on the uptake, wiped his tears away.
Then he opened his eyes and said something that no one could understand for quite some time, until Tikhon finally picked it up and told them.
Princess Marya was looking for a meaning in the way he had been speaking a few minutes earlier. It must surely be something about Russia, or was it Prince Andrey, her, his grandson, his imminent death? This was why she could not work out what he was saying.
'Put your white dress on. I like it,' he had said.
When she understood these words Princess Marya sobbed louder than ever, so the doctor took her by the arm and walked her out on to the terrace, calming her down and reminding her she had to get ready for the journey. When Princess Marya had gone, the prince started talking again about his son, the war and the Tsar. His eyebrows twit
ched with anger, his croaky voice got louder, and this was when he had his second and final stroke.
Princess Marya stayed out on the terrace. Morning had broken into a day of hot sunshine. She could take nothing in, think of nothing, and feel nothing beyond her passionate love for her father, a love that seemed to have escaped her understanding until this moment. She hurried out into the garden sobbing, and ran down the paths between Prince Andrey's recently planted lime-trees that led to the pond.
'Oh no . . . I was . . . I . . . I was longing for him to die! Yes, I wanted to get it over and done with . . . I wanted some peace for myself . . . And now what's going to happen to me? What can I do with peace when he's gone?' Princess Marya murmured out loud, tripping rapidly through the garden, and holding her hands to her chest, which was racked with convulsive sobs. She walked right round the garden in a circle that brought her back to the house again, and there coming towards her were Mademoiselle Bourienne (who was still at Bogucharovo, and had no desire to move away) and an unknown gentleman. It was the district marshal, who had come to persuade the princess how urgent it was for them to leave immediately. Princess Marya listened without taking it in. She led the way indoors, offered him lunch, and sat down with him. Then she left the table with an apology, and went to the old prince's door. The doctor came out looking very agitated and said she could not go in.
'Go away, Princess! Please go away!'
Princess Marya went down the garden again, and there by the pond she sat down on the grass at the bottom of a slope where nobody could see her. She was unaware of the time passing. She was brought to her senses by the sound of a woman's footsteps hurrying down the path. She got to her feet and there was Dunyasha, her maid, who had obviously rushed out to find her only to be stopped in her tracks, shocked by the sudden sight of her mistress.
'Please, Princess, you must come . . . the prince . . .' said Dunyasha in a trembling voice.
'Yes, I'm coming, I'm coming!' the princess blurted out, giving Dunyasha no time to finish. Looking away from her, she ran back to the house.
'Princess, this is the will of God! Please prepare yourself for the worst,' said the marshal, meeting her at the door.
'Leave me alone. It's not true!' she shouted angrily.
The doctor tried to stop her. She fended him off and ran to the door. 'Why are they stopping me, all these people who look so scared? I don't need them! What are they doing here?' she thought. She opened the door, and as bright daylight flooded into a room that had been kept in semi-darkness, she was suddenly horrified. There were some women in there, including her old nurse. They all pulled back from the bed to let her through. He was still there lying on the bed, but the forbidding look on his calm face brought Princess Marya to a halt in the doorway.
'No, he's not dead. He can't be!' Princess Marya said to herself. She went over to him, and struggling against a surge of horror she pressed her lips to his cheek. But she recoiled immediately. In an instant all the warm affection she had been feeling for him was gone, replaced by a terrible fear of what lay ahead. 'Oh, no! He's gone! He's gone, and here where he was, there is something different, something sinister, some ghastly, horrible, repulsive mystery!' Burying her face in her hands, Princess Marya sank into the arms of the doctor, who held her up.
With Tikhon and the doctor looking on, the women washed what was left of the prince, tied a cloth round his head to stop his mouth stiffening while wide open, and tied another cloth round his sprawling legs. Then they dressed him in his uniform and medals, and his little desiccated body was laid out on the table. Heaven knows when all the arrangements had been made, or by whom; they seemed to take place of their own accord. By nightfall candles had been lit all around the coffin, a pall was spread over it, juniper had been strewn across the floor, a printed prayer had been tucked under the dead man's withered head, and a deacon sat in a corner reading aloud from the Psalms.
Like shying, snorting horses crowding round over a dead horse a large group of people, outsiders and family, had gathered round the coffin in the drawing-room - the marshal, the village elder, some peasant women, all with darting eyes that settled into apprehensive stares as they crossed themselves and bowed down to kiss the old prince on his cold, stiff hand.
CHAPTER 9
Before Prince Andrey settled down there, Bogucharovo had never had an owner who lived on the estate, and the Bogucharovo peasants were very different from the peasants at Bald Hills. They differed in speech, dress and attitude. They claimed to be people from the steppe. The old prince applauded their stamina whenever they came over to Bald Hills to help out with the harvesting, or to dig ponds and ditches, but he didn't like them because they were an uncivilized lot.
Prince Andrey's last stay at Bogucharovo, and his innovations - hospitals, schools and rent reductions - far from mollifying them, had intensified those aspects of their character that the old prince had identified as uncivilized. Rumour-mongering was rife amongst them: one day they were all going to be enrolled as Cossacks, the next they were going to be forced into a new religion, then there was something about proclamations by the Tsar, or the oath of allegiance to Tsar Paul in 1797 (which was supposed to have given the peasants their freedom, only it was withdrawn later on by the gentry), or Tsar Peter Fyodorovich, who was expected to return to the throne in seven years' time, ushering in an age of complete freedom with everything so straightforward that you wouldn't need any government. Rumours about the war, Napoleon and his invasion became linked in their minds with vague notions of Antichrist, the end of the world and complete freedom.
The vicinity of Bogucharovo consisted mainly of large villages belonging either to the crown or to absentee owners with quit-rent peasants. Very few landowners actually lived there, so there were not many house serfs and literacy was low, and so the peasants of this locality were especially prone to these mysterious undercurrents of Russian country life which have origins and meanings that baffle the modern mind. This had shown up about twenty years ago in a movement that caused the peasants of this district to uproot themselves and move off to a place with warm rivers. Hundreds of peasants, including those from Bogucharovo, had suddenly started selling off their cattle and moving away with their families down to the south-east. Like birds flying out across the ocean these men, women and children set off for the south-east, where none of them had ever been before. They bought their freedom one by one, or just ran away. They formed up in cavalcades, and away they went on foot or in wagons, bound for the land where the warm rivers flowed. Many were caught and sent to Siberia, many others died of cold and hunger on the road, many came back of their own accord, and the movement petered out just as it had begun - for no obvious reason. But the undercurrents still flowing deep down among the people were now welling up into some new elemental force waiting to erupt just as weirdly and unexpectedly, yet with primitive simplicity and power. In 1812 anyone living close to the peasants must have been aware that the undercurrents were boiling up, ready to burst forth very soon.
Alpatych, who had come over to Bogucharovo shortly before the old prince's death, soon became aware of mounting agitation among the peasants, and he noticed that, unlike the Bald Hills district, where all the peasants within a forty-mile radius had moved away, abandoning their villages to destruction at the hands of the Cossacks, in the steppe country of Bogucharovo the peasants were said to have made contact with the French, accepted leaflets from them and passed them round, and then stayed on in their homes. He had learnt through some of his trusty serfs that only a day or two before, a peasant called Karp, whose voice counted for something in village politics, had returned from a trip away as an official driver with the news that the Cossacks were destroying the deserted villages, whereas the French weren't going to touch them. He knew that only yesterday another peasant had come over from Visloukhovo, a nearby hamlet occupied by the French, with a proclamation from the French general that the inhabitants would come to no harm, and anything taken from them would be paid for, i
f they stayed on. As proof of this, the peasant brought with him from Visloukhovo a one-hundred-rouble note (counterfeit money, but he didn't know that), which he had received as a deposit for hay.
Last but not least, Alpatych knew that on the day when he had ordered the village elder to collect some carts and move the princess out of Bogucharovo, a village meeting had been held at which a decision was taken to stay there and wait. Meanwhile, time was pressing. On the day of the prince's death, the 15th of August, the marshal had urged Princess Marya to move on immediately because things were getting dangerous. He had told her he wouldn't be responsible for anything that happened after the 16th. He had driven away the same evening, with a promise to come back next morning for the funeral. But next day he could not come because he was suddenly informed that the French were on the move, and he only just managed to get his own family and their valuables moved out.
For the best part of thirty years Bogucharovo village affairs had been handled by the elder, Dron, known to the old prince as Dronushka.
Dron was one of those peasants strong in body and mind who grow a big beard as soon as they can and don't look any different at sixty or seventy, when they still have no grey hair, all their teeth and the straightness and strength of a thirty-year-old.