And then pitty-pitty-pitty, itty-itty, pitty-pitty - ugh, the fly had settled on him . . . And his attention slid away into another realm half-way between reality and delirium where something very special was going on. Here the edifice was still intact, still rising; there was still something straining upwards, the candle was still burning, the red halo was still there, and the same shirt-that-was-a-sphinx was still there over by the door. But there was something else. There was a creaking sound, a breath of fresh air, and a different white sphinx stood in the doorway. This sphinx had a white face and in it the gleaming eyes of Natasha, the very girl who had just been in his thoughts.
'Oh, this terrible delirium - it goes on for ever!' thought Prince Andrey, trying to rid himself of this face. But the face stayed there in all its reality; the face was coming closer. Prince Andrey tried to get back to the earlier realm of pure thought, but he couldn't manage it. His delirium kept dragging him back. The softly murmuring voice kept up its rhythmic whisper, he could still feel something pressing down on him, and something rising up, and there was the strange face right in front of him. Prince Andrey gathered all his strength in an effort to bring himself round; he stirred a little, but then there was a sudden ringing in his ears, his eyes went dim, and he fainted away like a man disappearing under water.
When he came round there was Natasha, the very living Natasha that of all people in the world he was dying to love with that newly revealed, pure, divine love, down on her knees before him. He knew it was the real, living Natasha, and this came as no surprise; he was quietly happy. Natasha was kneeling, terrified but rooted to the spot (she couldn't have moved a muscle), gazing at him and trying so hard not to sob. Her pale face showed no movement other than a slight tremor in her lips and chin.
Prince Andrey gave a sigh of relief, smiled and held out his hand.
'Is it you?' he said. 'Real happiness!'
In one quick movement Natasha carefully shuffled up closer, still on her knees, and took his hand equally carefully, bending her face down over it, kissing it, caressing it with her lips.
'Oh please forgive me!' she whispered, looking up and glancing at him. 'Please do forgive me!'
'I love you,' said Prince Andrey.
'Forgive . . .'
'What is there to forgive?' asked Prince Andrey.
'Forgive me for what I . . . what I . . . did to you,' Natasha murmured in a barely audible broken whisper, and she kissed his hand more and more, covering it with caresses from her lips.
'I love you, darling, more than I did, better than before,' said Prince Andrey, lifting her face with his hand so he could look her in the eyes.
Those eyes, brimming with happy tears, were gazing at him with gentle compassion and the joy of love. Natasha's pale thin face with its puffy lips was worse than unattractive - it looked terrible. But Prince Andrey couldn't see her face; he saw only the glittering eyes, and they were beautiful. They heard voices behind them.
Pyotr, the valet, was now wide awake, and he had woken the doctor. Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had long been a witness to all that was happening, and he had shrunk down on his bench, carefully pulling the sheet right across his bare body.
'What's all this then?' said the doctor, getting up from his low bed. 'I must ask you to withdraw, madam.'
At that moment there was a knock at the door; it was a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed that her daughter was missing.
Natasha left the room like a sleepwalker woken up in mid-trance, walked back to her hut, and sank down on her bed sobbing.
From that day on, at every stop and overnight stay throughout the rest of the Rostovs' journey, Natasha never left Bolkonsky's side, and the doctor was forced to admit that he had not expected to see such fortitude in a young girl, nor that kind of skill in nursing a wounded man.
Awful as it was for the countess to think that Prince Andrey might (and according to the doctor probably would) die on the road in her daughter's arms, she was no match for Natasha. Even though the rapprochement between Prince Andrey and Natasha raised the possibility that if he happened to survive their old engagement might be renewed, nobody - least of all Natasha and Prince Andrey - ever mentioned it. The unresolved question of life and death still hung in the balance, not only over Prince Andrey, but over the whole of Russia, and this precluded all other considerations.
CHAPTER 33
Pierre woke late on the 3rd of September. He had a headache, the clothes he had slept in hung heavily on him, and he had a vague recollection of something reprehensible that he had done the evening before. That reprehensible something was yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe.
It was eleven o'clock by his watch, but it was very dark outside. Pierre got to his feet, rubbed his eyes, and the moment he saw the pistol with its engraved stock back on the desk where Gerasim had put it he remembered where he was and what was in store for him that day.
'I wonder if I'm too late,' he thought. 'No, surely that man won't make his entry into Moscow before midday.'
Without stopping to think about what was in store for him he got down to business straightaway.
Pierre straightened his clothes, picked up the pistol and was on the point of leaving when he realized for the first time he couldn't just walk down the street brandishing a pistol, so how could he carry it? Even under his loose coat it would be difficult to hide a big pistol. It couldn't be tucked in his belt or under his arm without being noticeable. Besides, the pistol had been fired, and Pierre hadn't had time to reload it. 'Never mind, I'll have to use a dagger,' Pierre decided, even though he had told himself repeatedly when wondering how to fulfil his mission that in 1809 the student's biggest mistake had been to try and kill Napoleon with a dagger. But by now Pierre's main aim seemed to be not so much to carry out his mission as to prove to himself that instead of backing away from it he was doing all he could to see it through. Pierre grabbed the blunt, jagged dagger in a green scabbard that he had bought with the pistol at the Sukharev tower, and hid it under his waistcoat.
Pierre tightened the sash round his peasant's coat, pulled his cap down over his eyes, and walked down the corridor, trying not to make a noise or run into the captain, and slipped out into the street.
The fire he had watched so indifferently yesterday evening had spread noticeably during the night. Moscow was blazing at several different points. The buildings in Carriage Row, the Bazaar, across the river and on Povarsky Street, as well as the barges on the river Moskva and down at the timber yards near the Dorogomilov bridge were all on fire.
Pierre's route was to take him down various side-streets to Povarsky Street, and then on to St Nicholas' church on the Arbat, where he had long before picked out in his mind a suitable spot for the doing of his deed. Most of the houses had their gates locked and shutters up. The streets and alleys were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of burning. Now and then he had come across Russians looking all anxious and apprehensive, and Frenchmen with an out-of-town look of camp-life about them, walking down the middle of the road. Both sorts of people looked surprised when they saw Pierre. It wasn't just his height and his fat body, or the sombre look of concentrated suffering that affected his face and whole figure; the Russians stared at Pierre because they couldn't work out what class he belonged to. As for the French, they were surprised to see that, whereas all the other Russians stared at them with curiosity and trepidation, Pierre simply ignored them.
At the gates of one house three Frenchmen trying to communicate with some Russians who couldn't understand what they were saying stopped Pierre to ask if he spoke French. Pierre shook his head and walked on. Down a side-street a sentry guarding a green caisson hailed him, and it was only when his menacing shout was repeated and his gun rattled as he picked it up that Pierre suddenly realized he was supposed to be walking on the other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing. He hurried along, horrified to be harbouring such a strange and terrible in
tention, yet dreading - if last night's experience was anything to go by - that he might lose his grip on it. But he was not destined to get to the place he was heading for without a new shock to his frame of mind. As it happened, even if he hadn't been distracted en route he could never have carried out his plan, because Napoleon had gone down the Arbat four hours earlier on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the Kremlin, where he was now ensconced in the royal study in a foul mood, issuing detailed instructions for immediate steps to be taken to put the fire out, stop any looting and reassure the citizens. But Pierre knew nothing of this. Totally absorbed in what lay ahead, he was agonizing as men do when they attempt the impossible, and the thing is impossible not because of any intrinsic difficulty, but because it requires them to act out of character. He was tormented by a terrible dread that he would weaken at the critical moment, and then lose all self-respect.
Even without seeing or hearing anything he was finding his way by instinct, and he moved unerringly down the back-streets leading to Povarsky.
As Pierre got nearer, the smoke got thicker, and thicker, and he could actually feel the heat from the conflagration. Tongues of flame licked up here and there along the roof-tops. He came across more and more people in the streets, and they were getting more excited. But although Pierre could sense that something unusual was going on around him, he didn't realize he was walking towards the fire. He was going along a path across a large open space which had Povarsky Street running down one side and Prince Gruzinsky's gardens on the other when he suddenly heard a woman near by crying with despair. He stopped as if he had come round from a dream, and looked up.
On the parched and dusty grass down one side of the path lay piles of household things: feather-beds, a samovar, icons and some trunks. There on the ground by the boxes sat a skinny woman, no youngster, with long, protruding upper teeth, wearing a black cloak and cap. She was sobbing and weeping fit to burst, rocking to and fro and muttering to herself. Two little girls, ten - or twelve-year-olds, in dirty little dresses and cloaks were staring at their mother with fear written all over their pale faces, not knowing what to make of her. The youngest child, a little boy of about seven, in a thick coat and a huge cap, obviously somebody else's, was howling in the arms of an old woman who was cradling him. A dirty, bare-legged servant-girl was sitting on a trunk; she had let down her blonde locks, and was tidying them up, sniffing at her singed hair. The husband, a stooping little man in uniform, with side-whiskers curling round like little wheels and smooth hair peeping out from under a square-set cap, looked impassive as he shifted the piled-up trunks and sorted through them to drag out some kind of clothing.
The woman almost threw herself down at Pierre's feet the moment she saw him.
'Mercy on us, good Christian folk! Save me. Help me, kind sir! . . . Please, somebody help!' she managed to get out through her sobs. 'It's my little girl! . . . My daughter! . . . My youngest girl. She's been left behind! . . . She's in the fire! Oo-oh! After all that nursing! . . . Oh-oh-oh!'
'Don't go on about it, Marya Nikolayevna,' the husband said softly to his wife, obviously wanting to justify himself in the presence of an outsider. 'Your sister must have taken her. Where else could she be?' he added.
'You monster! You villain!' the woman screamed furiously in mid-wail. 'You've got no heart, no feeling for your own child. Any other man would have rescued her from the fire. He's a monster, not a man, not a father. You're a gentleman, sir,' gabbled the woman, turning to Pierre and choking with sobs. 'The whole row was on fire. It just came at us. The girl shouted, "Fire!" We grabbed a few things and ran out in what we stood up in . . . This is all we could bring . . . the holy icons, and my marriage bed. Everything else has gone. We grabbed the children too, but not little Katechka. Oh Lord! Oh-oh!' and again she broke down sobbing. 'My sweet little baby! She's burnt to death! Burnt to death!'
'But where? Where did you leave her?' asked Pierre.
His face had lit up with sympathy, and the woman saw that this man might be able to help.
'Good, kind sir!' she howled, clutching at his legs. 'Be kind to us! Set my mind at rest if you can't do anything else . . . Aniska, you little slut, show him where to go,' she screamed at the servant-girl, opening her mouth wide in her fury so that her long teeth stuck out even more.
'Show me where to go. Just show me. I . . . I'll go and do something about it,' Pierre blurted out in a panic.
The dirty servant-girl came out from behind the trunk, put up her hair, gave a deep sigh and stumped off down the path ahead of him on her rough bare feet.
Pierre felt as if he had fainted away and suddenly come back to life. He raised his head higher, his eyes began to gleam with the light of life, and he hurried after the girl, overtook her and came out on to Povarsky Street. The entire street was enveloped in clouds of black smoke, with tongues of flame licking out here and there. A big crowd had gathered in front of the fire. In the middle of the street stood a French general, talking to some people standing round him. Pierre went with the servant-girl and they tried to get through to the place where the French general was standing, only to be stopped by some French soldiers.
'No way through!' shouted a voice.
'This way, Uncle,' bawled the girl. 'Down that lane past the Nikulins.'
Pierre turned back, skipping into a trot now and then just to keep up with her. The girl ran across the street, turned left down a side-street, went past three houses and turned in through a gateway on the right.
'Just in here,' she said before running across a yard to open a little gate in a paling-fence, where she stopped and pointed to the small wooden end-section of a building that was blazing away merrily. One side of it had collapsed, the other was on fire, and flames were licking out of the window-holes and up under the roof.
As Pierre went in through the little gate he ran into a wall of heat, and instinctively stopped in his tracks.
'Which one? Which is your house?' he asked.
'Oooh!' wailed the servant-girl, pointing to the end-section. 'That's it. That's where we been livin'. Burnt to death, you 'ave, our little treasure, Katechka, my dear little missy. Ooh!' wailed Aniska at the sight of the fire, feeling it was her turn to give vent to her feelings.
Pierre darted across to the end-section, but the heat was so great that the only thing he could do was skirt round close to the big house, which was burning only on one side, and at roof-level. A group of French soldiers were swarming round it. At first he couldn't work out what they were doing as they carried things out of the house, but when he saw a French soldier just in front hitting a peasant with the flat of his sword and pinching his fur-lined coat, Pierre got a vague impression they were after loot, though he had no time to stop and think about it.
The sounds of walls and ceilings breaking apart and crashing down; the sizzling hiss of the flames and the wild shouts of the crowd; the sight of billowing clouds of smoke belching out in great black swirls or shooting up and scattering showers of gleaming sparks; flames licking up the walls in big, thick red sheaves or covering them with what looked like golden fish-scales; the blistering heat, the choking smoke and the speed of everything roused Pierre in the way that only a huge fire can. The effect was particularly strong on Pierre, because now, at the sight of the fire, he felt suddenly liberated from all the ideas that had been weighing him down. He felt young and carefree, ready and resolute. He ran round to the end-section from the house side, and was about to dash into the bit that was still standing when he heard people calling out just above his head, and something heavy came crashing down close by.
Pierre looked up at the windows of the house and saw some French soldiers who had just thrown down a drawer out of a chest, full of metal objects. Other French soldiers waiting down below walked over to the drawer.
'Hey there, what does that fellow want?' shouted one of the French soldiers, looking at Pierre.
'There's a child in that house. Have you seen a child?' said Pierre.
'What
's he on about? Go on, get out of here!' came various voices, and one of the soldiers, evidently worried that Pierre might take it into his head to pinch their bits of silver and bronze, pounced on him ominously.
'A child?' shouted another Frenchman from above. 'I did hear something squawking in the garden. Perhaps it was the brat this fellow's looking for. Got to be nice to each other, haven't we?'
'Where is it?' asked Pierre.
'Round there! Over there!' the French soldier shouted down from the window, pointing to the garden at the back of the house. 'Hang on, I'll come down.'
And sure enough, a minute later the Frenchman, a black-eyed young man with a mark on his cheek, working in his shirt-sleeves, hopped out of a window on the ground floor, clapped Pierre on the shoulder, and ran round with him to the garden. 'Get a move on, you fellows,' he shouted to his comrades, 'it's getting hot.' Running down a sandy path round to the back of the house, the Frenchman jogged Pierre by the arm, and pointed to a little round space. Under a garden seat lay a little three-year-old girl in a pink dress.