Sonya played the opening chord of the prelude.
'My God, I'm ruined. My honour's gone. Bullet through the head, that's my only way out, not singing,' he thought. 'Shall I run away? Where to? Oh, it makes no difference - let them get on with the singing.' Still pacing, Nikolay glanced darkly at Denisov and the girls, avoiding their eyes.
'Nikolay, what's wrong?' asked Sonya's staring eyes. She had known immediately that something must have happened to him.
Nikolay turned away. Natasha, too, with her usual acuteness, had instantly sensed her brother's state of mind. She did notice him, but she was in such high spirits at that moment, so remote from sorrow, gloom and censure, that she deliberately indulged in a little self-delusion, as young people often do. 'No, I'm too happy at this moment to spoil my happiness by sympathizing with someone else's sorrow,' was what she felt, though she said to herself, 'No, I've probably got it all wrong. He must be as happy as I am.'
'Come on, Sonya,' she said, walking out into the middle of the room, where she thought the acoustics were best. Tilting her head, and letting her arms dangle lifelessly like a ballet-dancer, Natasha performed a strong heel-and-toe figure in the middle of the room and then stood still.
'Here I am! Look at me!' she seemed to be saying in response to Denisov's enraptured gaze, which never left her.
'What is she so pleased about?' Nikolay wondered, looking at his sister. 'Why doesn't she get fed up with all this? Has she no shame?' As Natasha sang the first note her throat swelled, her chest rose and her eyes became serious. Oblivious for the moment of everyone and everything, she spread her mouth into a broad smile and out came the sounds of her voice, sounds that might have left you cold if you had heard them a thousand times identically pitched and held, but then suddenly, the thousand and first time, you would be reduced to tears and trembling.
That winter Natasha had begun to take her singing seriously for the first time, especially since Denisov had been so complimentary about her voice. She no longer sang like a child. She had got rid of the childish straining for effect that had made her singing rather amusing until recently. But she was not yet a good singer, according to the musical experts who heard her. 'No polish. A nice voice, but it needs polishing,' they all said. But this was usually said a long time after her voice had stopped. While that unpolished voice was actually singing, for all its wrong breathing and moments of strain, even the experts kept quiet, enjoying the voice, however unpolished, and longing to hear more of it. It had a virginal purity, intuitive power and an easy velvety smoothness, so closely bound up with its own artistic imperfections that it seemed untouchable - as if nothing could be done to that voice without spoiling it.
'How can she?' thought Nikolay with staring eyes when he heard her sing. 'What's got into her? How can she sing at a time like this?' he thought. But then suddenly his whole world was concentrated on waiting for the next note, the next cadence, and everything in the world had a three-beat rhythm: Oh, mio crudele affetto . . . One, two, three . . . One, two, three . . . One . . . Oh, mio crudele affetto . . . One, two, three . . .
'Oh, the stupidity of human life!' thought Nikolay. 'All these things - this disaster, money, Dolokhov, evil, honour - it's all rubbish . . . This is what matters . . . Go on, Natasha! Go on, darling! Go on, my lovely girl! . . . Can she get that top B? Yes! Well done!' and, unaware that he was singing too, he accompanied her a third below to strengthen her top note. 'My God, how marvellous! Did I get that high? Wonderful feeling!' he thought.
Oh, the beauty of their singing in thirds, Oh, the lovely tremolo! Rostov felt a thrill of something nobler in his soul. And that something was detached from everything in the world, and higher than anything in the world. Gambling debts? Dolokhovs? Honour? What were they compared with this? Rubbish! You can murder and steal and still be happy . . .
CHAPTER 16
It was a long time since Rostov had felt such enjoyment in music as he did that day. But as soon as Natasha had finished her barcarolle he was brought back down to reality. He walked out without saying anything and went down to his room. A quarter of an hour later, the old count came in from his club, jolly and contented. Nikolay, hearing him drive up, went to see him.
'Had a good time, then?' asked the old count, a proud and delighted man, smiling cheerfully at his son. Nikolay tried to say yes, but he couldn't; he was choking with sobs. The count was busy lighting his pipe and did not notice the state his son was in.
'Oh well, it's got to be done!' thought Nikolay, once and for all. And out it came: feeling ashamed for doing so, he said to his father quite offhandedly, as if he was asking to use the carriage for a trip down town, 'Oh, Papa, there's a bit of business we ought to discuss. I nearly forgot. I need some money.'
'Dear me,' said his father, who happened to be in a very good mood. 'I said you wouldn't have enough. How much?'
'A lot,' said Nikolay, blushing and smiling a crass, casual smile for which he would never be able to forgive himself. 'I've lost a bit at cards, well rather a lot really, an awful lot - forty-three thousand.'
'What? Who to? . . . You must be joking!' cried the count, an apoplectic red spreading over his neck and the back of his neck, as it does with old people.
'I promised to pay up tomorrow,' said Nikolay.
'Oh no!' exclaimed the count, throwing his arms in the air as he flopped down helplessly on to a sofa.
'Can't be helped! Everybody does it,' said his son, outwardly brazen and breezy but feeling in his heart of hearts that he was an unspeakable cad and his crime could never be redeemed in a lifetime. He felt like kissing his father's hands, going down on his knees and begging for forgiveness, and here he was casually, even rather rudely, telling him this sort of thing happened to everybody.
Count Ilya lowered his eyes at these words from his son, and began fidgeting as if he was looking for something.
'Yes, yes . . .' he managed to say. 'It will be difficult, I'm afraid, difficult to raise . . . but it happens to everybody! Yes, it happens to everybody . . .' The old count flashed a look at his son, straight in the face, and walked out of the room . . . Nikolay had been preparing himself for a refusal, but this he had not expected.
'Papa! Pa-pa!' he cried out, sobbing, after the retreating figure. 'Please, forgive me!' Seizing his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.
While father and son were having this discussion, another one, hardly less important, was taking place between mother and daughter. Natasha had rushed in wildly excited and run over to her mother.
'Mamma! . . . Mamma! . . . he's done it . . . he's . . .'
'Done what?'
'He's . . . He's proposed to me! Mamma! Mamma!' she cried.
The countess couldn't believe her ears. Denisov proposing? Who to? . . . Her tiny little Natasha, who had only just grown out of playing with dolls and was still in the school-room.
'Natasha, that's enough. Don't be so silly!' she said, hoping it might be a joke.
'I'm not being silly! I'm telling you what's happened,' said Natasha angrily. 'I've come to ask you what to do, and you say I'm being silly!'
The countess shrugged.
'If it is true that Monsieur Denisov has made a proposal, it may be amusing but you must go and tell him he is a fool. That's all there is to it.'
'But he's not a fool,' said Natasha, serious and resentful.
'Well, what do you want, then? You all seem to be in love nowadays. Oh well, if you're in love perhaps you'd better marry him,' said the countess with an angry smile. 'Good luck to you.'
'No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him. I don't think I am.'
'Well, go and tell him.'
'Mamma, are you angry with me? Don't be angry, dearest Mamma. It's not my fault, is it?'
'No, of course I'm not, darling. If you like, I'll go and tell him,' said the countess with another smile.
'No, I can do it, only tell me what to say. It's all so easy for you,' she added, warming to her smile. 'Oh, if only you
could have seen him saying it! I know he didn't mean to. He just blurted it out.'
'Well, anyway, you've got to go and refuse him.'
'No, I can't. I feel sorry for him! He's so nice.'
'Well, you'd better accept then. Yes, it's about time you got married,' said her mother with pointed irony.
'No, Mamma, but I am sorry for him. I don't know what to say.'
'Well, you don't have to say anything. I'll speak to him myself,' said the countess, indignant at the very idea of someone treating her little Natasha like an adult.
'No, no, you mustn't! I'll do it. You come and listen at the door.'
And Natasha ran across the drawing-room into the hall where Denisov was still sitting at the clavichord in the same chair, with his face buried in his hands. He leapt to his feet at the sound of her little footsteps.
'Natalie,' he said, hurrying towards her, 'decide my fate. It is in your hands!'
'Vasily Dmitrich, I'm sorry! . . . You are so nice . . . but we can't . . . you know . . . but I'll always love you as I do now.'
Denisov bent over her hand and she heard some strange, incomprehensible sounds. She kissed him on his unkempt curly black head. At that moment they heard the hurried rustling of the old countess's skirts as she bore down on them.
'Vasily Dmitrich, I thank you for the honour you do us,' said the countess in an embarrassed tone which Denisov took as a harsh one, 'but my daughter is so young, and I would have thought that as a friend of my son you would have approached me first. If you had, you would not have put me in the position of having to make this refusal.'
'Countess . . .' began Denisov with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He wanted to say more but he had dried up. Natasha could not look calmly on such a pathetic sight. She broke down in a series of loud sobs.
'Countess, I do wegwet this,' he stammered out, 'but I weally do adore your daughter and all your family and I'd sacwifice more than one life . . .' He looked at the countess and took in her stern face. 'Wight then, I weally must say goodbye, Countess,' he said, kissing her hand, and without a glance at Natasha he strode quickly out of the room with an air of great determination.
The following day Rostov went to Denisov, who wasn't prepared to spend another day in Moscow, to see him on his way. All his Moscow friends gave him a grand send-off at the Gypsies', and he had no memory of being stowed in his sledge or of travelling the first three stations.
With Denisov gone Rostov hung on for another two weeks in Moscow waiting for his money, which the count needed some time to get together. He never went out, and he spent most of his time in the young girls' room.
Sonya was more attentive and affectionate than ever. She seemed anxious to show him that his loss at cards was a splendid achievement that made her love him more than ever. But Nikolay now felt unworthy of her.
He filled the girls' albums with poetry and music, and then at last, having sent off the entire sum of forty-three thousand roubles to Dolokhov and got his receipt, he left Moscow at the end of November without saying goodbye to any of his acquaintances, to rejoin his regiment, which was already in Poland.
PART II
CHAPTER 1
After having things out with his wife, Pierre left for Petersburg. At Torzhok, either there were no horses, or the station-master would not release any. Pierre had to wait. Without removing his overcoat, he lay down on a leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big feet up on it, still wearing his thick boots, and sank into thought.
'Shall I fetch the bags in? Should I make up a bed for you? Would you like some tea?' his valet kept asking.
No reply came from Pierre, who was hearing and saying nothing. He had been deep in thought since the last station and was still thinking about something so important that he had no idea of anything that was going on around him. He was quite unconcerned about arriving in Petersburg sooner rather than later, or whether there would or would not be somewhere for him to rest at this station. Compared with all that was going through his mind at the moment, it was a matter of complete indifference to him whether he spent a few hours or the rest of his life here.
The station-master and his wife, his valet and a peasant woman selling Torzhok embroidery kept coming in and out offering their services. Without shifting his raised feet, Pierre stared at them over his spectacles, wondering what they could possibly want and how they could go on living without answering the questions that were worrying him. They were the same questions that had worried him ever since the day he had returned from the duel at Sokolniki and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless night, but now, all alone and on the road, he had become obsessed by them. Whatever the direction of his thoughts he kept coming back to the same unanswerable but inescapable questions. It was as if the working of his head had stripped the main screw that held his life together. The screw wouldn't go in or come out; it just turned without biting on anything, always in the same hole, and he couldn't stop it turning.
The station-master came in and asked his Excellency obsequiously whether he would mind waiting just a while, only an hour or two, by which time - come what might - he would let his Excellency have the special post-horses. He was lying, of course, in the hope of squeezing more money out of the traveller.
'Is this a good thing or a bad thing?' Pierre wondered. 'Good for me, but bad for the next traveller, and anyway he can't help it - he has to eat. He told me an officer thrashed him for that. But the officer thrashed him because he was in a hurry. And I shot Dolokhov because I considered myself insulted. Louis XVI was executed because he was considered a criminal, and within a year the men who executed him were killed as well for doing something or other. What's bad and what's good? What should we love and what should we hate? What is life for, and what am I? What is life? What is death? What kind of force is it that directs everything?' he kept asking himself. And there were no answers to any of these questions, except one illogical response that didn't answer any of them. And that response was: 'You're going to die, and it will be over and done with. You're going to die and you'll either come to know everything or stop asking.' But dying was horrible too.
The Torzhok pedlar woman was whining away, offering her wares, especially some goatskin slippers. 'I've got hundreds of roubles, money I don't know what to do with, and she stands there in her tatty coat hardly daring to look at me,' thought Pierre. 'And what does she want money for? As if it could give her a hair's breadth of extra happiness or put her soul at rest. Is there anything in the world that can make her and me any less subject to evil and death? Death, the end of everything, and it must come today or tomorrow - either way it's a split second on the scale of eternity.' And again he twisted the screw that wouldn't bite, and the screw went on turning in the same hole.
His servant handed him a half-cut volume - it was a novel in letters by Madame de Souza.1 He started reading about the trials and struggle for virtue of someone called Amelie de Mansfeld. 'Why did she resist her seducer,' he thought, 'when she loved him? God couldn't have filled her heart with any desires that went against his will. My ex-wife didn't, and maybe she was right. Nothing has been discovered,' Pierre said to himself again, 'and nothing has been invented. The only thing we can know is that we don't know anything. And that is the summit of human wisdom.'
Everything within and around him struck him as confused, senseless and disgusting. And yet in his very disgust at everything around him Pierre found a source of nagging enjoyment.
'If I could just ask your Excellency to squeeze up a little and make room for this gentleman,' said the station-master, bringing in another traveller delayed by the lack of horses. This traveller was a stocky, large-boned old man, yellow, wrinkled and with grey bushy eyebrows and eyes that gleamed with a greyish colour.
Pierre took his feet down from the table, stood up and went to lie on the bed that had been got ready for him, glancing across now and again at the gloomy and weary newcomer, who did not look back at him as he struggled out of his top-coat assisted by his ser
vant. Keeping on his shabby nankeen-covered sheepskin coat and with felt boots on his thin bony legs, the traveller sat down on the sofa, leaned back his close-cropped head, which was unusually large and broad at the temples, and looked at Bezukhov. He had a shrewd, austere and sharp look that impressed Pierre, who felt like striking up a conversation, but just as he was about to ask him about the roads, the traveller closed his eyes and folded his wrinkled old hands, one finger displaying a large iron ring with a death's head seal on it. He sat there quite still, either relaxing or, as seemed more likely to Pierre, in a state of profound and tranquil meditation. The newcomer's servant was also old, yellow and wrinkled. He had no beard or moustache, not because he had shaved them off, but because he had clearly never been able to grow any. The old retainer fussed about, unpacking a hamper and setting up a little tea table, and then went to fetch a boiling samovar. When it was all ready, the traveller opened his eyes, moved over to the table and poured out one glass of tea for himself and another which he handed to the beardless old man. Pierre began to feel restless, as if it was necessary, even inevitable, for him to get into conversation with the traveller.
The servant came back with his empty glass inverted and a half-nibbled piece of sugar beside it, and asked if anything more was required.
'No. Give me my book,' said the traveller. The servant passed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional work, and the traveller became engrossed in it. Pierre watched him. Suddenly the stranger marked his place in the book, closed it and put it down. He then shut his eyes, leant back on the sofa and resumed his earlier position. Pierre was still watching him, too late to look away, when the old man opened his austere, resolute eyes and fastened them on Pierre. Pierre felt embarrassed and tried to avoid that look, but the gleaming old eyes kept a magnetic hold on him.
CHAPTER 2
'I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I'm not mistaken,' said the stranger in a loud, unhurried voice. Pierre said nothing but looked quizzically over his spectacles at the speaker. 'I have heard of you,' continued the stranger, 'and I have also heard about what has happened to you, sir. Your misfortune.' He seemed to emphasize the last word as if to say, Oh yes, misfortune. Call it what you will, but I know that what happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune.