'That's enough playing about,' she was saying. 'There's a time and a place for everything.'
'Oh, leave her alone, Kondratyevna,' said Natasha. 'All right, Mavrusha, off you go.' And after giving Mavrusha her freedom, Natasha crossed the great hall and went to the vestibule. An old footman and two young ones were playing cards. They broke off and got to their feet at the entrance of the young mistress. 'What shall I do with them?' Natasha wondered.
'Oh yes, Nikita, I want you to go somewhere . . . (Where shall I send him?) Er, yes, go outside and fetch me a cockerel, please. And you, Misha, bring me some oats.2
'A few oats is it you want?' said Misha, with cheerful readiness.
'Just do as you're told, and do it now,' the old man urged him.
'Fyodor, you can get me a piece of chalk.'
Since she happened to be passing the butler's pantry she asked for the samovar to be lit, though it was nowhere near the right time for this.
The butler, Foka, was the grumpiest person in the house, and Natasha liked to test her authority over him. Only too ready to distrust her, he went off to find out whether he had heard aright.
'Young ladies nowadays!' said Foka, pretending to scowl in Natasha's direction.
There was no one in the house who sent more people scurrying around and gave the servants more work to do than Natasha. She couldn't set eyes on anyone without sending him or her on an errand. She seemed to be challenging any one of them to get angry or sulky, but no one's orders were more lovingly obeyed by the servants than Natasha's. 'What can I possibly do now? Where can I possibly go?' Natasha wondered as she ambled down the corridor.
'Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children am I going to have?' she asked the buffoon, who came towards her dressed in his woman's jacket.
'You'll have fleas, and dragonflies, and grasshoppers,' answered the buffoon.
'Oh, Lord! Same old story! Oh, where can I go? What can I do with myself?' And she clattered rapidly upstairs to see Iogel and his wife, who lived on the top floor. The two governesses were sitting with the Iogels and on the table were plates of raisins, walnuts and almonds. The governesses were discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down, listened to their discussion with a solemn, pensive air, and then got up again. 'The Island of Madagascar,' she said. 'Ma-da-gas-car,' she repeated, lingering long on all four syllables, and then, ignoring Madame Schoss, who wanted to know what she was talking about, she walked out of the room.
Petya, her brother, was upstairs too. He and his tutor were busy making fireworks to let off that night.
'Petya! Petya!' she yelled at him. 'Give me a piggy-back downstairs.' Petya ran over and presented his back, she jumped up on it and grabbed him round the neck with both arms, and he skipped off, prancing along the landing. 'No, don't . . . The Island of Madagascar,' she enunciated as she jumped down from his back and went downstairs.
Having inspected her kingdom, so to speak, and tested her authority, ensuring total obedience on all sides, but still bored out of her mind, Natasha went back to the great hall, took up her guitar and sat down with it in a dark corner behind a bookcase. She began to play on the bass string, picking out a melody remembered from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrey. For any passer-by who might have chanced to listen, the noise given off by her guitar would have been quite meaningless, but for her these sounds evoked a host of memories in her imagination. She sat there behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a shaft of light falling from the crack in the pantry door, listening to herself and remembering days gone by. She was in a reminiscing mood.
Sonya crossed the hall and went into the pantry carrying a small glass. Natasha glanced at her through the crack in the door, and suddenly she seemed to be remembering this scene from some time in the past, with the light falling through the crack in the pantry door, and Sonya walking across with the glass. 'Yes, yes, that's exactly how it was,' thought Natasha.
'What does this sound like, Sonya?' Natasha called out, plucking the thick string.
'Oh, there you are!' said Sonya, startled, and she came over to listen. 'I don't know . . . Is it a storm?' she said diffidently, afraid of getting it wrong.
'Yes, that's just how she jumped, just how she came over to me with that shy smile when it all happened before,' thought Natasha, 'and just like then . . . I thought there was something disappointing about her.'
'No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier.3 Listen.' And Natasha hummed through the tune of the chorus for Sonya to recognize. 'Where were you off to?' asked Natasha.
'I'm changing this glass of water. I've nearly finished that pattern.'
'You can always find something to do, and I can't, you know,' said Natasha. 'Where's Nikolay gone?'
'I think he's asleep.'
'Sonya, go and wake him up,' said Natasha. 'Tell him I want him to sing and I need him.'
She sat there a little while longer, wondering what it meant - this had all happened before - but she couldn't work it out, and didn't mind in the slightest, so she let herself glide back in imagination to the time when they had been alone together, and he had gazed at her with eyes full of love.
'Oh, I do wish he'd come! I'm afraid he never will!'
'And the worst thing is: I'm getting older. I really am. What's in me now won't be there soon. Perhaps he's coming today - now! Perhaps he's here already, sitting there in the drawing-room. Perhaps he did come yesterday, and I've forgotten about it.' She got up, put down her guitar, and went into the drawing-room. They were all there - tutors, governesses and guests, sitting at the tea table, and the servants standing behind them. But not Prince Andrey - he wasn't there, and life went on as before.
'Here she is,' said the count, seeing Natasha coming in. 'Come over here and sit with me.' But Natasha stayed by her mother, staring round the room as if she was looking for something.
'Mamma!' she said. 'Get him for me, Mamma, please get him. Hurry!' and again she could hardly stop herself sobbing. She sat down at the table and listened to them talking, the old folk and Nikolay, who had just come in for tea. 'Lord God in heaven! The same people, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing his tea the same as he always does,' thought Natasha, with a terrible sense of revulsion welling up inside her at the sight of all these people, disgusting in their inevitable sameness.
When tea was over Nikolay, Sonya and Natasha went over to their favourite corner in the sitting-room, where their most intimate conversations always began.
CHAPTER 10
'Do you ever get that feeling,' said Natasha to her brother once they were settled in the sitting-room, 'that nothing's ever going to happen to you again, nothing at all, and anything good is in the past? And you don't feel bored exactly, but very, very sad?'
'I'll say!' he replied. 'It's happened to me. Everything's fine, everyone's happy, and suddenly you get this feeling of being fed up with everything, and realizing everybody's going to die. Once in the regiment I stayed in while they all went out celebrating. I could hear the music playing . . . and I had this empty feeling . . .'
'Yes, I know what you mean. I know that feeling. I really do,' said Natasha in full agreement. 'I was quite little when it first happened to me. Do you remember, once I got punished for pinching some plums, and you were all dancing, and I sat in the classroom sobbing. I just sobbed and sobbed - I'll never forget it. I felt so sad and sorry for everyone, sorry for myself and absolutely everybody. And the thing was - I hadn't done it,' said Natasha. 'Do you remember?'
'Yes,' said Nikolay. 'I remember coming to you afterwards, and I really wanted to comfort you, but you know, I felt too ashamed. We were so funny, weren't we? I had that little wooden doll, and I wanted to give it you. Do you remember?'
'And do you remember,' said Natasha, with a pensive smile, 'a long, long time ago, when we were really tiny, Uncle called us over into his study in the old house, and it was dark. We went in, and suddenly there was this . . .'
'Black man!' s
aid Nikolay, finishing her sentence with a smile of delight. 'Of course I remember. I still don't know whether it really was a black man, or whether we dreamt it, or just heard about it.'
'He had grey hair. Do you remember? And white teeth, and he stood there looking at us . . .'
'Do you remember, Sonya?' asked Nikolay.
'Oh yes, I do remember something like that,' Sonya answered shyly.
'You know, I've often asked Papa and Mamma about that black man,' said Natasha. 'They say there wasn't any black man. But you remember him!'
'Of course, I do. I can see his teeth now.'
'Isn't it funny? Just like a dream. I like it.'
'And do you remember us rolling hard-boiled eggs in the big hall, and suddenly there were two old women there, going round and round on the carpet? Did that really happen or not? Remember the fun we had?'
'Yes. And do you remember Papa, in that heavy blue coat, firing his shot gun from the top of the steps?'
Smiling with happiness, they enjoyed going down memory lane; these were not the memories of old age, but the romantic memories of youth, images from the distant past where dreams and reality blur together. They laughed from pure pleasure.
Sonya, as always, couldn't keep up with them, even though she shared the same memories. She couldn't remember much of what they recalled, and what she could remember failed to evoke the same romantic response in her. She was just enjoying their enjoyment, and pretending to be part of it.
She could only come into it properly when they recalled Sonya's first arrival. Sonya said she had been scared of Nikolay because he had braid on his jacket and nurse had told her she was going to be tied up with braid.
'And I remember, they told me you'd been born in a cabbage-patch,' said Natasha. 'Yes, I remember, I had to believe them, even though I knew it wasn't true, and I had such an awkward feeling.'
While they were talking a maid popped her head in at the inner sitting-room door.
'Miss, they've brought you a cockerel,' she whispered.
'I don't want it now, Polya. Tell them to take it away,' said Natasha.
They resumed their conversation, but soon Dimmler came into the sitting-room, and walked over to the harp that stood in one corner. He removed the cloth cover, and the harp gave a discordant jangle. 'Herr Dimmler, please play my favourite nocturne, the one by Mr Field,'4 came the voice of the old countess from the drawing-room.
Dimmler struck a chord, and turning to Natasha, Nikolay and Sonya he said, 'You youngsters are very quiet today.'
'Yes, we're in a philosophical mood,' said Natasha, glancing round for a moment before going on with the conversation. They were now on to dreams.
Dimmler began to play. Natasha tiptoed silently across to the table, picked up the candle and took it back to them, sitting down quietly in her place. It was dark in the room, especially where they were sitting on the sofa, but the silver light of the full moon shone in through the big windows and spread across the floor.
'Do you know what I think?' said Natasha, in a whisper, moving up closer to Nikolay and Sonya as Dimmler finished the nocturne and sat there faintly rippling the strings as if he didn't know whether to stop playing or begin a new piece, 'I think you can go on remembering, remembering and remembering until you can pre-remember things that happened before you were ever in this world . . .'
'That's metempsychosis,' said Sonya, who had been good at lessons and remembered everything. 'The Egyptians used to believe that our souls have been in animals, and will go back into animals again.'
'No, listen, I don't think we've ever been in animals,' said Natasha, still whispering even though the music had finished, 'but I do know for certain we were once angels somewhere beyond, and we came here, and that's why we can remember everything . . .'
'Please may I join you?' said Dimmler, coming over quietly and sitting down beside them.
'If we've been angels, why did we fall down so low?' said Nikolay. 'No, it's not possible!'
'It's not a question of being low . . . who said anything about being low? . . . The reason I know what I used to be is this,' Natasha replied with great conviction. 'You know the soul is immortal . . . Well, if I'm going to live for ever, that means I've lived before. I've been living all through eternity.'
'Yes, but it's hard for us to conceive of eternity,' said Dimmler, who had joined the young people with a slightly scornful smile, but was now talking just as quietly and seriously as they were.
'Why is it hard to conceive of eternity?' said Natasha. 'There'll be today, there'll be tomorrow, and there'll be always, and there was yesterday, and the day before . . .'
'Natasha! It's your turn! Sing something for me,' called the voice of the countess. 'What are you doing sitting there in a huddle like conspirators?'
'Oh, Mamma, I really don't feel like it!' said Natasha, but she got up as she spoke.
None of them, not even Dimmler, and he was no youngster, wanted to break off the conversation and come out of their corner of the sitting-room, but Natasha got to her feet, and Nikolay seated himself at the clavichord. Standing, as always, in the centre of the room, and choosing the best place for maximum resonance, Natasha began singing her mother's favourite piece.
She had said she didn't feel like singing, but she hadn't sung for a very long time, and it would be a long time in the future before she sang again as she sang that evening. Count Ilya heard her singing from his study, where he was in consultation with Mitenka, and he behaved like a schoolboy rushing through a lesson so he could get out to play, bungling his instructions to the steward until at last he stopped talking, and so did Mitenka, who just stood there before him silent and smiling, both of them listening. Nikolay never took his eyes off his sister, and breathed in and out when she did. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the vast difference between her and her friend, and the impossibility of her ever being anything like as enchanting as her cousin. The old countess sat there with a bitter-sweet smile on her face and tears in her eyes, shaking her head now and then. She was thinking about Natasha and her own youth, and she knew there was something terribly wrong about Natasha's impending marriage to Prince Andrey.
Dimmler had sidled up and sat down beside the countess, and now he listened with his eyes closed. 'No, Countess,' he said, at last, 'this is talent on a European scale. She's beyond all coaching . . . Such a gentle tone, such tenderness, and power . . .'
'Oh, I'm so worried about her, I really am,' said the countess, forgetting who she was speaking to. Maternal instinct told her there was something excessive about Natasha, something that would stop her ever being happy.
Natasha had not quite finished singing when fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in, wildly excited, to announce the arrival of the mummers. Natasha stopped abruptly.
'Idiot!' she yelled at her brother. She ran over to a chair, flopped down on to it and broke into such violent sobbing that it was a long while before she could stop.
'It's nothing, Mamma. Honestly, it's nothing. It's all right. Petya startled me, that's all,' she said, trying hard to smile, but the tears still flowed and she was still racked with sobs.
At first the mummers (house serfs dressed up as bears, Turks, tavern-keepers and fine ladies, monsters and clowns) huddled together timidly in the vestibule, though they had already brought in from outside a breath of cold air and a sense of fun. Then, hiding behind each other, they bumbled and bustled into the great hall, where things began rather uncertainly but soon became more and more hectic and friendly, with singing and dancing, and Christmas games. The countess, after working out who was who and having a good laugh at their costumes, went away to the drawing-room. Count Ilya sat there in the great hall beaming with pleasure and praising their performance. The youngsters had disappeared.
Half an hour later an old lady in a farthingale appeared amidst the other mummers in the hall - it was Nikolay. There was also a Turkish lady - Petya; a clown - Dimmler; a hussar - Natasha; and a Circassian boy with burnt-cork eyebrows and
moustaches - Sonya.
After many a polite expression of surprise, bemusement and praise from those who were not dressed up, the young people began to think their costumes were so good they ought to be shown off to a wider audience.
Nikolay's first impulse was to put them all in his sledge and, with the roads in such good condition, drive over to 'Uncle's' along with a dozen house serfs in their costumes.
'No, why bother the old fellow?' said the countess. 'Anyway, you wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the Melyukovs'.'
Madame Melyukov was a widow living with several children of various ages and their tutors and governesses in a house only a couple of miles down the road.
'Jolly good idea, my love,' the old count put in, his spirits rising. 'Just let me find a costume for myself and I'll come with you. I'll give Pashette something to look at.'
But the countess wouldn't let him go; for several days he had had a bad leg. It was decided that he must stay at home, but if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would agree to go with them the young ladies could go to Madame Melyukov's. Sonya, normally so shy and retiring, was the most vociferous in pleading with Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
Sonya's disguise was the best of them all. Her moustaches and eyebrows were particularly fetching. Everyone told her how pretty she looked, and she was taken right out of herself in a new mood of excitement and energy. An inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and dressed like a man she seemed like a completely different person. Louisa Ivanovna proved amenable, and half an hour later four troikas with merrily jingling bells and runners crunching and creaking over the frozen snow drove round to the front steps.
Natasha took the lead in setting the right tone of Christmas cheer, which passed quickly from one person to the next, grew wilder and wilder and came to a splendid climax as they all walked out into the frosty air, chatting and calling across to each other, with much laughter and shouting, and got into the sledges.
Two of the troikas were harnessed to workaday sledges, the third sledge was the old count's, with a trotter from Orlov's famous stud as the shaft-horse, while the fourth one belonged to Nikolay, and he had put his own short, shaggy black horse to the shaft. Nikolay, with a hussar's cloak belted over his old lady's farthingale, stood up tall in the middle of the sledge and held the reins. The light was so good that he could see the metal fittings on the harnesses glinting in the moonlight, and the horses eyes' goggling in alarm at the racket coming from the travellers in the dark shadow of the porch.