When they got home the two young ladies described to the countess how much they had enjoyed their visit to the Melyukovs' and then went off to their room. They undressed for bed without washing off their moustaches, and then sat there for quite some time just talking about how happy they were. They told each other how they would live after they were married, and what good friends their husbands would be, and, again, how happy they would be. There were two mirrors on Natasha's table, set up earlier in the evening by Dunyasha.
'But when will it happen? I'm scared it won't ever happen . . . It's too much to hope for!' said Natasha, getting to her feet and going over to the mirrors.
'Sit down with the mirrors, Natasha. You might just see him,' said Sonya.
Natasha lit two candles and sat down. 'I can see somebody with a moustache,' said Natasha, catching sight of her own face.
'You mustn't laugh, miss,' said Dunyasha.
With the assistance of Sonya and the maid Natasha adjusted one of the mirrors, then she stopped talking and went all serious. For some time she sat there, staring down the row of disappearing candles reflected in the mirrors. Guided by the tales she had heard, she was expecting to see either a coffin, or perhaps him, Prince Andrey, in the very last blurred and smudgy square. But for all her eagerness to accept any dark outline as man - or coffin-shaped, she saw nothing. Her eyes began to water and blink, and she moved away from the mirror.
'Why do other people see things and I don't?' she said. 'You try, Sonya. Today you really must. Do it for me. I feel absolutely terrified today!'
Sonya sat down in front of the mirror, adjusted the angle and peered into it.
'Miss Sonya's bound to see something,' whispered Dunyasha. 'You laugh too much.'
Sonya heard these words, and also heard Natasha's whispered response: 'Yes, I know she'll see something. She did last year.' For two or three minutes nobody spoke.
'She's bound to . . .' Natasha began to whisper, but she never finished her sentence . . . Suddenly Sonya pushed the mirror away and put a hand over her eyes. 'Oh, Natasha!' she said.
'Did you see something? Come on, what was it?' cried Natasha.
'I told you she would,' put in Dunyasha, keeping the mirror from falling.
Sonya hadn't seen anything. She was just about to give in and start blinking and stand up when she had heard Natasha's voice saying, 'She's bound to . . .' She had no desire to hoodwink either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard work sitting there. She couldn't imagine how or why she had cried out like that as she covered her eyes.
'Did you see him?' asked Natasha, catching at her arm.
'Yes. Wait a minute . . . I . . . yes I did.' Sonya couldn't stop herself saying it, though she wasn't sure whether Natasha's him had meant Nikolay or Andrey.
'Why shouldn't I say I saw something? Other people do. Anyway, who can tell whether I did or I didn't?' The thoughts flashed through Sonya's mind.
'Yes. I did see him,' she said.
'What was he doing? Standing up or lying down?'
'No, what I saw was, er . . . Well, first there was nothing, then I saw him lying down.'
'Andrey lying down? Is he ill?' asked Natasha, her eyes transfixed with terror.
'No, just the opposite, his face looked cheerful and he turned towards me.' And as she spoke these words she began to think she really had seen what she was talking about.
'Come on, Sonya, what happened next?'
'Well, it wasn't very clear. There was something blue and red . . .'
'Oh, Sonya, when will he come back? When shall I see him? Oh God! I'm so worried about him, and me. This whole thing scares me . . .' Natasha blurted out and without a word to Sonya, who was doing what she could to console her, she got into bed, and long after the candle had been put out she lay there motionless, watching the frosty moonlight with staring eyes as it poured in through the frozen window-panes.
CHAPTER 13
Not long after Christmas Nikolay told his mother about his love for Sonya and his absolute determination to marry her. The countess had long been aware of recent developments between Sonya and Nikolay, and she had been expecting this announcement. She listened to his words without comment, and then told her son he could marry anyone he wanted but neither she nor his father would give their blessing to any such marriage. For the first time in his life Nikolay felt that he had offended his mother, and despite all her love for him she was not going to give way. Coldly and without looking at her son she sent for her husband, and when he came in the countess set out there and then to give a brief and icy account of the situation, but she lost control, burst into tears of frustration and walked out of the room. The old count began by appealing to Nikolay, not very convincingly, and asked him to go back on his decision. Nikolay replied that his word was his bond, whereupon his father, sighing from obvious embarrassment, made no further comment and went off to see the countess. In every confrontation with his son the old count was plagued by a guilty conscience for having managed their affairs so badly, and he could hardly turn on his son for refusing to marry an heiress and choosing Sonya, the girl with no dowry. This served only to remind him all the more painfully that but for his mismanagement they could have wished for no better wife than Sonya for Nikolay, and that all the blame lay with him, Mitenka and his own uncontrollable bad habits.
Neither parent raised the subject again with their son, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya, and with a viciousness that took them both by surprise accused her of inducement and ingratitude. Sonya looked down as she listened in silence to the countess's hurtful words, with no clear idea of what she was supposed to do. She would readily make any kind of sacrifice for her benefactors. The concept of self-sacrifice was dear to her heart, but in this instance she couldn't see who or what there was to sacrifice. She couldn't help loving the countess and all the Rostovs, but neither could she help loving Nikolay or believing that his happiness depended on their love. Sadly at a loss for words, she made no response. Nikolay felt he couldn't put up with this any longer and went in to have things out with his mother. First he asked his mother to forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage; then he warned her that if they kept on persecuting Sonya he would go straight out and marry her in secret. With an icy aloofness her son had never seen before the countess replied that he was now an adult, and Prince Andrey was marrying without his father's consent, and he could do the same thing, but she would never acknowledge that scheming hussy as her daughter.
Incensed by the words 'scheming hussy', Nikolay told his mother in no uncertain terms he had never expected her to try and make him prostitute his feelings, and if this was how things stood it was the last time he would ever . . . But he never delivered the final word which his mother was now dreading, given the look on his face, and which would probably have remained a bitter memory between them for ever. He never delivered it because Natasha, who had been listening at the door, now ran in with a grave look on her pale face.
'Nikolay, darling, you don't know what you're saying. Shut up, shut up! I'm telling you now to shut up!' She was virtually screaming to drown him out.
'Mamma, darling, it's nothing to do with . . . My poor, dear darling . . .' she babbled at her mother, who was gazing in horror at her son, aware that a permanent break was staring them in the face, yet too stubborn and too worked up to give in. 'I'll sort things out later, Nikolay. Just go away. Listen to me, dear darling Mamma,' she said to her mother.
Her words may have been incoherent but they achieved the desired effect.
The countess gave a huge gasp and buried her face on her daughter's bosom, while Nikolay got to his feet, and walked out of the room clutching his head.
Natasha took it upon herself to effect a reconciliation, and she succeeded in so far as Nikolay received an undertaking from his mother that Sonya would not be put under pressure, and he for his part promised not to do anything without his parents' knowledge.
Fully determined to wind things up with the army, re
tire and come home to marry Sonya, Nikolay returned to his regiment at the beginning of January, chastened and unhappy about the clash with his parents, but, as he thought, still madly in love.
When Nikolay had gone the atmosphere in the Rostov household was more depressed than at any time in the past. The countess fell ill from all the emotional turmoil.
Sonya was saddened by having to part from Nikolay, and more so by the hostile attitude the countess couldn't help adopting towards her. The count was more worried than ever by the disastrous state of his finances, which now demanded decisive action. They were going to have to sell the town house and the estate near Moscow, and this meant going to Moscow. But because of the countess's illness he kept putting off his departure from one day to the next. Natasha, having originally endured separation from her fiance fairly easily and even cheerfully, now grew increasingly impatient and restive with each passing day. The thought that the prime of her life, which could have been spent loving him, was draining away uselessly like this and benefiting no one, preyed upon her mind. Letters from Prince Andrey just made her angry. She was offended by the very idea that, while her life consisted of nothing but thinking of him, he was living a real life, seeing new places and new people that must be fascinating. The more interesting his letters were, the more they annoyed her. Her letters to him gave her no comfort; she looked on them as a tedious and formal obligation. She was no great writer, finding it impossible to set down adequately in a letter a thousandth part of what she was used to conveying by means of her voice, her smile and her eyes. She wrote him a series of dry, formal and identical missives to which she attached not the slightest importance, with spelling mistakes corrected by the countess at the rough copy stage.
The countess's health was not improving, but it was becoming impossible to put off the visit to Moscow any longer. There was the trousseau to see about and the house had to be sold, in addition to which Prince Andrey was due to go first to Moscow, where his father was spending the winter, and Natasha felt certain he was already there. The countess stayed behind in the country when, towards the end of January, the count left for Moscow, taking Sonya and Natasha with him.
PART V
CHAPTER 1
After Prince Andrey's engagement to Natasha it dawned on Pierre, suddenly and for no obvious reason, that he couldn't possibly go on living as before. For all his staunch belief in the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, the old freemason, and the pleasure he had taken at first in striving so ardently towards the perfection of his inner self, after Prince Andrey's engagement to Natasha and the death of Osip Bazdeyev, news of which had reached him at almost exactly the same time, all the zest suddenly went out of that earlier way of living. He was left with nothing but the skeleton of a life: his house with his brilliant wife, now enjoying the favours of a very important person, entree to all levels of Petersburg society and service at court with all its tiresome formalities. And now suddenly Pierre was shocked by the degree of disgust that he felt for that former life. He stopped keeping a diary, shunned the society of his brother-masons and went back to his old club, drinking too much, consorting with the bachelor set and adopting the kind of life-style that made Countess Helene feel obliged to take him to task on the subject. Pierre felt she had right on her side, so he went down to Moscow to avoid compromising her.
Once in Moscow, the moment he set foot in his vast house with the faded and fading princesses and the hordes of servants, the moment he drove through the town and caught his first glimpse of the Iversky chapel with the lights of innumerable candles glinting and reflecting in the silver icon-covers and the Kremlin Square with its deep covering of untrodden snow, the sledge-drivers, the shanties of the Sivtsev Vrazhok slums, the old gentlemen of Moscow in the twilight of their lives, unhurried and set in their ways, and also the old ladies of Moscow, the Moscow ballrooms and the English Club - he felt he had come back home to a haven of peace. In Moscow he felt warm and welcome, comfortable and scruffy. It was like putting an old dressing-gown.
All Moscow society, from the old ladies to the children, welcomed Pierre back like a long-awaited guest, whose place had always lain ready for him, never occupied by anyone else. In the eyes of Moscow society, Pierre was the nicest and kindest of men, the brightest and jolliest, the most generous of eccentrics, a hare-brained and warm-hearted Russian gentleman of the old school. His purse was for ever empty, being open to all.
Benefit performances, awful paintings and statues, charities, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, drinking parties, the masons, churches, book-publishing - everyone and everything met with his support, and had it not been for two of his friends, who had borrowed heavily from Pierre and set themselves up as his guardians, he would have given away his last kopeck. Not a single party or dinner took place at the club without him being there.
Once seen sprawling in his usual place on the sofa after a couple of bottles of Margaux he would be surrounded by a circle of friends and become the centre of all discussions, disputes and jokes. When people fell out, a friendly smile or a well-chosen bon mot from him was enough to bring peace. Masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he wasn't there.
When he got to his feet after a bachelor supper and yielded with a sweet smile to the entreaties of the revellers to drive off with them somewhere, the young men would raise the roof with yells of delight and triumph. In the ballroom he would dance if a partner was needed. He appealed to both young girls and the younger married ladies because he didn't flirt and was nice to everyone in just the same way, especially after supper. 'He's a delightful man with no sex,' they used to say of him (always in French).
This was Pierre - one among hundreds of retired gentlemen-in-waiting peaceably living out their days in Moscow. What horror he would have felt if he had been told on his return from abroad seven years ago that there was no point in searching or taxing his brains because the way forward was set for him, marked out in advance for all eternity, and it was no use fighting against it because he was bound to turn out exactly like every other man in his position. He wouldn't have believed it. Had he not put his heart and soul into so many things - setting up a republic in Russia, turning himself into another Napoleon, or a philosopher, or a master strategist capable of defeating Napoleon? Had he not considered it possible and highly desirable to work for the regeneration of sinful humanity and bring himself to the highest degree of perfection? Had he not gone about founding schools and hospitals and liberating his serfs?
But instead of all that, here he was now, the wealthy husband of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of his food and drink, not averse to unbuttoning his waistcoat after dinner and indulging in a little mild criticism of the government, a member of the Moscow English Club, and everyone's favourite on the Moscow circuit. It took him a long time to become reconciled to the idea that he was the very model of a retired Moscow gentleman-in-waiting, a type he had found so profoundly repellent seven years ago.
Sometimes he consoled himself with the idea that it didn't matter - this was only a passing phase - only to be struck by the horrifying thought that plenty of others had gone through the same 'passing phase', embarking on this kind of life and joining this club with all their teeth and hair and leaving when they were toothless and bald.
There were moments of pride when he took stock and it seemed to him that he wasn't like them, he was somehow different from the retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had once despised; they were vulgar and stupid men, given to complacency, 'whereas I'm still never satisfied, I really want to do things for humanity', as he put it when pride came upon him. 'Yes, but what if all of them, these comrades of mine, also struggled like me, looking for some new and original way of living, and only got as far as I have because they were beaten, like me, by the force of circumstances, society, breeding - a force of nature that renders a man impotent?' This is what he wondered when modesty came upon him. And when he had been some little time in Moscow he lost all contempt for his compa
nions in destiny and even started to love them, respect them and feel as sorry for them as he did for himself.
Pierre no longer suffered from his earlier bouts of despair, disillusionment and loathing for life, but the same sickness that had once manifested itself in acute attacks had now been driven inwards, never to leave him for a single moment. 'What's the use of anything? What is it all about? What is going on in the world?' he asked himself in great bewilderment several times a day, allowing himself to be drawn forcibly into a search for meaning in all the phenomena of existence. But experience had taught him that there weren't any answers to these questions, so he made every effort to wrench himself away from them by turning to a book, nipping down to the club, or calling in at Apollon Nikolayevich's place for a good gossip.
'My Helene has never cared for anything but her own body and she's one of the stupidest women in the world,' thought Pierre, 'yet everybody thinks she's the last word in intelligence and sophistication, and they all bow down to her. And take Napoleon - universally despised as long as he was a great man, and now he's just a pathetic clown the Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter for an illegal marriage. The Spaniards go down on their knees and thank God through their Catholic clergy for victory over the French on the 14th of June, and the French, through the same Catholic clergy, go down on their knees and thank God for victory over the Spaniards on the same day, the 14th of June. My masonic brothers take an oath in blood, swearing to sacrifice everything for their neighbour, but they won't cough up a rouble when you go round collecting for the poor, and meanwhile the Astraea lodge sets itself against the "Manna Seekers", 1 and they squabble over some authentic Scottish carpet or a completely superfluous Act which has no meaning any more, not even for the man who wrote it. We all profess the Christian laws of forgiveness of injuries and love for our neighbour - laws we have honoured by raising forty times forty churches in Moscow - but yesterday a deserter died under the knout, and it was a minister of these same laws of love and forgiveness, a priest, who had given the soldier a cross to kiss before his punishment.'