Count Ostermann-Tolstoy was there to welcome them back. He sent for Rostov, thanked him and told him he would report his gallant action to the Tsar and recommend him for a St George's Cross. When the summons had come for him to appear before Count Ostermann, Rostov could only recall that he had gone on the attack without any orders to do so, and he was certain his commanding officer had sent for him to discipline him for being out of order. Ostermann's honeyed words and the prospect of getting a medal should, therefore, have come as a pleasant surprise to Rostov, but he still felt sick at heart, troubled by the same vague but nasty feeling. 'What is it? What's worrying me?' he wondered as he rode away from seeing the general. 'Ilyin? No, he's all right. Did I do anything I should be ashamed of? No, that's not it!' Something else was worrying him, a kind of remorse. 'Yes, I know, it's that French officer with the dimple. I can remember holding back just when I'd lifted my arm.'
Rostov suddenly noticed that the prisoners were being led away, and he galloped after them to have a look at his Frenchman with a dimple in his chin. He was sitting astride one of their pack-horses dressed in his funny uniform, staring around uneasily.
The scratch on his arm wasn't really a wound. He looked at Rostov with a forced smile and waved a greeting. Rostov still felt embarrassed and somehow ashamed.
All that day and the next Rostov's friends and comrades noticed that, without being exactly morose or snappy with them, he was quiet, pensive and in a world of his own. He was reluctant to accept a drink, he wanted to be left alone and he seemed permanently preoccupied.
Rostov couldn't take his mind off the brilliant exploit which, to his astonishment, had won him the St George's Cross and a heroic reputation. There was something odd about it. 'It turns out they're even more scared than we are,' he thought. 'Is this it then? Is this what they mean by heroism? Did I really do it for my country? And what has he done wrong with his dimple and his blue eyes? He was so scared! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I want to kill him? My hand shook. And they've given me the George Cross! I can't see it, I just can't see it!'
But even as Nikolay turned these things over in his mind without being able to work out what was wrong with him, the wheel of fortune was turning, as it so often does in the army, and turning in his favour. After Ostrovna he came to prominence and was put in command of a battalion. From now on they called on him whenever there was a need for an officer of outstanding bravery.
CHAPTER 16
The moment Countess Rostov received news of Natasha's illness, even though she was still poorly and had little strength, she left for Moscow immediately with Petya and the whole household; the other Rostovs moved over from Marya Dmitriyevna's house and they all settled down together in their own home.
Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and her parents, all thoughts of what lay behind it, her conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, had faded into the background. She was too ill for anyone to start bothering about how far she was to blame for what had happened; after all, she could neither eat nor sleep, she was growing thinner by the day, she had a bad cough and according to the doctors her life was in danger. The only thing to concentrate on was how to get her well again. Doctors kept rolling up to see Natasha individually and in consultant groups. They rattled away in French, German and Latin, criticized each other and wrote out prescriptions for all sorts of medicine guaranteed to cure every imaginable disease, but not one of them hit on the simple idea that Natasha's affliction was beyond them, just as all diseases affecting any living person are beyond our comprehension because every living person has his own peculiarities, every complaint is unique, new, complex, unknown to medicine - not a disease of the lungs, kidneys, skin, heart, et cetera, long recorded in the annals of medicine, but a disease that happens to be one possibility from an infinite number of afflictions affecting those organs. An idea as simple as this could never have occurred to the doctors (just as a wizard could never accept the idea that magic is beyond him), because their business in life had always been the curing of disease, that's what they'd always been paid for, and that's what they'd spent the best years of their life doing. But the real reason why this idea could never have occurred to the doctors was because they could see that now they were being really useful here, definitely useful to the entire Rostov household. Useful, not because they were making the patient swallow predominantly noxious substances (the harm they were doing was scarcely perceptible because the noxious substances were administered in tiny doses), no, they were useful, necessary, you might say indispensable (in the same way that the world has always been full of mountebanks, miracle-men, homoeopaths and allopaths, and always will be), because they satisfied the psychological yearnings of the patient and those who loved her. They satisfied the eternal human need to go on hoping for relief, the need for sympathy and for someone to do something that is felt by any suffering individual. They satisfied the eternal human need - seen at its simplest in a little child - to be rubbed where it hurts. When a child gets hurt he rushes into the arms of his mother or nurse for them to kiss or rub him where it hurts, and he feels better when the tender spot gets rubbed or kissed. The child cannot believe that these infinitely strong and wise friends of his lack the power to ease his pain. The very hope of relief and the sympathy shown by his mother as she rubs him are a source of comfort. The doctors helped Natasha by kissing and rubbing her poorly place and telling her she would soon be better if the coachman just drove down to the chemist's on the Arbat and spent one rouble, seventy kopecks on a few powders and some pills in a pretty little box, as long as she took the powders in boiled water at two-hourly intervals on the dot.
What would they have done, Sonya, the count and countess - they couldn't just stand there watching their feeble Natasha fade away - if they hadn't been able to minister to her with hourly pills, warm drinks, little cuts of chicken, and all the vital necessities laid down by the doctors that kept them so busy and consoled them one and all? As the rules laid down became ever more strict and complicated, so their consolation grew. How could the count have borne his beloved daughter's illness without knowing it was costing him a thousand roubles and being ready to find thousands more if it would do her any good; without knowing that, if by any chance she didn't get better, he would find thousands more again to take her abroad to consult foreign doctors; without being able to tell people in great detail how Metivier and Feller had got it all wrong, but Friez had got it right, and Mudrov had produced an even better diagnosis? What would the countess have done if she hadn't been able to go to her sick Natasha and tell her off now and then for not following the doctor's instructions to the letter?
'How can you expect to get better,' she would say, fussing with annoyance to hide how worried she was, 'if you won't do what the doctor says and take your medicine properly? We can't have all this silliness, can we? You might get pneumonia,' said the countess, much consoled by the very sound of that solemn word, which like everyone else she had no understanding of.
And what would Sonya have done without the happy knowledge that in those early days she hadn't taken her clothes off for three nights running so she could be on hand to carry out the doctor's orders down to the last detail, and now she couldn't sleep for fear of missing the right time to administer a few none-too-noxious pills from the little golden box? Even Natasha herself, despite many a protestation that medicine wouldn't do her any good and it was all nonsense, was delighted to see so many sacrifices being made for her, and to be forced to take medicine at certain times, and no less delighted to demonstrate by ignoring the doctor's instructions that she didn't believe in medicine and set little store by her own life.
The doctor rolled up every day, came and took her pulse, looked at her tongue, ignored her distraught face and made little jokes. But afterwards, when he had gone out into the next room followed hastily by the countess, he would assume a grave expression and inform her with a thoughtful shake of his head that her daughter was not yet out of
the wood, though this latest medicine ought to do the trick, and all they could do was wait and see, the illness being more in the mind than the body, and yet . . .
The countess would slip him a piece of gold, trying to hide the deed from herself and from him, and she always went back to the poorly patient with more hope in her heart.
The symptoms of Natasha's illness were loss of appetite, sleeplessness, a cough and continual depression. The doctors had insisted she must never be far from medical attention, so they kept her there in the stifling atmosphere of the city. The whole summer of 1812 passed without the Rostovs going down to the country.
Despite the huge number of pills, drops and powders Natasha swallowed from enough little jars and boxes for Madame Schoss to build up a nice little collection (she had a passion for such things), despite Natasha's being deprived of her normal country life, youth prevailed, her affliction gradually became overlaid with the business of everyday life and an agonizing pain was lifted from her heart, receding into the past and giving her physical health a chance to improve.
CHAPTER 17
Natasha was calmer, but not happier. Not only did she avoid all outward forms of amusement such as balls, skating, concerts and the theatre, but she never even laughed without a suggestion of tears behind the laughter. She was incapable of singing. Whenever she began to laugh or tried to sing all alone, she was choked with tears: tears of remorse, tears of regret for a lost time of pure happiness, tears of annoyance at herself for so wantonly destroying her young life that might have turned out to be so happy. It was particularly laughter and singing that seemed like a profanation of her sorrow. Flirtation was far from her mind; here there was no temptation to resist. She said at the time that all men were no more to her than Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon, and she meant it. Some kind of inner sentinel seemed to guard against all pleasure. And indeed she appeared to have lost all her old girlish interests, which now belonged to a carefree former life once full of hope. Her bitterest and most recurrent memory took her back to those autumn months - the hunting, 'Uncle', the Christmas holidays spent with Nikolay at Otradnoye. She would have given anything to bring back a single day of that time! But it was all gone for ever. Her misgivings at the time had not been wrong; a time of freedom like that with such capacity for every kind of enjoyment would never come again. And yet life had to go on.
She took some pleasure in the thought that far from being better than everybody else, as she had once imagined, she was worse, much worse than anybody in the whole world. But this had little meaning. She knew it was true, but she kept on wondering, 'What's next?' only to find there was nothing next. There wasn't any joy in life, but life was passing. Natasha was clearly determined not to be a burden to anybody and not to get in anybody's way, but she wanted nothing for herself. She kept away from everyone in the house, and her brother Petya was the only person she felt at ease with. She liked being with him more than anyone else, and when she was alone with him there were occasions when she laughed. She hardly ever went out, and among the visitors she welcomed only one person - Pierre. No one could have been gentler, more caring, and yet more serious-minded than Count Bezukhov in his dealings with her. Natasha took in this tenderness at a subconscious level, and this was what made him so nice to be with. But she felt no gratitude towards him on this account: being good seemed to come naturally to Pierre and cost him no effort. Pierre seemed to be so spontaneously good-natured there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha noticed some embarrassment or awkwardness in Pierre when she was with him, especially when he was trying to do her a favour or could see something looming up in the conversation that might bring back painful memories. Noting this, she put it down to his kind personality and the same kind of diffidence which she imagined he showed to everybody else. After uttering those unexpected words - if only he had been free to do so he would have been down on his knees asking for her hand and her love - which had come out at a moment of high emotion directed towards her, Pierre had said nothing of his feelings to Natasha, and she could only assume that those words, so comforting at the time, had been said like the usual bits of nonsense you come out with to console a weeping child. Not because Pierre was married, but because Natasha could sense a moral barrier between them - the very thing she had not felt with Kuragin - it never crossed her mind that her relationship with Pierre might one day develop into love on her side, even less on his, or even into the kind of tender, fully acknowledged romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had seen several examples.
Towards the end of the fast of St Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a country neighbour of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to worship at the shrines of the saints. She suggested to Natasha that she should fast and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha seized on the idea with some relish. In defiance of the doctors' prohibition on going out in the early morning, Natasha insisted on keeping the fast and preparing for Communion not the way it was done in the Rostovs' household - by attending three services at home - but by following in the footsteps of Agrafena Ivanovna for a whole week, which meant not missing a single service, Matins, Vespers or Mass.
The countess was pleased to see this kind of zeal in Natasha. After all the unsuccessful medical treatment, deep down she was now hoping that prayer might do her daughter more good than medicine, so despite terrible misgivings she fell in with Natasha's wishes, said nothing to the doctors and handed her into the care of Madame Belova.
Agrafena Ivanovna used to come in to wake Natasha at three in the morning, and more often than not she found her already awake. Natasha was afraid of sleeping in and being late for Matins. After a quick wash she meekly pulled on her shabbiest dress and an old shawl before walking out into the deserted streets, shivering as she met the chill air and the limpid half-light of early morning. On the advice of Agrafena Ivanovna Natasha was preparing for Communion not at her own parish church, but at a church where the priest was described by the devout Madame Belova as someone with a particularly austere and righteous way of living.
There were never many people in church. Natasha and Madame Belova stood side by side always in the same place before an icon of the Mother of God which formed part of the screen behind the left choir, and at this unusual morning hour Natasha was overwhelmed by a new sense of humility before the sublime mystery as she gazed up at the black face of the Blessed Virgin lit up by candles burning in front and the morning light coming in through a window. She listened to the words of the service, trying hard to follow and understand. When she did understand, her personal emotions merged in every shade with her prayers; when she didn't, she had an even sweeter sense that the desire to understand everything amounted to pride, no one could ever understand everything, and all she had to do was believe and give herself up to God, and at moments like this she had a sense of Him guiding her soul. She crossed herself, bowed low, and when she didn't understand she simply yielded in disgust to a sense of her own vileness and prayed for forgiveness, total forgiveness, and mercy. The prayers she said most of all were prayers of repentance. Walking home in the early morning, when the only people they encountered were brick-layers on their way to work or men cleaning the streets, and the houses were full of sleeping people, Natasha glimpsed the first fresh possibility of redemption from sin and a new life of purity and happiness.
She spent a whole week leading this kind of life and the feeling grew stronger with each passing day. And the joy of Holy Communion (or holy communication, as Agrafena Ivanovna liked to call it, enjoying the pun) was so enormous she thought that blissful Sunday would never come.
But come it did, that happy, unforgettable Sunday when Natasha returned from Holy Communion dressed in her white muslin frock, experiencing peace of mind for the first time in many months and no longer oppressed by the life that lay ahead.
The doctor called to see Natasha the same day and his instructions were to keep on with the powders he had prescribed two weeks before. 'Oh, keep taking them, yes definitely, morning
and evening,' he said, visibly and genuinely gratified by his own success. 'Now you mustn't forget. Countess, you have nothing to worry about,' said the doctor with great good humour, deftly palming his gold. 'We'll soon have her singing and dancing again. This last medicine has done the trick all right. She's so much better.'
The countess looked down at her fingernails and spat a little for luck before returning to the drawing-room with a smile on her face.
CHAPTER 18
At the beginning of July Moscow was awash with rumours about the progress of the war, and they were getting more and more alarming; there was talk of the Tsar making an appeal to the people, and the Tsar himself was said to be on his way back to Moscow from the army. And with no manifesto and no appeal to the people having been issued, by the 11th of July these communications and the overall position of Russia had become the subject of even wilder speculation. It was claimed that the Tsar was leaving because the army was in danger; it was also claimed that Smolensk had fallen, Napoleon had a million troops at his disposal, and nothing short of a miracle could save Russia.
On Saturday, the 11th of July, the manifesto was out but not yet circulating in print, and Pierre, who happened to be at the Rostovs', promised to come back to dinner the following evening, Sunday, and bring with him the manifesto and appeal, which he would have got by then from Count Rostopchin.
That Sunday the Rostovs attended divine service as usual in the private chapel of the Razumovskys. It was a hot July day. Even at ten in the morning, as the Rostovs descended from their carriage by the chapel, the sultry atmosphere, the shouts of the street hawkers, the bright, gaily coloured summer clothing of the crowd, the dusty leaves on the trees along the boulevard, the martial music and whitetrousered battalion marching past to go on parade, the rumble of traffic and the blazing-hot sunshine, all conspired to produce that feeling of summer lassitude, that happiness and unhappiness with things as they stand, which are at their sharpest on a bright, hot day in town. All the fashionable world of Moscow, all the Rostovs' acquaintances were there in the chapel. (This year, as if anticipating something in the air, very many of the wealthy families who usually went down to the country for the summer had stayed on in Moscow.)