on fire, isn't it?' asked one of the footmen.
Danilo said nothing, and again for quite some time they all stood there in silence. The blaze was moving; the glow was spreading.
'Lord have mercy on us! . . . The wind's gettin' up, after all that drought . . .' said the same voice.
'That's well on, that is. O Lord in heaven! Look, you can see the jackdaws! Lord, have mercy on us miserable sinners!'
'Don't worry. They'll soon put that out.'
'Who will?' came the voice of Danilo, silent until then. His voice was gentle and deliberate. ''Tis Moscow sure enough, boys,' he said. 'There she be, our mother, the white . . .' his voice faltered and he broke down in choking sobs, sounding like the old man he was. And this seemed to be all that was needed for the others to take in the full meaning of the glow they were watching. All that could be heard were people sighing and saying prayers, and the old valet choking and sobbing.
CHAPTER 31
The valet went back in and told the count Moscow was on fire. The count put on his dressing-gown and came out to have a look. Sonya, who was still dressed, came out with him and so did Madame Schoss. Natasha and the countess were left alone indoors. (Petya was no longer with the family, having gone on ahead to join his regiment on the march to Troitsa.)
The countess burst into tears when she heard that Moscow was in flames. Natasha's lively eyes had settled as she sat, pale-faced, on the same bench under the icons that she had gone straight to when they had arrived, and she ignored what her father was saying. She was listening to the never-ending moan coming from the adjutant, which could be heard three huts away.
'Oh, it's so awful!' cried Sonya, coming in from the yard chilled and frightened. 'I'm sure the whole of Moscow will be burnt down. There's a terrible glow over everything! Natasha, come and have a look. You can see through the window,' she said to her cousin, obviously trying to distract her. But Natasha stared back as if she couldn't understand what was being asked of her, and she turned round to stare again at the corner of the stove. Natasha had been in this frozen state since that morning, when Sonya, to the amazement and annoyance of the countess, had for some unknown reason seen fit to tell Natasha about Prince Andrey's wound, and the fact that he was there with them in their convoy. Sonya had rarely suffered such fury from the countess. Sonya had wept and asked to be forgiven, and she now seemed to be trying to smooth things over by being unfailingly nice to her cousin.
'Look, Natasha, it's on fire. It's awful!' said Sonya.
'What's on fire?' asked Natasha. 'Oh yes, Moscow.'
And to get rid of Sonya without giving offence by ignoring her she moved her head nearer the window and looked through it from an angle that made it impossible for her to see anything, and then went back to her former position.
'Did you see it?'
'Yes, I really did,' she said in a voice that pleaded to be left in peace.
Neither the countess nor Sonya had any trouble understanding why Moscow, even in flames, or anything else in the world, might not be of the slightest interest to Natasha.
The count came back in and lay down behind the partition. The countess went over to Natasha, rested the back of her hand on her head, as she always did when her daughter was ill, and then brushed her forehead with her lips as if to find out whether she was running a temperature, before giving her a kiss.
'You've got a chill. You're shaking all over. You ought to lie down,' she said.
'You what? Oh yes, all right, I will. In a minute,' said Natasha.
When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrey was seriously wounded and was travelling with them, her instinctive response had been to ask lots of questions. Where were they taking him? How had it happened? Was he badly hurt? Could she see him? But once she had been told she couldn't see him, and his wound was serious but his life wasn't in danger, even though she clearly didn't believe them, she could see she would get the same answers whatever she said, so she stopped asking questions and refused to speak at all. All day long Natasha had sat there rigidly in the corner of the carriage with a special look in her wide, staring eyes that the countess knew only too well and always dreaded, and she was still sitting like that now on the little bench in the hut. She was hatching something. She was making her mind up; perhaps she had already done so. The countess knew full well, but she had no idea what Natasha had decided to do, and this was a terrible source of worry.
'Natasha, do get undressed, darling. Come into bed with me.' The countess was the only one to have had a proper bed made up. Madame Schoss and the two girls were having to sleep on the floor on piles of hay.
'No, Mamma, I'll lie down here on the floor,' said Natasha irritably. She went over to the window and opened it. The moaning adjutant sounded much louder with the window open. She put her head out into the humid night air, and the countess could see her slender shoulders racked with sobs heaving against the window frame. Natasha knew it wasn't Prince Andrey moaning. She knew Prince Andrey was in their yard, in the next hut just across the passage, but still, that terrible, never-ending moaning and groaning was making her sob. The countess exchanged a glance with Sonya.
'Come to bed, sweetheart. Do come to bed, darling,' said the countess, reaching out to touch Natasha gently on the shoulder. 'It really is time for bed.'
'Yes, all right . . . I'll go to bed now, straightaway,' said Natasha, getting undressed so quickly she broke some of the strings on her petticoats. Slipping off her dress and putting on a bed-jacket, she sat down with her feet tucked under her on the bed made up on the floor, jerked her short pigtail of very fine hair forward over her shoulder and started to re-plait it. Her long, thin, practised fingers moved quickly and skilfully as she separated the hair, braided it and tied it up again. Natasha was moving her head from side to side as she always did, but she stared fixedly ahead the whole time and her wide eyes had a feverish look about them. When she had finished getting ready for bed she lowered herself gently down on to the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.
'Natasha, you go the middle,' said Sonya.
'No, I'll stay here,' said Natasha. 'And please come to bed yourselves,' she added irritably before burying her face in the pillow.
The countess, Madame Schoss and Sonya got undressed very quickly and were soon in bed. Only the icon-lamp was left burning. But outside, the fire at Little Mytyshchi lit up the landscape for more than a mile around, there was a lot of noise coming from some drunken peasants at the tavern across the street where Mamonov's Cossacks had broken in, and the adjutant could still be heard moaning and groaning.
Natasha lay there for a long time listening to the sounds coming to her from within and without, and she never moved a muscle. First she heard her mother praying and sighing, then her bed creaking under her, then Madame Schoss whistling and snoring as she always did, then Sonya breathing softly. The countess called out to Natasha. Natasha didn't respond.
'I think she's asleep, Mamma,' whispered Sonya.
The countess waited for a while in silence and then spoke again, but this time nobody answered.
It wasn't long before Natasha caught the sound of her mother's steady breathing. Natasha still didn't move, though her little bare foot, sticking out from under the blanket, felt frozen on the uncovered floor.
A cricket chirped in a cranny, as if he was king of the world. A cock crowed a long way away, and others answered close by. The shouting had died away in the tavern. Only the adjutant's moaning went on as before. Natasha sat up.
'Sonya! Are you asleep? Mamma!' she whispered.
No answer. Slowly and cautiously Natasha got up, crossed herself and stepped cautiously with her slender, supple, bare feet on to the dirty, cold floor. A floorboard creaked. With nimble movements she skipped forward one or two steps like a little kitten, and took hold of the cold door-handle.
Something seemed to be thumping on every wall of the hut with a heavy, rhythmic thudding sound; it was the beating of her own heart, which was bursting with dread, love and panic.
She opened the door, stepped over the threshold and out on to the damp, cold earth of the passage beyond. She felt refreshed by the chill air that met her. Her bare foot brushed against a sleeping body; she stepped over it, and opened the door into the hut where Prince Andrey was lying. It was dark inside. There was a bed with something lying on it, and in the far corner on a little bench a guttering tallow candle with a huge wick.
Ever since yesterday morning when she had been told that Prince Andrey was with them, wounded, Natasha had decided she had to see him. She couldn't have said why precisely, but she knew their meeting would be an agonizing experience, and this reinforced her certainty that it couldn't be avoided.
All day long she had lived in the hope of seeing him that night. But now the moment had come she was horrified at the thought of what she might see. Had he been disfigured? What was left of him? Was he something like that never-ending moan of the adjutant? Yes, that's what he was like. In her imagination he was the personification of that awful moaning. When she caught sight of a dark mass in the corner, and mistook a pair of raised knees under the blanket for someone's shoulders, she imagined it to be some ghastly body, and she stopped in terror. But an irresistible urge drew her on. She took one cautious step, then another, and there she was in the middle of the small hut, which was cluttered with baggage. There was another figure (Timokhin), lying on a bench under the icons, and two more down on the floor (the doctor and the valet).
The valet sat up whispering. Timokhin couldn't sleep because of a painful wound in his leg, and he goggled at this weird apparition - a girl in a white chemise, bed-jacket, and nightcap. The only effect of the valet's scared and sleepy reaction, 'Who's that? What do you want?' was to make Natasha hurry across to the object lying in the corner. Horribly inhuman though it looked, she simply had to see that body. As she slipped past the valet the guttering candle flared up a little, and she could see Prince Andrey quite clearly, lying there just as she had always seen him, with his arms stretched out on top of the blanket.
He was just the same as ever, but the feverish flush on his face, his glittering eyes, rapturously glued on her, and most of all his neck, as soft as child's where his nightshirt collar was turned down, gave him a special look of boyish innocence that she had never before seen in Prince Andrey. She ran over to him and in one smooth, youthful movement dropped quickly down on her knees.
He smiled, and held out his hand to her.
CHAPTER 32
Seven days had passed since Prince Andrey had come round in the ambulance station on the field of Borodino. All that time he had been in a state of almost continual unconsciousness. The fever and inflammation of his damaged intestines, were, according to the doctor travelling with the wounded man, sure to finish him off. But on the seventh day he enjoyed eating a piece of bread with a drink of tea, and the doctor noticed his temperature was down. Prince Andrey had regained consciousness that morning. The first night after leaving Moscow had been fairly warm, and Prince Andrey had spent the night in his carriage, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself had asked to be taken indoors and given some tea. The pain caused by moving him had made Prince Andrey groan aloud and lose consciousness again. When he had been stretched out on his camp-bed he lay there quite still for a long time with his eyes closed. Then he opened his eyes and whispered softly, 'What about the tea?' The doctor was struck by this sudden ability to remember little details of everyday life. He took his pulse, and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found that it was stronger. His dissatisfaction was due to the fact that experience told him Prince Andrey couldn't survive, and if he didn't die now he would die later on, in even greater agony. Travelling with Prince Andrey was Timokhin, the red-nosed major from his regiment, who had joined him in Moscow; he had been wounded in the leg, also at Borodino. They were accompanied by the doctor, the prince's valet, his driver and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrey some tea. He gulped it down, looking with feverish eyes at the door in front of him, as if there was something he couldn't quite understand or remember.
'That's enough. Is Timokhin here?' he asked.
Timokhin dragged himself along the bench towards him.
'Yes, sir.'
'How's your leg?'
'Oh, I'm all right. What about you?'
Again Prince Andrey thought for a while, as if he was trying to remember something.
'I need a book,' he said.
'What book?'
'The Bible. I haven't got one.'
The doctor promised to get hold of a bible, and began asking the prince how he felt. Prince.Andrey answered all the doctor's questions rationally, though reluctantly, and then said he wanted a bolster pushed under him because he felt uncomfortable and was in a lot of pain. The doctor and the valet removed the greatcoat that was covering him, winced at the nauseating smell of putrefying flesh coming from the wound, and began to examine that terrible place. Something was worrying the doctor. He made a few adjustments that involved turning the wounded man, but the pain was such that Andrey gave another groan and lost consciousness again. He began to ramble, and kept asking for them to bring the book and push it under him. 'Is it too much trouble?' he kept saying. 'I haven't got it. Fetch one, please, and shove it under me, here. Just for a minute,' he said pathetically.
The doctor went out to wash his hands.
'You are a shameless lot,' the doctor was saying to the valet, who was pouring water over his hands. 'I can't take my eyes off you for a minute. You've laid him right on top of his wound. He's in such agony I wonder he can stand it.'
'I thought we had pushed things under him, by the Lord Jesus Christ,' said the valet.
For the first time Andrey knew where he was and what was happening to him. He knew he had been wounded and remembered asking to be taken indoors when the carriage had stopped at Mytishchi. He had lost consciousness from the pain and come round again properly in the hut while he was drinking tea. Now here he was again trying to recall everything that had happened to him, and his most vivid recollection was that moment in the ambulance station when, at the sight of a man he had not liked suffering terrible agony, he had been struck by new ideas, ideas that brought the promise of happiness. And these same ideas - vague and fuzzy though they now were - had taken possession of his soul again. He remembered that some new kind of happiness was within his grasp, and it had something to do with the Bible. This was why he had asked for a bible. But the position they had laid him in, which was so bad for his wound, and the agony of being moved, had caused him to drift away again, and it was only in the complete stillness of the night that he had come round for the third time. They were all asleep. A cricket chirped across the passage, there was shouting and singing in the street, cockroaches rustled across the table-top and up the icons, and a big fat autumn fly was buzzing between his pillow and the tallow candle that stood near by with its big wick smouldering.
His mind was not functioning normally. A healthy man usually thinks, feels and remembers a vast number of different things all at the same time, but he has the power and ability to pick out one track of ideas or phenomena and concentrate all his attention on that. A healthy man can break off from really serious thinking to exchange courtesies with anybody who comes in, and then go straight back to where he was in his thinking. It was in this respect that Prince Andrey's mind was not functioning normally. His mental powers were as clear and active as ever, but they were acting independently of his will. His mind was overwhelmed by the widest possible range of ideas and images all emerging at the same time. Sometimes an idea would suddenly start up in his mind, working away with the kind of strength, clarity and depth that he hadn't experienced when he had been well, but suddenly the thought would break off half-way through, giving way to some new and unexpected image, and there was no way back.
'Yes, a new kind of happiness was revealed to me, one of the inalienable rights of man,' he thought to himself as he lay there in the quiet semi-darkness of the hut, staring ahead with wide eyes that had settled but still held a feverish look. 'Happiness beyond materialism, beyond all external, material influences, happiness known only to the soul, the happiness of loving! It is within the conception of all men, but it can be fully determined and ordained by God alone. But how did God ordain this law? And what about His son? . . .' And then suddenly his chain of thoughts was broken, and Prince Andrey heard a noise (he couldn't tell whether this was part of a delirious dream or something real), a kind of soft voice whispering something insistent and rhythmical. 'Pitty-pitty-pitty,' and then, 'itty-itty,' and again, 'pitty-pitty-pitty,' and again, 'itty-itty.' And all the time, lulled by this sweet susurration, Prince Andrey felt as if a strangely ethereal edifice of delicate needles or splinters was rising up above his face, in the very middle of it. He felt he had to keep things in balance (though it was terribly difficult) so that this soaring structure didn't collapse, and yet it was collapsing, and slowly rising up again to the rhythmic murmur of the music.
'It's stretching up and spreading out, stretching and spreading!' Prince Andrey said to himself. As he listened to the whispering murmur and sensed the edifice of needles stretching and rising Prince Andrey caught glimpses of a red halo round a candle, and he could hear cockroaches rustling and a fly buzzing round his pillow and his face. And every time the fly brushed against his face it gave him a burning sensation, and he was surprised that the fly could hit him right in the middle of the soaring edifice without bringing it down. And besides this, there was something else that was terribly important to him, something white over by the door. Was that a statue of the sphinx pressing down on him?
'Must be my shirt on the table,' thought Prince Andrey, 'and there are my legs, and that's the door. But what's all this stretching and straining and pitty-pitty-pitty, and itty-itty and pitty-pitty-pitty. No more, please. Stop it. Leave me alone,' Prince Andrey begged wearily. And then suddenly thought and feeling floated to the surface again with the utmost clarity and strength.
'Yes, it's love . . .' (hi