War And Peace

To admit the possibility of a future seemed like an affront to his memory. They were even more cautious about mentioning anything to do with the dead man. What they had gone through and felt so deeply seemed to defy expression in words. Any reference in words to the details of his life seemed to offend against the grandeur and sanctity of the mystery that had been accomplished before their eyes.

This constant holding back and studious avoidance of anything that might lead to a mention of him, this stopping short on both sides of the barrier that determined what could and couldn’t be said, left both their minds with a clearer and purer sense of what they were feeling.

But complete and unalloyed sorrow is as impossible as complete and unalloyed joy. Princess Marya, conscious of her position as the independent mistress of her own fate, and her nephew’s guardian and tutor, was the first to respond to the demands of everyday life and emerge from the world of mourning she had been living in throughout those first two weeks. She had received letters from relatives that needed answering, there was damp in the room where little Nikolay had been put, and he now had a cough. Alpatych came to Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and various proposals. He s advised Princess Marya to move back to Moscow and take up residence in their house on Vozdvizhenka Street, which had survived intact and needed nothing more than a few minor repairs. Life had to go on; there was no stopping it. Painful as it was for Princess Marya to emerge from the world of solitary contemplation she had so far been living in, regrettable, almost shameful, as it was to have to leave Natasha to manage on her own, the duties of everyday life were calling for attention, and she had to give in to them, however reluctantly. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, consulted Dessalles about her nephew, and then got down to the arrangements and preparations for moving back to Moscow.

Natasha was now on her own, and from the moment Princess Marya became busy with the preparations for leaving she avoided even her company.

Princess Marya asked the countess to let Natasha come and stay with her in Moscow, a suggestion that met with the immediate approval of both mother and father, who had been watching their daughter’s physical decline getting worse by the day and now hoped that a change of scene and some help from the doctors in Moscow might do her good.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ answered Natasha, when the suggestion was put to her. ‘Please, just leave me alone.’ And she ran out of the room, hardly able to hold back tears that had more to do with exasperation and anger than sorrow.

Feeling abandoned by Princess Marya and alone in her grief, Natasha now spent most of the time alone in her room sitting in a corner of the sofa with her feet tucked up under her. Her narrow, nervous fingers were continually twisting or tearing at something, and she would sit there staring fixedly at the first object that met her eyes. This solitude was wearisome, pure torture, but it was just what she needed. The moment someone came in to see her she got quickly to her feet, changed her attitude and expression, and picked up a book or some needlework, but she was obviously anxious for the intruder to go away.

She always felt herself to be on the very brink of understanding, of focusing her spiritual vision and answering questions too terrible to contemplate.

One day towards the end of December Natasha, looking thin and pale, dressed in a black woollen gown, with her hair plaited up in a hasty coil, was sitting in the corner of the sofa with her feet tucked up under her, nervously crumpling and smoothing out the ends of her sash with her fingers while she gazed at the corner of the door.

She was looking out towards the place on the other side of life where she knew he had gone to. And that other side of life, which she had never given a thought to in days gone by because it had always seemed so remote and unbelievable, was now closer, more natural to her and more understandable than this side of life, where there was nothing but emptiness and desolation or pain and humiliation.

She was looking out towards the place where she knew he had gone to, but she could only see him as he had been here on earth. She was seeing him again as he had been at Mytishchi, Troitsa and Yaroslavl.

She could see his face, hear his voice, repeat his words to her and her words to him. Sometimes she dreamt up new phrases for herself and for him, things that might have been said at that earlier time.