War And Peace

Countess Marya listened to her husband, taking it all in. She knew that when he was thinking aloud like this he would sometimes ask her what he had been saying, and he was annoyed when he found out her thoughts had been elsewhere. But she had to work hard at this because she hadn’t the slightest interest in what he was saying. As she watched him it wasn’t really a question of her thoughts being elsewhere – her feelings were elsewhere. She felt a submissive and tender love for this man who was never going to understand everything that she understood, and this seemed to make her love him all the more, with a love verging on passion. But apart from these feelings that absorbed her entirely and stopped her going into the details of her husband’s plans, she was conscious of other ideas flashing through her mind that had nothing to do with what he was saying. She kept thinking of her nephew (what her husband had told her about his excitement listening to Pierre had made its mark on her), and recalling various aspects of his tender, sensitive personality, and when she was thinking about her nephew she thought about her own children too. She didn’t compare her nephew with her own children, but she did compare her own feelings for him, and she felt, sadly, that there was something lacking in her feelings towards little Nikolay.

Sometimes it had occurred to her that the difference might have something to do with his age, but he still made her feel guilty, and she swore in the depths of her soul to put things right and achieve the impossible by loving them all in one lifetime, loving her husband, her children, little Nikolay and all her fellow creatures, as Jesus had loved all mankind. Countess Marya’s spirit was always striving towards the infinite, the eternal, absolute perfection, which meant she was never at peace. Her face froze in a grim expression that came from the hidden, lofty suffering of a spirit weighed down by the flesh. Nikolay stared at her. ‘My God!’ he thought, ‘what will become of us if she dies, as I fear she will when she looks like that?’ He stood there before the icon and began to say his bedtime prayers.

CHAPTER 16

The moment they were alone together Natasha too began to converse with her husband in that manner peculiar to husbands and wives, one of those in which ideas are perceived and exchanged with extraordinary clarity and speed by some means that transcends all the rules of logic and develops its own way without any spoken assertions, deductions or conclusions. Natasha was so used to talking to her husband like this that she took any process of logical thinking on Pierre’s part as an unmistakable sign that something was wrong between them. Whenever he started to lay out an argument, speaking calmly and reasonably, and she followed his example by doing the same thing, she knew they were definitely in for a quarrel.

When they were alone together and Natasha, wide-eyed and blissfully happy, crept over to him and grabbed him by the head, suddenly, swiftly, pressing it to her bosom and saying, ‘Now you’re all mine, mine! I’m not letting you go!’ this moment marked the beginning of the conversation, and it transcended all the rules of logic not least because they talked about several different things at once. This simultaneous discussion of all sorts of everything, far from marring any clarity of perception, was the surest guarantee of their mutual understanding.

In a dream everything is uncertain, senseless and contradictory except the overall feeling that directs the dream; similarly in this form of communication, which offends against every law of reason, it is not the flow of words that is clear and coherent, but the feeling behind them.

Natasha had much to tell: the details of her brother’s lifestyle, how much she had suffered without him (it was no kind of life), all about her ever-growing fondness for Marie, and the fact Marie was better than her in every way. Even as she said this Natasha was perfectly sincere in acknowledging Marie’s superiority, but at the same time she expected Pierre to prefer her to Marie and all other women, and now, especially after seeing so many women in Petersburg, to remind her of that. In response to Natasha’s words Pierre told her that the soirées and dinners with all those ladies in Petersburg had been absolutely intolerable.

‘I can’t talk to ladies any more,’ he said. ‘It’s just boring. All the more so because I was so busy.’

Natasha gave him a close scrutiny, and went on. ‘Marie is so wonderful!’ she said. ‘She’s so good with children. She seems to see right down into their souls. Take yesterday. Mitenka was being naughty . . .’

‘Just like his father, isn’t he?’ Pierre put in.

Natasha knew why he had made a comment about the similarity between Mitenka and Nikolay. The argument with his brother-in-law was still rankling, and he was dying to hear what she thought about it.