Chapter 38

The whole interest was concentrated on Rostóv. Instead of sixteen hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him, which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dólokhov was no longer listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostóv’s hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of his and Sónya’s joint ages. Rostóv, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him in their power.

“Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back’s impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or quits... it can’t be!... And why is he doing this to me?” Rostóv pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dólokhov refused to accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of Dólokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.

“He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can’t want my ruin. Wasn’t he my friend? Wasn’t I fond of him? But it’s not his fault. What’s he to do if he has such luck?... And it’s not my fault either,” he thought to himself, “I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that casket for Mamma’s name day and then going home. I was so happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened? I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No, it can’t be! Surely it will all end in nothing!”

He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless efforts to seem calm.

The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand. Rostóv had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when Dólokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostóv’s debt, breaking the chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.

“Supper, it’s time for supper! And here are the gypsies!”

Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:

“Well, won’t you go on? I had a splendid card all ready,” as if it were the fun of the game which interested him most.

“It’s all up! I’m lost!” thought he. “Now a bullet through my brain—that’s all that’s left me!” And at the same time he said in a cheerful voice:

“Come now, just this one more little card!”

“All right!” said Dólokhov, having finished the addition. “All right! Twenty-one rubles,” he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostóv submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.

“It’s all the same to me,” he said. “I only want to see whether you will let me win this ten, or beat it.”

Dólokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostóv detested at that moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.

“You owe forty-three thousand, Count,” said Dólokhov, and stretching himself he rose from the table. “One does get tired sitting so long,” he added.

“Yes, I’m tired too,” said Rostóv.

Dólokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to jest.

“When am I to receive the money, Count?”

Rostóv, flushing, drew Dólokhov into the next room.

“I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?” he said.

“I say, Rostóv,” said Dólokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas straight in the eyes, “you know the saying, ‘Lucky in love, unlucky at cards.’ Your cousin is in love with you, I know.”

“Oh, it’s terrible to feel oneself so in this man’s power,” thought Rostóv. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to escape it all, and felt that Dólokhov knew that he could save him from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does with a mouse.

“Your cousin...” Dólokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.

“My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not necessary to mention her!” he exclaimed fiercely.

“Then when am I to have it?”

“Tomorrow,” replied Rostóv and left the room.

CHAPTER XV

To say “tomorrow” and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of honor, was terrible.

At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostóv household that winter and, now after Dólokhov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker round Sónya and Natásha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya and Natásha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denísov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called “Enchantress,” which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:

Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre What magic power is this recalls me still? What spark has set my inmost soul on fire, What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?

He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natásha.

“Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she said, without noticing Nicholas.

“Everything’s still the same with them,” thought Nicholas, glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with the old lady.

“Ah, and here’s Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.

“Is Papa at home?” he asked.

“I am so glad you’ve come!” said Natásha, without answering him. “We are enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer for my sake! Did you know?”

“No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.

“Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!” called the old countess from the drawing room.

Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade Natásha to sing.

“All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “It’s no good making excuses now! It’s your turn to sing the ba’cawolla—I entweat you!”

The countess glanced at her silent son.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” said he, as if weary of being continually asked the same question. “Will Papa be back soon?”

“I expect so.”

“Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where am I to go?” thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room where the clavichord stood.

Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denísov’s favorite barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing. Denísov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.

Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.

“Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There’s nothing to be happy about!” thought he.

Sónya struck the first chord of the prelude.

“My God, I’m a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain is the only thing left me—not singing!” his thoughts ran on. “Go away? But where to? It’s one—let them sing!”

He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denísov and the girls and avoiding their eyes.

“Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya’s eyes fixed on him seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.

Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha too, with her quick instinct, had instantly noticed her brother’s condition. But, though she noticed it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as young people often do. “No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s sorrow,” she felt, and she said to herself: “No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am.”

“Now, Sónya!” she said, going to the very middle of the room, where she considered the resonance was best.

Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet dancers do, Natásha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.

“Yes, that’s me!” she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with which Denísov followed her.

“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his sister. “Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”

Natásha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may produce at the same intervals and hold for the same time, but which leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill you and make you weep.

Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously, mainly because Denísov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: “It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained.” Only they generally said this some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be altered without spoiling it.

“What is this?” thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely opened eyes. “What has happened to her? How she is singing today!” And suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided into three beats: “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two, three... one, two, three... One... “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two, three... One. “Oh, this senseless life of ours!” thought Nicholas. “All this misery, and money, and Dólokhov, and anger, and honor—it’s all nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natásha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She’s taken it! Thank God!” And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third below the high note. “Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take it? How fortunate!” he thought.

Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest in Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and Dólokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy....”

CHAPTER XVI

It was long since Rostóv had felt such enjoyment from music as he did that day. But no sooner had Natásha finished her barcarolle than reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count came in from his club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him drive up, went to meet him.

“Well—had a good time?” said the old count, smiling gaily and proudly at his son.

Nicholas tried to say “Yes,” but could not: and he nearly burst into sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son’s condition.

“Ah, it can’t be avoided!” thought Nicholas, for the first and last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel ashamed of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:

“Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I need some money.”

“Dear me!” said his father, who was in a specially good humor. “I told you it would not be enough. How much?”

“Very much,” said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, “I have lost a little, I mean a good deal, a great deal—forty three thousand.”

“What! To whom?... Nonsense!” cried the count, suddenly reddening with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.

“I promised to pay tomorrow,” said Nicholas.

“Well!...” said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking helplessly on the sofa.

“It can’t be helped! It happens to everyone!” said the son, with a bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He longed to kiss his father’s hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!

The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son’s words and began bustlingly searching for something.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?”

And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count went out of the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all expected this.

“Papa! Pa-pa!” he called after him, sobbing, “forgive me!” And seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.

While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and daughter were having one not less important. Natásha came running to her mother, quite excited.

“Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me...”

“Made what?”

“Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!” she exclaimed.

The countess did not believe her ears. Denísov had proposed. To whom? To this chit of a girl, Natásha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls and who was still having lessons.

“Don’t, Natásha! What nonsense!” she said, hoping it was a joke.

“Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natásha indignantly. “I come to ask you what to do, and you call it ‘nonsense!’”

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

“If it is true that Monsieur Denísov has made you a proposal, tell him he is a fool, that’s all!”

“No, he’s not a fool!” replied Natásha indignantly and seriously.

“Well then, what do you want? You’re all in love nowadays. Well, if you are in love, marry him!” said the countess, with a laugh of annoyance. “Good luck to you!”

“No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him, I suppose I’m not in love with him.”

“Well then, tell him so.”

“Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, dear! Is it my fault?”

“No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?” said the countess smiling.

“No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It’s all very well for you,” said Natásha, with a responsive smile. “You should have seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out accidently.”

“Well, all the same, you must refuse him.”

“No, I mustn’t. I am so sorry for him! He’s so nice.”

“Well then, accept his offer. It’s high time for you to be married,” answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.

“No, Mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know how I’m to say it.”

“And there’s nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,” said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this little Natásha as grown up.

“No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you’ll listen at the door,” and Natásha ran across the drawing room to the dancing hall, where Denísov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord with his face in his hands.

He jumped up at the sound of her light step.

“Nataly,” he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, “decide my fate. It is in your hands.”

“Vasíli Dmítrich, I’m so sorry for you!... No, but you are so nice... but it won’t do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always love you.”

Denísov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess’ dress. She came up to them.

“Vasíli Dmítrich, I thank you for the honor,” she said, with an embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denísov—“but my daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son’s friend, you would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would not have obliged me to give this refusal.”

“Countess...” said Denísov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He tried to say more, but faltered.

Natásha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began to sob aloud.

“Countess, I have done w’ong,” Denísov went on in an unsteady voice, “but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I would give my life twice over...” He looked at the countess, and seeing her severe face said: “Well, good-by, Countess,” and kissing her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without looking at Natásha.

Next day Rostóv saw Denísov off. He did not wish to stay another day in Moscow. All Denísov’s Moscow friends gave him a farewell entertainment at the gypsies’, with the result that he had no recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three stages of his journey.

After Denísov’s departure, Rostóv spent another fortnight in Moscow, without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls’ room.

Sónya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of her.

He filled the girls’ albums with verses and music, and having at last sent Dólokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.

BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07

CHAPTER I

After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the Torzhók post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing, he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.

“Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and tea?” asked his valet.

Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same question—one so important that he took no notice of what went on around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or for the rest of his life.

The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling Torzhók embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned from Sokólniki after the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the same place.

The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.

“Is this good or bad?” Pierre asked himself. “It is good for me, bad for another traveler, and for himself it’s unavoidable, because he needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses. But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as possible. And I,” continued Pierre, “shot Dólokhov because I considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who executed him—also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?”

There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: “You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.” But dying was also dreadful.

The Torzhók peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. “I have hundreds of rubles I don’t know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered cloak looking timidly at me,” he thought. “And what does she want the money for? As if that money could add a hair’s breadth to happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me less a prey to evil and death?—death which ends all and must come today or tomorrow—at any rate, in an instant as compared with eternity.” And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread, and again it turned uselessly in the same place.