Chapter Chapter 153 · 第153章

That evening the Rostóvs went to the Opera, for which Márya

Dmítrievna had taken a box.

Natásha did not want to go, but could not refuse Márya Dmítrievna’s

kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready

dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large

mirror there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more

sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.

“O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but

differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply

embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching

inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I

would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes—how I see those

eyes!” thought Natásha. “And what do his father and sister matter

to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with

his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of

him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present.

I can’t bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!” and she

turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry. “And how

can Sónya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so

patiently?” thought she, looking at Sónya, who also came in quite

ready, with a fan in her hand. “No, she’s altogether different. I

can’t!”

Natásha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not

enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at

once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of

love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her

father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on

the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot

where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of

carriages, the Rostóvs’ carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels

squeaking over the snow. Natásha and Sónya, holding up their dresses,

jumped out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and,

passing among men and women who were entering and the program sellers,

they all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.

Through the closed doors the music was already audible.

“Natásha, your hair!...” whispered Sónya.

An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and

opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the

door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and

shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before

their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy

at Natásha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being

played. Natásha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sónya and sat down,

scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not

experienced for a long time—that of hundreds of eyes looking at

her bare arms and neck—suddenly affected her both agreeably and

disagreeably and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and

emotions associated with that feeling.

The two remarkably pretty girls, Natásha and Sónya, with Count Rostóv

who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general

attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natásha’s engagement

to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostóvs had lived in the country

ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancée who was making

one of the best matches in Russia.

Natásha’s looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country,

and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty.

She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and beauty,

combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes

looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare

to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently

unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to the music,

crumpling her program. “Look, there’s Alénina,” said Sónya,

“with her mother, isn’t it?”

“Dear me, Michael Kirílovich has grown still stouter!” remarked the

count.

“Look at our Anna Mikháylovna—what a headdress she has on!”

“The Karágins, Julie—and Borís with them. One can see at once that

they’re engaged....”

“Drubetskóy has proposed?”

“Oh yes, I heard it today,” said Shinshín, coming into the

Rostóvs’ box.

Natásha looked in the direction in which her father’s eyes were

turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her

face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck—which Natásha

knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning

over with an ear to Julie’s mouth, was Borís’ handsome smoothly

brushed head. He looked at the Rostóvs from under his brows and said

something, smiling, to his betrothed.

“They are talking about us, about me and him!” thought Natásha.

“And he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn’t trouble

themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of

them.”

Behind them sat Anna Mikháylovna wearing a green headdress and with a

happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was

pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natásha knew

so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all

that had been so humiliating in her morning’s visit.

“What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,

better not think of it—not till he comes back!” she told herself,

and began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in

the stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against

the orchestra rail, stood Dólokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair

brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,

well aware that he was attracting everyone’s attention, yet as much at

ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow’s

most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.

The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sónya and pointed to her

former adorer.

“Do you recognize him?” said he. “And where has he sprung from?”

he asked, turning to Shinshín. “Didn’t he vanish somewhere?”

“He did,” replied Shinshín. “He was in the Caucasus and ran

away from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling

prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah’s brother. Now all the

Moscow ladies are mad about him! It’s ‘Dólokhov the Persian’ that

does it! We never hear a word but Dólokhov is mentioned. They swear

by him, they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet.

Dólokhov and Anatole Kurágin have turned all our ladies’ heads.”

A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed

plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of

large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress

and took a long time settling into her place.

Natásha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls

and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.

While Natásha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady

looked round and, meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled.

She was the Countess Bezúkhova, Pierre’s wife, and the count, who

knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.

“Have you been here long, Countess?” he inquired. “I’ll call,

I’ll call to kiss your hand. I’m here on business and have brought

my girls with me. They say Semënova acts marvelously. Count Pierre

never used to forget us. Is he here?”

“Yes, he meant to look in,” answered Hélène, and glanced

attentively at Natásha.

Count Rostóv resumed his seat.

“Handsome, isn’t she?” he whispered to Natásha.

“Wonderful!” answered Natásha. “She’s a woman one could easily

fall in love with.”

Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor

tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,

and the curtain rose.

As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and

all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the

women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with

eager curiosity to the stage. Natásha too began to look at it.