Kabanata Kabanata 261 · 第261章

Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the

ambulance station on the field of Borodinó. His feverish state and the

inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor’s

opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with

pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his

temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.

The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had

remained in the calèche, but at Mytíshchi the wounded man himself asked

to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into

the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he

had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with

closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: “And the tea?”

His remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished

the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew’s pulse, and to his surprise and

dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was dissatisfied because he

knew by experience that if his patient did not die now, he would do so

a little later with greater suffering. Timókhin, the red-nosed major of

Prince Andrew’s regiment, had joined him in Moscow and was being

taken along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the battle of

Borodinó. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s valet, his

coachman, and two orderlies.

They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with

feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and

remember something.

“I don’t want any more. Is Timókhin here?” he asked.

Timókhin crept along the bench to him.

“I am here, your excellency.”

“How’s your wound?”

“Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?”

Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.

“Couldn’t one get a book?” he asked.

“What book?”

“The Gospels. I haven’t one.”

The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he

was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but

reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was

uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak

with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of

mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining that dreadful

place. The doctor was very much displeased about something and made a

change in the dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned

again and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking

them to get him the book and put it under him.

“What trouble would it be to you?” he said. “I have not got one. Please

get it for me and put it under for a moment,” he pleaded in a piteous

voice.

The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.

“You fellows have no conscience,” said he to the valet who was pouring

water over his hands. “For just one moment I didn’t look after you...

It’s such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it.”

“By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!”

said the valet.

The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the

matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked

to be carried into the hut after his calèche had stopped at Mytíshchi.

After growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he

again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled

all that had happened to him, and above all vividly remembered the

moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of the sufferings of

a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to him which promised him

happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again

possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of

happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels.

That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in

which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts,

and when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete

stillness of the night. Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket

chirped from across the passage; someone was shouting and singing in

the street; cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on

the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around the

candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had shaped itself

like a mushroom.

His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,

feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the

power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to

fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from the

deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can

then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew’s mind was not

in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more

active and clearer than ever, but they acted apart from his will. Most

diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously. At times his

brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had

never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the midst of its

work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength

to turn it back again.

“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be

deprived,” he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut,

gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. “A happiness

lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act

on man—a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every man

can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only

for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?”

And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew

heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a

soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating

“piti-piti-piti,” and then “titi,” and then again “piti-piti-piti,” and

“ti-ti” once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above

the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out

of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music.

He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so

that this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept

collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic

music—“it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching,” said

Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling

the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice

of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and

heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that

flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his

face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not

destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his

face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of

importance. It was something white by the door—the statue of a sphinx,

which also oppressed him.

“But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,” he thought, “and that’s my

legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing

itself out, and ‘piti-piti-piti’ and ‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...?

That’s enough, please leave off!” Prince Andrew painfully entreated

someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of

his mind with peculiar clearness and force.

“Yes—love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves

for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason,

but the love which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy

and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very

essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel

that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love

everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to

love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved

by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I

loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...

“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but

divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can

destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have

I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did

her.” And he vividly pictured to himself Natásha, not as he had done in

the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but for

the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her

feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for the

first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his

rupture with her. “If only it were possible for me to see her once more!

Just once, looking into those eyes to say...”

“Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!” flopped the fly....

And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of

reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In

that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall,

something was still stretching out, and the candle with its red halo

was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but

besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and

a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had

the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natásha of whom he had just

been thinking.

“Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,” thought Prince Andrew,

trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained

before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew

wished to return to that former world of pure thought, but he could not,

and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice

continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed him and stretched

out, and the strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all

his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and

suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and

like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to

himself, Natásha, that same living Natásha whom of all people he most

longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to

him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living

Natásha, and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natásha, motionless

on her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on

him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the

lower part of it something quivered.

Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.

“You?” he said. “How fortunate!”

With a rapid but careful movement Natásha drew nearer to him on her

knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began

kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.

“Forgive me!” she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.

“Forgive me!”

“I love you,” said Prince Andrew.

“Forgive...!”

“Forgive what?” he asked.

“Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!” faltered Natásha in a scarcely

audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just

touching it with her lips.

“I love you more, better than before,” said Prince Andrew, lifting her

face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.

Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,

compassionately, and with joyous love. Natásha’s thin pale face, with

its swollen lips, was more than plain—it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew

did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful. They

heard the sound of voices behind them.

Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.

Timókhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had

long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare

body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.

“What’s this?” said the doctor, rising from his bed. “Please go away,

madam!”

At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her

daughter’s absence, knocked at the door.

Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natásha went out of the room

and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.

From that time, during all the rest of the Rostóvs’ journey, at every

halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natásha never left the

wounded Bolkónski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected

from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a

wounded man.

Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die

in her daughter’s arms during the journey—as, judging by what the doctor

said, it seemed might easily happen—she could not oppose Natásha. Though

with the intimacy now established between the wounded man and Natásha

the thought occurred that should he recover their former engagement

would be renewed, no one—least of all Natásha and Prince Andrew—spoke of

this: the unsettled question of life and death, which hung not only over

Bolkónski but over all Russia, shut out all other considerations.