Bab Bab 141 · 第141章

Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and

wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the

new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though

the calm frost of twenty degrees Réaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day,

and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some special

celebration of the season.

On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the

inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest time

of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that morning,

was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his

study. Sónya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying a

design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastásya

Ivánovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old

ladies. Natásha came into the room, went up to Sónya, glanced at

what she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood without

speaking.

“Why are you wandering about like an outcast?” asked her mother.

“What do you want?”

“Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!” said Natásha,

with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.

The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.

“Don’t look at me, Mamma! Don’t look; I shall cry directly.”

“Sit down with me a little,” said the countess.

“Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?”

Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to

hide them and left the room.

She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then

went into the maids’ room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at

a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from

the serfs’ quarters.

“Stop playing—there’s a time for everything,” said the old

woman.

“Let her alone, Kondrátevna,” said Natásha. “Go, Mavrúshka,

go.”

Having released Mavrúshka, Natásha crossed the dancing hall and went

to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing

cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.

“What can I do with them?” thought Natásha.

“Oh, Nikíta, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the

yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some

oats.”

“Just a few oats?” said Misha, cheerfully and readily.

“Go, go quickly,” the old man urged him.

“And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.”

On her way past the butler’s pantry she told them to set a samovar,

though it was not at all the time for tea.

Fóka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.

Natásha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and

asked whether the samovar was really wanted.

“Oh dear, what a young lady!” said Fóka, pretending to frown at

Natásha.

No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as

Natásha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send

them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would

get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders

so readily as they did hers. “What can I do, where can I go?”

thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.

“Nastásya Ivánovna, what sort of children shall I have?” she asked

the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman’s jacket.

“Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,” answered the buffoon.

“O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What

am I to do with myself?” And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly

upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.

Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were

plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing

whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natásha sat down,

listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got

up again.

“The island of Madagascar,” she said, “Ma-da-gas-car,” she

repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to

Madame Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the

room.

Her brother Pétya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him

he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.

“Pétya! Pétya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”

Pétya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her

arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.

“No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!” she said, and jumping off

his back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made

sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull,

Natásha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down

in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over

the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an

opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. What she drew from

the guitar would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in her

imagination a whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds.

She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light

escaping from the pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She

was in a mood for brooding on the past.

Sónya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natásha glanced

at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that

she remembered the light falling through that crack once before and

Sónya passing with a glass in her hand. “Yes it was exactly the

same,” thought Natásha.

“Sónya, what is this?” she cried, twanging a thick string.

“Oh, you are there!” said Sónya with a start, and came near and

listened. “I don’t know. A storm?” she ventured timidly, afraid of

being wrong.

“There! That’s just how she started and just how she came up smiling

timidly when all this happened before,” thought Natásha, “and in

just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her.”

“No, it’s the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!” and Natásha

sang the air of the chorus so that Sónya should catch it. “Where were

you going?” she asked.

“To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design.”

“You always find something to do, but I can’t,” said Natásha.

“And where’s Nicholas?”

“Asleep, I think.”

“Sónya, go and wake him,” said Natásha. “Tell him I want him to

come and sing.”

She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened

before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting

not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was

with him and he was looking at her with a lover’s eyes.

“Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!

And, worst of all, I am growing old—that’s the thing! There won’t

then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he’ll come today, will

come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing

room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it.” She rose,

put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.

All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already

at the tea table. The servants stood round the table—but Prince Andrew

was not there and life was going on as before.

“Ah, here she is!” said the old count, when he saw Natásha enter.

“Well, sit down by me.” But Natásha stayed by her mother and

glanced round as if looking for something.

“Mamma!” she muttered, “give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,

quickly!” and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.

She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the

elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. “My God, my God!

The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the

same way!” thought Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion

rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the

same.

After tea, Nicholas, Sónya, and Natásha went to the sitting room, to

their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.