บทที่ บทที่ 184 · 第184章

Natásha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all external

forms of pleasure—balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters—but she

never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She could not

sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears

choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure

times which could never return, tears of vexation that she should so

uselessly have ruined her young life which might have been so happy.

Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy,

in face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to

coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no

man was more to her than Nastásya Ivánovna, the buffoon. Something stood

sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all

the old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so full

of hope. The previous autumn, the hunting, “Uncle,” and the Christmas

holidays spent with Nicholas at Otrádnoe were what she recalled oftenest

and most painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a

single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at

the time had not deceived her—that that state of freedom and readiness

for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live

on.

It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly

imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But

this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, “What next?”

But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was

passing. Natásha apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance to

anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She kept away from everyone in

the house and felt at ease only with her brother Pétya. She liked to

be with him better than with the others, and when alone with him she

sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of those who came

to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would have been

impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care, and at the

same time more seriously than did Count Bezúkhov. Natásha unconsciously

felt this delicacy and so found great pleasure in his society. But

she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part

seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind

to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natásha

noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,

especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that

something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her. She

noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness,

which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was to her.

After those involuntary words—that if he were free he would have asked

on his knees for her hand and her love—uttered at a moment when she was

so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natásha of his feelings;

and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had then so comforted

her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken to comfort

a crying child. It was not because Pierre was a married man, but because

Natásha felt very strongly with him that moral barrier the absence of

which she had experienced with Kurágin that it never entered her head

that the relations between him and herself could lead to love on her

part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious,

romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had known

several instances.

Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agraféna Ivánovna Belóva, a

country neighbor of the Rostóvs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at

the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natásha should fast

and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natásha gladly welcomed the idea.

Despite the doctor’s orders that she should not go out early in the

morning, Natásha insisted on fasting and preparing for the sacrament,

not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostóv family by attending

three services in their own house, but as Agraféna Ivánovna did, by

going to church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers,

Matins, or Mass.

The countess was pleased with Natásha’s zeal; after the poor results of

the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that prayer

might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not without

fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natásha’s wish and

entrusted her to Belóva. Agraféna Ivánovna used to come to wake Natásha

at three in the morning, but generally found her already awake. She was

afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily washing, and meekly putting on

her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla, Natásha, shivering in the fresh

air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn.

By Agraféna Ivánovna’s advice Natásha prepared herself not in their

own parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agraféna

Ivánovna, the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were

never many people in the church; Natásha always stood beside Belóva in

the customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the

screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, of

humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her when

at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin

illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning light

falling from the window, she listened to the words of the service which

she tried to follow with understanding. When she understood them her

personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its

own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still to think that

the wish to understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to

understand all, that it is only necessary to believe and to commit

oneself to God, whom she felt guiding her soul at those moments. She

crossed herself, bowed low, and when she did not understand, in horror

at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her everything,

everything, to have mercy upon her. The prayers to which she surrendered

herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home at an

early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or men

sweeping the street, and everybody within the houses was still asleep,

Natásha experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility

of correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of

happiness.

During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every

day. And the happiness of taking communion, or “communing” as Agraféna

Ivánovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natásha

so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.

But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in

white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the first time for

many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life

that lay before her.

The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue the

powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.

“She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening,” said

he, evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. “Only, please be

particular about it.

“Be quite easy,” he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the gold

coin in his palm. “She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The

last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has freshened

up very much.”

The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at her

nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.