Book 7, Chapter 10
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18691869

People :
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Author : Leo Tolstoy

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“Does it ever happen to you,” said Natásha to her brother, when they
 settled down in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you to feel as
 if there were nothing more to come—nothing; that everything good is
 past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?”

“I should think so!” he replied. “I have felt like that when everything
 was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my mind
 that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once in the
 regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was music... and
 suddenly I felt so depressed...”

“Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!” Natásha interrupted him. “When I was
 quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was
 punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing in
 the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for
 everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent—that was
 the chief thing,” said Natásha. “Do you remember?”

“I remember,” answered Nicholas. “I remember that I came to you afterwards
 and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed to. We were
 terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give it to you. Do
 you remember?”

“And do you remember,” Natásha asked with a pensive smile, “how once,
 long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the study—that
 was in the old house—and it was dark—we went in and suddenly
 there stood...”

“A Negro,” chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. “Of course I
 remember. Even now I don’t know whether there really was a Negro, or if we
 only dreamed it or were told about him.”

“He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked at
 us....”

“Sónya, do you remember?” asked Nicholas.

“Yes, yes, I do remember something too,” Sónya answered timidly.

“You know I have asked Papa and Mama about that Negro,” said Natásha,
 “and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you remember!”

“Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them.”

“How strange it is! It’s as if it were a dream! I like that.”

“And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, and
 suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real
 or not? Do you remember what fun it was?”

“Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun in the
 porch?”

So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad
 memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones—those impressions of
 one’s most distant past in which dreams and realities blend—and they
 laughed with quiet enjoyment.

Sónya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared
 the same reminiscences.

Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she recalled
 did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced. She simply
 enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.

She only really took part when they recalled Sónya’s first arrival. She
 told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because he had on a corded
 jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too, would be sewn up with
 cords.

“And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a cabbage,”
 said Natásha, “and I remember that I dared not disbelieve it then, but
 knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable.”

While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of the
 sitting room.

“They have brought the cock, Miss,” she said in a whisper.

“It isn’t wanted, Pólya. Tell them to take it away,” replied Natásha.

In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and went
 up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth
 covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.

“Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field,” came the old
 countess’ voice from the drawing room.

Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natásha, Nicholas, and Sónya,
 remarked: “How quiet you young people are!”

“Yes, we’re philosophizing,” said Natásha, glancing round for a moment and
 then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing dreams.

Dimmler began to play; Natásha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table,
 took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself quietly in
 her former place. It was dark in the room especially where they were
 sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the silvery light of the
 full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished the piece but still sat
 softly running his fingers over the strings, evidently uncertain whether
 to stop or to play something else.

“Do you know,” said Natásha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
 Sónya, “that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last
 begins to remember what happened before one was in the world....”

“That is metempsychosis,” said Sónya, who had always learned well, and
 remembered everything. “The Egyptians believed that our souls have lived
 in animals, and will go back into animals again.”

“No, I don’t believe we ever were in animals,” said Natásha, still in a
 whisper though the music had ceased. “But I am certain that we were angels
 somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we remember....”

“May I join you?” said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down by
 them.

“If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?” said Nicholas. “No,
 that can’t be!”

“Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was before?”
 Natásha rejoined with conviction. “The soul is immortal—well then,
 if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole
 eternity.”

“Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity,” remarked Dimmler, who
 had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now spoke
 as quietly and seriously as they.

“Why is it hard to imagine eternity?” said Natásha. “It is now today, and
 it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the day
 before....”

“Natásha! Now it’s your turn. Sing me something,” they heard the countess
 say. “Why are you sitting there like conspirators?”

“Mama, I don’t at all want to,” replied Natásha, but all the same she
 rose.

None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off their
 conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natásha got up
 and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the middle
 of the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best, Natásha
 began to sing her mother’s favorite song.

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had sung,
 and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The count, from
 his study where he was talking to Mítenka, heard her and, like a schoolboy
 in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk while giving orders
 to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mítenka stood in front of him
 also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister
 and drew breath in time with her. Sónya, as she listened, thought of the
 immense difference there was between herself and her friend, and how
 impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her cousin.
 The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with tears in her
 eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of Natásha and of her own
 youth, and of how there was something unnatural and dreadful in this
 impending marriage of Natásha and Prince Andrew.

Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with closed
 eyes.

“Ah, Countess,” he said at last, “that’s a European talent, she has
 nothing to learn—what softness, tenderness, and strength....”

“Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!” said the countess, not
 realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her that
 Natásha had too much of something, and that because of this she would not
 be happy. Before Natásha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old Pétya
 rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers had arrived.

Natásha stopped abruptly.

“Idiot!” she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, threw
 herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop for a long
 time.

“It’s nothing, Mama, really it’s nothing; only Pétya startled me,” she
 said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs still choked
 her.

The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
 innkeepers, and ladies—frightening and funny—bringing in with
 them the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first
 timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
 into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily and
 heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas games. The
 countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their costumes, went
 into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom, smiling radiantly
 and applauding the players. The young people had disappeared.

Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the ballroom
 an old lady in a hooped skirt—this was Nicholas. A Turkish girl was
 Pétya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natásha, and a Circassian was
 Sónya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.

After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from those
 who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that their
 costumes were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.

Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take
 them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a
 dozen of the serf mummers and drive to “Uncle’s.”

“No, why disturb the old fellow?” said the countess. “Besides, you
 wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
 Melyukóvs’.”

Melyukóva was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
 governesses, lived three miles from the Rostóvs.

“That’s right, my dear,” chimed in the old count, thoroughly aroused.
 “I’ll dress up at once and go with them. I’ll make Pashette open her
 eyes.”

But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad leg all
 these last days. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if
 Louisa Ivánovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might
 go to the Melyukóvs’, Sónya, generally so timid and shy, more urgently
 than anyone begging Louisa Ivánovna not to refuse.

Sónya’s costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows were
 extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very handsome, and
 she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with her. Some inner
 voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and in her
 male attire she seemed quite a different person. Louisa Ivánovna consented
 to go, and in half an hour four troyka sleighs with large and small bells,
 their runners squeaking and whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to
 the porch.

Natásha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing from
 one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all came
 out into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to one
 another, laughing, and shouting.

Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was the old
 count’s with a trotter from the Orlóv stud as shaft horse, the fourth was
 Nicholas’ own with a short shaggy black shaft horse. Nicholas, in his old
 lady’s dress over which he had belted his hussar overcoat, stood in the
 middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.

It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal
 harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm
 at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.

Natásha, Sónya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas’ sleigh;
 Dimmler, his wife, and Pétya, into the old count’s, and the rest of the
 mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.

“You go ahead, Zakhár!” shouted Nicholas to his father’s coachman, wishing
 for a chance to race past him.

The old count’s troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
 squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned
 bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the middle
 horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar, and threw
 it up.

Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the others moved
 noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove at a steady trot
 along the narrow road. While they drove past the garden the shadows of the
 bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but
 as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight
 and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled
 with bluish shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole
 in the snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same
 way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas began to
 speed along the road, one after the other.

“A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!” rang out Natásha’s voice through the
 frost-bound air.

“How light it is, Nicholas!” came Sónya’s voice.

Nicholas glanced round at Sónya, and bent down to see her face closer.
 Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches peeped up at him
 from her sable furs—so close and yet so distant—in the
 moonlight.

“That used to be Sónya,” thought he, and looked at her closer and smiled.

“What is it, Nicholas?”

“Nothing,” said he and turned again to the horses.

When they came out onto the beaten highroad—polished by sleigh
 runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were visible in
 the moonlight—the horses began to tug at the reins of their own
 accord and increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and
 breaking into a short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse swayed
 from side to side, moving his ears as if asking: “Isn’t it time to begin
 now?” In front, already far ahead the deep bell of the sleigh ringing
 farther and farther off, the black horses driven by Zakhár could be
 clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh one could hear the
 shouts, laughter, and voices of the mummers.

“Gee up, my darlings!” shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one side and
 flourishing the whip.

It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the
 side horses who pulled harder—ever increasing their gallop—that
 one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With
 screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft horses to
 gallop—the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung steadily
 beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of slackening pace and
 ready to put on speed when required.

Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and coming
 out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.

“Where are we?” thought he. “It’s the Kosóy meadow, I
 suppose. But no—this is something new I’ve never seen before. This
 isn’t the Kosóy meadow nor the Dëmkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is!
 It is something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be...” And shouting
 to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.

Zakhár held back his horses and turned his face, which was already covered
 with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.

Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhár, stretching out his arms,
 clucked his tongue and let his horses go.

“Now, look out, master!” he cried.

Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the feet
 of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead. Zakhár, while
 still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with the reins.

“No you won’t, master!” he shouted.

Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhár. The horses
 showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh—beside
 them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of
 swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing. The
 whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls
 shrieking were heard from different sides.

Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were still
 surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled with stars.

“Zakhár is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the left?”
 thought Nicholas. “Are we getting to the Melyukóvs’? Is this Melyukóvka?
 Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows what is happening
 to us—but it is very strange and pleasant whatever it is.” And he
 looked round in the sleigh.

“Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!” said one of the strange,
 pretty, unfamiliar people—the one with fine eyebrows and mustache.

“I think this used to be Natásha,” thought Nicholas, “and that was Madame
 Schoss, but perhaps it’s not, and this Circassian with the mustache I
 don’t know, but I love her.”

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind
 shouted something—probably something funny—but they could not
 make out what he said.

“Yes, yes!” some voices answered, laughing.

“But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a glitter of
 diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver roofs of fairy
 buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And if this is really
 Melyukóvka, it is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and have
 come to Melyukóvka,” thought Nicholas.

It really was Melyukóvka, and maids and footmen with merry faces came
 running, out to the porch carrying candles.

“Who is it?” asked someone in the porch.

“The mummers from the count’s. I know by the horses,” replied some voices.


     From : Gutenberg.org

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     Book 7, Chapter 10 -- Publication : November 30, 1868

     Book 7, Chapter 10 -- Added : February 11, 2017

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