Book Seven: 1810-11 - Chapter IX

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn andwearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, andthe new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshineby day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for somespecial celebration of the season.

　　On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all theinmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullesttime of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors thatmorning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count wasresting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the roundtable, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playingpatience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at thewindow with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up toSonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her motherand 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 Natasha,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 turnedquickly to hide them and left the room.

　　She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, andthen went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumblingat a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the coldfrom the serfs' quarters.

　　"Stop playing- there's a time for everything," said the old woman.

　　"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."

　　Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and wentto the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playingcards. They broke off and rose as she entered.

　　"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.

　　"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to theyard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me someoats."

　　"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 asamovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.

　　Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the orderand asked whether the samovar was really wanted.

　　"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown atNatasha.

　　No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much troubleas Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had tosend them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any ofthem would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled noone's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where canI go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.

　　"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she askedthe 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 amI to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quicklyupstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.

　　Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on whichwere plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses werediscussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natashasat 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 MadameSchoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.

　　Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance onhim he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.

　　"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."

　　Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting herarms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.

　　"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping offhis back she went downstairs.

　　Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and madesure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it wasdull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar,sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run herfingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage sherecalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for otherlisteners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscencesarose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyesfixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door andlistened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding onthe past.

　　Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glancedat her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to herthat she remembered the light failing through that crack once beforeand Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly thesame," thought Natasha.

　　"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.

　　"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near andlistened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid ofbeing wrong.

　　"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smilingtimidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and injust the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."

　　"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natashasang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Wherewere 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 Natasha. "Andwhere's Nicholas?"

　　"Asleep, I think."

　　"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to comeand sing."

　　She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happenedbefore could be, and without solving this problem, or at allregretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the timewhen 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'tthen be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, willcome immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawingroom. 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, werealready at the tea table. The servants stood round the table- butPrince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.

　　"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter."Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glancedround 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 betweenthe elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, myGod! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowingin the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense ofrepulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because theywere always the same.

　　After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, totheir favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.