Book Fifteen: 1812-13 - Chapter I

by Leo Tolstoy

　　When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when itis a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides thishorror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritualwound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimesheals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

　　After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike feltthis. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacingcloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in theface. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough andpainful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street,a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, orworse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed aninsult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessaryquiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadfulchoir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered theirgazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instanthad opened out before them.

　　Only when alone together were they free from such outrage andpain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did itwas of very unimportant matters.

　　Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility ofa future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully didthey avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to themthat what they had lived through and experienced could not beexpressed in words, and that any reference to the details of hislife infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had beenaccomplished before their eyes.

　　Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance ofeverything that might lead up to the subject- this halting on allsides at the boundary of what they might not mention- brought beforetheir minds with still greater purity and clearness what they wereboth feeling.

　　But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and completejoy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independentarbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, wasthe first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in whichshe had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from herrelations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholashad been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came toYaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with adviceand suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house onthe Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and neededonly slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessaryto live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realmof secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, andsorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet thecares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yieldedto them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred withDessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparationsfor the journey to Moscow.

　　Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began makingpreparations for departure, held aloof from her too.

　　Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her toMoscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they sawtheir daughter losing strength every day and thought that a changeof scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.

　　"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed toher. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room,with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritationrather than of sorrow.

　　After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in hergrief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself,sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing andtwisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazingintently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. Thissolitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need ofit. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her positionand expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waitingimpatiently for the intruder to go.

　　She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate thaton which- with a terrible questioning too great for her strength-her spiritual gaze was fixed.

　　One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressedin a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into aknot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervouslycrumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked ata corner of the door.

　　She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone- to the otherside of life. And that other side of life, of which she had neverbefore thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away andimprobable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensiblethan this side of life, where everything was either emptiness anddesolation or suffering and indignity.

　　She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imaginehim otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as hehad been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.

　　She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own,and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.

　　There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaninghis head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and hisshoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, anda wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legstwitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he isstruggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does hehave that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thoughtNatasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began tospeak seriously:

　　"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself foreverto a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he lookedsearchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time tothink what she would say. She said: "This can't go on- it won't. Youwill get well- quite well."

　　She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived whatshe had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look atthose words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair inthat protracted gaze.

　　"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would bedreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only becauseit would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently.He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to liveand feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did notsay what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what Ithought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to diecontinually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared withwhat I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No,he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never bepossible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying thesame words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gavehim a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you,but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you,and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and hetook her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terribleevening four days before his death. And in her imagination she saidother tender and loving words which she might have said then butonly spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said,convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperateeffort...

　　She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising inher eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and againwith a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. Andnow, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But atthe instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealingitself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on herears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with afrightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.

　　"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange,excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," shefinished with a sob.