Анатолий Шигапов – Peace, war and peace (страница 4)

Prokofy, after standing a while longer, approached his master and, coughing into his fist, said:

"Your Excellency, it is cold outside. The frost must be twenty degrees. Would you not like to come inside? The stoves are lit, the samovar is ready."

Andrei did not answer. He kept looking at the oak, and Prokofy, who had known this master since childhood and remembered him still small, running about these very rooms in short trousers, suddenly thought that the master was not seeing just a tree, not just an old oak on which he and his brother (deceased, rest his soul) used to hang a swing, but fate itself - that very fate that leads a man through life without asking his consent, and which, like this oak, is old, gnarled, does not move, but stands firm and does not bend before any winds. And Prokofy sighed, because he felt sorry for the master - with that hopeless, silent pity that old servants feel for young masters tormented by something that no advice can remedy. And, sighing, he crossed himself - broadly, as his late mother had taught him - and went into the house, because he had to stoke the stoves and prepare supper, and because standing in the cold watching another's grief was neither the time nor the inclination.

Andrei remained alone. He stood for a long time, until it grew dark, until the first stars lit up in the clearing evening sky, until the snow stopped swirling and settled in an even white cover on the roof, the road, the branches of the oak. And when he finally turned and went into the house, he imagined that the oak knew something that people did not know, and that in its immobility, in its gnarled, upthrust branches, there was something greater than the mere life of a tree - there was memory and patience such as man is not given to have. And this thought made him both lighter and heavier at once, because if a tree is given to know and to endure, then perhaps a man is also given - but not to know, only to endure? He found no answer and, sighing, pushed open the door.

Prokofy, standing by the stove and throwing in wood, heard the door clap, the steps creak, and thought to himself: "Never mind, it will all grind through - flour will come. Everything will grind through." And he went to set the samovar.

IV

Dunyasha, out of breath, ran into the maids' room - a small, stuffy little room with a low ceiling and a single window facing the inner courtyard - and, falling onto a stool, whispered to the other maids who sat sewing: one mending lace, another sorting linen, a third, old Fyoklovna, dozing by the stove with a stocking dropped on her lap. "They are dressing the young lady," said Dunyasha, "for her first formal appearance. The prince ordered the pink dress with the bare shoulders. You know, the one they ordered last year for the big ball and never put on. Now the time has come."

The maids exchanged glances. Old Fyoklovna, without opening her eyes, grumbled: "The girl is eleven. Rather early, isn't it? C'est un peu tôt, elle n'a que onze ans." But Dunyasha only waved her hand and ran back, because she could hear the French governess shouting in the bedroom - the one everyone called Madame Lambert, a thin, bilious woman who tyrannized the household but trembled before the prince like an aspen leaf, and therefore always agreed with his decisions, even the most absurd.

In the bedroom - large, bright, with tall mirrors in carved frames and portraits of some distant relatives on the walls - several people were bustling about. Madame Lambert, holding the pink dress - pale pink, with silver embroidery on the hem and such bare shoulders that the dress seemed about to fall off - pursed her lips disapprovingly but remained silent. Hélène herself, slender, with a figure already noticeably developed beyond her years - the very figure that would later become the talk of every Petersburg drawing room - stood before the mirror in just a petticoat and twirled and twirled, now lifting her head, now lowering it, smiling at herself - not a child's smile, timid and uncertain, but that calm, confident, slightly mocking smile that later would drive half of Petersburg mad and about which it would be said that it contained not a drop of feeling, yet something that made men lose their heads.

"Il faut qu'elle s'y habitue," said Prince Vasily, entering the bedroom and looking at no one. "She must get used to it." He was already dressed for the road, in an embroidered uniform with his orders, because he was taking his daughter to her first grand soirée - at the house of the Ober-Hofmeister Countess Shuvalova, where all high society gathered, and where, he hoped, eleven-year-old Hélène would make an impression. He went to his daughter, looked her over - that quick, appraising look he gave horses before purchase or estates he intended to mortgage - and was pleased. More than pleased. The corners of his lips twitched into something like a smile - the very smile he gave when concluding a profitable deal.

"You will be the most beautiful woman in Russia," he said, taking Hélène by the chin and turning her face to the light. "But remember: beauty without calculation is worth nothing. Remember that. You must not simply be beautiful. You must know how to use your beauty."

Hélène nodded, still smiling, but her eyes were empty - that very emptiness that later so amazed everyone who tried to speak with her of anything other than gowns and balls. She did not understand what "calculation" meant, but she knew that when her father spoke in that tone, it was best to nod and smile, because arguing with him was useless and contradicting him dangerous.

Dunyasha, helping to tighten her corset, pulled at the laces with all her might, and Hélène, wincing, sometimes cried out but endured it. The corset was tight, because the dress had been made a year ago, and in that year Hélène had grown and filled out, and now her thin, still girlishly angular figure was squeezed by the brocade and whalebone, and every breath came with difficulty. But Prince Vasily demanded everything be as it should, and Dunyasha, who feared the master more than fire or flogging, pulled the laces until her own fingers ached.

In the doorway appeared Anatole - fourteen years old, already tall, with rosy cheeks and insolent, cheerfully senseless eyes that seemed to say: "Everything is permitted to me, and I will do as I please." He peered into the bedroom, whistled long and low like a cabman at a horse fair, and loudly, so that the whole room heard, said:

"Elle est belle, ma sœur. Pity one cannot marry one's own sister. Now there would be a wife - the wife of all wives!"

And, without waiting for an answer, immediately boasted that he had stolen a purse from the French tutor - the very one who tormented him with Latin every morning and whom Anatole hated with a fierce, boyish hatred.

"And did you give it back?" asked Madame Lambert, throwing up her hands.

"Why give it back?" Anatole wondered. "I drank it away yesterday with my schoolmates. There were three rubles and forty kopecks. We bought pies with liver and a bottle of rum. C'était délicieux."

Prince Vasily looked at his son with the same appraising glance - but now the glance held not pleasure, as at his daughter, but something else, like weariness and irritation. "He will grow up," thought the prince. "Or he won't. In any case, he will cause a lot of trouble." But aloud he said nothing, only waved his hand, and Anatole, understanding that his father had no time for him, disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, slamming the door and almost knocking over a footman carrying some papers on a tray.

Dunyasha, fastening the last buttons on Hélène's dress - tiny mother-of-pearl buttons that barely went through the buttonholes - furtively crossed the young lady, because she, Dunyasha, had a rule: every time the young lady put on a new dress or went out for the first time, she crossed her for good luck, that God might protect her from drunken officers, from evil tongues, and from beauty itself, which, as Dunyasha knew from her own small but bitter experience, brings a woman not joy but only grief. "The girl is growing to her own sorrow," thought Dunyasha, tightening the last knot at the waist. "Beauty is not joy, but a burden. Too pretty - that's frightening. C'est dangereux, la beauté." And she crossed herself again, now openly, and Hélène, feeling that breath of fingers on her nape, turned slightly and smiled - the smile that meant nothing, but which Dunyasha remembered for the rest of her life.

Prince Vasily gave a sign, and everyone began to bustle. Madame Lambert threw a warm shawl over Hélène's shoulders - although it was warm enough in the carriage, a shawl was required in case of a draft - and led her to the door. Dunyasha ran after to help her into the carriage and adjust the hem if it caught on the step.

Outside it was freezing - fifteen degrees at least - but the sky stood clear, pure, of that deep, dark blue that comes only in a Petersburg February, when the sun already shines brightly but still gives little warmth, and the air is dry, and each snowflake, if you look closely, shimmers and burns like a small diamond. Hoarfrost on the carriage windows sparkled, shimmering in all colors - pink, blue, green - and Dunyasha, looking at it, involuntarily thought: "Lord, how beautiful. And the young lady is beautiful today. But why does my soul feel so anxious?"