Анатолий Шигапов – Peace, war and peace (страница 5)

The carriage was brought around - large, with a coat of arms, high springs, and a box on which sat the coachman in a blue livery and a high beaver cap. Prince Vasily helped Hélène climb inside - she stepped carefully, afraid of dirtying her hem in the wet snow lying on the porch and already beginning to melt under people's feet - and sat opposite her. Inside, the carriage was upholstered in dark blue velvet, a small icon lamp hung in the corner, and it smelled of expensive perfume, the very perfume used by the late princess, Hélène and Anatole's mother, who had died five years ago and since then been almost forgotten by everyone but the old servants.

"Well, God be with us," said Prince Vasily, and the carriage moved, softly swaying on its springs.

Dunyasha remained on the porch. She watched the carriage with her eyes until it disappeared around the corner, and kept thinking: "What will become of her? A beauty, that's clear. But will she be happy?" She remembered her own fate - how she, eighteen years old, was married off to a drunken coachman who beat her when drunk and died a year later of delirium tremens, leaving her only debts and bruises. "Beauty," she thought, "is like money: much is good, but much is also frightening. But with the young lady, perhaps everything will be different. She is a prince's daughter. She will be courted, not beaten."

She crossed herself one last time, looking at the clear, frosty sky on which the first evening stars had begun to appear, and went into the house - to finish her sewing, because tomorrow there would be guests again, and again she would have to serve and clear away, and again all that bustle from which there seemed to be neither exit nor end.

Old Fyoklovna, when Dunyasha returned to the maids' room, asked without raising her head from her stocking:

"Well, have they gone?"

"They've gone," said Dunyasha, and sat down in her place, took her needle, and began to sew - because one always had to sew, and the thoughts crowding in her head had no place in this work, but they crowded nonetheless, and she, sighing, sewed and thought, sewed and thought, and could not drive away the image of Hélène - slim, smiling, with marble shoulders - and Prince Vasily's words: "beauty without calculation is worth nothing." And it seemed to her that there was something terrible in those words, something that an eleven-year-old child should not have heard, but it was said, and the child nodded, and now it would live in her and grow, like a seed cast into the earth.

Meanwhile, the sky outside the window darkened, stars lit one after another, the frost strengthened; someone in the house played the harpsichord - a sad, old melody that Dunyasha had heard many times and now, this evening, listened to with a new, incomprehensible feeling. And it seemed to her that this melody, this sky, this frost, the girl who had driven off into adult life - all of it was one, all connected by some fine, invisible thread called fate, and that no one could escape this fate - neither a prince's daughter nor a simple maid. "Everything is in God's hands," thought Dunyasha and crossed herself again. "Everything is in God's hands."

She laid down her sewing, stood up, straightened the icon lamp before the icon - the one hanging in the corner over an old faded rug - and went to the kitchen to set the samovar, because Prince Vasily would soon return, and he would likely want tea after his visit to the Shuvalovs, and she had to get everything done before the masters began to get angry and shout.

V

In the great dining room of the Rostov house on Povarskaya, where the walls were hung with family portraits in heavy gilded frames and which smelled of wax, polished silver, and something else homely and cozy that exists only in old Moscow houses where three generations of one family live - in this dining room, around a long oak table set for twenty persons, they gathered for supper. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov, flushed and cheerful, with that special, festive smile that appeared on his face whenever guests were in the house, sat at the head of the table and kept pouring wine for himself, his neighbors, and especially for the honored guest, Prince Vasily Kuragin, who had stopped in Moscow on his way from Petersburg and, as was his custom, could not pass by the count's hospitable house, where he was always awaited with a hearty supper, good wine, and a cheerful, easy conversation such as could not be found in the prim Petersburg salons.

Petrushka, a young footman who had served the Rostovs for three years and already knew all the masters' habits - when to serve, when to refill, when to stand still, and when to slip out unnoticed - walked around the table with a heavy silver decanter in his hand, pouring red wine into crystal glasses, trying not to clink or spill, because the count did not like stains on the tablecloth, though he himself was always knocking something over. The table was full of people: the count himself; Countess Natalya Petrovna, still young but already plump, with that perpetually worried expression common to mothers of many children; their eldest daughter Vera, an eight-year-old girl with straight fair hair and a stern, unusually serious face, who sat with a straight back and generally tried to behave as, in her understanding, a well-brought-up young lady should; ten-year-old Nikolai, leggy, with tousled curls, who kept fidgeting and had probably already regretted being made to sit at table with the adults; six-year-old Sonya, the count's niece, a quiet, big-eyed girl with a sad, thoughtful face, who stayed close to her mother and glanced timidly at the guest; and finally little Natasha, only four years old - rosy-cheeked, black-eyed, with perpetually disheveled hair and the lively, restless curiosity that never left her for a moment.

Baby Petya, not yet a year old, slept upstairs in the nursery, and his presence was felt only in the countess's frequent anxious listening to sounds from above and her start and gesture to the nanny whenever crying came from there. But for now, all was quiet; everyone sat at the table, and the conversation turned to what now concerned everyone most - the new decrees of Emperor Paul.

Count Rostov, having poured himself another glass and drained it with that cheerful, grunting sound he always made when the wine was good, turned to Prince Vasily:

"I hear, my dear fellow, what decrees our sovereign has signed? He's banning round hats, frock coats, the waltz. The waltz, my dear fellow! They say you can't dance the new way. What is this world coming to? If it weren't so funny, I'd want to weep."

Prince Vasily, sitting next to the count with an air as if he were doing a favor by being there at all, unhurriedly cut a piece of roast veal, put it in his mouth, chewed, and only then answered, glancing at the door - as he glanced everywhere, even in the safest places, because the habit of looking over his shoulder had become second nature after he saw what happened in Petersburg to those who had not been quick enough to look.

"C'est une bêtise, of course," he said, his voice carrying that light, half-contemptuous smirk with which he often accompanied his judgments. "But orders must be obeyed, Count. We no longer live in Catherine's times, when everyone did as they pleased. Now there is order. And we must fit into this order, whether we like it or not."

Count Rostov sighed - heavily, in the Russian manner, with his whole chest - and poured himself more wine. He wanted to say something about Russia not being German, that Prussian ways did not suit her, that real Russian life was breadth, daring, freedom, not drill and fear of speaking a word. But he knew it was dangerous to say such things, so he remained silent, sighing once more, and to smooth over the awkwardness, said loudly and cheerfully:

"Well then, Prince, let us drink to the sovereign's health! Whatever one may say, he is our father, and God willing, everything will be settled."

Prince Vasily raised his glass, clinked, took a sip - and set it down, because he did not like to drink much, considering that wine clouded the mind, and in his position a clouded mind was an unforgivable luxury.

Petrushka, pouring wine, heard all this and wondered. To him, a seventeen-year-old lad who had grown up in the country and come to the city only three years ago, these talks about hats and dances were incomprehensible. What business did the sovereign have with what hat anyone wore? And how could one forbid a dance? A dance came from the soul; you could not forbid it. But the masters spoke of it seriously, almost fearfully, and Petrushka, not understanding the essence, felt only one thing: something in life had changed, and not for the better. He remembered how last year, before the empress's death, the Rostov house had been merrier - guests laughed loudly, spoke freely, no one glanced at doors or lowered their voices when politics came up. But now - whispering, fear, and even Prince Vasily, so important, so seemingly fearless, even he looked around.