Анатолий Шигапов – Peace, war and peace (страница 6)

Little Natasha, who had spent the whole supper sitting on the floor under the table because her mother would not let her sit at table - "too little, she'll get dirty" - was playing with a rag doll, dressing and undressing it, and could not fasten the tiny button on the doll's dress. She was bored under the table. She heard the voices of adults, the tramp of Petrushka's boots, the clatter of dishes, but could not understand a word of what was said, and so grew more and more angry with the doll that would not button. Finally she grew tired of it. She threw away the doll, crawled out from under the table - covered in dust, hair disheveled, cheeks bright red - and, before her mother or any adult could stop her, ran to Prince Vasily. She stopped before him, hands on hips, and loudly, so that even the footmen froze with their trays, asked:

"Why do you speak not our language?"

Prince Vasily, accustomed to children's questions no more than to the barking of little dogs - that is, paying them no attention - smirked and answered:

"Parce que je suis français, ma petite."

Natasha frowned. She did not understand the words, but the tone displeased her - too affectionate, too adult, as if speaking to a little one. She stamped her foot - not hard, but angrily - and cried:

"Liar! You are Russian! Why do you speak in a foreign tongue? Why pretend?"

She wanted to add something more, but at that moment her mother, Countess Rostova, was already running to her, and Natasha, feeling herself being carried off, only managed to shout after the prince:

"You are deceiving us! I know!"

The countess snatched her up, pressed her to herself, and carried her from the dining room, whispering in her ear: "What are you doing, mad girl? Why do you embarrass your uncle?" Natasha, kicking her legs and feeling no guilt, answered loudly so that all could hear: "He is the one who is embarrassed! He is not telling the truth! He is Russian, but he pretends to be French!"

The door closed behind them. For a second, a silence fell in the dining room - that awkward silence that follows when a child says what everyone is thinking but no one dares to utter. Then Count Rostov laughed - that loud, rolling laugh he always had ready for any occasion - and said:

"Ah, Natalya! That's telling him! C'est une petite philosophe, I declare!"

Prince Vasily also laughed - but his laugh was strained, insincere, and something like annoyance flickered in his eyes. However, he was too experienced a socialite to show his true feelings, and so a second later he was smiling affably and turning to the countess with some empty compliment.

Petrushka, leaving with his tray for the kitchen, remembered it all. And when he stepped into the corridor, he paused for a moment, pressed the tray to his chest, and thought: "The girl speaks truth. Why pretend? Why speak a foreign language if it is not foreign? Russian is the language. French is for the masters, for show. But the prince is Russian. And we are all Russian. So why put on airs? Pourquoi mentir?"

He took the tray to the kitchen, handed over the dirty dishes to the cook, and went into the servants' hall - a small, cramped room where the unmarried footmen slept and which smelled of kvass, vegetable oil, and old, sweat-soaked sheepskins. No other servants were there - all were busy about the house. Petrushka went to the window, drew the curtain, and looked out at the street. Water was dripping from the roofs; the snow that yesterday had lain white was now black, dirty, loose, and here and there the earth showed through - wet, brown, unattractive. The sky was low, damp, overcast, that gray, heavy color that comes before a prolonged rain or before everything finally melts and spring arrives. And in that sky, in those clouds hurrying somewhere northward, there was something that made one's soul both melancholy and light at the same time.

"Spring is coming," thought Petrushka. "The rivers will break up, the fields will emerge from under the snow. And the masters are still at it - hats, dances, French. And a little girl said the truth. Why pretend? One must live truthfully."

He stood a while longer, looking at the melting snow and the low sky, then sighed, crossed himself before the icon in the corner - an old, blackened icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, which had hung there since the house was built - and went back to the dining room, because supper was not yet over, and the masters needed dessert served, and there were not enough footmen, and the count, heaven forbid, would start shouting if the wine were not poured on time.

Passing the nursery door, he heard that inside they were no longer crying but laughing - and Natasha laughing loudest of all, probably because her mother had given her a spoonful of honey to calm her. And Petrushka involuntarily smiled. "Never mind," he thought. "You'll grow up and understand everything yourself. And you'll hear worse."

He pushed the dining room door and took up the decanter again.

VI

Old coachman Yermolai, who had served in the cab trade for twenty-five years and driven generals, merchants, minor officials, and even Count Orlov-Chesmensky himself once - whom he remembered because he had sworn all the way and given a tip of a full ten rubles - sat on the box of his britzka, driving a pair of bays, lazily clicking his whip and looking around. The day was summer, warm, with a light breeze from the fields, smelling of fresh hay and something sweet, probably blooming buckwheat. The road went through a small wood, then a field, then another wood; it was that Russian summer when everything grows and blossoms, and it seems it will always be so, and no one thinks that winter will ever return and cover everything with ice and snow.

In the britzka, on threadbare leather cushions, sat a boy - fat, clumsy, with a round face and eyes too large and too bright for his age. He was twelve, but looked fourteen, and in his thoughtfulness, in the way he looked at the passing fields and forests - as if he were searching for something others did not see - he sometimes seemed an adult, sometimes a child who did not yet understand where he was being taken or why. Pierre Bezukhov - the illegitimate son of old Count Kirill Vladimirovich, whom his father, despite all the gossip, had recognized and was now sending to Paris to study, to gain wisdom, so that when he returned he would no longer disgrace the family name with his clumsiness and strange speeches.

Before his departure, at the porch of the Moscow house on Molchanovka, the old count - ill, with a yellow face and trembling hands, but still alive and still authoritative - embraced his son, crossed him, and said, trying to speak firmly, though his voice broke:

"Mon fils, apprends, deviens un homme. I am old and, surely, will not live to see your return. But you must become such that people speak of you with respect. Not as they do of me - they say I am an old sinner - but as an honest and intelligent man. C'est tout ce que je te demande."

Pierre nodded, not raising his eyes. He did not know how to say goodbye - not because he did not love his father, but because every farewell seemed to him something terrible, final, like death. He climbed into the britzka, caught the skirt of his coat on the step, nearly fell, blushed, finally sat down, and stared at the floor. Yermolai clicked his whip, the horses set off, and the britzka, swaying, drove out of the yard.

The road was long - Yermolai was ordered to take Pierre only as far as Petersburg, and there change horses, another coachman, or perhaps a carriage. But for now they traveled together, and the old coachman from time to time turned to look at the master, who remained silent and gazed into the distance at fields, forests, and passing villages where women in white headscarves worked in the fields and men in bast shoes and ragged shirts trudged along the roadside, hats off when anyone resembling a gentleman passed.

Pierre thought. He thought a great deal about many things - more than a twelve-year-old boy sent abroad to study should. He thought about why people were not equal: some born rich, others poor; some able to read and write, others not; some command, others obey. And it seemed to him unjust, and that something should be done to remedy it, and that he, Pierre, when he grew up, would certainly do something to make all people happy. But how - he did not know. And from this ignorance came melancholy, and he began to look at the clouds racing across the high summer sky and think that the clouds had it good - they floated wherever the wind blew, no one asked them, no one commanded them.

"Why do people kill people?" he suddenly asked aloud, not turning to Yermolai but as if asking the sky itself.

Yermolai heard but did not understand. He thought the master was asking about something of his own, something a coachman was not meant to understand, and so he kept silent.

"Why do some command and others obey?" Pierre continued, his voice holding not childish resentment but an adult, bitter perplexity. "Je veux comprendre le monde. But the world does not want to be understood."