Анатолий Шигапов – Peace, war and peace (страница 9)

"And I am a sultana! Look, everyone! I am the most important sultana in the world! I am going to war! Regardez, je vais à la guerre!" she cried in French, because the governess taught her and Vera French, and Natasha, though she did not understand half of it, loved to insert French words where they were not needed at all - simply because it seemed important and grown-up.

Nikolai, an eleven-year-old boy, leggy, with sideburns already sprouting, which he plucked himself at night sitting before a candle, sat in an armchair, lounging like a nobleman, and looked at his sister mockingly. He was dressed as a page - a costume made for Christmas - and felt terribly grown-up and terribly important, because he was already eleven and soon would be sent to military school to train as a real officer.

"A sultana without a saber," he said with a smirk, not even turning his head. "What kind of sultan is that without a saber? Does a real sultana walk about with bare hands? Any bandit could defeat her."

Natasha frowned. She did not fully understand the word "sultana," but she understood that her brother was laughing at her, and that she could not stand more than anything in the world - to be laughed at, not taken seriously, thought little and ignorant.

"Well, here's a saber!" she cried. "I'll show you right now!"

And without further thought, she took off one of her slippers (the left one), swung, and threw it at her brother. The slipper flew past, hit the wall, knocked a silver angel off the tree, and it, with a tinkle, rolled under the table. Agafya, standing on a stool, nearly fell, grabbed the tree, and three more toys - a glass ball, a gold fish, and a gingerbread man - fell and broke. The ball burst with a thin, plaintive tinkle; the fish broke in half; the gingerbread man, which Agafya had so carefully baked and glazed, fell to the floor and broke into three pieces.

"Oh, good heavens!" cried Agafya, jumping off the stool. "What's going on? A quarter of the work on the floor - all to ruin! Young lady, Natalya Ilyinichna, why throw your slipper? Is that allowed? The count will scold you, you'll see!"

Natasha stood on one foot, holding the slipper she had taken off in her hand, having lost the other somewhere along the way, and her face was that of one surprised by her own actions. At first she wanted to cry - from hurt, from her brother's laughter, from her bare foot on the cold floor - but then she looked at the broken toys, at the shards of the glass ball scattered across the parquet, and suddenly burst out laughing - loudly, ringingly, so that even Agafya smiled through her scolding.

"Oh, how fun!" cried Natasha. "Look, look, the fish is in two pieces! Now its tail is separate and its head separate. And the gingerbread boy is scattered! Let's eat him! He's broken anyway, he'll be no use on the tree."

She ran to the gingerbread man, grabbed a piece, and stuffed it in her mouth. But the gingerbread was old and stale, and Natasha, chewing, made a face and spat it into her hand.

"Tasteless," she said. "Why hang such things on the tree, Agafya? You should have baked soft ones."

Agafya only waved her hand and began to pick up the pieces.

At that moment, Count Ilya Andreyevich appeared in the doorway - flushed, with shining eyes, in an unbuttoned coat, because he had just returned from a walk and had not yet changed. He saw the broken toys, Natasha on one foot, Nikolai trying to assume an innocent air but failing, and guessed that something had happened. But instead of getting angry, he suddenly smiled that broad, kind smile that made him look like a big, good-natured bear, and said, spreading his hands:

"Quelle joie, mes enfants! Now this is Christmas time! This is fun! In my day, we did worse. Once at Christmas time I threw a candlestick at a sugarloaf - and the sugar flew everywhere like snow! And my grandmother, Princess Sofya Dmitrievna, was angry, but then she laughed herself."

Agafya did not understand the count's French words, because she had not been taught French, and the only French word she knew was "merci," which she pronounced as "mersey" and used only when one of the masters gave her something on a holiday. But she understood from the count's face that he was not angry, and so she smiled - that relieved, elderly smile that comes when an expected punishment suddenly passes by.

"Don't be angry, Your Excellency," she said. "I'll tidy it up now. And children - they are always children. They'll grow up and be wiser."

Count Rostov only waved his hand and went to change, saying as he left: "And by supper I want the tree like new, Agafya! And straighten that star on top - it's slipped sideways again."

Agafya sighed, took the stool, tied the star for the fourth time - now, she hoped, for good - and was about to start hanging new toys to replace the broken ones when she heard a rustle behind her. She turned and saw that Natasha, having forgotten her quarrel with her brother and the broken fish, had climbed onto the table, from the table onto the windowsill, and from the windowsill was reaching for the tree, trying to reach the very star Agafya had just tied.

"Young lady!" cried Agafya. "You'll fall!"

But Natasha no longer heard. She grabbed a branch; the branch cracked; the tree tilted; and Natasha, losing her balance, fell - straight into an imaginary snowdrift, which, however, did not exist, because only parquet lay on the floor - hard and cold, and it would hurt to fall on it. But by a miracle she did not fall on the parquet but into a pile of soft cushions that Agafya had piled in the corner that evening to put on the sofas. The cushions softened the fall, and Natasha, emerging from them covered in feathers and lace, laughed again - so loudly and infectiously that Nikolai, who had almost taken offense at her over the slipper, could not help himself and laughed too.

"Look," he said, pointing at her, "now you're not a sultana, you're a broody hen! All covered in feathers!"

"Am not!" cried Natasha, climbing out of the cushions. "I am a star!" And she snatched a paper star from a branch - the one Agafya had hung last - and fixed it to her turban. "See? Now I am the most important star on the tree!"

Nikolai laughed even louder. Agafya stood, watching this commotion, and did not know whether to cry or laugh with them. A branch of the tree had broken; toys lay on the floor; the star - the main one, the glass one - was scratched, because Natasha, grabbing the tree, had knocked it off, and now it lay on the carpet, one of its sharp points broken off and rolled under the sofa. But Agafya was somehow not angry. She suddenly thought that all of this - the tree, the toys, the stars, the children's laughter, the quarrels and reconciliations - all of this was life, and that without it life would be empty and boring, and that the children would grow up, and have their own children, who would also break toys and quarrel and make up and hang on the tree, because it could not be otherwise. That was how the world was arranged. That was how it had been.

She went to Natasha, picked her up (the girl was light as a feather), removed the remains of the paper star from her head, kissed her forehead, and said:

"Ah, little mischief-maker. What are you doing? The countess will scold. Better go to the nursery and change. Guests will come this evening; you must be pretty."

"I am pretty anyway," said Natasha, but obediently climbed out of the cushions, picked up her lost slipper, and, limping, ran to the nursery, leaving a trail of feathers and pine needles.

Agafya watched her go, crossed herself - broadly, in the old fashion - and began to tidy up. She swept up the shards, gathered the fallen toys, straightened the broken branch, hung new balls in place of the broken ones. Evening was falling; outside, the frosty air was turning blue; the first stars had lit in the gray, pre-evening sky - small, frequent, prickly, like the shards she was now sweeping into the dustpan. Agafya paused for a moment, looked out the window at those stars - the very stars that had shone for her grandmother, for her mother, and would shine when neither she, nor the count, nor little Natasha, who had just been playing the star, remained in the world - and sighed. "Everything passes," she thought. "The tree stood, the toys broke, the children grew, the old aged. But the stars are still the same. And the sky, it seems, does not care who lives below and what toys they break."

She finished tidying, wiped her hands on her apron, and went to the window. The sky was starry, frosty, as it should be in December, when God lights the stars early and extinguishes them late, and people, looking at them, think of eternity, but eternity remains eternal, and people remain people: quarreling, making up, breaking dishes, while old housekeepers gather the pieces and sigh. Agafya smiled at her own thoughts, crossed herself once more, and went to the kitchen to set the samovar for tea, because guests would soon arrive, and guests are not received without tea; the samovar must boil, the pies must be hot, and everything must be as it should, because order is order, and without it one cannot manage.