Peace, war and peace

Before getting in, the old prince turned to his son, silently removed his cap, crossed him with a broad, sweeping cross - the kind one makes only before a long journey or before death - and said:

"Well, God be with you. Guard your honor, Andrei. And remember: honor is dearer than life, because a man has only one life, but he carries his honor within him and passes it to his children after death."

Andrei bowed silently. Prokofy gave the master his hand to help him onto the step, and the old prince, grunting and quietly swearing, finally climbed inside, flopped onto the threadbare cushions, and slammed the door.

"And you, Prokofy!" he shouted, sticking his head out the little window that slid open with a squeak. "Keep an eye on him! See that the estate doesn't fall apart, that Marya doesn't weep, that he -" he nodded toward Andrei - "doesn't do any stupid things. You are an old servant, you know the rules."

"At your service, Your Excellency," answered Prokofy, bowing low and holding his cap with one hand to keep it from flying off in the wind, and with the other the skirts of his coat, which were billowing.

"Go!" commanded the old prince, and the coachman, sitting on the box in a sheepskin coat and mittens, tugged the reins. The horses set off slowly, heavily, but still they moved, and the carriage, swaying on its springs, creaked along the packed snow-covered road, growing smaller and smaller until it became a black dot on the white field, and then the dot disappeared around the bend where the forest began.

Andrei stood on the porch and watched. Prokofy stood beside him, not daring to break the silence. The wind lifted snow from the ground, and small snowflakes swirled over the yard; it was so quiet that one could hear dogs barking in the distance and the creak of fresh, newly fallen snow underfoot. Andrei did not move. He stood leaning his hand on the carved pillar of the porch and looked at the oak - that huge, spreading oak that grew right by the house, a few fathoms from the porch, and which, the old folk said, had been planted by the present prince's grandfather, or maybe earlier. This oak was so thick that two people could not embrace it; its branches, black, gnarled, battered by frost and time, reached toward the sky like crooked fingers, and it seemed that this tree was not just a tree but something living, thinking, perhaps even possessing its own will and memory.

"When will real life begin?" thought Andrei, looking at the oak. "Must my whole life pass like this - in waiting, in silence, in languishing, while my elders say 'be silent,' when I cannot take a step without asking permission, when each day is like the one before and all the future seems as gray as this sky?" The sky was low, gray, monotonous, without a break; it seemed to press down on the earth, on this oak, on this house, on him, Andrei, on his entire life, which had not yet begun but was already ending. And he suddenly felt aggrieved - aggrieved to the point of tears, though he would not show them, considering that a man should not cry, so he only clenched his jaw harder and stared at one spot.

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?"

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.

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?"