Peace, war and peace

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.

And as she was leaving the drawing room, she heard from above, from the nursery, the sound of laughter - Natasha, probably, making peace with Nikolai, and the two of them inventing something together, their voices so merry, so carefree, that Agafya involuntarily smiled, shook her head, and went her way, softly humming an old Christmas song her mother had sung - the words long forgotten, but the melody remained, and lived in her, and warmed her soul, as fire in the stove warms a winter evening.

X

The day was August, hot, stuffy, with that heavy, leaden silence that comes before a thunderstorm. In the count's house it was quiet - the master had not left his study for three days and received no one; the servants walked on tiptoe, afraid to disturb. Only in the morning had the post arrived from abroad, and the count, having received a letter, sat over it for a long time, then called his steward and said: "Pierre writes. Alive, healthy. Asks permission to return. But I think - let him study another year. France, they say, is calming down. The Terror is over, the Jacobins have been dispersed. Now consuls rule, and it seems quieter."

The steward, an old German, bowed and left. And rumors went through the house that the young master Pierre, now thirteen, was writing terrible letters from Paris, and that France, they said, was no longer what it had been, and that a new ruler there, some Bonaparte, had pacified everyone and was now gathering an army, and it was unknown against whom. Semyon, cleaning harness, listened with half an ear and thought his own thoughts. He thought about how the count was old and ill, and the heir was a boy abroad, and it was unknown whether he, Semyon, would have to drive with this boy or would remain with the old master until his death. He was not afraid of death - he had seen old masters die, and he knew that after death one still had to live and serve the new master. But he did not like the thought that the new master would be that fat, clumsy boy who once, before his departure, had run around the yard and kept asking the servants why the sky was blue and why people could not fly.

"He's strange," said Semyon aloud, addressing no one. "And his eyes are not like everyone else's. He looks and seems to see something we don't see."

"And what," asked the cook, fat Marfa, who had just milked the cow, "will he come back, they say? He'll need watching over. He might do foolish things."

"He won't," answered Semyon. "He's quiet. Only very thoughtful. And thoughtful people rarely do foolish things. They suffer more inwardly."

The servants' hall laughed. Semyon took offense - not at the laughter, but at not being understood. He was about to say something more, but at that moment the count's valet, Grigory, came out of the house and said the count wanted the carriage harnessed - to go to town, to Prince Kuragin's. Semyon stood up, put on his sheepskin coat, and went to the stable to harness.

The count drove alone; Semyon, sitting on the box, heard the old master sigh heavily as he settled onto the cushions and say to himself in French: "Que faire, mon Dieu? Il est encore si jeune." Semyon did not understand whom the count meant, but guessed Pierre. He was afraid, probably, that the boy would be lost in a foreign land. Or afraid that he himself would not live to see his return. So they drove in silence, only the wheels clattering on the cobblestones, while over Moscow a thunderstorm gathered, stuffy and low, pressing on the chest.

At Prince Vasily's house, the count stayed only a short while - came out pale, angry, slammed the carriage door, and ordered them to drive back. Semyon turned and saw from a second-story window Princess Hélène looking out - slender, with marble shoulders - smiling. But her smile was somehow empty, unreal, and Semyon felt uneasy. He started the horses, and the carriage rolled back.

That same evening, in Count Bezukhov's house, they learned news that spread all over Moscow: Emperor Paul had signed a decree forbidding young people from going abroad to study without special permission. Now Pierre, like many Russian nobles, could not return because he had been sent before the decree, but also could not stay - because the decree demanded everyone's return. The count sat in his study, rereading his son's letter, thinking. And Semyon, standing by the stable, looked at the sky. The thunderstorm had passed by, only rustled and gone, but the air became cleaner, and the first stars lit in the black, high sky.

"What will be, will be," thought Semyon. "And the count will probably obtain permission. He has influence, money. And Pierre will come - and we'll go on living. There's room for everyone."

He crossed himself, entered the stable, patted the horses, gave them oats, and lay down to sleep in the hayloft, listening to the harmonica playing beyond the wall in the servants' hall and someone singing an old, long song about a brave young man riding into an open field where no one awaits him. And it seemed to Semyon that this song was about everyone - about him, about the old count, about little Pierre studying in France, not knowing if he would ever return home. And over Moscow the sky was high and starry, and the wind blew from the north, and somewhere in the distance, beyond the city, began those very fields over which couriers galloped with the emperor's decrees.

XI

Count Kirill Vladimirovich, dressed in a spacious dressing gown, sat in his favorite Voltaire armchair by the window, rereading a letter that had come that morning from Paris. The letter was from Pierre - the thirteen-year-old boy the count had sent to France two years ago to study and who now, apparently, did not intend to return, because, as he wrote, his studies were absorbing and Paris the most beautiful city in the world. The count read, smiled, sometimes frowned and twitched his eyebrows - those thick, gray eyebrows that made his face resemble that of an old, life-wise lion.

"What does he write?" asked Grigory, handing him a cup.

"He writes," answered the count without raising his eyes, "that Bonaparte, that Corsican, they say, will soon chase everyone away and make himself consul. Already everyone speaks of him as the master of France. C'est un homme extraordinaire, he writes. The boy, but he's at it - judging politics."

Grigory said nothing, for he understood nothing of politics and had seen Bonaparte only in pictures - small, angry, with a hand tucked into his coat. But he noticed that the count was not angry with Pierre, but rather proud that his son was interested in such things.

"And then, Your Excellency," Grigory asked cautiously, "will he return soon? Or will he stay on in France?"

"He'll stay," said the count, putting aside the letter. "Let him study. Things are unsettled now at home. The sovereign, they say, is preparing new decrees, and who knows what will happen with Europe. Better he stay in France than be here, under the hand of an emperor who can exile you for an extra word. Ici, c'est dangereux."

Grigory sighed, straightened the napkin, and walked to the window. The sky was autumn, low, gray, with small, quickly moving clouds that seemed to Grigory like couriers shuttling between Moscow and Petersburg with tsarist decrees. A fine, frequent rain tapped on the glass - the kind that comes in September, when summer is over but winter has not yet begun, and everything around seems wet, sticky, unpleasant. And the people were the same - wet, sticky, unpleasant. Yesterday, for example, Prince Vasily Kuragin had come - ostensibly to visit the ailing count (though the count was not ill, merely tired and not coming to dinner) - but actually, as Grigory understood, to find out whether a new will had been written, and whether the estate had been left to the wrong person. Prince Vasily sat in an armchair, drank tea, spoke of trifles, but his eyes darted and he kept glancing at the writing desk where papers lay in a leather portfolio.

"A fox," Grigory thought then. "He came to sniff what lay where." And now, remembering it, he thought: "He'll come again. He'll come, certainly. As long as the count lives, he won't rest."

The count finished his chocolate, set aside his cup, and said:

"Grigory, write an answer. Say: live, study, don't be bored. And I will send him as much money as he asks. Let him not want."

Grigory went to the desk, took a pen, dipped it in ink, and began to write at dictation. The count dictated slowly, deliberately, sometimes pausing, his voice tired but firm.

"'Mon cher fils, I received your letter and was glad that you are healthy and cheerful. As for Bonaparte - do not judge what you do not know. Time will show whether he is a genius or a brigand. Study, listen to your professors, do not be lazy. And do not hurry to return. In Russia things are no better than in France, perhaps worse...'"

He paused, rubbed his forehead, and added:

"Don't write 'worse.' Delete it. Write: 'Be careful, take care of yourself. Your loving father.'"

Grigory wrote, folded the sheet, sealed it with wax, and pressed it with a stamp bearing the count's coat of arms. The count took the letter, held it to the candle for the wax to harden, and said:

"Send it with a courier tomorrow. Have it fly."

Then he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and after a silence, said as if to himself:

"If I die, he will be alone. Prince Vasily will eat him alive. And Princess Drubetskaya too. I must do something. I must write a will... but when? There's never time."

Grigory stood and looked at the count. He felt pity for the old man - that quiet, silent pity that servants feel for old, lonely masters who have no one but their servants. The count had relatives - Prince Vasily, Princess Drubetskaya, some cousins and nephews - but they all wanted one thing: his money. And his son, the only one who loved him not for his money, was far away in France, and it was unknown when he would return.

"Your Excellency," said Grigory, hesitating, "perhaps write to Pierre to come? After all, one's own flesh and blood."

The count opened his eyes, looked at Grigory with a long, heavy look, and answered:

"No. Let him study. I shall live yet. I am tenacious."

He smirked - that crooked, joyless smirk people give when they know their tenacity is running out but do not want to show it. Grigory bowed and went out into the corridor.

In the corridor it was dark; it smelled of old wood and wax. Grigory passed the room where Pierre had once lived - a small room with a window onto the yard - and stopped. The room was empty; furniture stood covered with sheets; on the wall hung a portrait of the late Countess Bezukhova, young, beautiful, with that special, sad smile that appears on women who know they will die young. Grigory crossed himself, remembered how little Pierre had run about this room, asking: "Grigory, why is the sky so high? Why don't the stars fall?" And how Grigory had not known what to answer, and answered: "God made it so, master." And Pierre had not believed, said God had nothing to do with it, that everything had an explanation, one only had to seek. And Grigory had thought then: "A strange boy. Big, clever eyes. Maybe he will indeed find the answer."

Now Pierre was thirteen, lived in Paris, studied in a boarding school, wrote his father letters about Bonaparte and about how the world was arranged. And Grigory, looking at his mother's portrait, thought: "If only he would grow up soon and return. Or the old count will die any day, and the boy will be left alone, surrounded by wolves. Prince Vasily is already sharpening his teeth. And Princess Drubetskaya is not far behind. She came again yesterday - brought flowers, but she kept looking at the portfolio. Foxes, I declare."

He went downstairs to the kitchen, ordered dinner to be served, and remained standing by the window, looking out at the autumn street. The rain had stopped, but the sky remained low and gray; rare passersby walked with collars turned up, hiding their faces. Someone among the servants said that in Petersburg there were more arrests, that the sovereign was displeased, that everyone was afraid - nobles, merchants, common people. Grigory listened and thought: "Fear everywhere. Everywhere dread. And the boy in France is probably better off. There at least you know what to fear. But here - unknown. Maybe tomorrow a decree, the day after exile. And no one knows for what."

He sat on a bench, took up an old, well-read book - a book of saints' lives, which he liked to read in his spare time - but did not read, because his thoughts were elsewhere. He thought about how life goes on, and no one knows where it leads. The count is rich and noble, but lies in his chair, afraid that after his death his son will be cheated. Prince Vasily is clever and cunning, but also afraid - afraid he will not get what he hoped for. And he, Grigory, a little man, a servant, is also afraid, because if the count dies, the new master may turn him out in his old age, and he will wander the world. Everyone is afraid. Only the sky - high, indifferent - fears nothing and looks on everyone alike: on the count, on the prince, on the servant.

He crossed himself, rose, and went to set the table, because the count should have dinner, and dinner must not grow cold, and order must be kept - as in life and as in death, because order is order, and without it one cannot manage.

Outside dusk was falling; candles were lit in the house; shadows danced on the walls, and it seemed that in this dance of shadows there was something that could not be understood with the mind, only felt - felt that everything was going as it must, and no one could stop this movement, not the tsar, not a minister, not the richest man in Russia.

XII

The day was December, frosty, sunny, with that special, festive sparkle that comes before Christmas, when snow creaks underfoot, hoarfrost shimmers on the branches, and it seems the whole world has frozen in anticipation of something joyful and bright. At the Rostovs' house guests had come today - not many, about ten people - and all sat in the drawing room, drinking tea with jam and listening to little Natasha sing French romances before them, which her governess had taught her.

Efim did not see this, but heard - through the double windows came a faint, pure voice, so thin and tender that even the old coachman, who understood not a word of French, felt a pang in his heart. The voice sang of something sad, something Efim could not put into words but understood with his whole being, because in that voice was that genuine, unaffected purity that exists only in children - and that passes as they grow up. In the drawing room, as the footmen later told, Countess Rostova wiped tears with a handkerchief; the count himself, red as a lobster, sat with a glass in his hand and, sobbing, repeated: "Ah, what a girl! Ah, Lord!"; and one guest, an elderly princess, very important and perfumed, bending to the countess's ear, said: "Elle a du talent, ma chère. She has real talent; take care of her."

The count, hearing this, laughed through his tears and shouted something loud and cheerful, making everyone laugh; and Natasha, finishing her song, made a curtsey - clumsy, funny, because she still did not know how to bow properly - and ran to her mother, buried her face in her knees, and asked: "Mama, did I sing well? Mama, truly well?" The countess stroked her hair and said: "Well, my joy, very well."

But Natasha could not stay still. She was six years old, and after long sitting in the stuffy drawing room, after singing and applause, she wanted to go outside - into the frost, into the snow, where she could run, shout, roll in a snowdrift, and not think about how to bow and speak French. She slipped out of the room unnoticed, ran down the stairs, threw a little fur coat over her shoulders - not buttoned, carelessly - and ran out onto the porch.