________________________________________________
_ Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that
his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself
asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his
removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose
consciousness. When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a
long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them and
whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small detail
of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse,
and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He
was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did
not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering.
Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had
joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having been
wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied by
a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coach. man, and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking
with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to
understand and remember something.
"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.
Timokhin crept along the bench to him.
"I am here, your excellency."
"How's your wound?"
"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"
Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.
"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.
"What book?"
"The Gospels. I haven't one."
The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he
was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly
but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him
as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted
the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the
noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began
examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much displeased
about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the
wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and
delirious from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book
and put it under him.
"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one.
Please get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a
piteous voice.
The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was
pouring water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after
you... It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it."
"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under
him!" said the valet.
The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was
the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he
asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at
Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into
the hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once
more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all vividly
remembered the moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of
the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to
him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague
and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had
now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to
do with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The
uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over
again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third
time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him
was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was
shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the
table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the
head of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which
was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.
His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which
to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from
the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in
and can then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's
mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of
his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted
apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him
simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a
vigor, clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in
health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some
unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again.
"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
on man- a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving.
Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was
possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was
the Son...?"
And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince
Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality)
a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti,"
and "ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face,
above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being
erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this
whispered music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it
was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but
nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound
of whispered rhythmic music- "it stretches, stretches, spreading out
and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to
this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and
the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a
red halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and
the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face.
Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and
yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure, though it
knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But
besides this there was something else of importance. It was
something white by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also
oppressed him.
"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and
that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always
stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti'
and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince
Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings
again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and
force.
"Yes- love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which
loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some
reason, but the love which I- while dying- first experienced when I
saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love
which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an
object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to
love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His
manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with
human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why
I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has
become of him? Is he alive?...
"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people
have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as
I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he
had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him
delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And
he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now
understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her,
the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for
me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."
"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the
fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a
world of reality and delirium in which something particular was
happening. In that world some structure was still being erected and
did not fall, something was still stretching out, and the candle
with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay
near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a
whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the
door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very
Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.
"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince
Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face
remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer.
Prince Andrew wished to return that former world of pure thought,
but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft
whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed
him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince
Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his
senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his
ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost
consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living
Natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure
divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He
realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised
but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to
stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her
sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it
something quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.
"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"
With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on
her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and
began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.
"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
"Forgive me!"
"I love you," said Prince Andrew.
"Forgive...!"
"Forgive what?" he asked.
"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a
scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more
rapidly, just touching it with her lips.
"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting
her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.
Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face,
with its swollen lips, was more than plain- it was dreadful. But
Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were
beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.
Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his
bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.
"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go
away, madam!"
At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter's absence, knocked at the door.
Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the
room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at
every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never
left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had
not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in
nursing a wounded man.
Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew
die in her daughter's arms during the journey- as, judging by what the
doctor said, it seemed might easily happen- she could not oppose
Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the
wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover
their former engagement would be renewed, no one- least of all Natasha
and Prince Andrew- spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and
death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut
out all other considerations. _
Read next: Book Eleven: 1812: Chapter 33
Read previous: Book Eleven: 1812: Chapter 31
Table of content of War and Peace
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
