War and Peace

atásha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all external
forms of pleasure—balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters—but she
never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She could not
sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears
choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure
times which could never return, tears of vexation that she should so
uselessly have ruined her young life which might have been so happy.
Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy,
in face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to
coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no
man was more to her than Nastásya Ivánovna, the buffoon. Something stood
sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all
the old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so full
of hope. The previous autumn, the hunting, “Uncle,” and the Christmas
holidays spent with Nicholas at Otrádnoe were what she recalled oftenest
and most painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a
single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at
the time had not deceived her—that that state of freedom and readiness
for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
on.

It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly
imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But
this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, “What next?”
But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was
passing. Natásha apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance to
anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She kept away from everyone in
the house and felt at ease only with her brother Pétya. She liked to
be with him better than with the others, and when alone with him she
sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of those who came
to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would have been
impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care, and at the
same time more seriously than did Count Bezúkhov. Natásha unconsciously
felt this delicacy and so found great pleasure in his society. But
she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part
seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind
to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natásha
noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,
especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that
something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her. She
noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness,
which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was to her.
After those involuntary words—that if he were free he would have asked
on his knees for her hand and her love—uttered at a moment when she was
so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natásha of his feelings;
and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had then so comforted
her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken to comfort
a crying child. It was not because Pierre was a married man, but because
Natásha felt very strongly with him that moral barrier the absence of
which she had experienced with Kurágin that it never entered her head
that the relations between him and herself could lead to love on her
part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious,
romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had known
several instances.

Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agraféna Ivánovna Belóva, a
country neighbor of the Rostóvs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at
the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natásha should fast
and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natásha gladly welcomed the idea.
Despite the doctor’s orders that she should not go out early in the
morning, Natásha insisted on fasting and preparing for the sacrament,
not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostóv family by attending
three services in their own house, but as Agraféna Ivánovna did, by
going to church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers,
Matins, or Mass.

The countess was pleased with Natásha’s zeal; after the poor results of
the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that prayer
might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not without
fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natásha’s wish and
entrusted her to Belóva. Agraféna Ivánovna used to come to wake Natásha
at three in the morning, but generally found her already awake. She was
afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily washing, and meekly putting on
her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla, Natásha, shivering in the fresh
air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn.
By Agraféna Ivánovna’s advice Natásha prepared herself not in their
own parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agraféna
Ivánovna, the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were
never many people in the church; Natásha always stood beside Belóva in
the customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the
screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, of
humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her when
at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin
illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning light
falling from the window, she listened to the words of the service which
she tried to follow with understanding. When she understood them her
personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its
own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still to think that
the wish to understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to
understand all, that it is only necessary to believe and to commit
oneself to God, whom she felt guiding her soul at those moments. She
crossed herself, bowed low, and when she did not understand, in horror
at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her everything,
everything, to have mercy upon her. The prayers to which she surrendered
herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home at an
early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or men
sweeping the street, and everybody within the houses was still asleep,
Natásha experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility
of correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of
happiness.

During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every
day. And the happiness of taking communion, or “communing” as Agraféna
Ivánovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natásha
so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.

But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in
white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the first time for
many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life
that lay before her.

The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue the
powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.

“She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening,” said
he, evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. “Only, please be
particular about it.

“Be quite easy,” he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the gold
coin in his palm. “She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The
last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has freshened
up very much.”

The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at her
nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.