Petya was still marching around the room in silence.
‘If I’d been where Nikolay was I’d have killed a lot more Frenchmen,’ he said. ‘They’re a lot of savages! I’d have kept on killing them till they were lying around in heaps,’ Petya went on.
‘Don’t talk like that, Petya, you’re being silly!’
‘I’m not being silly. Silly people cry when there’s nothing to cry about,’ said Petya.
‘Can you still remember him?’ Natasha asked suddenly, after a moment’s silence.
Sonya smiled.
‘Who, Nikolay?’
‘No, Sonya, not just remember him,
‘What do you mean, you can’t remember Boris?’ Sonya asked in some surprise.
‘No, I don’t really mean I can’t remember him. I know what he’s like, but I remember Nikolay much better. I only have to close my eyes and I can see him, but not Boris . . .’ (she closed her eyes) ‘no, there’s nothing there!’
‘Oh, Natasha!’ said Sonya, looking away, all solemn and serious, as if she thought Natasha was unworthy of what she was now going to say, or as if she was saying it to a different person who was not someone to joke with. ‘I have fallen in love with your brother, and whatever happens to him or me I shall never stop loving him for the rest of my life.’
Natasha gazed at Sonya, too surprised and puzzled to speak. She sensed that what Sonya was talking about was true, that such love did exist, only she had never known anything like it. She believed it might happen but she couldn’t understand it.
‘Are you going to write to him?’ she asked. Sonya sank into thought. The question of how she should write to Nikolay, or whether she should write at all, was worrying her. Now that he was an officer and a wounded hero was this the right time for her to remind him that she existed and that he had undertaken certain obligations towards her?
‘I really don’t know. I suppose if he writes to me I’ll write back,’ she said, blushing.
‘You won’t be too embarrassed to write to him?’ Sonya smiled.
‘No.’
‘Oh, I’d be too embarrassed to write to Boris. I’m not going to.’
‘Why should you be?’
‘I don’t know. I just feel awkward and embarrassed.’
‘I know why,’ said Petya, still stinging from Natasha’s earlier comment. ‘Because she fell in love with that fat man with the glasses,’ (this was what Petya called his namesake, now Count Bezukhov) ‘and now she’s in love with that there singer,’ (meaning Natasha’s Italian singing-master) ‘that’s why she’s embarrassed.’
‘Petya, you are stupid,’ said Natasha.
‘No stupider than you, ma’am,’ said nine-year-old Petya, for all the world like an elderly brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna’s hints over dinner. Back in her room she sat down in an armchair to gaze long and hard at the miniature of her son painted on her snuff-box lid, and her eyes were watering. Anna Mikhaylovna now tiptoed over to the countess’s room with the letter and stopped at the door.
‘Don’t you come in,’ she said to the old count who was following her. ‘You can come in later,’ and she closed the door after her. The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
At first he could hear them talking about this and that, but then there was only Anna Mikhaylovna’s voice speaking and she went on and on until she was interrupted by a little shriek followed by a short silence, and then both voices were talking in tones of delight, then he heard footsteps approaching, and there was Anna Mikhaylovna opening the door. She wore a proud look, like a surgeon who has performed a tricky amputation and now invites the public in to admire his skill.
‘It is done,’ she announced triumphantly, motioning the count in to see the countess, who with the snuff-box and portrait in one hand and the letter in the other was pressing her lips first to one and then to the other. On seeing the count, she held out both arms to him, embraced his bald head, looked over it at the letter and the portrait, and then pushed the bald head slightly to one side so she could press them to her lips again. Vera, Natasha, Sonya and Petya came into the room, and the reading of the letter began. It contained a brief description of the march, the two battles in which their dear Nikolay had taken part and his promotion, and it said that he kissed the hands of his mamma and papa, asking for their blessing, and sent kisses to Vera, Natasha and Petya. Greetings also to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss and his old nurse, and a special kiss from him to his darling Sonya, whom he still loved and remembered as always. This made Sonya blush till her eyes watered. To get away from the staring eyes, she ran out into the hall, chased about, whirled round and round and then sank to the floor, her skirts ballooning, her face flushed and beaming. The countess was weeping.
