‘Oh, you go to sleep. I can’t,’ responded the first voice, now coming from somewhere nearer to the window. She must have been leaning right out because he could hear her dress rustling and even the sound of her breathing. Silence had descended and everything froze in the stillness of the moonlight and the shadows. Prince Andrey hardly dared to move for fear of giving himself away – not that he had intended any of this.
‘Sonya! Sonya!’ came the first voice again. ‘How can you sleep? Come over here and look at this – it’s gorgeous! Oh, it’s just gorgeous! Sonya, wake up!’ she said, almost with tears in her voice. ‘This is the most gorgeous night there’s ever been.’
Sonya made some grudging response.
‘Oh, please come and look at this moon! . . . It’s gorgeous! Come on. Darling, sweetheart, please come here. There you are, look at that! Hey, if you rock back on your heels like this – watch – and squeeze your knees together – hold them tight, as tight as you can – one big squeeze and you could – fly away! . . . Like this – look!’
‘Mind you don’t fall out.’
He heard scuffling noises followed by Sonya’s voice. She was not pleased. ‘Come on, it’s past one o’clock.’
‘Oh, you are a spoilsport. Go on then, you go to bed.’
Silence again, but Prince Andrey knew she was still sitting there. Now and then he could still hear a soft rustling, and the occasional sigh.
‘Oh God! Oh God! What’s it all about?’ she cried suddenly. ‘Oh well, I suppose I’d better go to bed,’ and the window banged as it closed.
‘Oblivious to my existence!’ Prince Andrey had thought while he was listening to her talk, inexplicably half-hoping and dreading that she might say something about him. ‘It’s her again! It almost seems planned!’ he thought. And he was surprised to feel his spirit overwhelmed by a sudden surge of ideas and hopes that belonged to youth and clashed with his whole way of life, so much so that his state of mind was beyond all comprehension, and he went straight to bed and fell asleep.
CHAPTER 3
Next morning Prince Andrey set off home before the ladies were up, though not without taking leave of the count.
It was early June when, on his return journey, he drove once again into the birch-wood where the gnarled oak-tree had made such a strangely indelible impression on him. The harness-bells jingled in the woodland with a more muffled sound than a month before, now that everything was densely filled out and shady. The scattering of baby firs, far from disrupting the overall beauty, blended their feathery green shoots sweetly with the general mood.
All day it had been hot, with a storm brewing somewhere near by, but only a few drops of rain from one small cloud had spattered the dusty road and the lush greenery. The left-hand side of the forest was in dark shade; the right-hand side glistened wet in the bright sunshine and rippled in the breeze. Everything was in full bloom and the nightingales were singing with sharp notes that echoed far and near.
‘That oak-tree, it was somewhere near here in the forest. There was such an affinity between us,’ he thought. ‘But where was it?’ As he wondered, he glanced across left and, unconsciously, without recognizing it, began to admire the very tree that he was looking for. The old oak was completely transformed, now spreading out a canopy of lush, dark foliage and stirring gently as it wallowed in the evening sunshine. No trace now of the gnarled fingers, the scars, the old sadness and misgivings. Succulent young leaves with no twigs had burst straight through the hard bark of a hundred years; it was almost incredible that this old fellow should have grown them.
‘Oh yes, that’s the one,’ thought the prince, spontaneously overwhelmed by one of those surges of delight and renewal that belong to springtime. All the best times of his life came together sharply in his memory. The lofty sky at Austerlitz, the look of reproach on his dead wife’s face, Pierre on the ferry and that young girl who had been so enthralled by the night’s beauty, the night itself and the moon . . . suddenly he remembered it all.
‘No, life isn’t over at thirty-one,’ was his instant, final and irrevocable conclusion. ‘It is not enough for me to know what is going on inside me. Everybody must know about it – Pierre, and that girl who wanted to fly up into the sky – they must all get to know me. My life must be lived for me but also for other people. They mustn’t live like that girl, separated from me. My life must be reflected in them and they must live along with me, all of us together!’
