Dreamt again and woke up with a quaking heart. Dreamt I was in Moscow at home in the big sitting-room and Osip came in out of the drawing-room. I knew immediately that he had completed the process of regeneration, and I rushed to meet him. I kissed him on the face and hands, and he said, ‘Do you not notice that my face is different?’ I looked at him, still holding him in my arms, and I saw that his face was young, but he had no hair on his head and his features were quite different. And I said to him, ‘I would have recognized you if we had met by chance,’ and as I said this I thought, ‘Am I telling the truth?’ Then suddenly I saw him lying there looking like a corpse, but he came round gradually and walked with me into the big study, holding a big book of drawing paper. I said, ‘I drew all that.’ And he answered by bowing his head. I opened the book, and all the pages were covered with splendid drawings. I knew that these pictures depicted the soul’s erotic exploits with her lover. And I saw on those pages a wonderful drawing of a maiden with transparent clothes on her transparent body, soaring up into the clouds. And I knew that this maiden was nothing other than a representation of the Song of Songs. And as I looked at these pictures I felt I was doing something wrong but I couldn’t tear myself away from them. Help me, Lord! Father, if it be Thy will to forsake me, then Thy will be done, but if I am the cause of these things, teach me what I am to do. I shall perish in my vileness if Thou shouldst utterly forsake me.
CHAPTER 11
The Rostovs’ financial position had not improved during the two years spent in the country.
Although Nikolay Rostov had stuck firmly to his resolution, and was still living on modest means in an obscure regiment, the way of life at Otradnoye, especially the way Mitenka ran things, was enough to ensure that their debts rose inexorably year by year. The only remedy that seemed at all obvious to the old count was for him to enter government service, and he had come to Petersburg now to look for a position, and at the same time, as he put it, to let his lassies have one last fling.
Shortly after the Rostovs’ arrival in Petersburg, Berg proposed to Vera and his proposal was accepted. Although in Moscow the Rostovs were high society people, without ever realizing it, because their social standing could be taken for granted, in Petersburg their position was delicate and uncertain. In Petersburg they were provincials, too lowly for some people who had been their dinner-guests in Moscow and had never wondered then what level of society they belonged to.
The Rostovs were no less hospitable in Petersburg than they had been in Moscow; and a wide variety of people would foregather at their house for supper – there might be the odd country neighbour, an elderly gentleman with daughters but not much money, and an old maid-of-honour, Madame Peronsky, Pierre Bezukhov, anyone down to the son of their district postmaster, who was working in the city. Among the first of the men to become regular visitors at the Rostovs’ house in Petersburg, you might say family friends, were Boris, Pierre, who had bumped into the old count in the street and been dragooned into coming, and also Berg, who now spent days on end with the Rostovs, fussing round Vera, the elder of the two young countesses, in the manner of a young man working himself up to make a proposal.
Berg had gone about flaunting his right arm, which had been wounded at Austerlitz, and brandishing a superfluous sword in his left hand – all to good effect. He had told his story to everybody with such conviction and authority that they all came to believe in his action as something portentous and very worthy – and Berg had received two decorations for Austerlitz.
He had also managed to distinguish himself in the Finnish campaign. 4 He had picked up a piece of shrapnel from the shell that had killed an adjutant close to the commander-in-chief and had taken it to the commander. Just as after Austerlitz, he went on and on about this incident and spoke again with such conviction that people ended up believing this was another task that had needed to be done – and Berg received two more decorations. By 1809 he was a captain in the guards with a chest full of medals, and he held one or two very lucrative posts in Petersburg.
The odd sceptic may have smiled at the mention of Berg’s merits but it was not to be denied that Berg was a conscientious and gallant officer in good odour with the authorities, and a modest, good-living young man with a brilliant career ahead of him as well as a solid position in society.
Four years before, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostov to a German comrade he had met in the stalls of a Moscow theatre and said to him in German, ‘She’s going to be my wife.’ That was the moment he had made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, after taking stock of the Rostovs’ position and his own, he had decided the time had come to propose.
