All these delicacies had been grown, picked and prepared by Anisya herself. Every smell, taste and flavour seemed redolent of Anisya, redolent of her plumpness, cleanliness, whiteness and her broad welcoming smile.
‘Please help yourself, little Lady-Countess,’ she kept saying, offering something to Natasha and following it immediately with something else. Natasha sampled everything. Never in her life, she thought, had she seen or tasted buttermilk cakes like these, such delicious preserves, such nuts in honey, or a chicken like this one. Anisya withdrew.
Rostov and ‘Uncle’, as they downed their cherry-flavoured vodka after supper, talked of hunts past and future, Rugay and Ilagin’s dogs. Natasha sat up straight on the sofa, drinking in all that they were saying with a glint in her eyes. Several times she made an attempt to wake Petya and give him something to eat, but he just mumbled a few nonsensical words, obviously reluctant to come round. Natasha felt so happy at heart, so much at home in these new surroundings, that her only fear was that the trap would come for her too soon. When the conversation broke down for a moment, as it almost always does when you have friends in for the first time, ‘Uncle’ responded to what was in his guests’ minds by saying, ‘So there you have it . . . me in my last days . . . Soon be dead . . . Fair for the chase! Nothing left after that. So what’s wrong with a bit of living in sin?’
‘Uncle’s’ face had a knowing even rather handsome look and even a touch of beauty as he uttered these words. As he spoke Rostov was forcibly reminded of the many good things he had heard about this man from his father and the neighbours. From one end of the district to the other ‘Uncle’ was thought of as an eccentric but also the noblest and most selfless of men. He was brought in to abitrate in family disputes and chosen as executor. People told him secrets. He was invited to serve as a justice, and in other similar posts, but he had refused all public offices point-blank, spending autumn and spring out in the fields on his bay horse, winter indoors and summer stretched out in his overgrown garden.
‘Why don’t you work in the service, Uncle?’
‘I used to once, but I gave it up. It doesn’t suit me. Fair for the chase. Can’t make head nor tail of it. May be all right for you – but it’s beyond me. Now, take hunting – that’s a different thing. Fair for the chase! Open that door there, will you?’ he yelled. ‘Why have you shut it?’ A door at the end of the corridor (which ‘Uncle’ called a ‘collidor’, like the peasants) led to the ‘huntsman’s corner’, as the room for the hunt servants was called. Bare feet padded along at some speed and an unseen hand opened the door into the huntsman’s corner. Down the corridor came the distinct strains of a balalaika in the hands of an obvious expert. Natasha had been listening to this for some time, and now she went down the corridor to hear the music more clearly.
‘That’s Mitka, my coachman . . . Bought him a decent balalaika. Very fond of it,’ said ‘Uncle’. He had built up a little tradition whereby every time he came home from the chase he liked to hear Mitka playing the balalaika in the huntsman’s corner. This music was dear to his heart.
‘He’s good, isn’t he? A really good player,’ said Nikolay, with a touch of instinctive scorn in his voice, as if he was embarrassed to admit that this kind of music appealed to him.
‘Good?’ said Natasha, full of reproach as she sensed her brother’s funny tone. ‘It’s more than good, it’s absolutely magnificent!’ She had considered ‘Uncle’s’ mushrooms, honey and various vodkas the best in all the world, and now this playing struck her as the highest possible expression of music.
‘More, please, more!’ said Natasha in the doorway as soon as the balalaika stopped playing. Mitka retuned and launched again into a plangent version of ‘My Lady’, with many a trill and flourish. ‘Uncle’ sat there listening with his head on one side and the suggestion of a grin on his face. The ‘My Lady’ tune was repeated a hundred times over. With one or two more pauses for retuning, the same plangent notes came at them time and again, but no one found them at all tedious; they all clamoured for more. Anisya came in and leant her portly figure against the doorpost.
‘Oh, little countess, just listen to that!’ she said to Natasha, with a smile that was extraordinarily like ‘Uncle’s’. ‘He’s a marvellous player,’ she added.
‘He never gets that bit right,’ said ‘Uncle’ suddenly with a wild gesture. ‘He needs to draw it out more. Fair for the chase! . . . A bit more drawn out . . .’
‘Do you play, then?’ asked Natasha.
‘Uncle’ gave a smile instead of an answer.
‘Anisya, old girl, go and see whether the strings on my guitar are all right, will you? It’s a long time since I had it in my hands. Fair for the chase! Thought I’d given it up!’
