‘Here she is,’ said the count, seeing Natasha coming in. ‘Come over here and sit with me.’ But Natasha stayed by her mother, staring round the room as if she was looking for something.
‘Mamma!’ she said. ‘Get him for me, Mamma, please get him. Hurry!’ and again she could hardly stop herself sobbing. She sat down at the table and listened to them talking, the old folk and Nikolay, who had just come in for tea. ‘Lord God in heaven! The same people, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing his tea the same as he always does,’ thought Natasha, with a terrible sense of revulsion welling up inside her at the sight of all these people, disgusting in their inevitable sameness.
When tea was over Nikolay, Sonya and Natasha went over to their favourite corner in the sitting-room, where their most intimate conversations always began.
CHAPTER 10
‘Do you ever get that feeling,’ said Natasha to her brother once they were settled in the sitting-room, ‘that nothing’s ever going to happen to you again, nothing at all, and anything good is in the past? And you don’t feel bored exactly, but very, very sad?’
‘I’ll say!’ he replied. ‘It’s happened to me. Everything’s fine, everyone’s happy, and suddenly you get this feeling of being fed up with everything, and realizing everybody’s going to die. Once in the regiment I stayed in while they all went out celebrating. I could hear the music playing . . . and I had this empty feeling . . .’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. I know that feeling. I really do,’ said Natasha in full agreement. ‘I was quite little when it first happened to me. Do you remember, once I got punished for pinching some plums, and you were all dancing, and I sat in the classroom sobbing. I just sobbed and sobbed – I’ll never forget it. I felt so sad and sorry for everyone, sorry for myself and absolutely everybody. And the thing was – I hadn’t done it,’ said Natasha. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Nikolay. ‘I remember coming to you afterwards, and I really wanted to comfort you, but you know, I felt too ashamed. We were so funny, weren’t we? I had that little wooden doll, and I wanted to give it you. Do you remember?’
‘And do you remember,’ said Natasha, with a pensive smile, ‘a long, long time ago, when we were really tiny, Uncle called us over into his study in the old house, and it was dark. We went in, and suddenly there was this . . .’
‘Black man!’ said Nikolay, finishing her sentence with a smile of delight. ‘Of course I remember. I still don’t know whether it really was a black man, or whether we dreamt it, or just heard about it.’
‘He had grey hair. Do you remember? And white teeth, and he stood there looking at us . . .’
‘Do you remember, Sonya?’ asked Nikolay.
‘Oh yes, I do remember something like that,’ Sonya answered shyly.
‘You know, I’ve often asked Papa and Mamma about that black man,’ said Natasha. ‘They say there wasn’t any black man. But you remember him!’
‘Of course, I do. I can see his teeth now.’
‘Isn’t it funny? Just like a dream. I like it.’
‘And do you remember us rolling hard-boiled eggs in the big hall, and suddenly there were two old women there, going round and round on the carpet? Did that really happen or not? Remember the fun we had?’
‘Yes. And do you remember Papa, in that heavy blue coat, firing his shot gun from the top of the steps?’
Smiling with happiness, they enjoyed going down memory lane; these were not the memories of old age, but the romantic memories of youth, images from the distant past where dreams and reality blur together. They laughed from pure pleasure.
Sonya, as always, couldn’t keep up with them, even though she shared the same memories. She couldn’t remember much of what they recalled, and what she could remember failed to evoke the same romantic response in her. She was just enjoying their enjoyment, and pretending to be part of it.
She could only come into it properly when they recalled Sonya’s first arrival. Sonya said she had been scared of Nikolay because he had braid on his jacket and nurse had told her she was going to be tied up with braid.
‘And I remember, they told me you’d been born in a cabbage-patch,’ said Natasha. ‘Yes, I remember, I had to believe them, even though I knew it wasn’t true, and I had such an awkward feeling.’
While they were talking a maid popped her head in at the inner sitting-room door.
‘Miss, they’ve brought you a cockerel,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t want it now, Polya. Tell them to take it away,’ said Natasha.
They resumed their conversation, but soon Dimmler came into the sitting-room, and walked over to the harp that stood in one corner. He removed the cloth cover, and the harp gave a discordant jangle. ‘Herr Dimmler, please play my favourite nocturne, the one by Mr Field,’4 came the voice of the old countess from the drawing-room.
Dimmler struck a chord, and turning to Natasha, Nikolay and Sonya he said, ‘You youngsters are very quiet today.’
