War And Peace полностью

At that moment Natasha felt so overwhelmed by softness and tenderness that it wasn’t enough for her to love and know she was loved in return – now was what mattered, she wanted to embrace the man she loved now, to talk about love and hear love-talk from him, because her heart was filled with words of love. As she sat there in the carriage beside her father, staring moodily at the lights of the street lamps as they flashed by the frozen window, she began to feel even sadder and more love-stricken, until she forgot where she was going and who she was with. The Rostovs’ carriage fell into line with all the other carriages and trundled slowly up to the theatre, its wheels creaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya hopped out holding up their skirts, followed by the count, assisted down by the footmen, and the three of them made their way through the stream of opera-goers and programme-sellers towards the corridor leading to the boxes. The music had started, as they could hear through the closed doors.

‘Natasha, your hair!’ whispered Sonya. The box-keeper slithered past the ladies deferentially, nipped ahead and opened the door into their box. The music was suddenly louder and clearer, and from the doorway they could see the brightly lit rows of boxes, the bare arms and shoulders of the ladies, and the stalls down below, noisy and glittering with uniforms. A lady going into a nearby box stole an envious woman’s glance at Natasha. The curtain was still down but the overture was under way. Natasha smoothed down her dress, walked in with Sonya, sat down and gazed across at the brightly lit tiers of boxes opposite. Suddenly, there it was again, a sensation she had not experienced for some time – hundreds of eyes staring at her bare arms and neck; it was a pleasant and yet unpleasant sensation that brought back a swarm of associated memories, desires and emotions.

There they were: two extremely pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, in the company of Count Ilya Rostov, who had been away from Moscow for some time, and all eyes were on them. Besides that, everybody had heard something of Natasha’s engagement to Prince Andrey, they all knew the Rostovs had been living in the country ever since, and they looked with great curiosity at the girl who was about to make one of the best matches in Russia.

Natasha was even prettier after her stay in the country, as everyone had been telling her, and this evening, in her present state of excitement, she looked particularly attractive. She seemed to be brimming with life and beauty, and impervious to everything around her. Her black eyes scanned the crowd without looking for anyone in particular while her slender arm, exposed almost to the shoulder, rested on the velvet edge of the box and, quite unconsciously, her hand squeezed the programme rhythmically in time to the overture.

‘Look, that’s Alenina,’ said Sonya, ‘with her mother, isn’t it?’

‘Good heavens, Mikhail Kirillych has put some more weight on,’ said the old count.

‘Look! Anna Mikhaylovna. Fancy wearing a cap like that!’

‘The Karagins are over there. Julie and Boris are with them. You can tell they’re engaged.’

‘Drubetskoy has proposed! Oh yes, I found out today,’ said Shinshin, joining the Rostovs in their box.

Natasha glanced over where her father was looking, and there was Julie with a string of pearls round her thick red neck (which Natasha knew to be well-powdered), sitting next to her mother, a picture of contentment.

Behind them sat Boris, with his handsome, neatly brushed head of hair, all smiles as he lent an ear to what Julie was saying. He squinted across at the Rostovs and smiled again as he spoke to his fiancée.

‘They’re talking about us, me and him!’ thought Natasha. ‘And she’s probably jealous of me, and he’s reassuring her. They don’t have a thing to worry about. If only they knew. I couldn’t care less about any of them.’

Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna, decked out in a green headpiece; she was in celebratory mood, with happiness and resignation to the will of God written all over her face. Their box was full of the atmosphere generated by an engaged couple, which Natasha knew all about and was so fond of. She turned away from them, and suddenly all the events of that humiliating morning visit surged up in her mind again.

‘What right has he to keep me out of his family? Oh well, better not think about it, till he comes back!’ she said to herself, and she began to scan the faces, familiar and unfamiliar, down in the stalls.

There in the middle of the front stalls, leaning back against the orchestra-rail, stood Dolokhov, in Persian costume, with his curls brushed up into a huge shock of hair. He was standing in full view, deliberately inviting the attention of the whole audience, yet as casual as if he had been at home standing alone in his room. The most brilliant set of young Muscovites thronged round him, and he was clearly the cock of the roost.