Anatole had recently moved in with Dolokhov. A plan for abducting the Rostov girl had been thought up and worked out in detail by Dolokhov over several days, and the evening when Sonya had listened at Natasha’s door and made up her mind to keep guard over her was the very day when the plan was due to be carried out. Natasha had promised to come out at ten o’clock and meet Kuragin by the back porch. Kuragin would be waiting for her with a troika, get her on board and drive her from Moscow to the village of Kamenka forty miles away, where an unfrocked priest would be standing by ready to marry them. At Kamenka a relay of horses would be waiting to take them down to the Warsaw road, from where they would use post-horses to take them out of the country.
Anatole had secured a passport, an order for post-horses, ten thousand roubles borrowed from his sister and another ten thousand raised by Dolokhov.
The two necessary witnesses – Khvostikov, a low-grade civil servant now retired and regularly exploited by Dolokhov at the card-table, and Makarin, a former hussar, a pleasant man with no backbone, whose devotion to Kuragin knew no bounds – were now sitting in Dolokhov’s front room drinking tea.
In Dolokhov’s big study, adorned with Persian rugs, bearskins and weaponry right up to the ceiling, Dolokhov sat waiting, fully rigged out in travelling cloak and high boots, in front of an open bureau with accounts and bundles of banknotes lying around on it. Anatole, with his uniform unbuttoned, was stalking about, going from the room where the witnesses were sitting through the study into a back room, where his French valet and one or two other servants were doing the last of the packing. Dolokhov was counting notes and jotting down figures.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to give Khvostikov two thousand.’
‘Well, give him it, then,’ said Anatole.
‘Makarka – ’ (their name for Makarin) ‘well, he’d go through fire and water for you and not ask for any reward. That’s it then, the accounts are finished,’ said Dolokhov, showing him a note. ‘Does that look all right?’
‘Yes, of course it does,’ said Anatole, obviously not listening, just staring into space with a permanent grin on his face.
Dolokhov slammed the bureau shut, and turned to Anatole with a sardonic smile.
‘Hey, listen – why don’t you drop all this while there’s still time?’ he said.
‘Idiot!’ said Anatole. ‘Stop talking rubbish. If only you knew . . . It’s hellishly important to me!’
‘I still think you should drop it,’ said Dolokhov. ‘It’s serious, this scheme of yours. No laughing matter.’
‘You will have your little joke. To hell with you! Do you hear?’ said Anatole, frowning. ‘I’m not in the mood for your stupid jokes.’ And he walked out of the room.
As he did so Dolokhov was smiling a lofty, rather contemptuous smile.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he called after Anatole. ‘I’m not joking. This is serious. Come back in here! Come on!’
Anatole came back into the room, trying to concentrate as he looked at Dolokhov and obviously reluctant to submit.
‘Listen. I’m saying this for the last time. Why would I want to joke with you? Have I ever got in your way? Who made all the arrangements? Who found you a priest? Who got you a passport and all this money? It was me.’
‘All right. Thank you very much. Do you think I’m not grateful?’ Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
‘So I have helped you, but I’ve still got to tell you the truth. This is a dangerous business, and when you come to think of it, it’s stupid. You take her away – well and good. Do you think they’ll leave it at that? It’ll come out that you’re already married. Then they’ll have you up on a criminal charge . . .’
‘Oh, rubbish, rubbish!’ said Anatole, scowling again. ‘I’ve gone through this time and again, haven’t I?’ And Anatole, with the stubborn attachment that you tend to find in small-minded people to any conclusion stemming from their own mental processes, outlined the argument he had already gone through a hundred times with Dolokhov.
‘Let me go through it again. I’ve decided that if this marriage turns out to be invalid,’ he said, bending one finger back, ‘that means I’m not responsible. And if it is valid, it won’t matter. Anyway, abroad nobody’s going to know anything about it. See? It’s all right, isn’t it? And you will go on and on and on about it!’
‘Oh, please, why don’t you drop the whole thing? You’ll only get yourself into a mess . . .’
‘To hell with you!’ said Anatole, and he strode off into the next room clutching his hair, but he was soon back and he sat down in an armchair with his feet tucked up, right in front of Dolokhov. ‘I’m in a hellish state! Do you know what I mean? How’s that for a heartbeat?’ He took Dolokhov’s hand and placed it on his heart. ‘But oh, that foot, my dear boy, those eyes! A goddess!’ he rhapsodized in French. ‘Can you hear what I’m saying?’
Dolokhov watched him with a cold smile, a gleam in his handsome eyes and a hard stare, obviously minded to get more fun out of him.
