There were never many people in church. Natasha and Madame Belova stood side by side always in the same place before an icon of the Mother of God which formed part of the screen behind the left choir, and at this unusual morning hour Natasha was overwhelmed by a new sense of humility before the sublime mystery as she gazed up at the black face of the Blessed Virgin lit up by candles burning in front and the morning light coming in through a window. She listened to the words of the service, trying hard to follow and understand. When she did understand, her personal emotions merged in every shade with her prayers; when she didn’t, she had an even sweeter sense that the desire to understand everything amounted to pride, no one could ever understand everything, and all she had to do was believe and give herself up to God, and at moments like this she had a sense of Him guiding her soul. She crossed herself, bowed low, and when she didn’t understand she simply yielded in disgust to a sense of her own vileness and prayed for forgiveness, total forgiveness, and mercy. The prayers she said most of all were prayers of repentance. Walking home in the early morning, when the only people they encountered were brick-layers on their way to work or men cleaning the streets, and the houses were full of sleeping people, Natasha glimpsed the first fresh possibility of redemption from sin and a new life of purity and happiness.
She spent a whole week leading this kind of life and the feeling grew stronger with each passing day. And the joy of Holy Communion (or holy communication, as Agrafena Ivanovna liked to call it, enjoying the pun) was so enormous she thought that blissful Sunday would never come.
But come it did, that happy, unforgettable Sunday when Natasha returned from Holy Communion dressed in her white muslin frock, experiencing peace of mind for the first time in many months and no longer oppressed by the life that lay ahead.
The doctor called to see Natasha the same day and his instructions were to keep on with the powders he had prescribed two weeks before. ‘Oh, keep taking them, yes definitely, morning and evening,’ he said, visibly and genuinely gratified by his own success. ‘Now you mustn’t forget. Countess, you have nothing to worry about,’ said the doctor with great good humour, deftly palming his gold. ‘We’ll soon have her singing and dancing again. This last medicine has done the trick all right. She’s so much better.’
The countess looked down at her fingernails and spat a little for luck before returning to the drawing-room with a smile on her face.
CHAPTER 18
At the beginning of July Moscow was awash with rumours about the progress of the war, and they were getting more and more alarming; there was talk of the Tsar making an appeal to the people, and the Tsar himself was said to be on his way back to Moscow from the army. And with no manifesto and no appeal to the people having been issued, by the 11th of July these communications and the overall position of Russia had become the subject of even wilder speculation. It was claimed that the Tsar was leaving because the army was in danger; it was also claimed that Smolensk had fallen, Napoleon had a million troops at his disposal, and nothing short of a miracle could save Russia.
On Saturday, the 11th of July, the manifesto was out but not yet circulating in print, and Pierre, who happened to be at the Rostovs’, promised to come back to dinner the following evening, Sunday, and bring with him the manifesto and appeal, which he would have got by then from Count Rostopchin.
That Sunday the Rostovs attended divine service as usual in the private chapel of the Razumovskys. It was a hot July day. Even at ten in the morning, as the Rostovs descended from their carriage by the chapel, the sultry atmosphere, the shouts of the street hawkers, the bright, gaily coloured summer clothing of the crowd, the dusty leaves on the trees along the boulevard, the martial music and whitetrousered battalion marching past to go on parade, the rumble of traffic and the blazing-hot sunshine, all conspired to produce that feeling of summer lassitude, that happiness and unhappiness with things as they stand, which are at their sharpest on a bright, hot day in town. All the fashionable world of Moscow, all the Rostovs’ acquaintances were there in the chapel. (This year, as if anticipating something in the air, very many of the wealthy families who usually went down to the country for the summer had stayed on in Moscow.)
As Natasha walked in beside her mother behind a footman in livery who was clearing their way through the crowd she heard the voice of a young man talking about her in an audible whisper.
‘That’s young Countess Rostov. Didn’t she . . .’
‘She’s looking thin, but she’s still pretty!’
