‘Listen here, Bilibin,’ said Hélène – she always addressed friends in the Bilibin category by their surnames – allowing her white fingers glittering with rings to brush against his jacket-sleeve. ‘I want you to tell me what to do, as a brother would to a sister. Which one?’
Bilibin puckered up the skin just above his eyebrows, and gave it some thought with a smile hovering about his lips.
‘This comes as no great surprise, you know,’ he said. ‘As a true friend of yours, I have been thinking, and rethinking, about this whole business. Look at it this way. If you marry the prince . . .’ Bilibin bent one finger back to mark off the younger suitor ‘. . . you lose for ever the opportunity of marrying the other man,
‘This is friendship indeed!’ said Hélène, beaming radiantly as she brushed Bilibin’s sleeve again. ‘But I do love them both, and I wouldn’t want to hurt either of them. I would give up my life for the happiness of them both,’ she declared.
Bilibin gave a shrug: for worries of this order even he had no cure to offer.
‘Wife and mistress together!’ thought Bilibin. ‘That’s what I call plain speaking. She wants to marry them all at once.’
‘But do tell me – what will your husband’s attitude be?’ he said, relying on the strength of his reputation to save him from disaster in asking such a naive question. ‘Will he give his consent?’
‘Oh, he’s so fond of me!’ said Hélène, who was under the strange impression that Pierre also adored her. ‘He’ll do anything for me.’ Bilibin began a puckered wrinkle to indicate the imminent arrival of a telling phrase.
‘Including divorce?’ he said.
Hélène gave a laugh.
One of the people bold enough to question the propriety of the proposed marriage was Hélène’s mother, Princess Kuragin. She had always been painfully jealous of her daughter, and now, with the subject of her jealousy so close to her own heart, she couldn’t come to terms with even the thought of it.
She consulted a Russian priest about the extent to which divorce and remarriage during the husband’s lifetime was feasible, and the priest said it was impossible. To her delight he referred her to a Gospel text in which (under his interpretation) remarriage during the lifetime of the husband was explicitly forbidden.
Furnished with these arguments, which she considered incontestable, Princess Kuragin drove round to see her daughter early one morning to make sure of finding her alone.
Hélène listened patiently to her mother’s objections, and then gave a smile of gentle irony.
‘Look, it spells it out: “Whoso marrieth her that is divorced. . .” ’ said the old princess.
‘Oh, Mamma, don’t be so silly. You don’t understand. In my position I have certain duties . . .’ Hélène began, switching from Russian to French, because in Russian she always felt her case lacked a certain clarity.
‘But, darling . . .’
‘Oh Mamma, surely you must understand that the Holy Father, who has the power to issue dispensations . . .’
At this point the lady companion who lived in with Hélène came in to announce that his Highness was out in the hall, hoping to see her.
‘No, tell him I won’t see him. I’m furious with him for not keeping his word.’
‘Countess, there is mercy for every sin,’ said a fair-haired young man, long in face and nose, as he walked into the room.
The old princess rose politely and curtsied. The young man ignored her. Princess Kuragin nodded to her daughter, and floated across to the door.
‘Yes, she’s right,’ thought the old princess, all of her certainties having dissolved at his Highness’s sudden arrival. ‘She is right, but how can our youth have gone by and been lost for ever without our knowing about it? And it was such a simple thing,’ thought Princess Kuragin as she climbed into her carriage.
The issue was settled once and for all for Hélène by early August, and she wrote to her husband (who was still very fond of her, or so she thought), informing him of her intention to marry N. N., and her conversion to the one true faith, and asking him to deal with the necessary formalities for obtaining a divorce, further details to be conveyed by the bearer of this letter.
‘Whereupon, my dear friend, I pray to God that He may have you in His holy and powerful keeping. Your friend, Hélène.’
This letter was delivered to Pierre’s Moscow house while he was out on the field at Borodino.
CHAPTER 8
When the battle of Borodino was over Pierre ran down from the Rayevsky redoubt for the second time that day, and walked up the ravine leading to Knyazkovo along with hordes of soldiers. He came to the dressing-station, took one look at all the blood and heard all the men screaming and groaning, and hurried on, swept along in a mob of soldiers.
