‘Oh, it’s so awful!’ cried Sonya, coming in from the yard chilled and frightened. ‘I’m sure the whole of Moscow will be burnt down. There’s a terrible glow over everything! Natasha, come and have a look. You can see through the window,’ she said to her cousin, obviously trying to distract her. But Natasha stared back as if she couldn’t understand what was being asked of her, and she turned round to stare again at the corner of the stove. Natasha had been in this frozen state since that morning, when Sonya, to the amazement and annoyance of the countess, had for some unknown reason seen fit to tell Natasha about Prince Andrey’s wound, and the fact that he was there with them in their convoy. Sonya had rarely suffered such fury from the countess. Sonya had wept and asked to be forgiven, and she now seemed to be trying to smooth things over by being unfailingly nice to her cousin.
‘Look, Natasha, it’s on fire. It’s awful!’ said Sonya.
‘What’s on fire?’ asked Natasha. ‘Oh yes, Moscow.’
And to get rid of Sonya without giving offence by ignoring her she moved her head nearer the window and looked through it from an angle that made it impossible for her to see anything, and then went back to her former position.
‘Did you see it?’
‘Yes, I really did,’ she said in a voice that pleaded to be left in peace.
Neither the countess nor Sonya had any trouble understanding why Moscow, even in flames, or anything else in the world, might not be of the slightest interest to Natasha.
The count came back in and lay down behind the partition. The countess went over to Natasha, rested the back of her hand on her head, as she always did when her daughter was ill, and then brushed her forehead with her lips as if to find out whether she was running a temperature, before giving her a kiss.
‘You’ve got a chill. You’re shaking all over. You ought to lie down,’ she said.
‘You what? Oh yes, all right, I will. In a minute,’ said Natasha.
When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrey was seriously wounded and was travelling with them, her instinctive response had been to ask lots of questions. Where were they taking him? How had it happened? Was he badly hurt? Could she see him? But once she had been told she couldn’t see him, and his wound was serious but his life wasn’t in danger, even though she clearly didn’t believe them, she could see she would get the same answers whatever she said, so she stopped asking questions and refused to speak at all. All day long Natasha had sat there rigidly in the corner of the carriage with a special look in her wide, staring eyes that the countess knew only too well and always dreaded, and she was still sitting like that now on the little bench in the hut. She was hatching something. She was making her mind up; perhaps she had already done so. The countess knew full well, but she had no idea what Natasha had decided to do, and this was a terrible source of worry.
‘Natasha, do get undressed, darling. Come into bed with me.’ The countess was the only one to have had a proper bed made up. Madame Schoss and the two girls were having to sleep on the floor on piles of hay.
‘No, Mamma, I’ll lie down here on the floor,’ said Natasha irritably. She went over to the window and opened it. The moaning adjutant sounded much louder with the window open. She put her head out into the humid night air, and the countess could see her slender shoulders racked with sobs heaving against the window frame. Natasha knew it wasn’t Prince Andrey moaning. She knew Prince Andrey was in their yard, in the next hut just across the passage, but still, that terrible, never-ending moaning and groaning was making her sob. The countess exchanged a glance with Sonya.
‘Come to bed, sweetheart. Do come to bed, darling,’ said the countess, reaching out to touch Natasha gently on the shoulder. ‘It really is time for bed.’
‘Yes, all right . . . I’ll go to bed now, straightaway,’ said Natasha, getting undressed so quickly she broke some of the strings on her petticoats. Slipping off her dress and putting on a bed-jacket, she sat down with her feet tucked under her on the bed made up on the floor, jerked her short pigtail of very fine hair forward over her shoulder and started to re-plait it. Her long, thin, practised fingers moved quickly and skilfully as she separated the hair, braided it and tied it up again. Natasha was moving her head from side to side as she always did, but she stared fixedly ahead the whole time and her wide eyes had a feverish look about them. When she had finished getting ready for bed she lowered herself gently down on to the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.
‘Natasha, you go the middle,’ said Sonya.
‘No, I’ll stay here,’ said Natasha. ‘And please come to bed yourselves,’ she added irritably before burying her face in the pillow.
