War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [153]
“But for God’s sake be more careful: you know what a shock it may give your maman.”
“I will, I will be, but tell me. You won’t? Then I’ll go and tell her now.”
Anna Mikhailovna briefly recounted to Natasha the contents of the letter, on condition that she not tell anyone.
“My noble word of honor,” said Natasha, crossing herself, “I won’t tell anyone”—and she immediately ran to Sonya.
“Nikolenka…wounded…a letter…” she said solemnly and joyfully.
“Nicolas!” Sonya merely said, instantly turning pale.
Seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound made on Sonya, Natasha felt for the first time the whole grievous side of this news.
She rushed to Sonya, embraced her, and wept.
“Slightly wounded, but promoted to officer; he’s recovered now, he wrote himself,” she said through her tears.
“It’s obvious all you women are crybabies,” said Petya, pacing the room in big, resolute strides. “I’m very glad, really very glad, that my brother has distinguished himself. You’re all blubberers! You understand nothing.”
Natasha smiled through her tears.
“You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sonya.
“No, I haven’t, but she said it’s all over and he’s already an officer…”
“Thank God,” said Sonya, crossing herself. “But maybe she deceived you? Let’s go to maman.”
Petya silently paced the room.
“If I were in Nikolushka’s place, I’d have killed even more of those Frenchmen,” he said, “they’re so disgusting! I’d have cut down so many, there’d be a whole pile,” Petya went on.
“Shut up, Petya, what a fool you are!…”
“I’m not a fool, the fools are the ones who cry over trifles,” said Petya.
“Do you remember him?” Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment’s silence. Sonya smiled.
“Do I remember Nicolas?”
“No, Sonya, do you remember him so as to remember everything, remember really well,” said Natasha, with an assiduous gesture, evidently wishing to give her words the most serious meaning. “I remember Nikolenka, too, I do,” she said. “But not Boris. I don’t remember him at all.”
“What? You don’t remember Boris?” Sonya asked in surprise.
“It’s not that I don’t remember him—I know how he is, but I don’t remember him the way I do Nikolenka. I close my eyes, and I remember him, but Boris I don’t” (she closed her eyes), “no—nothing!”
“Ah, Natasha!” Sonya said rapturously and seriously, without looking at her friend, as if she considered her unworthy of what she intended to say, and as if she was saying it to someone else, with whom it was impossible to joke. “I’ve fallen in love with your brother once and for all, and whatever happens to him, or to me, I will never stop loving him—all my life.”
Natasha looked at Sonya with astonished, curious eyes and said nothing. She felt that what Sonya had said was true, that there was such love as Sonya was talking about; but Natasha had never experienced anything like that. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
“Will you write to him?” she asked.
Sonya fell to thinking. The question of how to write to Nicolas, and whether she should write to him, was a question that tormented her. Now that he was already an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right on her part to remind him of herself and, as it were, of the commitment he had taken upon himself in her regard.
“I don’t know; I think, since he writes, I’ll write, too,” she said, blushing.
“And you won’t be ashamed to write to him?”
Sonya smiled.
“No.”
“But I’d be ashamed to write to Boris, so I won’t.”
“Ashamed of what?”
“Just so, I don’t know. Awkward, ashamed.”
“But I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Petya, offended by Natasha’s first remark, “because she was in love with that fat one in spectacles” (so Petya described his namesake, the new Count Bezukhov); “now she’s in love with this singer” (Petya was referring to Natasha’s Italian singing teacher): “so she’s ashamed.”
“Petya, you’re stupid,” said Natasha.
“No stupider than you, old girl,” said the nine-year-old Petya, as if he was an old brigadier.
The countess had