War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [223]
Nikolai turned away from her. Natasha, with her sensitivity, also instantly noticed her brother’s state. She noticed it, but she felt so merry herself at that moment, she was so far from grief, sorrow, reproach, that she purposely deceived herself (as often happens with young people). “No, I’m too merry now to spoil my merriment by sympathy for someone else’s grief,” she felt and said to herself: “No, I’m surely mistaken, he must be as merry as I am.”
“Well, Sonya,” she said, and went out to the very middle of the reception room, where, in her opinion, the resonance was best. Raising her head, lowering her lifelessly hanging arms as dancers do, Natasha made a few energetic steps from heel to toe in the middle of the room and stopped.
“Here I am!” she seemed to be saying, responding to the rapturous gaze of Denisov, who was watching her.
“What’s she so glad about!” thought Nikolai, looking at his sister. “How is it she’s not bored and ashamed!” Natasha took the first note, her throat expanded, her chest straightened, her eyes acquired a serious expression. She did not think of anyone or anything at that moment, and from her lips composed into a smile sounds poured forth, sounds that anyone can produce for the same lengths of time, at the same intervals, but which leave one cold a thousand times, then for the thousand and first time make one tremble and weep.
That winter Natasha had begun to sing seriously for the first time, especially because Denisov admired her singing. She no longer sang like a child, there was none of that comic, childish assiduousness in her singing which had been in it before; but her singing was not good yet, as all the critical connoisseurs said who had heard her sing. “Her voice has no polish, it’s beautiful, but it needs polish,” they all said. But they usually said it long after her voice had fallen silent. While this unpolished voice with its wrong breathing and strained transitions was singing, even the critical connoisseurs said nothing and merely enjoyed this unpolished voice, merely wanted to hear it again. Her voice had that virgin, intact quality, that unawareness of its strength, that unpolished velvetiness, which were so combined with a deficiency in the art of singing that it seemed impossible to change anything in this voice without spoiling it.
“What on earth is this?” thought Nikolai, hearing her voice and opening his eyes wide. “What’s happened with her? How she sings today!” he thought. And suddenly the whole world became concentrated for him on the expectation of the next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world became divided into three beats: “Oh mio crudele affetto…*291 One, two, three…one, two…three…one…Oh mio crudele affetto…One, two, three…one. Ah, our foolish life!” thought Nikolai. “All this misfortune, and money, and Dolokhov, and spite, and honor—it’s all nonsense…and here is—the real thing…Ah, Natasha, ah, darling! ah, dearest!…How is she going to take this B…She did it? Thank God!” And without noticing it, he himself was singing, so as to strengthen that B, taking the second voice a third below the high note. “My God! how beautiful! Did I sing that? What happiness!” he thought.
Oh, how that third had vibrated, and how touched was something that was best in Rostov’s soul. And that something was independent of anything in the world and higher than anything in the world. What are gambling losses, and Dolokhovs, and words of honor!…It’s all nonsense! One can kill, and steal, and still be happy…
XVI
It was long since Rostov had experienced such enjoyment from music as on that day. But as soon as Natasha finished her barcarolle, reality again reminded him of itself. Saying nothing, he left and went downstairs to his room. A quarter of an hour later, the old count, merry and content, came home from the club. Nikolai, hearing him come, went to him.
“Well, did you have a good time?” asked Ilya Andreich, smiling joyfully and proudly at his son. Nikolai wanted to say “yes,” but could not: he all but burst into sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did