War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [334]
“That’s my Mitka the coachman…I bought him a good balalaika, I like it,” said the uncle. It was the uncle’s custom that, when he came back from the hunt, Mitka would play the balalaika in the bachelor hunters’ room. The uncle liked listening to this music.
“How good! Excellent, really,” said Nikolai with a sort of involuntary disdain, as if he was ashamed to confess that he found the sounds very pleasing.
“What do you mean, excellent?” Natasha said with reproach, feeling the tone with which her brother had said it. “It’s not excellent, it’s simply lovely!” Just as the uncle’s mushrooms, honey, and liqueurs seemed the best in the world to her, so this song, too, seemed to her at that moment the height of musical loveliness.
“More, please, more,” Natasha said through the door, as soon as the balalaika fell silent. Mitka tuned up and again began picking out “Barinya,”6 with runs and leaps. The uncle sat and listened, his head inclined to one side, with a barely perceptible smile. The melody of “Barinya” was repeated some hundred times. The balalaika was tuned several times, and again the same sounds rippled out, and the listeners were not bored, but only wanted to hear this playing again and again. Anisya Fyodorovna came in and leaned her corpulent body against the doorpost.
“Listen, if you please, little countess,” she said to Natasha with a smile very much like the uncle’s smile. “He plays nicely,” she said.
“This part here he doesn’t do right,” the uncle said suddenly with an energetic gesture. “He should pour it on—right you are!—pour it on.”
“And can you do it?” Natasha asked. The uncle smiled without answering. “Go, Anisyushka, see whether my guitar has all its strings or not. Haven’t set hand to it for a long time, right you are! Gave it up.”
Anisya Fyodorovna went eagerly with her light step to fulfill her master’s request and fetched the guitar.
The uncle, not looking at anyone, blew the dust off, rapped on the face of the guitar with his bony fingers, tuned it up, and settled comfortably in his armchair. He took hold of the guitar (with a slightly theatrical gesture, cocking his left elbow) a little higher on the neck and, with a wink to Anisya Fyodorovna, did not begin “Barinya,” but struck one sonorous, pure chord, and measuredly, calmly, but firmly began at a very slow tempo to pick out the well-known song “Down the ro-o-oadway…” At once, in time with that sober merriment (the same that was breathed out by Anisya Fyodorovna’s whole being), the tune of the song began to sing in the souls of Nikolai and Natasha. Anisya Fyodorovna blushed and, covering her face with her kerchief, left the room laughing. The uncle continued to pick out the song clearly, assiduously, and with energetic firmness, gazing with an altered, inspired gaze at the place Anisya Fyodorovna had left. Something laughed slightly in his face, on one side, under his gray mustache, and it laughed especially when, as the song got going, the tempo quickened and in running passages there would be a sudden break.
“Lovely, lovely, uncle! More, more!” cried Natasha as soon as he finished. She jumped up from her place, embraced her uncle, and kissed him. “Nikolenka, Nikolenka!” she said, glancing at her brother, as if asking him: what on earth is it?
Nikolai also liked the uncle’s playing very much. The uncle played the song a second time. Anisya Fyodorovna’s smiling face again appeared in the doorway, and behind her some other faces.
Fetching water clear and cold,
He cries out, oh maiden, hold!
the uncle played, again made a skillful run, broke off, and twitched his shoulders.
“Come, come, dearest uncle,” Natasha moaned in such an imploring voice as though her life depended on it. The uncle got up, and it was as if there were two men in him—one smiled gravely at the jolly fellow, while the jolly fellow performed a naïve and precise little caper before dancing.
“Come, niece!” cried the uncle, waving to Natasha with the hand that