War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [338]
Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs’ house.
IX
Christmastime came and, besides the festal liturgy, besides the solemn and boring felicitations of the neighbors and the servants, besides the new dresses everybody put on, there was nothing special to mark it as Christmastime, yet in the windless twenty degrees of frost, in the bright, blinding sunlight of day and the starry winter light at night, one felt called upon to mark this time somehow.
On the third day of the feast, after dinner, the entire household dispersed to various rooms. It was the most boring time of the day. Nikolai, who had gone to the neighbors in the morning, fell asleep in the sitting room. The old count rested in his study. Sonya sat at the round table in the drawing room copying a pattern. The countess laid out cards. Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon, sat by the window with two old ladies, his face sad. Natasha came into the room, went over to Sonya, looked at what she was doing, then went to her mother and stopped silently.
“Why are you wandering about so forlorn?” her mother asked her. “What do you want?”
“I want him… now, this minute, I want him,” Natasha said, her eyes glistening and not smiling. The countess raised her head and looked intently at her daughter.
“Don’t look at me, mama, don’t look at me, I’m going to cry now.”
“Sit down, sit with me,” said the countess.
“Mama, I want him. Why am I going to waste like this, mama?…” Her voice broke off, tears flowed from her eyes, and to conceal them she quickly turned and left the room. She went to the sitting room, stood, thought, and went to the maids’ quarters. There an old maidservant was grumbling at a young girl who came in breathless from the cold outside.
“Enough playing,” the old woman said, “there’s a time for everything.”
“Let her be, Kondratyevna,” said Natasha. “Go, Mavrusha, go.”
And, having dismissed Mavrusha, Natasha went through the reception room to the front hall. An old servant and two young ones were playing cards. They broke off their game and stood up when the young lady came in. “What shall I do with them?” thought Natasha.
“Yes, Nikita, please go…” (“but where shall I send him?”). “Yes, go to the yard and bring a rooster, please; yes, and you, Misha, bring some oats.”
“Just a bit of oats is it?” Misha said merrily and eagerly.
“Go, go quickly,” the old man confirmed.
“And you, Fyodor, go and get me some chalk.”
Passing by the butler’s pantry, she ordered a samovar served, though it was not the right time.
The butler Foka was the most ill-tempered man in the whole house. Natasha liked to test her power over him. He did not believe her and went to ask if it was true.
“This young lady, really!” said Foka, pretending to frown at Natasha.
No one in the house ordered so many people around or gave them so much work as Natasha. She could not look at people indifferently, without sending them somewhere. It seemed as if she were testing whether any of them would get angry or upset with her, but people liked carrying out Natasha’s orders as they did no one else’s. “What shall I do? Where shall I go?” thought Natasha, walking slowly down the corridor.
“Nastasya Ivanovna, what will I give birth to?” she asked the buffoon, who came from the opposite direction in his short quilted jacket.
“Fleas, dragonflies, grasshoppers,” the buffoon replied.
“My God, my God, it’s all the same thing! Ah, where shall I go? What shall I do with myself?” And, stamping her feet, she quickly ran upstairs to Iogel, who lived on the upper floor with his wife. Iogel had two governesses sitting with him; there were