War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [339]
“The island of Madagascar,” she said. “Ma-da-gas-car,” she repeated each syllable distinctly and, not answering Mme Schoss’s question about what she was saying, left the room.
Petya, her brother, was also upstairs: he and his tutor were preparing fireworks to be set off at night.
“Petya! Petka!” she cried to him. “Give me a ride dowstairs.” Petya ran over and offered his back. She jumped on it, put her arms around his neck, and he went skipping about with her. “No, never mind…the island of Madagascar,” she said and, jumping off his back, she went downstairs.
Having gone around her kingdom, as it were, tested her power, and convinced herself that everyone was submissive, but that it was still boring, Natasha went to the reception room, took her guitar, sat in a dark corner behind a little cupboard, and began to pluck at the bass strings, picking out a phrase she remembered from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrei. For an uninitiated listener, what came of her playing would have been something that had no meaning, but in her imagination a whole series of memories arose from these sounds. She sat behind the little cupboard, her eyes fixed on a strip of light coming from the pantry door, listened to herself, and remembered. She was in a state of remembrance.
Sonya walked across the reception room to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha looked at her, at the crack of the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered light coming through the crack in the pantry door and Sonya passing by with a glass. “Yes, that happened, too, in the same way,” Natasha thought.
“Sonya, what’s this?” Natasha cried, plucking a thick string with her fingers.
“Ah, you’re here!” said Sonya, giving a start, and she came over and listened. “I don’t know. A storm?” she said timidly, afraid of being wrong.
“She gave a start in just the same way, came over in just the same way, and smiled timidly when it happened before,” thought Natasha, “and in just the same way…I thought there was something lacking in her.”
“No, it’s a chorus from The Water-Carrier,8 don’t you hear?” And Natasha finished singing the chorus to give Sonya the idea.
“Where did you go?” asked Natasha.
“To change the water in the glass. I’m just finishing a pattern.”
“You always keep busy, but I don’t know how,” said Natasha. “And where’s Nikolenka?”
“Asleep, I think.”
“Go and wake him up, Sonya,” said Natasha. “Tell him I’m calling him to sing.” She went on sitting, thinking about what it meant that it had all happened before, and, not resolving the question and not regretting it in the least, was again carried back in her imagination to the time when she was with him and he was looking at her with amorous eyes.
“Ah, if only he’d come soon. I’m so afraid it won’t happen! And above all, I’m getting old, that’s the thing! What’s in me now won’t be there anymore. But maybe he’ll come today, right now. Maybe he has come and is sitting there in the drawing room. Maybe he already came yesterday and I forgot.” She stood up, set aside the guitar, and went to the drawing room. All the household people, tutors, governesses, and guests were already sitting at the tea table. The servants stood around the table—Prince Andrei was not there, and it was still the old habitual life.
“Ah, here she is,” said Ilya Andreich, seeing Natasha come in. “Well, sit here with me.” But Natasha stopped by her mother, looking around, as if searching for something.
“Mama!” she said. “Give him to me, mama, quickly, quickly,” and she again had difficulty holding back her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation of the older people and of Nikolai, who had also come to the table. “My God, my God, the same faces, the same conversations, papa holding his cup in the same way and blowing in exactly the same way!” thought