War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [340]
After tea, Nikolai, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to their favorite corner, where their most heartfelt conversations always began.
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“Does it ever happen to you,” Natasha said to her brother, when they had settled in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you that you feel there’s nothing more—nothing; that everything good has already happened? And it’s not really boring, but sad?”
“As if it doesn’t!” he said. “It’s happened to me that everything’s fine, everybody’s merry, and it suddenly comes into my head that it’s all tiresome and we all ought to die. Once in the regiment I didn’t go to an outdoor fête, and there was music there…and I suddenly felt so bored…”
“Ah, I know that. I know, I know,” Natasha picked up. “I was still little when it happened to me. Remember, I was punished once for the plums, and you were all dancing, but I sat in the schoolroom and cried. I cried so much, I’ll never forget it. I felt sad, and sorry for everybody, myself and everybody else. And the main thing was that I wasn’t guilty,” said Natasha, “remember?”
“Yes,” said Nikolai. I remember that I came to you later and wanted to comfort you, and, you know, I was ashamed. We were terribly funny. I had a little toy figure then, and I wanted to give it to you. Remember?”
“And do you remember,” Natasha said with a pensive smile, “how long, long ago, when we were still very little, our uncle called us to his study, in his old house, and it was dark—we came, and suddenly there stood…”
“A blackamoor,” Nikolai finished with a joyful smile, “as if I don’t remember! And I don’t even know now if it was a blackamoor, or we dreamed it up, or somebody told it to us.”
“He was gray, remember, and his teeth were white—he stood and looked at us…”
“Do you remember, Miss Sonya?” asked Nikolai.
“Yes, yes, I also remember something,” Sonya replied timidly.
“I asked papa and mama about that blackamoor,” said Natasha. “They say there wasn’t any blackamoor. But you do remember!”
“Of course, I remember his teeth as if it was now.”
“How strange it was, as if in a dream. I like that.”
“And do you remember how we were rolling eggs in the reception room and suddenly there were two old women, and they started twirling on the carpet. Did that happen or not? Remember how good it was…”
“Yes. And do you remember how papa in his dark blue overcoat fired a gun on the porch?” Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.
Sonya, as always, lagged behind them, though they had memories in common.
Sonya did not remember much of what they remembered, and what she did remember did not evoke in her the poetic feeling they experienced. She only delighted in their joy, trying to imitate it.
The only moment she took a real part in was when they remembered Sonya’s first arrival. Sonya told how she was afraid of Nikolai, because he had a jacket with cords on it, and her nanny told her that she, too, would be stitched with cords.
“And I remember being told that you were born under a cabbage,” Natasha said, “and I remember not daring to disbelieve it then, but I knew it wasn’t true, and I felt so awkward.”
During this conversation, a maid stuck her head in at the back door of the sitting room.
“They’ve brought the rooster, miss,” the girl said in a whisper.
“Never mind, Polya, tell them to take it away,” said Natasha.
In the midst of the conversation going on in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and went to the harp that stood in the corner. He took the cloth off it, and the harp gave out a false sound.
“Edward Karlych, please play my favorite Nocturne by Monsieur Field,”9 the voice of the old countess said from the drawing room.
Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nikolai, and Sonya, said:
“You young people sit so quietly!”
“We