War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [341]
Dimmler began to play. Inaudibly, on tiptoe, Natasha went to the table, picked up the candle, took it out, came back, and quietly sat down in her place. The room was dark, especially on the sofa where they were sitting, but the silver light of the full moon fell on the floor through the big windows.
“You know,” said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nikolai and Sonya, when Dimmler had finished and still sat there, lightly thrumming the strings, clearly undecided whether to stop or begin something new, “I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.”
“That’s metempsychosis,” said Sonya, who had always been a good student and remembered everything. “The Egyptians believed that our souls were in animals and will go back into animals.”
“No, you know, I don’t believe we were in animals,” Natasha said in the same whisper, though the music had stopped. “I know for certain that we were angels somewhere, and visited here, and so we remember everything…”
“May I join you?” asked Dimmler, quietly approaching and sitting down with them.
“If we were angels once, why did we end up lower?” asked Nikolai. “No, that can’t be!”
“Not lower, who told you it’s lower?…How do I know what I used to be?” Natasha objected with conviction. “The soul is immortal…which means, if I will live forever, then I also lived before, lived for the whole eternity.”
“Yes, but it’s hard for us to imagine eternity,” said Dimmler, who had approached the young people with a mildly scornful smile, but was now speaking as softly and seriously as they were.
“Why is it hard to imagine eternity?” asked Natasha. “There will be today, there will be tomorrow, there will be always, and there was yesterday, and there was the day before…”
“Natasha, it’s your turn now! Sing something for me,” said the countess’s voice. “Why are you sitting there like conspirators?”
“Mama, I really don’t want to!” said Natasha, but at the same time she got up.
None of them, not even the not-so-young Dimmler, wanted to break off the conversation and leave the sitting room, but Natasha got up and Nikolai sat at the clavichord. As always, Natasha stood in the middle of the room, choosing the most advantageous place for resonance, and began to sing her mother’s favorite piece.
She had said she did not want to sing, but for a long time before and a long time after she did not sing as she sang that evening. Count Ilya Andreich heard her singing from the study, where he was talking with Mitenka, and, like a schoolboy who finishes his lesson while hurrying to go and play, he became confused as he gave orders to his steward, and finally fell silent, and Mitenka, also listening, stood before the count smiling silently. Nikolai could not take his eyes off his sister and paused for breath together with her. Sonya, listening, thought of what an enormous difference there was between her and her friend, and how impossible it would be for her to be ever so slightly as bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a happily sad smile and tears in her eyes, shaking her head from time to time. She was thinking of Natasha, and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural and frightening in this forthcoming marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrei.
Dimmler, having sat down by the countess, closed his eyes and listened.
“No, Countess,” he said finally, “that is a European talent, there’s nothing for her to learn, that softness, tenderness, power…”
“Ah, I’m so afraid for her, so afraid!” said the countess, forgetting whom she was talking with. Her maternal intuition told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that because of it she would not be happy. Natasha had not yet finished singing when the enraptured fourteen-year-old Petya came running into the room with news that the mummers had come.
Natasha suddenly stopped.
“Fool!