War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [344]
“Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white,” said one of those strange, pretty, and unfamiliar-looking people with fine eyebrows and mustache.
“That one, I think, was Natasha,” thought Nikolai, “and that one Mme Schoss, or maybe not; and this Circassian with the mustache—I don’t know who she is, but I love her.”
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked. They did not reply and burst out laughing. Dimmler shouted something from the sleigh behind, probably something funny, but it was impossible to hear what it was.
“Yes, yes,” voices answered, laughing.
Here, however, is some sort of magical forest with flowing dark shadows and the sparkle of diamonds, and with flights of some sort of marble steps, and magical buildings with some sort of silver roofs, and the piercing shrieks of some sort of animals. “And if this is indeed Melyukovka, then it’s all the more strange that we drove God knows where and arrived at Melyukovka,” thought Nikolai.
It actually was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with candles and joyful faces ran out to the porch.
“Who are you?” they asked from the porch.
“Mummers from the count’s, I can see by the horses,” voices replied.
XI
Pelageya Danilovna Melyukov, a broad, energetic woman in spectacles and an open housecoat, was sitting in the drawing room, surrounded by her daughters, whom she was trying to keep from being bored. They were quietly pouring wax and looking at the shadows of the figures that emerged,10 when the footsteps and voices of the visitors were heard in the front hall.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, bears, clearing their throats and wiping their frost-covered faces in the front hall, came into the reception room, where candles were hastily lighted. The clown Dimmler and the lady Nikolai opened the dance. Surrounded by shouting children, the mummers, covering their faces and altering their voices, bowed before the hostess and took their places in the room.
“Ah, it’s impossible to recognize them! And Natasha! See what she looks like! She really looks like somebody. And Edward Karlych is something! I didn’t recognize him. How well he dances! Ah, dear me, there’s a Circassian here, too; it really suits you, Sonyushka. And who’s this one? Well, how amusing! Nikita, Vanya, take the tables away. And we were sitting here so quietly!”
“Ha, ha, ha!…That hussar, that hussar! Just like a boy, and the legs!…I can’t stand it!…” voices said.
Natasha, the young Melyukovs’ favorite, disappeared with them into the back room, asking to be brought cork and various house robes and men’s clothing, which the girls’ bare arms received from a footman through a slightly open door. In ten minutes all the young people of the Melyukov family had joined the mummers.
Pelageya Danilovna, having ordered a space cleared for the guests and snacks served to the masters and servants, not removing her spectacles, with a suppressed smile, walked among the mummers, looking closely at their faces and not recognizing anybody. She not only did not recognize the Rostovs or Dimmler, but she could not recognize her own daughters, or her husband’s robes and uniforms, which they were wearing.
“And who’s this one?” she said, addressing her governess and looking into the face of her daughter, who was dressed as a Kazan Tartar. “Seems to be one of the Rostovs. Well, and you, Mister Hussar, which regiment do you serve in?” she asked Natasha. “That Turk, give that Turk some fruit jelly,” she said to the butler with a tray, “their law doesn’t prohibit it.”
Sometimes, looking at the strange but funny steps the dancers made, having decided once and for all that, as they were dressed up, no one could recognize them, and therefore not feeling embarrassed—Pelageya Danilovna covered her face with her handkerchief, and her whole corpulent body shook with unrestrainable, kindly, old-woman’s laughter.
“Sashinette, look at my Sashinette!” she said.
After Russian dances and singing, Pelageya Danilovna joined all the servants and masters together in one big circle; they brought