War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [42]
“Besides that, Pyotr Nikolaevich, in transferring to the guards, I am in view,” Berg went on, “and vacancies in the foot guards are much more frequent. Then, consider for yourself how I’m able to get along on two hundred and thirty rubles. Yet I save some and also send some to my father,” he went on, letting out a smoke ring.
“La balance y est…A German can make cheese from chalk, comme dit le proverbe,”†110 said Shinshin, shifting the amber to the other side of his mouth, and he winked at the count.
The count burst out laughing. Other guests, seeing that Shinshin was conducting a conversation, came over to listen. Berg, oblivious of both the mockery and the indifference, went on to tell how he, by being transferred to the guards, was already one rank ahead of his comrades in the corps, how in wartime the company commander might be killed, and he, remaining the senior in the company, could very easily become the commander, and how everyone in the regiment liked him, and how his papa was pleased with him. Berg apparently enjoyed telling about it all and seemed not to suspect that other people might also have their interests. But everything he told about was so nice, so earnest, the naïveté of his youthful egoism was so obvious, that his listeners were disarmed.
“Well, old boy, infantry or cavalry, you’ll make it anywhere; that I prophesy to you,” said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and lowering his feet from the ottoman.
Berg smiled joyfully. The count, and his guests after him, went to the drawing room.
It was that time before a formal dinner when the assembled guests refrain from beginning a long conversation, expecting to be called to the hors d’oeuvres, but at the same time consider it necessary to move about and not be silent, in order to show that they are not at all impatient to sit down at the table. The hosts keep glancing at the door and occasionally exchange glances with each other. The guests try to guess from these glances who or what they are still waiting for: an important belated relation or a dish that is not ready yet.
Pierre arrived just before dinner and sat awkwardly in the middle of the drawing room, in the first armchair he happened upon, getting in everyone’s way. The countess wanted to get him to talk, but he looked around naïvely through his spectacles, as if searching for someone, and gave monosyllabic answers to all the countess’s questions. He was an inconvenience and was the only one not to notice it. The majority of the guests, knowing his story with the bear, looked curiously at this big, fat, and placid man, wondering how such a clumsy and shy fellow could perform such a stunt with a policeman.
“Did you arrive recently?” the countess asked him.
“Oui, madame,” he replied, looking around.
“Have you seen my husband?”
“Non, madame.” He smiled quite inappropriately.
“It seems you were recently in Paris? I suppose it was very interesting.”
“Very interesting.”
The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhailovna. Anna Mikhailovna understood that she was being asked to take up this young man, and sitting beside him, she began speaking of his father; but, as with the countess, he gave her nothing but monosyllabic answers. The guests were all taken up with each other.
“Les Razoumovsky…Ça a été charmant…Vous êtes bien bonne…La comtesse Apraksine…”*111 was heard on all sides. The countess got up and went to the reception room.
“Marya Dmitrievna?” her voice was heard from there.
“Herself,” a rough female voice was heard in reply, after which Marya Dmitrievna came into the room.
All the girls and even the ladies, except for the oldest ones, rose. Marya Dmitrievna stood in the doorway and, from the height of her corpulent body, her fifty-year-old head with its gray curled hair held high, looked over the guests, and unhurriedly straightened