War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [637]
Princess Marya understood what Natasha had meant by the words “this happened to him two days ago.” She understood that it meant he had suddenly softened, and that this softening and tender feeling were signs of death. As she was going to the door, she already saw in her imagination the face of the Andryusha she had known in childhood, gentle, mild, tender, which he showed so rarely and which therefore always affected her so strongly. She knew that he would speak quiet, gentle words to her, like those her father had spoken to her before his death, and she would be unable to bear it and would burst into sobs over him. But sooner or later it had to be, and so she went into the room. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat as her nearsighted eyes made out his form more and more clearly and sought his features, and then she saw his face and met his gaze.
He was lying on a sofa, surrounded by pillows, in a squirrel-fur dressing gown. He was thin and pale. One thin, transparently white hand was holding a handkerchief, the other, with a quiet movement of the fingers, was touching his thin, newly grown mustache. His eyes were looking at the entering women.
Seeing his face and meeting his gaze, Princess Marya suddenly slowed her steps and felt that her tears had suddenly dried up and her sobs had ceased. Catching the expression of his face and gaze, she suddenly grew timid and felt guilty.
“But what am I guilty of?” she asked herself. “Of being alive and thinking about the living, while I…” his cold, stern gaze replied.
There was almost hostility in that deep gaze, looking not out of but into himself, as he slowly examined his sister and Natasha.
They took each other’s hands and kissed each other, as was their habit.
“Hello, Marie, how is it that you got here?” he said in a voice as flat and alien as was his gaze. If he had shrieked in a desperate voice, that shriek would have terrified Princess Marya less than the sound of that voice.
“And you’ve brought Nikolushka?” he said just as flatly and slowly, and with an obvious effort of recollection.
“How is your health now?” asked Princess Marya, marveling at herself as she said it.
“That, my friend, you must ask the doctor,” he said, and, clearly making another effort to be gentle, he said with his lips only (it was clear that he did not at all think what he was saying): “Merci, chère amie, d’être venue.”*684
Princess Marya pressed his hand. He winced barely noticeably from the pressure of her hand. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She understood what had happened to him in those two days. In his words, in his tone, especially in that gaze—a cold, almost hostile gaze—there could be felt an alienation from everything of this world that was frightening in a living man. He clearly had difficulty now in understanding anything living; but at the same time it could be felt that he did not understand the living, not because he lacked the power of understanding, but because he understood something else, such as the living could not understand, and which absorbed him entirely.
“Yes, see how strangely fate has brought us together!” he said, breaking his silence and pointing to Natasha. “She’s taking care of me.”
Princess Marya listened and did not understand what he was saying. How could he, the sensitive, gentle Prince Andrei, say that in the presence of the one he loved and who loved him! If he had thought he would live, he would not have said it in such a coldly offensive tone. If he had not known he would die, how could he not have pitied her, how could he have said it in front of her! The only explanation could be that it made no difference to him, and it made no difference because something else, more important, had been revealed to him.
The conversation was cold, incoherent, and constantly interrupted.
“Marie came through Ryazan,