War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [638]
“Well, and what about it?” he said.
“They told her that Moscow is all burned down, completely, that supposedly…”
Natasha stopped: it was impossible to speak. He was obviously making an effort to listen, and still could not.
“Yes, they say it’s burned down,” he said. “That’s a great pity,” and he began to look straight ahead, absentmindedly stroking his mustache with his fingers.
“And you’ve met Count Nikolai, Marie?” Prince Andrei said suddenly, clearly wishing to please them. “He wrote here that he found you very much to his liking,” he went on simply, calmly, clearly unable to understand all the complex significance his words had for living people. “If you should also like him, it would be very good…if you got married,” he added somewhat more quickly, as if glad of the words he had long been searching for and had finally found. Princess Marya heard his words, but they had no other meaning for her than to prove how terribly far he now was from everything living.
“Why talk of me!” she said calmly, and glanced at Natasha. Natasha, feeling her gaze upon her, did not look at her. Again they all fell silent.
“André, would you li…” Princess Marya suddenly said in a shuddering voice, “would you like to see Nikolushka? He talks about you all the time.”
Prince Andrei smiled barely perceptibly for the first time, but Princess Marya, who knew his face so well, understood with horror that this was a smile not of joy, not of tenderness for his son, but of quiet, mild mockery of Princess Marya, who, in his opinion, was using her last means of bringing him to his senses.
“Yes, I’m very glad Nikolushka is here. Is he well?”
When Nikolushka was brought to Prince Andrei, he looked at his father with fear, but did not cry, because no one was crying. Prince Andrei kissed him and obviously did not know what to say to him.
When Nikolushka was taken away, Princess Marya went up to her brother once more, kissed him, and, unable to control herself any longer, began to cry.
He looked at her intently.
“Is it about Nikolushka?” he asked.
Princess Marya, crying, nodded affirmatively.
“Marie, do you know the Gosp…” but he suddenly fell silent.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. You mustn’t cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same cold gaze.
When Princess Marya began to cry, he understood that she was crying because Nikolushka would be left without a father. Making a great effort with himself, he attempted to come back into life and shift to their point of view.
“Yes, this must seem pitiful to them!” he thought. “Yet it’s so simple!
“‘The birds of the air neither sow nor reap, but your Father feeds them,’”9 he said to himself and wanted to say it to the princess. “But no, they’ll understand it their own way, they won’t understand! This they cannot understand, that all these feelings they value, all these thoughts of ours, which seem so important to us—that they’re unnecessary. We cannot understand each other!” And he kept silent.
Prince Andrei’s little son was seven years old. He could barely read, he knew nothing. He lived through many things after that day, acquiring knowledge, power of observation, experience; but if he had then possessed all these abilities he acquired later, he would not have been able to understand the full meaning of the scene he saw take place between his father, Princess Marya, and Natasha any better, any more profoundly, than he understood it now. He understood everything and, without crying, left the room, silently went up to Natasha, who came out after him, glanced at her bashfully with his thoughtful, beautiful eyes; his slightly raised, red upper lip quivered, he leaned his head against Natasha and began to cry.
From that day on he avoided Dessales, avoided the countess, who caressed him, and either sat by himself or timidly approached Princess Marya and Natasha, whom he seemed to have come to love more than his aunt, and