War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [640]
He looked at her without stirring, and saw that, after her movement, she needed to take a deep breath, but did not dare to do it, and caught her breath cautiously.
In the Trinity monastery they had talked about the past, and he had told her that, if he should live, he would eternally thank God for his wound, which had brought them together again; but since then they had never talked about the future.
“Could it be, or not?” he thought now, looking at her and listening to the slight noise of the steel needles. “Can it be that fate brought us together so strangely only so that I should die?…Can it be that the truth of life was revealed to me only so that I should live in a lie? I love her more than anything in the world. But what am I to do if I love her?” he said and suddenly moaned involuntarily, by a habit acquired during his sufferings.
Hearing this sound, Natasha put down the stocking, leaned in his direction, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, went over to him on light steps and bent down.
“You’re not asleep?”
“No, I’ve been looking at you for a long time; I felt it when you came in. No one but you gives me that soft silence…that light. I want to weep for joy.”
Natasha moved closer to him. Her face beamed with rapturous joy.
“Natasha, I love you too much. More than anything in the world.”
“And I?” She turned away for a moment. “Why too much?” she asked.
“Why too much?…Well, what do you think, what do you feel in your soul, in your whole soul—will I live? How does it seem to you?”
“I’m sure of it, sure of it!” Natasha almost cried out, taking both his hands in a passionate movement.
He was silent for a moment.
“How good it would be!” And, taking her hand, he kissed it.
Natasha was happy and excited; and she remembered at once that this was forbidden, that he needed to be quiet.
“You didn’t sleep, though,” she said, suppressing her joy. “Try to fall asleep…please.”
He let go of her hand after pressing it, and she went over to the candle and sat down again in the same position. Twice she turned to glance at him, and his eyes shone meeting hers. She set to work on the stocking and said to herself that she would not look at him until it was finished.
Indeed, soon after that he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He slept for a short time and suddenly woke up anxiously, in a cold sweat.
Falling asleep, he was thinking about the same thing he had been thinking about all that time—about life and death. And more about death. He felt himself closer to it.
“Love? What is love?” he thought. “Love hinders death. Love is life. Everything, everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is connected only by that. Love is God, and to die—means that I, a part of love, return to the common and eternal source.” These thoughts seemed comforting to him. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, there was something one-sidedly personal, cerebral—there was no evidence. And there was the same uneasiness and vagueness. He fell asleep.
In a dream he saw himself lying in the same room in which he lay in reality, but he was not wounded, but healthy. Many sorts of persons, insignificant, indifferent, appear before Prince Andrei. He talks with them, argues about something unnecessary. They are preparing to go somewhere. Prince Andrei vaguely recalls that it is all insignificant and that he has other, more important concerns, but he goes on, to their surprise, speaking some sort of empty, witty words. Gradually, imperceptibly, all these people begin to disappear, and everything is replaced by the one question of the closed door. He gets up and goes to the door to slide the bolt and lock it. Everything depends on whether he does or does not manage to lock it. He walks, he hurries, his feet do