War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [699]
The Russian army had to act like a whip on a running animal. And the experienced driver knew that it was most advantageous to hold the whip raised, to threaten, but not to lash the running animal on the head.
Part Four
I
When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes—is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror at the annihilation of life, there is a feeling of severance and a spiritual wound which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills and sometimes heals, but always hurts and fears any external, irritating touch.
After the death of Prince Andrei, Natasha and Princess Marya equally felt that. Morally bowed down and shutting their eyes to the menacing cloud of death that hung over them, they did not dare to look life in the face. They carefully protected their open wounds from any offensive, painful touch. Everything—a carriage driving quickly down the street, a reminder of dinner, a maid’s question about what dress to prepare; still worse, a word of insincere, weak sympathy—everything painfully irritated the wound, seemed offensive, and violated the necessary quiet in which they both tried to listen to the dread, stern choir not yet silenced in their imagination, and prevented them from peering into those mysterious, infinite distances which for a moment had opened before them.
Only together were they not offended or pained. They spoke little between themselves. When they spoke, it was of the most insignificant subjects. They both equally avoided mentioning anything that had a relation to the future.
To acknowledge the possibility of a future seemed to them an offense to his memory. Still more carefully did they avoid in their conversations all that might have a relation to the dead man. It seemed to them that what they had lived through and felt could not be expressed in words. It seemed to them that any mention in words of the details of his life violated the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been accomplished before their eyes.
A continual restraint of speech, a constant careful avoidance of all that might lead to words about him: these halts on all sides at the border of what could not be spoken of, brought out still more purely and clearly in their imagination what they both felt.
But pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy. Princess Marya, in her position as the sole, independent mistress of her fate, the guardian and instructor of her nephew, was the first to be called away by life from the world of sorrow in which she had lived for the first two weeks. She received letters from relations, which had to be answered; the room in which Nikolenka had been placed was damp, and he began to cough. Alpatych came to Yaroslavl with business reports, and with suggestions and advice to move to Moscow, to the house on Vzdvizhenka, which had remained intact and only needed minor repairs. Life did not stop, and one had to live. Hard as it was for Princess Marya to leave the world of solitary contemplation in which she had lived till then, sorry and as if ashamed as she was to leave Natasha alone, the cares of life called for her participation, and she involuntarily surrendered to them. She went over the accounts with Alpatych, consulted with Dessales about her nephew, and gave instructions and made preparations for moving to Moscow.
Natasha remained alone and, once Princess Marya began preparing for departure, avoided her as well.
Princess Marya suggested that the countess allow Natasha to come with her to Moscow, and the mother and father gladly accepted this suggestion, noticing the daily decline in their daughter’s physical strength, and supposing that the change of place and the help of Moscow doctors would be good for her.
“I won’t go anywhere,” replied Natasha, when the suggestion was made, “only please leave me alone,” she said and ran out of the room, barely holding back her tears, not so much