War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [702]
“Natasha, you love me,” she said in a soft, trustful whisper. “Natasha, you won’t deceive me? You’ll tell me the whole truth?”
Natasha looked at her with tear-filled eyes, and there was nothing in her face but a plea for forgiveness and love.
“My dearest mama,” she repeated, straining all the force of her love towards her, so as to somehow shift onto herself the excess of grief that was crushing her.
And again, in her strengthless struggle with reality, her mother, by refusing to believe that she could live while her beloved boy had been killed in the flower of life, tried to save herself from reality in a world of insanity.
Natasha did not remember how that day passed, nor the night, the next day, the next night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother’s side. It was as if Natasha’s love, persistent, patient, not as an explanation, not as a consolation, but as a summons to life, enveloped the countess on all sides every second. On the third night, the countess calmed down for a few minutes, and Natasha closed her eyes, resting her head on the arm of the chair. The bed creaked. Natasha opened her eyes. The countess was sitting on the bed and speaking softly.
“I’m so glad you’ve come. You’re tired, would you like some tea?” Natasha went to her. “You’ve grown handsome and manly,” the countess went on, taking her daughter by the hand.
“Mama, what are you saying?…”
“Natasha, he’s no more, no more!” And, embracing her daughter, for the first time the countess began to weep.
III
Princess Marya postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried to replace Natasha, but could not. They saw that she alone could keep her mother from insane despair. For three weeks Natasha was constantly with her mother, slept in the armchair in her room, made her drink and eat, and talked ceaselessly with her—talked, because only her gentle, caressing voice could soothe the countess.
The wound in the mother’s soul could not heal. Petya’s death tore away half of her life. A month after the news of Petya’s death, which had found her a fresh and cheerful fifty-year-old woman, she came out of her room an old woman—half-dead and taking no part in life. But the same wound that half killed the countess, this new wound called Natasha to life.
A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem, gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force of life pushing up from inside.
This was the way Natasha’s wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life—love—was still alive in her. Love awoke, and life awoke.
Prince Andrei’s last days had bound Natasha and Princess Marya together. The new misfortune brought them still closer. Princess Marya postponed her departure and for the last three weeks looked after Natasha like a sick child. Those last weeks, which Natasha spent in her mother’s room, undermined her physical strength.
Once, in the middle of the afternoon, noticing that Natasha was shivering feverishly, Princess Marya brought her to her own room and made her lie down on her bed. Natasha lay down, but, when Princess Marya lowered the blinds and was about to leave, Natasha called her to her.
“I don’t want to sleep. Sit with me, Marie.”
“You’re tired—try to sleep.”
“No, no. Why did you take me away? She’ll ask for me.”
“She’s much better. She talked so nicely today,” said Princess Marya.
Natasha lay on the bed and studied Princess Marya’s face in the semi-darkness of the room.
“Does she resemble him?” thought Natasha. “Yes, she does and doesn’t. But she’s special, a stranger, quite new, unknown. And she loves me. What’s in her heart? All good things. But