War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [727]
“It was a terrible spectacle, children were abandoned, some in the flames…In my presence, a child was pulled out…women had their things pulled off them, earrings torn out…”
Pierre blushed and faltered.
“Here the patrol arrived and took all the men, all those who weren’t looting. And me, too.”
“You’re surely not telling us everything; you surely did something…” said Natasha, and she paused, “something good.”
Pierre went on with what he was telling. When he told about the execution, he wanted to avoid the terrible details, but Natasha demanded that he not leave anything out.
Pierre began telling about Karataev (by then he had stood up from the table and was pacing; Natasha followed him with her eyes) and stopped.
“No, you can’t understand what I learned from that illiterate man—a little simpleton.”
“No, no, go on,” said Natasha. “Where is he?”
“He was killed almost in my presence.” And Pierre began telling about the last period of their retreat, Karataev’s illness (his voice trembled constantly), and his death.
Pierre told of his adventures as he had never told them to anyone, as he had never yet recalled them to himself. It was as if he now saw a new significance in everything he had lived through. Now, as he told it all to Natasha, he experienced that rare pleasure which is granted by women when they listen to a man—not intelligent women, who, when they listen, try either to memorize what they are told in order to enrich their minds and on occasion retell the same thing, or else to adjust what is being told to themselves and quickly say something intelligent of their own, worked out in their small intellectual domain; but the pleasure granted by real women, endowed with the ability to select and absorb all the best of what a man has to show. Natasha, not knowing it herself, was all attention: she did not miss a word of Pierre’s, not a waver in his voice, not a glance, not the twitch of a facial muscle, not a gesture. She caught the not-yet-spoken word in flight and brought it straight into her open heart, guessing the secret meaning of all Pierre’s inner work.
Princess Marya understood the story, sympathized with it, but she now saw something else that absorbed all her attention; she saw the possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre. And that thought, which occurred to her for the first time, filled her soul with joy.
It was three o’clock in the morning. The servants came with sad and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.
Pierre finished his story. Natasha went on looking at him intently and attentively with her shining, animated eyes, as if wishing to understand the rest, which he had perhaps not expressed. Pierre, in shy and happy confusion, glanced at her from time to time, and tried to think of what to say now, in order to turn the conversation to another subject. Princess Marya was silent. It occurred to no one that it was three o’clock in the morning and time for bed.
“They say: misfortunes, sufferings,” said Pierre. “Well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God’s sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it’s only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there’s life, there’s happiness. There’s much, much still to come. I’m saying that to you,” he said, turning to Natasha.
“Yes, yes,” she said, responding to something quite different. “I, too, would wish for nothing except to live through it all over again.”
Pierre looked at her attentively.
“Yes, and nothing more,” Natasha confirmed.
“Not true, not true,” cried Pierre. “I’m not