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By Root 3946 0

herself an accidentally forgotten being in this world, with no purpose or meaning. She ate, drank, slept, woke, but did not live. Life gave her no impressions at all. She needed nothing from life except peace, and that peace she could find only in death. But as long as death did not come, she had to live, that is, to make use of her time, her life forces. In her there was noticeable in the highest degree what one notices in very small children and very old people. In her life no external purpose could be seen, but what was evident was only the need to exercise her various inclinations and abilities. She needed to eat, to sleep, to think, to talk, to weep, to work, to get angry, and so on, only because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a liver. She did all that without any external impulse, not as people do in the full force of life, when, behind the purpose they are striving towards, they do not notice another purpose—that of applying their forces. She talked only because she had a physical need to work her lungs and tongue. She wept like a baby, because she had to clear her nose, and so on. What for people in full force presented itself as a purpose, for her was obviously a pretext.

Thus, in the morning, especially if she had eaten something rich the day before, a need to be angry appeared in her, and then she chose the closest pretext—Mrs. Belov’s deafness.

She would begin to say something softly to her from the other end of the room.

“It seems warmer today, my dear,” she would say in a whisper. And when Mrs. Belov replied, “Why, of course they’ve come,” the countess would grumble crossly: “My God, how deaf and stupid she is!”

Another pretext was her snuff, which seemed to her now dry, now damp, now poorly rubbed. After these irritations, bile would spread over her face, and her maids knew by sure signs when Mrs. Belov would again be deaf, and the snuff would again be damp, and when her face would turn yellow. As she needed her bile to work, so she also sometimes needed her remaining thinking capacity to work, and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she needed to weep, the object was the late count. When she needed to worry, the pretext was Nikolai and his health; when she needed to speak caustically, the pretext was Countess Marya. When she needed to exercise her vocal organs—this happened mainly between six and seven, after a digestive rest in a dark room—then the pretext was the telling of ever the same stories to ever the same listeners.

Everyone in the house understood the old woman’s condition, though no one ever spoke of it, and everyone made every possible effort to satisfy her needs. Only in an occasional glance and sad half smile exchanged among Nikolai, Pierre, Natasha, and Marya was this mutual understanding of her condition expressed.

But, besides that, these glances said something else; they said that she had already finished her business in life, that all of her was not in that which could be seen in her now, that we would all be the same, and that it was a joy to submit to her, to restrain oneself for the sake of this being, once so dear, once as full of life as we, and now so pathetic. Memento mori—said these glances.

Of all the household, only quite bad and stupid people, and the little children, did not understand that and avoided her.

XIII

When Pierre and his wife came to the drawing room, the countess was in the habitual state of needing to occupy herself with the mental work of double patience, and therefore, though she said out of habit the words she always spoke when Pierre or her son returned: “It’s high time, high time, my dear; we’ve been waiting and waiting. Well, thank God,” and as the presents were given to her, said other habitual words: “It’s not the gift that’s dear, my friend—thank you for thinking of an old woman like me…”—one could see that Pierre’s coming was disagreeable to her at that moment, because it distracted her from her unfinished double patience. She finished the patience and only then received the presents. The presents consisted of