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Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in
the ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state
and the inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in
the doctor's opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh
day he ate with pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the
doctor noticed that his temperature was lower. He had regained
consciousness that morning. The first night after they left Moscow
had been fairly warm and he had remained in the caleche, but at
Mytishchi the wounded man himself asked to be taken out and given
some tea. The pain caused by his removal into the hut had made
him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he had been
placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: "And
the tea?" His remembering such a small detail of everyday
life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse, and
to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He
was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient
did not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering.
Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had
joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having
been wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied
by a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coach. man, and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking
with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to
understand and remember something.
"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.
Timokhin crept along the bench to him.
"I am here, your excellency."
"How's your wound?"
"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"
Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.
"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.
"What book?"
"The Gospels. I haven't one."
The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask
how he was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly
but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under
him as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and
valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry
faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from
the wound, began examining that dreadful place. The doctor was
very much displeased about something and made a change in the
dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned again
and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking
them to get him the book and put it under him.
"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I
have not got one. Please get it for me and put it under for a
moment," he pleaded in a piteous voice.
The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the
valet who was pouring water over his hands. "For just one
moment I didn't look after you... It's such pain, you know, that
I wonder how he can bear it."
"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something
under him!" said the valet.
The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what
was the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was
when he asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had
stopped at Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being
carried into the hut he again regained consciousness, and while
drinking tea once more recalled all that had happened to him,
and above all vividly remembered the moment at the ambulance station
when, at the sight of the sufferings of a man he disliked, those
new thoughts had come to him which promised him happiness. And
those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again possessed
his soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of happiness
and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels.
That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position
in which they had put him and turned him over again confused his
thoughts, and when he came to himself a third time it was in the
complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him was sleeping.
A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was shouting
and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the table, on
the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head
of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which
was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.
His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually
thinks of, feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously,
but has the power and will to select one sequence of thoughts
or events on which to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can
tear himself away from the deepest reflections to say a civil
word to someone who comes in and can then return again to his
own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's mind was not in a normal state
in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more active and
clearer than ever, but they acted apart from his will. Most diverse
thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously. At times his
brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth
it had never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the
midst of its work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he
had not the strength to turn it back again.
"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man
cannot be deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness
of the quiet hut, gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide
open eyes. "A happiness lying beyond material forces, outside
the material influences that act on man- a happiness of the soul
alone, the happiness of loving. Every man can understand it, but
to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only for God. But how
did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?"
And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and
Prince Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion
or reality) a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically
repeating "piti-piti-piti," and then "titi,"
and then again "piti-piti-piti," and "ti-ti"
once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected
out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered
music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was
difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but
nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the
sound of whispered rhythmic music- "it stretches, stretches,
spreading out and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself.
While listening to this whispering and feeling the sensation of
this drawing out and the construction of this edifice of needles,
he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and heard
the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched
his face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise
it did not destroy the structure, though it knocked against the
very region of his face where it was rising. But besides this
there was something else of importance. It was something white
by the door- the statue of a sphinx, which also oppressed him.
"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought,
"and that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it
always stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti'
and 'ti-ti' and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave
off!" Prince Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly
thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of his mind with
peculiar clearness and force.
"Yes- love," he thought again quite clearly. "But
not love which loves for something, for some quality, for some
purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I- while dying-
first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced
that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and
does not require an object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love
one's neighbors, to love one's enemies, to love everything, to
love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love someone
dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved by
divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that
I loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...
"When loving with human love one may pass from love to
hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything
else can destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how
many people have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved
and hated none as I did her." And he vividly pictured to
himself Natasha, not as he had done in the past with nothing but
her charms which gave him delight, but for the first time picturing
to himself her soul. And he understood her feelings, her sufferings,
shame, and remorse. He now understood for the first time all the
cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his rupture with
her. "If only it were possible for me to see her once more!
Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."
"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!"
flopped the fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into
another world, a world of reality and delirium in which something
particular was happening. In that world some structure was still
being erected and did not fall, something was still stretching
out, and the candle with its red halo was still burning, and the
same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but besides all this
something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and a new white
sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had the
pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of whom he had
just been thinking.
"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,"
thought Prince Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination.
But the face remained before him with the force of reality and
drew nearer. Prince Andrew wished to return that former world
of pure thought, but he could not, and delirium drew him back
into its domain. The soft whispering voice continued its rhythmic
murmur, something oppressed him and stretched out, and the strange
face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all his strength
in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and suddenly
there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like
a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to
himself, Natasha, that same living Natasha whom of all people
he most longed to love with this new pure divine love that had
been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He realized that
it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised but quietly
happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to stir),
with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her sobs.
Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it something
quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his
hand.
"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"
With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him
on her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over
it and began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.
"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and
glancing at him. "Forgive me!"
"I love you," said Prince Andrew.
"Forgive...!"
"Forgive what?" he asked.
"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha
in a scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand
more rapidly, just touching it with her lips.
"I love you more, better than before," said Prince
Andrew, lifting her face with his hand so as to look into her
eyes.
Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face,
with its swollen lips, was more than plain- it was dreadful. But
Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which
were beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.
Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his
leg, had long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering
his bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.
"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his
bed. "Please go away, madam!"
At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed
her daughter's absence, knocked at the door.
Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out
of the room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey,
at every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha
never left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit
that he had not expected from a young girl either such firmness
or such skill in nursing a wounded man.
Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince
Andrew die in her daughter's arms during the journey- as, judging
by what the doctor said, it seemed might easily happen- she could
not oppose Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between
the wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he
recover their former engagement would be renewed, no one- least
of all Natasha and Prince Andrew- spoke of this: the unsettled
question of life and death, which hung not only over Bolkonski
but over all Russia, shut out all other considerations.
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