LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

said in response to his glance and set off even more quickly along the corridor.

      Pierre did not understand what was going on, and even less what it meant to look out for someone’s interests, but he did understand that all of this was as it ought to be. The corridor brought them out into the dimly lit hall adjoining the count’s reception room. It was one of those cold and sumptuous rooms that Pierre knew from the formal wing. But even in the middle of this room there was a bath standing empty and water had been spilled on the carpet. A servant and a junior deacon with a censer tiptoed out towards them, paying no attention to them. They entered the reception room that Pierre knew so well, with its two Italian windows, its doors to the winter garden, the large bust and the full-length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people, in almost the same places as before, were still sitting in the reception room, whispering to each other. Everyone fell silent and glanced round at Anna Mikhailovna as she entered, with her careworn, pale face, and at Pierre, big and fat, who was following her with his head meekly lowered.

      Anna Mikhailovna’s face expressed the realisation that the decisive moment had arrived, and she entered the room with the bearing of a practical St. Petersburg lady, without letting Pierre away from her, even more boldly than in the morning. She evidently felt that leading after her the person whom the dying man wished to see guaranteed that she would be admitted. Casting a swift glance over everyone present in the room and noticing the count’s confessor, she glided smoothly across to him and, without exactly stooping but suddenly becoming shorter, she respectfully accepted the blessing of first one clergyman, then another.

      “Thank God I am in time,” she said to one clergyman, “we relatives were all so afraid. This young man is the count’s son,” she added more quietly. “A terrible moment!”

      After uttering these words, she walked up to the doctor.

      “My dear doctor,” she said to him, “this young man is the count’s son … is there any hope?”

      Without speaking, the doctor raised his eyes and his shoulders in a rapid movement. Anna Mikhailovna raised her eyes and shoulders in exactly the same movement, almost closing her eyes, sighed and moved away from the doctor to Pierre. She addressed Pierre in a tone of especial deference and gentle sorrow:

      “Trust in His mercy,” she said to him and, having indicated a small divan for him to sit on and wait, she herself moved soundlessly towards the door at which everyone kept looking and, after a barely audible sound, this door closed behind her.

      Pierre, having decided to obey his guide in all things, walked towards the divan that she had pointed out to him. As soon as Anna Mikkhailovna left the room, he noticed that the glances of everyone there were directed at him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that everyone was whispering to each other, pointing him out with their eyes, seemingly in fear or even servility. They were showing him a respect that they had never shown him before: a lady he did not know, who had been speaking with the clergymen, got up from her seat and offered it to him; an adjutant picked up a glove that Pierre dropped and handed it to him. The doctors respectfully fell silent as he walked past them and moved aside to allow him space. Pierre at first tried to sit in a different place, in order not to inconvenience the lady, he wanted to pick up the glove himself and walk round the doctors, who were not standing in his way at all; but he suddenly sensed that it would be improper, he sensed that on this night he was an individual who was obliged to perform some terrible, universally expected ritual and that therefore he must accept services from everybody. He accepted the glove from the adjutant without a word, and sat in the lady’s place, setting his large hands on his knees, symmetrically positioned in the naïve pose of an Egyptian statue, having decided to himself that all this was exactly as it ought to be and that this evening, in order not to become confused or do anything stupid, he ought not to act according to his own understanding, but submit himself entirely to the will of those who were leading him.

      Less than two minutes went by before Prince Vasily majestically entered the room in his kaftan with three starry orders, holding his head high. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning; his eyes were larger than usual when he glanced round the room and saw Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (which he had never done before) and tugged it downwards, as though he wished to test how firmly it was attached.

      “Bear up, bear up, my friend. He has asked to see you. That is good …” and he was about to leave. But Pierre felt it necessary to ask:

      “How is …” He stopped short, not knowing whether it was proper to call the dying man the count, but ashamed to call him father.

      “He has suffered another stroke, half an hour ago. Bear up, my friend …”

      Pierre was in such a confused state of mind that at the word “stroke” he imagined a blow from some object. He looked at Prince Vasily, perplexed. Only afterwards did he realise that a stroke was the name of the illness. Prince Vasily said a few words to Lorrain as he walked by and went in through the door on tiptoe. He did not know how to walk on tiptoe and his entire body bobbed up and down awkwardly. The eldest princess followed him, then the clergymen and junior deacons went through and a servant also went in at the door. There was the sound of things being moved behind the door and finally Anna Mikhailovna came running out with the same pale face set firm in the performance of her duty and, touching Pierre’s arm, said:

      “God’s mercy is inexhaustible. The rite of extreme unction is about to begin. Let us go.”

      Pierre went in through the door, walking across the soft carpet, and noticed that the adjutant and the lady he did not know and some other servant all followed him in, as if there were no longer any need to ask permission to enter this room.

      XXX

      Pierre knew this large room, divided by columns and an arch, its floor completely covered with Persian carpets, very well. The section of the room beyond the columns, where on one side there was a tall mahogany bedstead standing under silk curtains, and on the other an immense icon case with holy images, was brightly and beautifully illuminated, in the same way as churches are lit during the evening service. Standing under the illuminated rizas of the icon frame was a long Voltairian couch, and lying on the couch, which was padded at the top with snow-white, uncreased, pillows that had evidently only just been changed, covered up to the waist by a bright green quilt, lay the familiar majestic figure of Pierre’s father, Count Bezukhov, with that grey mane of hair reminiscent of a lion above the broad forehead, and those large, characteristically noble, wrinkles on the handsome reddish-yellow face. He was lying directly under the icons; both of his large, chubby hands had been freed from under the quilt and were lying on top of it. A wax candle had been set between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, which was lying palm-down, and an old servant, leaning forward out of his armchair, was holding it in place. The clergymen were standing over the couch in their magnificent, glittering robes, with their long, loose hair flowing down over them, holding lighted candles and slowly and solemnly intoning the service. A little way behind them stood the two younger princesses, one clutching her handkerchief and the other pressing hers to her eyes, and in front of them the eldest, Katish, with a spiteful and determined expression, not taking her eyes off the icons for a moment, as though she were telling everyone that she could not answer for herself if she looked away. Anna Mikhailovna, her face expressing meek sorrow and universal forgiveness, and the unknown lady were standing by the door. Prince Vasily was standing at the other side of the door, close to the couch, behind a carved velvet-upholstered chair, the back of which he had turned towards himself, resting his left hand with a candle on it, and was crossing himself with his right hand, each time raising his eyes upwards as he touched his fingers to his forehead. His face expressed serene piety and devotion to the will of God. “If you do not understand these feelings, then so much the worse for you,” his face seemed to say.

      Behind him stood the adjutant, the doctors and the male servants; as if they were in church, the men and the women had separated. Everyone there was silent, crossing themselves, and all that could be heard were the words of the service, the rich, restrained, bass singing and, in the moments

Скачать книгу