Читать книгу War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой, Leo Tolstoy, Liev N. Tolstói - Страница 39

While these conversations were taking place in the reception room and the princess’s quarters, the carriage with Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna Mikhailovna (who had deemed it necessary to travel with him), was driving into Count Bezukhov’s courtyard. As the wheels of the carriage began crunching gently across the straw spread under the windows, Anna Mikhailovna realised, on addressing her travelling companion with words of consolation, that he was asleep in the corner of the carriage and she woke him up. Once awake, Pierre followed Anna Mikhailovna out of the carriage and only then thought about the meeting with his dying father that awaited him. He noticed that they had driven up to the rear entrance, not the main one. Just as he stepped down from the footboard, two men in tradesmen’s clothes darted hastily away from the entrance into the shadow of the wall. Halting for a moment, Pierre made out several other similar figures in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhailovna, nor the servant, nor the coachman, who could not have failed to see these people, took any notice of them. “Perhaps that is how things should be,” Pierre thought to himself and followed Anna Mikhailovna inside. Anna Mikhailovna walked hurriedly up the dimly lit, narrow stone staircase, calling to Pierre, who was falling behind, to hurry. Not understanding why he had to go to the count, and even less why he had to go by the back staircase, he nevertheless decided that, judging from Anna Mikhailovna’s certainty and haste, it was definitely necessary. Halfway up the stairs they were almost knocked over by some men with buckets who came running down towards them, clattering their boots. These people pressed themselves back against the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna past, and showed not the slightest surprise at the sight of them.

“Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” Anna Mikhailovna asked one of them.

“Yes, it is,” the servant replied in a loud, bold voice, as if now everything were permitted, “the door’s on the left, ma’am.”

“Perhaps the count did not send for me,” said Pierre as he reached the landing, “I should go to my room.”

Anna Mikhailovna halted and waited for Pierre to draw level with her.

“Ah, my friend,” she said touching his arm with the very same gesture that she had used with her son that morning. “Remember that he is your father … perhaps in the final agony.” She sighed. “I loved you immediately, like a son. Trust in me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests.”

Pierre did not understand anything: once again he had the feeling, even more strongly, that this was how everything ought to be, and he meekly followed after Anna Mikhailovna, who was already opening the door.

The door led into the lobby of the back entrance. The eldest princess’s old manservant was sitting in the corner, knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been in this wing of the house, he had not even suspected the existence of these apartments. Anna Mikhailovna enquired after the princesses’ health from a girl who was overtaking them with a carafe on a tray, calling her “my dear” and “darling”, and dragged Pierre further on along the stone corridor. The first door to the left from the corridor led into the princesses’ living quarters. In her haste (just as everything in that house was being done in haste at that moment) the maid with the carafe had not closed the door and, as they walked past, Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna automatically glanced into the room where the eldest princess and Prince Vasily were sitting close to each other, talking. Seeing them walking by, Prince Vasily made an impatient gesture and drew himself back, while the princess leapt to her feet and slammed the door with all her might in a furious gesture, locking it.

This gesture was so unlike the princess’s constant composure and the fear expressed on Prince Vasily’s face was so uncharacteristic of his normal pompous gravity that Pierre halted and looked enquiringly at his guide through his spectacles. Anna Mikhailovna did not express any surprise, she only smiled gently and sighed, as if indicating that she had been expecting all of this.

“Be a man, my friend, I shall look out for your interests,” she 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.