Читать книгу War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой, Leo Tolstoy, Liev N. Tolstói - Страница 42

At Bleak Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, they were expecting the arrival of the young Prince Andrei and his princess any day, but this anticipation did not disrupt the strict order which life followed in the home of the old prince. Ever since he had been exiled to the country under Tsar Paul, General-in-Chief Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, known in society as the King of Prussia, had never left Bleak Hills, living there with his daughter, Princess Marya, and her companion Mademoiselle Bourienne. Even during the present reign, although he had been granted permission to enter the two capitals, he had continued to live in the country without leaving it once, saying that if anybody needed him, then that person would have to travel the one hundred and fifty versts to Bleak Hills, but he had no need of anyone or anything. There were, he would say, only two sources of human vice: idleness and superstition; and only two virtues: activity and intelligence. He conducted his daughter’s education himself and, in order to develop in her both of the principal virtues, until the age of twenty he gave her lessons in algebra and arranged her entire life in a pattern of ceaseless study. He himself was constantly occupied either with writing his memoirs, or calculations from higher mathematics, or turning snuffboxes on a lathe, or working in the garden and supervising the construction projects which went on unceasingly on his estate, or reading his favourite authors. Since the primary condition of effective activity is order, in his life order was also carried to the ultimate degree of precision. His appearances at table were all made under the same unvarying conditions, not just at the same hour, but the same minute. With the people who surrounded him, from his daughter to the servants, the prince was brusque and unvaryingly demanding and therefore, not being cruel, he inspired fear and respect such as not even the most cruel of men could have easily commanded. Despite the fact that he was retired and now had no influence in affairs of state, every high official in the province where the prince’s estate lay regarded it as his duty to report to him and, just like the architect, the gardener and Princess Marya, waited for the appointed hour of the prince’s appearance in the high-ceilinged waiting room. Everyone in that waiting room experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear at that moment when the enormous, tall door of the study opened and the old man’s short figure appeared in that powdered wig, with those small, dry hands and grey, beetling brows which sometimes, when he scowled, veiled the bright gleam in his intelligent and youthful-looking eyes.

On the morning of the day of the young couple’s arrival, Princess Marya, following her custom, entered the footman’s room at the usual time for the morning salutation, crossing herself fearfully and inwardly reciting a prayer. Every day she went in and every day she prayed for this daily meeting to pass successfully.

The powdered old manservant sitting in the footman’s room rose quietly to his feet and declared in a whisper: “If you please!”

From behind the door she could hear the regular sounds of a lathe. The princess timidly tugged at the door, which always opened easily and smoothly, and stopped in the doorway. The prince was working at the lathe and, after glancing round, he continued with what he was doing.

The huge study was filled with things that were obviously in constant use. The large desk with books and maps lying on it, the tall glazed bookcases of the library with keys in their doors, the marble table for writing in a standing position, with an open notebook lying on it, the turner’s lathe with the tools laid out and wood shavings scattered around it – everything evinced constant, varied and ordered activity. The movements of the small foot shod in a Tatar boot sewn with silver thread and the firm pressure of the lean, sinewy hand betrayed in the prince the strength of fresh old age, still stubborn and capable of great endurance. After making a few more turns, he removed his foot from the pedal of the lathe, wiped off his chisel, dropped it into a leather pocket attached to the lathe, went over to the desk and called his daughter to him. He never blessed his children and, after presenting her with his stubbly cheek, still unshaven that day, he merely said, looking her over severely and yet at the same time with attentive affection: “Are you well? Well then, sit down!” (As always, he spoke curtly and abruptly, opening the geometry notebook written in his own hand and moving his armchair up with his foot.)

“For tomorrow!” he said, rapidly locating the right page and marking from one paragraph to another with his tough nail. The princess bent down over the notebook on the table. “Wait, there’s a letter for you,” the old man said suddenly, taking an envelope written in a woman’s hand out of a pocket fixed above the desk and tossing it onto the desk.

Blotches of red covered the princess’s face at the sight of the letter. She hastily took it and bent over it.

“From Héloise?” the prince asked, his cold smile revealing teeth that were still sound, but gapped and yellowed.

“Yes, from Julie Akhrosimova,” said the princess, with a timid glance and a timid smile.

“I shall let two more letters through, but I shall read the third one,” the prince said strictly, “I fear you are writing a lot of drivel. I shall read the third one.”

“Read this one if you wish, father,” replied the princess, blushing even more intensely and offering him the letter.

“The third one I said, the third one,” the prince shouted curtly, pushing the letter away. Leaning his elbows on the desk, he pulled across the notebook with the geometry diagrams.

“Well now, my lady,” the old man began, bending down close to his daughter and placing one hand on the back of the chair in which the princess was sitting, so that the princess felt herself enveloped on all sides by her father’s long-familiar acrid scent of tobacco and old age.

“Well now, my lady, these triangles are congruent: be so good as to show me the angle abc…”

The princess glanced in fright at her father’s gleaming eyes, so close to her: red blotches flooded across her face and it was clear that she did not understand anything and was so afraid that her fear would prevent her from understanding all of her father’s subsequent explanations, no matter how clear they might be. Whether the teacher was at fault or the pupil, every day the same scene was repeated: everything blurred in front of the princess’s eyes, she could not see anything, she could not hear anything, she could only feel her strict father’s dry, stern face beside her, feel his breath and his smell and only think about getting out of the study as quickly as possible and mastering the problem in the calm freedom of her own room. The old man lost his temper: he scraped the chair on which he was sitting away from the desk and then back towards it again, trying to control himself and not fly into a passion, yet almost every time he did fly into a passion, upbraiding her and sometimes flinging the notebook away.

The princess gave the wrong answer.

“Well, what a fool you are!” cried the prince pushing the notebook aside and turning away sharply: but he immediately rose to his feet, strode up and down, touched the princess’s hair with his hands and sat down again. He moved his chair up closer to the desk and continued his exposition in a forcibly restrained voice.

“This will not do from you, princess,” he said as the princess, having picked up the notebook with the set lessons and closed it, was preparing to leave. “Mathematics is a great matter, my lady. And I do not want you to be like our stupid young ladies, I do not want that. You will enjoy it when you get used to it.” He patted her on the cheek. “You’ll forget all about this foolishness.” She was about to go out, but he stopped her with a gesture and took a new book with uncut pages off the tall table.

THE MATHS LESSON Wood engraving by K.I. Rikhai after the drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866

“And here we have a certain Key to the Sacrament which your Héloise sends you. Religious. But I don’t interfere in anybody’s faith. I’ve looked it through. Take it. Right, off you go, off you go!”

He patted her on the cheek and locked the door behind her himself.