Chapter 31 Chapter Thirty-One

The footman went back to the house and reported to the count that Moscow was burning, and the count put on his coat and went out to see.He went out with Sonia and Mrs. Shaws, who had not undressed for bed.Only the Countess and Natasha remained in the room. (Petya was no longer with the family, for he had gone ahead with the regiment to which he belonged for Troitz.) When the countess heard the news of the fire in Moscow, she wept.Natasha, pale and fixed-eyed, sat on the bench under the icon (where she had been since her arrival), paying no attention to what her father said.She was listening to the adjutant's incessant groans, which came from three houses away.

"Oh, how terrible!" said Sonya, coming back from the yard, trembling and frightened, "I see Moscow will burn down, what a frightful flame! Now look, Natasha, from the window here." Just see," she said to her cousin, evidently hoping to break her gloom.But Natasha looked at her, as if she did not understand what was being asked of her, and she fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove again.Natasha had been sitting in this way since morning until now, when Sonya, much to the countess' surprise and annoyance, confided to Natasha that Prince Andrey was wounded and was traveling with them, I really don't know why.The Countess had never been so angry with Sonia.Sonia cried and begged for forgiveness, and now, as if trying to minimize her fault, she kept showing consideration and caring for her cousin. "Look, Natasha, what a terrible burn," said Sonia.

"Where is it burning?" Natasha asked. "Ah, yes, Moscow." So, it seems that it is inconvenient to deliberately disobey Sonia, and at the same time to get rid of her conventional view of truth with relativism.One of the founders was French mathematics, and she turned her head to the window, looked at it with an apparently blind look, and sat down again in the same position as before. "Didn't you see it?" "No, I did see it," said Natasha in a voice begging for silence. Only then did the countess and Sonia understand that no matter Moscow or the fire in Moscow, it must not affect Natasha.

The count went back behind the partition and lay down again.The countess went up to Natasha, touched her head with the back of her hand, as she always did when her daughter was sick, touched her forehead with her lips, as if to know if it was warm, and kissed her. "Are you cold? Shaking all over. You'd better lie down," she said. "Lie down? Yes, all right, I'll lie down. I'll lie down now," said Natasha. Where was he going?How is the injury?Is it fatal?Can she visit him?But after telling her that she couldn't see him, that he was seriously injured but not life-threatening, she obviously didn't believe what was being said to her, and firmly believed that no matter how many times she said it, she would only get the same answer, and stopped Ask questions without even saying a word.Along the way Natasha sat motionless in a corner of the carriage with wide-open eyes (eyes which the Countess was so familiar with, and whose expression terrified the Countess), while she remained still on the bench. Sit still.She was thinking about something, and she was either still thinking about it, or she had made up her mind.The countess could see it, but she didn't know what she was thinking about, and it frightened and distressed her.

"Natasha, undress, babe; sleep in my bed." (Bed on a bed frame for the Countess only. Mrs. Shaws and both Misses sleep on hay on the floor superior.) "No, mother, I'm going to sleep on the floor here," answered Natasha angrily, going to the window and opening it.The adjutant's groans were heard more clearly through the open window.She put her head out into the moist night air, and the countess saw her little neck, trembling with sobs, touch the window frame.Natasha knew that it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning.She knew that Prince Andrey was lying in a cabin across the passage from the house where they lived; but this terrible incessant moaning made her weep.The Countess exchanged glances with Sonia.

"Lie down, dear, lie down, my friend," said the countess, patting Natasha on the shoulder. "Okay, lie down and sleep." "Ah, yes... I'll lie down right away," said Natasha, and hastily undressed, ripping off her skirt.After she took off her dress and put on her short pajamas, she knelt on the bunk on the floor, swung the braids to her chest, and began to rebraid them.Her slender, practiced fingers quickly unbraided, rebraided, and tied.Her head was habitually turned to the side, but her wide, feverish eyes looked straight ahead.After changing her clothes, Natasha crept quietly into the mattress that was spread on the hay by the door.

"Natasha, you sleep in the middle," Sonya said. "I'm going to sleep here," Natasha answered. "Lie down, too," she added annoyedly.Then, bury your face in the pillow. The Countess, Mrs. Shaws and Sonia hurriedly undressed for bed.There was only one single lamp left under the icon in the room.But the courtyard was brightly lit by the fire from the village of Malymytish, two versts away, and from the street, in the tavern whose door had been smashed diagonally by the Mamonov Cossacks, one could hear the nocturnal commotion of the people, and still hear the adjutant's unrest. Stop moaning.

Natasha listened attentively to the sounds coming from inside and outside, and listened for a long time without moving. She heard first her mother's prayers and sighs, the creaking of her couch, Mrs. Shaws's familiar hissing snores, and Sonia snorted softly.Then the countess called to Natasha.Natasha didn't respond. "It seems that she fell asleep, mother." Sonia replied softly.The countess was silent for a while and called again, but no one answered her. Soon after this Natasha heard her mother's even breathing.She didn't make a sound, although her bare foot was sticking out of the bed, freezing to death on the bare floor.

A cricket, as if celebrating its victory over everyone, chirped in a crack in the wall.A rooster crowed in the distance, and a rooster nearby responded.The shouting in the tavern fell silent, only the adjutant was still moaning.Natasha sat up. "Sonia? Are you asleep? Mom?" she called softly, but no one answered.Natasha got up slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and carefully stepped her thin, flexible bare feet onto the dirty, cold floor.The floor creaked.She flipped her feet quickly, ran a few steps like a kitten, and grabbed the cold doorknob. She felt something heavy, rhythmically beating against the walls of the farmhouse: it was the beating of her tightly constricted heart, broken with terror and fear and love.

She opened the door, stepped over the threshold, and stepped onto the wet, cold floor of the hall.The cold air against her face lifted her spirits.Her bare feet touched a sleeping man, she stepped over him, and opened the door of the farmhouse where Prince Andrew lived.The room is very dark.In the innermost corner, on a stool beside the bed where someone was lying, stood a tallow candle whose wick formed a large candle. Natasha had decided from the morning when she was informed that Prince Andrew was wounded and living here that she should go and see him.She didn't know why she did it, but she knew that the meeting would be painful, and that was why she was so determined that it had to be done.

All day long, she looked forward to seeing him at night.And now, when the moment came, she was terrified of what she was about to see.How disabled is he?What's left?Was it like that groaning lieutenant?Yes, he totally is.In her imagination, he was the embodiment of that terrible moan.When she saw an indistinct mass in the corner of the room, taking his arched knees under the covers for his shoulders, she thought she saw a horrible body and frightened her to move.But an irresistible force attracted her to move forward.She took one step carefully, and another step, and appeared in the middle of the house full of debris.On one of the cobbled-together benches under the icon lay another man (this was Tymokhin), and on the floor some two others (these were the doctor and his attendant). The attendant got up and whispered something.Timoxin couldn't fall asleep due to the pain in his leg, and stared at this strange figure—a girl in a white shirt, jacket, and hoodie.The startled question of the sleepy attendant—"What do you want, what are you here for?"—made Natasha approach even more rapidly the thing lying in the corner.No matter how terrible the body was, how inhuman it was, she wanted to see him.As she passed by the retinue, the candle-wicks fell, and she saw clearly Prince Andrew lying with his hands stretched out from the quilt, as she had always seen him before. He was not his usual self; but his feverish countenance, his bright eyes gazing excitedly at her, and above all the thin, childlike neck that peeped out from the open collar of his shirt, gave him a peculiar childlike aspect, which was She had never seen anything in Prince Andrew.She walked to him with brisk, flexible young steps and knelt down beside him. He smiled and held out his hand to her.