Salomini. We’ve engaged an Italian to teach her.”
“Is it not rather early? They do say it’s bad for the voice to train it at this age.”
“Oh no, not at all too early!” said the count.
“And what about our mothers getting married at twelve and thirteen?” added Countess Anna Mikhailovna.
“She’s already in love with Boris, how do you like that?” said the countess, smiling gently, glancing at Boris’s mother and, clearly replying to the thought that was always on her mind, she went on: “Well now, you see, if I were strict with her, if I forbade her … God knows what they would do in secret” (the countess meant that they would have kissed), “but as it is I know every word she says. She’ll come running to me this evening and tell me everything herself. Perhaps I do spoil her, but I really think that is best. I was strict with my elder daughter.”
“Yes, I was raised quite differently,” said the elder daughter, the beautiful Countess Vera, with a smile. But a smile did not adorn Vera’s face in the way it usually does: on the contrary, her face became unnatural and therefore unpleasant. The elder daughter Vera was good-looking, she was clever, she was well brought up. She had a pleasant voice. What she had said was just and apt but, strange to say, everyone, even the guest and the countess, glanced round at her as though they wondered why she had said it and felt uneasy.
“People always try to be clever with their oldest children, they want to make something exceptional of them,” said the guest.
“No point in pretending, ma chère! The little countess tried to be clever with Vera,” said the count. “But what of it? She still turned out splendid.”
And then, noticing with the intuition that is more perceptive than the intellect that Vera was feeling embarrassed, he went over to her and stroked her shoulder with his hand.
“Excuse me, I have a few things to see to. Do stay a bit longer,” he added, bowing and preparing to go out.
The guests stood up and left, promising to come to dinner.
“What a way to behave! Ugh, I thought they would never leave!” said the countess after she had seen the guests out.
XVI
When Natasha came out of the drawing room and started running, she only got as far as the conservatory. There she stopped, listening to the talk in the drawing room and waiting for Boris to come out. She was already beginning to feel impatient and stamped her foot, preparing to burst into tears because he was not coming immediately. When she heard the young man’s footsteps, not quiet, but rapid and discreet, the thirteen-year-old girl quickly dashed in among the tubs of plants and hid.
“Boris Nikolaevich!” she said in a deep bass, trying to frighten him, and then immediately started laughing. Catching sight of her, Boris shook his head and smiled.
“Boris, come here please,” she said with a look of significant cunning. He went over to her, making his way between the tubs.
“Boris! Kiss Mimi,” she said, smiling mischievously and holding out her doll.
“Why shouldn’t I kiss her?” he said, moving closer and keeping his eyes on Natasha.
“No, say: ‘I don’t want to.’”
She moved away from him.
“Well, I can say I don’t want to as well, if you like. Where’s the fun in kissing a doll?”
“You don’t want to? Right, then come here,” she said and moved away deeper into the plants and threw the doll onto a tub of flowers. “Closer, closer!” she whispered. She caught hold of the officer by his cuffs and her blushing face was filled with fearful solemnity.
“But do you want to kiss me?” she whispered barely audibly, peering at him warily, smiling and almost crying in her excitement.
Boris blushed.
“You’re so funny!” he said, leaning down towards her and blushing even more, but not trying to do anything and biding his time. The faint hint of mockery was still playing on his lips, on the point of disappearing.
She suddenly jumped up onto a tub so that she was taller than him, put both arms round him so that her slim, bare hands bent around his neck and, flinging her hair back with a toss of her head, kissed him full on the lips.
“Ah, what have I done!” she cried, then slipped, laughing, between the tubs to the other side of the plants, and her frisky little footsteps squeaked rapidly in the direction of the nursery. Boris ran after and stopped her.
“Natasha,” he said, “can I tell you something really special?”
She nodded.
“I love you,” he said slowly. “You’re not a child. Natasha, do what I’m going to ask you.”
“What are you going to ask me?”
“Please, let’s not do what we just did for another four years.”
Natasha stopped and thought for a moment.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she said, counting on her slim little fingers. “All right! Is it settled, then?” And a serious smile of joy illuminated her vivacious though not beautiful face.
“Yes!” said Boris.
“For ever?” the girl said. “Until death itself?”
And, taking him by the arm, she calmly walked with him into the nursery. Boris’s handsome, refined face turned red and the expression of mockery disappeared entirely from his lips. He thrust out his chest and sighed in happiness and contentment. His eyes seemed to be gazing far into the future, four years ahead, to the happy year of 1809. The young people gathered once again in the nursery, where they loved to sit most of all.
“No, you shan’t leave!” shouted Nikolai, who did and said everything passionately and impetuously, grabbing Boris by the sleeve of his uniform jacket with one hand and pulling his arm away from his sister with the other. “You have to get married.”
“You have to! You have to!” both the girls cried.
“I’ll be the sexton, Nikolaenka,” shouted Petrushka. “Please, let me be the sexton: ‘Oh Lord have mercy!’”
Although it might seem incomprehensible how much fun young men and girls could find in the wedding of the doll and Boris, one look at the exultation and joy expressed on all their faces when the doll, adorned with Seville orange blossom and wearing a white dress, was set on its kidskin bottom on a little post and Boris, who was ready to agree to anything, was led up to her, and little Petrusha, having donned a skirt, pretended he was the sexton – one look at all this was enough to share in this joy, even without understanding it.
During the dressing of the bride, for decency’s sake Nikolai and Boris were banished from the room. Nikolai walked to and fro, sighing to himself and shrugging his shoulders.
NATASHA ROSTOV AND BORIS DRUBETSKOY Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866
“What’s the matter?” asked Boris.
Nikolai glanced at his friend and gestured despairingly with his hand.
“Ah, you don’t know what just happened to me!” he said, clutching his head in his hands.
“What?” asked Boris, in a calm, humorous tone.
“Well, I’m going away, and she … No, I can’t say it!”
“But what