War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc TXT) 📕

Natásha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, or such a chicken anywhere. Anísya Fëdorovna left the room.

After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostóv and “Uncle” talked of past and future hunts, of Rugáy and Ilágin’s dogs, while Natásha sat upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to wake Pétya that he might eat something, but he only muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natásha felt so lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause, such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in one’s own house, “Uncle,” answering a thought that was in his visitors’ minds, said:

“This, you see, is how I am finishing my days⁠ ⁠… Death will come. That’s it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?”

“Uncle’s” face was very significant and even handsome as he said this. Involuntarily Rostóv recalled all the good he had heard about him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province “Uncle” had the reputation of being the most honorable and disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes, chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in summer.

“Why don’t you enter the service, Uncle?”

“I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That’s it, come on! I can’t make head or tail of it. That’s for you⁠—I haven’t brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter⁠—that’s it, come on! Open the door, there!” he shouted. “Why have you shut it?”

The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen’s room, as they called the room for the hunt servants.

There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the door into the huntsmen’s room, from which came the clear sounds of a balaláyka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was playing. Natásha had been listening to those strains for some time and now went out into the passage to hear better.

“That’s Mítka, my coachman.⁠ ⁠… I have got him a good balaláyka. I’m fond of it,” said “Uncle.”

It was the custom for Mítka to play the balaláyka in the huntsmen’s room when “Uncle” returned from the chase. “Uncle” was fond of such music.

“How good! Really very good!” said Nikoláy with some unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him very much.

“Very good?” said Natásha reproachfully, noticing her brother’s tone. “Not ‘very good’⁠—it’s simply delicious!”

Just as “Uncle’s” pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight.

“More, please, more!” cried Natásha at the door as soon as the balaláyka ceased. Mítka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balaláyka to the air of “My Lady,” with trills and variations. “Uncle” sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was repeated a hundred times. The balaláyka was retuned several times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anísya Fëdorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.

“You like listening?” she said to Natásha, with a smile extremely like “Uncle’s.” “That’s a good player of ours,” she added.

“He doesn’t play that part right!” said “Uncle” suddenly, with an energetic gesture. “Here he ought to burst out⁠—that’s it, come on!⁠—ought to burst out.”

“Do you play then?” asked Natásha.

“Uncle” did not answer, but smiled.

“Anísyushka, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I haven’t touched it for a long time. That’s it⁠—come on! I’ve given it up.”

Anísya Fëdorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her errand and brought back the guitar.

Without looking at anyone, “Uncle” blew the dust off it and, tapping the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at Anísya Fëdorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow time, not “My Lady,” but the well-known song: “Came a maiden down the street.” The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the hearts of Nikoláy and Natásha, arousing in them the same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anísya Fëdorovna’s whole being. Anísya Fëdorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing out of the room. “Uncle” continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anísya Fëdorovna had just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers over the strings, something seemed to snap.

“Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!” shouted Natásha as soon as he had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. “Nikólenka, Nikólenka!” she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: “What is it moves me so?”

Nikoláy too was greatly pleased by “Uncle’s” playing, and “Uncle” played the piece over again. Anísya Fëdorovna’s smiling face reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces⁠ ⁠…

Fetching water clear and sweet,
Stop, dear maiden, I entreat⁠—

played “Uncle” once more, running his fingers skillfully over the strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.

“Go on, Uncle dear,” Natásha wailed