War And Peace

Even in the very warmest, friendliest and simplest of relationships you need either flattery or praise in the way that you need grease to keep wheels turning.

‘I’m yesterday’s man,’ said Prince Andrey. ‘There’s no point in talking about me. Let’s talk about you,’ he said after a short pause, smiling at his own thoughts of consolation. His smile was instantly reflected on Pierre’s face.

‘Why, what is there to say about me?’ said Pierre, his mouth broadening in an easy-going, happy smile. ‘What am I? I am a bastard.’ And he suddenly blushed to the roots of his hair. Clearly, it cost him a great effort to say this. ‘No name, no fortune . . . And really, when all’s said and done . . .’ But he didn’t say really what. ‘Anyway, I’m free for the time being and I’m doing all right. It’s just that I’ve no idea what to get going on. I wanted to talk things over with you seriously.’

Prince Andrey looked at him with kindly eyes. But as he looked, for all his friendliness and kindness he knew his own superiority.

‘I feel close to you because you’re the only living person in our social group. You’ll be all right. Choose anything; it won’t make any difference. You’ll always be all right, but there is one thing – stop knocking about with the Kuragins and leading their kind of life. It doesn’t suit you, all that riotous living, debauchery and all that stuff . . .’

‘Can’t be helped, old man,’ said Pierre with a shrug. ‘Women, my dear fellow, women.’

‘I can’t see it,’ answered Andrey. ‘Decent women are all very well, but Kuragin’s women, women and wine . . . No, I just can’t see it!’ Pierre was staying at Prince Vasily Kuragin’s, and sharing in the dissipated lifestyle of his son Anatole, the young man whom they were proposing to marry off to Prince Andrey’s sister – in order to reform him.

‘You know what?’ said Pierre, as though a happy thought had suddenly struck him. ‘Seriously, I’ve been thinking that for quite a while now. With this kind of life I can’t make any decisions, or think anything through. I’ve got a permanent headache and no money in my pocket. He’s invited me tonight, but I’m not going.’

‘Promise me you won’t go.’

‘I promise.’

It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. On one of those limpid ‘white nights’ typical of Petersburg in June¹⁷

Pierre got into a hired cab with every intention of going home. But the nearer he got, the more he realized it would be impossible to get to sleep on a night like this, when it was more like evening or morning. You could see right down the empty streets. On the way Pierre remembered that the old gambling school would be meeting at Anatole Kuragin’s that night, and it would usually lead on to a drinking session followed by one of Pierre’s favourite pastimes.

‘It would be nice to go to Kuragin’s,’ he thought, but then remembered he had promised Prince Andrey he wouldn’t go there again.

But, as so often happens with people who might be described as spineless, he felt such a strong urge for one more shot at the old debauchery that he decided to go. And it suddenly occurred to him that his promise wasn’t valid anyway because he had already promised Prince Anatole that he would go before promising Andrey that he wouldn’t. Then he began to think that all promises like that were relative, they had no definite meaning, especially if you imagined that tomorrow you might be dead or something so strange might happen that there would be no difference between honesty and dishonesty. Pierre was very prone to this kind of speculation which destroyed all his resolutions and intentions. He went to Kuragin’s.

He drove up to the front of a mansion near the horse guards’ barracks where Anatole lived, went up the well-lit steps and the staircase, and walked in through an open door. There was no one in the vestibule; empty bottles, cloaks and overshoes were scattered about everywhere. The place reeked of drink, and in the distance he could hear people talking and shouting.

They had finished playing cards and supper was over, but the party had not broken up. Pierre threw off his cloak, and went into the first room, where there were some leftovers from supper, and a servant, thinking that no one could see him, was downing half-empty glasses on the side. From the third room came great roars of laughter, the sound of familiar voices shouting, and a bear growling. Eight or nine young men were jostling each other by an open window. Three others were playing with a bear-cub, one of them yanking at its chain and scaring the others with it.

‘A hundred on Stevens!’ cried one.

‘No holding on to the window!’ shouted another.

‘My money’s on Dolokhov!’ shouted a third. ‘You’re my witness, Kuragin.’

‘Forget that bear. There’s a bet on here.’

‘Down in one, or you’ve lost!’ cried a fourth.