Healing Through Connection — War and Peace

Princess Mary postpones her departure. Sonya and the count try to replace Natasha and cannot. For three weeks Natasha stays at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge, making her eat and drink, talking because the sound of her caressing tones soothes the countess. Petya's death tears half a life from a woman who had been vigorous at fifty; a month later she leaves her room a listless old woman. The same blow restores Natasha. A spiritual wound, like a physical one, heals only from a vital force within. Love for her mother shows her that the essence of life is still active. Love wakes, and so does life.

Andrew's last days had bound the two women; this new sorrow draws them closer. Mary looks after Natasha as a sick child. One afternoon, seeing her shiver, Mary takes her to her own room. Natasha will not sleep. She studies Mary's face: like him and not like him, original, unknown, and she loves her. From that day a passionate friendship forms. They kiss, grow restless apart, talk till morning of childhood and faith. Natasha, who once turned from devotion and Christian self-sacrifice, learns to love that past in another without applying it to herself. Mary hears Natasha's tales of early youth and finds a side of life she had not comprehended: belief in life and its enjoyment. They still never mention him, and the silence slowly lets memory soften without their noticing.

Natasha grows thin and pale. Weakness pleases her, then frightens her: she examines a thin arm, a drawn face in the glass. She runs upstairs twice to test her breath. She calls Dunyasha in the old singing chest tones to hear whether the voice remains. Beneath the slime that seemed to cover her soul, Tolstoy says, young shoots are already taking root. At the end of January Mary leaves for Moscow, and the count insists Natasha go with her to consult the doctors.