LIV
And here is the glade. “Natasha, do you remember? How warmly they all sang ‘Arise, ye branded with a curse!’ Natasha, will you sing it again? Do. Is it a torture?”
“I’ll sing,” replies Natasha quietly.
She sings in a low voice, almost to herself. The mother listens, and the grandmother listens—but what have the birches and the grass and the clear moon to do with human songs!
In the International
As brothers all men shall meet!
Her song is at an end. The wood is silent. The moon waits. The mist is pensive. The birches seem to listen. The sky is clear.
Ah, for whom is all this life? Who calls? Who responds? Or is it all the play of the dead?
Loudly wailing, the mother calls: “Borya, Borya!”
Overflowing with tears Elena Kirillovna replies: “Borya won’t come. There is no Borya.”
Natasha stretches out her arms toward the lifeless moon, and cries out: “Borya has been hanged!”
All three now stand side by side, looking at the moon, and weeping. Louder grows their sobbing, fiercer the note of despair. Their moans merge finally into a prolonged, wild wailing, which can be heard for some distance.
The dog at the forester’s hut is restless. Trembling with all his lean body, his short hair bristling, he has pricked up his ears. Rising, he stretches his slender limbs. His sharp muzzle, showing its teeth, is uplifted to the tormenting moon. His eyes burn with a yearning flame. The dog bays in answer to the distant wail of the women in the wood.
People are asleep.