Chapter 6
For Chapter 6, we're in the Rostov household. Nikolai Rostov - this translation calls him Nicholas, but I'm sticking with Nikolai to avoid confusion with the old Prince - was injured in book 2, you may recall. He was one of the young men at the party with the bear in book 1, I think. Anyway, his father, the Count, has just received a letter from him. Anna Mikhaylovna, Darling Bory's mother, who organised the party at which Pierre was told he'd proposed to Helene, is still staying with them. Nikolai - his father calls him Nikolenka, which is cute - has been injured, as we know, and promoted to officer, which I'm not sure we'd heard about before. They've not told Natasha, Nikolai's sister, yet, but she knows somethings up and, later, begs Anna to tell her. Anna does so, asking Natasha not to tell her mother. What's that phrase? Two can keep a secret so long as one of them is dead?
Well, Natasha doesn't tell her mother, she tells Sonya, who I think is her cousin, and who I know had a thing with Nikolai before he went off to war. Petya, Nikolai and Natasha's 9-year-old brother, decides to tell them how much better he would have done in handling the news, and if he'd been in Nikolai's position. What an armchair strategist.
Natasha asks Sonya if she remembers every detail of Nikolai, confessing that she can't remember Darling Bory very well. His mother would be shocked. Sonya is also shocked, and tells Natasha that she could never forget Nikolai - she loves him.
(My little joke there is that that gif is from Shadow Hearts II, which has a Russian character named Nikolai, but there weren't any gifs of him because it's not a very famous game. Also Nikolai loved Karin, but fuck Karin, she knows what she did).
Natasha knows she's never been in love like Sonya is, which is understandable because she's, what, thirteen? Sonya says she'll write to Nikolai if he writes to her, and Natasha asks, won't she be ashamed? Natasha would be ashamed to write to Darling Bory, and Petya insists that that's because, since she last saw Darling Bory, she fell in love with Pierre, and then with her Italian singing master.
While all this has been happening, Anna has told their mother, so that secret turned out not to be a big deal at all. They read the letter together, and Nikolai sends his love to Sonya. Over the next few days, lots of people come to read the letter, and the countess is filled with pride at the thought of her little baby boy being a grown-up officer. He was her first child, so every single stage of his growth seemed impossible and miraculous. I get that. How is it possible to just...make a person? And they grow inside of you and then outside of you, and become proper people and adults? It all seems very strange to me. Also, we learn that Nikolai's first words were 'pear' and 'granny', which seem like odd choices. Along with reading the letter to people, the household has been busy writing back and collecting all the money and equipment Nikolai needs to be an officer. I always assumed that sort of thing was provided, which is probably quite a modern perspective. They don't have an address for Nikolai, so they send the letters and money to Darling Bory, assuming that the Grand Duke's office is probably somewhere quite close to the Pavlograd regiment. I feel like this might end in disaster.
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