Sunday morning, Pierre awoke early. The house felt deserted. Certainly the opposite side of the bed was, though he'd only half-expected to find Hélène there. He sighed and pulled on his dressing-gown, fumbling a moment with the sleeves. At least he could make himself a pot of coffee before church. Assuming his wife came home from wherever she had gone by then. He did not mean to go alone. Moscow talked enough as it was. They didn't need another reason to think Pierre couldn't manage his wife.
Even if that was true.
Had he known the kind of degeneracy that would enter his house along with Hélène Vasilyevna, he thought, he'd have second-guessed this marriage. Yes, she was beautiful, and on paper the thing seemed splendid. But paper was one thing. Reality found Pierre skirting the halls like a guest in his own home, dreading the moment when he stumbled on his wife and had to speak to her. Or, these days, to her brother.
Anatole Kuragin had his moments, of course. He was a pleasant fellow—ought to be, as taking pleasure and being pleasant were his joint purposes in life. But Pierre had never agreed to let the boy into his guest room, much less move in with no indication of ever leaving. Had he known what Prince Vasily was planning, Pierre would have locked the windows, bolted the doors, and pretended not to be at home for a month. Of course, Pierre's father-in-law had given no warning. The man had thrown his disreputable son on the first train to Moscow, and the boy turned up on Pierre's steps the next day. A single carpetbag in his hand, wearing a ridiculous aquamarine coat with brown leather patches on the elbows, bleached hair crowning his head like a cockatoo.
A harmless dandy, Pierre had thought at first. Though lately, he had begun to wonder.
Particularly given the scene he walked in on as he entered the kitchen.
They lay there together, their sleeping faces bathed in the pale light of early morning. An empty bottle of vodka lay on the floor beside them. Hélène, hair still in the remnants of its style from the night before, slept with her back against the table leg, her head drooping onto one shoulder. Her lashes were immeasurably long, her breathing soft and regular. She wore the blue housecoat Pierre had bought her as a birthday gift.
Anatole lay on the kitchen floor, curled on his side like a cat, with his head in his sister's lap. He was still dressed for the opera in a well-cut black waistcoat and narrow trousers, the satin stripe down the side emphasizing the length and leanness of his legs. Anatole's white-blonde hair, in that ostentatious cut, looked almost silver against the blue fabric of Hélène's housecoat. The faint remains of a bruise colored his throat and the plane of his left cheek. Pierre couldn't muster up surprise at the notion that someone had hit the boy. Sympathy was equally difficult to come by.
Pierre made no sound at first, merely looking at his wife and brother-in-law entwined and asleep on the kitchen floor. It had Kuragin written all over it, he thought. Beautiful and obscene. They might have looked like a Renaissance sculpture if the underlying current hadn't been so revolting.
After what he'd said to her last night, after what he'd accused her of, he wondered if Hélène hadn't staged this. It wasn't beneath her. Very little was.
Pierre cleared his throat. Hélène's eyes opened, and in a moment she was fully alert. She met his eyes boldly and without apology, as if she had nothing to apologize for. Without breaking Pierre's gaze, she gently shook Anatole's shoulder, jostling him awake.
Anatole sat up and arched his slender back like he'd woken up in his own bed. Then, he turned a warm, guileless smile on Pierre. Not for the first time, Pierre wondered if Anatole were an idiot, the world's best liar, or both.
"Pierre, old man," Anatole said brightly, and stood. "Early riser, that's admirable. You slept well, I hope, mon cher?"
"Very well," Pierre said, tight-lipped.
"Excellent," Anatole said. He wove behind Pierre to snatch his coat from the chair, that gaudy steel-gray number that made him look vaguely otherworldly. "All that studying, you've earned it. Give the old brain some rest, eh? Terrible shame you missed the opera. Marya Dmitrievna asked after you."
Pierre was in no doubt that Anatole could have rattled off a string of idle nonsense for the next thirty minutes if unchecked. Though perhaps not so idle as all that, he thought. Hélène, taking advantage of Pierre's distraction, had left the room to dress. Anatole must have diverted Pierre's attention on purpose. Giving his sister an escape, sensing the tension between husband and wife. They did seem to read one another's thoughts, the Kuragins. And yet Pierre could never tell what either of them was thinking.
"You'll join Hélène and me for church?" Pierre asked, somewhat stiffly.
He regretted the invitation almost immediately. He didn't want to be alone with Hélène at church, but bringing Anatole along was, if anything, worse. Given the vulgarity he'd discovered in his own kitchen. But it was too late. Besides, he could not go to church without his wife, and he already knew his wife would not go without her brother.
Anatole grinned and tossed the coat over his arm, like a towel over the arm of a waiter. He pushed the other hand through his hair, ruffling it to the perfect cocky height. It was incredible. Anyone would have thought he'd spent the past hour getting ready, not sleeping drunk on Pierre's kitchen floor.
"Bien sur," he said. "I think we could all use some salvation this morning, don't you?"
Though he did not say so, Pierre agreed.
An hour later, they piled into a carriage and set off for St. Peter's on the opposite side of the river. Anatole had washed and changed into something more appropriate to commune with the Lord in, though his vibrant green jacket still contrived to be more suggestive than anything Pierre had ever dared to put on. Hélène sat beside her brother and did not look at Pierre. After their argument the night before, Pierre didn't want to look at her either.
He forced himself, instead, to look at Anatole. The boy had reached over to Hélène's lap and held her hand, tracing a circle in the space between her forefinger and thumb. Flirtatious, Pierre thought for a moment, sickened. Right in front of him. Flaunting it. Then, he realized: reassuring. Hélène's hand shook, and Anatole's steadied it. She was afraid. Afraid of Pierre. And Anatole had known that before he did.
Anatole watched Pierre with those large, childlike eyes. Accusing him, without saying a word. The accusation did not seem sharp enough, given what he'd said. Pierre wondered if Hélène had told her brother the substance of his accusations last night, or if she'd left him to form his own conclusions. He looked back to his own hands, which seemed too large, monstrous, compared to Anatole's.
Damn him, he thought, without wholly understanding why.
The moment the carriage stopped, Pierre stepped out into the cobbled square in front of the church, the Kuragins following behind. They had almost reached the door when a fine voice made all three turn.
"Anatole."
Pierre thought for a moment he saw Anatole flinch. But that was ridiculous, because when he saw who it was, Anatole smiled and nodded in recognition. A broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man of medium height, thick dark hair and sharp eyes, wearing the epaulettes of an infantry captain. Fedya Dolokhov, that reckless young rake, his skill with a pistol unmatched in Moscow. Pierre had met him a year or two before, in Petersburg. A bear had been involved, he vaguely recalled.
And then Pierre had shot him.
He blushed like a child, remembering, and looked away.
But Dolokhov had no eyes for Pierre. "Anatole, I need to speak with you," he said. He looked terrible, Pierre thought. His uniform had been slept in, and his eyes were red-rimmed in a way that suggested crying but in this case was almost certainly a hangover.
Pierre was about to tell Anatole to go—here was clearly a friend in distress, that was religion in practice if not in form—when Anatole spoke.
"Find me after, Fedya," he said. "I won't be an hour."
"Anatole," Hélène said sharply, as if this had disobeyed some order she'd given.
But Anatole merely pressed her hand in his, once, and turned to walk into the church. He moved with a swagger that was almost sacrilegious, as if he were striding down the aisle of the opera and not into the nave of St. Peter's. Dolokhov stared after him as if enchanted, watching every flicker of movement through Anatole's body. He looked as if he tried to see through Anatole's clothes to the bones, the muscle, the soul beneath.
He looked angry enough to shoot.
Pierre looked at Dolokhov, then turned to Hélène. "Come," he said, and took her by the arm. To his surprise, she didn't resent his touch. Hélène must have been unnerved by something in the encounter, for her to bear his presence without her usual degree of exasperation and disdain. Pierre didn't know what it was, and knew he wouldn't ask.
But it was nice, he thought, to walk into a church with your wife on your arm, and her brother a respectable distance away, like any normal man could do.