“I am quite rested now, darling,” she said (though I knew that it was many a night since she had closed her eyes). “Yes, I am indeed, and have no wish to sleep again,” she added with a deep sigh.
I felt as though I wanted to speak to her of our misfortune, since I knew her sincerity and love, and thought that it would be a consolation to me to weep with her.
“Natalia Savishna,” I said after a pause, as I seated myself upon the bed, “who would ever have thought of this?”
The old woman looked at me with astonishment, for she did not quite understand my question.
“Yes, who would ever have thought of it?” I repeated.
“Ah, my darling,” she said with a glance of tender compassion, “it is not only ‘Who would ever have thought of it?’ but ‘Who, even now, would ever believe it?’ I am old, and my bones should long ago have gone to rest rather than that I should have lived to see the old master, your Grandpapa, of blessed memory, and Prince Nicola Michaelovitch, and his two brothers, and your sister Amenka all buried before me, though all younger than myself—and now my darling, to my never-ending sorrow, gone home before me! Yet it has been God’s will. He took her away because she was worthy to be taken, and because He has need of the good ones.”
This simple thought seemed to me a consolation, and I pressed closer to Natalia. She laid her hands upon my head as she looked upward with eyes expressive of a deep, but resigned, sorrow. In her soul was a sure and certain hope that God would not long separate her from the one upon whom the whole strength of her love had for many years been concentrated.
“Yes, my dear,” she went on, “it is a long time now since I used to nurse and fondle her, and she used to call me Natasha. She used to come jumping upon me, and caressing and kissing me, and say, ‘MY Nashik, MY darling, MY ducky,’ and I used to answer jokingly, ‘Well, my love, I don’t believe that you DO love me. You will be a grown-up young lady soon, and going away to be married, and will leave your Nashik forgotten.’ Then she would grow thoughtful and say, ‘I think I had better not marry if my Nashik cannot go with me, for I mean never to leave her.’ Yet, alas! She has left me now! Who was there in the world she did not love? Yes, my dearest, it must never be POSSIBLE for you to forget your Mamma. She was not a being of earth—she was an angel from Heaven. When her soul has entered the heavenly kingdom she will continue to love you and to be proud of you even there.”
“But why do you say ‘when her soul has entered the heavenly kingdom’?” I asked. “I believe it is there now.”
“No, my dearest,” replied Natalia as she lowered her voice and pressed herself yet closer to me, “her soul is still here,” and she pointed upwards. She spoke in a whisper, but with such an intensity of conviction that I too involuntarily raised my eyes and looked at the ceiling, as though expecting to see something there. “Before the souls of the just enter Paradise they have to undergo forty trials for forty days, and during that time they hover around their earthly home.” [A Russian popular legend.]