Chapter 10
Natasha layed wide awake with her phone screen illuminating her face in the darkness. She leaned her head on her fluffy, feathery pink pillows for support. This is what she did to cope. Drown herself in the internet until she fell asleep, momentarily forgetting the guilt she felt with disobeying Marya, and putting everyone (including herself) in harm's way. Even though she was unconscious for the entirety of the event, she could tell Andrey was not the best of people. The way Marya scolded her for her actions and the way Helene described her judgement of Andrey made Natasha fear what could have happened. She was thankful nothing horrendous happened besides a punch to the nose that was well deserved… but her mind kept saying ‘what if?’
What if he hurt Marya or Fedya, Anatole, Pierre?
What if he hurt me?
The things he could have done to anyone were disastrous to think about. Natasha didn’t even want to indulge herself with those thoughts. To put her thoughts at ease, she decided to send a message to Pierre.
Natasha: Hi. This is Natasha, the girl you drove home the other day. I just wanted to say thank you for that… and for getting help when you did. Really means a lot to me. Thank You Pierre.
Natasha stared at the phone screen for a few moments. Was it wrong to send a thank you message to someone at 1:32am? She hoped Pierre didn’t get the wrong idea… that is if he was even awake at this hour.
Suddenly, her phone buzzed and her screen lit up again.
Pierre Bezukhov: Oh, you're welcome. Can’t exactly drive yourself home when your so drunk that you become blackout and become unconscious. Am I rite?
Pierre Bezukhov: you’re**
Pierre’s attempt at humor left Natasha in a state of confusion. Instead of simply not responding to the message she decided to just go with:
Natasha: haha lol
After sending her message, Natasha decided it was time to get some sleep. Her eyes had grown heavy and every twenty seconds she found herself yawning uncontrollably. She set her phone down on the nightstand next to her, making sure to plug in her charger to her phone.
Approximately five minutes went by before her phone buzzed again. Somehow in those five minutes she spent laying down, she did not manage to fall asleep. She groaned when picking up her phone again to see the notification displayed on her screen.
Pierre Bezukhov: Sorry if that was insensitive… I hope you’re alright?
Despite how dry and awkward Pierre may seem, Natasha did smile slightly knowing that he seems to care for her without ever formally meeting her.
She began to type back:
Natasha: No it wasn’t insensitive at all, It’s just 1:30am. I can’t think. Also I’m doing okay. Not the best, but okay.
Pierre Bezukhov: Oh, am I keeping you awake? Im sorry. We can continue texting tomorrow... if you want to do that?
Natasha: No we can keep texting. I’ll just try to pull through the tiredness. It’s nice having someone to talk to who doesn't constantly remind me of the mistakes I made.
Pierre Bezukhov: Your friends are upset with you?
Natasha: Yeah… mainly Marya though. Sonya is just Sonya. And Fedya hasn’t even talked to me since the whole thing went down.
Pierre Bezukhov: Wait so, who’s Marya and who’s Sonya? I know the redhead from the gala was there too. Is she Marya or is she Sonya?
Natasha: That's Marya. Although Sonya is a ginger as well. She’s my cousin.
Natasha opened the ‘contacts’ app on her phone and changed Pierre’s contact to just his first name.
Pierre: Oh. Well they shouldnt be mad at you. It was pretty easy to be tempted at a place like that. Practically everyone was drinking. Plus Andrey was getting you more drunk so it wasn’t just your own naivety dragging you down.
A few moments passed by.
Pierre: Sorry for calling you naive. You’re not.
Natasha: No, I am. And I hate that about me. This has really made me realize how much of an idiot I can be sometimes. I know I don’t make the wisest decisions, and because I do that people like Andrey have the power to use me. I’m not gonna be put in that position again. I’m gonna be better, I swear.
Natasha: And you should stop apologizing.
Pierre: I’m working on trying to be less anxious. I just don’t want to offend you.
Natasha: Pierre, you literally saved my life the other day. Whatever you say will not offend me.
Natasha: It’s okay to be anxious.
Pierre: You are too kind Natasha.
Natasha: Friends are nice to friends.
Pierre: Oh, I didn't know we were friends?
Natasha: Yeah cause I just decided we should be friends. Is that alright with you?
Pierre: It's great! I just never thought you’d want to associate with someone like me.
Natasha: Then you don’t know me.
For the rest of the night, the new friends chatted about various different subjects. Natasha told Pierre all about the students in the theatre club, and Pierre was fascinated with her knowledge of the arts. She might’ve even convinced Pierre to sign up and learn stage lighting. Pierre told her about the stars in the sky, more specifically, the stellar molecules that make up the molecular structures in stars. Natasha didn’t really understand it, but she blabbed to him all about the inner workings of theatre, the most she could do is listen to what he had to say. Sometime in the middle of his rambling, Natasha’s eyes began to close and her head slowly tilted back onto her pillow. Her phone fell on her mattress with a soft ‘thump’ and her mind drifted into sleep.
Her phone buzzed with every text Pierre had sent to her in the span of 10 minutes.
Pierre: Some elements you may be familiar with which can be found in stars are Calcium, Carbon, Iron, Hydrogen, Titanium, and a whole bunch more!
Sent ten minutes ago
Pierre: Yeah stars are cool to look at but they're even more cooler when you actually get to know what’s inside of them.
Sent seven minutes ago
Pierre: Natasha? Are you there?
Sent three minutes ago
Pierre: Goodnight Natasha. I hope tomorrow is better for you.
Sent one minute ago
====
The sun shined down brightly onto the siblings as they crossed the parking lot, walking into the library. Helene donned a pair of sunglasses while Anatole just shielded the sun rays with his hand.
“You could’ve asked for a pair of my extra sunglasses.” Helene said as she opened the heavy door of the stone building.
“I am doing just fine with my hand, thank you.” He slipped into the entrance way and Helene closed the door behind him.
Seeing the bookcases filled to the brim with books, Anatole couldn’t help but wonder what Dolokhov would say. He’d probably head straight over to the classical literature section and check out all the books.
Helene looked around on the walls to see if she could find some directional guide to aid her on where to go, but she couldn’t find anything of that sort. And she couldn't really ask an employee or a friendly stranger for help because to be quite honest, the library was bare.
Helene figured the reason was early Sunday mornings are most usually reserved for Sunday mass and not the local library.
The only few people she could see in the library at the time was a small child in the children’s literature section, a young woman reading Shakespeare by a window, and a teenager browsing in the anime section.
“Helene?”
A voice from behind the two said.
Helene and Anatole spun around to see who it was, and to no surprise - it was Sonya.
“Sonya, hi!”
Helene went in to hug the girl, who was pushing a cart filled with books.
“Hi! What’re you doing here?”
Her eyes flickered from her to Anatole, and Anatole sheepishly waved back at Sonya.
“We wanted to see that Russian articles section you have here, and maybe ask you a few questions. See, our father is a kinda shady man and he...Oh wait I haven’t even introduced you to my brother Anatole.”
Helene turned and motioned Anatole to come, to which he did.
“Sonya, this is Anatole. My brother.”
Helene said as Anatole extended his hand for Sonya to shake.
“Hi.” He whispered to her.
“Hi.” She grinned.
“Anatole, this is Sonya. One of Marya’s friends.”
“Ah, you’re a friend of Marya’s! I know Fedya really well, and I’ve just met Natasha recently too.”
Anatole tried to whisper to not disrupt the one person reading in the corner.
Sonya’s eyes widened at the sudden realization.
“Wait a minute, you’re Anatole! Fedya’s boyfriend right?”
The word ‘boyfriend’ made Anatole flush a shade of red.
“Uh- Well, yes I guess so.” He chuckled slightly.
The two boys never explicitly defined their relationship, but Anatole did like the feeling of when someone referred to him as ‘Dolokhov’s boyfriend’. It made him feel warm inside.
“Sonya, we need your help. We found a picture last night in one of our mother’s old photo albums…”
Helene explained to Sonya, while Anatole pulled the picture out of his back pocket.
Sonya awed at the photo, taking it from him carefully.
“See the arm wrapped around our mother? That guy is not our father, cause he’s right there.”
She pointed to a younger Vassily Kuragina.
“We figured out that this photo was taken in 1996, and there's only three suspects as to who this man could be. Do you have any articles on Moscow University circa 95’-96’?”
Helene watched as Sonya inspected the peculiar photo. She ran her fingers along the burnt side of the photo.
“I do… come with me.”
She abandoned the cart of books and walked over towards the sign that read, ‘Articles’. Helene and Anatole followed behind her.
“Most of the articles we have on Russia are from centuries ago, but there are some recent ones.”
She blew off some caked on dust from the old filing cabinet. When she opened the drawer labeled ‘Russia 1990’s’, she began to skim through the folders until she landed on the one that read ‘1996’.
“Okay we should have some stuff in here about Moscow University.”
She pulled out the file and opened it to see Russian text on many, many, many worn out yellow pages.
She handed the file to Helene along with the photo.
“Good luck on your search! I’ll be right over there by my cart if you need anything.”
“Thank you Sonya.”
She said as she set the file down on the table.
Anatole already sat down and opened it, examining papers.
Sonya went over to the cart and started sorting the array of books in alphabetical order.
“Okay, let's do this.”
Helene moved the chair out so she could sit down. She took half of the stack that Anatole had, and plopped it down in front of her.
“I’ll do this half, you do your half.”
Anatole nodded, so lost in sleuthing he couldn’t even respond verbally.
Helene huffed and scanned through the papers. Most of them were just random news articles of various blizzards and avalanches - Russian things - but some of them were just local Moscow news.
After skimming through ten articles, Helene had developed a strategy. Any article that mentioned ‘Moscow University’ in any way, shape, or form, was to go in a separate pile. All other articles would be placed aside. Anatole seemed to follow this strategy too.
Together in the Moscow University pile, the siblings accumulated five articles. It took them nearly three hours to go through the entire stack. And even though there was no eating allowed in the library, Sonya would sometimes sneak them snacks of her packed lunch. The animal crackers and cheese squares were very much appreciated by Helene and Anatole.
“We did it, Helene… Now all we have is this.”
Anatole took the first page of the five and began to examine it when Helene muttered out, “What if we find nothing?”
She had a blank look on her face, discouraged by the findings.
“I mean, there’s only five pages left. How can we be so sure that one of them will be about dad?”
She set her head down on the table.
“Helene, I know it might be tough if we finally find out the truth and we're so close to it! You can’t give up now. We deserve to know right?”
Anatole set a hand on her shoulder, and Helene slowly rose up from her arms to look at Anatole.
“Yeah...you’re right.”
She sniffed a little bit, and began to reach for one of the papers.
Skimming through the article, Helene deduced that it was not what she was looking for and put it in the other pile, with the other 200 articles.
She grabbed the next article, and read the headline to herself.
“Профессор уволен из-за того, что научный клуб пошел не так”
Rapidly tapping on Anatole’s shoulder, she showed him the headline.
“Professor Fired for Science Club Gone Wrong…” He muttered to Helene. His blue eyes were wide as he reread the headline to himself.
Helene looked over his shoulder to skim through the article’s contents.
“The students in the ‘Science Alliance Union’ were founder Vassily Kuragina (Senior), Thalia Kuznetsov (Junior), Micheal Kirilovich (Freshman) and Alexei Chernyshevsky (Freshman). They were taught under the guidance of Dr. Nikolai Bolkonsky.”
Helene felt her heart sink in her chest.
She cautiously gazed back at the photo sitting on the far end of the table.
“You don’t think that…”
Anatole shifted his eyes between the photo and Helene. He tried to process what Helene had just read.
“Bolkonsky was the professor. That’s Bolkonsky in that photo.”