Weeks passed in the monastery and Natasha brought Prince Andrei tea and the small cakes he liked even though the doctor said he should take only broth. And Prince Andrei asked Natasha many questions, questions about the army, about the Moscow fire, and questions about her life while he was away. What did she do and what did she wish? Questions he had never cared to ask his late wife, with whom he had been so unhappy, for she had lived only for balls and society, which bored him so much. Natasha told Prince Andrei many things she had done and thought through his absence and during the war and then she said, looking far away,
“Andrei, at times I thought—I wish I were a man.”

What did this mean, he asked.

“I was very sad that you were gone to Rome. But I wished not just to be with you—I wished to be you.”

And Prince Andrei thought about this very much and considered it very important, and his soul filled with a will to live and to thrive. Not only did he begin to heal with Natasha’s companionship, but listening to her thoughts he began to feel himself surrounded by a higher power that he thought might be truth. He had dreamed that this existed but had not yet known how or where to find it on earth, and he longed desperately to live. And Prince Andrei’s thoughts of begging and bargaining with a god receded, so drawn back into earthly love was he.

Kutuzov’s letter arrived. The joy he expressed for Prince Andrei’s life went beyond the plain words on the page. Prince Andrei read the letter each day until the diminishment of pain was so significant that he began to forget what the initial pain was like. Prince Andrei dictated a letter of gratitude to Kutuzov, but with the movement of the army it did not reach the field marshal for months, by which time Kutuzov had died of old age while still stationed among his soldiers.