War and Peace

01 Nov War and Peace

My husband is reading War and Peace. 1,444 pages, closely printed between the elegant black covers of the Penguin Classics edition I read in 1985. It lives on a shelf among friends, all dressed in the same Gothic black; there’s quite a gang of truly ancient and almost modern heroes and heroines halfway up the bookcase, in the last section at the kitchen end.  All of them date back to around that time or earlier; all of them have survived the periodic cull needed to ease in new acquisitions. I’m not sure I could part with them now. They are cryptic clues, biographical details that tell of my passions and, sometimes, my pretensions; they give me a sense of journeys that brought me here. I remember the year I read War and Peace exactly because I was pregnant at the time and when my daughter was born we named her Natasha after the book’s exuberant heroine. It’s well-thumbed, though I am the only other person to have read this copy. But such a hefty volume involves many days and weeks of holding and handling, gripping its girth tightly. I have a particularly soft spot for books slightly bruised by the hand of the reader; they’re the ones that feel most loved.

War and Peace. It feels symbolic in a way. Not of any atmosphere prevailing at home, you understand. Though as we move into the ninth month of mostly having only one another for company it would be surprising if the odd skirmish didn’t take place. And I must admit I’ve observed a palpably peaceable quality to certain times of the day when he has his nose between the pages, committing to a daily total to get him through. He’s a numbers man, always counting, setting quantitative targets. We’re different that way; I just drift through yielding to the story. But I can see his point. Especially now. Setting goals, being able to mark progress is somehow important in this new land of limbo we all now inhabit as we try to adapt to how the world has become, come to terms with how it will likely stay for the foreseeable future, while holding onto a wish for some of the old world to return. I try not to let myself do too much of the wishing. It can get me down.

In the old world, he’d probably not have chosen War and Peace. But it’s apt for now, when you think about it. With all this indoor time and the absence of regular company, it’s the perfect moment to take on a long read. Not just that, maybe it also has a metaphorical value for this moment in our world. Though I stay at home most of the time, going out as far as the park or the river and occasionally further afield, though I make myself avoid too much exposure to the cycle of daily news, I still feel a level of tension inside much of the time that I imagine I might feel if we were in a war. Doing battle with a virus has exposed how much we are all doing battle with one another: young and old; rich and poor; north and south; urban and rural; left and right – whatever that means nowadays since the battles between political parties seem dwarfed by the battles within them; those seeking asylum and those who would deny them. I’m finding coverage of the US election stressful in that way that things are when you have no control over them but know how they turn out will affect you. It feels like another war zone. I could, I should just switch it off, avoid reading the latest piece predicting this or that hellish outcome. But it’s hard to drag one’s gaze away. It’s hard not to feel involved. Hard not to feel angry. Hard not to feel amazed at the vastly, destructively different world views.

Lockdown returns this week bringing new opportunities for introversion that I know I must ration. Not much changes for us except that we can now only see people outdoors in ones rather than twos and, once again, all the grocery delivery slots have filled up. At least we have masses of toilet paper thanks to a bumper box from the delightfully-named, socially and environmentally responsible ‘Who Gives a Crap’. It’s no tougher this time. But there is less novelty and I’m feeling less enamoured than I was back in March of the benefits of my world pared back for a second time, of the gift of quietness, of a less busy diary, of time to sit and think. Perhaps I’ll discover them again.