by Leo Tolstoy
Learning of the close relations between Alexei Alexandrovich and Countess Lydia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write her a letter, which cost her great effort, in which she said deliberately that permission to see her son depended on her husband's magnanimity. She knew that if her husband were shown the letter, he, pursuing his role of magnanimity, would not refuse her.
The messenger who had carried the letter brought her a most cruel and unexpected reply - that there would be no reply. She had never felt so humiliated as in that moment when, having summoned the messenger, she heard from him a detailed account of how he had waited and how he had then been told: 'There will be no reply.' Anna felt herself humiliated, offended, but she saw that from her own point of view Countess Lydia Ivanovna was right. Her grief was the stronger because it was solitary. She could not and did not want to share it with Vronsky. She knew that for him, though he was the chief cause of her unhappiness, the question of her meeting her son would be a most unimportant thing. She knew that he would never be able to understand all the depth of her suffering; she knew that she would hate him for his cold tone at the mention of it. She feared that more than anything in the world, and so she concealed everything from him that had to do with her son.
She spent the whole day at home, inventing means for meeting her son, and arrived at the decision to write to her husband. She was already working on the letter when Lydia Ivanovna's letter was brought to her. The countess's silence had humbled and subdued her, but the letter, everything she could read between its lines, annoyed her so much, its malice seemed so outrageous compared with her passionate and legitimate tenderness for her son, that she became indignant with them and stopped accusing herself.
'This coldness is a pretence of feeling,' she said to herself. 'All they want is to offend me and torment the child, and I should submit to them! Not for anything! She's worse than I am. At least I don't lie.' And she decided then and there that the next day, Seryozha's birthday itself, she would go directly to her husband's house, bribe the servants, deceive them, but at all costs see her son and destroy the ugly deceit with which they surrounded the unfortunate child.
She went to a toy store, bought lots of toys, and thought over her plan of action. She would come early in the morning, at eight o'clock, when it was certain that Alexei Alexandrovich would not be up yet. She would have money with her, which she would give to the hall porter and the footman so that they would let her in, and, without lifting her veil, she would tell them she had come from Seryozha's godfather to wish him a happy birthday and had been charged with putting the toys by the boy's bed. The only thing she did not prepare was what she would say to her son. However much she thought about it, she could not think of anything.
The next day, at eight o'clock in the morning, Anna got out of a hired carriage by herself and rang at the big entrance of her former home.
'Go and see what she wants. It's some lady,' said Kapitonych, not dressed yet, in a coat and galoshes, looking out of the window at a lady in a veil who was standing just at the door.
The porter's helper, a young fellow Anna did not know, opened the door for her. She came in and, taking a three-rouble bill from her muff, hurriedly put it into his hand.
'Seryozha ... Sergei Alexeich,' she said and started forward. Having examined the bill, the porter's helper stopped her at the inside glass door.
'Who do you want?' he asked.
She did not hear his words and made no reply.
Noticing the unknown woman's perplexity, Kapitonych himself came out to her, let her in the door and asked what she wanted.
'I've come from Prince Skorodumov, to see Sergei Alexeich,' she said.
'He's not up yet,' the porter said, looking at her intently.
Anna had never expected that the totally unchanged interior of the front hall of the house in which she had lived for nine years would affect her so strongly. One after another, joyful and painful memories arose in her soul, and for a moment she forgot why she was there.
'Would you care to wait?' said Kapitonych, helping her off with her fur coat.
After taking her coat, Kapitonych looked into her face, recognized her and silently made a low bow.
'Please come in, your excellency,' he said to her.
She wanted to say something, but her voice refused to produce any sound; giving the old man a look of guilty entreaty, she went up the stairs with quick, light steps. All bent over, his galoshes tripping on the steps, Kapitonych ran after her, trying to head her off.
'The tutor's there and may not be dressed. I'll announce you.'
Anna went on up the familiar stairs, not understanding what the old man was saying.
'Here, to the left please. Excuse the untidiness. He's in the former sitting room now,' the porter said breathlessly. 'Allow me, just a moment, your excellency, I'll peek in,' he said, and, getting ahead of her, he opened the tall door and disappeared behind it. Anna stood waiting. 'He's just woken up,' the porter said, coming out the door again.
And as the porter said it, Anna heard the sound of a child's yawn. From the sound of the yawn alone she recognized her son and could see him alive before her.
'Let me in, let me in, go away!' she said, and went through the tall doorway. To the right of the door stood a bed, and on the bed a boy sat upright in nothing but an unbuttoned shirt, his little body arched, stretching and finishing a yawn. As his lips came together, they formed themselves into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and sweetly fell back again.
'Seryozha!' she whispered, approaching him inaudibly.
While they had been apart, and with that surge of love she had been feeling all the time recently, she had imagined him as a four-year-old boy, the way she had loved him most. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from being a four-year-old, was taller and thinner. What was this! How thin his face was, how short his hair! How long his arms! How he had changed since she left him! But this was he, with his shape of head, his lips, his soft neck and broad shoulders.
'Seryozha!' she repeated just over the child's ear.
He propped himself on his elbow, turned his tousled head from side to side as if looking for something, and opened his eyes. For several seconds he gazed quietly and questioningly at his mother standing motionless before him, then suddenly smiled blissfully and, closing his sleepy eyes again, fell, not back now, but towards her, towards her arms.
'Seryozha! My sweet boy!' she said, choking and putting her arms around his plump body.
'Mama!' he said, moving under her arms, so as to touch them with different parts of his body.
Smiling sleepily, his eyes still shut, he shifted his plump hands from the back of the bed to her shoulders, snuggled up to her, enveloping her with that sweet, sleepy smell and warmth that only children have, and began rubbing his face against her neck and shoulders.
'I knew it,' he said, opening his eyes. 'Today's my birthday. I knew you'd come. I'll get up now.'
And he was falling asleep again as he said it.
Anna looked him over greedily; she saw how he had grown and changed during her absence. She did and did not recognize his bare feet, so big now, sticking out from under the blanket, recognized those cheeks, thinner now, those locks of hair cut short on the back of his neck, where she had so often kissed them. She touched it all and could not speak; tears choked her.
'What are you crying for, mama?' he said, now wide awake. 'Mama, what are you crying for?' he raised his tearful voice.
'I? I won't cry ... I'm crying from joy. I haven't seen you for so long. I won't, I won't,' she said, swallowing her tears and turning away. 'Well, it's time you got dressed,' she added after a pause, recovering herself; and without letting go of his hand, she sat by his bed on a chair where his clothes were lying ready.
'How do you get dressed without me? How ...' She wanted to begin talking simply and cheerfully, but could not and turned away again.
'I don't wash w
ith cold water, papa told me not to. And did you see Vassily Lukich? He'll come. And you sat on my clothes!' Seryozha burst out laughing.
She looked at him and smiled.
'Mama, darling, dearest!' he cried, rushing to her again and embracing her. As if it were only now, seeing her smile, that he understood clearly what had happened. 'No need for that,' he said, taking her hat off. And, as if seeing her anew without a hat, he again began kissing her.
'But what have you been thinking about me? You didn't think I was dead?'
'I never believed it.'
'Didn't you, my love?'
'I knew it, I knew it!' He repeated his favourite phrase and, seizing her hand, which was caressing his hair, he pressed her palm to his mouth and began to kiss it.
XXX
Meanwhile Vassily Lukich, who did not understand at first who this lady was, and learning from the conversation that she was the same mother who had left her husband and whom he did not know because he had come to the house after she left, was in doubt whether to go in or to inform Alexei Alexandrovich. Considering finally that his duty was to get Seryozha up at a certain time and that therefore he had no need to determine who was sitting there, the mother or someone else, but had to fulfil his duty, he got dressed, went to the door and opened it.
But the caresses of the mother and son, the sounds of their voices, and what they were saying - all this made him change his mind. He shook his head and closed the door with a sigh. 'I'll wait another ten minutes,' he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away his tears.
Just then there was great commotion among the domestic servants. Everyone had learned that the mistress had come, that Kapitonych had let her in, and that she was now in the nursery; and meanwhile the master always went to the nursery himself before nine o'clock, and everyone realized that a meeting between the spouses was impossible and had to be prevented. Kornei, the valet, went down to the porter's lodge and began asking who had let her in and how, and on learning that Kapitonych had met her and shown her in, he reprimanded the old man. The porter remained stubbornly silent; but when Kornei told him that he deserved to be sacked for it, Kapitonych leaped towards him and, waving his arms in front of Kornei's face, said:
'Yes, and you wouldn't have let her in! Ten years' service, seeing nothing but kindness from her, and then you'd go and say: "Kindly get out!" Subtle politics you've got! Oh, yes! You mind yourself, robbing the master and stealing racoon coats!'
'Old trooper!' Kornei said contemptuously and turned to the nanny, who had just arrived. 'Look at that, Marya Efimovna: he let her in, didn't tell anybody,' Kornei went on. 'Alexei Alexandrovich will come out presently and go to the nursery.'
'Such goings-on!' said the nanny. 'Listen, Kornei Vassilyevich, why don't you delay somehow - the master, I mean - while I go and somehow lead her away. Such goings-on!'
When the nanny went into the nursery, Seryozha was telling his mother how he and Nadenka fell while they were sliding and rolled over three times. She listened to the sound of his voice, saw his face and the play of its expression, felt his hand, but did not understand what he was saying. She had to go, she had to leave him - that was all she thought and felt. She heard the steps of Vassily Lukich as he came to the door and coughed, she also heard the steps of the nanny approaching; but she sat as if turned to stone, unable either to begin talking or to get up.
'Mistress, dearest!' the nanny started to say, going up to Anna and kissing her hand and shoulders. 'What a Godsent joy for our little one's birthday! You haven't changed at all.'
'Ah, nanny, dear, I didn't know you were in the house,' said Anna, coming to her senses for a moment.
'I don't live here, I live with my daughter, I came to wish him a happy birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, dearest!'
The nanny suddenly wept and started kissing her hand again.
Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smile, holding his mother with one hand and his nanny with the other, stamped his fat little bare feet on the rug. He was delighted with his beloved nanny's tenderness towards his mother.
'Mama! She often comes to see me, and when she comes .. .'he began, but stopped, noticing that the nanny was whispering something to his mother, and that his mother's face showed fear and something like shame, which was so unbecoming to her.
She went up to him.
'My dear one!' she said.
She could not say goodbye, but the look on her face said it, and he understood. 'Dear, dear Kutik!' She said the name she had called him when he was little. 'You won't forget me? You ...' but she was unable to say more.
How many words she thought of later that she might have said to him! But now she did not and could not say anything. Yet Seryozha understood all that she wanted to tell him. He understood that she was unhappy and that she loved him. He even understood what the nanny had said to her in a whisper. He had heard the words 'always before nine' and understood that this referred to his father and that his mother and father must not meet. But one thing he could not understand: why did fear and shame appear on her face? . .. She was not guilty, but she was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He wanted to ask the question that would have cleared up this doubt, but did not dare to do it: he saw that she was suffering and he pitied her. He silently pressed himself to her and said in a whisper:
'Don't go yet. He won't come so soon.'
His mother held him away from her, to see whether he had thought of what he was saying, and in his frightened expression she read that he was not only speaking of his father but was, as it were, asking her how he should think of him.
'Seryozha, my dear,' she said, 'love him, he is better and kinder than I, and I am guilty before him. When you grow up, you will decide.'
'No one's better than you!...' he cried through tears of despair, and seizing her by the shoulders, he pressed her to him, his arms trembling with the strain.
'My darling, my little one!' said Anna, and she started crying as weakly, as childishly, as he.
Just then the door opened and Vassily Lukich came in. Steps were heard at the other door, and the nanny said in a frightened whisper:
'He's coming,' and gave Anna her hat.
Seryozha sank down on the bed and sobbed, covering his face with his hands. Anna took his hands away, kissed his wet face once more and with quick steps went out of the door. Alexei Alexandrovich was coming towards her. Seeing her, he stopped and bowed his head.
Though she had just said that he was better and kinder than she, feelings of loathing and spite towards him and envy about her son came over her as she glanced quickly at him, taking in his whole figure in all its details. With a swift movement she lowered her veil and, quickening her pace, all but ran out of the room.
She had had no time to take out the toys she had selected with such love and sadness in the shop the day before, and so brought them home with her.
XXXI
Strongly as Anna had wished to see her son, long as she had been thinking of it and preparing for it, she had never expected that seeing him would have so strong an effect on her. On returning to her lonely suite in the hotel, she was unable for a long time to understand why she was there. 'Yes, it's all over and I'm alone again,' she said to herself and, without taking off her hat, she sat down in an armchair by the fireplace. Staring with fixed eyes at the bronze clock standing on the table between the windows, she began to think.
The French maid, brought from abroad, came in to suggest that she dress. She looked at her in surprise and said:
'Later.'
The footman offered her coffee.
'Later,' she said.
The Italian wet nurse, having changed the baby, came in with her and gave her to Anna. The plump, well-nourished baby, as always, seeing her mother, turned over her bare little arms, which looked as if they had string tied round them, and, smiling with a toothless little mouth, began rowing with her hands palm down like a fish with its fins, making the starched folds of her embroidered frock rustle. It was impossible not
to smile, not to kiss the little girl, not to give her a finger, which she seized, squealing and bouncing with her whole body; it was impossible not to offer her a lip, which she, as if in a kiss, took into her mouth. And Anna did all this, took her in her arms, got her to jump, and kissed her fresh cheek and bare little elbows; but the sight of this child made it still clearer that her feeling for her, compared to what she felt for Seryozha, was not even love. Everything about this little girl was sweet, but for some reason none of it touched her heart. To the first child, though of a man she did not love, had gone all the force of a love that had not been satisfied; the girl, born in the most difficult conditions, did not receive a hundredth part of the care that had gone to the first child. Besides, in this little girl everything was still to come, while Seryozha was almost a person, and a loved person; thoughts and feelings already struggled in him; he understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she thought, remembering his words and looks. And she was forever separated from him, not only physically but also spiritually, and it was impossible to remedy that.
She gave the girl to the wet nurse, dismissed her, and opened a locket which held a portrait of Seryozha when he was nearly the same age as the girl. She got up and, after removing her hat, took an album from a little table in which there were photographs of her son at other ages. She wanted to compare the photographs and began taking them out of the album. She took them all out. One remained, the last, the best picture. He was sitting astride a chair, in a white shirt, his eyes sulky and his mouth smiling. This was his most special, his best expression. With her small, deft hands, which today moved their thin, white fingers with a peculiar strain, she picked at the corner several times, but the picture was stuck and she could not get it out. As there was no paper-knife on the table, she took out the picture next to it (it was a picture of Vronsky in a round hat and with long hair, taken in Rome) and pushed her son's picture out with it. 'Yes, here he is!' she said, glancing at the picture of Vronsky, and she suddenly remembered who had been the cause of her present grief. She had not thought of him once all morning. But now suddenly, seeing that noble, manly face, so familiar and dear to her, she felt an unexpected surge of love for him.
