Leo Tolstoy

by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)

  In Moscow, after the luxurious and coarse life of Petersburg, he had experienced for the first time the charm of intimacy with a sweet, innocent society girl who had fallen in love with him. It did not even occur to him that there could be anything bad in his relations with Kitty. At balls he danced mostly with her; he visited their house. He said to her the things that are usually said in society, all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense which he unwittingly endowed with a special meaning for her. Though he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was growing increasingly dependent on him, and the more he felt it, the more pleasant it was for him, and his feeling for her grew more tender. He did not know that his behaviour towards Kitty had a specific name, that it was the luring of a young lady without the intention of marriage, and that this luring was one of the bad actions common among brilliant young men such as himself. It seemed to him that he was the first to discover this pleasure, and he enjoyed his discovery.

  If he could have heard what her parents said that evening, if he could have taken the family’s point of view and learned that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been very surprised and would not have believed it. He could not have believed that something which gave such great and good pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be bad. Still less could he have believed that he was obliged to marry her.

  Marriage had never presented itself as a possibility to him. He not only did not like family life, but pictured the family, and especially a husband, according to the general view of the bachelor world in which he lived, as something alien, hostile and, above all, ridiculous. But though Vronsky had no suspicion of what the parents said, he felt as he left the Shcherbatskys’ that evening that the secret spiritual bond existing between him and Kitty had established itself so firmly that something had to be done. But what could and should be done, he was unable to imagine.

  ‘The charm of it is,’ he thought, going home from the Shcherbatskys’ and bringing with him, as always, a pleasant feeling of purity and freshness, partly because he had not smoked all evening, and together with it a new feeling of tenderness at her love for him, ‘the charm of it is that nothing was said either by me or by her, yet we understood each other so well in that invisible conversation of eyes and intonations, that tonight she told me more clearly than ever that she loves me. And so sweetly, simply and, above all, trustfully! I feel better and purer myself. I feel that I have a heart and that there is much good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: "and very much" … ‘Well, what then? Well, then nothing. It’s good for me, and it’s good for her.’ And he began thinking about where to finish the evening.

  He checked in his imagination the places he might go to. ‘The club? A game of bezique[29] champagne with Ignatov? No, not there. The Château des Fleurs[30] I’ll find Oblonsky there, French songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick of it. That’s precisely what I love the Shcherbatskys’ for, that I become better there myself. I’ll go home.’ He went straight to his rooms at the Dussot, ordered supper served, after which he got undressed and, the moment his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound and peaceful sleep, as always.

  XVII

  The next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the Petersburg railway station to meet his mother, and the first person he ran into on the steps of the main stairway was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister on the same train.

  ‘Ah! Your highness!’ cried Oblonsky. ‘Here for someone?’

  ‘My mother,’ Vronsky replied, shaking his hand and smiling, as did everyone who met Oblonsky, and they went up the stairway together. ‘She arrives today from Petersburg.’

  ‘And I waited for you till two o’clock. Where did you go from the Shcherbatskys’?’

  ‘Home,’ replied Vronsky. ‘I confess, I felt so pleasant last night after the Shcherbatskys’ that I didn’t want to go anywhere.’

  ‘Bold steeds I can tell by their something–or–other thighs, and young men in love by the look in their eyes,’ declaimed Stepan Arkadyich, exactly as he had done to Levin.

  Vronsky smiled with a look that said he did not deny it, but at once changed the subject.

  ‘And whom are you meeting?’ he asked.

  ‘I? A pretty woman,’ said Oblonsky.

  ‘Really!’

  ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense[31] My sister Anna.’

  ‘Ah, you mean Karenina?’ said Vronsky.

  ‘I suppose you know her?’

  ‘I think I do. Or else, no … I really can’t remember,’ Vronsky replied absentmindedly, vaguely picturing to himself at the name Karenina something standoffish and dull.

  ‘But surely you know Alexei Alexandrovich, my famous brother–in–law. The whole world knows him.’

  ‘That is, I know him by sight and by reputation. I know he’s intelligent, educated, something to do with religion … But you know, it’s not in my … not in my line? Vronsky added in English.

  ‘Yes, he’s a very remarkable man – a bit conservative, but a nice man,’ observed Stepan Arkadyich, ‘a nice man.’

  ‘Well, so much the better for him,’ said Vronsky, smiling. ‘Ah, you’re here.’ He turned to his mother’s tall old footman, who was standing by the door. ‘Come inside.’

  Vronsky had recently felt himself attached to Stepan Arkadyich, apart from his general agreeableness for everyone, by the fact that in his imagination he was connected with Kitty.

  ‘Well, then, shall we have a dinner for the diva on Sunday?’ he said to him, smiling and taking his arm.

  ‘Absolutely. I’ll take up a collection. Ah, did you meet my friend Levin last night?’ asked Stepan Arkadyich.

  ‘Of course. But he left very early.’

  ‘He’s a nice fellow,’ Oblonsky went on. ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know why it is,’ answered Vronsky, ‘but all Muscovites, naturally excluding those I’m talking with,’ he added jokingly, ‘have something edgy about them. They keep rearing up for some reason, getting angry, as if they want to make you feel something …’

  ‘There is that, it’s true, there is …’ Stepan Arkadyich said, laughing merrily.

  ‘Soon now?’ Vronsky asked an attendant.

  ‘The train’s pulling in,’ the attendant answered.

  The approach of the train was made more and more evident by the preparatory movements in the station, the running of attendants, the appearance of gendarmes and porters, and the arrival of those coming to meet the train. Through the frosty steam, workers in sheepskin jackets and soft felt boots could be seen crossing the curved tracks. The whistle of the engine could be heard down the line, and the movement of something heavy.

  ‘No,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, who wanted very much to tell Vronsky about Levin’s intentions regarding Kitty. ‘No, you’re wrong in your appraisal of my Levin. He’s a very nervous man and can be unpleasant, true, but sometimes he can be very nice. He has such an honest, truthful nature, and a heart of gold. But last night there were special reasons,’ Stepan Arkadyich went on with a meaningful smile, forgetting completely the sincere sympathy he had felt for his friend yesterday and now feeling the same way for Vronsky. ‘Yes, there was a reason why he might have been either especially happy, or especially unhappy.’

  Vronsky stopped and asked directly:

  ‘Meaning what? Or did he propose to your belle–soeur* last night?…’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘It seemed to me there was something of the sort yesterday. Yes, if he left early and was also out of sorts, then that’s it… He’s been in love for so long, and I’m very sorry for him.’

  ‘Really! … I think, however, that she can count on a better match,’ said Vronsky, and, squaring his shoulders, he resumed his pacing. ‘However, I don’t know him,’ he added. ‘Yes, it’s a painful situation! That’s why most of us prefer the company of Claras. There failure only proves that you didn’t have enough money, while here – your dignity is at stake. Anyhow, the
train’s come.’

  Indeed, the engine was already whistling in the distance. A few minutes later the platform began to tremble, and, puffing steam that was beaten down by the frost, the engine rolled past, with the coupling rod of the middle wheel slowly and rhythmically turning and straightening, and a muffled–up, frost–grizzled engineer bowing; and, after the tender, slowing down and shaking the platform still more, the luggage van began to pass, with a squealing dog in it; finally came the passenger carriages, shuddering to a stop.

  A dashing conductor jumped off, blowing his whistle, and after him the impatient passengers began to step down one by one: an officer of the guards, keeping himself straight and looking sternly around; a fidgety little merchant with a bag, smiling merrily; a muzhik with a sack over his shoulder.

  Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, looked over the carriages and the people getting off and forgot his mother entirely. What he had just learned about Kitty had made him excited and happy. His chest involuntarily swelled and his eyes shone. He felt himself the victor.

  ‘Countess Vronsky is in this compartment,’ said the dashing conductor, coming up to Vronsky.

  The conductor’s words woke him up and forced him to remember his

  * Sister–in–law.

  mother and the forthcoming meeting with her. In his soul he did not respect her and, without being aware of it, did not love her, though by the notions of the circle in which he lived, by his upbringing, he could not imagine to himself any other relation to his mother than one obedient and deferential in the highest degree, and the more outwardly obedient and deferential he was, the less he respected and loved her in his soul.

  XVIII

  Vronsky followed the conductor to the carriage and at the door to the compartment stopped to allow a lady to leave. With the habitual flair of a worldly man, Vronsky determined from one glance at this lady’s appearance that she belonged to high society. He excused himself and was about to enter the carriage, but felt a need to glance at her once more – not because she was very beautiful, not because of the elegance and modest grace that could be seen in her whole figure, but because there was something especially gentle and tender in the expression of her sweet–looking face as she stepped past him. As he looked back, she also turned her head. Her shining grey eyes, which seemed dark because of their thick lashes, rested amiably and attentively on his face, as if she recognized him, and at once wandered over the approaching crowd as though looking for someone. In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile.

  Vronsky entered the carriage. His mother, a dry old woman with dark eyes and curled hair, narrowed her eyes, peering at her son, and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing the maid her little bag, she offered her small, dry hand to her son and, raising his head from her hand, kissed him on the face.

  ‘You got my telegram? Are you well? Thank God.’

  Did you have a good trip?’ her son asked, sitting down beside her and involuntarily listening to a woman’s voice outside the door. He knew it was the voice of the lady he had met at the entrance.

  ‘I still don’t agree with you,’ the lady’s voice said.

  ‘A Petersburg point of view, madam.’

  ‘Not Petersburg, merely a woman’s,’ she answered.

  ‘Well, allow me to kiss your hand.’

  ‘Good–bye, Ivan Petrovich. Do see if my brother is here, and send him to me,’ the lady said just by the door, and entered the compartment again.

  ‘Have you found your brother?’ asked Countess Vronsky, addressing the lady.

  Vronsky remembered now that this was Mme Karenina.

  ‘Your brother is here,’ he said, getting up. ‘Excuse me, I didn’t recognize you, and then our acquaintance was so brief,’ Vronsky said, bowing, ‘that you surely don’t remember me.’

  ‘Oh, no, I would have recognized you, because your mother and I seem to have spent the whole trip talking only of you,’ she said, finally allowing her animation, which was begging to be let out, to show itself in a smile. ‘And my brother still isn’t here.’

  ‘Call him, Alyosha,’ said the old countess.

  Vronsky went out on the platform and shouted:

  ‘Oblonsky! This way!’

  Mme Karenina did not wait for her brother, but, on seeing him, got out of the carriage with a light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother came up to her, she threw her left arm around his neck in a movement that surprised Vronsky by its resoluteness and grace, quickly drew him to her, and gave him a hearty kiss. Vronsky, not taking his eyes away, looked at her and smiled, himself not knowing at what. But remembering that his mother was waiting for him, he again got into the carriage.

  ‘Very sweet, isn’t she?’ the countess said of Mme Karenina. ‘Her husband put her with me, and I was very glad. We talked all the way. Well, and they say that you … vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.’*

  ‘I don’t know what you’re hinting at, maman,’ her son replied coolly. ‘Let’s go, then, maman.’’

  Mme Karenina came back into the carriage to take leave of the countess.

  ‘Well, Countess, so you’ve met your son and I my brother,’ she said gaily. ‘And all my stories are exhausted; there was nothing more to tell.’

  * You are living love’s perfect dream. So much the better, my dear, so much the better.

  ‘Ah, no, my dear,’ said the countess, taking her hand, ‘I could go around the world with you and not be bored. You’re one of those sweet women with whom it’s pleasant both to talk and to be silent. And please don’t keep thinking about your son: it’s impossible for you never to be separated.’

  Mme Karenina stood motionless, holding herself very straight, and her eyes were smiling.

  ‘Anna Arkadyevna,’ the countess said, explaining to her son, ‘has a little boy of about eight, I think, and has never been separated from him, and she keeps suffering about having left him.’

  ‘Yes, the countess and I spent the whole time talking – I about my son, she about hers,’ said Mme Karenina, and again a smile lit up her face, a tender smile addressed to him.

  ‘You were probably very bored by it,’ he said, catching at once, in mid–air, this ball of coquetry that she had thrown to him. But she evidently did not want to continue the conversation in that tone and turned to the old countess:

  ‘Thank you very much. I didn’t even notice how I spent the day yesterday. Good–bye, Countess.’

  ‘Good–bye, my friend,’ the countess replied. ‘Let me kiss your pretty little face. I’ll tell you simply, directly, like an old woman, that I’ve come to love you.’

  Trite as the phrase was, Mme Karenina evidently believed it with all her heart and was glad. She blushed, bent forward slightly, offering her face to the countess’s lips, straightened up again, and with the same smile wavering between her lips and eyes, gave her hand to Vronsky. He pressed the small hand offered him and was glad, as of something special, of her strong and boldly energetic handshake. She went out with a quick step, which carried her rather full body with such strange lightness.

  ‘Very sweet,’ said the old woman.

  Her son was thinking the same. He followed her with his eyes until her graceful figure disappeared, and the smile stayed on his face. Through