Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Oh, they feel it at once!’ said Dolly.

  ‘But I’d be desperate if there were anything serious here on his part,’ Anna interrupted her. ‘And I’m sure it will all be forgotten, and Kitty will stop hating me.’

  ‘Anyhow, Anna, to tell you the truth, I don’t much want this marriage for Kitty. It’s better that it come to nothing, if he, Vronsky, could fall in love with you in one day.’

  ‘Ah, my God, that would be so stupid!’ said Anna, and again a deep blush of pleasure came to her face when she heard the thought that preoccupied her put into words. ‘And so I’m leaving, having made an enemy of Kitty, whom I came to love so. Ah, she’s such a dear! But you’ll set things right, Dolly? Yes?’

  Dolly could hardly repress a smile. She loved Anna, but she enjoyed seeing that she, too, had weaknesses.

  ‘An enemy? That can’t be.’

  ‘I so wish you would all love me as I love you. And now I’ve come to love you still more,’ she said with tears in her eyes. ‘Ah, how stupid I am

  today!’

  She dabbed her face with her handkerchief and began to dress.

  Late, just before her departure, Stepan Arkadyich arrived, with a red and merry face, smelling of wine and cigars.

  Anna’s emotion communicated itself to Dolly, and as she embraced her sister–in–law for the last time, she whispered:

  ‘Remember this, Anna: I will never forget what you did for me. And remember that I’ve loved and will always love you as my best friend!’

  ‘I don’t understand why,’ said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.

  ‘You’ve understood and understand me. Good–bye, my lovely!’

  XXIX

  ‘Well, it’s all over, and thank God!’ was the first thought that came to Anna Arkadyevna when she had said good–bye for the last time to her brother, who stood blocking the way into the carriage until the third bell. She sat down in her plush seat beside Annushka and looked around in the semi–darkness of the sleeping car[40] ‘Thank God, tomorrow I’ll see Seryozha and Alexei Alexandrovich, and my good and usual life will go on as before.’

  Still in the same preoccupied mood that she had been in all day, Anna settled herself with pleasure and precision for the journey; with her small, deft hands she unclasped her little red bag, took out a small pillow, put it on her knees, reclasped the bag, and, after neatly covering her legs, calmly leaned back. An ailing lady was already preparing to sleep. Two other ladies tried to address Anna, and a fat old woman, while covering her legs, made some observations about the heating. Anna said a few words in reply to the ladies, but, foreseeing no interesting conversation, asked Annushka to bring out a little lamp, attached it to the armrest of her seat, and took a paper–knife and an English novel from her handbag. At first she was unable to read. To begin with she was bothered by the bustle and movement; then, when the train started moving, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow that beat against the left–hand window and stuck to the glass, and the sight of a conductor passing by, all bundled up and covered with snow on one side, and the talk about the terrible blizzard outside, distracted her attention. Further on it was all the same; the same jolting and knocking, the same snow on the window, the same quick transitions from steaming heat to cold and back to heat, the same flashing of the same faces in the semi–darkness, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and understand what she was reading. Annushka was already dozing, holding the little red bag on her knees with her broad hands in their gloves, one of which was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She wanted too much to live herself. When she read about the heroine of the novel taking care of a sick man, she wanted to walk with inaudible steps round the sick man’s room; when she read about a Member of Parliament making a speech, she wanted to make that speech; when she read about how Lady Mary rode to hounds, teasing her sister–in–law and surprising everyone with her courage, she wanted to do it herself. But there was nothing to do, and so, fingering the smooth knife with her small hands, she forced herself to read.

  The hero of the novel was already beginning to achieve his English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna wished to go with him to this estate, when suddenly she felt that he must be ashamed and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what was he ashamed of ? ‘What am I ashamed of?’ she asked herself in offended astonishment. She put down the book and leaned back in the seat, clutching the paper–knife tightly in both hands. There was nothing shameful. She went through all her Moscow memories. They were all good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his enamoured, obedient face, remembered all her relations with him: nothing was shameful. But just there, at that very place in her memories, the feeling of shame became more intense, as if precisely then, when she remembered Vronsky, some inner voice were telling her: ‘Warm, very warm, hot!’ ‘Well, what then?’ she said resolutely to herself, shifting her position in the seat. ‘What does it mean? Am I afraid to look at it directly? Well, what of it? Can it be that there exist or ever could exist any other relations between me and this boy–officer than those that exist with any acquaintance?’ She smiled scornfully and again picked up the book, but now was decidedly unable to understand what she was reading. She passed the paper–knife over the glass, then put its smooth and cold surface to her cheek and nearly laughed aloud from the joy that suddenly came over her for no reason. She felt her nerves tighten more and more, like strings on winding pegs. She felt her eyes open wider and wider, her fingers and toes move nervously; something inside her stopped her breath, and all images and sounds in that wavering semi–darkness impressed themselves on her with extraordinary vividness. She kept having moments of doubt whether the carriage was moving forwards or backwards, or standing still. Was that Annushka beside her, or some stranger? ‘What is that on the armrest – a fur coat or some animal? And what am I? Myself or someone else?’ It was frightening to surrender herself to this oblivion. But something was drawing her in, and she was able, at will, to surrender to it or hold back from it. She stood up in order to come to her senses, threw the rug aside, and removed the pelerine from her warm dress. For a moment she recovered and realized that the skinny muzhik coming in, wearing a long nankeen coat with a missing button, was the stoker, that he was looking at the thermometer, that wind and snow had burst in with him through the doorway; but then everything became confused again … This muzhik with the long waist began to gnaw at something on the wall; the old woman began to stretch her legs out the whole length of the carriage and filled it with a black cloud; then something screeched and banged terribly, as if someone was being torn to pieces; then a red fire blinded her eyes, and then everything was hidden by a wall. Anna felt as if she was falling through the floor. But all this was not frightening but exhilarating. The voice of a bundled–up and snow–covered man shouted something into her ear. She stood up and came to her senses, realizing that they had arrived at a station and the man was the conductor. She asked Annushka to hand her the pelerine and a shawl, put them on and went to the door.

  ‘Are you going out?’ asked Annushka.

  Yes, I need a breath of air. It’s very hot in here.’

  And she opened the door. Blizzard and wind came tearing to meet her and vied with her for the door. This, too, she found exhilarating. She opened the door and went out. The wind, as if only waiting for her, whistled joyfully and wanted to pick her up and carry her off, but she grasped the cold post firmly and, holding her dress down, stepped on to the Platform and into the lee of the carriage. The wind was strong on the steps, but on the platform beside the train it was quiet. With pleasure she drew in deep breaths of the snowy, frosty air and, standing by the carriage, looked around the platform and the lit–up station.

  XXX

  The terrible snowstorm tore and whistled between the wheels of the carriages, over the posts and around the corner of the station. Carr
iages, posts, people, everything visible was covered with snow on one side and getting covered more and more. The storm would subside for a moment, but then return again in such gusts that it seemed impossible to withstand it. Meanwhile, people were running, exchanging merry talk, creaking over the planks of the platform, and ceaselessly opening and closing the big doors. The huddled shadow of a man slipped under her feet, and there was the noise of a hammer striking iron. ‘Give me the telegram!’ a gruff voice came from across the stormy darkness. ‘This way, please!’ ‘Number twenty–eight!’ various other voices shouted, and bundled–up, snow–covered people ran by. Two gentlemen with the fire of cigarettes in their mouths walked past her. She breathed in once more, to get her fill of air, and had already taken her hand from her muff to grasp the post and go into the carriage, when near her another man, in a military greatcoat, screened her from the wavering light of the lantern. She turned and in the same moment recognized the face of Vronsky. Putting his hand to his visor, he bowed to her and asked if she needed anything, if he might be of service to her. She peered at him for quite a long time without answering and, though he was standing in the shadow, she could see, or thought she could see, the expression of his face and eyes. It was again that expression of respectful admiration which had so affected her yesterday. More than once she had told herself during those recent days and again just now that for her Vronsky was one among hundreds of eternally identical young men to be met everywhere, that she would never allow herself even to think of him; but now, in the first moment of meeting him, she was overcome by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why he was there. She knew it as certainly as if he had told her that he was there in order to be where she was.

  ‘I didn’t know you were going. Why are you going?’ she said, letting fall the hand that was already holding the post. And irrepressible joy and animation shone on her face.

  ‘Why am I going?’ he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. ‘You know I am going in order to be where you are,’ he said, ‘I cannot do otherwise.’

  And just then, as if overcoming an obstacle, the wind dumped snow from the roof of the carriage, blew some torn–off sheet of iron about, and from ahead a low train whistle howled mournfully and drearily. All the terror of the blizzard seemed still more beautiful to her now. He had said the very thing that her soul desired but that her reason feared. She made no reply, and he saw a struggle in her face.

  ‘Forgive me if what I have said is unpleasant for you,’ he said submissively.

  He spoke courteously, respectfully, but so firmly and stubbornly that for a long time she was unable to make any reply.

  ‘What you’re saying is bad, and I beg you, if you are a good man, to forget it, as I will forget it,’ she said at last.

  ‘Not one of your words, not one of your movements will I ever forget, and I cannot…’

  ‘Enough, enough!’ she cried out, trying in vain to give a stern expression to her face, into which he peered greedily. And, placing her hand on the cold post, she went up the steps and quickly entered the vestibule of the carriage. But in this little vestibule she stopped, pondering in her imagination what had just happened. Though she could remember neither his words nor her own, she sensed that this momentary conversation had brought them terribly close, and this made her both frightened and happy. She stood for a few seconds, went into the carriage, and took her seat. The magical, strained condition that had tormented her at the beginning not only renewed itself, but grew stronger and reached a point where she feared that something wound too tight in her might snap at any moment. She did not sleep all night. But in that strain and those reveries that filled her imagination there was nothing unpleasant or gloomy; on the contrary, there was something joyful, burning and exciting. Towards morning Anna dozed off in her seat, and when she woke up it was already white, bright, and the train was pulling into Petersburg. At once thoughts of her home, her husband, her son, and the cares of the coming day and those to follow surrounded her.

  In Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got off, the first face that caught her attention was that of her husband. ‘Ah, my God! what’s happened with his ears?’ she thought, looking at his cold and imposing figure and especially struck now by the cartilage of his ears propping up the brim of his round hat. Seeing her, he came to meet her, composing his lips into his habitual mocking smile and looking straight at her with his big weary eyes. Some unpleasant feeling gnawed at her heart as she met his unwavering and weary gaze, as if she had expected him to look different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. This was an old, familiar feeling, similar to that state of pretence she experienced in her relations with her husband; but previously she had not noticed it, while now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.

  ‘Yes, as you see, your tender husband, tender as in the second year of marriage, is burning with desire to see you,’ he said in his slow, high voice and in the tone he almost always used with her, a tone in mockery of someone who might actually mean what he said.

  ‘Is Seryozha well?’ she asked.

  ‘Is that all the reward I get for my ardour?’ he said. ‘He’s well, he’s well…’

  XXXI

  Vronsky did not even try to fall asleep all that night. He sat in his seat, now staring straight ahead of him, now looking over the people going in and out, and if he had struck and troubled strangers before by his air of imperturbable calm, he now seemed still more proud and self–sufficient. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man across from him, who served on the circuit court, came to hate him for that look. The young man lit a cigarette from his, tried talking to him, and even jostled him, to let him feel that he was not a thing but a human being, but Vronsky went on looking at him as at a lamppost, and the young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his self–possession under the pressure of this non–recognition of himself as a human being and was unable to fall asleep because of it.

  Vronsky did not see anything or anybody. He felt himself a king, not because he thought he had made an impression on Anna – he did not believe that yet – but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.

  What would come of it all, he did not know and did not even consider. He felt that all his hitherto dissipated and dispersed forces were gathered and directed with terrible energy towards one blissful goal. And he was happy in that. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he was going where she was, that the whole happiness of life, the sole meaning of life, he now found in seeing and hearing her. And when he got off the train at Bologoye for a drink of seltzer water, and saw Anna, his first words involuntarily told her just what he thought. And he was glad he had said it to her, that she now knew it and was thinking about it. He did not sleep all night. Returning to his carriage, he kept running through all the attitudes in which he had seen her, all her words, and in his imagination floated pictures of the possible future, making his heart stand still.

  When he got off the train in Petersburg he felt animated and fresh after his sleepless night, as after a cold bath. He stopped by his carriage, waiting for her to get out. ‘One more time,’ he said to himself, smiling involuntarily, ‘I’ll see her walk, her face; she’ll say something, turn her head, look, perhaps smile.’ But even before seeing her, he saw her husband, whom the stationmaster was courteously conducting through the crowd. ‘Ah, yes, the husband!’ Only now did Vronsky understand clearly for the first time that the husband was a person connected with her. He knew she had a husband, but had not believed in his existence and fully believed in it only when he saw him, with his head, his shoulders, his legs in black trousers; and especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a proprietary air.

  Seeing Alexei Alexandrovich with his fresh Petersburg face[41], his sternly self–confident figure, his round hat and slightly curved back, he believed in him and experienced an unpleasant feeling, like th
at of a man suffering from thirst who comes to a spring and finds in it a dog, a sheep or a pig who has both drunk and muddied the water. The gait of Alexei Alexandrovich, swinging his whole pelvis and his blunt feet, was especially offensive to Vronsky. Only for himself did he acknowledge the unquestionable right to love her. But she was still the same, and her appearance still affected him in the same way, physically reviving, arousing his soul, and filling it with happiness. He told his German footman, who came running from second class, to take his things and go, and he himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting of husband and wife and, with the keen–sightedness of a man in love, noticed signs of the slight constraint with which she talked to her husband. ‘No, she does not and cannot love him,’ he decided to himself.