by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
The next two obstacles, a ditch and a barrier, were passed easily, but Vronsky began to hear Gladiator’s tread and snort coming closer. He urged his horse on and felt with joy that she easily increased her pace, and the sound of Gladiator’s hoofs began to be heard again from the former distance.
Vronsky was leading the race – the very thing he had wanted and that Cord had advised him to do – and was now certain of success. His excitement, his joy and tenderness for Frou–Frou kept increasing. He would have liked to look back but did not dare to, and tried to calm himself down and not urge his horse on, so as to save a reserve in her equal to what he felt was still left in Gladiator. There remained one obstacle, the most difficult; if he got over it ahead of the others, he would come in first. He was riding towards the Irish bank. Together with Frou–Frou he could already see this bank in the distance, and the two together, he and his horse, had a moment’s doubt. He noticed some indecision in the horse’s ears and raised his whip, but felt at once that his doubt was groundless: the horse knew what was needed. She increased her speed and measuredly, exactly as he had supposed, soared up, pushing off from the ground and giving herself to the force of inertia, which carried her far beyond the ditch; and in the same rhythm, effortlessly, in the same step, Frou–Frou continued the race.
‘Bravo, Vronsky!’ He heard the voices of a group of people – his regiment and friends, he knew – who were standing by that obstacle; he could not mistake Yashvin’s voice, though he did not see him.
‘Oh, my lovely!’ he thought of Frou–Frou, listening to what was happening behind him. ‘He cleared it!’ he thought, hearing Gladiator’s hoofbeats behind him. There remained one little ditch of water five feet wide. Vronsky was not even looking at it, but, wishing to come in a long first, began working the reins in a circle, raising and lowering the horse’s head in rhythm with her pace. He felt that the horse was drawing on her last reserve; not only were her neck and shoulders wet, but sweat broke out in drops on her withers, her head, her pointed ears, and her breathing was sharp and short. But he knew that this reserve was more than enough for the remaining five hundred yards. Only because he felt himself closer to the earth, and from the special softness of her movement, could Vronsky tell how much the horse had increased her speed. She flew over the ditch as if without noticing it; she flew over it like a bird; but just then Vronsky felt to his horror that, having failed to keep up with the horse’s movement, he, not knowing how himself, had made a wrong, an unforgivable movement as he lowered himself into the saddle. His position suddenly changed, and he knew that something terrible had happened. He was not yet aware of what it was, when the white legs of the chestnut stallion flashed just beside him and Makhotin went by at a fast clip. Vronsky was touching the ground with one foot, and his horse was toppling over on that foot. He barely managed to free the foot before she fell on her side, breathing heavily and making vain attempts to rise with her slender, sweaty neck, fluttering on the ground at his feet like a wounded bird. The awkward movement Vronsky had made had broken her back. But he understood that much later. Now he saw only that Makhotin was quickly drawing away, while he, swaying, stood alone on the muddy, unmoving ground, and before him, gasping heavily, lay Frou–Frou, her head turned to him, looking at him with her lovely eye. Still not understanding what had happened, Vronsky pulled the horse by the reins. She again thrashed all over like a fish, creaking the wings of the saddle, freed her front legs, but, unable to lift her hindquarters, immediately staggered and fell on her side again. His face disfigured by passion, pale, his lower jaw trembling, Vronsky kicked her in the stomach with his heel and again started pulling at the reins. She did not move but, burying her nose in the ground, merely looked at her master with her speaking eye.
‘A–a–ah!’ groaned Vronsky, clutching his head. ‘A–a–ah, what have I done!’ he cried. ‘The race is lost! And it’s my own fault – shameful, unforgivable! And this poor, dear, destroyed horse! A–a–ah, what have I done!’
People – the doctor and his assistant, officers from his regiment –came running towards him. To his dismay, he felt that he was whole and unhurt. The horse had broken her back and they decided to shoot her. Vronsky was unable to answer questions, unable to talk to anyone. He turned and, without picking up the cap that had fallen from his head, left the racetrack, not knowing himself where he was going. He felt miserable. For the first time in his life he had experienced a heavy misfortune, a misfortune that was irremediable and for which he himself was to blame.
Yashvin overtook him with the cap, brought him home, and a half hour later Vronsky came to his senses. But the memory of this race remained in his soul for a long time as the most heavy and painful memory of his life.
XXVI
Externally Alexei Alexandrovich’s relations with his wife remained the same as before. The only difference was that he was even busier than before. As in previous years, with the coming of spring he went to a spa abroad to restore his health, upset each year by his strenuous winter labours. Returning in July, as usual, he at once sat down with increased energy to his customary work. And as usual, his wife moved to their country house while he stayed in Petersburg.
Since the time of that conversation after the evening at Princess Tverskoy’s, he had never spoken to Anna of his suspicions and jealousy, and his usual mocking tone could not have been better for his present relations with his wife. He was somewhat colder towards her. It was merely as if he were slightly displeased with her for that first night’s conversation, which she had fended off. There was a tinge of vexation in his relations with her, nothing more. ‘You did not wish to have a talk with me,’ he seemed to be saying, mentally addressing her. ‘So much the worse for you. Now you’ll ask me, and / won’t talk. So much the worse for you,’ he said mentally, like a man who, after a vain attempt to put out a fire, gets angry at his vain efforts and says: ‘Serves you right! So for that you can just burn down!’
He who was so intelligent and subtle in official business, did not understand all the madness of such an attitude towards his wife. He did not understand it, because it was too dreadful for him to recognize his real position, and in his soul he closed, locked and sealed the drawer in which he kept his feelings for his family – that is, his wife and son. He who had been an attentive father had become especially cold towards his son since the end of that winter, and took the same bantering attitude towards him as towards his wife. ‘Ah! young man!’ was the way he addressed him.
Alexei Alexandrovich thought and said that he had never had so much official business in any other year as he had that year; but he did not realize that he had invented things for himself to do that year, that this was one way of not opening the drawer where his feelings for his wife and family and his thoughts about them lay, becoming more dreadful the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexei Alexandrovich what he thought about his wife’s behaviour, the mild, placid Alexei Alexandrovich would have made no reply, but would have become very angry with the man who had asked him about it. And that was why there was something proud and stern in the expression of Alexei Alexandrovich’s face when he was asked about his wife’s health. He did not want to think anything about his wife’s behaviour and feelings, and in fact did not think anything about them.
Alexei Alexandrovich’s permanent country house was in Peterhof, and Countess Lydia Ivanovna usually spent the summers there, too, in the neighbourhood and in constant contact with Anna. This year Countess Lydia Ivanovna refused to live in Peterhof, never once visited Anna Arkadyevna, and hinted to Alexei Alexandrovich at the awkwardness of Anna’s closeness to Betsy and Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich sternly interrupted her, expressing the thought that his wife was above suspicion, and after that he began to avoid Countess Lydia Ivanovna. He did not want to see, and did not see, that in society many were already looking askance at his wife; he did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife insisted especially on moving to Tsarskoe, where Betsy live
d, which was not far from the camp of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow himself to think of it, and did not think of it; but, nevertheless, in the depths of his soul, without ever saying it to himself and having not only no proofs of it but even no suspicions, he knew without doubt that he was a deceived husband, and it made him deeply unhappy.
How many times during his eight years of happy life with his wife, looking at other people’s unfaithful wives and deceived husbands, had Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself: ‘How can one let it come to that? How can one not undo this ugly situation?’ But now, when the disaster had fallen on his head, he not only did not think of how to undo the situation, but did want to know about it at all – did not want to know precisely because it was too terrible, too unnatural.
Since his return from abroad, Alexei Alexandrovich had been to the country house twice. Once he had dinner, the other time he spent the evening with guests, but neither time did he spend the night, as he had usually done in previous years.
The day of the races was a very busy day for Alexei Alexandrovich; but, having made a schedule for himself that morning, he decided that immediately after an early dinner he would go to see his wife at their country house and from there to the races, which the whole court would attend and which he, too, had to attend. He would visit his wife, because he had decided to see her once a week for propriety’s sake. Besides, according to the established rule, that day being the fifteenth, he had to give her money for her expenses.
With his customary control over his mind, having pondered all this about his wife, he did not allow his thoughts to go further into what concerned her.
That morning Alexei Alexandrovich was very busy. The day before, Countess Lydia Ivanovna had sent him a booklet by a famous traveller to China, then in Petersburg, with a letter asking him to receive the traveller himself – a very interesting and necessary man in many regards. Alexei Alexandrovich had not finished the booklet the night before and so he finished it in the morning. Then petitioners came, reports began, receptions, appointments, dismissals, distributions of awards, pensions, salaries, correspondence – all that everyday business, as Alexei Alexandrovich called it, which took up so much time. Then there were personal matters – visits from his doctor and his office manager. The office manager did not take much time. He merely handed Alexei Alexandrovich the money he needed and gave a brief report on the state of his affairs, which was not entirely good, because it so happened that, having gone out frequently that year, they had spent more and there was a deficit. But the doctor, a famous Petersburg doctor who was on friendly terms with Alexei Alexandrovich, took much time. Alexei Alexandrovich did not expect him that day and was surprised by his arrival and still more by the fact that the doctor questioned him very attentively about his condition, sounded his chest, tapped and palpated his liver. Alexei Alexandrovich did not know that his friend Lydia Ivanovna, noticing that his health was not good that year, had asked the doctor to go and examine the patient. ‘Do it for me,’ she had said to him.
‘I shall do it for Russia, Countess,’ the doctor had replied.
‘A priceless man!’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna had said.
The doctor remained very displeased with Alexei Alexandrovich. He found his liver considerably enlarged, his appetite insufficient, and the waters of no effect. He prescribed as much physical movement and as little mental strain as possible, and above all no sort of distress – that is, the very thing which for Alexei Alexandrovich was as impossible as not to breathe; and he went off, leaving Alexei Alexandrovich with the unpleasant awareness that something was wrong with him and that it could not be put right.
On the porch, as he was leaving, the doctor ran into Slyudin, Alexei Alexandrovich’s office manager, whom he knew well. They had been at the university together and, though they saw each other rarely, respected each other and were good friends, and therefore the doctor would not have given anyone so frank an opinion of the patient as he gave to Slyudin.
‘I’m so glad you visited him,’ said Slyudin. ‘He’s unwell, and I think . . . Well, what is it?’
‘Here’s what,’ said the doctor, waving over Slyudin’s head for his coachman to drive up. ‘Here’s what,’ he said, taking a finger of his kid glove in his white hands and stretching it. ‘If a string isn’t tight and you try to break it, it’s very hard to do. But tighten it to the utmost and put just the weight of your finger on it, and it will break. And he, with his assiduousness, his conscientiousness about his work, is tightened to the utmost degree; and there is an external pressure and a heavy one,’ the doctor concluded, raising his eyebrows significantly. ‘Will you be at the races?’ he added, going down to the waiting carriage. ‘Yes, yes, naturally, it takes a lot of time,’ the doctor replied to some remark of Slyudin’s that he had not quite heard.
After the doctor, who had taken so much time, came the famous traveller, and Alexei Alexandrovich, using the just–read booklet and his previous knowledge of the subject, struck the traveller with the depth of his grasp and the breadth of his enlightened outlook.
Along with the traveller, the arrival of a provincial marshal[30] was announced, who had come to Petersburg and with whom he had to talk. After his departure, he needed to finish the everyday work with his office manager and also go to see a very significant person on some serious and important business. Alexei Alexandrovich just managed to get back by five o’clock, his dinner–time, and, having dined with his office manager, invited him to come along to his country house and the races.
Without realizing it, Alexei Alexandrovich now sought occasions for having a third person present at his meetings with his wife.
XXVII
Anna was standing in front of the mirror upstairs, pinning the last bow to her dress with Annushka’s help, when she heard the sound of wheels crunching gravel at the entrance.
‘It’s too early for Betsy,’ she thought and, looking out the window, saw the carriage with Alexei Alexandrovich’s black hat and so–familiar ears sticking out of it. ‘That’s untimely. Does he mean to spend the night?’ she thought, and all that might come of it seemed to her so terrible and frightening that, without a moment’s thought, she went out to meet them with a gay and radiant face and, feeling in herself the presence of the already familiar spirit of lying and deceit, at once surrendered to it and began talking without knowing herself what she was going to say.
‘Ah, how nice!’ she said, giving her hand to her husband and greeting Slyudin with a smile as a member of the household. ‘You’ll spend the night, I hope?’ were the first words that the spirit of deceit prompted her to say. ‘And now we can go together. Only it’s a pity I promised Betsy. She’s coming for me.’
Alexei Alexandrovich winced at the name of Betsy.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t separate the inseparables,’ he said in his usual jocular tone. ‘I’ll go with Mikhail Vassilyevich. And the doctors tell me to walk. I’ll stroll on the way and imagine I’m back at the spa.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Anna. ‘Would you like tea?’
She rang.
‘Serve tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexei Alexandrovich has come. Well, how is your health? Mikhail Vassilyevich, you’ve never been here; look how nice it is on my balcony,’ she said, addressing first one, then the other.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too quickly. She felt it herself, the more so as, in the curious glance that Mikhail Vassilyevich gave her, she noticed that he seemed to be observing her.
Mikhail Vassilyevich at once went out on the terrace.
She sat down by her husband.
‘You don’t look quite well,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the doctor came today and took an hour of my time. I have the feeling that one of my friends sent him: my health is so precious …’
