by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
After what has happened, I can no longer remain in your house. I am leaving and taking our son with me. I do not know the laws and therefore do not know which of the parents keeps the son; but I am taking him with me, because I cannot live without him. Be magnanimous, leave him with me.
Up to that point she wrote quickly and naturally, but the appeal to his magnanimity, which she did not recognize in him, and the necessity of concluding the letter with something touching, stopped her.
‘I cannot speak of my guilt and my repentance, because …’
Again she stopped, finding no coherence in her thoughts. ‘No,’ she said to herself, ‘nothing’s needed,’ and, tearing up the letter, she rewrote it, removing the mention of magnanimity, and sealed it.
The other letter had to be written to Vronsky. ‘I have told my husband,’ she wrote, and sat for a long time, unable to write more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. ‘And then, what can I write to him?’ she said to herself. Again a flush of shame covered her face. She remembered his calm, and a feeling of vexation with him made her tear the sheet with the written phrase into little shreds. ‘Nothing’s necessary,’ she said to herself. She folded the blotting pad, went upstairs, told the governess and the servants that she was going to Moscow that day, and immediately started packing her things.
XVI
In all the rooms of the country house caretakers, gardeners and footmen went about, carrying things out. Wardrobes and chests of drawers were opened; twice they ran to the shop for more string; newspapers lay about on the floor. Two trunks, several bags, and some tied–up rugs were taken out to the front hall. Her carriage and two hired cabs stood by the porch. Anna, having forgotten her inner anxiety in the work of packing, was standing at the table in her boudoir packing her travelling bag when Annushka drew her attention to the noise of a carriage driving up. Anna looked out the window and saw Alexei Alexandrovich’s courier on the porch, ringing at the front door.
‘Go and find out what it is,’ she said, and with a calm readiness for anything, her hands folded on her knees, she sat in the armchair. A footman brought a fat envelope with Alexei Alexandrovich’s handwriting on it.
‘The courier has been ordered to bring a reply,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ she said, and as soon as the man went out, she tore open the letter with trembling fingers. A wad of unfolded bank notes in a sealed wrapper fell out of it. She freed the letter and began reading from the end. ‘I have made the preparations for the move, I ascribe importance to the fulfilment of my request,’ she read. She skipped further back, read everything and once again read through the whole letter from the beginning. When she finished, she felt that she was cold and that a terrible disaster, such as she had never expected, had fallen upon her.
She had repented in the morning of what she had told her husband and had wished for only one thing, that those words might be as if unspoken. And here was a letter recognizing the words as unspoken and granting her what she had wished. But now this letter was more terrible for her than anything she could have imagined.
‘He’s right! He’s right!’ she said. ‘Of course, he’s always right, he’s a Christian, he’s magnanimous! Yes, the mean, vile man! And I’m the only one who understands or ever will understand it; and I can’t explain it. They say he’s a religious, moral, honest, intelligent man; but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has been stifling my life for eight years, stifling everything that was alive in me, that he never once even thought that I was a living woman who needed love. They don’t know how he insulted me at every step and remained pleased with himself. Didn’t I try as hard as I could to find a justification for my life? Didn’t I try to love him, and to love my son when it was no longer possible to love my husband? But the time has come, I’ve realized that I can no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, that I am not to blame if God has made me so that I must love and live. And what now? If he killed me, if he killed him, I could bear it all, I could forgive it all, but no, he . ..
‘How did I not guess what he would do? He’ll do what’s proper to his mean character. He’ll remain right, and as for me, the ruined one, he will make my ruin still worse, still meaner …
‘ "You yourself can imagine what awaits you and your son",’ she recalled the words of the letter. ‘That’s a threat that he’ll take my son away, and according to their stupid law he can probably do it. But don’t I know why he says it? He doesn’t believe in my love for my son either, or else he despises (how he always did snigger at it), he despises this feeling of mine, but he knows that I won’t abandon my son, I cannot abandon my son, that without my son there can be no life for me even with the one I love, but that if I abandon my son and run away from him, I’ll be acting like the most disgraceful, vile woman – he knows that and knows I wouldn’t be able to do it.
‘ "Our life must go on as before",’ she recalled another phrase from the letter. ‘That life was a torment even before, it has been terrible recently. What will it be now? And he knows it all, he knows that I cannot repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that, except for lies and deceit, there will be nothing in it; yet he must go on tormenting me. I know him, I know that he swims and delights in lies like a fish in water. But no, I won’t give him that delight, I’ll tear apart this web of lies he wants to wrap around me, come what may. Anything is better than lies and deceit!
‘But how? My God! My God! Was any woman ever as unhappy as I am?…
‘No, I’ll tear it, I’ll tear it apart!’ she cried out, jumping up and forcing back her tears. And she went to the desk in order to write him another letter. But in the depths of her soul she already sensed that she would be unable to tear anything apart, unable to get out of her former situation, however false and dishonest it was.
She sat down at the desk but, instead of writing, she folded her arms on it, put her head on them, and wept, sobbing and heaving her whole breast, the way children weep. She wept that her dream of clarifying, of defining her situation was destroyed forever. She knew beforehand that everything would stay as it had been, and would even be far worse than it had been. She felt that the position she enjoyed in society, which had seemed so insignificant to her in the morning, was precious to her, and that she would not be able to exchange it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned her husband and son and joined her lover; that, try as she might, she could not be stronger than she was. She would never experience the freedom of love, but would forever remain a criminal wife, under threat of exposure every moment, deceiving her husband for the sake of a disgraceful affair with another, an independent man, with whom she could not live a life as one. She knew that this was how it would be, and at the same time it was so terrible that she could not even imagine how it would end. And she wept without restraint, as punished children weep.
The sound of the footman’s steps brought her back to herself and, hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.
‘The courier is asking for the reply,’ the footman reported.
‘Reply? Yes,’ said Anna, ‘have him wait. I’ll ring.’
‘What can I write?’ she thought. ‘What can I decide alone? What do I know? What do I want? What do I love?’ Again she felt that things had begun to go double in her soul. She became frightened at this feeling and seized on the first pretext for action that came to her, to distract her from thoughts of herself. ‘I must see Alexei’ (so she called Vronsky in her mind), ‘he alone can tell me what I must do. I’ll go to Betsy: maybe I’ll see him there,’ she said to herself, completely forgetting that just yesterday, when she had told him that she would not go to Princess Tverskoy’s, he had said that in that case he would not go either. She went to the table, wrote to her husband: ‘I have received your letter. A.’ – rang and handed it to the footman.
‘We’re not going,’ she said to Annushka as she came in.
‘Not going at all?’
‘No, don’t unpack until tomorrow, and hold the carr
iage. I’m going to see the princess.’
‘What dress shall I prepare?’
XVII
The company at the croquet party to which Princess Tverskoy had invited Anna was to consist of two ladies with their admirers. These two ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle which, in imitation of an imitation of something, was called Les sept merveilles du monde.*[16] These ladies belonged to a high circle, true, but one totally hostile to the one frequented by Anna. Besides, old Stremov, one of the influential people of Petersburg, the admirer of Liza Merkalov, was Alexei Alexandrovich’s enemy in the service. Because of all these considerations, Anna had not wished to go, and it was to this refusal that the hints in Princess Tverskoy’s note had referred. But now, in hopes of seeing Vronsky, she wanted to go.
Anna arrived at Princess Tverskoy’s earlier than the other guests.
Just as she came in, Vronsky’s footman, resembling a kammerjunker with his brushed–up side–whiskers, also came in. He stopped by the door and, taking off his cap, allowed her to pass. Anna recognized him and only then remembered Vronsky’s saying the day before that he would not come. Probably he had sent a note to that effect.
As she was taking off her coat in the front hall, she heard the footman, even pronouncing his rs like a kammerjunker, say: ‘From the count to the princess,’ and hand over a note.
* The seven wonders of the world.
She would have liked to ask where his master was. She would have liked to go home and send him a letter that he should come to her, or to go to him herself. But neither the one, nor the other, nor the third was possible: the bells announcing her arrival were already ringing ahead of her, and Princess Tverskoy’s footman was already standing sideways in the opened door, waiting for her to pass into the inner rooms.
‘The princess is in the garden, you will be announced presently. Would you care to go to the garden?’ another footman in another room asked.
The situation of indecision, of uncertainty, was the same as at home; still worse, because it was impossible to do anything, impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to stay here in an alien society so contrary to her mood; but she was wearing a costume that she knew became her; she was not alone, around her were the customary festive surroundings of idleness, and that made it easier for her than at home. She did not need to invent something to do; everything was being done by itself. Meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown that struck her with its elegance, Anna smiled at her as always. Princess Tverskoy was walking with Tushkevich and a young lady relation who, to the great delight of her provincial parents, was spending the summer with the famous princess.
Probably there was something special in Anna, because Betsy noticed it at once.
‘I slept badly,’ Anna replied, studying the footman who was coming towards them and, she supposed, bringing Vronsky’s note.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ said Betsy. ‘I’m tired and just wanted to have a cup of tea before they arrive. Why don’t you and Masha,’ she turned to Tushkevich, ‘go and try the croquet ground where it’s been cut? You and I will have time for a heart–to–heart talk over tea – we’ll have a cosy chat, won’t we?’ she added in English, turning to Anna with a smile and pressing her hand, which was holding a parasol.
‘The more so as I can’t stay with you long, I must go to see old Vrede. I promised her ages ago,’ said Anna, for whom lying, foreign to her nature, had not only become simple and natural in society, but even gave her pleasure.
Why she had said something that she had not thought of a second before, she would have been quite unable to explain. She had said it only with the idea that, since Vronsky was not coming, she had to secure some freedom for herself and try to see him somehow. But why precisely she had mentioned the old lady–in–waiting Vrede, whom she had to visit no more than many others, she would not have known how to explain, and yet, as it turned out later, had she been inventing the cleverest way of seeing Vronsky, she could have found nothing better.
‘No, I won’t let you go for anything,’ replied Betsy, peering attentively into Anna’s face. ‘Really, if I didn’t love you, I’d be offended. As if you’re afraid my company might compromise you. Please bring us tea in the small drawing room,’ she said, narrowing her eyes as she always did when addressing a footman. She took a note from him and read it. ‘Alexei has made us a false leap,’ she said in French. * ‘He writes that he can’t come,’ she added in such a natural, simple tone as if it never could have entered her head that Vronsky was anything more to Anna than a croquet partner.
Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but, listening to the way she talked about Vronsky, she always had a momentary conviction that she knew nothing.
‘Ah!’ Anna said indifferently, as if it was of little interest to her, and went on with a smile: ‘How could your company compromise anyone?’ This playing with words, this concealment of the secret, held great charm for Anna, as for all women. It was not the need for concealment, not the purpose of the concealment, but the very process of concealment that fascinated her. ‘I cannot be more Catholic than the pope,’ she said. ‘Stremov and Liza Merkalov are the cream of the cream of society. They are also received everywhere, and J,’ she especially emphasized the /, ‘have never been strict and intolerant. I simply have no time.’
‘Perhaps you don’t want to run into Stremov? Let him and Alexei Alexandrovich be at loggerheads on some committee, that’s no concern of ours. But in society he’s the most amiable man I know and a passionate croquet player. You’ll see. And despite his ridiculous position as Liza’s aged wooer, you must see how he gets himself out of it! He’s very sweet. You don’t know Sappho Stolz? This is a new, a quite new, tone.’
While Betsy was saying all this, Anna sensed from her cheerful, intelligent look that she partly understood her position and was up to something. They were in the small drawing room.
‘Anyhow, I must write to Alexei,’ and Betsy sat down at the table, wrote a few lines and put them in an envelope. ‘I’m writing that he should come for dinner. I have one lady for dinner who is left without a
* I.e. ‘nous a fait un faux bond’, i.e. ‘has let us down’.
man. See if it sounds convincing. Excuse me, I’ll leave you for a moment. Seal it, please, and send it off,’ she said from the door, ‘I must make some arrangements.’
Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down at the table with Betsy’s letter and, without reading it, added at the bottom: ‘I must see you. Come to Vrede’s garden. I’ll be there at six o’clock.’ She sealed it, and Betsy, having returned, sent the letter off in her presence.
Over tea, which was brought to them on a tray–table in the cool small drawing room, the two women indeed engaged in a ‘cosy chat’, as Princess Tverskoy had promised, until the guests arrived. They discussed the people who were expected, and the conversation came to rest on Liza Merkalov.
‘She’s very sweet and I’ve always found her sympathetic,’ Anna said.
‘You ought to love her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me after the race and was in despair at not finding you. She says you’re a real heroine from a novel and that if she were a man she would have committed a thousand follies for you. Stremov tells her she commits them anyway.’
‘But tell me, please, I never could understand,’ Anna said after some silence and in a tone which showed clearly that she was not putting an idle question, but that what she was asking was more important for her than it ought to be. ‘Tell me, please, what is her relation to Prince Kaluzhsky, the so–called Mishka? I’ve seldom met them. What is it?’
Betsy smiled with her eyes and looked attentively at Anna.
‘It’s the new way,’ she said. ‘They’ve all chosen this way. They’ve thrown their bonnets over the mills.* But there are different ways of throwing them over.’
