Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Let’s go to mama!’ she said, taking him by the hand. For a long time he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid to spoil the loftiness of his feeling with words, as because each time he wanted to say something he felt that, instead of words, tears of happiness were about to burst out. He took her hand and kissed it.

  ‘Can this be true?’ he said finally in a muted voice. ‘I can’t believe you love me!’ She smiled at these words and at the timidity with which he glanced at her.

  ‘Yes!’ she said meaningly and slowly. ‘I’m so happy!’

  Without letting go of his hand, she went into the drawing room. The princess, seeing them, began breathing quickly and immediately broke down in tears, then immediately burst out laughing and, running to them with energetic strides that Levin would never have expected of her, embraced his head, kissed him and wetted his cheeks with tears.

  ‘So it’s all settled! I’m glad. Love her. I’m glad … Kitty!’

  ‘That was quick work!’ said the old prince, trying to be indifferent; but Levin noticed that his eyes were moist when he addressed him.

  ‘I’ve long, I’ve always wished for this!’ he said, taking Levin’s hand and drawing him to him. ‘Even then, when this flighty one took a notion…’

  ‘Papa!’ Kitty cried and covered his mouth with her hand.

  ‘Well, all right!’ he said. ‘I’m very, very … hap … Ah! how stupid I am…’

  He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made the sign of the cross over her.

  And Levin was overcome by a new feeling of love for this man previously a stranger to him, the old prince, when he saw how long and tenderly Kitty kissed his fleshy hand.

  XVI

  The princess sat in an armchair, silent and smiling; the prince sat beside her. Kitty stood by her father’s chair, still holding his hand. Everyone was silent.

  The princess was the first to put names to things and translate all thoughts and feelings into questions of life. And it seemed equally strange and even painful to them all in the first moment.

  ‘So, when? We must bless you and announce it. And when will the wedding be? What do you think, Alexandre?’

  ‘He’s the one,’ said the old prince, pointing at Levin, ‘he’s the chief person here.’

  ‘When?’ said Levin, blushing. ‘Tomorrow. If you ask me, in my opinion, the blessing today and the wedding tomorrow.’ ‘Come, come, mon cher, that’s foolishness!’

  ‘Well, in a week, then.’

  ‘He’s quite mad.’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Mercy!’ said the mother, smiling joyfully at his haste. ‘And the trousseau?’

  ‘Will there really be a trousseau and all that?’ Levin thought with horror. ‘And yet, can the trousseau, and the blessing, and all that – can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!’ He glanced at Kitty and noticed that she was not the least bit offended at the thought of a trousseau. ‘So it’s necessary,’ he thought.

  ‘I really don’t know anything, I only said what I wish,’ he said, apologizing.

  ‘Then we’ll decide. We can give the blessing and make the announcement now. That’s so.’

  The princess went up to her husband, kissed him and was about to leave; but he held her back, embraced her and tenderly, like a young lover, smiling, kissed her several times. The old folk evidently got confused for a moment and could not quite tell whether it was they who were in love again, or only their daughter. When the prince and princess left, Levin went up to his fiancée and took her hand. He had now gained control of himself and could speak, and there was much that he needed to tell her. But he said not at all what he meant to.

  ‘How I knew it would be so! I never hoped, but in my soul I was always sure,’ he said. ‘I believe it was predestined.’

  ‘And I.’ she said. ‘Even when . . .’ she stopped and then went on, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, ‘even when I pushed my happiness away from me. I always loved you alone, but I was infatuated. I must tell. .. Can you forget it?’

  ‘Maybe it was for the better. You must forgive me many things. I must tell you .. .’

  This was one of the things he had resolved to tell her. He had resolved to tell her two things in the very first days – one, that he was not as pure as she was, and the other, that he was an unbeliever. It was painful, but he considered that he ought to tell her both the one and the other.

  ‘No, not now, later!’ he said.

  ‘Very well, later, but you absolutely must tell me. I’m not afraid of anything. I must know everything. It’s settled now.’

  He finished the phrase: ‘Settled that you’ll take me however I used to be, that you won’t renounce me? Yes?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Their conversation was interrupted by Mlle Linon, who, smiling falsely but tenderly, came to congratulate her favourite charge. Before she left, the servants came with their congratulations. Then relatives arrived, and that blissful tumult began from which Levin did not escape till the day after his wedding. Levin felt constantly awkward, bored, but the tension of happiness went on, ever increasing. He kept feeling that much that he did not know was demanded of him, and he did everything he was told and it all made him happy. He thought that his engagement would have nothing in common with others, that the ordinary conditions of engagement would spoil his particular happiness; but it ended with him doing the same things as others, and his happiness was only increased by it and became more and more special, the like of which had never been known and never would be.

  ‘Now we’ll have some sweets,’ Mlle Linon would say, and Levin would go to buy sweets.

  ‘Well, I’m very glad,’ said Sviyazhsky. ‘I advise you to buy flowers at Fomin’s.’

  ‘Must I?’ And he went to Fomin’s.

  His brother told him that he would have to borrow money, because there would be many expenses, presents …

  ‘Must there be presents?’ And he galloped off to Fulde’s.[15]

  At the confectioner’s, at Fomin’s and at Fulde’s he saw that they expected him, were glad to see him, and celebrated his happiness just as did everyone he had to deal with during those days. The extraordinary thing was not only that everyone loved him, but that all formerly unsympathetic, cold, indifferent people admired him and obeyed him in all things, treated his feeling with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was the happiest man in the world because his fiancée was the height of perfection. And Kitty felt the same. When Countess Nordston allowed herself to hint that she had wished for something better, Kitty flew into such a passion and proved so persuasively that nothing in the world could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had to admit it and never afterwards met Levin in Kitty’s presence without a smile of admiration.

  The explanation he had promised was the one painful event during that time. He discussed it with the old prince and, having obtained his permission, gave Kitty his diary, in which he had written down what tormented him. He had written this diary with his future fiancée in mind. Two things tormented him: his impurity and his unbelief. His confession of unbelief went unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the least. She knew his whole soul through love, and in his soul she saw what she wanted, and if such a state of soul was called unbelief, it made no difference to her. But the other confession made her weep bitterly.

  It was not without inner struggle that Levin gave her his diary. He knew that there could not and should not be any secrets between them, and therefore he decided that it had to be so: but he did not realize how it might affect her, he did not put himself in her place. Only when he came to them that evening before the theatre, went to her room and saw her tear–stained, pathetic and dear face, miserable from the irremediable grief he had caused her, did he understand the abyss that separated his shameful past from her dove–like purity and feel horrified at what he had done.
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br />   ‘Take them, take these terrible books!’ she said, pushing away the notebooks that lay before her on the table. ‘Why did you give them to me! … No, all the same it’s better,’ she added, taking pity on his desperate face. ‘But it’s terrible, terrible!’

  He bowed his head and was silent. There was nothing he could say.

  ‘You won’t forgive me,’ he whispered.

  ‘No, I’ve forgiven you, but it’s terrible!’

  However, his happiness was so great that this confession did not destroy it, but only added a new shade to it. She forgave him; but after that he considered himself still more unworthy of her, bowed still lower before her morally, and valued still more highly his undeserved happiness.

  XVII

  Involuntarily going over in his memory the impressions of the conversations during and after dinner, Alexei Alexandrovich went back to his lonely hotel room. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about forgiveness produced nothing in him but vexation. The applicability or non– applicability of the Christian rule to his own case was too difficult a question, one about which it was impossible to speak lightly, and this question Alexei Alexandrovich had long ago decided in the negative. Of all that had been said, the words that had sunk deepest into his imagination were those of the stupid, kindly Turovtsyn: ‘Acted like a real man; challenged him to a duel and killed him’. They all obviously sympathized with that, though out of politeness they did not say so.

  ‘Anyhow, the matter’s settled, there’s no point in thinking about it,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself. And, thinking only of his impending departure and the inspection business, he went into his room and asked the porter who had accompanied him where his valet was; the porter said that the valet had just left. Alexei Alexandrovich asked to have tea served, sat down at the table and, taking up Froom,[16] began working out the itinerary of his trip.

  ‘Two telegrams,’ said the valet, coming back into the room. ‘Excuse me, your excellency, I just stepped out.’

  Alexei Alexandrovich took the telegrams and opened them. The first was the news of Stremov’s appointment to the very post Karenin had desired. Alexei Alexandrovich threw down the dispatch and, turning red, got up and began to pace the room. ‘Quos vult perdere dementat,’* he said, meaning by quos those persons who had furthered this appointment. He was not vexed so much by the fact that it was not he who had obtained the post, that he had obviously been passed over; what he found incomprehensible and astonishing was how they could not see that the babbler, the phrase–monger Stremov was less fit for the job than anyone else. How could they not see that they were ruining themselves and their prestige by this appointment!

  ‘Something else of the same sort,’ he said biliously to himself, opening the second dispatch. The telegram was from his wife. Her signature in blue pencil – ‘Anna’ – was the first thing that struck his eyes. ‘Am dying, beg, implore you come. Will die more peacefully with forgiveness,’ he read. He smiled contemptuously and threw down the telegram. There could be no doubt, it seemed to him in that first moment, that this was a trick and a deception.

  ‘She wouldn’t stop at any deception. She’s due to give birth. Maybe the illness is childbirth. But what is their goal? To legitimize the child, to compromise me and prevent the divorce,’ he thought. ‘But there’s

  * Those whom [God] would destroy he first makes mad.

  something it says there – "Am dying .. ."‘ He reread the telegram; and suddenly the direct meaning of what it said struck him. ‘And what if it’s true?’ he said to himself. ‘If it’s true that in the moment of suffering and near death she sincerely repents and I, taking it for deception, refuse to come? It would not only be cruel – and everybody would condemn me – but it would be stupid on my part.’

  ‘Pyotr, cancel the coach. I’m going to Petersburg,’ he said to the valet.

  Alexei Alexandrovich decided that he would go to Petersburg and see his wife. If her illness was a deception, he would say nothing and go away. If she was really ill and dying, and wished to see him before she died, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and fulfil his final duty if he came too late.

  For the whole way he gave no more thought to what he was to do.

  With the feeling of fatigue and uncleanness that comes from a night on the train, in the early mist of Petersburg Alexei Alexandrovich drove down the deserted Nevsky and stared straight ahead, not thinking of what awaited him. He could not think of it because, when he imagined what was to be, he could not rid himself of the thought that death would resolve at a stroke all the difficulty of his situation. Bakers, locked–up shops, night cabs, caretakers sweeping the pavements, flashed past his eyes, and he observed it all, trying to stifle within himself the thought of what awaited him and what he dared not wish but wished all the same. He drove up to the porch. A cab and a coach with a sleeping coachman stood at the entrance. As he went into the front hall, Alexei Alexandrovich drew a resolution, as it were, from a far corner of his brain and consulted it. It read: ‘If it is a deception, then calm contempt, and depart. If true, observe propriety.’

  The hall porter opened the door even before Alexei Alexandrovich rang. The porter Petrov, also called Kapitonych, looked strange in an old frock coat, with no tie and in slippers.

  ‘How is the mistress?’

  ‘Safely delivered yesterday.’

  Alexei Alexandrovich stopped and went pale. He now realized clearly how strongly he had desired her death.

  ‘And her health?’

  Kornei, in a morning apron, came running down the stairs.

  ‘Very bad,’ he answered. ‘Yesterday there was a doctors’ consultation, and the doctor is here now.’

  ‘Take my things,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich and, feeling slightly relieved at the news that there was after all some hope of death, he went into the front hall.

  There was a military coat on the rack. Alexei Alexandrovich noticed it and asked:

  ‘Who is here?’

  ‘The doctor, the midwife and Count Vronsky.’

  Alexei Alexandrovich walked into the inner rooms.

  There was no one in the drawing room; at the sound of his footsteps the midwife came out of the boudoir in a cap with violet ribbons.

  She went up to Alexei Alexandrovich and with the familiarity that comes from the nearness of death took him by the arm and led him to the bedroom.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come! She talks only of you,’ she said.

  ‘Quickly fetch some ice!’ the doctor’s peremptory voice said from the bedroom.

  Alexei Alexandrovich went into her boudoir. At her desk, his side to the back of the low chair, sat Vronsky, his face buried in his hands, weeping. At the sound of the doctor’s voice he jumped up, took his hands away from his face, and saw Alexei Alexandrovich. Seeing the husband, he was so embarrassed that he sat down again, drawing his head down between his shoulders as if he wished to disappear somewhere; but he made an effort, stood up and said:

  ‘She’s dying. The doctors say there’s no hope. I am entirely at your mercy, but allow me to be here … however, I shall do as you please, I…’

  Alexei Alexandrovich, seeing Vronsky’s tears, felt a surge of that inner disturbance that the sight of other people’s suffering produced in him, and, averting his face, without waiting for him to finish, he hastily went to the door. From the bedroom came Anna’s voice saying something. Her voice was gay, animated, with extremely distinct intonations. Alexei Alexandrovich went into the bedroom and approached the bed. She lay with her face turned towards him. Her cheeks were flushed red, her eyes shone, her small white hands, sticking out of the cuffs of her jacket, toyed with the corner of the blanket, twisting it. She seemed not only healthy and fresh but also in the best of spirits. She spoke quickly, sonorously, and with unusually regular and deep–felt intonations.