by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
‘No, I deserve it very much, because I’ve become a most serious man. I settle not only my own but other people’s family affairs,’ he said with a meaningful look on his face.
‘Ah, I’m very glad!’ Betsy replied, understanding at once that he was talking about Anna. And going back to the reception room, they stood in a corner. ‘He’ll be the death of her,’ Betsy said in a meaningful whisper. ‘It’s impossible, impossible …’
‘I’m very glad you think so,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, shaking his head with a grave and painfully compassionate look on his face. ‘I’ve come to Petersburg on account of that.’
‘The whole town is talking about it,’ she said. ‘This is an impossible situation. She’s wasting away. He doesn’t understand that she’s one of those women who can’t trifle with their feelings. One of two things: he must either take her away, act energetically, or give her a divorce. But this is stifling her.’
‘Yes, yes … precisely …’ Oblonsky said, sighing. ‘That’s why I’ve come. That is, not essentially for that… I’ve been made a gentleman of the chamber, so I must show my gratitude. But above all, this has got to be settled.’
‘Well, God help you!’ said Betsy.
Having seen Princess Betsy to the front hall and kissed her hand above the glove, where the pulse beats, and having told her a heap of such unseemly drivel that she no longer knew whether to laugh or be angry, Stepan Arkadyich went to his sister. He found her in tears.
Despite the ebulliently merry mood he was in, Stepan Arkadyich naturally changed at once to the compassionate, poetically agitated tone that suited her mood. He asked about her health and how she had spent the night.
‘Very, very badly. And the afternoon, and the morning, and all days past and to come,’ she said.
‘I think you’re surrendering to dejection. You must shake yourself up, look at life straight on. I know it’s hard, but…’ ‘I’ve heard that women love people even for their vices,’ Anna suddenly began, ‘but I hate him for his virtues. I cannot live with him. You understand, the look of him affects me physically, I get beside myself. I cannot, cannot live with him. What am I to do? I was unhappy and thought it was impossible to be more unhappy, but I could not have imagined the terrible state I live in now. Would you believe that, though I know he’s a good and excellent man and I’m not worth his fingernail, I hate him even so? I hate him for his magnanimity. And I have nothing left, except…’
She was about to say ‘death’, but Stepan Arkadyich did not let her finish.
‘You’re ill and annoyed,’ he said. ‘Believe me, you exaggerate terribly. There’s nothing so dreadful in it.’
And Stepan Arkadyich smiled. No one in Stepan Arkadyich’s place, having to deal with such despair, would have allowed himself to smile (a smile would seem crude), but in his smile there was so much kindness and almost feminine tenderness that it could not be offensive. His quiet words and smiles worked softeningly and soothingly, like almond butter. And Anna soon felt it.
‘No, Stiva,’ she said. ‘I’m lost, lost! Worse than lost. I’m not lost yet, I can’t say it’s all ended, on the contrary, I feel that it hasn’t ended. I’m like a tightened string that’s about to snap. It hasn’t ended . .. and it will end horribly.’
‘Never mind, the string can be gently loosened. There’s no situation that has no way out.’
‘I’ve been thinking and thinking. There’s only one …’
Again he understood from her frightened eyes that this one way out, in her opinion, was death, and he did not let her finish.
‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘excuse me. You can’t see your situation as I can see it. Allow me to tell you frankly my opinion.’ Again he warily smiled his almond–butter smile. ‘I’ll begin from the beginning: you married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married without love or not knowing what love is. That was a mistake, let’s assume.’
‘A terrible mistake!’ said Anna.
‘But I repeat: it’s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let’s say, the misfortune to fall in love with someone other than your husband. That is a misfortune, but it’s also an accomplished fact. And your husband has accepted and forgiven it.’ He paused after each sentence, expecting her to object, but she made no reply. ‘That’s so. The question now is: can you go on living with your husband? Do you want that? Does he want it?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything.’
‘But you said yourself that you can’t stand him.’
‘No, I didn’t. I take it back. I don’t know anything, I don’t understand anything.’
‘Yes, but excuse me …’
‘You can’t understand. I feel I’m flying headlong into some abyss, but I mustn’t try to save myself. And I can’t.’
‘Never mind, we’ll hold something out and catch you. I understand you, I understand that you can’t take it upon yourself to speak your wish, your feeling.’
‘There’s nothing I wish for, nothing … only that it should all end.’
‘But he sees it and knows it. And do you really think it’s less burdensome for him than for you? You suffer, he suffers, and what on earth can come of it? Whereas a divorce would resolve everything.’ Stepan Arkadyich, not without effort, spoke his main thought and looked at her meaningfully.
She made no reply and shook her cropped head negatively. But by the expression on her face, which suddenly shone with its former beauty, he saw that she did not want it only because to her it seemed an impossible happiness.
‘I’m terribly sorry for you both! And how happy I’d be if I could settle it!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, now with a bolder smile. ‘No, don’t say anything! If only God grants me to speak as I feel. I’ll go to him.’
Anna looked at him with pensive, shining eyes and said nothing.
XXII
Stepan Arkadyich, with that somewhat solemn face with which he usually took the presiding chair in his office, entered Alexei Alexandrovich’s study. Alexei Alexandrovich, his hands behind his back, was pacing the room and thinking about the same thing that Stepan Arkadyich had talked about with his wife.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, who, on seeing his brother–in–law, experienced what was for him an unaccustomed feeling of embarrassment. To hide this embarrassment he produced a cigarette case with a new–fangled clasp he had just bought, sniffed the leather and took out a cigarette.
‘No. Is there something you need?’ Alexei Alexandrovich replied reluctantly.
‘Yes, I’d like … I need to dis … yes, to discuss something with you,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, surprised at this unaccustomed feeling of timidity.
It was so unexpected and strange a feeling that Stepan Arkadyich did not believe it was the voice of his conscience, telling him that what he intended to do was bad. Stepan Arkadyich made an effort and conquered the timidity that had come over him.
‘I hope you believe in my love for my sister and in my sincere attachment and respect for you,’ he said, blushing.
Alexei Alexandrovich stopped and made no reply, but Stepan Arkadyich was struck by the look of the submissive victim on his face.
‘I intended … I wanted to talk with you about my sister and your mutual situation,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, still struggling with his unaccustomed shyness.
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled sadly, looked at his brother–in–law and, without replying, went over to the desk, took from it the beginning of a letter and handed it to him.
‘I think continually of the same thing. And this is what I’ve begun to write, supposing that I will say it better in writing and that my presence annoys her,’ he said, handing him the letter.
Stepan Arkadyich took the letter, looked with perplexed astonishment at the dull eyes gazing fixedly at him, and began to read.
I see that my presence is burdensome to you. Painful as it was for me to become convinced of it, I see that it is so and cannot be otherwise. I do not blame you, and God is my witness that, seeing yo
u during your illness, I resolved with all my soul to forget everything that had been between us and start a new life. I do not repent and will never repent of what I have done; but I desired one thing – your good, the good of your soul – and now I see that I have not achieved it. Tell me yourself what will give you true happiness and peace in your soul. I give myself over entirely to your will and your sense of justice.
Stepan Arkadyich handed the letter back and went on looking at his brother–in–law with the same perplexity, not knowing what to say. This silence was so awkward for them both that a painful twitch came to Stepan Arkadyich’s lips as he sat silently, not taking his eyes from Karenin’s face.
‘That is what I wanted to tell her,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, looking away.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, unable to answer for the tears that choked him. ‘Yes, yes. I understand you,’ he finally got out.
‘I wish to know what she wants,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich.
‘I’m afraid she doesn’t understand her situation herself. She’s no judge,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, recovering. ‘She’s crushed, precisely crushed by your magnanimity. If she reads this letter, she’ll be unable to say anything, she’ll only hang her head lower.’
‘Yes, but in that case what? How to explain … how to find out her wish?’
‘If you will allow me to express my opinion, I think it depends on you to point directly to the measures you find necessary in order to end this situation.’
‘So you find that it must be ended?’ Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted. ‘But how?’ he added, making an unaccustomed gesture with his hands in front of his eyes. ‘I don’t see any possible way out.’
‘There’s a way out of every situation,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, standing up and becoming animated. ‘There was a time when you wanted to break off … If you’re now convinced that you can’t make each other happy…’
‘Happiness can be variously understood. But let’s suppose that I agree to everything, that I want nothing. What is the way out of our situation?’
‘If you want to know my opinion,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, with the same softening, almond–butter smile with which he had spoken to Anna. His kind smile was so convincing that Alexei Alexandrovich, sensing his own weakness and giving in to it, was involuntarily prepared to believe what Stepan Arkadyich would say. ‘She will never say it outright. But there is one possibility, there’s one thing she may wish for,’ Stepan Arkadyich went on, ‘that is – to end your relations and all memories connected with them. I think that in your situation it’s necessary to clarify your new mutual relations. And those relations can be established only with freedom on both sides.’
‘Divorce,’ Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted with repugnance.
‘Yes, I suppose it means divorce. Yes, divorce,’ Stepan Arkadyich repeated, blushing. ‘For a couple in such relations as yours, it’s the most intelligent way out in all respects. What’s to be done if they’ve discovered that life together is impossible for them? That can always happen.’ Alexei Alexandrovich sighed deeply and closed his eyes. ‘There’s only one consideration here: does either of them wish to enter into a new marriage? If not, it’s very simple,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, freeing himself more and more from his embarrassment.
Alexei Alexandrovich, pinched with agitation, murmured something to himself and made no reply. Everything that appeared so simple to Stepan Arkadyich, Alexei Alexandrovich had thought over thousands and thousands of times. And it all seemed to him not only not simple but utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he already knew, seemed impossible to him now because his sense of dignity and respect for religion would not permit him to take upon himself an accusation of fictitious adultery, still less to allow his wife, whom he had forgiven and loved, to be exposed and disgraced. Divorce seemed impossible for other, still more important reasons as well.
What would happen to his son in case of divorce? To leave him with his mother was impossible. The divorced mother would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position and upbringing as a stepson would in all likelihood be bad. To keep him with himself ? He knew that this would be vengeance on his part, and he did not want that. But, apart from that, divorce seemed impossible to Alexei Alexandrovich, above all, because in consenting to a divorce he would be ruining Anna. What Darya Alexandrovna had said in Moscow – that in deciding on a divorce he was thinking only about himself and not thinking that by it he would be ruining her irretrievably – had sunk deeply into his soul. And, combining that with his forgiveness and his attachment to the children, he now understood it in his own way. To his mind, agreeing to a divorce, giving her freedom, meant depriving himself of his last tie to the life of the children he loved, and depriving her of her last support on the path to the good and casting her into perdition. If she were a divorced wife, he knew, she would join with Vronsky, and that liaison would be illegitimate and criminal, because according to Church law a woman may not remarry while her husband is alive. ‘She’ll join with him, and in a year or two either he will abandon her or she will enter a new liaison,’ thought Alexei Alexandrovich. ‘And, by agreeing to an illegitimate divorce, I would be to blame for her ruin.’ He had thought it all over thousands of times and was convinced that the matter of a divorce was not only not very simple, as his brother–in–law said, but was completely impossible. He did not believe a single word Stepan Arkadyich said, he had a thousand refutations for every word of it, yet he listened to him, feeling that his words expressed that powerful, crude force which guided his life and to which he had to submit.
‘The only question is, on what conditions would you agree to grant a divorce. She wants nothing, she doesn’t dare ask you, she leaves everything to your magnanimity.’
‘My God! My God! Why this?’ thought Alexei Alexandrovich, recalling the details of a divorce in which the husband had taken the blame upon himself, and, with the same gesture as Vronsky, he covered his face with his hands in shame.
‘You’re upset, I understand that. But if you think it over …’
‘And to him who strikes you on the right cheek, offer the left, and to him who takes your caftan, give your shirt,’ thought Alexei Alexandrovich.
‘Yes, yes!’ he cried in a shrill voice, ‘I’ll take the disgrace upon myself, I’ll even give up my son, but… isn’t it better to let things be? However, do as you like …’
And turning away from his brother–in–law, so that he would not see him, he sat on a chair by the window. He felt grieved; he felt ashamed. But along with grief and shame he experienced joy and tenderness before the loftiness of his humility.
Stepan Arkadyich was moved. He paused.
‘Believe me, Alexei Alexandrovich, she will appreciate your magnanimity,’ he said. ‘But it looks as if it was the will of God,’ he added and, having said it, felt that it was stupid, and barely managed to keep from smiling at his own stupidity.
Alexei Alexandrovich wanted to make some reply, but tears stopped him.
‘It is a fatal misfortune and must be recognized as such. I recognize this misfortune as an accomplished fact and am trying to help her and you,’ said Stepan Arkadyich.
When Stepan Arkadyich left his brother–in–law’s room, he was moved, but that did not prevent him from being pleased at having successfully accomplished the deed, since he was sure that Alexei Alexandrovich would not take back his words. This pleasure was also mixed with a thought that had come to him, that when the deed was done, he would ask his wife and close acquaintances the question: ‘What’s the difference between me and the emperor? He makes alliances and no one benefits, I break alliances and three people benefit … Or, what’s the similarity between me and the emperor? When … Anyhow, I’ll come up with something better,’ he said to himself with a smile.
XXIII
Vronsky’s wound was dangerous, though it had missed the heart. He lay for several days between life and death. When he was able to speak for the first time, his brother�
�s wife, Varya, was the only one in his room.
