by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
‘Varya!’ he said, looking sternly at her. ‘I shot myself accidentally. And please never speak of it and tell everybody the same. Otherwise it’s too stupid!’
Without replying to what he said, Varya leaned over him and looked into his face with a joyful smile. His eyes were clear, not feverish, but their expression was stern.
‘Well, thank God!’ she said. ‘Does it hurt anywhere?’
‘Here a little.’ He pointed to his chest.
‘Then let me change your bandage.’
Silently clenching his broad jaws, he gazed at her while she bandaged him. When she finished, he said:
‘I’m not delirious: please make sure there’s no talk of me shooting myself on purpose.’
‘But nobody says that. Only, I hope you won’t accidentally shoot yourself any more,’ she said with a questioning smile.
‘It must be that I won’t, though it would be better …’
And he smiled gloomily.
Despite his words and smile, which frightened Varya so much, when the inflammation passed and he began to recover, he felt himself completely free of one part of his grief. By his act he had washed himself, as it were, of the shame and humiliation he had felt previously. He could think calmly now of Alexei Alexandrovich. He recognized all his magnanimity and no longer felt himself humiliated. Besides, he fell back into the old rut of his life. He saw the possibility of looking people in the eye without shame and could live under the guidance of his habits. The one thing he could not tear out of his heart, despite his constant struggle with this feeling, was the regret, reaching the point of despair, at having lost her forever. That now, having redeemed his guilt before her husband, he had to renounce her and never again stand between her with her repentance and her husband, was firmly resolved in his heart; but he could not tear out of his heart the regret at the loss of her love, could not erase from his memory the moments of happiness he had known with her, which he had valued so little then and which now pursued him in all their enchantment.
Serpukhovskoy came up with an assignment for him in Tashkent, and Vronsky accepted the offer without the slightest hesitation. But the closer the time of departure came, the harder became the sacrifice he was offering to what he considered his duty.
His wound had healed and he was already up and about, making preparations for his departure for Tashkent.
‘To see her once and then burrow in and die,’ he thought and, while making his farewell visits, he voiced this thought to Betsy. With this mission Betsy went to Anna and brought him back a negative reply.
‘So much the better,’ thought Vronsky, on receiving the news. ‘This was a weakness that would have destroyed my last strength.’
The next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning and announced that she had received positive news through Oblonsky that Alexei Alexandrovich was granting a divorce and that he could therefore see her.
Without even bothering to see Betsy to the door, forgetting all his resolutions, not asking when it was possible or where the husband was, Vronsky went at once to the Karenins’. He raced up the stairs, seeing nothing and no one, and with quick strides, barely keeping himself from running, entered her room. And without thinking, without noticing whether there was anyone in the room, he embraced her and began covering her face, hands and neck with kisses.
Anna had been preparing for this meeting, she had thought of what she was going to tell him, but she did not manage to say any of it: his passion seized her. She wanted to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling communicated itself to her. Her lips trembled so that for a long time she could not say anything.
‘Yes, you possess me and I am yours,’ she finally got out, pressing his hand to her breast.
‘It had to be so!’ he said. ‘As long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.’
‘It’s true,’ she said, growing paler and paler and embracing his head. ‘Still, there’s something terrible in it, after all that’s happened.’
‘It will pass, it will all pass, we’ll be so happy! Our love, if it could possibly grow stronger, would grow stronger for having something terrible in it,’ he said, raising his head and revealing his strong teeth in a smile.
And she could not help responding with a smile – not to his words but to his enamoured eyes. She took his hand and stroked herself with it on her cold cheeks and cropped hair.
‘I don’t recognize you with this short hair. You’re so pretty. Like a boy. But how pale you are!’
‘Yes, I’m very weak,’ she said, smiling. And her lips trembled again.
‘We’ll go to Italy and you’ll get better,’ he said.
‘Is it really possible that we’ll be like husband and wife, alone, a family to ourselves?’ she said, peering into his eyes from close up.
‘I’m only surprised that it could ever have been otherwise.’
‘Stiva says he consents to everything, but I can’t accept his magnanimity,’ she said, looking pensively past Vronsky’s face. ‘I don’t want a divorce, it’s all the same to me now. Only I don’t know what he’ll decide about Seryozha.’
He simply could not understand how, at this moment of their reunion, she could think about her son, about divorce. Was it not all the same?
‘Don’t talk about it, don’t think,’ he said, turning her hand in his own and trying to draw her attention to himself; but she still would not look at him.
‘Ah, why didn’t I die, it would be better!’ she said, and tears streamed silently down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile so as not to upset him.
To decline a flattering and dangerous assignment to Tashkent would have been, to Vronsky’s former way of thinking, disgraceful and impossible. But now he declined it without a moment’s reflection and, noticing the disapproval of his act in high places, he at once resigned his commission.
A month later Alexei Alexandrovich was left alone in his apartment with his son, and Anna went abroad with Vronsky without obtaining a divorce and resolutely abandoning the idea.
Part Five
* * *
I
Princess Shcherbatsky thought that to have the wedding before Lent, which was only five weeks away, was impossible, because half of the trousseau would not be ready by then; but she could not help agreeing with Levin that after Lent would be too late, since Prince Shcherbatsky’s old aunt was very ill and might die soon, and the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts, a larger and a smaller, the princess agreed to have the wedding before Lent. She decided to prepare the smaller part of the trousseau at once and send the larger part later, and she was very angry with Levin for being quite unable to tell her seriously whether he agreed to it or not. This disposition was the more convenient as immediately after the wedding the young people were going to the country, where the things in the larger trousseau would not be needed.
Levin continued in the same state of madness, in which it seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and only goal of all that existed, and that there was no longer any need for him to think or worry about anything, that everything was being and would be done for him by others. He even had no plans or goals for his future life; he left it for others to decide, knowing that it would all be wonderful. His brother Sergei Ivanovich, Stepan Arkadyich and the princess directed him in what he had to do. He was simply in complete agreement with everything suggested to him. His brother borrowed money for him, the princess advised leaving Moscow after the wedding, Stepan Arkadyich advised going abroad. He agreed to everything. ‘Do as you like, if it amuses you. I’m happy, and my happiness can be no greater or smaller whatever you do,’ he thought. When he told Kitty of Stepan Arkadyich’s advice about going abroad, he was very surprised that she did not agree to it, but had certain requirements of her own regarding their future life. She knew that Levin had work in the country that he loved. He could see that she not only did not understand this work but had
no wish to understand it. That did not prevent her, however, from considering this work very important. And therefore she knew that their home would be in the country and wanted to go, not abroad where she was not going to live, but where their home would be. This definitely expressed intention surprised Levin. But since it was all the same to him, he at once asked Stepan Arkadyich, as if it were his duty, to go to the country and arrange everything there as he knew how to do, with that taste of which he had so much.
‘Listen, though,’ Stepan Arkadyich asked Levin one day, after he came back from the country where he had arranged everything for the young people’s arrival, ‘do you have a certificate that you’ve been to confession?’
‘No, why?’
‘You can’t go to the altar without it.’
‘Ai, ai, ai!’ Levin cried. ‘I bet it’s a good nine years since I last prepared for communion.[1] never thought of it.’
‘You’re a fine one!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, laughing. ‘And you call me a nihilist! This won’t do, however. You’ve got to confess and take communion.’
‘But when? There are only four days left.’
Stepan Arkadyich arranged that as well. And Levin began to prepare for communion. For Levin, as an unbeliever who at the same time respected the beliefs of others, it was very difficult to attend and participate in any Church rituals. Now, in the softened mood he found himself in, sensitive to everything, this necessity to pretend was not only difficult for him but seemed utterly impossible. Now, in this state of his glory, his blossoming, he had either to lie or to blaspheme. He felt himself unable to do either the one or the other. But much as he questioned Stepan Arkadyich whether it might not be possible to get the certificate without going to confession, Stepan Arkadyich declared that it was impossible.
‘And what is it to you – two days? And he’s such a sweet, intelligent old fellow. He’ll pull this tooth of yours before you notice it.’
Standing through the first liturgy, Levin tried to refresh in himself his youthful memories of the strong religious feeling he had experienced between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. But he could see at once that it was utterly impossible for him. He tried to look at it as a meaningless, empty custom, like the custom of paying visits; but he felt that he could not do that either. With regard to religion, Levin, like most of his contemporaries, was in a very uncertain position. He could not believe, yet at the same time he was not firmly convinced that it was all incorrect. And therefore, being unable either to believe in the meaningfulness of what he was doing or to look at it indifferently as at an empty formality, he experienced, all through this time of preparation, a feeling of awkwardness and shame at doing what he himself did not understand and therefore, as his inner voice kept telling him, something false and bad.
During the services, he first listened to the prayers, trying to ascribe a meaning to them that did not disagree with his views, then, feeling that he could not understand and had to condemn them, he tried not to listen, but occupied himself with his own thoughts, observations and memories, which during this idle standing in church wandered with extreme vividness through his head.
He stood through the liturgy, vigil and compline, and the next day, getting up earlier than usual, without having tea, went to the church at eight o’clock in the morning to hear the morning prayers and confess.
There was no one in the church except a begging soldier, two little old women and the clergy.
A young deacon, the two halves of his long back sharply outlined under his thin cassock, met him and, going over to a little table, began at once to read the prayers. As the reading went on, and especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same words, ‘Lord have mercy,’ which sounded like ‘Lordamerse, Lordamerse,’ Levin felt that his mind was locked and sealed and should not be touched or stirred now, otherwise confusion would come of it, and therefore, standing behind the deacon, without listening or fathoming, he went on having his own thoughts. ‘Amazing how much expression there is in her hand,’ he thought, recalling how they had sat at the corner table the day before. They found nothing to talk about, as almost always during that time, and she, placing her hand on the table, kept opening and closing it, and laughed as she watched its movement. He recalled kissing that hand and afterwards studying the merging lines on its pink palm. ‘Again "Lordamerse,"‘ thought Levin, crossing himself, bowing and looking at the supple movement of the bowing deacon’s back. ‘Then she took my hand and studied the lines: "You have a nice hand," she said.’ And he looked at his own hand and at the deacon’s stubby hand. ‘Yes, it will soon be over now,’ he thought. ‘No, it seems he’s starting again,’ he thought, listening to the prayers. ‘No, it’s the end; there he’s bowing to the ground. That’s always just before the end.’
The hand in its velveteen cuff having discreetly received a three–rouble note, the deacon said he would register it and, briskly stamping with his new boots over the flagstones of the empty church, went into the sanctuary. A moment later he peeked out and beckoned to Levin. The thought locked up till then in Levin’s head began to stir, but he hastened to drive it away. ‘It will work out somehow,’ he reflected and walked to the ambo.[2] He went up the steps and, turning to the right, saw the priest. An elderly man with a thin, greying beard and tired, kindly eyes, he was standing by a lectern leafing through the service book. After bowing slightly to Levin, he at once began reading prayers in an accustomed voice. When he finished them, he bowed to the ground and turned to face Levin.
‘Christ stands here invisibly and receives your confession,’ he said, pointing to the crucifix. ‘Do you believe everything that is taught by the holy apostolic Church?’ the priest went on, turning his eyes from Levin’s face and folding his hands under the stole.
‘I have doubted, I doubt everything,’ Levin said, in a voice he himself found unpleasant, and fell silent.
The priest waited a few seconds to see whether he would say anything more, and then, closing his eyes, in a quick, provincial patter with a stress on the os, said:
‘Doubts are in the nature of human weakness, but we must pray that God in His mercy will strengthen us. What particular sins do you have?’ he added without the slightest pause, as if trying not to waste time.
‘My chief sin is doubt. I doubt everything and for the most part live in doubt.’
‘Doubt is in the nature of human weakness,’ the priest repeated the same words. ‘What is it that you doubt predominantly?’
‘I doubt everything. I sometimes even doubt the existence of God,’ Levin said involuntarily, and was horrified at the impropriety of what he had said. But Levin’s words did not seem to make any impression on the priest.
‘What doubts can there be of the existence of God?’ he hastened to say with a barely perceptible smile.
Levin was silent.
‘What doubt can you have of the existence of the Creator, when you behold His creations?’ the priest went on in a quick, habitual manner.
‘Who adorned the heavenly firmament with lights? Who clothed the earth in its beauty? How can it be without a creator?’ he said, glancing questioningly at Levin.
Levin felt that it would be improper to enter into a philosophical debate with a priest, and therefore he said in answer only what had a direct bearing on the question.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘You don’t know? How then can you doubt that God created everything?’ the priest said in merry perplexity.
‘I don’t understand anything,’ Levin said, blushing and feeling that his words were stupid and could not help being stupid in such a situation.
‘Pray to God and ask Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts and asked God to confirm their faith. The devil has great power, and we mustn’t give in to him. Pray to God, ask Him. Pray to God,’ he repeated hurriedly.
The priest was silent for a time, as if pondering.
