by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
While he was doing his writing, she was thinking of how unnaturally attentive her husband had been to the young prince Charsky, who had very tactlessly bantered with her on the eve of their departure. ‘He’s jealous,’ she thought. ‘My God, how sweet and silly he is! He’s jealous of me! If he only knew that they’re all the same as Pyotr the cook for me,’ she thought, gazing at his nape and red neck with a proprietary feeling strange to her. ‘Though it’s a pity to distract him from his work (but he’ll have time to do it!), I must look at his face. Will he feel me looking at him? I want him to turn round … I want him to!’ And she opened her eyes wide, wishing thereby to increase the effect of her gaze.
‘Yes, they draw all the juices off to themselves and lend a false glitter,’ he muttered, stopped writing and, feeling her looking at him and smiling, turned to her.
‘What?’ he asked, smiling and getting up.
‘He turned,’ she thought.
‘Nothing, I just wanted you to turn to me,’ she said, looking at him and trying to see whether he was annoyed that she had distracted him.
‘How good it is for us here together! For me, that is,’ he said, going to her and beaming with a smile of happiness.
‘It’s so good for me! I won’t go anywhere, especially not to Moscow!’
‘And what have you been thinking?’
‘Me? I was thinking … No, no, go and write, don’t get distracted,’ she said, puckering her lips. ‘And I’ve got to cut out these little holes now, see?’
She took the scissors and began to cut.
‘No, tell me what,’ he said, sitting down beside her and watching the circular movement of the small scissors.
‘Ah, what was I thinking? I was thinking about Moscow, about the nape of your neck.’
‘Precisely why have I been given such happiness? It’s unnatural. Too good,’ he said, kissing her hand.
‘For me, on the contrary, the better it is, the more natural it seems.’
‘And you’ve got a little strand here,’ he said, carefully turning her head. ‘A little strand. See, right here. No, no, we’re busy with our work.’
But the work no longer went on, and they guiltily jumped away from each other when Kuzma came to announce that tea was served.
‘Have they come from the city?’ Levin asked Kuzma.
‘They’ve just arrived; they’re unpacking.’
‘Come quickly,’ she said as she left the study, ‘or I’ll read the letters without you. And then let’s play four hands.’
Left alone, he put his notebooks into the new briefcase she had bought and began washing his hands at the new washstand with its elegant new accessories that had also appeared with her. Levin smiled at his thoughts and shook his head at them disapprovingly; he suffered from a feeling akin to remorse. There was something shameful, pampered, Capuan,[28] as he called it to himself, in his present life. ‘It’s not good to live like this,’ he thought. ‘It will soon be three months and I’m not doing anything. Today is almost the first time I seriously got down to work –and what? I no sooner started than I dropped it. Even my usual occupations – I’ve all but abandoned them, too. My farming – I almost don’t go to look after it. I either feel sorry to leave her or see that she’s bored. And here I used to think that life before marriage was just so, anyhow, didn’t count, and that real life started after marriage. And it will soon be three months, and I’ve never spent my time so idly and uselessly. No, it’s impossible. I must get started. Of course, it’s not her fault. There’s nothing to reproach her for. I must be firmer myself, must fence off my male independence. Or else I may get into the habit and teach it to her … Of course, it’s not her fault,’ he said to himself.
But it is hard for a discontented man not to reproach someone else, especially the very one who is closest to him, for his discontent. And it vaguely occurred to Levin, not that she was at fault (she could not be at fault for anything), but that her upbringing was at fault, was too superficial and frivolous (‘that fool Charsky: I know she’d have liked to stop him, but she didn’t know how’). ‘Yes, besides an interest in the house (that she does have), besides her clothes and her broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in my work, in farming, in the muzhiks, nor in music, which she’s quite good at, nor in reading. She’s not doing anything and is quite content.’ In his soul Levin disapproved of that and did not yet understand that she was preparing for the period of activity which was to come for her, when she would be at one and the same time the wife of her husband, the mistress of the house, and would bear, nurse and raise her children. He did not understand that she knew it intuitively and, while preparing for this awesome task, did not reproach herself for the moments of insouciance and the happiness of love that she enjoyed now, while cheerfully building her future nest.
XVI
When Levin came upstairs, his wife was sitting at the new silver samovar by the new tea set and, having seated old Agafya Mikhailovna before a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom she was in constant and frequent correspondence.
‘See, your lady seated me, she told me to sit with her,’ Agafya Mikhailovna said, smiling amiably at Kitty.
In these words of Agafya Mikhailovna Levin read the denouement of the drama that had been going on lately between Agafya Mikhailovna and Kitty. He saw that despite all the grief caused Agafya Mikhailovna by the new mistress, who had taken the reins of government from her, Kitty had still prevailed and made the old woman love her.
‘See, I also read your letter,’ said Kitty, handing him an illiterate letter. ‘It’s from that woman, I think, your brother’s.. .’ she said. ‘I didn’t really read it. And this is from my family and from Dolly. Imagine! Dolly took Grisha and Tanya to a children’s ball at the Sarmatskys’. Tanya was a marquise.’
But Levin was not listening to her. Flushing, he took the letter from Marya Nikolaevna, his brother Nikolai’s former mistress, and started to read it. This was now the second letter from Marya Nikolaevna. In the first letter she had written that his brother had driven her out through no fault of her own, and had added with touching naivety that though she was again destitute, she did not ask or wish for anything, only that the thought of Nikolai Dmitrich perishing without her on account of the weakness of his health was killing her, and she asked his brother to look after him. Now she wrote something else. She had found Nikolai Dmitrich, had been with him again in Moscow, and had gone with him to a provincial capital where he had been given a post. But he had quarrelled with his superior there and was returning to Moscow, only on the way had become so ill that it was unlikely he would ever get back on his feet – so she wrote. ‘He keeps mentioning you, and we also have no more money.’
‘Read it, Dolly writes about you,’ Kitty began, smiling, but suddenly stopped, noticing the changed expression of her husband’s face.
‘What’s the matter? What is it?’
‘She writes that my brother Nikolai is dying. I’ll go.’
Kitty’s countenance suddenly changed. Her thoughts about Tanya as a marquise, about Dolly, all vanished.
‘When will you go?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘And I’ll go with you, may I?’ she said.
‘Kitty! What on earth?’ he said in reproach.
‘Why not?’ she said, offended that he seemed to take her suggestion reluctantly and vexedly. ‘Why shouldn’t I go? I won’t bother you. I.. .’
‘I’m going because my brother is dying,’ said Levin. ‘Why should you…’
‘Why? For the same reason as you.’
‘At such an important moment for me,’ thought Levin, ‘she thinks only about being bored by herself.’ And that pretext in such an important matter made him angry.
‘It’s impossible,’ he said sternly.
Agafya Mikhailovna, seeing that things were heading for a quarrel, quietly put down her cup and left. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband had spoken th
e last words offended her, especially since he obviously did not believe what she had said.
‘And I tell you that if you go, I’ll go with you, I’ll certainly go,’ she said hastily and wrathfully. ‘Why is it impossible? Why do you say it’s impossible?’
‘Because to go God knows where, on what roads, with what inns … You’d be a hindrance to me,’ said Levin, trying to preserve his equanimity.
‘Not in the least. I don’t need anything. Where you can be, I, too . ..’
‘Well, if only because this woman will be there, with whom you cannot associate.’
‘I do not know or wish to know anything about who or what is there. I know that my husband’s brother is dying, and that my husband is going to him, and I am going with my husband, so that…’
‘Kitty! Don’t be angry. But just think, this is such an important matter that it pains me to think you’re mixing it up with a feeling of weakness, a reluctance to stay by yourself. Well, if it’s boring for you to be alone, then go to Moscow.’
‘There, you always ascribe bad, mean thoughts to me,’ she began, with tears of offence and anger. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, no weakness, nothing … I feel it’s my duty to be with my husband when my husband is in distress, and you purposely want to hurt me, you purposely don’t want to understand …’
‘No, this is terrible. To be some sort of slave!’ Levin cried out, standing up and no longer able to hold back his vexation. But in the same instant he felt that he was striking himself.
‘Why did you get married, then? You could be free. Why, if you regret it now?’ she said, jumped up and ran to the drawing room.
When he went to her there, she was sobbing.
He began talking, wishing to find words that might not so much dissuade her as merely calm her down. But she would not listen and would not agree with anything. He bent down and took her resisting hand. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again –she kept silent. But when he took her face in both his hands and said ‘Kitty!’ she suddenly recovered herself, wept a little more and made peace.
It was decided that they would go together the next day. Levin told his wife that he believed she wanted to go only in order to be of use, agreed that Marya Nikolaevna’s presence at his brother’s side did not present any impropriety; but in the depths of his soul he went away displeased with her and with himself. He was displeased with her for being unable to bring herself to let him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was for him to think that he, who so recently had not dared to believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!), and displeased with himself for not standing firm. Still less did he agree in the depths of his soul that she was not concerned about the woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror of all the confrontations that might occur. The fact alone that his wife, his Kitty, would be in the same room with a slut already made him shudder with revulsion and horror.
XVII
The hotel in the provincial capital where Nikolai Levin lay was one of those provincial hotels that are set up in accordance with new, improved standards, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort and even elegance, but which, because of their clients, turn extremely quickly into dirty pot–houses with a pretence to modern improvements, and by that very pretence become still worse than the old hotels that were simply dirty. This hotel had already reached that state; the soldier in a dirty uniform, smoking a cigarette at the entrance, who was supposed to represent the doorman, the gloomy and unpleasant wrought–iron stairway, the casual waiter in a dirty tailcoat, the common room with a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, the dirt, dust and slovenliness everywhere in the hotel, and with that some sort of new, modern–railwayish, smug preoccupation – gave the Levins, after their newlywed life, a most painful feeling, especially as the false impression made by the hotel could not be reconciled with what awaited them.
As always, after the question of how much they wanted to pay for a room, it turned out that there were no good rooms: one of the good rooms was occupied by a railway inspector, another by a lawyer from Moscow, and the third by Princess Astafyev coming from her estate. There remained one dirty room, with an adjacent room which they were told would be vacated by evening. Vexed with his wife because what he had anticipated was coming true – namely, that at the moment of arrival, when his heart was seized with agitation at the thought of his brother, he had to be concerned with her instead of running to him at once –Levin brought her to the room they had been given.
‘Go, go!’ she said, giving him a timid, guilty look.
He silently went out the door and straight away ran into Marya Nikolaevna, who had learned of his arrival and had not dared to enter his room. She was exactly the same as he had seen her in Moscow: the same woollen dress with no collar or cuffs, the same kindly, dull, pockmarked face, grown slightly fuller.
‘Well, what? How is he?’
‘Very bad. Bedridden. He’s been waiting for you. He … Are you .. . with your wife?’
Levin did not understand at first what made her embarrassed, but she explained it to him at once.
‘I’ll leave, I’ll go to the kitchen,’ she managed to say. ‘He’ll be glad. He’s heard, and he knows her and remembers her from abroad.’
Levin understood that she meant his wife and did not know what to answer.
‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ he said.
But just as he started off, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeked out. Levin flushed from shame and vexation with his wife for putting herself and him in this painful situation; but Marya Nikolaevna flushed even more. She shrank all over and flushed to the point of tears, and, seizing the ends of her kerchief with both hands, twisted them in her red fingers, not knowing what to say or do.
For the first moment Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the look Kitty gave this, for her, incomprehensible and terrible woman; but it lasted only an instant.
‘Well? How is he?’ she turned to her husband and then to her.
‘We really can’t start talking in the corridor!’ Levin said, turning crossly to look at a gentleman who, as if on his own business, was just then walking down the corridor with a jerky gait.
‘Well, come in then,’ said Kitty, addressing Marya Nikolaevna, who had now recovered; but she added, noticing her husband’s frightened face, ‘or else go, go and send for me later,’ and returned to the room. Levin went to his brother.
He had in no way expected what he saw and felt there. He had expected to find the same state of self–deception that, he had heard, occurs so often with consumptives and that had struck him so strongly during his brother’s visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical signs of approaching death more definite – greater weakness, greater emaciation – but still almost the same condition. He had expected that he himself would experience the same feeling of pity at losing his beloved brother and of horror in the face of death that he had experienced then, only to a greater degree. And he had been preparing himself for that; but he found something else entirely.
In a small, dirty room, with bespattered painted panels on the walls, divided by a thin partition behind which voices could be heard, in an atmosphere pervaded with a stifling smell of excrement, on a bed moved away from the wall, lay a blanket–covered body. One arm of this body lay on top of the blanket, and an enormous, rake–like hand was in some incomprehensible way attached to the long arm–bone, thin and straight from wrist to elbow. The head lay sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the sweaty, thin hair on the temples and the taut, as if transparent, forehead.
