by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
‘It would be so painful for you alone,’ she said, and raising her arms high so that they hid her cheeks, blushing from pleasure, she twisted her braids on the back of her head and pinned them up. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘she didn’t know … Fortunately, I learned a lot in Soden.’
‘Can there have been such sick people there?’
‘Worse.’
‘For me the terrible thing is that I can’t help seeing him as he was when he was young … You can’t imagine what a lovely youth he was, but I didn’t understand him then.’
‘I believe it very, very much. I do feel that I would have been friends with him,’ she said, and became frightened at what she had said, turned to look at her husband, and tears came to her eyes.
‘Yes, would have been,’ he said sadly. ‘He’s precisely one of those people of whom they say that they’re not meant for this world.’
‘However, we’ve got many days ahead of us, it’s time for bed,’ said Kitty, looking at her tiny watch.
XX
DEATH
The next day the sick man took communion and was anointed. During the rite, Nikolai Levin prayed fervently. His big eyes, directed at an icon set on a card table covered with a flowery napkin, expressed such passionate entreaty and hope that Levin was terrified to look at them. Levin knew that this passionate entreaty and hope would make it still harder for him to part with life, which he loved so much. Levin knew his brother and the train of his thought; he knew that his unbelief had come not because it was easier for him to live without faith, but because his beliefs had been supplanted step by step by modern scientific explanations of the phenomena of the world, and therefore he knew that his present return was not legitimate, accomplished by way of the same thinking, but was only temporary, self–interested, done in the mad hope of recovery. Levin also knew that Kitty had strengthened that hope by accounts of extraordinary healings she had heard of. Levin knew all that, and it was tormentingly painful for him to look at those pleading eyes filled with hope, that emaciated hand rising with difficulty to make the sign of the cross on the taut skin of the forehead, at the protruding shoulders and the gurgling, empty chest that could no longer contain the life that the sick man was asking for. During the sacrament Levin also prayed and did what he, as an unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God: ‘If You exist, make it so that this man is healed (for that very thing has been repeated many times), and You will save him and me.’
After the anointing the sick man suddenly felt much better. He did not cough even once for a whole hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand, thanking her tearfully, saying that he was well, that there was no pain anywhere and that he felt appetite and strength. He even sat up by himself when soup was brought for him and also asked for a cutlet. Hopeless as he was, obvious as it was from one look at him that he could not recover, during this hour Levin and Kitty shared the same excitement, happy yet fearful of being mistaken.
‘He’s better.’ ‘Yes, much.’ ‘Amazing.’ ‘Not amazing at all.’ ‘He’s better, anyhow,’ they said in a whisper, smiling at each other.
This illusion did not last long. The sick man fell peacefully asleep, but half an hour later was awakened by coughing. And suddenly all hope vanished in those around him and in himself. The actuality of suffering destroyed it without question, along with all memory of former hopes, in Levin, in Kitty and in the sick man himself.
Not even mentioning what he had believed half an hour earlier, as if it were embarrassing even to remember it, he asked to be given iodine for inhalation in a vial covered with perforated paper. Levin handed him the jar, and the same look of passionate hope with which he had been anointed was now directed at his brother, demanding that he confirm the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked miracles.
‘Katia’s not here?’ he croaked, looking around, when Levin had reluctantly repeated the doctor’s words. ‘Well, then I can say it… I performed that comedy for her. She’s so sweet, but it’s impossible for you and me to deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,’ he said, and, clutching the vial with his bony hand, he began breathing over it.
Between seven and eight in the evening Levin and his wife were having tea in their room when Marya Nikolaevna, out of breath, came running to them. She was pale, her lips were trembling.
‘He’s dying!’ she whispered. ‘I’m afraid he’ll die any minute.’
They both ran to him. He had got up and was sitting on the bed, propped on his elbows, his long back bent and his head hanging low.
‘What do you feel?’ Levin asked in a whisper, after some silence.
‘I feel I’m going,’ Nikolai said with difficulty, but with extreme certainty, slowly squeezing the words out. He did not raise his head but only looked upwards, his gaze not reaching his brother’s face. ‘Katia, go away!’ he also said.
Levin jumped up and in a peremptory whisper made her leave.
‘I’m going,’ he said again.
‘Why do you think so?’ said Levin, just to say something.
‘Because I’m going,’ he repeated, as if he liked the expression. ‘It’s the end.’
Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.
‘Lie down, you’ll feel better,’ she said.
‘I’ll soon lie still,’ he said. ‘Dead,’ he added jeeringly and angrily. ‘Well, lay me down if you like.’
Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him and with bated breath looked at his face. The dying man lay with his eyes closed, but on his forehead the muscles twitched from time to time, as with a man who is thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him about what was now being accomplished in him, but, despite all his mental efforts to go with him, he saw from the expression of that calm, stern face and the play of a muscle over one eyebrow, that for the dying man something was becoming increasingly clearer which for him remained as dark as ever.
‘Yes, yes, it’s so,’ the dying man said slowly, distinctly. ‘Wait.’ Again he was silent. ‘So!’ he suddenly drew out peacefully, as if everything had been resolved for him. ‘Oh Lord!’ he said and sighed heavily.
Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet.
‘Getting cold,’ she whispered.
For a long time, a very long time, it seemed to Levin, the sick man lay motionless. But he was still alive and sighed now and then. Levin was weary now from mental effort. He felt that in spite of it all, he could not understand what was so. He felt that he lagged far behind the dying man. He could no longer think about the question of death itself, but thoughts came to him inadvertently of what he was to do now, presently: close his eyes, dress him, order the coffin. And, strangely, he felt completely cold and experienced neither grief, nor loss, nor still less pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for him now, it was rather envy of the knowledge that the dying man now had but that he could not have.
He sat over him like that for a long time waiting for the end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin stood up to stop her. But as he stood up, he heard the dead man stir.
‘Don’t go,’ said Nikolai, and reached out his hand. Levin gave him his own and angrily waved at his wife to go away.
With the dead man’s hand in his, he sat for half an hour, an hour, another hour. Now he was no longer thinking about death at all. He was thinking about what Kitty was doing, and who lived in the next room, and whether the doctor had his own house. He wanted to eat and sleep. He carefully freed his hand and felt the sick man’s feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man was breathing. Levin was again about to leave on tiptoe, but the sick man stirred and said:
‘Don’t go.’
Day broke; the sick man’s condition was the same. Levin, quietly freeing his hand, not looking at the dying man, went to his room and fell asleep. When he woke up, instead of the news of his brother’s death that he had expected, he learned that the sick man had reverted to his earlier condition. He again began to sit up, to cough, began to eat again, to tal
k, and again stopped talking about death, again began to express hope for recovery and became still more irritable and gloomy than before. No one, neither his brother nor Kitty, could comfort him. He was angry with everyone and said unpleasant things to everyone, reproached everyone for his suffering and demanded that a famous doctor be brought to him from Moscow. To all questions about how he felt, he replied uniformly with an expression of spite and reproach:
‘I’m suffering terribly, unbearably!’
The sick man suffered more and more, especially from bedsores, which would no longer heal over, and was more and more angry with those around him, reproaching them for everything, especially for not bringing him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried her best to help him, to comfort him; but it was all in vain, and Levin could see that she herself was physically and morally exhausted, though she would not admit it. That sense of death evoked in them all by his farewell to life on the night he summoned his brother was destroyed. They all knew he would die inevitably and soon, that he was already half dead. They all desired only one thing – that he die as soon as possible – yet, concealing it, they gave him medicine from vials, went looking for medicines and doctors, and deceived him, and themselves, and each other. All this was a lie, a foul, insulting and blasphemous lie. And Levin, by a peculiarity of his character, and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, felt this lie especially painfully.
Levin, who had long been occupied with the thought of reconciling his brothers, if only in the face of death, had written to his brother Sergei Ivanovich and, having received a reply from him, read this letter to the sick man. Sergei Ivanovich wrote that he could not come himself, but in moving words asked his brother’s forgiveness.
The sick man said nothing.
‘What shall I write to him?’ asked Levin. ‘You’re not angry with him, I hope?’
‘No, not in the least!’ Nikolai replied vexedly to this question. ‘Write to him to send me a doctor.’
Three more days of torment went by; the sick man was in the same condition. A desire for his death was now felt by everyone who saw him: the servants in the hotel, its proprietor, all the lodgers, the doctor, Marya Nikolaevna, and Levin and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling, but, on the contrary, was angry that the doctor had not been brought, went on taking medicine and talked about life. Only in rare moments, when the opium made him momentarily forget his incessant suffering, did he sometimes say in half sleep what was stronger in his soul that in anyone else’s: ‘Ah, if only this were the end!’ Or: ‘When will it end!’
Suffering, steadily increasing, did its part in preparing him for death. There was no position in which he did not suffer, no moment when he was oblivious, no part or limb of his body that did not hurt, that did not torment him. Even this body’s memories, impressions and thoughts now evoked in him the same revulsion as the body itself. The sight of other people, their conversation, his own memories – all this was sheer torment to him. Those around him felt it and unconsciously forbade themselves any free movement, conversation, expression of their wishes. His whole life merged into one feeling of suffering and the wish to be rid of it.
A turnabout was obviously taking place that was to make him look at death as the satisfaction of his desires, as happiness. Formerly each separate desire caused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by a bodily function that gave pleasure; but now privation and suffering received no satisfaction, and the attempt at satisfaction caused new suffering. And therefore all his desires merged into one – the desire to be rid of all sufferings and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire for liberation, and therefore did not speak of it, but out of habit demanded the satisfaction of desires that could no longer be fulfilled. ‘Turn me on the other side,’ he would say, and immediately afterwards would demand to be turned back as before. ‘Give me some bouillon. Take the bouillon away. Say something, don’t all be silent!’ And as soon as they began talking, he would close his eyes and show fatigue, indifference and disgust.
On the tenth day after their arrival in the town, Kitty fell ill. She had a headache, vomited and could not leave her bed the whole morning.
The doctor explained that the illness came from fatigue and worry, and prescribed inner peace.
After dinner, however, Kitty got up and, bringing her handwork, went to the sick man as usual. He gave her a stern look when she came in, and smiled contemptuously when she said she had been ill. That day he blew his nose incessantly and moaned pitifully.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked him.
‘Worse,’ he said with difficulty. ‘It hurts!’
‘Where does it hurt?’
‘Everywhere.’ ‘It will end today, you’ll see,’ Marya Nikolaevna said in a whisper, but loudly enough for the sick man, whose hearing, as Levin had noticed, was very keen, to hear her. Levin shushed her and looked at his brother. Nikolai had heard, but the words made no impression on him. He had the same tense and reproachful look.
‘Why do you think so?’ Levin asked when she followed him out to the corridor.
‘He’s begun plucking at himself,’ said Marya Nikolaevna.
‘How, plucking?’
‘Like this,’ she said, pulling down the folds of her woollen dress. Indeed, he had noticed that the sick man had been clutching at himself all that day, as if wanting to pull something off.
Marya Nikolaevna’s prediction proved correct. By nightfall Nikolai was already too weak to raise his arms and only looked straight ahead without changing the intently concentrated expression of his gaze. Even when his brother or Kitty leaned over him so that he could see them, his look was the same. Kitty sent for a priest to read the prayers for the dying.
While the priest was reading the prayers, the dying man showed no signs of life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty and Marya Nikolaevna stood by the bed. Before the priest finished reading, the dying man stretched out, sighed and opened his eyes. The priest finished the prayers, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly wrapped it in his stole and, after standing silently a minute or two longer, he touched the enormous, cold and bloodless hand.
‘It is ended,’ said the priest, and he was about to step aside; but suddenly the dead man’s matted moustache stirred and clearly in the silence there came from the depths of his chest the sharply distinct sounds:
‘Not quite … Soon.’
And a moment later his face brightened, a smile showed under the moustache, and the assembled women began to busy themselves with laying out the deceased.
The sight of his brother and the proximity of death renewed in Levin’s soul that feeling of horror at the inscrutability and, with that, the nearness and inevitability of death, which had seized him on that autumn evening when his brother had come for a visit. The feeling was now stronger than before; he felt even less capable than before of understanding the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared still more horrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife’s nearness, the feeling did not drive him to despair: in spite of death, he felt the necessity to live and to love. He felt that love saved him from despair and that under the threat of despair this love was becoming still stronger and purer.
No sooner had the one mystery of death been accomplished before his eyes, and gone unfathomed, than another arose, equally unfathomed, which called to love and life.
The doctor confirmed his own surmise about Kitty. Her illness was pregnancy.
XXI
From the moment when Alexei Alexandrovich understood from his talks with Betsy and Stepan Arkadyich that only one thing was required of him, that he leave his wife alone and not bother her with his presence, and that his wife herself wished it, he felt so lost that he could decide nothing by himself, not knowing what he wanted now, and, giving himself into the hands of those who took such pleasure in looking after his affairs, he agreed to everything. Only when Anna had already left his house and the English governess had
sent to ask him if she was to dine with him or separately did he understand his situation clearly for the first time, and it horrified him.
