Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Oh, no, Countess, I believe the Muscovites have a reputation for being quite staunch,’ Stepan Arkadyich replied.

  ‘But, as far as I understand, you, unfortunately, are among the indifferent,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, turning to him with a weary smile.

  ‘How can one be indifferent!’ said Lydia Ivanovna.

  ‘In that respect, I’m not really indifferent, but expectant,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, with his most soothing smile. ‘I don’t think the time for these questions has come for me.’

  Alexei Alexandrovich and Lydia Ivanovna exchanged glances.

  ‘We can never know whether the time has come for us or not,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said sternly. ‘We mustn’t think whether we’re ready or not: grace is not guided by human considerations; it sometimes descends not upon the labourers but upon the unprepared, as it did upon Saul.’[23]

  ‘No, not just yet, it seems,’ said Lydia Ivanovna, who had been following the Frenchman’s movements all the while.

  Landau got up and came over to them.

  ‘Will you allow me to listen?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I didn’t want to disturb you,’ said Lydia Ivanovna, looking at him tenderly. ‘Sit down with us.’

  ‘One need only not close one’s eyes, so as not to be deprived of light,’ Alexei Alexandrovich went on.

  ‘Ah, if you knew the happiness we experience, feeling His constant presence in our souls!’ said Lydia Ivanovna, smiling beatifically.

  ‘But sometimes a man may feel himself unable to rise to that height,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, not forthrightly, acknowledging the loftiness of religion, but at the same time not daring to acknowledge his freethinking before the person who, by saying one word to Pomorsky, could provide him with the desired post.

  ‘That is, you mean to say that sin prevents him?’ said Lydia Ivanovna. ‘But that is a false view. There is no sin for believers; sin is already redeemed. Pardon,’ she added, looking at the footman, who came in again with another note. She read it and responded verbally: ‘Say tomorrow at the Grand Duchess’s. There is no sin for a believer,’ she continued the conversation.

  ‘Yes, but faith without works is dead,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, recalling this phrase from the catechism, defending his independence only with his smile.

  ‘There it is, from the Epistle of the Apostle James,’[24] said Alexei Alexandrovich, addressing Lydia Ivanovna somewhat reproachfully, evidently to do with something they had talked about more than once. ‘How much harm the wrong interpretation of that passage has done! Nothing so turns people from faith as this interpretation: "I have no works, I cannot believe," when that is said nowhere. What is said is the opposite.’

  ‘To labour for God, to save your soul by works, by fasting,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said with squeamish contempt, ‘these are the wild notions of our monks … Whereas that is said nowhere. It is much simpler and easier,’ she added, looking at Oblonsky with the same encouraging smile with which, at court, she encouraged young maids–of–honour bewildered by their new situation.

  ‘We are saved by Christ, who suffered for us. We are saved by faith,’ Alexei Alexandrovich confirmed, approving of her words with his eyes.

  ‘Vous comprenez I’anglais?* Lydia Ivanovna asked and, receiving an affirmative answer, stood up and began looking through the books on the shelf.

  ‘I want to read Safe and Happy, or Under the Wing?’[25] she said, with a questioning look at Karenin. And, having found the book and sat down again, she opened it. ‘It’s very short. It describes the way in which faith is acquired and the happiness beyond all earthly things which then fills the soul. A believer cannot be unhappy, because he is not alone. You’ll see now.’ She was about to read when the footman came in again. ‘Mme Borozdin? Say tomorrow at two o’clock. Yes,’ she said, holding the place in the book with her finger, sighing and gazing before her with her beautiful, pensive eyes. ‘That is the effect of true faith. Do you know Marie Sanin? Do you know about her misfortune? She lost her only child. She was in despair. Well, and what then? She found this Friend, and now she thanks God for the death of her child. That is the happiness that faith gives!’

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s very …’ said Stepan Arkadyich, pleased that she was going to read and give him time to recover a little. ‘No,’ he thought, ‘looks as if it would be better not to ask for anything this time. So long as I can get out of here without messing things up.’

  ‘It will be boring for you,’ said Countess Lydia Ivanovna, turning to Landau, ‘you don’t know English. But it’s short.’

  ‘Oh, I shall understand,’ Landau said with the same smile and closed his eyes.

  Alexei Alexandrovich and Lydia Ivanovna exchanged meaningful glances, and the reading began.

  * Do you understand English?

  XXII

  Stepan Arkadyich felt completely baffled hearing this talk, which was new and strange to him. The complexity of Petersburg life generally had an exhilarating effect on him, lifting him out of his Moscow stagnation; but he liked and understood those complexities in spheres that were close and familiar to him, while in this alien milieu he was baffled, dumbfounded, and could not grasp it all. Listening to Countess Lydia Ivanovna and sensing Landau’s beautiful eyes – naive or sly, he did not know which – fixed on him, Stepan Arkadyich began to feel some peculiar heaviness in his head.

  The most diverse thoughts were tangled in his head. ‘Marie Sanin is glad her child died … Would be nice to smoke now … To be saved, one need only believe, and the monks don’t know how to do it, but Countess Lydia Ivanovna does … And why is there such a heaviness in my head? From the cognac, or because it’s all so strange? Anyhow, I don’t think I’ve done anything improper yet. But, still, it’s impossible to ask for her help now. I’ve heard they make people pray. What if they make me pray? That would be too stupid. And what’s this nonsense she’s reading, albeit with good enunciation? Landau is Bezzubov. Why is he Bezzubov?’ Suddenly Stepan Arkadyich felt his lower jaw beginning to contract irrepressibly before a yawn. He smoothed his side–whiskers, concealing the yawn, and shook himself. But next he felt he was already asleep and about to snore. He woke up just as the voice of Countess Lydia Ivanovna said, ‘He’s asleep.’

  Stepan Arkadyich woke up in fear, feeling guilty and exposed. But he was reassured at once, seeing that the words ‘He’s asleep’ referred not to him but to Landau. The Frenchman had fallen asleep as had Stepan Arkadyich. But while Stepan Arkadyich’s sleep, as he thought, would have offended them (however, he did not think even that, so strange everything seemed to him), Landau’s sleep delighted them in the extreme, Countess Lydia Ivanovna especially.

  ‘Mon ami,’ said Lydia Ivanovna, carefully picking up the folds of her silk dress so as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Karenin ‘mon ami’ now instead of Alexei Alexandrovich, ‘donnez–lui la main. Vous voyez?* Shh!’ she shushed the footman, who came in again. ‘Receive no one.’

  * Give him your hand. You see? The Frenchman slept, or pretended to sleep, his head resting on the back of the armchair, and made feeble movements with the sweaty hand that lay on his knee, as if attempting to catch something. Alexei Alexandrovich got up, trying to be careful but brushing against the table, went over and put his hand into the Frenchman’s hand. Stepan Arkadyich also got up and, opening his eyes wide, wishing to waken himself in case he was asleep, looked now at the one man, now at the other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyich felt that his head was getting worse and worse.

  ‘Que la personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui demande, qu'elle sorte! Qu’elle sorte!’* the Frenchman said, without opening his eyes.

  ‘Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez … Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain.’^

  ‘Qu’elle sorte!’ the Frenchman impatiently repeated.

  ‘C’est moi, n’est–ce pas?’*

  And, receiving an affirmative reply, Stepan Arkadyich, forgetting about what he had wanted to ask Lydia Ivanovna, and a
lso forgetting about his sister’s business, with the sole desire of quickly getting out of there, left on tiptoe and, as if it were a plague house, ran out to the street and spent a long time talking and joking with a cabby, hoping the sooner to come to his senses.

  At the French Theatre, where he arrived for the last act, and then over champagne at the Tartars’, Stepan Arkadyich caught his breath a little in an atmosphere more suitable to him. But even so he felt quite out of sorts that evening.

  Returning home to Pyotr Oblonsky’s, where he was staying in Petersburg, Stepan Arkadyich found a note from Betsy. She wrote that she wished very much to finish the conversation they had started and invited him to come the next day. No sooner had he read the note and winced at it than he heard downstairs the heavy footsteps of people carrying some weighty object.

  Stepan Arkadyich went out to look. It was the rejuvenated Pyotr Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he was unable to climb the stairs; but he ordered them to stand him on his feet when he saw Stepan Arkadyich,

  * The person who came last, the one who is asking for something, must get out! Get out!

  * You will excuse me, but you can see … Come back at around ten, or better still tomorrow.

  * That’s me, isn’t it? and, hanging on to him, went with him to his room, there began telling about how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep on the spot.

  Stepan Arkadyich was in low spirits, which rarely happened to him, and could not fall asleep for a long time. Everything he recalled, everything, was vile, but vilest of all was the recollection, as if of something shameful, of the evening at Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s.

  The next day he received from Alexei Alexandrovich a definitive refusal to divorce Anna and understood that this decision was based on what the Frenchman had said in his real or feigned sleep.

  XXIII

  In order to undertake anything in family life, it is necessary that there be either complete discord between the spouses or loving harmony. But when the relations between spouses are uncertain and there is neither the one nor the other, nothing can be undertaken.

  Many families stay for years in the same old places, hateful to both spouses, only because there is neither full discord nor harmony.

  For both Vronsky and Anna, Moscow life in the heat and dust, when the sun no longer shone as in spring but as in summer, and all the trees on the boulevards had long been in leaf, and the leaves were already covered with dust, was unbearable. But instead of moving to Vozdvizh–enskoe, as they had long ago decided to do, they went on living in the Moscow they both hated, because lately there had been no harmony between them.

  The irritation that divided them had no external cause, and all attempts to talk about it not only did not remove it but increased it. This was an inner irritation, which for her was based on the diminishing of his love, and for him on his regret at having put himself, for her sake, in a difficult situation, which she, instead of making easier, made still more difficult. Neither of them spoke of the causes of their irritation, but each considered the other in the wrong and tried to prove it at every opportunity.

  For her, all of him, with all his habits, thoughts, desires, with his entire mental and physical cast, amounted to one thing: love for women. And that love, which, as she felt, should have been concentrated on her alone, had diminished. Therefore, she reasoned, he must have transferred part of it to other women, or to another woman – and she was jealous. She was jealous not of any one woman, but of the diminishing of his love. Having as yet no object for her jealousy, she was looking for one. Following the slightest hint, she transferred her jealousy from one object to another. Now she was jealous of those coarse women with whom he could so easily associate himself thanks to his bachelor connections; then she was jealous of the society women he might meet, or again of some imaginary girl he wanted to marry after breaking the liaison with her. And this last jealousy tormented her most of all, especially as he himself, in a moment of candour, had imprudently told her that his mother understood him so little that she allowed herself to insist that he should marry Princess Sorokin.

  And, being jealous, Anna was indignant with him and sought pretexts for indignation in everything. She blamed him for everything that was difficult in her situation. The painful state of expectation, between heaven and earth, in which she lived in Moscow, Alexei Alexandrovich’s slowness and indecision, her seclusion – she ascribed it all to him. If he loved her, he would understand the full difficulty of her situation and would take her out of it. The fact that she was living in Moscow and not in the country was also his fault. He could not live buried in the country, as she wanted to. Society was necessary for him, and he put her into that terrible position, the difficulty of which he did not wish to understand. And it was he again who was to blame for her being forever separated from her son.

  Even the rare moments of tenderness that occurred between them did not bring her peace: in his tenderness she now saw a tinge of tranquillity, of assurance, which had not been there before and which irritated her.

  It was already dark. Alone, waiting for him to come back from a bachelors’ dinner he had gone to, Anna paced up and down his study (the room where the noise of the street was heard least) and mentally went through the nuances of yesterday’s quarrel in all their detail. Going further back from the memorably insulting words of the argument to what had caused them, she finally came to the beginning of their conversation. For a long time she could not believe that the quarrel had begun from such a harmless conversation, not close to either of their hearts. Yet it was really so. It had all begun with him laughing at women’s high schools, which he considered unnecessary, and her defending them. He referred disrespectfully to women’s education in general and said that Hannah, Anna’s English protégée, did not need any knowledge of physics.

  That irritated Anna. She saw it as a contemptuous allusion to her concerns. And she devised and spoke a phrase that would pay him back for the pain he had caused her.

  ‘I don’t expect you to be mindful of me or my feelings as a loving man would be, but I do expect simple tactfulness,’ she said.

  And indeed he turned red with vexation and said something unpleasant. She did not remember what reply she made to him, but only that he, obviously also wishing to cause her pain, responded by saying:

  ‘It’s true I’m not interested in your concern for this girl, because I can see it’s unnatural.’

  The cruelty with which he destroyed the world she had so laboriously built up for herself in order to endure her difficult life, the unfairness with which he accused her of being false and unnatural, made her explode.

  ‘I am very sorry that only coarse and material things seem understandable and natural to you,’ she said and walked out of the room.

  When he came to her that evening, they did not mention the quarrel that had taken place, but they both felt that, though it had been smoothed over, it was still there.

  Today he had not been home all day, and she felt so lonely and so pained to have quarrelled with him that she wanted forget it all, to forgive and make peace with him, wanted to accuse herself and justify him.

  ‘It’s my own fault, I’m irritable, I’m senselessly jealous. I’ll make peace with him, we’ll leave for the country, I’ll be calmer there,’ she said to herself.

  ‘Unnatural’ – she suddenly remembered the most offensive thing, not the word so much as the intention to cause her pain.

  ‘I know what he wanted to say. He wanted to say that it’s unnatural for me to love someone else’s child when I don’t love my own daughter. What does he understand about the love for children, about my love for Seryozha, whom I have sacrificed for him? But this wish to cause me pain! No, he loves another woman, it can’t be anything else.’

  And seeing that, while wishing to calm herself, she had gone round the circle she had already completed so many times and come back to her former irritation, she was horrified at herself. ‘Is it really impossible? Can I really not take it u
pon myself?’ she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. ‘He’s truthful, he’s honest, he loves me. I love him, the divorce will come any day now. What more do we need? We need peace, trust, and I’ll take it upon myself. Yes, now, when he comes, I’ll tell him it was my fault, though it wasn’t, and we’ll leave.’