Leo Tolstoy

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

  And so as not to think any more and not to yield to irritation, she rang the bell and ordered the trunks to be brought in order to pack things for the country.

  At ten o’clock Vronsky arrived.

  XXIV

  ‘So, did you have a good time?’ she asked, coming out to meet him with a guilty and meek expression on her face.

  ‘As usual,’ he replied, understanding at a glance that she was in one of her good moods. He had become used to these changes, and was especially glad of it today, because he himself was in the best of spirits.

  ‘What’s this I see! That’s good!’ he said, pointing to the trunks in the hallway.

  ‘Yes, we must leave. I went for a ride, and it’s so nice that I wanted to go to the country. Nothing’s keeping you?’

  ‘It’s my only wish. I’ll come at once and we’ll talk, I only have to change. Send for tea.’

  And he went to his study.

  There was something offensive in his saying ‘That’s good,’ as one speaks to a child when it stops misbehaving; still more offensive was the contrast between her guilty and his self–assured tone; and for a moment she felt a desire to fight rising in her; but, making an effort, she suppressed it and met Vronsky just as cheerfully.

  When he came out to her, she told him, partly repeating words she had prepared, about her day and her plans for departure.

  ‘You know, it came to me almost like an inspiration,’ she said. ‘Why wait for the divorce here? Isn’t it the same in the country? I can’t wait any longer. I don’t want to hope, I don’t want to hear anything about the divorce. I’ve decided it’s no longer going to influence my life. Do you agree?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ he said, looking uneasily into her excited face.

  ‘And what were you all doing there? Who came?’ she said after a pause.

  Vronsky named the guests.

  ‘The dinner was excellent, and the boat race and all that was quite nice, but in Moscow they can’t do without the ridicule. Some lady appeared, the queen of Sweden’s swimming teacher, and demonstrated her art.’

  ‘How? She swam?’ Anna said, frowning.

  ‘In some red costume de natation,* old, ugly. So, when do we leave?’

  ‘What a stupid fantasy! Does she swim in some special way?’ Anna said without answering.

  ‘Certainly nothing special. That’s what I’m saying – terribly stupid. So, when do you think of leaving?’

  Anna shook her head as if wishing to drive some unpleasant thought away.

  ‘When? The sooner the better. We won’t be ready tomorrow. The day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes … no, wait. The day after tomorrow is Sunday, I must call on maman,’ Vronsky said, embarrassed, because as soon as he mentioned his mother, he felt her intent, suspicious look fixed on him. His embarrassment confirmed her suspicions. She flushed and drew away from him. Now it was no longer the queen of Sweden’s teacher that Anna pictured to herself, but Princess Sorokin, who lived on Countess Vronsky’s country estate near Moscow.

  ‘Can’t you go tomorrow?’ she said.

  ‘No, I can’t! The business I’m going for, the warrant and the money, won’t have come by tomorrow,’ he replied.

  ‘In that case, we won’t leave at all.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘I won’t go later. Monday or never!’

  ‘But why?’ Vronsky said as if in surprise. ‘It makes no sense!’

  ‘For you it makes no sense, because you don’t care about me at all. You don’t want to understand my life. The only thing that has occupied me here is Hannah. You say it’s all pretence. You did say yesterday that I don’t love my daughter but pretend to love this English girl and that it’s unnatural. I’d like to know what kind of life can be natural for me here!’

  * Swimming costume.

  For a moment she recovered herself and was horrified at having failed in her intention. But, even knowing that she was ruining herself, she could not hold back, could not keep from showing him how wrong he was, could not submit to him.

  ‘I never said that. I said that I did not sympathize with this sudden love.’

  ‘Since you boast of your directness, why don’t you tell the truth?’

  ‘I never boast, and I never say anything that isn’t true,’ he said softly, holding back the anger that was surging up in him. ‘It’s a great pity if you don’t respect…’

  ‘Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. But if you don’t love me, it would be better and more honest to say so.’

  ‘No, this is becoming unbearable!’ Vronsky cried, getting up from his chair. And, stopping in front of her, he said slowly, ‘Why do you try my patience?’ He looked as if he could have said many other things, but restrained himself. ‘It does have limits.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she cried, staring with horror at the clear expression of hatred that was on his whole face, especially in his cruel, menacing eyes.

  ‘I mean …’ he began, but stopped. ‘I must ask you what you want of me.’

  ‘What can I want? The only thing I can want is that you not abandon me, as you’re thinking of doing,’ she said, understanding all that he had left unsaid. ‘But that’s not what I want, that’s secondary. I want love and there is none. Which means it’s all over!’

  She went towards the door.

  ‘Wait! Wa–a–ait!’ said Vronsky, not smoothing the grim furrow of his brows, but stopping her by the arm. ‘What’s the matter? I said we should put off our departure for three days and to that you said that I was lying, that I’m a dishonest man.’

  ‘Yes, and I repeat that a man who reproaches me by saying he has sacrificed everything for me,’ she said, recalling the words of a previous quarrel, ‘is still worse than a dishonest man – he’s a man with no heart!’

  ‘No, patience has its limits!’ he cried, and quickly let go of her arm.

  ‘He hates me, it’s clear,’ she thought, and silently, without looking back, she left the room with faltering steps.

  ‘He loves another woman, that’s clearer still,’ she said to herself, going into her room. ‘I want love and there is none. Which means it’s all over,’ she repeated the words she had said, ‘and I must end it.’ ‘But how?’ she asked herself, and sat down on a chair in front of the mirror.

  Thoughts of where she would go now – to the aunt who had brought her up, to Dolly, or simply abroad alone – and of what he was doing now, alone in his study, and whether this quarrel was the final one or reconciliation was still possible, and of what all her former Petersburg acquaintances would say about her now, and how Alexei Alexandrovich would look at it, and many other thoughts of what would happen now, after the break–up, came to her mind, but she did not give herself wholeheartedly to these thoughts. In her soul there was some vague thought which alone interested her, yet she was unable to bring it to consciousness. Having remembered Alexei Alexandrovich once again, she also remembered the time of her illness after giving birth, and the feeling that would not leave her then. ‘Why didn’t I die?’ – she remembered the words she had said then and the feeling she had had then. And she suddenly understood what was in her soul. Yes, this was the thought which alone resolved everything. ‘Yes, to die!…

  ‘The shame and disgrace of Alexei Alexandrovich and of Seryozha, and my own terrible shame – death will save it all. To die – and he will repent, pity, love and suffer for me.’ With a fixed smile of compassion for herself, she sat in the chair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand, vividly imagining from all sides his feelings after her death.

  Approaching steps, his steps, distracted her. As if occupied with arranging her rings, she did not even turn to him.

  He went up to her, took her hand and said softly:

  ‘Anna, let’s go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to everything.’

  She was silent.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You know yourself,’ she s
aid, and at the same moment, unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst into sobs.

  ‘Leave me, leave me!’ she repeated between sobs. ‘I’ll go away tomorrow … I’ll do more. What am I? A depraved woman. A stone around your neck. I don’t want to torment you, I don’t! I’ll release you. You don’t love me, you love another woman!’

  Vronsky implored her to calm herself and assured her that there was not the shadow of a reason for her jealousy, that he had never stopped and never would stop loving her, that he loved her more than ever.

  ‘Anna, why torment yourself and me like this?’ he said, kissing her hands. There was tenderness in his face now, and it seemed to her that she heard the sound of tears in his voice and felt their moisture on her hand. And instantly Anna’s desperate jealousy changed to a desperate, passionate tenderness; she embraced him and covered his head and neck and hands with kisses.

  XXV

  Feeling that their reconciliation was complete, in the morning Anna briskly began preparing for departure. Though it had not been decided whether they would go on Monday or on Tuesday, since they had kept yielding to each other the night before, Anna actively prepared for departure, now completely indifferent to whether they left a day earlier or later. She was standing in her room over an open trunk, sorting things, when he, already dressed, came into her room earlier than usual.

  ‘I’m going to see maman right now. She can send me the money through Yegorov. And tomorrow I’ll be ready to leave.’

  Good as her state of mind was, the mention of going to his mother’s country house stung her.

  ‘No, I won’t be ready myself,’ she said, and at once thought, ‘So he could have arranged to do it the way I wanted.’ ‘No, do it the way you wanted. Go to the dining room, I’ll come presently, as soon as I’ve sorted out the things I don’t need,’ she said, putting something else over Annushka’s arm, where a pile of clothes already hung.

  Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she came out to the dining room.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how sick I am of these rooms,’ she said, sitting down beside him over her coffee. ‘There’s nothing more terrible than these chambres garnies.* They have no face to them, no soul. This clock, these curtains, above all this wallpaper – a nightmare. I think of Vozdvizhenskoe as a promised land. You’re not sending the horses yet?’

  ‘No, they’ll go after us. Are you going out somewhere?’

  ‘I wanted to go to Mrs Wilson, to take her some dresses. So it’s tomorrow for certain?’ she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face changed.

  * Furnished rooms.

  Vronsky’s valet came to ask for a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing special in Vronsky’s receiving a telegram, but he, as if wishing to hide something from her, said that the receipt was in the study and quickly turned to her.

  ‘I’ll certainly be done with everything by tomorrow.’

  ‘Who was the telegram from?’ she asked, not listening to him.

  ‘Stiva,’ he answered reluctantly.

  ‘Why didn’t you show it to me? What secrets can there be between Stiva and me?’

  Vronsky called the valet back and told him to bring the telegram.

  ‘I didn’t want to show it because Stiva has a passion for sending telegrams. Why send telegrams if nothing’s been decided?’

  ‘About the divorce?’

  ‘Yes, but he writes: "Unable to obtain anything yet. Decisive answer promised in a day or two." Read here.’

  With trembling hands Anna took the telegram and read the same thing Vronsky had said. At the end there was also added: ‘Little hope, but will do everything possible and impossible.’

  ‘I said yesterday that I’m totally indifferent to when I get the divorce, or even whether I get it at all,’ she said, flushing. ‘There was no need to hide it from me.’ And she thought, ‘In the same way he can and does conceal his correspondence with women from me.’

  ‘And Yashvin wanted to come this morning with Voitov,’ said Vronsky. ‘It seems he’s won everything from Pevtsov, even more than he can pay – about sixty thousand.’

  ‘No,’ she said, irritated that by this change of subject he should make it so obvious to her that she was irritated, ‘why do you think this news interests me so much that you even have to conceal it? I said I don’t want to think about it, and I wish you were as little interested in it as I am.’

  ‘I’m interested because I like clarity,’ he said.

  ‘Clarity is not in form but in love,’ she said, getting more and more irritated, not by his words but by the tone of calm tranquillity in which he spoke. ‘What do you want that for?’

  ‘My God,’ he thought, wincing, ‘again about love.’

  ‘You know what for: for you and for the children to come,’ he said.

  ‘There won’t be any children.’

  ‘That’s a great pity,’ he said.

  ‘You need it for the children, but you don’t think about me?’ she said, completely forgetting or not hearing that he had said ‘for you and for the children’.

  The question about the possibility of having children had long been in dispute and it irritated her. She explained his wish to have children by the fact that he did not value her beauty.

  ‘Ah, I did say "for you". For you most of all,’ he repeated, wincing as if from pain, ‘because I’m sure that the greater part of your irritation comes from the uncertainty of your situation.’

  ‘Yes, now he’s stopped pretending and I can see all his cold hatred of me,’ she thought, not listening to his words, but gazing with horror at the cold and cruel judge who looked out of his eyes, taunting her.

  ‘That’s not the cause,’ she said, ‘and I do not even understand how the fact that I am completely in your power can be a cause of irritation, as you put it. What is uncertain in my situation? On the contrary.’

  ‘It’s a great pity you don’t want to understand,’ he interrupted her, stubbornly wishing to express his thought. ‘The uncertainty consists in the fact that to you it seems I’m free.’

  ‘Concerning that you may be perfectly at ease,’ she said and, turning away, began to drink her coffee.

  She raised her cup, holding out her little finger, and brought it to her lips. After taking several sips, she glanced at him and, from the expression on his face, clearly understood that he was disgusted by her hand, and her gesture, and the sound her lips made.

  ‘I am perfectly indifferent to what your mother thinks and how she wants to get you married,’ she said, setting the cup down with a trembling hand.

  ‘But we’re not talking about that.’

  ‘Yes, precisely about that. And believe me, a woman with no heart, whether she’s old or not, your mother or someone else’s, is of no interest to me, and I do not care to know her.’

  ‘Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.’

  ‘A woman whose heart cannot tell her what makes for the happiness and honour of her son, is a woman with no heart.’

  ‘I repeat my request: do not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect,’ he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.