by Leo Tolstoy
'Mikhail Ivanych, when is your name-day?' he asked suddenly.
'You'd better think about your work. Name-days mean nothing to intelligent beings. Just like any other day when we have to work.'
Seryozha looked attentively at the teacher, his sparse little beard, his spectacles which had slipped down below the red mark on his nose, and lapsed into thought so that he heard nothing of what his teacher explained to him. He realized that his teacher was not thinking about what he said, he felt it by the tone in which it was spoken. 'But why have they all decided to say it in the same way, everything that's most boring and unnecessary? Why does he push me away from him? Why doesn't he love me?' he asked himself with sorrow, and could think of no answer.
XXVII
After the teacher there was a lesson with his father. Waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the desk playing with his penknife and began to think. Among his favourite occupations was looking for his mother during his walk. He did not believe in death generally and especially not in her death, though Lydia Ivanovna had told him and his father had confirmed it, and therefore, even after he was told that she was dead, he looked for her during his walks. Any full-bodied, graceful woman with dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman, a feeling of tenderness welled up in his soul, so strong that he choked and tears came to his eyes. And he expected her to come up to him at any moment and lift her veil. Her whole face would be visible, she would smile, embrace him, he would smell her smell, feel the tenderness of her hand, and weep happily, as he had one evening when he lay at her feet and she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white hand with its rings. Later, when he learned by chance from the nanny that his mother was not dead, and his father and Lydia Ivanovna explained to him that she was dead for him, because she was not good (which he simply could not believe, because he loved her), he kept looking and waiting for her in the same way. Today in the Summer Garden there was a lady in a purple veil whom he watched with a sinking heart, expecting it to be her as she approached them on the path. This lady did not reach them but disappeared somewhere. Today Seryozha felt stronger surges of love for her than ever, and now, forgetting himself, while waiting for his father, he cut up the whole edge of the desk with his knife, staring straight ahead with shining eyes and thinking of her.
'Papa is coming!' Vassily Lukich distracted him.
Seryozha jumped up, approached his father and, after kissing his hand, looked at him attentively, searching for signs of joy at getting the Alexander Nevsky.
'Did you have a nice walk?' Alexei Alexandrovich said, sitting down in his armchair, moving the book of the Old Testament to him and opening it. Though Alexei Alexandrovich had told Seryozha many times that every Christian must have a firm knowledge of sacred history, he often consulted the Old Testament himself, and Seryozha noticed it.
'Yes, it was great fun, papa,' said Seryozha, sitting sideways on the chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. 'I saw Nadenka' (Nadenka was Lydia Ivanovna's niece, whom she was bringing up). 'She told me you've been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?'
'First of all, don't rock, please,' said Alexei Alexandrovich. 'And second, what is precious is not the reward but the work. And I wish you to understand that. If you work and study in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard to you; but when you work,' Alexei Alexandrovich said, recalling how he had sustained himself by a sense of duty that morning in the dull work of signing a hundred and eighteen papers, 'if you love the work, you will find your reward in that.' Seryozha's eyes, shining with tenderness and gaiety, went dull and lowered under his father's gaze. This was the same long-familiar tone in which his father always addressed him and which he had learned to fall in with. His father always talked to him - so he felt - as if he were addressing some imaginary boy, one of those that exist in books, but quite unlike him. And he always tried, when with his father, to pretend he was that book boy.
'You understand that, I hope?' said his father.
'Yes, papa,' Seryozha replied, pretending to be the imaginary boy.
The lesson consisted in learning several verses from the Gospel by heart and going over the beginning of the Old Testament. Seryozha knew the Gospel verses quite well, but as he was reciting them, he got so lost in contemplating the bone of his father's forehead, which curved sharply at the temple, that he got confused by a repetition of the same word and moved the ending of one verse to the beginning of another. It was obvious to Alexei Alexandrovich that he did not understand what he was saying, and that annoyed him.
He frowned and began to explain what Seryozha had already heard many times and could never remember, because he understood it all too clearly - the same sort of thing as 'thus' being an adverbial modifier of manner. Seryozha looked at his father with frightened eyes and thought of one thing only: whether or not his father would make him repeat what he said, as sometimes happened. And this thought frightened him so much that he no longer understood anything. But his father did not make him repeat it and went on to the lesson from the Old Testament. Seryozha recounted the events themselves quite well, but when he had to answer questions about what some of the events foreshadowed, he knew nothing, though he had already been punished for this lesson. The place where he could no longer say anything and mumbled, and cut the table, and rocked on the chair, was the one where he had to speak of the antediluvian patriarchs. He knew none of them except Enoch, who had been taken alive to heaven.[41] He had remembered the names before, but now he had quite forgotten them, especially because Enoch was his favourite person in all the Old Testament, and Enoch's having been taken alive to heaven was connected in his mind with a whole long train of thought to which he now gave himself, staring with fixed eyes at his father's watch chain and a waistcoat button half-way through the buttonhole.
In death, which he had been told about so often, Seryozha totally refused to believe. He did not believe that the people he loved could die, and especially that he himself would die. For him that was perfectly impossible and incomprehensible. Yet he had been told that everyone would die; he had even asked people he trusted and they had confirmed it; his nanny had also confirmed it, though reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, which meant that not everyone died. 'And why can't everyone be deserving in the same way before God and get taken alive to heaven?' thought Seryozha. The bad ones - that is, those whom Seryozha did not like - they could die, but the good ones should all be like Enoch.
'Well, so who are the patriarchs?'
'Enoch, Enos.'
'You've already said that. Bad, Seryozha, very bad. If you don't try to learn what's most necessary for a Christian,' his father said, getting up, 'what else can interest you? I'm displeased with you, and Pyotr Ignatyich' (the chief pedagogue) 'is displeased with you ... I will have to punish you.'
The father and the pedagogue were both displeased with Seryozha, and indeed he studied very badly. But it was quite impossible to say that he was an incapable boy. On the contrary, he was much more capable than the boys whom the pedagogue held up as examples to Seryozha. As his father saw it, he did not want to learn what he was taught. But in fact, he could not learn it. He could not, because there were demands in his soul that were more exacting for him than those imposed by his father and the pedagogue. These demands were conflicting, and he fought openly with his educators.
He was nine years old, he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was dear to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and did not let anyone into his soul without the key of love. His educators complained that he did not want to learn, yet his soul was overflowing with a thirst for knowledge. And he learned from Kapitonych, from his nurse, from Nadenka, from Vassily Lukich, but not from his teachers. The water that his father and the teacher had expected to turn their mill-wheels had long since seeped away and was working elsewhere.
His father punished Seryozha by not letting him visit Nadenka, Lydia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out to be lucky for Seryozha. Vassily Lukich was in
good spirits and showed him how to make windmills. They spent the whole evening working and dreaming of how to make a windmill so that you could turn round with it: hold on to the wings, or be tied to them, and turn. Seryozha did not think of his mother all evening, but when he went to bed, he suddenly remembered her and prayed in his own words that, for his birthday tomorrow, his mother would stop hiding and come to him.
'Vassily Lukich, do you know what extra I prayed for besides?'
'To study better?'
'No.'
'Toys?'
'No. You'll never guess. It's splendid, but secret! If it comes true, I'll tell you. You can't guess?'
'No, I can't. You'll have to tell me,' Vassily Lukich said, smiling, which rarely happened with him. 'Well, lie down, I'm putting the candle out.'
'And I can see what I prayed for better without the candle. Now I've nearly told you the secret!' said Seryozha, laughing gaily.
When the candle was taken away, he heard and felt his mother. She stood over him and caressed him with her loving eyes. But windmills came, a penknife came, everything got confused, and he fell asleep.
XXVIII
On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed in one of the best hotels. Vronsky separately on the lower floor, Anna upstairs with the baby, the wet nurse and the maid, in a big four-room suite.
The day they arrived Vronsky went to see his brother. There he found his mother, who had come from Moscow on her own business. His mother and sister-in-law met him as usual; they asked him about his trip abroad, spoke of mutual acquaintances, and did not say a word about his liaison with Anna. But his brother, when he came to Vronsky the next day, asked about her himself, and Alexei Vronsky told him straight out that he considered his liaison with Mme Karenina a marriage; that he hoped to arrange for a divorce and then marry her; and till then he considered her just as much his wife as any other wife and asked him to convey that to his mother and his wife.
'If society doesn't approve of it, that's all the same to me,' said Vronsky, 'but if my family wants to have family relations with me, they will have to have the same relations with my wife.'
The elder brother, who had always respected the opinions of the younger, could not quite tell whether he was right or wrong until society decided the question; he himself, for his own part, had nothing against it and went together with Alexei to see Anna.
In his brother's presence, as in everyone else's, Vronsky addressed Anna formally and treated her as a close acquaintance, but it was implied that the brother knew of their relations, and mention was made of Anna going to Vronsky's estate.
Despite all his social experience, Vronsky, owing to the new position in which he found himself, was strangely deluded. It seems he ought to have understood that society was closed to him and Anna; but some vague arguments were born in his head, that it had been so only in olden times, while now, progress being so quick (without noticing it he had become an advocate of every sort of progress), society's outlook had changed and the question of their being received in society was still to be decided. 'Naturally,' he thought, 'court society will not receive her, but closer acquaintances can and must understand it in the right way.'
A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that nothing prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them. That was what Vronsky felt with regard to society. Though in the depths of his soul he knew that society was closed to them, he tested whether it might change now and they might be received. But he very soon noticed that, though society was open to him personally, it was closed to Anna. As in the game of cat and mouse, arms that were raised for him were immediately lowered before Anna.
One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw was his cousin Betsy.
'At last!' she greeted him joyfully. 'And Anna? I'm so glad! Where are you staying? I can imagine how awful our Petersburg must seem to you after your lovely trip; I can imagine your honeymoon in Rome. What about the divorce? Has that all been done?'
Vronsky noticed that Betsy's delight diminished when she learned that there had been no divorce as yet. ,
'They'll throw stones at me, I know,' she said, 'but I'll go to see Anna. Yes, I'll certainly go. Will you be here long?'
And, indeed, she went to see Anna that same day; but her tone was now quite unlike what it used to be. She was obviously proud of her courage and wished Anna to appreciate the faithfulness of her friendship. She stayed less than ten minutes, talking about society news, and as she was leaving said:
'You haven't told me when the divorce will be. Granted I've thrown my bonnet over the mills, but other starched collars will blow cold on you until you get married. And it's so simple now. Ca se fait.* So you leave on Friday? A pity we won't see more of each other.'
From Betsy's tone Vronsky could understand what he was to expect from society; but he made another attempt with his family. He had no hopes for his mother. He knew that she, who had so admired Anna when they first became acquainted, was now implacable towards her for having brought about the ruin of her son's career. But he placed great hopes in Varya, his brother's wife. He thought that she would not throw stones and would simply and resolutely go to see Anna and receive her.
The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her and, finding her alone, voiced his wish directly.
'You know, Alexei,' she said, after hearing him out, 'how much I love you and how ready I am to do anything for you. But I have kept silent because I know I cannot be useful to you and Anna Arkadyevna,' she said, articulating 'Anna Arkadyevna' with special care. 'Please don't think that I condemn her. Never. It may be that in her place I would have done the same thing. I do not and cannot go into the details,' she said, glancing timidly at his sullen face. 'But one must call things by their names. You want me to see her, to receive her, and in that way to rehabilitate her in society, but you must understand that I cannot do it. I have growing daughters, and I must live in society for my husband's sake. If I go to see Anna Arkadyevna, she will understand that I cannot invite her or must do it so that she does not meet those who would take a different view of it, and that will offend her. I cannot raise her ...'
'I don't consider that she has fallen any more than hundreds of other women whom you do receive!' Vronsky interrupted her still more sullenly, and silently got up, realizing that his sister-in-law's decision was not going to change.
'Alexei! Don't be angry with me. Please understand that it's not my fault,' said Varya, looking at him with a timid smile.
'I'm not angry with you,' he said just as sullenly, 'but it doubles my
It's done.
pain. What also pains me is that it breaks up our friendship. Or let's say it doesn't break it up, but weakens it. You realize that for me, too, it cannot be otherwise.'
And with that he left her.
Vronsky understood that further attempts were futile and that they would have to spend those few days in Petersburg as in a foreign city, avoiding all contacts with their former society so as not to be subjected to insults and unpleasantnesses, which were so painful for him. One of the most unpleasant things about the situation in Petersburg was that Alexei Alexandrovich and his name seemed to be everywhere. It was impossible to begin talking about anything without the conversation turning to Alexei Alexandrovich; it was impossible to go anywhere without meeting him. At least it seemed so to Vronsky, as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he keeps knocking into everything, as if on purpose, with that finger.
The stay in Petersburg seemed the more difficult to Vronsky because all that time he saw some new, incomprehensible mood in Anna. At one moment she appeared to be in love with him, at another she became cold, irritable and impenetrable. She was suffering over something and concealing something from him, and seemed not to notice those insults that poisoned his life and that for her, with her subtl
e perceptiveness, ought to have been still more painful.
XXIX
For Anna one of the objects of the trip to Russia was to see her son. Since the day she left Italy, the thought of seeing him had not ceased to excite her. And the closer she came to Petersburg, the greater became the joy and significance of this meeting for her. She never asked herself the question of how to arrange it. To her it seemed natural and simple to see her son when she was in the same town with him; but on arriving in Petersburg, she suddenly saw her present position in society clearly and realized that it would be difficult to arrange the meeting.
She had already been in Petersburg for two days. The thought of her son had never left her for a moment, but she still had not seen him. She felt she did not have the right to go directly to the house, where she might encounter Aiexei Alexandrovich. She might be insulted and turned away. As for writing and entering into relations with her husband, it was painful even to think of it: she could be at peace only when not thinking of her husband. To find out when and where her son went for his walks and see him then, was not enough for her: she had been preparing so long for this meeting, she had so much to tell him, she wanted so much to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha's old nanny might have helped her and instructed her. But the nanny no longer lived in Alexei Alexandrovich's house. In these hesitations and in the search for the nanny, two days passed.