Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

  'No,' he interrupted and stopped involuntarily, forgetting that he was thereby putting her into an awkward position, so that she had to stop as well. 'No one feels all the difficulty of Anna's situation more fully or strongly than I do. And that is understandable, if you do me the honour of considering me a man who has a heart. I am the cause of that situation, and that is why I feel it.'

  'I understand,' said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring him for having said it so sincerely and firmly. 'But precisely because you feel yourself the cause of it, I'm afraid you exaggerate,' she said. 'Her situation in society is difficult, I understand that.'

  'It's hell in society!' he said quickly, with a dark frown. 'It's impossible to imagine moral torments worse than those she lived through for two weeks in Petersburg ... I beg you to believe that.'

  'Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna ... nor you feel any need of society...'

  'Society!' he said scornfully. 'What need can I have of society?'

  'Then for so long - and that may mean for ever - you'll be happy and at peace. I can see that Anna is happy, perfectly happy, she's already had time to tell me so,' Darya Alexandrovna said, smiling; and now, as she said it, she involuntarily doubted whether Anna was indeed happy.

  But Vronsky, it seemed, did not doubt it.

  'Yes, yes,' he said. 'I know she has revived after all her sufferings; she's happy. She's happy in the present. But I? ... I'm afraid of what awaits us ... Sorry, would you like to move on?'

  'No, it makes no difference.'

  'Let's sit down here then.'

  Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden bench in the corner of the avenue. He stood in front of her.

  'I see that she's happy,' he repeated, and the doubt whether she was happy struck Darya Alexandrovna still more strongly. 'But can it go on like this? Whether what we did was good or bad is another question. The die is cast,' he said, going from Russian to French, 'and we're bound for our whole life. We're united by the bonds of love, which are the most sacred thing for us. We have a child, we may have more children. But the law and all the conditions of our situation are such that thousands of complications exist that she doesn't see and doesn't want to see now, as she rests her soul after all her sufferings and ordeals. And that is understandable. But I can't help seeing them. My daughter, according to the law, is not my daughter, she is - Karenin's. I do not want this deceit!' he said with an energetic gesture of negation, and he gave Darya Alexandrovna a gloomily questioning look.

  She made no reply and only looked at him. He went on:

  'And tomorrow a son will be born, my son, and by law he is a Karenin, he is heir neither to my name nor to my fortune, and however happy we may be in our family and however many children we may have, there will be no connection between me and them. They are Karenins. You can understand the burden and horror of this situation! I've tried to say it to Anna. It annoys her. She doesn't understand, and I can't say everything to her. Now look at it from the other side. I'm happy in her love, but I must be occupied. I have found an occupation, and I am proud of that occupation and consider it nobler than the occupations of my former comrades at court and in the service. And I certainly would never exchange it for what they do. I work here, staying put, and I'm happy, content, and we need nothing more for happiness. I love this activity. Cela n'est pas un pis-aller,* on the contrary ..."

  Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point of his explanation he became confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she sensed that once he had begun talking about his innermost attitudes, which he could not talk about with Anna, he would now say everything, and that the question of his activity on the estate belonged to the same compartment of innermost thoughts as the question of his relations with Anna.

  'And so, to continue,' he said, recovering himself. 'The main thing is that, as I work, I must be sure that my work will not die with me, that I will have heirs - and that is not the case. Imagine the situation of a man who knows beforehand that his children by the woman he loves will be not his but someone else's, someone who hates them and does not want to know them. It's terrible!'

  He fell silent, obviously in great agitation.

  'Yes, of course, I understand that. But what can Anna do?' asked Darya Alexandrovna.

  'Yes, that brings me to the point of what I'm saying,' he said, making an effort to calm down. 'Anna can do something, it depends on her ... A divorce is necessary even in order to petition the emperor for adoption. And that depends on Anna. Her husband agreed to a divorce - at that

  * This is not making the best of a bad thing.

  time your husband had it all but arranged. And even now, I know, he would not refuse. It would only take writing to him. His answer then was that if she expressed the wish, he would not refuse. Of course,' he said gloomily, 'this is one of those pharisaic cruelties that only such heartless men are capable of. He knows what torment any remembrance of him costs her, and, knowing her, he demands a letter from her. I understand that it torments her. But the reasons are so important that she must passer par-dessus toutes ces finesses de sentiment. II y va du bonheur et de l'existence d'Anne et de ses enfants.* I'm not speaking of myself, though it's hard for me, very hard,' he said, with a look as if he were threatening someone for making it so hard. 'And so, Princess, I am shamelessly seizing upon you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to talk her into writing to him and demanding a divorce!'

  'Yes, of course,' Darya Alexandrovna said pensively, vividly remembering her last meeting with Alexei Alexandrovich. 'Yes, of course,' she repeated resolutely, remembering Anna.

  'Use your influence on her, make her write to him. I don't want to talk with her about it and almost cannot.'

  'Very well, I'll talk with her. But how is it she doesn't think of it herself?' said Darya Alexandrovna, at the same time suddenly recalling for some reason Anna's strange new habit of narrowing her eyes. And she remembered that Anna had narrowed her eyes precisely when it was a matter of the most intimate sides of life. 'As if she narrows her eyes at her life in order not to see it all,' thought Dolly. 'I'll be sure to talk with her, for my own sake and for hers,' Darya Alexandrovna replied to his look of gratitude.

  They got up and went towards the house.

  XXII

  Finding Dolly already at home, Anna looked attentively into her eyes, as if asking about the conversation she had had with Vronsky, but she did not ask in words. 'I think it's time for dinner,' she said. 'We haven't seen each other at

  * One must pass over all these fine points of feeling. The happiness and the existence of Anna and her children depend on it.

  all yet. I'm counting on the evening. Now I must go and dress. You, too, I think. We all got dirty at the construction site.'

  Dolly went to her room and felt like laughing. She had nothing to change into because she had already put on her best dress; but to mark her preparations for dinner in some way, she asked the maid to brush her dress, changed the cuffs and the bow, and put lace on her head.

  'This is all I could do,' she said, smiling, to Anna, who came out to her in a third, again extremely simple, dress.

  'Yes, we're very formal here,' she said, as if apologizing for being dressed up. 'Alexei is rarely so pleased with anything as he is with your visit. He's decidedly in love with you,' she added. 'But aren't you tired?'

  There was no time to talk about anything before dinner. Coming into the drawing room, they found Princess Varvara and the men in their black frock coats already there. The architect was wearing a tailcoat. Vronsky introduced the doctor and the steward to his guest. She had already met the architect at the hospital.

  The fat butler, his round, clean-shaven face and the starched bow of his white tie gleaming, announced that the meal was ready, and the ladies rose. Vronsky asked Sviyazhsky to give Anna Arkadyevna his arm, and went over to Dolly himself. Veslovsky got ahead of Tushkevich in offering his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevich, the steward and the doctor went in by them
selves.

  The dinner, the dining room, the dinnerware, the servants, the wine and the food were not only in keeping with the general tone of new luxury in the house, but seemed even newer and more luxurious than all the rest. Darya Alexandrovna observed this luxury, which was new to her, and, being herself the mistress of a house - though with no hope of applying to her own house anything of what she saw, so far did its luxury exceed her style of life - involuntarily took note of all the details, asking herself who had done it all and how. Vasenka Veslovsky, her own husband, and even Sviyazhsky, and many other people she knew, never gave it a thought, and took for granted what any decent host wishes his guests to feel - namely, that everything he had arranged so well had cost him, the host, no trouble and had got done by itself. But Darya Alexandrovna knew that not even the porridge for the children's breakfast got done by itself and that therefore such a complicated and excellent arrangement had required someone's close attention. And from the look of Alexei Kirillovich as he inspected the table, nodded to the butler, and offered her a choice between cold borscht and soup, she understood that everything was done and maintained through the care of the host himself. It obviously depended no more on Anna than on Veslovsky. She, Sviyazhsky, the princess and Veslovsky were guests alike, cheerfully enjoying what had been prepared for them.

  Anna was hostess only in conducting the conversation. And that task - quite difficult for a hostess at a small table in the presence of people like the steward and the architect, people from a completely different world, trying not to be intimidated by the unaccustomed luxury and unable to take part for long in a general conversation - Anna performed with her usual tact, naturalness and even pleasure, as Darya Alexandrovna noticed.

  The conversation turned to how Tushkevich and Veslovsky had gone for a boat ride alone, and Tushkevich began telling them about the last race at the Petersburg Yacht Club. But Anna, after a suitable pause, turned at once to the architect, to draw him out of his silence.

  'Nikolai Ivanovich was struck,' she said of Sviyazhsky, 'by how the new building has grown since he was here last; but I'm there every day, and every day I'm surprised at how quickly it goes.'

  'It's good working with his excellency,' the architect said with a smile (he was a quiet and deferential man with a sense of his own dignity). 'A far cry from dealing with the provincial authorities. Where we'd fill out a stack of papers with them, I just report to the count, we discuss it, and in three words it's done.'

  'American methods,' Sviyazhsky said, smiling.

  'Yes, sir, building's done rationally there ...'

  The conversation turned to government abuses in the United States, but Anna immediately turned it to a different subject, so as to draw the steward out of his silence.

  'Have you ever seen these harvesting machines?' She turned to Darya Alexandrovna. 'We were coming from looking at them when we met you. It was the first time I'd seen them myself.'

  'How do they work?' asked Dolly.

  'Just like scissors. A board and a lot of little scissors. Like this.'

  Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful, white, ring-adorned hands and began to demonstrate. She obviously could see that her explanation would not make anything understood, but, knowing that her speech was pleasant and her hands were beautiful, she went on explaining.

  'Rather like penknives,' Veslovsky said playfully, never taking his eyes off her.

  Anna gave a barely noticeable smile, but did not reply to him.

  'Isn't it just like scissors, Karl Fedorych?' She turned to the steward.

  'Oh, ja,' the German answered. 'Es ist ein ganz einfaches Ding,'* and he began explaining the construction of the machine.

  'Too bad it doesn't bind. I saw one at an exhibition in Vienna that binds with wire,' said Sviyazhsky. 'They'd be more profitable.'

  'Es kommt drauf an... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden.' And the German, roused from his silence, addressed Vronsky: 'Das lasst sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht.' The German was about to go to his pocket, where he had a pencil in a little notebook in which he calculated everything, but, remembering that he was sitting at dinner and noticing Vronsky's cold gaze, he checked himself. 'Zu kompliziert, macht zu viel Troubles,* he concluded.

  'Wunscht man Roubles, so hat man auch Troubles,' said Vasenka Veslovsky, teasing the German. 'J'adore l'allemand.' He turned to Anna again with the same smile.

  'Cessez,'* she said to him with mock severity.

  'And we hoped to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonych,' she turned to the doctor, a sickly man. 'Were you there?'

  'I was, but I evaporated,' the doctor replied with gloomy jocularity.

  'So you got some good exercise?'

  'Magnificent!'

  'Well, and how's the old woman's health? I hope it's not typhus.'

  'Typhus or no, her condition is not of the most advantageous.'

  'What a pity!' said Anna, and having granted due courtesy to the people of the household, she turned to her own friends.

  'But still, it would be difficult to build a machine from your description, Anna Arkadyevna,' Sviyazhsky said jokingly.

  'No, why?' Anna replied with a smile which said that she knew there had been something endearing in the way she had explained the construction of the machine, something Sviyazhsky had noticed as well. This new feature of youthful coquetry struck Dolly unpleasantly.

  * It's quite a simple thing.

  * That depends .. . The cost of the wire must be taken into account.

  * It can be calculated, your excellency.

  * Too complicated, makes too much troubles.

  * A man who wants roubles will also have troubles.

  * I love German,

  * Stop it.

  'On the other hand, Anna Arkadyevna's knowledge of architecture is amazing,' said Tushkevich.

  'That it is! Yesterday I heard Anna Arkadyevna say "in strobilus" and "plinths",' said Veslovsky. 'Am I saying it right?'

  'There's nothing amazing about it when one has seen and heard so much,' said Anna. 'And you probably don't even know what houses are made of!'

  Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna was displeased with that playful tone between her and Veslovsky but involuntarily fell into it herself.

  Vronsky in this case acted not at all like Levin. He obviously did not attach any significance to Veslovsky's chatter and, on the contrary, encouraged these jokes.

  'So, tell us, Veslovsky, what holds the bricks together?'

  'Cement, naturally.'

  'Bravo! And what is cement?'

  'Just some sort of paste ... no, putty,' said Veslovsky, provoking general laughter.

  The conversation among the diners, except for the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who were sunk in gloomy silence, never flagged, now gliding along smoothly, now touching and cutting someone to the quick. On one occasion Darya Alexandrovna was cut to the quick and got so excited that she even turned red and later tried to recall whether she had said anything out of place or unpleasant. Sviyazhsky had started talking about Levin, telling of his strange opinions about machines being only harmful for Russian farming.

  'I don't have the pleasure of knowing this Mr Levin,' Vronsky said, smiling, 'but he has probably never seen the machines he denounces. And if he has seen and tried one, it was not of foreign make but some Russian version. And what views can there be here?'

  'Turkish views, generally,' Veslovsky said with a smile, turning to Anna.

  'I cannot defend his opinions,' Darya Alexandrovna said, flushing, 'but I can tell you that he's a very educated man, and if he were here he would know how to answer you, though I'm unable to.'

  'I like him very much and we're great friends,' said Sviyazhsky, smiling good-naturedly. 'Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toque:* for instance, he maintains that the zemstvo and the local courts - that it's all unnecessary, and he doesn't want to participate in any of it.'

  * But, excuse me, he's a bit cracked.

  'That's our Russian apathy,' s
aid Vronsky, pouring water from a chilled carafe into a thin glass with a stem, 'not to feel the responsibilities imposed on us by our rights and thus to deny those responsibilities.'

  'I don't know a man more strict in fulfilling his responsibilities,' said Darya Alexandrovna, annoyed by Vronsky's superior tone.

  'I, on the contrary,' Vronsky went on, evidently touched to the quick for some reason by this conversation, 'I, on the contrary, such as I am, feel very grateful for the honour done me, thanks to Nikolai Ivanych here' (he indicated Sviyazhsky), 'in electing me an honourable justice of the peace. I think that for me the responsibility of attending the sessions, of judging the case of a muzhik and his horse, is as important as anything I can do. And I will consider it an honour if I'm elected to the council. That is the only way I can pay back the benefits I enjoy as a landowner. Unfortunately, people don't understand the significance major landowners ought to have in the state.'

  Darya Alexandrovna found it strange to hear how calmly in the right he was, there at his own table. She remembered Levin, who thought the opposite, being just as resolute in his opinions at his own table. But she loved Levin and was therefore on his side.