Alexei did not know himself what he wanted now. It was only when Anna had left his house, and the II/Porter/7e62 asked whether he desired the full table setting, though he would be dining alone, that for the first time he clearly comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from that past to a knowledge of his wife’s unfaithfulness he had lived through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could understand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the hopeless position—incomprehensible to himself—in which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man’s child with what was now the case; for in return for all this he now found himself alone.
PUT TO SHAME. A LAUGHINGSTOCK. NEEDED BY NO ONE. DESPISED BY ALL.
“Yes,” responded Karenin, pacing the empty rooms of his home.
NOT I THOUGH.
I SHALL NEVER ABANDON YOU.
His confidence buttressed by the supportive exhortations of the Face, Alexei was able to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna’s rooms and belongings, he exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred was neither unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of despair.
On the second day after her departure, Alexei Alexandrovich was paid a visit by a shop clerk, to whom he had previously sent word that his wife’s outstanding bills should be sent to her directly.
“Excuse me, your Excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But she is on the moon, where collections efforts are exceedingly difficult.”
Alexei began in his cold and formal way to explain that whatever planet or planetoid his wife cared to live upon was not his concern. But he trailed off, midway through his sentence, his head cocked slightly to the side, listening to an unheard admonition.
HOW DARE HE?
Yes, thought Alexei Karenin. Yes.
“You come to me today in search of money, the money owed to you by Anna Arkadyevna. You come and speak as if you do not know of our situation.”
“Of course, that is, I do know,” the shopkeeper stammered. “I do know of the situation to which you refer.”
“Yes,” Alexei began, and the human portion of his face twisted into a sneer, while his voice changed, emerging unnaturally with the timbre of nails rattling in an empty can: “BUT DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”
“I . . . I—yes, your Excellency,” the man stammered helplessly, stepping backward slowly as he spoke. “And normally of course before troubling you I would send my Class III. Funny little robot called Wholesale. But, sir, of course he’s been sent for adjustment.”
Alexei Alexandrovich threw his head back and pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at once, turning round, he sat down calmly at the table.
“I am sorry for bothering you. Perhaps it is best that I go. Sir? Sir?”
Letting his head sink into his hands, Karenin sat for a long while in that position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short. Then, at last, he looked up, stared directly at the man, and his ocular device clicked slowly forward.
* * *
When it was done—when the shopkeeper’s windpipe had been shattered like the neck of a wine bottle, when his eyes popped out of his head like overripe fruit, when what had been the man’s body lay in a ragged mass on the floor, one hand still clutching Anna’s overdue bill—Alexei Alexandrovich allowed a small smile to creep into the corner of his mouth.
“You may consider it paid, sir,” he said to the corpse as he stepped over it and returned to his bedchamber.
But, alone again, Alexei Alexandrovich recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.
He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain—if he did not crush them first. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.
SHE MADE YOU THE FOOL, ALEXEI.
Tomorrow he would appear before his colleagues in the Ministry; accompanied by a regiment of Toy Soldiers, loyal to him and him alone, he would appear before them to deliver a decisive announcement.
SHE ABANDONED YOU, AND THE WORLD HOWLED WITH LAUGHTER.
He would announce to them his new thinking on the topic of the grand Project, of which he was the supervisor; for his plans on that topic had somewhat . . . evolved.
NOW SHE MUST SUFFER.
AND THE WORLD ALONG WITH HER.
He threw back his head and emitted a long, horrid noise, beginning as a laugh that was a cold parody of laughter, and trailing off into a hideous, sobbing moan of despair. His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.
THE WORLD MUST SUFFER ALONG WITH HER.
The so-called beloved-companions, now that they had all been gathered up, would not have their circuits adjusted and then be returned to their owners.
They would never be returned at all.
ONLY ONE FRIEND, ALEXEI.
ONLY ME.
CHAPTER 14
WHEN THEY HAD ALIT upon terra firma, after the journey back from the moon, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of Petersburg’s finest hotels: he in a lower story, she in a suite of rooms with her child, a II/Governess/D145 to attend to the baby, and Android Karenina.
On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother’s. There he found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay on the moon, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop a single word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother came the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him about her, and Alexei Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon his connection with Madame Karenina as a marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother and his wife so.
“If the world disapproves, I don’t care,” said Vronsky, “but if my relations want to be on family terms with me, they will have to be on the same terms with my wife.”
The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother’s judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not till the world had decided the question; for his part he had nothing against it, and with Alexei he went up to see Anna.
Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna with a certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend, but it was understood that his brother knew their real relations.
In spite of all his social experience, Vronsky was, in consequence of the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood that society was closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had sprung up in his brain that this was
only the case in old-fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the views of society had changed, and that the question of whether they would be received in society was not a foregone conclusion. Of course, he thought, intimate friends can and must look at it in the proper light.
One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw was his cousin Betsy.
“At last!” she said, greeting him joyfully. “And Anna? How glad I am! I can fancy after your delightful travels you must find our poor Petersburg horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in the Mare Tranquillitatis! And your charming Lupo has yet to be gathered up! How marvelous for you!”
And thus did Betsy jump from subject to subject, clearly ill at ease with her old friends. She rambled about the rumors of alien monsters at large in the countryside—“Our Honored Guests, at last arrived!”—and spoke of how she eagerly awaited the return of the Class Ills. “Not that I miss Darling Girl one bit, of course. I’m doing just fine without her.” Vronsky nodded, noting with stifled amusement that Betsy’s hair sat in a sloppy bun atop her head, and her dress front was abominably wrinkled.
“How about the divorce,” Betsy prattled on. “Is that all over?”
“No, not yet—but what is the meaning of—”
Vronsky noticed that Betsy’s enthusiasm waned when she learned that no divorce had as yet taken place.
“People will throw stones at me, I know,” she said, “but I shall come and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You won’t be in Petersburg long, I suppose?”
And she did certainly come to see Anna and Android Karenina the same day, but her tone was not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably prided herself on her courage, and wished Anna to appreciate the fidelity of her friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking of society gossip and speculating about the Honored Guests: Were they from Venus? This new planet, Neptune, that had only just been discovered? Regardless, the Ministry was offering every assurance that the threat could be easily countered, and who would be such a fool as to doubt it?
On leaving she said:
“You’ve never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I’m ready to fling my cap over the mill, to show my friendship—other starchy people will give you the cold shoulder until you’re married. And that’s so simple nowadays. Although your husband, or so I understand, is exceptionally busy these days, overseeing the adjustment of the beloved-companions.
“If only your husband were someone else entirely. I do hear that of late he has become somewhat . . .”
She trailed off, raising one hand to her unkempt mess of hair.
“Somewhat strange!”
From Betsy’s tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to expect from the world; but he made another effort in his own family. The day after his arrival Vronsky went to Varya, his brother’s wife, and finding her alone, expressed his wishes directly: that she would not throw stones, and would go simply and directly to see Anna, and would receive her in her own house.
“You know, Alexei,” she said after hearing him, “how fond I am of you, and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna,” she said, articulating the name Anna Arkadyevna with particular care. “Don’t suppose, please, that I judge her. Never; perhaps in her place I should have done the same. I don’t and can’t enter into that,” she said, glancing timidly at his gloomy face. “But one must call things by their names. You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I cannot do so. I have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband’s sake.”
Vronsky left gloomily, knowing well that further efforts were useless, and that he had to live in Petersburg as though in a strange town, avoiding every sort of relation with his own old circle in order not to be exposed to the annoyances and humiliations, which were so intolerable to him. Even among strangers, he was always aware of the cold and envious stares of those wondering how he was allowed to walk about with his Class III robot. And to this implied question, he had no answer. Why had not these famous Toy Soldiers, who were led of course by none other than Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin himself, come to take away his beloved Lupo?
Indeed, one of the most unpleasant features of his position in Petersburg was that Alexei Alexandrovich and his name seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the conversation turning on Alexei Alexandrovich; he could not go anywhere without risk of meeting him. So at least it seemed to Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything.
Their stay in Petersburg was all the more painful to Vronsky because he perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then she would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable, spending hours sitting quietly alone with Android Karenina. She was worrying over something, and keeping something back from him, and did not seem to notice the humiliations that poisoned his existence, and for her, with her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.
The old adage, which Vronsky remembered from his youth, seemed to hold true: You may travel to the moon, but do not be surprised if the world changes while you are gone.
CHAPTER 15
ONE OF ANNA’S OBJECTS in coming back to Russia had been to see her son; she understood from letters she had received that Sergey had been told she was dead, and that terrible deception weighed heavily on her heart. From the day she left the moon the thought of it had never ceased to agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. When Vronsky spied her sitting in quiet counsel with Android Karenina, it was this dream she was speaking of, talking endlessly of Sergey and cuing Memories of the boy day and night. Anna did not even put to herself the question of how to arrange it. It seemed to her natural and simple to see her son when she should be in the same town with him. But on her arrival in Petersburg she was suddenly made distinctly aware of her present position in society—not only her relations with Vronsky, but her possession of one of the few remaining Class Ills on the city streets—and she grasped the fact that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter. To go straight to the house, where she might meet Alexei Alexandrovich, that she felt she had no right to do.
But to get a glimpse of her son out walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him.
She decided that the next day, Seryozha’s birthday, she would go straight to her husband’s house and at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child.
As her plan formed itself in her mind, she went to a toy shop, bought toys; and then crept into Vronsky’s private chambres d’armory, while he slept soundly, and carefully removed what she felt were the items necessary for the excursion. She thought over a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at eight o’clock, when Alexei Alexandrovich would be certain not to be up. She carefully explained her intentions to Android Karenina, who instantly and completely understood her desires.
The next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, a woman climbed from a hired sledge outside the home of Alexei Karenin and rang at the front entrance.
“Some lady,” grunted the Karenins’ stoic, old mécanicien, Kapitonitch, who, not yet dressed, in his dumpy, grey undercoat, peeped out of the window to see a lady in a veil standing close up to the door. Kapitonitch opened the door and was astonished to see the figure of his old mistress, Anna Karenina, covered in her familiar traveling cloak and veil.
Kapitonitch stood perfectly still, a statue of a man with his hand upon the doorknob—for how could he
open it? He remembered Anna’s kindness, and he wished for nothing greater than to allow her entrance to what had been her home; but it was Kapitonitch who had buried the poor store clerk in a rutted ditch behind the house.
“Whom do you want?” he asked, affecting a voice as hard as tempered steel.
From behind her veil, Anna, apparently not hearing his words, made no answer.
At the same moment, in the gardens behind the house, the real Anna Karenina—for of course it was Android Karenina standing still and wordless at the front door behind Anna’s veil—the real Anna overleaped the high electrified fence and landed with a bone-rattling thud beside the fountain. Uneasily holding one of Vronsky’s prized regimental smokers before her, she advanced in her stocking feet toward the rear door of the great house that once, a lifetime ago, had been her own. Step after careful step she advanced, not daring to glance up at the bedroom windows, and instead noticing, a few feet from the back door, a kind of rickety outbuilding she did not recognize.
The large metal door of this shed hung slightly open, glinting in the daylight, and Anna’s curiosity overcame her.
At the front door, noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonitch went out to her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she wanted.
Again the woman said nothing.
“His honor’s not up yet,” said Kapitonitch, looking at her attentively. Then, hearing a loud, sharp shriek from the rear of the house—the distressed call of a captured bird? the strangled cry of a woman?—he wheeled sharply about.
Leo Tolstoy & Ben Winters Page 36