Leo Tolstoy

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

‘Don’t call her "miss". She’s afraid of it. No one, except the justice of the peace, when she stood trial for wanting to leave the house of depravity, no one ever called her "miss". My God, what is all this nonsense in the world!’ he suddenly cried out. ‘These new institutions, these justices of the peace, the zemstvo – what is this outrage!’

  And he started telling about his encounters with the new institutions.

  Konstantin Levin listened to him, and that denial of sense in all social institutions, which he shared with him and had often expressed aloud, now seemed disagreeable to him coming from his brother’s mouth.

  We’ll understand it all in the other world,’ he said jokingly.

  ‘In the other world? Ah, I don’t like that other world! No, I don’t,’ he said resting his frightened, wild eyes on his brother’s face. ‘And it might seem good to leave all this vileness and confusion, other people’s and one’s own, but I’m afraid of death, terribly afraid of death.’ He shuddered. ‘Do drink something. Want champagne? Or else let’s go somewhere. Let’s go to the gypsies! You know, I’ve come to have a great love of gypsies and Russian songs.’

  His tongue began to get confused, and he jumped from one subject to another. Konstantin, with Masha’s help, persuaded him not to go anywhere and put him to bed completely drunk.

  Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need and to persuade Nikolai Levin to go and live with him.

  XXVI

  In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow and towards evening he arrived at home. On the way in the train he talked with his neighbours about politics, about the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by the confusion of his notions, by dissatisfaction with himself and shame at something; but when he got off at his station, recognized the one–eyed coachman, Ignat, with his caftan collar turned up, when he saw his rug sleigh [38] in the dim light coming from the station windows, his horses with their bound tails, their harness with its rings and tassels, when the coachman Ignat, while they were still getting in, told him the village news, about the contractor’s visit, and about Pava having calved – he felt the confusion gradually clearing up and the shame and dissatisfaction with himself going away. He felt it just at the sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he put on the sheepskin coat brought for him, got into the sleigh, wrapped himself up and drove off, thinking over the orders he had to give about the estate and glancing at the outrunner, a former Don saddle horse, over–ridden but a spirited animal, he began to understand what had happened to him quite differently. He felt he was himself and did not want to be otherwise. He only wanted to be better than he had been before. First, he decided from that day on not to hope any more for the extraordinary happiness that marriage was to have given him, and as a consequence not to neglect the present so much. Second, he would never again allow himself to be carried away by a vile passion, the memory of which had so tormented him as he was about to propose. Then, remembering his brother Nikolai, he decided that he would never again allow himself to forget him, would watch over him and never let him out of his sight, so as to be ready to help when things went badly for him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his brother’s talk about communism, which he had taken so lightly at the time now made him ponder. He regarded the reforming of economic conditions as nonsense, but he had always felt the injustice of his abundance as compared with the poverty of the people, and he now decided that, in order to feel himself fully in the right, though he had worked hard before and lived without luxury, he would now work still harder and allow himself still less luxury. And all this seemed so easy to do that he spent the whole way in the most pleasant dreams. With a cheerful feeling of hope for a new, better life, he drove up to his house between eight and nine in the evening.

  Light fell on to the snow–covered yard in front of the house from the windows of the room of Agafya Mikhailovna, his old nurse, who filled the role of housekeeper for him. She was not yet asleep. Kuzma, whom she woke up, ran out sleepy and barefoot on to the porch. The pointer bitch Laska also ran out, almost knocking Kuzma off his feet, and rubbed herself against Levin’s knees, stood on her hind legs and wanted but did not dare to put her front paws on his chest.

  ‘You’ve come back so soon, dear,’ said Agafya Mikhailovna.

  ‘I missed it, Agafya Mikhailovna. There’s no place like home,’ he replied and went to his study.

  The study was slowly lit up by the candle that was brought. Familiar details emerged: deer’s antlers, shelves of books, the back of the stove with a vent that had long been in need of repair, his father’s sofa, the big desk, an open book on the desk, a broken ashtray, a notebook with his handwriting. When he saw it all, he was overcome by a momentary doubt of the possibility of setting up that new life he had dreamed of on the way. All these traces of his life seemed to seize hold of him and say to him: ‘No, you won’t escape us and be different, you’ll be the same as you were: with doubts, an eternal dissatisfaction with yourself, vain attempts to improve, and failures, and an eternal expectation of the happiness that has eluded you and is not possible for you.’

  But that was how his things talked, while another voice in his soul said that he must not submit to his past and that it was possible to do anything with oneself. And, listening to this voice, he went to the corner where he had two thirty–six–pound dumb–bells and began lifting them, trying to cheer himself up with exercise. There was a creak of steps outside the door. He hastily set down the dumb–bells.

  The steward came in and told him that everything, thank God, was well, but informed him that the buckwheat had got slightly burnt in the new kiln. This news vexed Levin. The new kiln had been built and partly designed by him. The steward had always been against this kiln and now with concealed triumph announced that the buckwheat had got burnt. Levin, however, was firmly convinced that if it had got burnt, it was only because the measures he had ordered a hundred times had not been taken. He became annoyed and reprimanded the steward. But there had been one important and joyful event: Pava, his best and most valuable cow, bought at a cattle show, had calved.

  ‘Kuzma, give me my sheepskin coat. And you have them bring a lantern,’ he said to the steward. ‘I’ll go and take a look.’

  The shed for the valuable cows was just behind the house. Crossing the yard past a snowdrift by the lilac bush, he approached the shed. There was a smell of warm, dungy steam as the frozen door opened, and the cows, surprised by the unaccustomed light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. The smooth, broad, black–and–white back of a Frisian cow flashed. Berkut, the bull, lay with his ring in his nose and made as if to get up, but changed his mind and only puffed a couple of times as they passed by. The red beauty, Pava, enormous as a hippopotamus, her hindquarters turned, screened the calf from the entering men and sniffed at it.

  Levin entered the stall, looked Pava over, and lifted the spotted red calf on its long, tottering legs. The alarmed Pava began to low, but calmed down when Levin pushed the calf towards her, and with a heavy sigh started licking it with her rough tongue. The calf, searching, nudged its mother in the groin and wagged its little tail.

  ‘Give me some light, Fyodor, bring the lantern here,’ said Levin, looking the calf over. ‘Just like her mother! Though the coat is the father’s. Very fine. Long and deep–flanked. Fine, isn’t she, Vassily Fyodorovich?’ he asked the steward, completely reconciled with him about the buckwheat, under the influence of his joy over the calf.

  ‘What bad could she take after? And the contractor Semyon came the day after you left. You’ll have to settle the contract with him, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ said the steward. ‘I told you before about the machine.’

  This one question led Levin into all the details of running the estate, which was big and complex. From the cowshed he went straight to the office and, after talking with the steward and the contractor Semyon, returned home and went straight upstairs to the drawing room.

  XXVII

  The house was big, old, and
Levin, though he lived alone, heated and occupied all of it. He knew that this was foolish, knew that it was even wrong and contrary to his new plans, but this house was a whole world for Levin. It was the world in which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived a life which for Levin seemed the ideal of all perfection and which he dreamed of renewing with his wife, with his

  family–

  Levin barely remembered his mother. His notion of her was a sacred memory, and his future wife would have to be, in his imagination, the repetition of that lovely, sacred ideal of a woman which his mother was for him.

  He was not only unable to picture to himself the love of a woman without marriage, but he first pictured the family to himself and only then the woman who would give him that family. His notion of marriage was therefore not like the notion of the majority of his acquaintances, for whom it was one of the many general concerns of life; for Levin it was the chief concern of life, on which all happiness depended. And now he had to renounce it!

  When he went into the small drawing room where he always had tea, and settled into his armchair with a book, and Agafya Mikhailovna brought his tea and, with her usual ‘I’ll sit down, too, dear,’ took a chair by the window, he felt that, strange as it was, he had not parted with his dreams and could not live without them. With her or with someone else, but they would come true. He read the book, thought about what he had read, paused to listen to Agafya Mikhailovna, who chattered tirelessly; and along with that various pictures of farm work and future family life arose disconnectedly in his imagination. He felt that something in the depths of his soul was being established, adjusted and settled. He listened to Agafya Mikhailovna’s talk of how Prokhor had forgotten God and, with the money Levin had given him to buy a horse, was drinking incessantly and had beaten his wife almost to death; he listened, read the book and remembered the whole course of his thoughts evoked by the reading. This was a book by Tyndall[39] on heat. He remembered |s disapproval of Tyndall for his self–satisfaction over the cleverness of his experiments and for his lack of a philosophical outlook. And suddenly a joyful thought would surface: ‘In two years I’ll have two Frisian cows in my herd, Pava herself may still be alive, twelve young daughters from Berkut, plus these three to show off – wonderful!’ He picked up his book again.

  ‘Well, all right, electricity and heat are the same: but is it possible to solve a problem by substituting one quantity for another in an equation? No. Well, what then? The connection between all the forces of nature is felt instinctively as it is … It’ll be especially nice when Pava’s daughter is already a spotted red cow, and the whole herd, with these three thrown in … Splendid! To go out with my wife and guests to meet the herd … My wife will say: "Kostya and I tended this calf like a child." "How can it interest you so?" a guest will say. "Everything that interests him interests me." But who is she?’ And he remembered what had happened in Moscow … ‘Well, what to do? … I’m not to blame. But now everything will take a new course. It’s nonsense that life won’t allow it, that the past won’t allow it. I must fight to live a better life, much better …’ He raised his head and pondered. Old Laska, who had not yet quite digested the joy of his arrival and had gone to run around the yard and bark, came back wagging her tail, bringing with her the smell of outdoors, went over to him and thrust her head under his hand, making pitiful little whines and demanding to be patted.

  ‘She all but speaks,’ said Agafya Mikhailovna. ‘Just a dog … But she understands that her master’s come back and is feeling sad.’

  ‘Why sad?’

  ‘Don’t I see it, dear? I ought to know my gentry by now. I grew up among gentry from early on. Never mind, dear. As long as you’ve got your health and a clear conscience.’

  Levin looked at her intently, surprised that she understood his thoughts.

  ‘Well, should I bring more tea?’ she said, and, taking the cup, she went out.

  Laska kept thrusting her head under his hand. He patted her, and she curled up just at his feet, placing her head on a stretched–out hind leg. And as a sign that all was well and good now, she opened her mouth slightly, smacked her sticky lips, and, settling them better around her old teeth, lapsed into blissful peace. Levin watched these last movements attentively.

  ‘I’m just the same!’ he said to himself, ‘just the same! Never mind . . . All is well.’

  XXVIII

  Early on the morning after the ball, Anna Arkadyevna sent her husband a telegram about her departure from Moscow that same day.

  ‘No, I must, I must go.’ She explained the change of her intentions to her sister–in–law in such a tone as if she had remembered countless things she had to do. ‘No, I’d better go today!’

  Stepan Arkadyich did not dine at home, but promised to come at seven o’clock to see his sister off.

  Kitty also did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English governess. Because children are either inconstant or else very sensitive and could feel that Anna was different that day from when they had come to love her so, that she was no longer concerned with them – in any case they suddenly stopped playing with their aunt and loving her, and were quite unconcerned about her leaving. All morning Anna was busy with the preparations for the departure. She wrote notes to Moscow acquaintances, jotted down her accounts, and packed. Generally, it seemed to Dolly that she was not in calm spirits, but in that state of anxiety Dolly knew so well in herself, which comes not without reason and most often covers up displeasure with oneself. After dinner Anna went to her room to dress and Dolly followed her.

  ‘You’re so strange today!’ Dolly said to her.

  ‘I? You think so? I’m not strange, I’m bad. It happens with me. I keep wanting to weep. It’s very stupid, but it passes,’ Anna said quickly and bent her reddened face to the tiny bag into which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes had a peculiar shine and kept filling with tears. ‘I was so reluctant to leave Petersburg, and now – to leave here.’

  ‘You came here and did a good deed,’ said Dolly, studying her intently.

  Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.

  ‘Don’t say that, Dolly. I didn’t do anything and couldn’t do anything, often wonder why people have all decided to spoil me. What have I done, and what could I have done? You found enough love in your heart to forgive . . .’

  ‘Without you, God knows what would have happened! You’re so lucky, Anna!’ said Dolly. ‘Everything in your soul is clear and good.’

  ‘Each of us has his skeletons in his soul, as the English say.’ ‘What skeletons do you have? Everything’s so clear with you.’

  ‘There are some,’ Anna said suddenly and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly, humorous smile puckered her lips.

  ‘Well, then they’re funny, your skeletons, and not gloomy,’ Dolly said, smiling.

  ‘No, they’re gloomy. Do you know why I’m going today and not tomorrow? It’s a confession that has been weighing on me, and I want to make it to you,’ Anna said, resolutely sitting back in the armchair and looking straight into Dolly’s eyes.

  And, to her surprise, Dolly saw Anna blush to the ears, to the curly black ringlets on her neck.

  ‘Yes,’ Anna went on. ‘Do you know why Kitty didn’t come for dinner? She’s jealous of me. I spoiled … I was the reason that this ball was a torment for her and not a joy. But really, really, I’m not to blame, or only a little,’ she said, drawing out the word ‘little’ in a thin voice.

  ‘Ah, how like Stiva you said that!’ Dolly laughed.

  Anna became offended.

  ‘Oh, no, no! I’m not like Stiva,’ she said, frowning. ‘I’m telling you this because I don’t allow myself to doubt myself even for a moment.’

  But the moment she uttered these words, she felt that they were wrong; she not only doubted herself, but felt excitement at the thought of Vronsky, and was leaving sooner than she had wanted only so
as not to meet him any more.

  ‘Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and he …’

  ‘You can’t imagine how funny it came out. I had only just thought of matchmaking them, and suddenly it was something quite different. Perhaps against my own will I…’

  She blushed and stopped.