Leo Tolstoy

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

  As he came up to Anna Arkadyevna from behind, he noticed with joy that she, sensing his approach, looked around and, recognizing him, turned back to her husband.

  ‘Did you have a good night?’ he said, bowing to her and her husband together, and giving Alexei Alexandrovich a chance to take this bow to his own account and recognize him or not, as he wished.

  ‘Very good, thank you,’ she replied.

  Her face seemed tired, and there was none of that play of animation in it which begged to come out now in her smile, now in her eyes; yet for a moment, as she glanced at him, something flashed in her eyes and, although this fire went out at once, he was happy in that moment. She looked at her husband to see whether he knew Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich was looking at Vronsky with displeasure, absently trying to recall who he was. Vronsky’s calm and self–confidence here clashed like steel against stone with the cold self–confidence of Alexei Alexandrovich.

  ‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.

  ‘Ah! We’re acquainted, I believe,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said with indifference, offering his hand. ‘You went with the mother and came back with the son,’ he said, articulating distinctly, as if counting out each word. ‘You must be returning from leave?’ he said and, without waiting for an answer, addressed his wife in his bantering tone: ‘So, were there many tears shed in Moscow over the parting?’

  By addressing his wife in this way, he made it clear to Vronsky that he wished to be left alone, and, turning to him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky addressed Anna Arkadyevna:

  ‘I hope to have the honour of calling on you,’ he said.

  Alexei Alexandrovich looked at Vronsky with his weary eyes.

  ‘I’d be delighted,’ he said coldly, ‘we receive on Mondays.’ Then, having dismissed Vronsky altogether, he said to his wife: ‘And how good it is that I had precisely half an hour to meet you and that I have been able to show you my tenderness,’ continuing in the same bantering tone.

  ‘You emphasize your tenderness far too much for me to value it greatly,’ she said in the same bantering tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of Vronsky’s footsteps behind them. ‘But what do I care?’ she thought and began asking her husband how Seryozha had spent the time without her.

  ‘Oh, wonderfully! Mariette says he was very nice and … I must upset you … didn’t miss you, unlike your husband. But merci once again, my dear for the gift of one day. Our dear samovar will be delighted.’ (He called the celebrated Countess Lydia Ivanovna ‘samovar’, because she was always getting excited and heated up about things.) ‘She’s been asking about you. And you know, if I may be so bold as to advise you, you might just go to see her today. She takes everything to heart so. Now, besides all her other troubles, she’s concerned with reconciling the Oblonskys.’

  Countess Lydia Ivanovna was her husband’s friend and the centre of one of the circles of Petersburg society with which Anna was most closely connected through her husband.

  ‘I did write to her.’

  ‘But she needs everything in detail. Go, if you’re not tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, and I’m off to the committee. I won’t be alone at dinner any more,’ Alexei Alexandrovich went on, no longer in a bantering tone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how I’ve got used to …’

  And, pressing her hand for a long time, with a special smile, he helped her into the carriage.

  XXXII

  The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He came running down the stairs to her, despite the cries of the governess, and with desperate rapture shouted: ‘Mama, mama!’ Rushing to her, he hung on her neck. ‘I told you it was mama!’ he cried to the governess. ‘I knew it!’ And the son, just like the husband, produced in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality, she had to descend into reality to enjoy him as he was. But he was charming even as he was, with his blond curls, blue eyes and full, shapely legs in tight–fitting stockings. Anna experienced almost a physical pleasure in the feeling of his closeness and caress, and a moral ease when she met his simple–hearted, trusting and loving eyes and heard his naive questions. She took out the presents that Dolly’s children had sent and told her son about the girl Tanya in Moscow and how this Tanya knew how to read and even taught the other children. And am I worse than she is?’ asked Seryozha.

  ‘For me you’re the best in the world.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Seryozha, smiling.

  Before Anna had time to have coffee, Countess Lydia Ivanovna was announced. Countess Lydia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman with an unhealthy yellow complexion and beautiful, pensive dark eyes. Anna loved her, but today she saw her as if for the first time with all her shortcomings.

  ‘Well, my friend, did you bear the olive branch?’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna asked as soon as she came into the room.

  ‘Yes, it’s all over, but it was not as important as we thought,’ Anna replied. ‘Generally, my belle–soeur is too headstrong.’

  But Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who was interested in everything that did not concern her, had the habit of never listening to what interested her. She interrupted Anna:

  ‘Yes, there is much woe and wickedness in the world – but I’m so exhausted today.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Anna, trying to repress a smile.

  ‘I’m beginning to weary of breaking lances for the truth in vain, and sometimes I go quite to pieces. The business with the little sisters’ (this was a philanthropic, religious and patriotic institution) ‘would have gone splendidly, but it’s impossible to do anything with these gentlemen,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna added in mock submission to her fate. ‘They seized on the idea, distorted it, and now discuss it in such a petty, worthless fashion. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand the full significance of this business, but the others only demean it. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me …’

  Pravdin was a well–known Pan–Slavist[42] who lived abroad. Countess Lydia Ivanovna proceeded to recount the contents of his letter.

  Then she told of further troubles and schemes against the cause of Church unity and left hurriedly, because that afternoon she still had to attend a meeting of some society and then of the Slavic committee.

  ‘All this was there before; but why didn’t I notice it before?’ Anna said to herself. ‘Or is she very irritated today? In fact, it’s ridiculous: her goal is virtue, she’s a Christian, yet she’s angry all the time, and they’re all her enemies, and they’re all enemies on account of Christianity and virtue.’

  After Countess Lydia Ivanovna had left, an acquaintance came, the wife of a director, and told her all the news about town. At three o’clock she also left, promising to come for dinner. Alexei Alexandrovich was at the ministry. Finding herself alone, Anna spent the time before dinner sitting with her son while he ate (he dined separately), putting her things in order and reading and answering the notes and letters that had accumulated on her desk.

  Her agitation and the sense of groundless shame she had experienced during the journey disappeared completely. In the accustomed conditions of her life she again felt herself firm and irreproachable.

  She recalled with astonishment her state yesterday. ‘What happened? Nothing. Vronsky said a foolish thing, which it was easy to put an end to, and I replied as I ought to have done. To speak of it with my husband is unnecessary and impossible. To speak of it – would mean giving importance to something that has none.’ She recalled how she had told him of a near declaration that one of her husband’s young subordinates had made to her in Petersburg, and how Alexei Alexandrovich had replied that, living in society, any woman may be subject to such things, but that he fully trusted her tact and would never allow either himself or her to be demeaned by jealousy. ‘So there’s no reason to tell him? Yes, thank God, and there’s nothing to tell,’ she said to herself.

  XXXIII

  Alexei Alexandrovich returned from the ministry at four o’clock, but, as often happened, h
ad no time to go to her room. He proceeded to his study to receive the waiting petitioners and sign some papers brought by the office manager. At dinner (three or four people always dined with the Karenins) there were Alexei Alexandrovich’s elderly female cousin, the department director and his wife and a young man recommended to Alexei Alexandrovich at work. Anna came out to the drawing room to entertain them. At exactly five o’clock, before the Peter–the–Great bronze clock struck for the fifth time, Alexei Alexandrovich came out in a white tie and a tailcoat with two stars, because he had to leave right after dinner. Every minute of Alexei Alexandrovich’s life was occupied and scheduled. And in order to have time to do what he had to do each day, le held to the strictest punctuality. ‘Without haste and without rest’ was his motto. He entered the room, bowed to everyone, and hastily sat down, smiling at his wife.

  ‘Yes, my solitude is ended. You wouldn’t believe how awkward’ (he emphasized the word awkward) ‘it is to dine alone.’

  Over dinner he talked with his wife about Moscow affairs, asked with a mocking smile about Stepan Arkadyich; but the conversation was mainly general, about Petersburg administrative and social affairs. After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests and, again pressing his wife’s hand with a smile, left and went to the Council. This time Anna went neither to see Princess Betsy Tverskoy, who, on learning of her return, had invited her for the evening, nor to the theatre, where she had a box for that night. She did not go mainly because the dress she had counted on was not ready. Having turned to her toilette after her guests’ departure, Anna was very annoyed. Before leaving for Moscow, she, who was generally an expert at dressing not very expensively, had given her dressmaker three dresses to be altered. The dresses needed to be altered so that they could not be recognized, and they were to have been ready three days ago. It turned out that two of the dresses were not ready at all, and the third had not been altered in the way Anna wanted. The dressmaker came and explained that it was better as she had done it, and Anna got so upset that afterwards she was ashamed to remember it. To calm herself completely, she went to the nursery and spent the whole evening with her son, put him to bed herself, made a cross over him and covered him with a blanket. She was glad that she had not gone anywhere and had spent the evening so well. She felt light and calm. She saw clearly that everything that had seemed so important to her on the train was merely one of the ordinary, insignificant episodes of social life, and there was nothing to be ashamed of before others or herself. Anna sat by the fireplace with her English novel and waited for her husband. At exactly half–past nine the bell rang, and he came into the room.

  ‘It’s you at last!’ she said, giving him her hand.

  He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.

  ‘Generally, I see your trip was a success,’ he said to her.

  ‘Yes, very,’ she replied, and started telling him everything from the beginning: her journey with Mme Vronsky, her arrival, the accident at the railway station. Then she told of the pity she had felt, first for her brother, then for Dolly.

  ‘I don’t suppose one can possibly excuse such a man, though he is your brother,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said sternly.

  Anna smiled. She understood that he had said it precisely to show that considerations of kinship could not keep him from expressing his sincere opinion. She knew this feature in her husband and liked it.

  ‘I’m glad it all ended satisfactorily and that you’ve come back,’ he continued. ‘Well, what are they saying there about the new statute I passed in the Council?’

  Anna had heard nothing about this statute, and felt ashamed that she could so easily forget something so important for him.

  ‘Here, on the contrary, it caused a good deal of stir,’ he said with a self–satisfied smile.

  She could see that Alexei Alexandrovich wanted to tell her something that pleased him about this matter, and by her questions she led him to telling it. With the same self–satisfied smile, he told her about an ovation he had received as a result of the passing of this statute.

  ‘I was very, very glad. This proves that a reasonable and firm view of the matter is finally being established among us.’

  Having finished his bread and a second glass of tea with cream, Alexei Alexandrovich got up and went to his study.

  ‘And you didn’t go out anywhere – it must have been boring for you?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she replied, getting up after him and accompanying him across the drawing room to his study. ‘What are you reading now?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m now reading the Duc de Lille, Poésie des enfers,[43] he replied. ‘A very remarkable book.’

  Anna smiled, as one smiles at the weaknesses of people one loves, and, putting her arm under his, accompanied him to the door of the study. She knew his habit, which had become a necessity, of reading in the evenings. She knew that in spite of the responsibilities of service which consumed almost all his time, he considered it his duty to follow everything remarkable that appeared in the intellectual sphere. She also knew that he was indeed interested in books on politics, philosophy, theology, that art was completely foreign to his nature, but that, in spite of that, or rather because of it, Alexei Alexandrovich did not miss anything that caused a stir in that area, and considered it his duty to read everything. She knew that in the areas of politics, philosophy and theology, Alexei Alexandrovich doubted or searched; but in questions of art and poetry, and especially music, of which he lacked all understanding, he had the most definite and firm opinions. He liked to talk about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, about the significance of the new schools in poetry and music, which with him were all sorted out in a very clear order.

  ‘Well, God bless you,’ she said at the door of the study, where a shaded candle and a carafe of water had already been prepared for him beside the armchair. ‘And I’ll write to Moscow.’

  He pressed her hand and again kissed it.

  ‘All the same, he’s a good man, truthful, kind and remarkable in his sphere,’ Anna said to herself, going back to her room, as if defending him before someone who was accusing him and saying that it was impossible to love him. ‘But why do his ears stick out so oddly? Did he have his hair cut?’

  Exactly at midnight, when Anna was still sitting at her desk finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the measured steps of slippered feet, and Alexei Alexandrovich, washed and combed, a book under his arm, came up to her.

  ‘It’s time, it’s time,’ he said with a special smile, and went into the bedroom.

  ‘And what right did he have to look at him like that?’ thought Anna, recalling how Vronsky had looked at Alexei Alexandrovich.

  She undressed and went to the bedroom, but not only was that animation which had simply burst from her eyes and smile when she was in Moscow gone from her face: on the contrary, the fire now seemed extinguished in her or hidden somewhere far away.

  XXXIV

  On his departure from Petersburg, Vronsky had left his big apartment on Morskaya to his friend and favourite comrade Petritsky.

  Petritsky was a young lieutenant, of no especially high nobility, not only not rich but in debt all around, always drunk towards evening, and often ending up in the guard house for various funny and dirty episodes, but loved by both his comrades and his superiors. Driving up to his apartment from the railway station towards noon, Vronsky saw a familiar hired carriage by the entrance. In response to his ring, he heard men’s laughter from behind the door, a woman’s voice prattling in French and Petritsky’s shout: ‘If it’s one of those villains, don’t let him in!’ Vronsky told the orderly not to announce him and quietly went into the front room. Baroness Shilton, Petritsky’s lady–friend, her lilac satin dress and rosy fair face shining, and her canary–like Parisian talk filling the whole room, was sitting at a round table making coffee. Petritsky in

  civilian overcoat and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky in full uniform, probably just off duty, were sitting on either side of her.

  �
��Bravo! Vronsky!’ cried Petritsky, jumping up noisily from his chair. ‘The host himself! Coffee for him, Baroness, from the new coffeepot. We weren’t expecting you! I hope you’re pleased with the new ornament of your study,’ he said, pointing to the baroness. ‘You’re acquainted?’