Leo Tolstoy
Page 19
‘What else!’ said Vronsky, smiling gaily and pressing the baroness’s little hand. ‘We’re old friends!’
‘You’re back from a trip,’ said the baroness, ‘so I’ll run off. Oh, I’ll leave this very minute if I’m in the way.’
‘You’re at home right where you are, Baroness,’ said Vronsky. ‘Good day, Kamerovsky,’ he added, coldly shaking Kamerovsky’s hand.
‘See, and you never know how to say such pretty things.’ The baroness turned to Petritsky.
‘No? Why not? I’ll do no worse after dinner.’
‘After dinner there’s no virtue in it! Well, then I’ll give you some coffee, go wash and tidy yourself up,’ said the baroness, sitting down again and carefully turning a screw in the new coffeepot. ‘Pass me the coffee, Pierre.’ She turned to Petritsky, whom she called Pierre after his last name, not concealing her relations with him. ‘I’ll add some more.’
‘You’ll spoil it.’
‘No, I won’t! Well, and your wife?’ the baroness said suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. ‘We’ve got you married here. Did you bring your wife?’
‘No, Baroness. I was born a gypsy and I’ll die a gypsy.’
So much the better, so much the better. Give me your hand.’
And the baroness, without letting go of Vronsky’s hand, began telling mm her latest plans for her life, interspersing it with jokes, and asking for his advice.
He keeps refusing to grant me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?’ (‘He’ was her husband.) ‘I want to start proceedings. How would you advise me? Kamerovsky, keep an eye on the coffee, it’s boiling over – you can see I’m busy! I want proceedings, because I need my fortune.
Do you understand this stupidity – that I’m supposedly unfaithful to him,’ she said with scorn, ‘and so he wants to have use of my estate?’
Vronsky listened with pleasure to this merry prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave half–jocular advice, and generally adopted his habitual tone in dealing with women of her kind. In his Petersburg world, all people were divided into two completely opposite sorts. One was the inferior sort: the banal, stupid and, above all, ridiculous people who believed that one husband should live with one wife, whom he has married in church, that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, a man manly, temperate and firm, that one should raise children, earn one’s bread, pay one’s debts, and other such stupidities. This was an old–fashioned and ridiculous sort of people. But there was another sort of people, the real ones, to which they all belonged, and for whom one had, above all, to be elegant, handsome, magnanimous, bold, gay, to give oneself to every passion without blushing and laugh at everything else.
Vronsky was stunned only for the first moment, after the impressions of a completely different world that he had brought from Moscow; but at once, as if putting his feet into old slippers, he stepped back into his former gay and pleasant world.
The coffee never got made, but splashed on everything and boiled over and produced precisely what was needed – that is, gave an excuse for noise and laughter, spilling on the expensive carpet and the baroness’s dress.
‘Well, good–bye now, or else you’ll never get washed, and I’ll have on my conscience the worst crime of a decent person – uncleanliness. So your advice is a knife at his throat?’
‘Absolutely, and with your little hand close to his lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end well,’ Vronsky replied.
‘Tonight, then, at the French Theatre!’ And she disappeared, her dress rustling.
Kamerovsky also stood up, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to leave, gave him his hand and went to his dressing room. While he washed, Petritsky described his own situation in a few strokes, to the extent that it had changed since Vronsky’s departure. Of money there was none. His father said he would not give him any, nor pay his debts. One tailor wanted to have him locked up, and the other was also threatening to have him locked up without fail. The commander of the regiment announced that if these scandals did not stop, he would have to resign. He was fed up with the baroness, especially since she kept wanting to give him money; but there was one, he would show her to Vronsky, a wonder, a delight, in the severe Levantine style, the ‘slave–girl Rebecca genre[44] you know’. He had also quarrelled yesterday with Berkoshev, who wanted to send his seconds, but surely nothing would come of that. Generally, everything was excellent and extremely jolly. And, not letting his friend go deeper into the details of his situation, Petritsky started telling him all the interesting news. Listening to his so–familiar stories, in the so–familiar surroundings of his apartment of three years, Vronsky experienced the pleasant feeling of returning to his accustomed and carefree Petersburg life.
‘It can’t be!’ he cried, releasing the pedal of the washstand from which water poured over his robust red neck. ‘It can’t be!’ he cried at the news that Laura was now with Mileev and had dropped Fertinhoff. ‘And he’s still just as stupid and content? Well, and what about Buzulukov?’
‘Ah, there was a story with Buzulukov – lovely!’ cried Petritsky. ‘He has this passion for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. So he went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very good, much lighter. There he stands … No, listen.’
‘I am listening,’ Vronsky replied, rubbing himself with a Turkish towel.
‘The grand duchess passes by with some ambassador, and, as luck would have it, they begin talking about the new helmets. So the grand duchess wants to show him a new helmet… They see our dear fellow standing there.’ (Petritsky showed how he was standing there with his helmet.) ‘The grand duchess tells him to hand her the helmet – he won’t do it. What’s the matter? They wink at him, nod, frown. Hand it over. He won’t. He freezes. Can you imagine? … Then that one … what’s his name … wants to take the helmet from him … he won’t let go! … He tears it away, hands it to the grand duchess. "Here’s the new helmet," says the grand duchess. She turns it over and, can you imagine, out of it – bang! – falls a pear and some sweets – two pounds of sweets! … He had it all stashed away, the dear fellow!’
Vronsky rocked with laughter. And for a long time afterwards, talking about other things, he would go off into his robust laughter, exposing a solid row of strong teeth, when he remembered about the helmet.
Having learned all the news, Vronsky, with the help of his footman, put on his uniform and went to report. After reporting, he intended to call on his brother, then on Betsy, and then to pay several visits, so that he could begin to appear in the society where he might meet Anna. As always in Petersburg, he left home not to return till late at night.
Part Two
* * *
I
At the end of winter a consultation took place in the Shcherbatsky home, which was to decide on the state of Kitty’s health and what must be undertaken to restore her failing strength. She was ill, and as spring approached her health was growing worse. The family doctor gave her cod–liver oil, then iron, then common caustic, but as neither the one nor the other nor the third was of any help, and as he advised going abroad for the spring, a famous doctor was called in. The famous doctor, not yet old and quite a handsome man, asked to examine the patient. With particular pleasure, it seemed, he insisted that maidenly modesty was merely a relic of barbarism and that nothing was more natural than for a not–yet–old man to palpate a naked young girl. He found it natural because he did it every day and never, as it seemed to him, felt or thought anything bad, and therefore he regarded modesty in a girl not only as a relic of barbarism but also as an affront to himself.
They had to submit, because, though all doctors studied in the same school, from the same books, and knew the same science, and though some said that this famous doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess’s home and in her circle it was for some reason acknowledged that he alone knew something special and he alone could save Kitty. After a careful examination and sounding of the patient, who w
as bewildered and stunned with shame, the famous doctor, having diligently washed his hands, was standing in the drawing room and talking with the prince. The prince frowned and kept coughing as he listened to the doctor. He, as a man who had seen life and was neither stupid nor sick, did not believe in medicine, and in his soul he was angry at this whole comedy, the more so in that he was almost the only one who fully understood the cause of Kitty’s illness. ‘What a gabbler,’ he thought, mentally applying this barnyard term to the famous doctor and listening to his chatter about the symptoms of his daughter’s illness. The doctor meanwhile found it hard to keep from expressing his contempt for the old gentleman and descending to the low level of his understanding. He understood that there was no point in talking with the old man, and that the head of this house was the mother. It was before her that he intended to strew his pearls. Just then the princess came into the drawing room with the family doctor. The prince stepped aside, trying not to show how ridiculous this whole comedy was to him. The princess was bewildered and did not know what to do. She felt herself guilty before Kitty.
‘Well, doctor, decide our fate,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything.’ (‘Is there any hope?’ she wanted to say, but her lips trembled and she could not get the question out.) ‘Well, what is it, doctor?…’
‘I will presently confer with my colleague, Princess, and then I will have the honour of reporting my opinion to you.’
‘So we should leave you?’
‘As you please.’
The princess sighed and went out.
When the doctors were left alone, the family physician timidly began to present his opinion, according to which there was the start of a tubercular condition, but… and so forth. The famous doctor listened to him and in the middle of his speech looked at his large gold watch.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘But
The family physician fell respectfully silent in the middle of his speech.
‘As you know, we cannot diagnose the start of a tubercular condition. Nothing is definite until cavities appear. But we can suspect. And there are indications: poor appetite, nervous excitation and so on. The question stands thus: given the suspicion of a tubercular condition, what must be done to maintain the appetite?’
‘But, you know, there are always some hidden moral and spiritual causes,’ the family doctor allowed himself to put in with a subtle smile.
‘Yes, that goes without saying,’ the famous doctor replied, glancing at his watch again. ‘Excuse me, has the Yauza bridge been put up, or must one still go round?’ he asked. ‘Ah, put up! Well, then I can make it in twenty minutes. So, as we were saying, the question is put thus: to maintain the appetite and repair the nerves. The one is connected with the other, we must work on both sides of the circle.’
‘And a trip abroad?’ asked the family doctor.
‘I am an enemy of trips abroad. And kindly note: if there is the start of a tubercular condition, which is something we cannot know, then a trip abroad will not help. What’s needed is a remedy that will maintain the appetite without being harmful.’
And the famous doctor presented his plan of treatment by Soden waters, the main aim in the prescription of which evidently being that they could do no harm.
The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.
‘But in favour of a trip abroad I would point to the change of habits, the removal from conditions evoking memories. Then, too, the mother wants it,’ he said.
‘Ah! Well, in that case let them go; only, those German charlatans will do harm … They must listen to … Well, then let them go.’
He glanced at his watch again.
‘Oh! it’s time,’ and he went to the door.
The famous doctor announced to the princess (a sense of propriety prompted it) that he must see the patient again.
‘What! Another examination!’ the mother exclaimed with horror.
‘Oh, no, just a few details, Princess.’
‘If you please.’
And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went to Kitty in the drawing room. Emaciated and red–cheeked, with a special glitter in her eyes as a result of the shame she had endured, Kitty was standing in the middle of the room. When the doctor entered she blushed and her eyes filled with tears. Her whole illness and treatment seemed to her such a stupid, even ridiculous thing! Her treatment seemed to her as ridiculous as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. And what did they want to do, treat her with pills and powders? But she could not insult her mother, especially since her mother considered herself to blame.
‘Kindly sit down, miss,’ said the famous doctor.
He sat down facing her with a smile, felt her pulse, and again began asking tiresome questions. She kept answering him, but suddenly got angry and stood up.
‘Forgive me, doctor, but this really will not lead anywhere. You ask me the same thing three times over.’
The famous doctor was not offended.
‘Morbid irritation,’ he said to the old princess when Kitty had gone. ‘Anyhow, I was finished …’ And to the princess, as to an exceptionally intelligent woman, the doctor scientifically defined her daughter’s condition and concluded with instructions on how to drink those waters of which there was no need. At the question of going abroad, the doctor lapsed into deep thought, as if solving a difficult problem. The solution was finally presented: go, and do not believe the charlatans, but refer to him in all things.
It was as if something cheerful happened after the doctor’s departure. The mother cheered up as she came back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to cheer up. She often, almost always, had to pretend now.
‘I’m really well, maman. But if you want to go, let’s go!’ she said, and, trying to show interest in the forthcoming trip, she began talking about the preparations for their departure.
II
After the doctor left, Dolly arrived. She knew there was to be a consultation that day, and though she had only recently got up from a confinement (she had given birth to a girl at the end of winter), though she had many griefs and cares of her own, she left her nursing baby and a daughter who had fallen ill, and called to learn Kitty’s fate, which was being decided just then.
‘Well, so?’ she said, coming into the drawing room and not taking off her hat. ‘You’re all cheerful. Must be good news?’
They tried to tell her what the doctor had told them, but it turned out that though the doctor had spoken very well and at length, it was quite impossible to repeat what he had said. The only interesting thing was that it had been decided to go abroad.
Dolly sighed involuntarily. Her best friend, her sister, was leaving. And there was no cheer in her own life. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyich after the reconciliation had become humiliating. The welding, done by Anna, had not proved strong, and the family accord had broken again at the same place. There was nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyich was almost never at home, there was also almost never any money in the house, and Dolly was constantly tormented by suspicions of his unfaithfulness, which this time she tried to drive away, fearing the already familiar pain of jealousy. The first outburst of jealousy, once lived through, could not come again, and even the discovery of unfaithfulness could not affect her as it had the first time. Such a discovery would now only deprive her of her family habits, and she allowed herself to be deceived, despising him and most of all herself for this weakness. On top of that, the cares of a large family constantly tormented her: either the nursing of the baby did not go well, or the nanny left, or, as now, one of the children fell ill.
‘And how are all yours?’ her mother asked.
‘Ah, maman, you have enough grief of your own. Lily has fallen ill, and I’m afraid it’s scarlet fever. I came now just to find out the news, and then, God forbid, if it is scarlet fever, I’ll stay put and not go anywhere.’
The old prince also came out of his study after the doctor’s departure, and having offered Dolly his cheek and said a
word to her, turned to his wife: