Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘What’s the decision, are you going? Well, and what do you intend to do with me?’

  ‘I think you should stay, Alexander,’ said his wife.

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Maman, why shouldn’t papa come with us?’ said Kitty. ‘It will be more cheerful for him and for us.’

  The old prince stood up and stroked Kitty’s hair with his hand. She raised her face and, smiling forcedly, looked at him. It always seemed to her that he understood her better than anyone else in the family, though he spoke little with her. As the youngest, she was her father’s favourite, and it seemed to her that his love for her gave him insight. When her glance now met his kindly blue eyes gazing intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her and understood all the bad that was going on inside her. Blushing, she leaned towards him, expecting a kiss, hut he only patted her hair and said:

  ‘These stupid chignons! You can’t even get to your real daughter, but only caress the hair of dead wenches. Well, Dolinka,’ he turned to his eldest daughter, ‘what’s your trump up to?’

  ‘Nothing, papa,’ answered Dolly, understanding that he meant her husband. ‘He goes out all the time, I almost never see him,’ she could not help adding with a mocking smile.

  So he hasn’t gone to the country yet to sell the wood?’

  ‘No, he keeps getting ready to.’

  ‘Really!’ said the prince. ‘And I, too, must get myself ready? I’m listening, ma’am,’ he turned to his wife as he sat down. ‘And as for you, Katia,’ he added to his youngest daughter, ‘sometime or other, you’ll have to wake up one fine morning and say to yourself: "Why, I’m perfectly well and cheerful, and I’m going to go with papa again for an early morning walk in the frost." Eh?’

  What her father said seemed so simple, yet Kitty became confused and bewildered at these words, like a caught criminal. ‘Yes, he knows everything, understands everything, and with these words he’s telling me that, though I’m ashamed, I must get over my shame.’ She could not pluck up her spirits enough to make any reply. She tried to begin, but suddenly burst into tears and rushed from the room.

  ‘You and your jokes!’ The princess flew at her husband. ‘You always …’ she began her reproachful speech.

  The prince listened for quite a long time to her rebukes and kept silent, but his face frowned more and more.

  ‘She’s so pitiful, the poor dear, so pitiful, and you don’t feel how any hint at the cause of it hurts her. Ah, to be so mistaken about other people!’ said the princess, and by the change in her tone Dolly and the prince realized that she was speaking of Vronsky. ‘I don’t understand why there are no laws against such vile, ignoble people.’

  ‘Ah, I can’t listen!’ the prince said gloomily, getting up from his armchair and making as if to leave, but stopping in the doorway. ‘There are laws, dearest, and since you’re calling me out on it, I’ll tell you who is to blame for it all: you, you and you alone. There are and always have been laws against such young devils! Yes, ma’am, and if it hadn’t been for what should never have been, I, old as I am, would have challenged him to a duel, that fop. Yes, so treat her now, bring in your charlatans.’

  The prince seemed to have much more to say, but as soon as the princess heard his tone, she humbled herself and repented, as always with serious questions.

  ‘Alexandre, Alexandre,’ she whispered, moving closer, and burst into tears.

  As soon as she began to cry, the prince also subsided. He went over to her.

  ‘Well, there, there! It’s hard for you, too, I know. What can we do? It’s no great calamity. God is merciful … give thanks . ..’ he said, no longer knowing what he was saying, in response to the princess’s wet kiss, which he felt on his hand, and he left the room.

  When Kitty left the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly, family habit of mind, saw at once that there was woman’s work to be done, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat and, morally rolling up her sleeves, prepared for action. During her mother’s attack on her father, she tried to restrain her mother as far as daughterly respect permitted. During the prince’s outburst, she kept silent; she felt shame for her mother and tenderness towards her father for the instant return of his kindness; but when her father went out, she got ready to do the main thing necessary – to go to Kitty and comfort her.

  ‘I’ve long been meaning to tell you, maman: do you know that Levin was going to propose to Kitty when he was here the last time? He told Stiva so.’

  ‘Well, what of it? I don’t understand …’

  ‘Maybe Kitty refused him?… She didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No, she told me nothing either about the one or about the other. She’s too proud. But I know it’s all because of that…’

  ‘Yes, just imagine if she refused Levin – and she wouldn’t have refused him if it hadn’t been for the other one, I know … And then that one deceived her so terribly.’

  It was too awful for the princess to think of how guilty she was before her daughter, and she became angry.

  ‘Ah, I understand nothing any more! Nowadays they all want to live by their own reason, they tell their mothers nothing, and then look …’

  ‘I’ll go to her, maman.’

  ‘Go. Am I forbidding you?’ said the mother.

  III

  Entering Kitty’s small boudoir, a pretty little pink room, with vieux saxe* dolls as young, pink and gay as Kitty had been just two months earlier, Dolly remembered with what gaiety and love they had decorated this little room together last year. Her heart went cold when she saw Kitty sitting on the low chair nearest the door, staring fixedly at a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and her cold, somewhat severe expression did not change. ‘I’ll leave now and stay put at home, and you won’t be allowed to

  Old Saxony porcelain.

  visit me,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, sitting down next to her. ‘I’d like to talk with you.’

  ‘About what?’ Kitty asked quickly, raising her eyes in fear.

  ‘What else if not your grief ?’

  ‘I have no grief.’

  ‘Come now, Kitty. Can you really think I don’t know? I know everything. And believe me, it’s nothing … We’ve all gone through it.’

  Kitty was silent, and her face had a stern expression.

  ‘He’s not worth your suffering over him,’ Darya Alexandrovna went on, going straight to the point.

  ‘Yes, because he scorned me,’ Kitty said in a quavering voice. ‘Don’t talk about it! Please don’t!’

  ‘Why, who told you that? No one said that. I’m sure he was in love with you, and is still in love, but…’

  ‘Ah, these condolences are the most terrible thing of all for me!’ Kitty cried out, suddenly getting angry. She turned on her chair, blushed, and quickly moved her fingers, clutching the belt buckle she was holding now with one hand, now with the other. Dolly knew this way her sister had of grasping something with her hands when she was in a temper; she knew that Kitty was capable of forgetting herself in such a moment and saying a lot of unnecessary and unpleasant things, and Dolly wanted to calm her down. But it was already too late.

  ‘What, what is it you want to make me feel, what?’ Kitty was talking quickly. ‘That I was in love with a man who cared nothing for me, and that I’m dying of love for him? And I’m told this by my sister, who thinks that… that… that she’s commiserating! … I don’t want these pityings and pretences!’

  ‘Kitty, you’re unfair.’

  ‘Why do you torment me?’

  ‘On the contrary, I… I see that you’re upset…’

  But, in her temper, Kitty did not hear her.

  ‘I have nothing to be distressed or comforted about. I’m proud enough never to allow myself to love a man who does not love me.’

  ‘But I’m not saying … One thing – tell me the truth,’ Darya Alexandrovna said, taking her hand, ‘tell me, did Levin speak to you?…’

  The mention of Levin seemed
to take away the last of Kitty’s self–possession; she jumped up from the chair, flinging the buckle to the floor and, with quick gestures of her hands, began to speak:

  ‘Why bring Levin into it, too? I don’t understand, why do you need torment me? I said and I repeat that I’m proud and would never, never do what you’re doing – go back to a man who has betrayed you, who has fallen in love with another woman. I don’t understand, I don’t understand that! You may, but I can’t!’

  And, having said these words, she glanced at her sister and, seeing that Dolly kept silent, her head bowed sadly, Kitty, instead of leaving the room as she had intended, sat down by the door and, covering her face with a handkerchief, bowed her head.

  The silence lasted for some two minutes. Dolly was thinking about herself. Her humiliation, which she always felt, echoed especially painfully in her when her sister reminded her of it. She had not expected such cruelty from her sister and was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustling of a dress, along with the sound of suppressed sobs bursting out, and someone’s arms encircled her neck from below. Kitty was kneeling before her.

  ‘Dolinka, I’m so, so unhappy!’ she whispered guiltily.

  And she hid her sweet, tear–bathed face in Darya Alexandrovna’s skirts.

  As if tears were the necessary lubricant without which the machine of mutual communication could not work successfully, the two sisters, after these tears, started talking, not about what preoccupied them, but about unrelated things, and yet they understood each other. Kitty understood that her poor sister had been struck to the depths of her heart by the words she had spoken in passion about her husband’s unfaithfulness and her humiliation, but that she forgave her. Dolly, for her part, understood everything she had wanted to know; she was satisfied that her guesses were right, that Kitty’s grief, her incurable grief, was precisely that Levin had made a proposal and that she had refused him, while Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was ready to love Levin and hate Vronsky. Kitty did not say a word about it; she spoke only of her state of mind.

  ‘I have no grief,’ she said, once she had calmed down, ‘but can you understand that everything has become vile, disgusting, coarse to me, and my own self first of all? You can’t imagine what vile thoughts I have about everything.’

  ‘Why, what kind of vile thoughts could you have?’ Dolly asked, smiling.

  ‘The most, most vile and coarse –I can’t tell you. It’s not anguish, or boredom, it’s much worse. As if all that was good in me got hidden, and only what’s most vile was left. Well, how can I tell you?’ she went on, seeing the perplexity in her sister’s eyes. ‘Papa started saying to me just now… it seems to me all he thinks is that I’ve got to get married. Mama takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me in order to get me married quickly and be rid of me. I know it’s not true, but I can’t drive these thoughts away. The so–called suitors I can’t even look at. It seems as if they’re taking my measurements. Before it was simply a pleasure for me to go somewhere in a ball gown, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed, awkward. Well, what do you want! The doctor … Well…’

  Kitty faltered; she wanted to go on to say that ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyich had become unbearably disagreeable to her, and that she could not see him without picturing the most coarse and ugly things.

  ‘Well, yes, I picture things in the most coarse, vile way,’ she went on. ‘It’s my illness. Maybe it will pass …’

  ‘But don’t think …’

  ‘I can’t help it. I feel good only with children, only in your house.’

  ‘It’s too bad you can’t visit me.’

  ‘No, I will come. I’ve had scarlet fever, and I’ll persuade maman.’

  Kitty got her way and moved to her sister’s, and there spent the whole time of the scarlet fever, which did come, taking care of the children. The two sisters nursed all six children back to health, but Kitty’s condition did not improve, and during the Great Lent[1] the Shcherbatskys went abroad.

  IV

  There is essentially one highest circle in Petersburg; they all know each other, and even call on each other. But this big circle has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close connections in three different circles. One was her husband’s official service circle, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, who, in social condition, were connected or divided in the most varied and whimsical way. It was hard now for Anna to remember the sense of almost pious respect she had first felt for all these people. Now she knew them all as people know each other in a provincial town; knew who had which habits and weaknesses, whose shoe pinched on which foot; knew their relations to one another and to the main centre; knew who sided with whom, and how, and in what; and who agreed or disagreed with whom, and about what; but this circle of governmental, male interests never could interest her, despite Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s promptings, and she avoided it.

  Another circle close to Anna was the one through which Alexei Alexandrovich had made his career. The centre of this circle was Countess Lydia Ivanovna. It was a circle of elderly, unattractive, virtuous and pious women and of intelligent, educated and ambitious men. One of the intelligent men who belonged to this circle called it ‘the conscience of Petersburg society’. Alexei Alexandrovich valued this circle highly, and at the beginning of her Petersburg life, Anna, who was so good at getting along with everyone, also found friends for herself in it. But now, on her return from Moscow, this circle became unbearable to her. It seemed to her that both she and all the others were pretending, and she felt so bored and awkward in this company that she called on Countess Lydia Ivanovna as seldom as possible.

  The third circle, finally, in which she had connections, was society proper – the society of balls, dinners, splendid gowns, a monde that held on with one hand to the court, so as not to descend to the demi–monde, which the members of this circle thought they despised, but with which they shared not only similar but the same tastes. Her connection with this circle was maintained through Princess Betsy Tverskoy, her cousin’s wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand and who, since Anna’s appearance in society, had especially liked her, courted her, and drawn her into her circle, laughing at the circle to which Countess Lydia Ivanovna belonged.

  ‘When I’m old and ugly, I’ll become like that,’ said Betsy, ‘but for you, for a young, pretty woman, it’s too early for that almshouse.’

  At first Anna had avoided this society of Princess Tverskoy’s as much as she could, because it called for expenses beyond her means, and also because at heart she preferred the other; but after her visit to Moscow it turned the other way round. She avoided her virtuous friends and went into the great world. There she met Vronsky and experienced an exciting joy at these meetings. She met Vronsky especially often at Betsy’s, whose maiden name was Vronsky and who was his cousin. Vronsky went wherever he might meet Anna, and spoke to her whenever he could about his love. She never gave him any cause, but each time she met him, her soul lit up with the same feeling of animation that had come over her that day on the train when she had seen him for the first time.

  She felt joy shining in her eyes when she saw him and puckered her lips into a smile, and she was unable to extinguish the expression of that joy. At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for allowing himself to pursue her; but soon after her return from Moscow, having gone to a soiree where she thought she would meet him, and finding that he was not there, she clearly understood from the sadness which came over her that she was deceiving herself, that his pursuit not only was not unpleasant for her but constituted the entire interest of her life.

  The famous singer was singing for the second time, and all the great world was in the theatre.[2] Seeing his cousin from his seat in the front row, Vronsky went to her box without waiting for the interval.