Leo Tolstoy

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

  Mme Stahl had lived abroad in the south for a period of more than ten years, never getting out of bed. Some said that she had made a social position for herself as a virtuous, highly religious woman, while others said that she was at heart that same highly moral being she made herself out to be, living only for the good of others. No one knew what religion she adhered to – Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant – but one thing was certain: she was in friendly relations with the highest persons of all Churches and confessions.

  Varenka lived permanently abroad with her, and all who knew Mme Stahl, knew and loved Mlle Varenka, as everyone called her.

  Having learned all these details, the princess found nothing reprehensible in her daughter making friends with Varenka, especially since Varenka had the very best manners and upbringing: she spoke excellent French and English and, above all, conveyed regrets from Mme Stahl that, owing to her illness, she was deprived of the pleasure of making the princess’s acquaintance.

  Once she had made Varenka’s acquaintance, Kitty became more and more charmed by her friend and found new virtues in her every day.

  The princess, on hearing that Varenka sang well, invited her to come to them in the evening to sing.

  ‘Kitty plays, and we have a piano, not a good one, true, but you will give us great pleasure,’ the princess said with her false smile, which was now especially unpleasant for Kitty because she noticed that Varenka did not want to sing. But Varenka nevertheless came in the evening and brought with her a book of music. The princess invited Marya Evgenyevna with her daughter and the colonel.

  Varenka seemed perfectly indifferent to the fact that there were people there whom she did not know, and went to the piano at once. She could not accompany herself, but vocally she could sight–read music wonderfully. Kitty, who played well, accompanied her.

  ‘You have extraordinary talent,’ the princess said to Varenka, after she had sung the first piece beautifully.

  Marya Evgenyevna and her daughter thanked and praised her.

  ‘Look,’ said the colonel, glancing out the window, ‘what an audience has gathered to listen to you.’ Indeed, a rather big crowd had gathered by the windows.

  ‘I’m very glad that it gives you pleasure,’ Varenka replied simply.

  Kitty looked at her friend with pride. She admired her art, and her voice, and her face, but most of all she admired her manner, the fact that Varenka evidently did not think much of her singing and was perfectly indifferent to praise; she seemed to ask only: must I sing more, or is that enough?

  ‘If it were me,’ Kitty thought to herself, ‘how proud I’d be! How I’d rejoice, looking at this crowd by the windows! And she is perfectly indifferent. She is moved only by the wish not to say no and to do something nice for maman. What is it in her? What gives her this strength to disregard everything, to be so calmly independent? How I wish I knew and could learn it from her,’ Kitty thought, studying that calm face. The princess asked Varenka to sing more, and Varenka sang another piece as smoothly, distinctly and well, standing straight by the piano and beating the rhythm on it with her thin, brown hand.

  The next piece in the book was an Italian song. Kitty played the prelude, which she liked very much, and turned to Varenka.

  ‘Let’s skip this one,’ Varenka said, blushing.

  Kitty rested her timorous and questioning eyes on Varenka’s face.

  ‘Well, another then,’ she said hastily, turning the pages, understanding immediately that something was associated with that piece.

  ‘No,’ replied Varenka, putting her hand on the score and smiling, ‘no, let’s sing it.’ And she sang as calmly, coolly and well as before.

  When she had finished, everyone thanked her again and went to have tea. Kitty and Varenka went out to the little garden near the house.

  ‘Am I right that you have some memory associated with that song?’ Kitty said. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she added hastily, ‘just say – am I right?’

  ‘No, why not? I’ll tell you,’ Varenka said simply and, without waiting for a response, went on: ‘Yes, there is a memory, and it was painful once. I was in love with a man, and I used to sing that piece for him.’

  Kitty, her big eyes wide open, gazed silently and tenderly at Varenka.

  ‘I loved him and he loved me; but his mother didn’t want it, and he married someone else. He lives not far from us now, and I sometimes meet him. You didn’t think that I, too, could have a love story?’ she said, and in her beautiful face there barely glimmered that fire which, Kitty felt, had once lit up her whole being.

  ‘Of course I did! If I were a man, I wouldn’t be able to love anyone after knowing you. I just don’t understand how he could forget you to please his mother and make you unhappy. He had no heart.’

  ‘Oh, no, he’s a very good man, and I’m not unhappy; on the contrary, I’m very happy. Well, so we won’t sing any more today?’ she added, heading for the house.

  ‘How good, how good you are!’ Kitty cried and, stopping her, she kissed her. ‘If only I could be a little bit like you!’

  ‘Why do you need to be like anyone? You’re good as you are,’ said Varenka, smiling her meek and weary smile.

  ‘No, I’m not good at all. Well, tell me … Wait, let’s sit down,’ said Kitty, seating her on the bench again next to herself. ‘Tell me, isn’t it insulting to think that a man scorned your love, that he didn’t want… ?’

  ‘But he didn’t scorn it. I believe he loved me, but he was an obedient son…’

  ‘Yes, but if it wasn’t by his mother’s will, but he himself simply …’ Kitty said, feeling that she had given away her secret and that her face, burning with a blush of shame, had already betrayed her.

  ‘Then he would have acted badly, and I would not feel sorry about him,’ Varenka replied, obviously understanding that it was now a matter not of her but of Kitty.

  ‘But the insult?’ said Kitty. ‘It’s impossible to forget an insult, impossible,’ she said, remembering how she had looked at him at the last ball when the music stopped.

  ‘Where is the insult? Did you do anything bad?’

  ‘Worse than bad – shameful.’

  Varenka shook her head and placed her hand on Kitty’s hand.

  ‘But why shameful?’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have told a man who is indifferent to you that you loved him?’

  ‘Of course not, I never said a single word, but he knew. No, no, there are looks, there are ways. If I live to be a hundred, I won’t forget it.’

  ‘So what then? I don’t understand. The point is whether you love him now or not,’ said Varenka, calling everything by its name.

  ‘I hate him; I can’t forgive myself.’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘The shame, the insult.’

  ‘Ah, if everybody was as sensitive as you are!’ said Varenka. ‘There’s no girl who hasn’t gone through that. And it’s all so unimportant.’ ‘Then what is important?’ asked Kitty, peering into her face with curious amazement.

  ‘Ah, many things are important,’ Varenka said, smiling.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Ah, many things are more important,’ Varenka replied, not knowing what to say. But at that moment the princess’s voice came from the window:

  ‘Kitty, it’s chilly! Either take your shawl or come inside.’

  ‘True, it’s time!’ said Varenka, getting up. ‘I still have to stop and see Mme Berthe. She asked me to.’

  Kitty held her by the hand and with passionate curiosity and entreaty her eyes asked: ‘What is it, what is this most important thing that gives such tranquillity? You know, tell me!’ But Varenka did not even understand what Kitty’s eyes were asking her. All she remembered was that she still had to stop and see Mme Berthe and be in time for tea with maman at twelve. She went in, collected her music and, having said good–bye to everyone, was about to leave.

  ‘Allow me to accompany you,’ said the colonel.

  ‘Yes, how can you go alone now that
it’s night?’ the princess agreed. ‘I’ll send Parasha at least.’

  Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly keep back a smile at the suggestion that she needed to be accompanied.

  ‘No, I always go alone and nothing ever happens to me,’ she said, taking her hat. And, kissing Kitty once more and never saying what was important, at a brisk pace, with the music under her arm, she vanished into the semi–darkness of the summer night, taking with her the secret of what was important and what gave her that enviable tranquillity and dignity.

  XXXIII

  Kitty made the acquaintance of Mme Stahl as well, and this acquaintance, together with her friendship for Varenka, not only had great influence on her, but comforted her in her grief. The comfort lay in the fact that, thanks to this acquaintance, a completely new world was opened to her which had nothing in common with her past: a lofty, beautiful world, from the height of which she could calmly look over that past. It was revealed to her that, besides the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself till then, there was a spiritual life. This life was revealed by religion, but a religion that had nothing in common with the one Kitty had known from childhood and which found expression in the liturgy and vigils at the Widows’ Home,[31] where one could meet acquaintances, and in learning Slavonic[32] texts by heart with a priest; it was a lofty, mysterious religion, bound up with a series of beautiful thoughts and feelings which one could not only believe in because one was told to, but could also love.

  Kitty did not learn all this from words. Mme Stahl spoke with Kitty as with a dear child, whom one looks upon fondly as a memory of one’s youth, and she only once mentioned that in all human griefs consolation is given by faith and love alone and that no griefs are too negligible for Christ’s compassion for us, and at once turned the conversation to something else. Yet in her every movement, in every word, in every heavenly glance, as Kitty put it, especially in the whole story of her life, which she knew from Varenka, in everything, Kitty learned ‘what was important’, which till then she had not known.

  But however lofty Mme Stahl’s character was, however touching her whole story, however lofty and tender her speech, Kitty inadvertently noticed features in her that she found troubling. She noticed that, when asking about her family, Mme Stahl smiled contemptuously, which was contrary to Christian kindness. She also noticed that when she found a Catholic priest with her, Mme Stahl carefully kept her face in the shadow of a lampshade and smiled peculiarly. However negligible these two observations were, they troubled her, and she doubted Mme Stahl. But Varenka, lonely, without family, without friends, with her sad disappointment, desiring nothing, regretting nothing, was that very perfection of which Kitty only allowed herself to dream. From Varenka she understood that you had only to forget yourself and love others and you would be calm, happy and beautiful. And that was how Kitty wanted to be. Now that she had clearly understood what was most important, Kitty did not content herself with admiring it, but at once, with all her soul, gave herself to this new life that had opened to her. From Varenka’s stories about what Mme Stahl and the others she mentioned did, Kitty made herself a plan for her future life. Just like Mme Stahl’s niece, Aline, of whom Varenka had told her so much, wherever she lived she would seek out the unfortunate people, help them as much as possible, distribute the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick, the criminal, the dying. The thought of reading the Gospel to criminals, as Aline did, especially attracted Kitty. But these were all secret thoughts which Kitty did not speak about either to her mother or to Varenka.

  Even now, however, in anticipation of the time for fulfilling her plans on a large scale, Kitty easily found occasion, in imitation of Varenka, for applying her new rules at the spa, where there were so many sick and unfortunate people.

  At first the princess noticed only that Kitty was under the strong influence of her engouement, as she called it, for Mme Stahl and especially for Varenka. She saw that Kitty not only imitated Varenka in her activity, but involuntarily imitated her way of walking, speaking and blinking her eyes. But then the princess noticed that, independently of this fascination, a serious inner turnabout was taking place in her daughter.

  The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read the French Gospel that Mme Stahl had given her, something she had not done before; that she avoided society acquaintances and made friends with the sick people who were under Varenka’s patronage, especially with the poor family of the sick painter Petrov. Kitty was obviously proud that she was fulfilling the duties of a sister of mercy in this family. That was all good, and the princess had nothing against it, the more so as Petrov’s wife was a perfectly decent woman and the Furstin, noticing Kitty’s activity, praised her, calling her a ministering angel. All this would have been very good, had it not been for its excessiveness. But the princess saw that her daughter was running to extremes, which she proceeded to tell her.

  ‘Il ne faut jamais rien outrer,’* she told her.

  But her daughter said nothing in reply; she only thought in her heart that one could not speak of excessiveness in matters of Christianity. What excessiveness could there be in following a teaching that tells you to turn the other cheek [33] when you have been struck, and to give away your shirt when your caftan is taken? But the princess did not like this excessiveness, and still less did she like it that, as she felt, Kitty did not want to open her soul to her entirely. In fact, Kitty kept her new views and feelings hidden from her mother. She kept them hidden, not because she did not respect or love her mother, but because she was her mother. She would sooner have revealed them to anyone than to her mother.

  * One must do nothing in excess.

  ‘It’s some while since Anna Pavlovna has visited us,’ the princess said once of Petrov’s wife. ‘I invited her. But she seemed somehow displeased.’

  ‘No, I didn’t notice, maman,’ Kitty said, flushing.

  ‘Have you visited them recently?’

  ‘We’re going for an outing in the mountains tomorrow,’ Kitty replied.

  ‘Well, go then,’ the princess replied, looking into her daughter’s embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment.

  That same day Varenka came for dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna had changed her mind about going to the mountains tomorrow. And the princess noticed that Kitty blushed again.

  ‘Kitty, have you had any unpleasantness with the Petrovs?’ the princess said when they were alone. ‘Why has she stopped sending the children and coming to see us?’

  Kitty replied that there had been nothing between them, and that she decidedly did not understand why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her. Kitty’s reply was perfectly truthful. She did not know the reason for Anna Pavlovna’s change towards her, but she guessed it. Her guess was something she could not tell her mother any more than she could tell it to herself. It was one of those things that one knows but cannot even tell oneself – so dreadful and shameful it would be to be mistaken.

  Again and again she went over her whole relationship with this family in her memory. She remembered the naive joy that had shown on Anna Pavlovna’s round, good–natured face when they met; remembered their secret discussions about the sick man, conspiracies for distracting him from his work, which was forbidden him, and taking him for a walk; the attachment of the younger boy, who called her ‘my Kitty’ and refused to go to bed without her. How good it had all been! Then she remembered the thin, thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown frock coat – his scant, wavy hair, his inquisitive blue eyes, which Kitty had found so frightening at first, and his painful attempts to look cheerful and animated in her presence. She remembered her own efforts at first to overcome the revulsion she felt for him, as for all the consumptives, and her attempts to think of something to say to him. She remembered the timid, tender gaze with which he had looked at her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness, and then the consciousness of her own virtue which she had experienced at that. How good it had all been! But
all that was in the beginning. And now, a few days ago, everything had suddenly gone bad. Anna Pavlovna met Kitty with a false amiability and constantly watched her and her husband.