Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Well, he was old,’ he said and changed the subject. ‘So, I’ll live with you for a month or two, and then – to Moscow. You know, Miagkov has promised me a post, and I’ll be going into the service. Now I’ll arrange my life quite differently,’ he went on. ‘You know, I sent that woman away.’

  ‘Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?’

  ‘Ah, she’s a nasty woman! She caused me a heap of troubles.’ But he did not say what those troubles were. He could not say that he had chased Marya Nikolaevna out because the tea was weak, and above all because she looked after him as if he were an invalid. ‘And then in general I want to change my life completely now. I’ve certainly committed some follies, like everybody else, but money is the least thing, I’m not sorry about it. As long as there’s health – and my health, thank God, has improved.’

  Levin listened and thought and could not think of anything to say. Nikolai probably felt the same. He began asking his brother about his affairs, and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because he could talk without pretending. He told his brother his plans and activities.

  His brother listened but obviously was not interested.

  These two men were so dear and close to each other that the slightest movement, the tone of the voice, told them both more than it was possible to say in words.

  Now they both had one thought – Nikolai’s illness and closeness to death – which stifled all the rest. But neither of them dared to speak of it, and therefore everything else they said, without expressing the one thing that preoccupied them, was a lie. Never had Levin been so glad when an evening ended and it was time to go to bed. Never with any stranger, on any official visit, had he been so unnatural and false as he had been that day. And his awareness of and remorse for this unnaturalness made him more unnatural still. He wanted to weep over his beloved dying brother, and he had to listen and keep up a conversation about how he was going to live.

  As the house was damp and only one room was heated, Levin had his brother sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.

  His brother lay down and may or may not have slept, but, being a sick man, tossed, coughed and grumbled something when he was unable to clear his throat. Sometimes, when his breathing was difficult, he said, ‘Ah, my God!’ Sometimes, when phlegm choked him, he said vexedly, ‘Ah! the devil!’ Levin lay awake for a long time, listening to him. His thoughts were most varied, but the end of all his thoughts was one: death.

  Death, the inevitable end of everything, presented itself to him for the first time with irresistible force. And this death, which here, in his beloved brother, moaning in his sleep and calling by habit, without distinction, now on God, now on the devil, was not at all as far off as it had seemed to him before. It was in him, too – he felt it. If not now, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then in thirty years – did it make any difference? And what this inevitable death was, he not only did not know, he not only had never thought of it, but he could not and dared not think of it.

  ‘I work, I want to do something, and I’ve forgotten that everything will end, that there is – death.’

  He was sitting on his bed in the dark, crouching, hugging his knees and thinking, holding his breath from the strain of it. But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance – that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so.

  ‘Yet I am still alive. And what am I to do now, what am I to do?’ he said in despair. He lit the candle, got up carefully, went over to the mirror and began to examine his face and hair. Yes, there were grey hairs on his temples. He opened his mouth. The back teeth were beginning to go bad. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, good and strong. But Nikolenka, who was lying there breathing with the remains of his lungs, had also had a healthy body once. And he suddenly remembered how as children they had gone to bed at the same time and had only waited for Fyodor Bogdanych to leave before they started throwing pillows at each other and laughing, laughing irrepressibly, so that even the fear of Fyodor Bogdanych could not stop this overflowing and effervescent consciousness of life’s happiness. ‘And now this crooked and empty chest… and I, not knowing what will become of me or why …’

  ‘Kha! Kha! Ah, the devil! What’s this pottering about, why aren’t you asleep?’ his brother’s voice called to him.

  ‘I don’t know, just insomnia.’

  ‘And I slept well, I don’t sweat now. Look, feel the shirt. No sweat?’

  Levin felt it, went behind the partition, put out the candle, but did not sleep for a long time. He had just partly clarified the question of how to live, when he was presented with a new, insoluble problem – death.

  ‘So he’s dying, so he’ll die towards spring, so how can I help him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I even forgot there was such a thing.’

  XXXII

  Levin had long ago observed that when things are made awkward by people’s excessive compliance and submission, they are soon made unbearable by their excessive demandingness and fault–finding. He felt that this was going to happen with his brother. And indeed, brother Nikolai’s meekness did not last long. The very next morning he became irritable and diligently applied himself to finding fault with his brother, touching the most sensitive spots.

  Levin felt himself guilty and could do nothing about it. He felt that if they both had not pretended but had spoken, as the phrase goes, from the heart – that is, only what they both actually thought and felt – they would have looked into each other’s eyes, and Konstantin would have said only, ‘You’re going to die, to die, to die!’ and Nikolai would have answered only, ‘I know I’m going to die, but I’m afraid, afraid, afraid!’ And they would have said nothing else, if they had spoken from the heart. But it was impossible to live that way, and therefore Konstantin tried to do what he had tried to do all his life without succeeding, and what, in his observation, many could do so well, and without which it was impossible to live: he tried to say what he did not think, and kept feeling that it came out false, that his brother noticed it and was annoyed by it.

  On the third day, Nikolai provoked his brother to tell him his plans again and began not only to condemn them, but deliberately to confuse them with communism.

  ‘You’ve just taken other people’s thought and distorted it, and you want to apply it where it’s inapplicable.’

  ‘But I’m telling you, the two have nothing in common. They deny the justice of property, capital, inheritance, while I, without denying this main stimulus’ (Levin was disgusted with himself for using such words, but, ever since he had become involved in his work, he had inadvertently begun to use non–Russian words more and more often), ‘only want to regulate labour.’

  ‘That’s the point, that you’ve taken other people’s thought, lopped off everything that gives it force, and want to insist that it’s something new,’ said Nikolai, angrily twitching in his necktie.

  ‘But my thought has nothing in common …’

  ‘There,’ said Nikolai Levin, with a malicious gleam in his eyes and an ironic smile, ‘there at least there’s a geometrical charm, so to speak – of clarity, of certainty. Maybe it’s a Utopia. But let’s suppose it’s possible to make a tabula rasa of the whole past: there’s no property, no family, and so labour gets set up. While you have nothing …’

  ‘Why do you confuse them? I’ve never been a communist.’

  ‘But I have been, and I find that it’s premature but reasonable, and that it has a future, like Christianity in the first centuries.’

  ‘I only suppose that the work force must be considered from the point of view of natural science – that is, study it, recognize its properties, and…’

  ‘But that’s all useless. This force itself finds a certain way of action, according to its degree of development. Everywhere there were slave
s, then métayers;* and with us, too, there’s sharecropping, leasing, hired help – what are you seeking?’

  Levin suddenly became aroused at these words because in the depths of his soul he was afraid it was true – true that he wanted to balance between communism and the established forms and that this was hardly possible.

  * Tenant farmers.

  ‘I’m seeking a productive way of working, both for my own sake and for the workers,’ he answered hotly. ‘I want to set up …’

  ‘You don’t want to set up anything, you simply want to be original, as you have all your life, to show that you don’t simply exploit the muzhiks but do it with an idea.’

  ‘Well, so you think – and let’s drop it!’ Levin replied, feeling the muscle on his left cheek quivering uncontrollably.

  ‘You have no convictions and never had any, you only want to coddle your own vanity.’

  ‘Well, splendid, then leave me alone!’

  ‘And so I will! And it’s high time, and you can go to the devil! I’m very sorry I came!’

  No matter how Levin tried afterwards to calm his brother down, Nikolai would not listen to anything, saying that it was much better to part, and Konstantin saw that for his brother life had simply become unbearable.

  Nikolai was already on the point of leaving when Konstantin came to him again and asked him in an unnatural manner to forgive him if he had offended him in any way.

  ‘Ah, magnanimity!’ Nikolai said and smiled. ‘If you want to be in the right, I can give you that pleasure. You’re right, but I’m still leaving!’

  Only just before his departure Nikolai exchanged kisses with him and said, suddenly giving his brother a strangely serious look:

  ‘Anyhow, don’t think badly of me, Kostya!’ and his voice trembled.

  These were the only sincere words spoken. Levin understood that they implied: ‘You see and know that I’m in a bad way and we may never see each other again.’ Levin understood it, and tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his brother once more, but there was nothing he could or knew how to say to him.

  Three days after his brother’s departure, Levin also left for abroad. Running into Shcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, at the railway station, Levin amazed him with his gloominess.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Shcherbatsky asked him.

  ‘Nothing, it’s just that there’s not much cheer in the world.’

  ‘Not much? Come with me to Paris instead of some Mulhouse. You’ll see how cheerful it is!’

  ‘No, I’m finished. It’s time for me to die.’

  ‘A fine thing!’ Shcherbatsky said, laughing. ‘I’m just ready to begin.’

  ‘I thought the same not long ago, but now I know that I’ll die soon.’ Levin said what he had really been thinking lately. He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that his undertaking was the only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining strength.

  Part Four

  * * *

  I

  The Karenins, husband and wife, went on living in the same house, met every day, but were completely estranged from each other. Alexei Alexandrovich made it a rule to see his wife every day, so as to give the servants no grounds for conjecture, but he avoided dining at home. Vronsky never visited Alexei Alexandrovich’s house, but Anna saw him elsewhere and her husband knew it.

  The situation was painful for all three of them, and none of them would have been able to live even one day in that situation had they not expected that it would change and that it was only a temporary, grievous difficulty which would pass. Alexei Alexandrovich expected that this passion would pass, as all things pass, that everyone would forget about it and his name would remain undisgraced. Anna, upon whom the situation depended and for whom it was most painful of all, endured it because she not only expected but was firmly convinced that it would all resolve and clarify itself very soon. She decidedly did not know what would resolve this situation, but was firmly convinced that this something would now come very soon. Vronsky, involuntarily yielding to her, also expected something independent of himself which would clear up all the difficulties.

  In the middle of winter Vronsky spent a very dull week. He was attached to a foreign prince who came to Petersburg,[1] and had to show him the sights of Petersburg. Vronsky himself was of impressive appearance; besides that, he possessed the art of bearing himself with dignified respect and was accustomed to dealing with people of this sort; that was why he had been attached to the prince. But he found the duty very burdensome. The prince wished to miss nothing of which he might be asked at home whether he had seen it in Russia; and he himself wished to take advantage, as far as possible, of Russian pleasures. Vronsky’s duty was to be his guide in the one and the other. In the morning they went around seeing the sights; in the evening they partook of national pleasures. The prince enjoyed a health remarkable even among princes; by means of gymnastics and good care of his body, he had attained to such strength that, despite the intemperance with which he gave himself up to pleasure, he was as fresh as a big, green, waxy Dutch cucumber. The prince travelled a great deal and found that one of the main advantages of the modern ease of communication was the accessibility of national pleasures. He had been to Spain, where he had given serenades and become close with a Spanish woman who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he had shot a Gemse.* In England he had galloped over fences in a red tailcoat and shot two hundred pheasant for a bet. In Turkey he had visited a harem, in India he had ridden an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specifically Russian pleasures.

  Vronsky, who was, so to speak, his chief master of ceremonies, went to great lengths in organizing all the pleasures offered to the prince by various people. There were trotting races, and pancakes, and bear hunts, and troikas, and gypsies, and carousing with a Russian smashing of crockery. And the prince adopted the Russian spirit with extreme ease, smashed whole trays of crockery, sat gypsy girls on his knees and seemed to be asking: ‘What else, or is this all that makes up the Russian spirit?’

  In fact, of all Russian pleasures, the prince liked French actresses, a certain ballet dancer and champagne with the white seal best of all. Vronsky was accustomed to princes but, either because he himself had changed lately, or because he had been much too close to this prince, this week seemed terribly burdensome to him. During the whole week he kept feeling like a man attached to some dangerous lunatic, fearing the lunatic and at the same time, from his closeness to him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky constantly felt the necessity of not relaxing his tone of official deference for a second, so as not to be insulted. The prince had a contemptuous manner of treating those very people who, to Vronsky’s surprise, turned themselves inside out to supply him with Russian pleasures. His judgements of Russian women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky flush with indignation. But what made the prince especially burdensome was that Vronsky could

  * Chamois.

  not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in that mirror was not flattering to his vanity. This was a very stupid, very self–confident, very healthy and very cleanly man, and nothing more. He was a gentleman –that was true, and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and unservile with his superiors, free and simple with his equals, and contemptuously good–natured with his inferiors. Vronsky was like that himself and considered it a great virtue; but with respect to the prince he was an inferior and this contemptuously good–natured attitude made him indignant.

  ‘Stupid ox! Am I really like that?’ he thought.

  Be that as it may, when he said good–bye to him on the seventh day, before the prince’s departure for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was happy to be rid of this awkward situation and unpleasant mirror. He said good–bye to him at the station, on the
way back from a bear hunt, where they had spent the whole night in a display of Russian bravado.