Leo Tolstoy

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

  II

  On returning home, Vronsky found a note from Anna. She wrote: ‘I am ill and unhappy. I cannot go out, but neither can I go on without seeing you. Come in the evening. At seven o’clock Alexei Alexandrovich is going to a meeting and will be there till ten.’ After a moment’s reflection about the strangeness of her summoning him directly to her home, despite her husband’s demand that she not receive him, he decided to go.

  That winter Vronsky had been promoted to colonel, had left regimental quarters and was living alone. After lunch he immediately lay down on the sofa and in five minutes the memories of the outrageous scenes he had witnessed over the last few days became confused and joined with the thought of Anna and the muzhik tracker who had played an important role in the bear hunt, and he fell asleep. He woke up in the dark, trembling with fear, and hastened to light a candle. ‘What was that? What? What was that terrible thing I saw in my dream? Yes, yes. The muzhik tracker, I think, small, dirty, with a dishevelled beard, was bending down and doing something, and he suddenly said some strange words in French. Yes, that’s all there was to the dream,’ he said to himself. ‘But why was it so horrible?’ He vividly recalled the peasant again and the incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and horror sent a chill down his spine.

  ‘What is this nonsense!’ thought Vronsky, and he glanced at his watch.

  It was already half–past eight. He rang for his servant, hurriedly got dressed and went out to the porch, forgetting the dream entirely and suffering only over being late. Driving up to the Karenins’ porch, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was ten minutes to nine. A tall, narrow carriage hitched to a pair of grey horses stood at the entrance. He recognized Anna’s carriage. ‘She’s coming to me,’ thought Vronsky, ‘and that would be better. I don’t like going into this house. But never mind, I can’t start hiding,’ he said to himself; and, with the manner habitual to him since childhood of one who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of the sleigh and went to the door. The door opened and the hall porter with a rug over his arm beckoned to the carriage. Vronsky, who was not in the habit of noticing details, nevertheless noticed the astonished expression with which the porter glanced at him. Just at the doorway he nearly ran into Alexei Alexandrovich. The gaslight fell directly on the bloodless, pinched face under the black hat and the white tie gleaming from inside the beaver coat. The immobile, dull eyes of Karenin fixed themselves on Vronsky’s face. Vronsky bowed, and Alexei Alexandrovich, chewing his lips, raised his hand to his hat and passed by. Vronsky saw him get into the carriage without looking back, receive the rug and a pair of opera glasses, and disappear. Vronsky went into the front hall. His eyebrows frowned, his eyes gleamed with anger and pride.

  ‘What a position!’ he thought. ‘If he’d fight, if he’d stand up for his honour, I’d be able to act, to express my feelings; but this weakness or meanness… He puts me in the position of a deceiver, which is something I never wanted and do not want to be.’

  Since the time of his talk with Anna in Vrede’s garden, Vronsky’s thinking had changed greatly. Involuntarily submitting to the weakness of Anna, who had given herself to him entirely and expected the deciding of her fate from him alone, submitting to everything beforehand, he had long ceased to think that this liaison might end, as he had thought earlier. His ambitious plans retreated into the background again, and, feeling that he had left the circle of activity in which everything was definite, he gave himself wholly to his feeling, and this feeling bound him to her more and more strongly.

  Still in the front hall, he heard her retreating footsteps. He realized that she had been waiting for him, listening, and had now returned to the drawing room.

  ‘No!’ she cried, seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice, tears came to her eyes. ‘No, if it goes on like this, it will happen much, much sooner!’

  ‘What is it, my love?’

  ‘What? I’ve been waiting, suffering, one hour, two … No, I won’t!… I cannot quarrel with you. Surely you couldn’t help it. No, I won’t!’

  She placed both hands on his shoulders and gazed at him for a long time with a deep, rapturous and at the same time searching look. She studied his face to make up for the time in which she had not seen him. As at every meeting, she was bringing together her imaginary idea of him (an incomparably better one, impossible in reality) with him as he was.

  III

  ‘You met him?’ she asked, when they sat down by the table under the lamp. ‘That’s your punishment for being late.’

  ‘Yes, but how? Wasn’t he supposed to be at the council?’

  ‘He went and came back and went somewhere again. But never mind that. Don’t talk about it. Where have you been? With the prince all the time?’

  She knew all the details of his life. He wanted to say that he had not slept all night and had fallen asleep, but, looking at her excited and happy face, he felt ashamed. And he said that he had had to go and give a report about the prince’s departure.

  ‘But it’s over now? He’s gone?’

  ‘Yes, thank God. You wouldn’t believe how unbearable it was for me.’

  ‘Why so? It’s the usual life for all you young men,’ she said, frowning, and taking up her crochet, which was lying on the table, she began extricating the hook from it without looking at Vronsky.

  ‘I gave up that life long ago,’ he said, surprised at the change of expression in her face and trying to penetrate its meaning. ‘And I confess,’ he said, his smile revealing his close–set white teeth, ‘looking at that life all this week, it was as if I were seeing myself in a mirror, and I didn’t like it.’

  She held her crochet in her hands, not crocheting but looking at him with strange, shining and unfriendly eyes.

  ‘This morning Liza came to see me – they’re not afraid to visit me yet, in spite of Countess Lydia Ivanovna,’ she put in. ‘She told me about your Athenian night.[2] How vile!’

  ‘I was just going to say that…’

  She interrupted him:

  ‘Was it the Therese you knew before?’

  ‘I was going to say …’

  ‘How vile you men are! How can you not imagine to yourselves that a woman cannot forget that?’ she said, becoming increasingly angry and thereby betraying the cause of her vexation. ‘Especially a woman who cannot know your life. What do I know? What did I know?’ she said. ‘Only what you tell me. And how do I know whether what you’ve told me is true …’

  ‘Anna! That’s insulting. Don’t you believe me? Haven’t I told you that I don’t have a single thought that I wouldn’t reveal to you?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, obviously trying to drive the jealous thoughts away. ‘But if you knew how painful it is for me! I believe you, I do! … So what were you saying?’

  But he could not immediately recall what he was going to say. These fits of jealousy, which had come over her more and more often lately, horrified him and, no matter how he tried to conceal it, made him cooler towards her, though he knew that the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How many times he had told himself that her love was happiness; and here she loved him as only a woman can for whom love outweighs all that is good in life – yet he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had considered himself unhappy, but happiness was ahead of him; while now he felt that the best happiness was already behind. She was not at all as he had seen her in the beginning. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out, and her face, when she spoke of the actress, was distorted by a spiteful expression. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has plucked, in which he can barely recognize the beauty that had made him pluck and destroy it. And, despite that, he felt that when his love was stronger, he might have torn that love from his heart, had he strongly wished to do so, but now, when it seemed to him, as it did at that moment, that he felt no love for her, he knew that his bond with her could not be broken.

 
‘Well, what did you want to tell me about the prince? I’ve driven him away, I’ve driven the demon away,’ she added. The demon was their name for jealousy. ‘Yes, what did you start to tell me about the prince? Why was it so burdensome for you?’

  ‘Ah, unbearable!’ he said, trying to catch the thread of his lost thought. ‘He doesn’t gain from closer acquaintance. If I were to define him, he’s a superbly nourished animal, the sort that gets first prize at exhibitions, and nothing more,’ he said with a vexation that she found interesting.

  ‘No, how can you,’ she objected. ‘After all, he’s seen a lot, he’s educated, isn’t he?’

  ‘It’s quite a different education – their education. You can see he’s been educated only so that he can have the right to despise education, as they despise everything except animal pleasures.’

  ‘But you all love those animal pleasures,’ she said, and again he noticed her gloomy eyes, which avoided him.

  ‘Why do you defend him so?’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I’m not defending him, it makes absolutely no difference to me; but I think that if you didn’t like those pleasures yourself, you might have refused. But it gives you pleasure to look at Teresa in the costume of Eve…’

  ‘Again, again the devil!’ said Vronsky, taking the hand she had placed on the table and kissing it.

  ‘Yes, but I can’t bear it! You don’t know how I suffered waiting for you! I don’t think I’m jealous. I’m not jealous. I believe you when you’re here with me, but when you’re alone somewhere leading your life, which is incomprehensible to me …’

  She drew back from him, finally extricated the hook from her crochet, and quickly, with the help of her index finger, began drawing stitches of white woollen yarn, shining in the lamplight, one after another, and quickly, nervously flicking her wrist in its embroidered cuff.

  ‘Well, what then? Where did you meet Alexei Alexandrovich?’ her voice suddenly rang unnaturally.

  ‘We bumped into each other in the doorway.’

  ‘And he bowed to you like this?’ She pulled a long face and, half closing her eyes, quickly changed expression, folded her arms, and in her beautiful face Vronsky suddenly saw the very expression with which Alexei Alexandrovich had bowed to him. He smiled, and she gaily laughed that lovely deep laugh that was one of her main charms.

  ‘I decidedly do not understand him,’ said Vronsky. ‘If he had broken with you after your talk in the country, if he had challenged me to a duel … but this I do not understand: how can he bear such a situation? He suffers, it’s obvious.’

  ‘He?’ she said with a laugh. ‘He’s perfectly content.’

  ‘Why are we all tormented when everything could be so good?’

  ‘Only not him. Don’t I know him, the lie he’s all steeped in? … Is it possible, if he has any feeling, to live with me as he does? He doesn’t understand or feel anything. Can a man who has any feeling live in the same house with his "criminal" wife? Can he talk to her? Call her "my dear"?’

  And again she involuntarily pictured him: ‘Ma chère, my Anna!’

  ‘He’s not a man, not a human being, he’s a puppet! Nobody else knows it, but I do. Oh, if I were in his place, I’d have killed a wife like me long ago, I’d have torn her to pieces, I wouldn’t say to her: "Ma chère Anna". He’s not a man, he’s an administrative machine. He doesn’t understand that I’m your wife, that he’s a stranger, that he’s superfluous … Let’s not, let’s not talk!…’

  ‘You’re not right, not right, my love,’ said Vronsky, trying to calm her. ‘But never mind, let’s not talk about him. Tell me, what have you been doing? What’s wrong with you? What is this illness and what did the doctor say?’

  She looked at him with mocking delight. Apparently she had found other ridiculous and ugly sides in her husband and was waiting for the moment to come out with them.

  But he went on:

  ‘My guess is that it’s not illness but your condition. When is it to be?’

  The mocking gleam in her eyes went out, but a different smile – of the knowledge of something he did not know and of a quiet sadness –replaced her former expression.

  ‘Soon, soon. You said our situation is tormenting and we must resolve it. If you knew how painful it is for me, and what I would have given to be able to love you freely and boldly! I wouldn’t be tormented and wouldn’t torment you with my jealousy … And soon it will be so, but not the way we think.’

  And at the thought of how it would be, she seemed so pitiful to herself that tears came to her eyes and she could not go on. She laid her hand, shining under the lamp with its rings and whiteness, on his sleeve.

  ‘It will not be the way we think. I didn’t want to tell you that, but you made me. Soon, soon everything will be resolved, we’ll all, all be at peace and no longer tormented.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, understanding her.

  ‘You asked me when? Soon. And I won’t survive it. Don’t interrupt me!’ and she began speaking hurriedly. ‘I know this and know it for certain. I will die, and I’m very glad that I will die and deliver myself and you.’

  Tears flowed from her eyes. He bent to her hand and began to kiss it, trying to conceal his anxiety, which he knew had no grounds, but which he was unable to control.

  ‘There, that’s better,’ she said, pressing his hand with a strong movement. ‘That is the one thing, the one thing left to us.’

  He recovered and raised his head.

  ‘What nonsense! What meaningless nonsense you’re saying!’

  ‘No, it’s true.’

  ‘What, what is true?’

  ‘That I will die. I had a dream.’

  ‘A dream?’ Vronsky repeated and instantly recalled the muzhik in his dream.

  ‘Yes, a dream,’ she said. ‘I had this dream long ago. I dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there, to find something out – you know how it happens in dreams,’ she said, her eyes wide with horror, ‘and there was something standing in the bedroom, in the corner.’

  ‘Ah, what nonsense! How can you believe . ..’

  But she would not let herself be interrupted. What she was saying was much too important for her.

  ‘And this something turned, and I saw it was a muzhik with a dishevelled beard, small and frightening. I wanted to run away, but he bent over a sack and rummaged in it with his hands …’

  And she showed how he rummaged in the sack. There was horror in her face. And Vronsky, recalling his dream, felt the same horror filling his soul.

  ‘He rummages and mutters in French, very quickly, and rolling the rs in his throat, you know: "Il faut le battre le fer, le broyer, le pétrir . . ."* And

  * You must beat the iron, pound it, knead it.

  I was so frightened that I wanted to wake up, and I woke up… but I woke up in a dream. And I wondered what it meant. And Kornei says to me: "You’ll die in childbirth, dear, in childbirth .. ."And I woke up …’

  ‘What nonsense, what nonsense!’ Vronsky was saying, aware himself that there was no conviction in his voice.

  ‘But let’s not talk. Ring the bell, I’ll order tea to be served. Wait, now, it won’t be long, I…’

  But suddenly she stopped. The expression on her face changed instantly. Terror and anxiety suddenly gave way to an expression of quiet, serious and blissful attention. He could not understand the meaning of this change. She had felt the stirring of new life inside her.

  IV

  After meeting Vronsky on his porch, Alexei Alexandrovich drove, as he had intended, to the Italian Opera. He sat out two acts there and saw everyone he had to. On returning home, he studied the coat–rack attentively and, observing that no military coat hung there, went to his rooms as usual. But, contrary to his habit, he did not go to bed but paced up and down his study till three o’clock in the morning. The feeling of wrath against his wife, who did not want to observe propriety and fulfil the only condition placed upon her – not to receive her l
over at home –left him no peace. She had not fulfilled his request, and he must now carry out his threat – demand a divorce and take her son from her. He knew all the difficulties connected with this matter, but he had said that he would do it and now he had to carry out his threat. Countess Lydia Ivanovna had hinted to him that this was the best way out of his situation, and lately the practice of divorce had brought the matter to such perfection that Alexei Alexandrovich saw a possibility of overcoming the formal difficulties. Besides, misfortunes never come singly, and the cases of the settlement of the racial minorities and the irrigation of the fields in Zaraysk province had brought down on Alexei Alexandrovich such troubles at work that he had been extremely vexed all the time recently.