Leo Tolstoy
Page 54
He did not sleep the entire night, and his wrath, increasing in a sort of enormous progression, by morning had reached the ultimate limits. He dressed hurriedly and, as if carrying a full cup of wrath and fearing to spill it, fearing to lose along with it the energy needed for a talk with his wife, went into her room as soon as he knew that she was up.
Anna, who thought she knew her husband so well, was struck by his look when he came in. His brow was scowling, and his grim eyes stared straight ahead, avoiding hers; his lips were tightly and contemptuously compressed. In his stride, in his movements, in the sound of his voice there were such resolution and firmness as his wife had never seen in him before. He came into the room without greeting her, made straight for her writing desk and, taking the keys, opened the drawer.
‘What do you want?!’ she cried.
‘Your lover’s letters,’ he said.
‘They’re not here,’ she said, closing the drawer; but by that movement he understood that he had guessed right and, rudely pushing her hand away, he quickly snatched the portfolio in which he knew she kept her most important papers. She tried to tear it from him, but he pushed her away.[3]
‘Sit down! I must talk with you,’ he said, putting the portfolio under his arm and pressing it so tightly with his elbow that his shoulder rose up.
Surprised and intimidated, she gazed at him silently.
‘I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover at home.’
‘I had to see him, in order to …’
She stopped, unable to invent anything.
‘I will not go into the details of why a woman needs to see her lover.’
‘I wanted, I only …’ she said, flushing. His rudeness annoyed her and gave her courage. ‘Can’t you feel how easy it is for you to insult me?’ she said.
‘One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely la constatation d’un fait.’*
‘This cruelty is a new feature –I did not know it was in you.’
‘You call it cruelty when a husband offers his wife freedom, giving her the honourable shelter of his name, only on condition that propriety is observed. Is that cruelty?’
‘It’s worse than cruelty, it’s baseness, if you really want to know!’ Anna cried out in a burst of anger and got up, intending to leave.
‘No!’ he shouted in his squeaky voice, which now rose a pitch higher than usual, and, seizing her arm so strongly with his big fingers that the
* The establishing of a fact.
bracelet he pressed left red marks on it, he forced her to sit down. ‘Baseness? Since you want to use that word, it is baseness to abandon a husband and son for a lover and go on eating the husband’s bread!’
She bowed her head. Not only did she not say what she had said the day before to her lover – that he was her husband and her husband was superfluous – but she did not even think it. She felt all the justice of his words and only said softly:
‘You cannot describe my position as any worse than I myself understand it to be. But why are you saying all this?’
‘Why am I saying this? Why?’ he went on just as wrathfully. ‘So that you know that since you have not carried out my wish with regard to observing propriety, I shall take measures to bring this situation to an end.’
‘It will end soon anyway,’ she said, and again, at the thought of her near and now desired death, tears came to her eyes.
‘It will end sooner than you’ve thought up with your lover! You must satisfy your animal passions …’
‘Alexei Alexandrovich! I will not say that it is not magnanimous, but it is not even respectable to hit someone who is down.’
‘Yes, you’re only mindful of yourself, but the suffering of the man who was your husband does not interest you. You are indifferent to the destruction of his whole life, to the suffering he has exple … expre … experimenced.’
Alexei Alexandrovich was speaking so quickly that he became confused and could not get the word out. He finally came out with ‘experimenced’. She nearly laughed and at the same time felt ashamed that anything could make her laugh at such a moment. And for the first time, momentarily, she felt for him, put herself in his place and pitied him. But what could she say or do? She bowed her head and was silent. He, too, was silent for a while and then began to speak in a cold and less squeaky voice, emphasizing the arbitrarily chosen words, which had no particular importance.
‘I’ve come to tell you …’ he said.
She looked at him. ‘No, I imagined it,’ she thought, remembering the look on his face when he stumbled over the word ‘experimenced’, ‘no, how can a man with those dull eyes, with that smug calm, feel anything?’
‘There’s nothing I can change,’ she whispered.
‘I’ve come to tell you that I am leaving for Moscow tomorrow and will not return to this house again, and you will be informed of my decision through my lawyer, to whom I shall entrust the matter of the divorce. My son will move to my sister’s,’ Alexei Aiexandrovich said, trying hard to recall what he had wanted to say about the son.
‘You need Seryozha in order to hurt me,’ she said, looking at him from under her brows. ‘You don’t love him … Leave me Seryozha!’
‘Yes, I’ve even lost my love for my son, because he is connected with my loathing for you. But all the same I will take him. Good–bye!’
And he turned to go, but this time she held him back.
‘Alexei Aiexandrovich, leave me Seryozha!’ she whispered once again. ‘I have nothing more to say. Leave me Seryozha till my … I will give birth soon, leave him with me!’
Alexei Aiexandrovich turned red and, tearing his hand from hers, silently left the room.
V
The waiting room of the famous Petersburg lawyer was full when Alexei Aiexandrovich entered it. Three ladies: an old one, a young one, and a merchant’s wife; and three gentlemen: one a German banker with a signet ring on his finger, another a merchant with a beard, and the third an irate official in uniform with a decoration around his neck, had obviously been waiting for a long time already. Two assistants were writing at their desks, their pens scratching. The writing implements, of which Alexei Aiexandrovich was a connoisseur, were exceptionally good. Alexei Aiexandrovich could not help noticing it. One of the assistants, without getting up, narrowed his eyes and addressed Alexei Aiexandrovich gruffly:
‘What would you like?’
‘I have business with the lawyer.’
‘The lawyer’s occupied,’ the assistant said sternly, pointing with his pen at the waiting people, and went on writing.
‘Could he not find time?’ said Alexei Aiexandrovich.
‘He has no free time, he’s always occupied. Kindly wait.’
‘Then I shall trouble you to give him my card,’ Alexei Aiexandrovich said with dignity, seeing the necessity of abandoning his incognito.
The assistant took the card and, evidently disapproving of its content, went through the door.
Alexei Alexandrovich sympathized with open courts in principle, but he did not entirely sympathize with certain details of their application in our country, owing to higher official attitudes which were known to him, and he condemned them in so far as he could condemn anything ratified in the highest places. His whole life had been spent in administrative activity, and therefore, whenever he did not sympathize with anything, his lack of sympathy was softened by recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and the possibility of correcting them in each case. In the new court institutions he did not approve of the circumstances in which the legal profession had been placed.[4] But till now he had never dealt with lawyers and his disapproval had been merely theoretical, while now it was increased by the unpleasant impression he received in the lawyer’s waiting room.
‘He’ll come at once,’ the assistant said; and indeed, two minutes later the long figure of an old jurist who had been consulting with the lawyer appeared in the doorway, along with the la
wyer himself.
The lawyer was a short, stocky, bald–headed man with a reddish–black beard, light and bushy eyebrows and a prominent forehead. He was dressed up like a bridegroom, from his tie and double watch–chain to his patent–leather boots. He had an intelligent, peasant–like face, but his outfit was foppish and in bad taste.
‘Kindly come in,’ said the lawyer, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich. And, gloomily allowing Karenin to pass, he closed the door.
‘If you please?’ He indicated an armchair by the paper–laden desk and himself sat down in the presiding seat, rubbing his small, stubby–fingered hands overgrown with white hairs and inclining his head to one side. But he had no sooner settled in this position than a moth flew over the desk. With a dexterity one would not have expected of him, the lawyer spread his arms, caught the moth, and resumed his former position.
‘Before I begin talking about my case,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, his eyes following in surprise the lawyer’s movement, ‘I must observe that the matter I have to discuss with you must remain secret.’
A barely noticeable smile parted the lawyer’s drooping reddish moustaches.
‘I would not be a lawyer if I was unable to keep the secrets confided to me. But if you would like some assurance …’
Alexei Alexandrovich glanced at his face and saw that his grey, intelligent eyes were laughing and seemed to know everything already.
‘You know my name?’ Alexei Alexandrovich continued.
‘I know you and your useful’ – he caught another moth – ‘activity, as every Russian does,’ the lawyer said with a bow.
Alexei Alexandrovich drew a breath, gathering his courage. But, once resolved, he now went on in his squeaky voice, without timidity, without faltering, and emphasizing certain words.
‘I have the misfortune,’ Alexei Alexandrovich began, ‘of being a deceived husband, and I wish to break relations with my wife legally –that is, to be divorced, but in such a way that my son does not stay with his mother.’
The lawyer’s grey eyes tried not to laugh, but they leaped with irrepressible joy, and Alexei Alexandrovich could see that it was not only the joy of a man who was receiving a profitable commission – here there was triumph and delight, there was a gleam that resembled the sinister gleam he had seen in his wife’s eyes.
‘You desire my assistance in carrying through the divorce?’
‘Yes, precisely,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich, ‘but I must warn you that I risk abusing your attention. I have come only to ask your advice in a preliminary way. I desire the divorce, but I give importance to the forms in which it is possible. It is very likely that, if the forms do not fit my requirements, I will renounce a formal suit.’
‘Oh, that is always so,’ said the lawyer, ‘and it is always in your power.’
The lawyer dropped his eyes to Alexei Alexandrovich’s feet, sensing that his look of irrepressible joy might offend his client. He saw a moth flying just in front of his nose and his hand jumped, but he did not catch it, out of respect for Alexei Alexandrovich’s position.
‘Although our statutes on this subject are known to me in general terms,’ Alexei Alexandrovich continued, ‘I would like to know the forms in which cases of this sort are most often carried through in practice.’
‘You wish,’ replied the lawyer, not*raising his eyes, and adopting, not without pleasure, the tone of his client’s speech, ‘that I lay out for you the ways in which the fulfilment of your desire is possible.’
And, at an affirming nod of Alexei Alexandrovich’s head, he continued, only giving a fleeting glance now and then at Alexei Alexandrovich’s face, which was covered with red blotches.
‘Divorce, according to our laws,’ he said with a slight tinge of disapproval of our laws, ‘is possible, as you know, in the following cases … Let them wait!’ he said to the assistant who had thrust himself in the door, but nevertheless got up, said a few words and sat down again. ‘In the following cases: physical defects in the spouses, or a five–year absence without communication,’ he said, bending down his stubby, hair–covered fingers, ‘or adultery’ (he pronounced this word with visible pleasure). ‘The subdivisions are the following’ (he continued to bend down his fat fingers, though cases and subdivisions obviously could not be classified together): ‘physical defects in husband or wife, and adultery of the husband or wife.’ As he had run out of fingers, he unbent them all and went on. ‘This is the theoretical view, but I suppose that you have done me the honour of appealing to me in order to find out about the practical application. And therefore, going by precedent, I must inform you that all cases of divorce come down to the following –there are no physical defects, I may take it? and no five–year absence either?…’
Alexei Alexandrovich inclined his head affirmatively.
‘… come down to the following: adultery by one of the spouses and exposure of the guilty party by mutual agreement, or, lacking such agreement, by involuntary exposure. I must say that the latter case rarely occurs in practice,’ the lawyer said and, glancing fleetingly at Alexei Alexandrovich, fell silent, like a seller of pistols who, having described the advantages of each of two weapons, waits for his purchaser’s choice. But Alexei Alexandrovich was silent, and therefore the lawyer went on: ‘The most usual, simple and sensible thing, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I would not have allowed myself to put it that way if I were talking with an undeveloped man,’ said the lawyer, ‘but I suppose we understand each other.’
Alexei Alexandrovich was so upset, however, that he did not understand at once the sensibleness of adultery by mutual consent, and his eyes expressed bewilderment; but the lawyer immediately came to his assistance:
‘People cannot go on living together – there is a fact. And if they both agree in that, the details and formalities become a matter of indifference. And at the same .time this is the simplest and surest method.’
Now Alexei Alexandrovich fully understood. But he had religious requirements that prevented him from accepting this measure.
‘That is out of the question in the present case,’ he said. ‘Only one case is possible: involuntary exposure, confirmed by letters which I have in my possession.’
At the mention of letters, the lawyer pursed his lips and produced a high–pitched sound of pity and contempt.
‘Kindly consider,’ he began. ‘Cases of this sort are decided, as you know, by the religious department; the reverend fathers are great lovers of the minutest details,’ he said with a smile that showed his sympathy with the reverend fathers’ taste. ‘Letters undoubtedly could give partial confirmation; but the evidence must be obtained directly – that is, by witnesses. And, in general, if you do me the honour of granting me your trust, you should leave to me the choice of measures to be employed. He who wants results must allow for the means.’
‘If so …’ Alexei Alexandrovich began, suddenly turning pale, but at that moment the lawyer got up and went to the door to speak with the assistant, who had interrupted again.