Leo Tolstoy

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

‘It cannot be that this terrible body is my brother Nikolai,’ Levin thought. But he came nearer, saw the face, and doubt was no longer possible. Despite the terrible change in the face, Levin had only to look into those living eyes raised to him as he entered, notice the slight movement of the mouth under the matted moustache, to realize the terrible truth, that this dead body was his living brother.

  The shining eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at the brother coming in. And that look at once established a living relation between the living. Levin at once felt the reproach in the glance directed at him and remorse for his own happiness.

  When Konstantin took his hand, Nikolai smiled. The smile was faint, barely perceptible, and, in spite of it, the stern expression of the eyes did not change.

  ‘You didn’t expect to find me like this,’ he brought out with difficulty.

  ‘Yes … no,’ said Levin, stumbling over his words. ‘Why didn’t you let me know earlier, I mean back at the time of my wedding? I made inquiries everywhere.’

  He had to speak so as not to be silent, but he did not know what to say, especially as his brother did not respond but only stared without taking his eyes off him, apparently trying to grasp the meaning of each word. Levin told his brother that his wife had come with him. Nikolai expressed satisfaction but said he was afraid to frighten her by his condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolai stirred and began to say something. From the expression of his face, Levin expected something especially meaningful and important, but Nikolai spoke of his health. He accused the doctor, regretted that the famous Moscow doctor was not there, and Levin realized that he still had hope.

  Profiting from the first moment of silence, Levin stood up, wishing to get rid of the painful feeling at least for a moment, and said he would go and bring his wife.

  ‘Very well, and I’ll have things cleaned up here. It’s dirty here and I suppose it stinks. Masha, tidy up here!’ the sick man said with difficulty. ‘And once you’ve finished, go away,’ he added, looking questioningly at his brother.

  Levin made no reply. He went out to the corridor and stopped. He had said he would bring his wife, but now, aware of the feeling he had experienced, he decided, on the contrary, to try to persuade her not to go to see the sick man. ‘Why should she suffer as I do?’ he thought.

  ‘Well, how is he?’ Kitty asked with a frightened face.

  ‘Ah, it’s terrible, terrible! Why did you come?’ said Levin.

  Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and pityingly at her husband; then she went up to him and took him by the elbow with both hands.

  ‘Kostya, take me to him, it will be easier with two of us. Just take me there, take me, please, and leave,’ she began. ‘You must understand that for me to see you and not see him is much harder. There I might perhaps be of use to you and to him. Please, let me!’ she implored her husband, as if the happiness of her life depended on it.

  Levin had to consent, and, recovering himself and forgetting all about Marya Nikolaevna, he went back to his brother with Kitty.

  With a light tread, glancing constantly at her husband and showing him a brave and compassionate face, she went into the sick man’s room and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door behind her. With inaudible steps she quickly approached the sick man’s bed, and, placing herself so that he would not have to turn his head, at once took in her fresh, young hand the skeleton of his enormous hand, pressed it, and began talking to him with that unoffending and sympathetic animation peculiar only to women.

  ‘We met at Soden but didn’t become acquainted,’ she said. ‘You never thought I’d be your sister.’

  ‘Would you have recognized me?’ he said, lighting up with a smile as she came in.

  ‘Yes, I would. You were so right to let us know! There wasn’t a day when Kostya didn’t remember you and worry about you.’

  But the sick man’s animation did not last long.

  Before she finished speaking, his face became set again in the stern, reproachful expression of a dying man’s envy of the living.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not very nice for you here,’ she said, turning away from his intent gaze and looking round the room. ‘We must ask the innkeeper for a different room,’ she said to her husband, ‘and also for us to be closer.’

  XVIII

  Levin could not look calmly at his brother, could not be natural and calm in his presence. When he entered the sick man’s room, his eyes and attention would unconsciously become veiled, and he did not see or distinguish the details of his brother’s condition. He smelled the terrible stench, saw the filth, the disorder, and the painful posture and groaning, and felt that it was impossible to be of help. It did not even occur to him to look into the details of the sick man’s state, to think of how this body lay there under the blanket, how the emaciated shins, legs, back lay bent there and whether they could not be laid out better, to do something, if not to improve things, at least to make them less bad. A chill went down his spine when he began to think of these details. He was certain beyond doubt that nothing could be done to prolong his life or alleviate his suffering. But the sick man sensed his awareness that he considered all help impossible and was annoyed by it. And that made it still harder for Levin. To be in the sick–room was torture for him, not to be there was still worse. And, on various pretexts, he kept going out and coming back again, unable to stay alone.

  But Kitty thought, felt and acted quite differently. At the sight of the sick man, she felt pity for him. And pity in her woman’s soul produced none of the horror and squeamishness it did in her husband, but a need to act, to find out all the details of his condition and help with them. As she did not have the slightest doubt that she had to help him, so she had no doubt that it was possible, and she got down to work at once. Those same details, the mere thought of which horrified her husband, at once attracted her attention. She sent for the doctor, sent to the pharmacy, ordered Marya Nikolaevna and the maid who had come with her to sweep, dust, scrub, washed and rinsed something herself, put something under the blanket. On her orders things were brought in and carried out of the sick man’s room. She went to her room several times, paying no attention to the passing gentlemen she met, to fetch and bring sheets, pillowcases, towels, shirts.

  The waiter, who was serving dinner to some engineers in the common room, several times came at her call with an angry face, but could not help carrying out her orders, because she gave them with such gentle insistence that it was simply impossible to walk away from her. Levin disapproved of it all; he did not believe it could be of any use to the sick man. Most of all he feared that his brother would get angry. But, though he seemed indifferent, he did not get angry but only embarrassed, and generally appeared interested in what she was doing to him. Coming back from the doctor, to whom Kitty had sent him, Levin opened the door and found the sick man at the moment when, on Kitty’s orders, his underwear was being changed. The long, white frame of his back, with enormous protruding shoulder blades, the ribs and vertebrae sticking out, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter had got tangled in a shirt sleeve, unable to put the long, dangling arm into it. Kitty, who hastily closed the door behind Levin, was not looking in that direction; but the sick man moaned and she quickly went to him.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t come here,’ the sick man said crossly, ‘I myself…’

  ‘What’s that?’ Marya Nikolaevna asked.

  But Kitty heard and understood that he found it embarrassing and unpleasant to be naked in front of her.

  ‘I’m not looking, I’m not looking!’ she said, putting the arm right. ‘Marya Nikolaevna, go around to the other side and put it right,’ she added.

  ‘Go, please, there’s a vial in my small bag,’ she turned to her husband, ‘you know, in the side pocket. Bring it, please, while they straighten everything up here.’

  When he returned with the vial, Levin found the sick man lying down and everything around him complete
ly changed. The heavy smell was replaced by the smell of vinegar and scent, which Kitty, her lips pursed and her red cheeks puffed out, was spraying through a little pipe. No dust could be seen anywhere; there was a rug beside the bed. Vials and a carafe stood neatly on the table, where the necessary linen lay folded, along with Kitty’s broderie anglaise. On the other table, by the sick–bed, were drink, a candle and powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed, lay on clean sheets, on high–propped pillows, in a clean shirt, its white collar encircling his unnaturally thin neck, and looked at Kitty, not taking his eyes off her, with a new expression of hope.

  The doctor brought by Levin, who had found him at his club, was not the one who had treated Nikolai Levin and with whom he was displeased. The new doctor took out a little tube and listened to the patient’s chest, shook his head, wrote a prescription, and explained with particular thoroughness, first, how to take the medicine, then what diet to observe. He advised eggs, raw or slightly boiled, and seltzer water with fresh milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor left, the sick man said something to his brother; but Levin heard only the last words: ‘your Katia’, and by the look he gave her, Levin understood that he was praising her. He beckoned to Katia, as he called her, to come over.

  ‘I’m much better already,’ he said. ‘With you I’d have recovered long ago. How nice!’ He took her hand and drew it towards his lips, but, as if fearing it would be unpleasant for her, changed his mind, let go and only stroked it. Kitty took his hand in both of hers and pressed it.

  ‘Now turn me on my left side and go to bed,’ he said.

  No one made out what he said, only Kitty understood him. She understood, because her thought constantly followed what he needed.

  ‘On the other side,’ she said to her husband, ‘he always sleeps on that side. Turn him, it’s unpleasant to call the servants. I can’t do it. Can you?’ she turned to Marya Nikolaevna.

  ‘I’m scared,’ answered Marya Nikolaevna.

  Frightening as it was for Levin to put his arms around that frightening body, to hold those places under the blanket that he did not want to know about, he yielded to his wife’s influence, made the resolute face she knew so well, put his arms under the blanket and took hold of him, but, in spite of his strength, he was amazed at the strange heaviness of those wasted limbs. As he turned him over, feeling an enormous, emaciated arm around his neck, Kitty quickly, inaudibiy, turned the pillow over, plumped it up, and straightened the sick man’s head and his thin hair, again stuck to his temple.

  The sick man kept his brother’s hand in his own. Levin felt that he wanted to do something with his hand and was drawing it somewhere. Levin yielded with a sinking heart. Yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed it. Levin shook with sobs and, unable to get a word out, left the room.

  XIX

  ‘Hidden from the wise and revealed unto babes and the imprudent.’[29] So Levin thought about his wife as he talked with her that evening.

  Levin was thinking of the Gospel saying not because he considered himself wise. He did not consider himself wise, but he could not help knowing that he was more intelligent than his wife or Agafya Mikhailovna, and he could not help knowing that when he thought about death, he thought about it with all the forces of his soul. He also knew that many great masculine minds, whose thoughts about it he had read, had pondered death and yet did not know a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafya Mikhailovna knew about it. Different as these two women were – Agafya Mikhailovna and Katia, as his brother Nikolai called her and as Levin now especially liked to call her – they were perfectly alike in this. Both unquestionably knew what life was and what death was, and though they would have been unable to answer and would not even have understood the questions that presented themselves to Levin, neither had any doubt about the meaning of this phenomenon and looked at it in exactly the same way, not only between themselves, but sharing this view with millions of other people. The proof that they knew firmly what death was lay in their knowing, without a moment’s doubt, how to act with dying people and not being afraid of them. While Levin and others, though they could say a lot about death, obviously did not know, because they were afraid of death and certainly had no idea what needed to be done when people were dying. If Levin had been alone now with his brother Nikolai, he would have looked at him with horror, and would have waited with still greater horror, unable to do anything else.

  Not only that, but he did not know what to say, how to look, how to walk. To speak of unrelated things seemed to him offensive, impossible; to speak of death, of dark things – also impossible. To be silent – also impossible. ‘If I look, I’m afraid he’ll think I’m studying him; if I don’t look, he’ll think I’m thinking of something else. If I walk on tiptoe, he’ll be displeased; if I stomp around, it’s embarrassing.’ But Kitty obviously did not think about herself and had no time to; she thought about him, because she knew something, and it all turned out well. She told him about herself and about her wedding, and smiled, and pitied, and caressed him, and spoke of cases of recovery, and it all turned out well; which meant that she knew. The proof that what she and Agafya Mikhailovna did was not instinctive, animal, unreasoning, was that, besides physical care, the alleviation of suffering, both Agafya Mikhailovna and Kitty demanded something more important for the dying man, something that had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafya Mikhailovna, speaking of an old man who had died, said: ‘Well, thank God, he took communion, got anointed, God grant everybody such a death.’ In the same way Katia, besides all her cares about linen, bedsores, drink, persuaded the sick man on the very first day of the need to take communion and be anointed.

  When he left the sick man and went to his own rooms for the night, Levin sat, his head bowed, not knowing what to do. Not to mention having supper, settling for the night, thinking about what they were going to do, he could not even speak to his wife: he was abashed. But Kitty, on the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even more animated than usual. She ordered supper, unpacked their things herself, helped to make the beds, and did not forget to sprinkle them with Persian powder. She had in her that excitement and quickness of judgement that appear in men before a battle, a struggle, in dangerous and decisive moments of life, those moments when once and for all a man shows his worth and that his whole past has not been in vain but has been a preparation for those moments.

  Everything she did went well, and it was not yet midnight when all the things were unpacked, cleanly and neatly, somehow specially, so that the room began to resemble her home, her rooms: beds made, brushes, combs, mirrors laid out, doilies spread.

  Levin found it inexcusable even now to eat, sleep, talk, and felt that his every movement was improper. Yet she was sorting her brushes, doing it in such a way that there was no offence in it.

  They could not eat anything anyway, and for a long time they could not fall asleep; it was even a long time before they went to bed.

  ‘I’m very glad I persuaded him to be anointed tomorrow,’ she said, sitting in a dressing jacket before her folding mirror and combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. ‘I’ve never seen it done, but mama told me all the prayers are about healing.’

  ‘Do you really think he can get well?’ Levin said, looking at the narrow parting at the back of her round little head, which kept closing the moment she drew her comb forward.

  ‘I asked the doctor: he says he can’t live more than three days. But can they really know? All the same, I’m very glad I persuaded him,’ she said, looking sideways at her husband from behind her hair. ‘Anything can happen,’ she added, with the special, somewhat sly expression she usually had on her face when she talked about religion.

  Since their conversation about religion while they were still engaged, neither he nor she had ever started speaking of it, but she always observed her rituals of going to church and saying her prayers with the same calm awareness that it was necessary. Despite his assurances to the contrary, she was firmly con
vinced that he was as good a Christian as she was, or even better, and that everything he said about it was one of those ridiculous male quirks, like what he said about broderie anglaise: that good people mend holes, while she cut them on purpose, and so on.

  ‘Yes, that woman, Marya Nikolaevna, couldn’t have arranged it all,’ said Levin. ‘And … I must admit that I’m very, very glad you came. You’re such purity that…’ He took her hand and did not kiss it (to kiss that hand in this presence of death seemed improper to him) but only pressed it with a guilty air, looking into her brightened eyes.