Leo Tolstoy

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

  Smiling sleepily, his eyes still shut, he shifted his plump hands from the back of the bed to her shoulders, snuggled up to her, enveloping her with that sweet, sleepy smell and warmth that only children have, and began rubbing his face against her neck and shoulders.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘Today’s my birthday. I knew you’d come. I’ll get up now.’

  And he was falling asleep again as he said it.

  Anna looked him over greedily; she saw how he had grown and changed during her absence. She did and did not recognize his bare feet, so big now, sticking out from under the blanket, recognized those cheeks, thinner now, those locks of hair cut short on the back of his neck, where she had so often kissed them. She touched it all and could not speak; tears choked her.

  ‘What are you crying for, mama?’ he said, now wide awake. ‘Mama, what are you crying for?’ he raised his tearful voice.

  ‘I? I won’t cry … I’m crying from joy. I haven’t seen you for so long. I won’t, I won’t,’ she said, swallowing her tears and turning away. ‘Well, it’s time you got dressed,’ she added after a pause, recovering herself; and without letting go of his hand, she sat by his bed on a chair where his clothes were lying ready.

  ‘How do you get dressed without me? How …’ She wanted to begin talking simply and cheerfully, but could not and turned away again.

  ‘I don’t wash with cold water, papa told me not to. And did you see Vassily Lukich? He’ll come. And you sat on my clothes!’ Seryozha burst out laughing.

  She looked at him and smiled.

  ‘Mama, darling, dearest!’ he cried, rushing to her again and embracing her. As if it were only now, seeing her smile, that he understood clearly what had happened. ‘No need for that,’ he said, taking her hat off. And, as if seeing her anew without a hat, he again began kissing her.

  ‘But what have you been thinking about me? You didn’t think I was dead?’

  ‘I never believed it.’

  ‘Didn’t you, my love?’

  ‘I knew it, I knew it!’ He repeated his favourite phrase and, seizing her hand, which was caressing his hair, he pressed her palm to his mouth and began to kiss it.

  XXX

  Meanwhile Vassily Lukich, who did not understand at first who this lady was, and learning from the conversation that she was the same mother who had left her husband and whom he did not know because he had come to the house after she left, was in doubt whether to go in or to inform Alexei Alexandrovich. Considering finally that his duty was to get Seryozha up at a certain time and that therefore he had no need to determine who was sitting there, the mother or someone else, but had to fulfil his duty, he got dressed, went to the door and opened it.

  But the caresses of the mother and son, the sounds of their voices, and what they were saying – all this made him change his mind. He shook his head and closed the door with a sigh. ‘I’ll wait another ten minutes,’ he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away his tears.

  Just then there was great commotion among the domestic servants. Everyone had learned that the mistress had come, that Kapitonych had let her in, and that she was now in the nursery; and meanwhile the master always went to the nursery himself before nine o’clock, and everyone realized that a meeting between the spouses was impossible and had to be prevented. Kornei, the valet, went down to the porter’s lodge and began asking who had let her in and how, and on learning that Kapitonych had met her and shown her in, he reprimanded the old man. The porter remained stubbornly silent; but when Kornei told him that he deserved to be sacked for it, Kapitonych leaped towards him and, waving his arms in front of Kornei’s face, said:

  ‘Yes, and you wouldn’t have let her in! Ten years’ service, seeing nothing but kindness from her, and then you’d go and say: "Kindly get out!" Subtle politics you’ve got! Oh, yes! You mind yourself, robbing the master and stealing racoon coats!’

  ‘Old trooper!’ Kornei said contemptuously and turned to the nanny, who had just arrived. ‘Look at that, Marya Efimovna: he let her in, didn’t tell anybody,’ Kornei went on. ‘Alexei Alexandrovich will come out presently and go to the nursery.’

  ‘Such goings–on!’ said the nanny. ‘Listen, Kornei Vassilyevich, why don’t you delay somehow – the master, I mean – while I go and somehow lead her away. Such goings–on!’

  When the nanny went into the nursery, Seryozha was telling his mother how he and Nadenka fell while they were sliding and rolled over three times. She listened to the sound of his voice, saw his face and the play of its expression, felt his hand, but did not understand what he was saying. She had to go, she had to leave him – that was all she thought and felt. She heard the steps of Vassily Lukich as he came to the door and coughed, she also heard the steps of the nanny approaching; but she sat as if turned to stone, unable either to begin talking or to get up.

  ‘Mistress, dearest!’ the nanny started to say, going up to Anna and kissing her hand and shoulders. ‘What a God–sent joy for our little one’s birthday! You haven’t changed at all.’

  ‘Ah, nanny, dear, I didn’t know you were in the house,’ said Anna, coming to her senses for a moment.

  ‘I don’t live here, I live with my daughter, I came to wish him a happy birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, dearest!’

  The nanny suddenly wept and started kissing her hand again.

  Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smile, holding his mother with one hand and his nanny with the other, stamped his fat little bare feet on the rug. He was delighted with his beloved nanny’s tenderness towards his mother.

  ‘Mama! She often comes to see me, and when she comes .. .’he began, but stopped, noticing that the nanny was whispering something to his mother, and that his mother’s face showed fear and something like shame, which was so unbecoming to her.

  She went up to him.

  ‘My dear one!’ she said.

  She could not say goodbye, but the look on her face said it, and he understood. ‘Dear, dear Kutik!’ She said the name she had called him when he was little. ‘You won’t forget me? You …’ but she was unable to say more.

  How many words she thought of later that she might have said to him! But now she did not and could not say anything. Yet Seryozha understood all that she wanted to tell him. He understood that she was unhappy and that she loved him. He even understood what the nanny had said to her in a whisper. He had heard the words ‘always before nine’ and understood that this referred to his father and that his mother and father must not meet. But one thing he could not understand: why did fear and shame appear on her face? . .. She was not guilty, but she was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He wanted to ask the question that would have cleared up this doubt, but did not dare to do it: he saw that she was suffering and he pitied her. He silently pressed himself to her and said in a whisper:

  ‘Don’t go yet. He won’t come so soon.’

  His mother held him away from her, to see whether he had thought of what he was saying, and in his frightened expression she read that he was not only speaking of his father but was, as it were, asking her how he should think of him.

  ‘Seryozha, my dear,’ she said, ‘love him, he is better and kinder than I, and I am guilty before him. When you grow up, you will decide.’

  ‘No one’s better than you!…’ he cried through tears of despair, and seizing her by the shoulders, he pressed her to him, his arms trembling with the strain.

  ‘My darling, my little one!’ said Anna, and she started crying as weakly, as childishly, as he.

  Just then the door opened and Vassily Lukich came in. Steps were heard at the other door, and the nanny said in a frightened whisper:

  ‘He’s coming,’ and gave Anna her hat.

  Seryozha sank down on the bed and sobbed, covering his face with his hands. Anna took his hands away, kissed his wet face once more and with quick steps went out of the door. Alexei Alexandrovich was coming towards her. Seeing her, he stopped and bowed his head.

  Though
she had just said that he was better and kinder than she, feelings of loathing and spite towards him and envy about her son came over her as she glanced quickly at him, taking in his whole figure in all its details. With a swift movement she lowered her veil and, quickening her pace, all but ran out of the room.

  She had had no time to take out the toys she had selected with such love and sadness in the shop the day before, and so brought them home with her.

  XXXI

  Strongly as Anna had wished to see her son, long as she had been thinking of it and preparing for it, she had never expected that seeing him would have so strong an effect on her. On returning to her lonely suite in the hotel, she was unable for a long time to understand why she was there. ‘Yes, it’s all over and I’m alone again,’ she said to herself and, without taking off her hat, she sat down in an armchair by the fireplace. Staring with fixed eyes at the bronze clock standing on the table between the windows, she began to think.

  The French maid, brought from abroad, came in to suggest that she dress. She looked at her in surprise and said:

  ‘Later.’

  The footman offered her coffee.

  ‘Later,’ she said.

  The Italian wet nurse, having changed the baby, came in with her and gave her to Anna. The plump, well–nourished baby, as always, seeing her mother, turned over her bare little arms, which looked as if they had string tied round them, and, smiling with a toothless little mouth, began rowing with her hands palm down like a fish with its fins, making the starched folds of her embroidered frock rustle. It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the little girl, not to give her a finger, which she seized, squealing and bouncing with her whole body; it was impossible not to offer her a lip, which she, as if in a kiss, took into her mouth. And Anna did all this, took her in her arms, got her to jump, and kissed her fresh cheek and bare little elbows; but the sight of this child made it still clearer that her feeling for her, compared to what she felt for Seryozha, was not even love. Everything about this little girl was sweet, but for some reason none of it touched her heart. To the first child, though of a man she did not love, had gone all the force of a love that had not been satisfied; the girl, born in the most difficult conditions, did not receive a hundredth part of the care that had gone to the first child. Besides, in this little girl everything was still to come, while Seryozha was almost a person, and a loved person; thoughts and feelings already struggled in him; he understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she thought, remembering his words and looks. And she was forever separated from him, not only physically but also spiritually, and it was impossible to remedy that.

  She gave the girl to the wet nurse, dismissed her, and opened a locket which held a portrait of Seryozha when he was nearly the same age as the girl. She got up and, after removing her hat, took an album from a little table in which there were photographs of her son at other ages. She wanted to compare the photographs and began taking them out of the album. She took them all out. One remained, the last, the best picture. He was sitting astride a chair, in a white shirt, his eyes sulky and his mouth smiling. This was his most special, his best expression. With her small, deft hands, which today moved their thin, white fingers with a peculiar strain, she picked at the corner several times, but the picture was stuck and she could not get it out. As there was no paper–knife on the table, she took out the picture next to it (it was a picture of Vronsky in a round hat and with long hair, taken in Rome) and pushed her son’s picture out with it. ‘Yes, here he is!’ she said, glancing at the picture of Vronsky, and she suddenly remembered who had been the cause of her present grief. She had not thought of him once all morning. But now suddenly, seeing that noble, manly face, so familiar and dear to her, she felt an unexpected surge of love for him.

  ‘But where is he? Why does he leave me alone with my sufferings?’ she suddenly thought, with a feeling of reproach, forgetting that she herself had concealed from him everything to do with her son. She sent to him asking him to come to her at once; with a sinking heart she waited for him, thinking up the words in which she would tell him everything, and the expressions of love with which he would comfort her. The messenger came back with the reply that he had a visitor but would come presently, and with the question whether she could receive him with Prince Yashvin, who had come to Petersburg. ‘He won’t come alone, and yet he hasn’t seen me since dinner yesterday,’ she thought. ‘He won’t come so that I can tell him everything, but will come with Yashvin.’ And suddenly a strange thought occurred to her: what if he had stopped loving her?

  And, going over the events of the last few days, it seemed to her that she found the confirmation of this horrible thought in everything: in the fact that he had dined out the previous evening, and that he had insisted they stay separately in Petersburg, and that even now he was not coming to her alone, as if to avoid meeting her tête–à–tête.

  ‘But he ought to tell me that. I need to know that. If I knew it, then I know what I’d do,’ she said to herself, unable to imagine the position she would be in once she became convinced of his indifference. She thought he had stopped loving her, she felt herself close to despair, and as a result she became peculiarly agitated. She rang for the maid and went to her dressing room. As she dressed, she paid more attention to her toilette than she had all those days, as if, having ceased to love her, he might start loving her again because she was wearing a dress or had done her hair in a way more becoming to her.

  She heard the bell ring before she was ready.

  When she came out of the drawing room, it was not his but Yashvin’s eyes that met hers. Vronsky was looking at the photographs of her son, which she had forgotten on the table, and in no hurry to look at her.

  ‘We’re acquainted,’ she said, putting her small hand into the enormous hand of Yashvin, whose embarrassment went strangely with his huge stature and coarse face. ‘Since last year, at the races. Give them to me,’ she said, and with a quick movement she took from Vronsky the pictures of her son that he had been looking at, glancing at him meaningfully with her shining eyes. ‘Were the races good this year? I watched the races at the Corso in Rome instead. However, you don’t like life abroad,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘I know you and know all your tastes, though we’ve met so seldom.’

  ‘I’m very sorry for that, because my tastes are mostly bad,’ Yashvin said, biting the left side of his moustache.

  Having talked for a while and noticing that Vronsky was glancing at the clock, Yashvin asked her how long she would be in Petersburg and, unbending his enormous figure, took his cap.

  ‘Not long, it seems,’ she said in perplexity, glancing at Vronsky.

  ‘So we won’t see more of each other?’ said Yashvin, standing up and addressing Vronsky. ‘Where will you dine?’

  ‘Come and dine with me,’ Anna said resolutely, as if angry with herself for her embarrassment, but blushing as she always did when she revealed her position to a new person. ‘The dinners aren’t good here, but at least you’ll see each other. Of all his comrades in the regiment, there’s no one Alexei loves more than you.’

  ‘Delighted,’ Yashvin said with a smile, by which Vronsky could see that he liked Anna very much.

  Yashvin bowed and left. Vronsky stayed behind.

  ‘You’re going, too?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’m late already,’ he answered. ‘Go on! I’ll catch up with you in a minute,’ he called to Yashvin.

  She held his hand and gazed at him, not taking her eyes away, searching her mind for something to say that would keep him there.

  ‘Wait, I must tell you something,’ and, taking his short hand, she pressed it to her neck. ‘So it’s all right that I asked him to dinner?’

  ‘You did splendidly,’ he said with a calm smile, revealing his solid row of teeth, and kissed her hand.

  ‘Alexei, you haven’t changed towards me?’ she said, pressing his hand with both of hers. ‘Alexei, I’m suffering here. When will we leave?’ ‘Soon, soon. You
wouldn’t believe how painful our life here is for me, too,’ he said, and withdrew his hand.