by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
* In the prime of life.
* A young man.
V
‘Varvara Andreevna, when I was still very young, I made up for myself an ideal of the woman I would love and whom I would be happy to call my wife. I have lived a long life, and now for the first time I have met in you what I have been seeking. I love you and offer you my hand.’
Sergei Ivanovich was saying this to himself when he was just ten steps away from Varenka. Kneeling down and protecting a mushroom from Grisha with her hands, she was calling little Masha.
‘Here, here! There are small ones! Lots!’ she said in her sweet, mellow voice.
Seeing Sergei Ivanovich approaching, she did not get up and did not change her position, but everything told him that she felt him approaching and was glad of it.
‘So, did you find any?’ she asked, turning her beautiful, quietly smiling face to him from behind the white kerchief.
‘Not one,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘And you?’
She did not answer him, busy with the children around her.
‘That one, too, by the branch.’ She pointed Masha to a small mushroom, its resilient pink cap cut across by a dry blade of grass it had sprung up under. She stood up when Masha picked the mushroom, breaking it into two white halves. ‘This reminds me of my childhood,’ she added, stepping away from the children with Sergei Ivanovich.
They went on silently for a few steps. Varenka saw that he wanted to speak. She guessed what it was about and her heart was gripped by the excitement of joy and fear. They went far enough away so that no one could hear them, and still he did not begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to remain silent. After a silence it would have been easier to say what they wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms; but against her own will, as if inadvertently, Varenka said:
‘So you didn’t find any? But then there are always fewer inside the wood.’
Sergei Ivanovich sighed and made no answer. He was vexed that she had begun talking about mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to her first words about her childhood; but, as if against his will, after being silent for a while, he commented on her last words.
‘I’ve heard only that the white boletus grows mostly on the edge, though I’m unable to identify it.’ Several more minutes passed, they went still further away from the children and were completely alone. Varenka’s heart was pounding so that she could hear it, and she felt herself blush, then turn pale, then blush again.
To be the wife of a man like Koznyshev, after her situation with Mme Stahl, seemed to her the height of happiness. Besides, she was almost certain that she was in love with him. And now it was to be decided. She was frightened. Frightened that he would speak, and that he would not.
He had to declare himself now or never; Sergei Ivanovich felt it, too. Everything in Varenka’s gaze, colour, lowered eyes, showed painful expectation. Sergei Ivanovich saw it and pitied her. He even felt that to say nothing now would be to insult her. In his mind he quickly repeated all the arguments in favour of his decision. He also repeated to himself the words in which he wished to express his proposal; but instead of those words, by some unexpected consideration that occurred to him, he suddenly asked:
‘And what is the difference between a white boletus and a birch boletus?’
Varenka’s lips trembled as she answered:
‘There’s hardly any difference in the caps, but in the feet.’
And as soon as these words were spoken, both he and she understood that the matter was ended, and that what was to have been said would not be said, and their excitement, which had reached its highest point just before then, began to subside.
‘In the birch boletus, the foot resembles a two–day growth of beard on a dark–haired man,’ Sergei Ivanovich said, calmly now.
‘Yes, that’s true,’ Varenka replied, smiling, and the direction of their walk changed inadvertently. They began going towards the children. Varenka was both hurt and ashamed, but at the same time she had a sense of relief.
On returning home and going through all the arguments, Sergei Ivanovich found that his reasoning had been wrong. He could not betray the memory of Marie.
‘Quiet, children, quiet!’ Levin shouted angrily at the children, standing in front of his wife in order to protect her, when the bunch of children came flying to meet them with shrieks of joy.
After the children, Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka also came out of the wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; from the calm and somewhat embarrassed expressions on both their faces, she understood that her plans had not worked out.
‘Well, what happened?’ her husband asked, as they went back home.
‘Didn’t bite,’ said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking resembling her father’s, something Levin often noticed in her with pleasure.
‘Didn’t bite, meaning what?’
‘Like this,’ she said, taking her husband’s hand, putting it to her mouth, and touching it with unopened lips. ‘Like kissing a bishop’s hand.’
‘But which of them didn’t bite?’ he said, laughing.
‘Neither. And it should have been like this …’
‘There are muzhiks coming …’
‘No, they didn’t see.’
VI
During the children’s tea the grown–ups sat on the balcony talking as if nothing had happened, though they all knew very well, Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka especially, that something important, though negative, had happened. They both experienced an identical feeling, similar to that of a pupil after failing an examination, staying in the same class or being expelled from the institution for good. Everyone present, also feeling that something had happened, talked animatedly about unrelated subjects. Levin and Kitty felt particularly happy and amorous that evening. And the fact that they were happy in their love contained in itself an unpleasant allusion to those who wanted but could not have the same –and they were embarrassed.
‘Mark my words: Alexandre won’t come,’ said the old princess.
Stepan Arkadyich was expected on the train that evening, and the old prince had written that he, too, might come.
‘And I know why,’ the princess went on. ‘He says that a young couple should be left alone at first.’
‘But papa has left us alone. We haven’t seen him,’ said Kitty. ‘And what kind of young couple are we? We’re already so old.’
‘Only if he doesn’t come, I, too, will say good–bye to you, children,’ said the princess, sighing sadly.
‘Well, what is it to you, mama!’ Both daughters fell upon her.
‘But think, how is it for him? You see, now …’
And suddenly, quite unexpectedly, the old princess’s voice trembled. Her daughters fell silent and exchanged glances. ‘Maman always finds something sad for herself,’ they said with these glances. They did not know that, good as it was for the princess to be at her daughter’s, and useful as she felt herself there, it had been painfully sad for her and for her husband since they had given away their last beloved daughter in marriage and the family nest had been left empty.
‘What is it, Agafya Mikhailovna?’ Kitty suddenly asked Agafya Mikhailovna, who stood there with a mysterious look and an important face.
‘About supper.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ said Dolly. ‘You go and give the orders, and I’ll go with Grisha to hear his lesson. Otherwise he’ll have done nothing today.’
‘That’s a lesson for me! No, Dolly, I’ll go,’ said Levin, jumping up.
Grisha, already enrolled in school, had to go over his lessons during the summer. Darya Alexandrovna, who had studied Latin with her son while still in Moscow, had made it a rule when she came to the Levins’ to go over the most difficult lessons in arithmetic and Latin with him at least once a day. Levin had volunteered to replace her; but the mother had heard Levin’s lesson once and, noticing that he did not do it in the same way as the teacher in Moscow, embarrassed and trying not to offend him, had told
him resolutely that it was necessary to go by the book, as the teacher did, and that she had better do it again herself. Levin was vexed both with Stepan Arkadyich, who in his carelessness left it to the mother to look after the teaching, of which she understood nothing, instead of doing it himself, and with the teachers for teaching children so poorly; but he promised his sister–in–law that he would conduct the lessons as she wished. And he went on tutoring Grisha, not in his own way now but by the book, and therefore did it reluctantly and often missed the time of the lesson. So it happened that day.
‘No, I’ll go, Dolly, and you sit,’ he said. ‘We’ll do everything properly, by the book. Only when Stiva comes and we go hunting, then I’ll skip.’
And Levin went to Grisha.
Varenka said the same thing to Kitty. Even in the happy, comfortable home of the Levins, Varenka was able to be useful.
‘I’ll order supper, and you sit,’ she said and got up to go with Agafya Mikhailovna.
‘Yes, yes, they probably couldn’t find any chickens. Our own, then Kitty said.
‘We’ll decide, Agafya Mikhailovna and I.’ And Varenka disappeared with her.
‘What a dear girl!’ said the princess.
‘Not dear, maman, but as lovely as can be.’
‘So you’re expecting Stepan Arkadyich today?’ asked Sergei Ivanovich, obviously unwilling to continue the conversation about Varenka. ‘It’s hard to find two brothers–in–law less alike than your husbands,’ he said with a subtle smile. ‘One all movement, living in society like a fish in water, the other, our Kostya, alive, quick, sensitive to everything, but the moment he’s in society, he either freezes or thrashes about senselessly like a fish on dry land.’
‘Yes, he’s very light–minded,’ said the princess, turning to Sergei Ivanovich. ‘I precisely wanted you to tell him that it’s impossible for her, for Kitty, to stay here, that she must come to Moscow. He talks of sending for a doctor …’
‘Maman, he’ll do everything, he’ll agree to everything,’ said Kitty, vexed with her mother for inviting Sergei Ivanovich to judge in the matter.
In the midst of their conversation they heard a snorting of horses and the sound of wheels on the gravel of the drive.
Before Dolly had time to get up and go to meet her husband, Levin jumped out the window of the downstairs room where Grisha studied and helped Grisha out.
‘It’s Stiva!’ Levin shouted from under the balcony. ‘We finished, Dolly, don’t worry!’ he added and, like a boy, went running to meet the carriage.
‘Is, ea, id, ejus, ejus, ejus,’* cried Grisha, skipping down the drive.
‘And somebody else. Must be papa!’ Levin cried out, stopping at the entrance to the drive. ‘Kitty, don’t go down the steep stairs, go around.’
But Levin was mistaken in taking the one sitting in the carriage with Oblonsky for the old prince. When he got close to the carriage, he saw beside Stepan Arkadyich not the prince but a handsome, stout young man in a Scotch cap with long ribbons hanging down behind. This was Vasenka Veslovsky, the Shcherbatskys’ cousin twice removed, a brilliant
* He, she, it, his, hers, its.
man around Petersburg and Moscow – ‘a most excellent fellow and a passionate hunter’, as Stepan Arkadyich introduced him.
Not put out in the least at the disappointment he caused by replacing the old prince with himself, Veslovsky gaily greeted Levin, reminding him of their former acquaintance, and, taking Grisha up into the carriage, lifted him over the pointer that Stepan Arkadyich had brought along.
Levin did not get into the carriage but walked behind. He was slightly vexed that the old prince, whom he loved more the more he knew him, had not come, and that this Vasenka Veslovsky, a completely alien and superfluous man, had appeared. He seemed all the more alien and superfluous in that, when Levin came up to the porch where the whole animated crowd of grown–ups and children had gathered, he saw Vasenka Veslovsky kiss Kitty’s hand with an especially gentle and gallant air.
‘Your wife and I are cousins, as well as old acquaintances,’ said Vasenka Veslovsky, again pressing Levin’s hand very, very firmly.
‘Well, is there any game?’ Stepan Arkadyich turned to Levin, having barely had time to say hello to everyone. ‘He and I have come with the cruellest intentions. Of course, maman, they haven’t been to Moscow since. Well, Tanya, there’s something for you! Get it from the back of the carriage, please,’ he spoke in all directions. ‘How fresh you look, Dollenka,’ he said to his wife, kissing her hand again, keeping it in his own and patting it with his other hand.
Levin, who a minute ago had been in the merriest spirits, now looked darkly at everyone and did not like anything.
‘Who did he kiss yesterday with those lips?’ he thought, gazing at Stepan Arkadyich’s tenderness with his wife. He looked at Dolly and did not like her either.
‘She doesn’t believe in his love. Then why is she so glad? Revolting!’ thought Levin.
He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a moment ago, and did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vasenka with his ribbons, as if she were in her own home.
Even Sergei Ivanovich, who also came out on to the porch, seemed unpleasant to him in the sham friendliness with which he met Stepan Arkadyich, when Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor respected Oblonsky.
And Varenka, too, was disgusting to him, with her look of a sainte nitouche* as she made the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all she thought about was getting married.
And most disgusting of all was Kitty, the way she yielded to the tone of merriment with which this gentleman regarded his arrival in the country as a festive occasion for himself and everyone, and particularly unpleasant was the special smile with which she responded to his smiles.
Talking noisily, they all went into the house; but as soon as they all sat down, Levin turned round and left.
Kitty saw that something was wrong with her husband. She wanted to snatch a moment and talk to him alone, but he hastened away from her, saying he had to go to the office. It was long since his farm affairs had seemed so important to him as they did right then. ‘It’s all a holiday for them,’ he thought, ‘but these are no holiday affairs, they won’t wait and without them life is impossible.’