Leo Tolstoy

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

  When the two women got into the carriage, both were suddenly overcome with embarrassment. Anna was embarrassed by the attentively inquisitive way Dolly looked at her; Dolly because, after Sviyazhsky’s words about the ‘vehicle’, she felt involuntarily ashamed of the dirty old carriage that Anna got into with her. The coachman Filipp and the clerk felt the same way. To conceal his embarrassment, the clerk bustled about, helping the ladies in, but Filipp the coachman turned glum and prepared himself ahead of time not to submit to this external superiority. He smiled ironically, glancing at the black trotter, and had already made up his mind that this black one of the char a banc was good only for ‘permenading’, and would not even make twenty–five miles in hot weather, harnessed singly.

  The muzhiks all got up from the cart and curiously and merrily watched the visitor’s reception, making their own observations.

  ‘They’re glad, too, haven’t seen each other in a long while,’ said the curly–headed old man tied with bast.

  ‘Say, Uncle Gerasim, with that black stallion to haul sheaves, we’d step lively!’

  ‘Looky there. Is that one in britches a woman?’ said one of them, pointing at Vasenka Veslovsky, who was mounting a side–saddle.

  ‘Naw, it’s a man. See how sprightly he hopped up!’

  ‘Well, boys, does it look like we’ll have our nap?’ ‘Forget it!’ said the old man, with a sidelong glance at the sun. ‘It’s already past noon! Take the hooks and get started!’

  XVIII

  Anna looked at Dolly’s thin, worn face with dust caught in its wrinkles and was about to say what she was thinking – namely, that Dolly had grown thinner; but remembering that she herself had become prettier and that Dolly’s eyes told her so, she sighed and began talking about herself.

  ‘You look at me,’ she said, ‘and think, can she be happy in her situation? Well, and what? It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I … I’m unforgivably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you feel frightened, creepy, and suddenly wake up and feel that all those fears are gone. I woke up. I lived through the torment and fear, and for a long time now, especially since we came here, I’ve been so happy! …’ she said, looking at Dolly with a timid, questioning smile.

  ‘How glad I am!’ Dolly said with a smile, involuntarily speaking more coldly than she meant to. ‘I’m very glad for you. Why didn’t you write to me?’

  ‘Why?… Because I didn’t dare … you forget my situation …’

  ‘To me? You didn’t dare? If you knew how I… I consider …’

  Darya Alexandrovna wanted to tell Anna about her thoughts from that morning, but for some reason the moment seemed inappropriate to her.

  ‘Anyhow, of that later. What are all these buildings?’ she asked, wishing to change the subject and pointing to the red and green roofs visible through the green quickset hedge of acacia and lilac. ‘Just like a little town.’

  But Anna did not reply.

  ‘No, no! What’s your opinion of my situation? What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘I suppose…’ Darya Alexandrovna began, but just then Vasenka Veslovsky, who had got the cob going on the right leg, galloped past them in his short jacket, bouncing heavily against the suede of the side–saddle.

  ‘He’s caught on, Anna Arkadyevna!’ he shouted.

  Anna did not even look at him; but again it seemed awkward to Darya Alexandrovna to start this long conversation in the carriage, and so she abridged her thought.

  ‘I have no opinion,’ she said, ‘but I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.’

  Anna turned her glance from her friend’s face and, narrowing her eyes (this was a new habit that Dolly had not known in her), pondered, wishing to fully understand the meaning of those words. Then, evidently having understood them as she wanted, she looked at Dolly.

  ‘If you have any sins,’ she said, ‘they should all be forgiven you for your coming and for those words.’

  And Dolly saw tears come to Anna’s eyes. She silently pressed her hand.

  ‘So what are these buildings? There are so many of them!’ She repeated her question after a moment’s silence.

  ‘Those are the employees’ houses, the stud farm, the stables,’ replied Anna. ‘And here the park begins. It had all run to seed, but Alexei has renovated everything. He loves this estate very much and, something I never expected, he’s passionately interested in managing it. But then, his is such a rich nature! Whatever he does, he does splendidly. He’s not only not bored, but he takes it up passionately. Besides all I’ve known of him, he’s become a shrewd and excellent manager. He’s even stingy in his management, but only then. Where it’s a matter of tens of thousands, he doesn’t count,’ she said with that joyfully sly smile with which women often speak of the secret qualities of a beloved man, revealed only to them. ‘You see that big building? It’s a new hospital. I think it will cost more than a hundred thousand. It’s his dada* now. And do you know what it came from? It seems the muzhiks asked him to lower the rent for some meadows, but he refused, and I reproached him for stinginess. Of course, it wasn’t just from that, but from everything together – he began on this hospital, you see, in order to show that he wasn’t stingy. C’est une petitesse* if you like; but I love him the more for it. And now you’ll see the house. It’s an ancestral house, and nothing on the outside has been altered.’

  ‘How fine!’ said Dolly, gazing with involuntary astonishment at the

  * Hobby–horse.

  * It’s a petty thing.

  beautiful house with its columns emerging from amidst the varied greens of the old trees in the garden.

  ‘Isn’t it? And the view from the house, from upstairs, is wonderful.’

  They drove into a courtyard covered with gravel and adorned with flowers, where two workmen were placing uncut porous stones around a freshly turned flower bed, and stopped under a covered portico.

  ‘Ah, they’re here already!’ said Anna, looking at the saddle horses which were just being led away from the porch. ‘Isn’t that a fine horse? He’s a cob. My favourite. Bring him here and get me some sugar. Where’s the count?’ she asked of the two liveried footmen who came running out. ‘Ah, here he is!’ she said, seeing Vronsky and Veslovsky coming to meet them.

  ‘Where will you put the princess?’ Vronsky said in French, addressing Anna, and without waiting for an answer he greeted Darya Alexandrovna again, this time kissing her hand. ‘In the big bedroom with the balcony, I assume?’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s too far away! Better in the corner room, we’ll see more of each other. Well, come along,’ said Anna, giving her favourite horse the sugar that the footman had brought her.

  ‘Et vous oubliez votre devoir,’* she said to Veslovsky, who also came out to the porch.

  ‘Pardon, j’en ai tout plein les poches,’* he said, smiling and putting his fingers into his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Mais vous venez trop tard,’* she said, wiping with a handkerchief the hand that the horse had wetted as he took the sugar. Anna turned to Dolly: ‘How long will you stay? One day? That’s impossible!’

  ‘That’s what I promised, and the children…’ said Dolly, feeling embarrassed both because she had to take her handbag from the carriage and because she knew that her face must be quite covered with dust.

  ‘No, Dolly, darling… Well, we’ll see. Come along, come along!’ And Anna took Dolly to her room.

  This room was not the fancy one Vronsky had suggested, but one for which Anna said that Dolly must excuse her. And this room for which excuses were offered was filled with such luxury as Dolly had never lived in and reminded her of the best hotels abroad.

  ‘Well, darling, how happy I am!’ said Anna, sitting down in her riding

  And you’re forgetting your duty, t Excuse me, I’ve got my pockets full. t But you’ve come too late. , habit for a moment beside Dolly. ‘Tell me about your family. I sa
w Stiva in passing, but he can’t talk about the children. How’s my favourite, Tanya? A big girl, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, very big,’ Darya Alexandrovna replied curtly, surprised at herself for answering so coldly about her children. ‘We’re having a wonderful stay with the Levins.’

  ‘If only I’d known you don’t despise me …’ said Anna. ‘You could all come to stay with us. Stiva is an old and great friend of Alexei’s,’ she added and suddenly blushed.

  ‘Yes, but we’re so nicely …’ Dolly replied, embarrassed.

  ‘Yes, anyhow I’m talking foolishly from joy. One thing, darling, is that I’m so glad you’ve come!’ Anna said, kissing her again. ‘You haven’t told me yet how and what you think of me, and I want to know everything. But I’m glad you’ll see me as I am. Above all, I wouldn’t want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don’t want to prove anything, I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. I have that right, haven’t I? However, that’s a long conversation, and we’ll still have a good talk about it all. Now I’ll go and dress, and I’ll send you a maid.’

  XIX

  Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna looked round her room with a housewifely eye. Everything she had seen while approaching the house and passing through it, and now in her own room, gave her an impression of opulence and display and that new European luxury she had only read about in English novels but had never seen in Russia, let alone in the country. Everything was new, from the new French wallpaper to the carpet that covered the entire floor. The bed had springs and a mattress, a special headboard, and little pillows with raw–silk slips. The marble washstand, the dressing table, the couch, the tables, the bronze clock on the mantelpiece, the curtains on the windows and doors – it was all expensive and new.

  The smart maid who came to offer her services, her dress and coiffure more fashionable than Dolly’s, was as new and expensive as the rest of the room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her politeness, neatness and obliging manner, but she felt ill at ease with her; she was embarrassed before her for the patched chemise which, as ill luck would have it, she had packed by mistake. She was ashamed of those very patches and mendings which she had been so proud of at home. At home it was clear that for six chemises she needed seventeen yards of nainsook at ninety kopecks a yard, which would come to over fifteen roubles, besides the work and the trimmings, and these were fifteen roubles gained. But in front of the maid she felt not so much ashamed as ill at ease.

  It was a great relief for Darya Alexandrovna when her old acquaintance, Annushka, came into the room. The smart maid was needed by her mistress, and Annushka stayed with Darya Alexandrovna.

  Annushka was obviously very glad of the lady’s arrival and talked incessantly. Dolly noticed that she wanted to give her opinion of her mistress’s situation, especially of the count’s love and devotion for Anna, but Dolly took care to interrupt her each time she began to speak of it.

  T grew up with Anna Arkadyevna, she’s dearest of all to me. So it’s not for us to judge. And, you’d think, to love like that…’

  ‘So, please send this to be washed, if possible,’ Darya Alexandrovna interrupted her.

  ‘Very well, ma’am. We have two women especially for small laundry, but the linen’s all done by machine. The count sees to everything himself. What husband would …’

  Dolly was glad when Anna came in and by her arrival interrupted Annushka’s chatter.

  Anna had changed into a very simple cambric dress. Dolly looked attentively at this simple dress. She knew what such simplicity meant and what money was paid for it.

  ‘An old acquaintance,’ Anna said of Annushka.

  Anna was no longer embarrassed. She was perfectly free and calm. Dolly saw that she had now fully recovered from the impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that tone of superficial indifference which indicated that the door to the compartment in which she kept her feelings and innermost thoughts was locked.

  ‘Well, and how is your little girl, Anna?’ asked Dolly.

  ‘Annie?’ (So she called her daughter Anna.) ‘Quite well. She’s gained a lot of weight. Would you like to see her? Come, I’ll show her to you. There’s been terrible trouble with the nannies,’ she began to tell the story. ‘We have an Italian wet nurse. Good, but so stupid! We wanted to send her away, but the child is so used to her that we still keep her.’

  ‘But how did you arrange … ?’ Dolly began to ask about what name the girl would have; but, noticing Anna’s sudden frown, she changed the sense of the question. ‘How did you arrange about weaning her?’

  But Anna understood.

  ‘That’s not what you wanted to ask. You wanted to ask about her name, didn’t you? That torments Alexei. She has no name. That is, she’s Karenina,’ said Anna, narrowing her eyes so that only her joined eyelashes could be seen. ‘However,’ her face suddenly brightened, ‘we’ll talk about all that later. Come, I’ll show her to you. Elle est très gentille.* She crawls already.’

  In the nursery the luxury that had struck Darya Alexandrovna everywhere in the house struck her still more. Here were carriages ordered from England, and contraptions for learning to walk, and a specially designed couch, like a billiard table, for crawling, and rocking chairs and special new baths. It was all of English make, sturdy, of good quality, and obviously very expensive. The room was big, very high–ceilinged and bright.

  When they came in the little girl was sitting on a chair at the table in just her shift, drinking bouillon, which she spilled all down her front. The child was being fed by a Russian maid who served in the nursery and who apparently ate with her. Neither the wet nurse nor the nanny was there; they were in the next room, where they could be heard talking in a strange French, the only language in which they could communicate with each other.

  On hearing Anna’s voice, a tall, well–dressed English governess with an unpleasant face and an impure expression came through the door, hastily shaking her blond curls, and at once began justifying herself, though Anna had not accused her of anything. To Anna’s every word the governess hastily chimed ‘Yes, my lady’ several times.

  Darya Alexandrovna liked the dark–browed, dark–haired, ruddy–cheeked little girl very much, with her sturdy red body and taut, goose–fleshed skin, despite the stern expression with which she looked at the new person. She even envied her healthy look. She also liked very much the way the girl crawled. None of her children had crawled like that. This girl, when she was sitting on the rug with her dress tucked behind her, was very sweet. She looked at the grown–ups with shining, dark eyes, like a little animal, obviously glad to be admired; smiling and turning her legs sideways, she leaned energetically on her hands and

  * She is very nice.

  quickly lifted her whole bottom up, then again moved her little hands forward.

  But Darya Alexandrovna very much disliked the general spirit of the nursery, and the governess in particular. How Anna, with her knowledge of people, could have engaged such an unsympathetic, unrespectable governess for her child, she could explain to herself only by the fact that a good one would not have come to such an irregular family as Anna’s. Moreover, she could tell at once, from a few words, that Anna, the wet nurse, the nanny and the baby did not get on together, and that the mother’s visit was an unusual thing. Anna wanted to give her little girl a toy, but could not find it.

  Most surprising of all was that, when asked how many teeth the girl had, Anna was mistaken and knew nothing about the two latest teeth.

  ‘It pains me sometimes that I seem so superfluous here,’ said Anna, leaving the nursery and picking up her train so as to avoid the toys lying by the door. ‘It wasn’t like that with my first.’

  ‘I thought the opposite,’ Darya Alexandrovna said timidly.

  ‘Oh, no! You know, I saw him – Seryozha,’ Anna said, narrowing her eyes as if peering at something in the distance. ‘However, we’ll talk about it later. You wouldn’t believe it, I’m like a hungry person
who suddenly has a full meal put in front of her and doesn’t know where to start. The full meal is you and the conversations I’m going to have with you, which I haven’t been able to have with anybody; and I don’t know which conversation to get to first. Mais je ne vous ferai grâce de rien.* I have to say everything. Ah, yes, I should describe for you the company you’ll find here,’ she began. ‘I’ll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvara. You know her, and I know your and Stiva’s opinion of her. Stiva says the whole aim of her life consists in proving her superiority to Aunt Katerina Pavlovna. It’s all true, but still she’s kind and I’m so grateful to her. There was a moment in Petersburg when I needed a chaperone. And she came along. But, really, she’s kind. She made my situation a lot easier. I see you don’t realize all the difficulty of my situation … there, in Petersburg,’ she added. ‘Here I’m perfectly calm and happy. Well, about that later. I must go on with the list. Then there’s Sviyazhsky. He’s the marshal and a very decent man, but he wants something from Alexei. You see, with his wealth, now that we’ve settled in the country, Alexei could have great influence. Then there’s Tushkevich – you’ve seen