Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Please order tea in the drawing room.’

  The girl got up and went out.

  ‘Well, did she pass her examination?’ asked Stepan Arkadyich.

  ‘Splendidly. She’s a very capable girl and with a sweet nature.’

  ‘You’ll end by loving her more than your own.’

  ‘That’s a man talking. There is no more or less love. I love my daughter with one love and her with another.’

  T was just telling Anna Arkadyevna,’ said Vorkuev, ‘that if she spent at least a hundredth of the energy she puts into this English girl on the common cause of the education of Russian children, Anna Arkadyevna would be doing a great and useful thing.’

  ‘Say what you like, I can’t do it. Count Alexei Kirillych strongly encouraged me’ (in pronouncing the words ‘Count Alexei Kirillych’, she gave Levin a pleadingly timid look, and he involuntarily responded with a respectful and confirming look) ‘ – encouraged me to occupy myself with the village school. I went several times. They’re very nice, but I couldn’t get caught up in it. Energy, you say. Energy is based on love. And love can’t be drawn from just anywhere, it can’t be ordered. I love this English girl, I myself don’t know why.’

  And again she glanced at Levin. Her eyes, her smile, everything told him that she was addressing what she said to him, valuing his opinion and at the same time knowing beforehand that they understood each other.

  ‘I understand that perfectly,’ Levin replied. ‘One cannot put one’s heart into a school or generally into institutions of that sort, and that is precisely why I think these philanthropic institutions always produce such meagre results.’

  She kept silent and then smiled.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she agreed. ‘I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez large* to love a whole orphanage of nasty little girls. Cela ne m’a jamais réussi.* There are so many women who have made themselves a position sociale that way. And the less so now,’ she said with a sad, trustful expression,

  * My heart isn’t big enough,

  * I’ve never succeeded in it.

  ostensibly addressing her brother but obviously speaking only to Levin, ‘now, when I so need some occupation, I cannot do it.’ And, frowning suddenly (Levin understood that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself), she changed the subject. ‘What I know about you,’ she said to Levin, ‘is that you’re a bad citizen, and I’ve defended you the best I could.’

  ‘How have you defended me?’

  ‘Depending on the attack. But wouldn’t you like some tea?’ She rose and picked up a morocco–bound book.

  ‘Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna,’ said Vorkuev, pointing to the book. ‘It’s well worth it.’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s all so unfinished.’

  ‘I told him,’ Stepan Arkadyich said to his sister, pointing to Levin.

  ‘You shouldn’t have. My writing is like those little carved baskets made in prisons that Liza Mertsalov used to sell me. She was in charge of prisons in that society,’ she turned to Levin. ‘And those unfortunates produced miracles of patience.’

  And Levin saw another new feature in this woman whom he found so extraordinarily to his liking. Besides intelligence, grace, beauty, there was truthfulness in her. She did not want to conceal from him all the difficulty of her situation. Having said this, she sighed, and it was as if her face, acquiring a stern expression, suddenly turned to stone. With this expression she was still more beautiful than before; but this was a new look; it was outside the realm of the expressions, radiant with happiness and giving happiness, which the artist had caught in the portrait. Levin glanced once more at the portrait and then at her figure as she took her brother’s arm and walked with him through the high doorway, and felt a tenderness and pity for her that surprised him.

  She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go to the drawing room and stayed behind to talk about something with her brother. ‘About the divorce, about Vronsky, about what he’s doing at the club, about me?’ thought Levin. And he was so excited by the question of what she was talking about with Stepan Arkadyich that he hardly listened to what Vorkuev was telling him about the merits of the children’s novel Anna Arkadyevna had written.

  Over tea the same pleasant, meaningful conversation continued. Not only was there not a single moment when it was necessary to search for a subject of conversation but, on the contrary, there was a feeling of having no time to say what one wanted and of willingly restraining oneself in order to hear what the other was saying. And whatever was said, not only by her but by Vorkuev, by Stepan Arkadyich, acquired a special significance, as it seemed to Levin, owing to her attention and observations.

  As he followed the interesting conversation, Levin admired her all the while – her beauty, her intelligence, her education, and with that her simplicity and deep feeling. He listened, talked, and all the while thought about her, about her inner life, trying to guess her feelings. And he who had formerly judged her so severely, now, by some strange train of thought, justified her and at the same time pitied her, and feared that Vronsky did not fully understand her. After ten, when Stepan Arkadyich got up to leave (Vorkuev had left earlier), it seemed to Levin as if he had just come. He, too, regretfully got up to leave.

  ‘Good–bye,’ she said, holding his hand and looking into his eyes with an appealing gaze. ‘I’m very glad que la glace est rompue.’*

  She let go of his hand and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Tell your wife that I love her as before, and if she cannot forgive me my situation, I wish her never to forgive me. In order to forgive, one must have lived through what I have lived through, and may God spare her that.’

  ‘Certainly, yes, I’ll tell her …’ said Levin, blushing.

  XI

  ‘What an amazing, dear and pitiful woman,’ he thought, going out with Stepan Arkadyich into the frosty air.

  ‘Well, so? I told you,’ Stepan Arkadyich said to him, seeing that Levin was completely won over.

  ‘Yes,’ Levin replied pensively, ‘an extraordinary woman! Not just her intelligence, but her heart. I’m terribly sorry for her!’

  ‘God grant it will all be settled soon now. Well, so don’t go judging beforehand,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, opening the carriage doors. ‘Goodbye. We’re not going the same way.’

  Never ceasing to think about Anna, about all those most simple conversations he had had with her, and at the same time remembering

  * That the ice is broken.

  all the details of her facial expression, entering more and more into her situation and pitying her, Levin arrived at home.

  At home Kuzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was well, that her sisters had left her only recently, and handed him two letters. Levin read them right there in the front hall, so as not to be distracted later. One was from his steward, Sokolov. Sokolov wrote that it was impossible to sell the wheat, that the offer was only five and a half roubles, and there was nowhere else to get money. The other letter was from his sister. She reproached him for still not having taken care of her business.

  ‘So we’ll sell it for five–fifty, since they won’t pay more.’ Levin resolved the first question at once, with extraordinary ease, though it had seemed so difficult to him before. ‘It’s amazing how all one’s time is taken up here,’ he thought about the second letter. He felt guilty before his sister for still not having done what she had asked him to do. ‘Again today I didn’t go to court, but today I really had no time.’ And, having decided that he would do it the next day without fail, he went to his wife. On his way, Levin quickly ran through the whole day in his memory. The day’s events were all conversations: conversations he had listened to and taken part in. They had all been about subjects which he, had he been alone and in the country, would never have bothered with, but here they were very interesting. And all the conversations had been nice; only in two places had they not been so nice. One was what he had said about the pike, the other that there was something not right in the tender pity he felt
for Anna.

  Levin found his wife sad and bored. The dinner of the three sisters had gone very cheerfully, but afterwards they had waited and waited for him, they had all became bored, the sisters had gone home, and she had been left alone.

  ‘Well, and what did you do?’ she asked, looking into his eyes, which somehow had a peculiarly suspicious shine. But, so as not to hinder his telling her everything, she hid her attentiveness and listened with an approving smile as he told her how he had spent his evening.

  ‘Well, I was very glad that I met Vronsky. I felt very easy and simple with him. You see, now I shall try never to meet him again, but since that awkwardness is over . ..’ he said and, recalling that, trying never to meet him again, he had at once gone to see Anna, he blushed. ‘We go around saying that the people drink; I don’t know who drinks more, the people or our own class; the people at least drink on feast days, but…’ But Kitty was not interested in his thoughts about the people drinking. She had seen him blush and wished to know why.

  ‘Well, and where did you go after that?’

  ‘Stiva was terribly insistent on going to see Anna Arkadyevna.’

  Having said that, Levin blushed still more, and his doubts about whether he had done a good or a bad thing by going to see Anna were finally resolved. He now knew that he should not have done it.

  Kitty’s eyes opened especially wide and flashed at the name of Anna, but with effort she concealed her agitation and deceived him.

  ‘Ah!’ was all she said.

  ‘You surely won’t be angry that I went. Stiva asked me to, and Dolly also wanted it,’ Levin continued.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, but he saw the effort in her eyes, which boded him no good.

  ‘She’s a very nice, a very, very pitiful and good woman,’ he said, telling her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had asked him to tell her.

  ‘Yes, to be sure, she’s very pitiful,’ said Kitty, when he had finished. ‘Who was your letter from?’

  He told her and, believing in her calm tone, went to undress.

  Coming back, he found Kitty in the same armchair. When he went up to her, she looked at him and burst into tears.

  ‘What is it? What is it?’ he asked, already knowing what.

  ‘You’ve fallen in love with that nasty woman. She’s bewitched you. I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can come of it? You drank at the club, drank, gambled, and then went… to whom? No, let’s go away … Tomorrow I’m going away.’

  It took Levin a long time to calm his wife down. When he finally did, it was only by confessing that the feeling of pity, along with the wine, had thrown him off guard and made him yield to Anna’s cunning influence, and that he was going to avoid her. The one thing he confessed most sincerely of all was that, living so long in Moscow, just talking, eating and drinking, he had got befuddled. They talked till three o’clock in the morning. Only at three o’clock were they reconciled enough to be able to fall asleep.

  XII

  After seeing her guests off, Anna began pacing up and down the room without sitting down. Though for the whole evening (lately she had acted the same way towards all young men) she had unconsciously done everything she could to arouse a feeling of love for her in Levin, and though she knew that she had succeeded in it, as far as one could with regard to an honest, married man in one evening, and though she liked him very much (despite the sharp contrast, from a man’s point of view, between Levin and Vronsky, as a woman she saw what they had in common, for which Kitty, too, had loved them both), as soon as he left the room, she stopped thinking about him.

  One and only one thought relentlessly pursued her in various forms. ‘If I have such an effect on others, on this loving family man, why is he so cold to me? … or not really cold, he loves me, I know that. But something new separates us now. Why was he gone all evening? He sent word with Stiva that he could not leave Yashvin and had to watch over his gambling. Is Yashvin a child? But suppose it’s true. He never tells lies. But there’s something else in this truth. He’s glad of an occasion to show me that he has other responsibilities. I know that, I agree with it. But why prove it to me? He wants to prove to me that his love for me shouldn’t hinder his freedom. But I don’t need proofs, I need love. He ought to have understood all the difficulty of my life here in Moscow. Do I live? I don’t live, I wait for a denouement that keeps being postponed. Again there’s no answer! And Stiva says he can’t go to Alexei Alexandrovich. And I can’t write again. I can’t do anything, start anything, change anything. I restrain myself, wait, invent amusements for myself – the Englishman’s family, writing, reading – but it’s all only a deception, the same morphine again. He ought to pity me,’ she said, feeling tears of self–pity come to her eyes.

  She heard Vronsky’s impetuous ring and hastily wiped her tears, and not only wiped them but sat down by the lamp and opened the book, pretending to be calm. She had to show him that she was displeased that he had not come back as he had promised, only displeased, but in no way show him her grief and least of all her self–pity. She might have pity for herself, but not he for her. She did not want to fight, she reproached him for wanting to fight, but involuntarily she herself assumed a fighting position.

  ‘Well, you weren’t bored?’ he said, coming up to her, cheerful and animated. ‘What a terrible passion – gambling!’

  ‘No, I wasn’t bored, I learned long ago not to be bored. Stiva was here, and Levin.’

  ‘Yes, they wanted to come and see you. Well, how do you like Levin?’ he said, sitting beside her.

  ‘Very much. They left not long ago. What did Yashvin do?’

  ‘He was winning – seventeen thousand. I called him. He was just about to leave. But he went back and now he’s losing again.’

  ‘What good was your staying then?’ she asked, suddenly raising her eyes to him. The expression on her face was cold and inimical. ‘You told Stiva you were staying to take Yashvin away. And you left him there.’

  The same expression of cold readiness for a fight also showed on his face.

  ‘First of all, I didn’t ask him to convey anything to you; second, I never tell lies. And the main thing is that I wanted to stay and so I did,’ he said, frowning. ‘Anna, why, why?’ he said, after a moment’s silence, leaning towards her and opening his hand, hoping she would put her hand in it.

  She was glad of this invitation to tenderness. But some strange power of evil would not allow her to yield to her impulse, as if the conditions of the fight did not allow her to submit.

  ‘Of course, you wanted to stay and so you did. You do whatever you like. But why do you tell that to me? Why?’ she said, becoming still angrier. ‘Does anyone dispute your rights? No, you want to be right, so be right.’

  His hand closed, he drew back, and his face assumed a still more stubborn expression than before.

  ‘For you it’s a matter of obstinacy,’ she said, looking intently at him and suddenly finding the name for that annoying expression on his face, ‘precisely of obstinacy. For you it’s a question of whether you are victorious over me, but for me …’ Again she felt pity for herself and she all but wept. ‘If you knew what it is for me! When I feel, as I do now, that you look at me with hostility – yes, with hostility – if you knew what that means for me! If you knew how close I am to disaster in these moments, how afraid I am, afraid of myself!’ And she turned away, hiding her sobs.

  ‘But what is this all about?’ he said, horrified at the expression of her despair and, leaning towards her again, he took her hand and kissed it.

  ‘Why? Do I look for outside amusements? Don’t I avoid other women’s company?’

  ‘I should hope so!’ she said.

  ‘Well, tell me, what must I do to set you at peace? I’m ready to do anything to make you happy,’ he said, moved by her despair. ‘There’s nothing I won’t do to deliver you from such grief as now, Anna!’ he said.