by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
As she was going to the big clock to check her watch, someone drove up. Looking out of the window, she saw his carriage. But no one came up the stairs and voices could be heard below. This was the messenger, who had come back in the carriage. She went down to him.
‘I didn’t find the count. He left for the Nizhni Novgorod railway.’
‘What are you doing? What…’ she said to the merry, red–cheeked Mikhaila, who was handing her note back to her.
‘Ah, yes, he didn’t get it,’ she remembered.
‘Take this note to Countess Vronsky’s country estate. You know it? And bring an answer at once,’ she said to the messenger.
‘And I, what shall I do?’ she thought. ‘Ah, I’m going to Dolly’s, that’s right, otherwise I’ll go out of my mind. Ah, I can also send a telegram.’ And she wrote a telegram:
‘I absolutely must talk with you, come at once.’
Having sent the telegram, she went to get dressed. Dressed and with her hat on, she again looked into the eyes of the plump, placid Annushka. Obvious compassion could be seen in those small, kind, grey eyes.
‘Annushka, dear, what am I to do?’ Anna said, sobbing, as she sank helplessly into an armchair.
‘Why worry so, Anna Arkadyevna! It happens. You go and take your mind off it,’ said the maid.
‘Yes, I’ll go,’ said Anna, recollecting herself and getting up. ‘And if a telegram comes while I’m gone, send it to Darya Alexandrovna’s … No, I’ll come back myself.
‘Yes, I mustn’t think, I must do something, go out, first of all – leave this house,’ she said, listening with horror to the terrible turmoil in her heart, and she hurriedly went out and got into the carriage.
‘Where to, ma’am?’ asked Pyotr, before climbing up on the box.
‘To Znamenka, to the Oblonskys’.’
XXVIII
The weather was clear. All morning there had been a fine, light drizzle, but now it had cleared up. The iron roofs, the flagstones of the pavements, the cobbles of the roadway, the wheels and leather, copper and tin of the carriages – everything glistened brightly in the May sun. It was three o’clock and the liveliest time in the streets.
Sitting in the corner of the comfortable carriage, barely rocking on its resilient springs to the quick pace of the greys, again going over the events of the last few days, under the incessant clatter of the wheels and the quickly changing impressions of the open air, Anna saw her situation quite differently from the way it had seemed to her at home. Now the thought of death no longer seemed to her so terrible and clear, and death itself no longer appeared inevitable. Now she reproached herself for stooping to such humiliation. ‘I begged him to forgive me. I submitted to him. I acknowledged myself guilty. Why? Can’t I live without him?’ And, not answering the question of how she would live without him, she began reading the signboards. ‘Office and Warehouse. Dentist. Yes, I’ll tell Dolly everything. She doesn’t like Vronsky. It will be shameful, painful, but I’ll tell her everything. She loves me, and I’ll follow her advice. I won’t submit to him; I won’t allow him to teach me. Filippov, Baker. They say he also sells his dough in Petersburg. Moscow water is so good. The Mytishchi springs and the pancakes.’ And she remembered how long, long ago, when she was just seventeen years old, she had gone with her aunt to the Trinity Monastery.[26] ‘One still went by carriage. Was that really me with the red hands? How much of what then seemed so wonderful and unattainable has become insignificant, and what there was then is now for ever unattainable. Would I have believed then that I could come to such humiliation? How proud and pleased he’ll be when he gets my note! But I’ll prove to him … How bad that paint smells. Why are they always painting and building? Fashions and Attire,’ she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka’s husband. ‘Our parasites,’ she remembered Vronsky saying. ‘Ours? Why ours? The terrible thing is that it’s impossible to tear the past out by the roots. Impossible to tear it out, but possible to hide the memory of it. And I will hide it.’ Here she remembered her past with Alexei Alexandrovich and how she had wiped him from her memory. ‘Dolly will think I’m leaving a second husband and so I’m probably in the wrong. As if I want to be right! I can’t be!’ she said, and wanted to cry. But she at once began thinking what those two young girls could be smiling at. ‘Love, probably? They don’t know how joyless it is, how low… A boulevard and children. Three boys running, playing horses. Seryozha! And I’ll lose everything and not get him back. Yes, I’ll lose everything if he doesn’t come back. Maybe he was late for the train and is back by now. Again you want humiliation!’ she said to herself. ‘No, I’ll go to Dolly and tell her straight out: I’m unhappy, I deserve it, I’m to blame, but even so I’m unhappy, help me.
These horses, this carriage – how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage – it’s all his. But I won’t see them anymore.’
Thinking of the words she was going to say to Dolly, and deliberately chafing her own heart, Anna went up the steps.
‘Is anyone here?’ she asked in the front hall.
‘Katerina Alexandrovna Levin,’ the footman replied.
‘Kitty! The same Kitty that Vronsky was in love with,’ thought Anna, ‘the one he remembered with love. He regrets not having married her. And me he remembers with hatred, and he regrets having become intimate with me.’
When Anna arrived, the two sisters were having a consultation about nursing. Dolly came out alone to meet her guest, who had just interrupted their conversation.
‘You haven’t left yet? I wanted to come and see you myself,’ she said. ‘I received a letter from Stiva today.’
‘We also received a telegram,’ Anna replied, looking past her for Kitty.
‘He writes that he can’t understand precisely what Alexei Alexandrovich wants, but that he won’t leave without an answer.’
‘I thought there was someone with you. May I read the letter?’
‘Yes, it’s Kitty,’ Dolly said, embarrassed. ‘She stayed in the nursery. She’s been very ill.’
‘I heard. May I read the letter?’
‘I’ll bring it at once. But he doesn’t refuse. On the contrary, Stiva has hopes,’ said Dolly, pausing in the doorway.
‘I have no hope, and don’t even wish it,’ said Anna.
‘What is it?’ thought Anna, left alone. ‘Does Kitty consider it humiliating to meet me? Maybe she’s right. But it’s not for her, who was once in love with Vronsky, it’s not for her to show it to me, even if it’s true. I know that not a single decent woman can receive me in my position. I know that from the first moment I sacrificed everything to him! And this is the reward! Oh, how I hate him! And why did I come here? It’s still worse, still harder.’ She heard the voices of the sisters talking in the other room. ‘And what shall I say to Dolly now? Shall I comfort Kitty with my unhappiness, submit to her patronizing? No, and Dolly won’t understand anything either. And I have nothing to tell her. It would only be interesting to see Kitty and show her how I despise everyone and everything, and how it makes no difference to me now.’
Dolly came with the letter. Anna read it and silently handed it back.
‘I knew all that,’ she said. ‘And it doesn’t interest me in the least.’ ‘But why? On the contrary, I’m hopeful,’ said Dolly, looking at Anna with curiosity. She had never seen her in such a strange, irritated state. ‘When are you leaving?’ she asked.
Anna looked straight ahead with narrowed eyes and did not answer her.
‘So is Kitty hiding from me?’ she said, looking towards the door and blushing.
‘Oh, what nonsense! She’s nursing and it’s not going well, so I advised her … She’s very glad. She’ll come at once,’ Dolly said awkwardly, not knowing how to tell an untruth. ‘And here she is.’
Learning that Anna was there, Kitty did not want to come out, but Dolly persuaded her to. Gathering her strength, Kitty came out and, blushing, went to her and held out her hand.
‘I’m very glad,’ she said in a tre
mbling voice.
Kitty was confused by the struggle going on inside her between animosity towards this bad woman and the wish to be lenient with her; but as soon as she saw Anna’s beautiful, sympathetic face, all her animosity disappeared at once.
‘I wouldn’t have been surprised if you didn’t want to meet me. I’ve grown used to everything. You’ve been ill? Yes, you’ve changed,’ said Anna.
Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with animosity. She explained this animosity by the awkward position that Anna, who had once patronized her, now felt herself to be in, and she felt sorry for her.
They talked about her illness, about the baby, about Stiva, but obviously nothing interested Anna.
‘I came to say good–bye to you,’ she said, getting up.
‘When are you leaving?’
But Anna, again without answering, turned to Kitty.
‘Yes, I’m very glad to have seen you,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’ve heard so much about you from all sides, even from your husband. He visited me, and I liked him very much,’ she added, obviously with ill intent. ‘Where is he?’
‘He went to the country,’ Kitty said, blushing.
‘Be sure to give him my regards.’
‘I’ll be sure to!’ Kitty naively repeated, looking into her eyes with compassion.
‘Farewell then, Dolly!’ and having kissed Dolly and shaken Kitty’s hand, Anna hastily went out.
‘The same as always and just as attractive. Such a handsome woman!’ said Kitty, when she was alone with her sister. ‘But there’s something pathetic about her! Terribly pathetic!’
‘No, today there was something peculiar about her,’ said Dolly. ‘When I saw her off in the front hall, I thought she was going to cry.’
XXIX
Anna got into the carriage in a still worse state than when she had left the house. To the former torment was now added the feeling of being insulted and cast out, which she clearly felt when she met Kitty.
‘Where to, ma’am? Home?’ asked Pyotr.
‘Yes, home,’ she said, not even thinking of where she was going.
‘How they looked at me as if at something frightful, incomprehensible and curious. What can he be talking about so ardently with the other one?’ she thought, looking at two passers–by. ‘Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels? I wanted to tell Dolly, and it’s a good thing I didn’t. How glad she would be of my unhappiness! She would hide it, but her main feeling would be joy that I’ve been punished for the pleasures she envied me. Kitty, she would be even more glad. How I see right through her! She knows that I was more than usually friendly to her husband. And she’s jealous, and she hates me. And also despises me. In her eyes I’m an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman, I could get her husband to fall in love with me… if I wanted to. And I did want to. This one is pleased with himself,’ she thought of a fat, red–cheeked gentleman who, as he drove by in the opposite direction, took her for an acquaintance and raised a shiny hat over his bald, shiny head and then realized he was mistaken. ‘He thought he knew me. And he knows me as little as anyone else in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say. Those two want that dirty ice cream. That they know for certain,’ she thought, looking at two boys who had stopped an ice–cream man, who was taking the barrel down from his head and wiping his sweaty face with the end of a towel. ‘We all want something sweet, tasty. If not candy, then dirty ice cream. And Kitty’s the same: if not Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies me. And hates me. We all hate each other. I Kitty, Kitty me. That’s the truth.
Twitkin, Coiffeur … Je me fais coiffer par Twitkin . . .* I’ll tell him when he comes,’ she thought and smiled. But at the same moment she remembered that she now had no one to tell anything funny to. ‘And there isn’t anything gay or funny. Everything is vile. The bells ring for vespers and this merchant crosses himself so neatly! As if he’s afraid of dropping something. Why these churches, this ringing and this lie? Only to hide the fact that we all hate each other, like these cabbies who quarrel so spitefully. Yashvin says, "He wants to leave me without a shirt, and I him." That’s the truth!’
In these thoughts, which carried her away so much that she even stopped thinking about her situation, she pulled up at the entrance of her house. Only on seeing the hall porter coming out to meet her did she remember that she had sent the note and the telegram.
‘Is there an answer?’ she asked.
‘I’ll look at once,’ said the porter and, glancing at the desk, he picked up the thin, square envelope of a telegram and handed it to her. ‘I cannot come before ten. Vronsky,’ she read.
‘And the messenger hasn’t come back yet?’
‘No, ma’am,’ replied the porter.
‘Ah, in that case I know what to do,’ she said, and, feeling a vague wrath surge up in her, and a need for revenge, she ran upstairs. ‘I’ll go to him myself. Before going away forever, I’ll tell him everything. I’ve never hated anyone as I do this man!’ she thought. Seeing his hat on the coat rack, she shuddered with revulsion. She did not realize that his telegram was a reply to her telegram and that he had not yet received her note. She imagined him now, calmly talking with his mother and Princess Sorokin and rejoicing at her suffering. ‘Yes, I must go quickly,’ she said to herself, still not knowing where to go. She wanted to get away quickly from the feelings she experienced in that terrible house. The servants, the walls, the things in the house – it all gave her a feeling of revulsion and anger and pressed her down with its weight.
‘Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if I don’t find him, I’ll go there myself and expose him.’ Anna looked up the train schedule in the newspaper. The evening train left at 8:02. ‘Yes, I can make it.’ She ordered other horses to be harnessed and began packing her travelling bag with the things necessary for several days. She knew she would not come back there any more. Among other plans that entered her head,
* I have ray hair done by Twitkin.
she also vaguely decided that after whatever happened there at the station or at the countess’s estate, she would take the Nizhni Novgorod railway to the first town and stay there.
Dinner was on the table; she went up to it, smelled the bread and cheese and, convinced that the smell of all food disgusted her, ordered the carriage to be brought and went out. The house already cast its shadow across the whole street, and the clear evening was still warm in the sun. Annushka, who accompanied her with her things, and Pyotr, who put them into the carriage, and the obviously disgruntled driver –they all disgusted her and irritated her with their words and movements.
‘I don’t need you, Pyotr.’
‘And what about your ticket?’
‘Well, as you like, it makes no difference to me,’ she said with vexation.
Pyotr jumped up on the box and, arms akimbo, told the driver to go to the railway station.
XXX
‘Here it is again! Again I understand everything,’ Anna said to herself as soon as the carriage set off, rocking and clattering over the small cobbles, and again the impressions began changing one after another.
‘Yes, what was that last thing I thought about so nicely?’ she tried to remember. ‘Twitkin, Coiffeur? No, not that. Yes, it was what Yashvin said: the struggle for existence and hatred – the only thing that connects people. No, you’re going in vain,’ she mentally addressed a company in a coach–and–four who were evidently going out of town for some merriment. ‘And the dog you’re taking with you won’t help you. You won’t get away from yourselves.’ Glancing in the direction in which Pyotr had just turned, she saw a half–dead–drunk factory worker with a lolling head being taken somewhere by a policeman. ‘Sooner that one,’ she thought. ‘Count Vronsky and I didn’t find that pleasure either, though we expected so much from it.’ And now for the first time Anna turned the bright light in which she saw everything upon her relations with him, which she had avoided thinking about before. ‘What wa
s he looking for in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of his vanity.’ She remembered his words, the expression on his face, like an obedient pointer, in the early days of their liaison. And now everything confirmed it. ‘Yes, there was the triumph of successful vanity in him. Of course, there was love, too, but for the most part it was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now it’s past. Nothing to be proud of. Not proud but ashamed. He took all he could from me, and I’m of no use to him any more. I’m a burden to him, and he tries not to be dishonourable towards me. He let it slip yesterday – he wants the divorce and marriage in order to burn his boats. He loves me – but how? The zest is gone,’ she said to herself in English. ‘This one wants to astonish everybody and is very pleased with himself,’ she thought, looking at a red–cheeked sales clerk riding a rented horse. ‘Yes, I no longer have the same savour for him. If I leave him, at the bottom of his heart he’ll be glad.’