Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Well, they need people there. I’ve heard the Serbian officers aren’t any good.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and these will make fine soldiers,’ Katavasov said, laughing with his eyes. And they began to talk about the latest war news, each concealing from the other his perplexity as to whom the next day’s battle was to be fought with, if, according to the latest news, the Turks had been beaten at all points. And so they parted, neither of them having voiced his opinion.

  Katavasov went to his carriage and, involuntarily dissembling, told Sergei Ivanovich his observations on the volunteers, from which it turned out that they were excellent fellows.

  At a large town station the volunteers were again met with singing and shouting, again men and women appeared with collection cups, and the provincial ladies offered bouquets to the volunteers and followed them to the buffet; but all this was considerably weaker and smaller than in Moscow.

  IV

  During the stop in the provincial capital Sergei Ivanovich did not go to the buffet but started pacing up and down the platform.

  The first time he walked past Vronsky’s compartment, he noticed that the window was curtained. But, walking past it a second time, he saw the old countess at the window. She called him over to her.

  ‘You see, I’m accompanying him as far as Kursk,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, pausing by her window and looking inside. ‘What a handsome gesture on his part!’ he added, noticing that Vronsky was not in the compartment.

  ‘But after his misfortune what was he to do?’

  ‘Such a terrible occurrence!’ said Sergei Ivanovich.

  ‘Ah, what I’ve lived through! But do come in … Ah, what I’ve lived through!’ she repeated, when Sergei Ivanovich came in and sat down beside her on the seat. ‘You can’t imagine! For six weeks he didn’t speak to anyone and ate only when I begged him to. And he couldn’t be left alone for a single moment. We took away everything he might have used to kill himself; we lived on the ground floor, but we couldn’t predict anything. You know, he already tried to shoot himself because of her,’ she said, and the old lady’s brows knitted at the memory of it. ‘Yes, she ended as such a woman should have ended. Even the death she chose was mean and low.’

  ‘It’s not for us to judge, Countess,’ Sergei Ivanovich said with a sigh, ‘but I understand how hard it was for you.’

  ‘Ah, don’t even say it! I was living on my estate and he was with me. A note was brought to him. He wrote a reply and sent it back. We had no idea that she was right there at the station. In the evening I had just gone to my room when my Mary told me that some lady at the station had thrown herself under a train. It was as if something hit me! I knew it was she. The first thing I said was: "Don’t tell him." But he had already been told. His coachman was there and saw it all. When I came running into his room, he was no longer himself – it was terrible to look at him. He galloped off to the station without saying a word. I don’t know what happened there, but he was brought back like a dead man. I wouldn’t have recognized him. Prostration complete, the doctor said. Then came near frenzy.

  ‘Ah, what is there to say!’ the countess went on, waving her hand. ‘A terrible time! No, whatever you say, she was a bad woman. Well, what are these desperate passions! It’s all to prove something special. So she proved it. Ruined herself and two fine men – her husband and my unfortunate son.’

  ‘And what about her husband?’ asked Sergei Ivanovich.

  ‘He took her daughter. At first Alyosha agreed to everything. But now he suffers terribly for having given his daughter to a stranger. But he can’t go back on his word. Karenin came to the funeral. But we tried to make it so that he wouldn’t meet Alyosha. For him, for the husband, it’s easier after all. She set him free. But my poor son gave her all of himself. He abandoned everything – career, me – and even so she took no pity on him but deliberately destroyed him completely. No, whatever you say, her death was itself the death of a vile, irreligious woman. God forgive me, but I can’t help hating her memory, looking at the ruin of my son.’

  ‘But how is he now?’ ‘This is God’s help to us, this Serbian war. I’m an old woman, I don’t understand anything about it, but it’s been sent him by God. Of course, as a mother I’m afraid, and above all they say ce n’est pas très bien vu à Petersbourg.* But what can be done! It’s the only thing that could have lifted him up again. Yashvin – his friend – lost everything at cards and decided to go to Serbia. He came to see him and talked him into it. Now he’s taken up with it. Talk to him, please, I want him to be distracted. He’s so sad. And, as ill luck would have it, he’s got a toothache. He’ll be very glad to see you. Please talk to him, he’s walking on that side.’

  Sergei Ivanovich said he would be very glad to, and went over to the other side of the train.

  V

  In the slanted evening shadow of the sacks piled on the platform, Vronsky, in his long coat, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his hands in his pockets, was pacing like a caged animal, turning abruptly every twenty steps. As Sergei Ivanovich approached, it seemed to him that Vronsky saw him but pretended to be unseeing. That made no difference to Sergei Ivanovich. He was above keeping any personal accounts with Vronsky.

  In Sergei Ivanovich’s eyes, Vronsky was at that moment an important actor in a great cause, and he considered it his duty to encourage him and show his approval. He went up to him.

  Vronsky stopped, peered, recognized him and, taking a few steps towards him, gave him a very firm handshake.

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t wish to see me,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, ‘but may I not be of some use to you?’

  ‘There is no one it would be less unpleasant for me to see than you,’ said Vronsky. ‘Forgive me. Nothing in life is pleasant for me.’

  ‘I understand, and I wanted to offer you my services,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, peering into Vronsky’s obviously suffering face. ‘Might you need a letter to Ristich, or to Milan?’[5]

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Vronsky, as though he had difficulty understanding. ‘If you don’t mind, let’s walk a bit more. It’s so stuffy on the train. A letter?

  * It’s not very well regarded in Petersburg.

  No, thank you. One needs no recommendations in order to die. Unless it’s to the Turks …’ he said, smiling with his lips only. His eyes kept their expression of angry suffering.

  ‘Yes, but perhaps it will be easier for you to enter into relations, which are necessary in any case, with someone who has been prepared. However, as you wish. I was very glad to hear of your decision. There are so many attacks on the volunteers that a man like you raises them in public opinion.’

  ‘As a man,’ said Vronsky, ‘I’m good in that life has no value for me. And I have enough physical energy to hack my way into a square and either crush it or go down – that I know. I’m glad there’s something for which I can give my life, which is not so much needless as hateful to me. It will be useful to somebody.’ And he made an impatient movement with his jaw, caused by an incessant, gnawing toothache, which even prevented him from speaking with the expression he would have liked.

  ‘You’ll come back to life, I predict it,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, feeling moved. ‘Delivering one’s brothers from the yoke is a goal worthy of both death and life. May God grant you outward success – and inner peace,’ he added and held out his hand.

  Vronsky firmly pressed Sergei Ivanovich’s hand.

  ‘Yes, as a tool I may prove good for something. But as a human being I am a wreck,’ he said measuredly.

  The nagging pain in the strong tooth, filling his mouth with saliva, prevented him from speaking. He fell silent, peering into the wheels of a tender rolling slowly and smoothly towards him on the rails.

  And suddenly a quite different feeling, not pain but a general, tormenting inner discomfort, made him forget his toothache for a moment. As he looked at the tender and the rails, influenced by the conversation with an acquaintance he had not met since
his misfortune, he suddenly remembered her – that is, what was left of her when he came running like a madman into the shed of the railway station: on a table in the shed, sprawled shamelessly among strangers, lay the blood–covered body, still filled with recent life; the intact head with its heavy plaits and hair curling at the temples was thrown back, and on the lovely face with its half–open red lips a strange expression was frozen, pitiful on the lips and terrible in the fixed, unclosed eyes, as if uttering the words of that terrible phrase – that he would regret it – which she had spoken to him when they had quarrelled.

  And he tried to remember her as she had been when he first met her, also at a station, mysterious, enchanting, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly vengeful as he remembered her in the last moment. He tried to remember his best moments with her, but those moments were forever poisoned. He remembered only her triumphant, accomplished threat of totally unnecessary but ineffaceable regret. He ceased to feel the toothache, and sobs distorted his face.

  After silently walking past the sacks a couple of times and regaining control of himself, he calmly addressed Sergei Ivanovich:

  ‘Have you had any telegrams since yesterday’s? Yes, they were beaten for a third time, but tomorrow the decisive battle is expected.’

  And having talked more about Milan being proclaimed king and the enormous consequences it might have, they went back to their carriages after the second bell.

  VI

  As he had not known when he would be able to leave Moscow, Sergei Ivanovich had not telegraphed his brother in order to be met. Levin was not at home when Katavasov and Sergei Ivanovich, dusty as Moors, in a little tarantass hired at the station, drove up to the porch of the Pokrovskoe house at around noon. Kitty, who was sitting on the balcony with her father and sister, recognized her brother–in–law and ran down to meet him.

  ‘Shame on you for not letting us know,’ she said, giving Sergei Ivanovich her hand and offering her forehead.

  ‘We had a wonderful ride, and without bothering you,’ replied Sergei Ivanovich. ‘I’m so dusty I’m afraid to touch you. I’ve been so busy I didn’t know when I’d be able to get away. And you, as ever,’ he said, smiling, ‘are enjoying quiet happiness far from all the currents in your quiet backwater. And our friend Fyodor Vassilyevich also finally decided to come.’

  ‘And I’m no Negro – I’ll wash and look like a human being,’ Katavasov said with his usual jocularity, giving her his hand and smiling, his teeth gleaming especially on account of his black face.

  ‘Kostya will be very glad. He’s gone out to the farmstead. He ought to be home any time now.’

  ‘Still busy with the farming. Precisely in backwaters,’ said Katavasov.

  ‘And we in the city see nothing but the Serbian war. Well, what’s my friend’s attitude? Surely something unlike other people’s?’

  ‘No, not really, the same as everyone else’s,’ Kitty replied, looking with some embarrassment at Sergei Ivanovich. ‘I’ll send for him, then. And we have papa with us. He came from abroad not long ago.’

  And, giving orders that Levin be sent for and that her dust–covered guests be taken to wash, one to the study, the other to Dolly’s former room, and that lunch be prepared for them, she ran out to the balcony, exercising her right to move quickly, which she had been deprived of during her pregnancy.

  ‘It’s Sergei Ivanovich and Katavasov, a professor,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, it’s hard in such heat!’ said the prince.

  ‘No, papa, he’s very nice, and Kostya loves him very much,’ said Kitty, smiling, as if persuading him of something, having noticed the mocking look on her father’s face.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me.’

  ‘Go to them, darling,’ Kitty said to her sister, ‘and entertain them. They met Stiva at the station. He’s well. And I’ll run to Mitya. Poor thing, I haven’t nursed him since breakfast. He’s awake now and must be crying.’ And, feeling the influx of milk, she went with quick steps to the nursery.

  Indeed, it was not that she guessed (her bond with the baby had not been broken yet), but she knew for certain by the influx of milk in her that he needed to be fed.

  She knew he was crying even before she came near the nursery. And he was indeed crying. She heard his voice and quickened her pace. But the quicker she walked, the louder he cried. It was a good, healthy, but hungry and impatient voice.

  ‘Has he been crying long, nanny?’ Kitty said hurriedly, sitting down on a chair and preparing to nurse him. ‘Give him to me quickly. Ah, nanny, how tiresome you are – no, you can tie the bonnet afterwards!’

  The baby was in a fit of greedy screaming.

  ‘That’s not the way, dearie,’ said Agafya Mikhailovna, who was almost always there in the nursery. ‘He must be tidied up properly. Coo, coo!’ she sang over him, paying no attention to the mother.

  The nanny brought the baby to the mother. Agafya Mikhailovna followed them, her face melting with tenderness.

  ‘He knows me, he does. It’s God’s truth, dearest Katerina Alexandrovna, he recognized me!’ Agafya Mikhailovna out–shouted the baby.

  But Kitty did not listen to what she said. Her impatience kept growing along with the baby’s.

  Owing to that impatience, it was a long time before matters were put right. The baby grabbed the wrong thing and got angry.

  Finally, after a desperate, gasping cry and empty sucking, matters were put right, mother and baby simultaneously felt pacified, and both quieted down.

  ‘He’s all sweaty, too, poor little thing,’ Kitty said in a whisper, feeling the baby. ‘Why do you think he recognizes you?’ she added, looking sideways at the baby’s eyes, which seemed to her to be peeping slyly from under the pulled–down bonnet, at his regularly puffing cheeks and his hand with its red palm, with which he was making circular movements.

  ‘It can’t be! If he recognized anyone, it would be me,’ Kitty said in response to Agafya Mikhailovna’s observation, and she smiled.

  She smiled because, though she had said he could not recognize anything, she knew in her heart that he not only recognized Agafya Mikhailovna but knew and understood everything, knew and understood much else that no one knew and which she, his mother, had herself learned and begun to understand only thanks to him. For Agafya Mikhailovna, for his nanny, for his grandfather, even for his father, Mitya was a living being who required only material care; but for his mother he had long been a moral creature with whom she had a whole history of spiritual relations.

  ‘Once he wakes up, God willing, you’ll see for yourself. I do like this, and he just beams all over, the darling. Beams all over, like a sunny day,’ said Agafya Mikhailovna.

  ‘Well, all right, all right, we’ll see then,’ whispered Kitty. ‘Go now, he’s falling asleep.’

  VII

  Agafya Mikhailovna tiptoed out; the nanny lowered the blind, chased away the flies from under the muslin bed curtain and a hornet that was beating against the window–pane, and sat down, waving a wilting birch branch over the mother and baby. ‘Ah, this heat, this heat! If only God would send a little rain,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes, shh …’ was Kitty’s only reply, as she rocked slightly and gently pressed down the plump arm, as if tied with a thread at the wrist, which Mitya kept waving weakly, now closing, now opening his eyes. This arm disturbed Kitty: she would have liked to kiss it but was afraid to, lest she waken the baby. The little arm finally stopped moving and the eyes closed. Only from time to time, going on with what he was doing, the baby raised his long, curling eyelashes slightly and glanced at his mother with his moist eyes, which seemed black in the semi–darkness. The nanny stopped waving and dozed off. From upstairs came the rumble of the old prince’s voice and Katavasov’s loud laughter.