The Killing of Anna Karenina

by Richard Freeborn

  ‘Help me up a little, Boris, if you would.’

  It was a voice of quiet, feminine authority that matched the elegance of the movement as she sat upright with Boris’s help and then skilfully, delicately adjusted the skirt of her long garment to suit herself. This was the vitality, the poise, of Anna Arkadyevna as the prince had known her in St Petersburg. He could not doubt that for a moment. She herself forestalled any further doubts by waving towards a chair and saying confidently and strongly, as if they were the closest of friends: ‘I learned, my dear prince, only this morning how helpful you have been.’

  ‘Madame,’ he said a little nervously and equally nervously sat down in a rickety gilded upright armchair.

  ‘You may have found a cure for my darling Sergei, my dear Seriozha. I cannot say how grateful I am. He is very precious to me, you know, and anything that can alleviate the pain must have some quality of the divine about it. In that sense you have indeed been a saviour to us.’ She adjusted the sleeves of her black garment. ‘You are content that I speak our language? Russian is not strange to you?’

  ‘Oh, no, madame!’ He was disconcerted to hear the voice coming from behind the veil as if from behind a heavy curtain that scarcely moved at all when she spoke. ‘I imagine you have not had much opportunity to speak our language…’

  ‘Prince, you are right! For many, many years I tried to speak only English, but it strikes me one cannot change oneself. I now prefer my native language. I believe – yes, I think I can tell from your face…’ she leaned forward to look closely at him, still without revealing any of her own features ‘…I believe I knew you a long time ago, Prince Rostov. You were very young and your looks, well, like mine… have changed. Do you remember me?’

  ‘Of course, madame. It was just before I went off to the Turkish campaign.’

  ‘Oh, please, do not mention that! I hate to remember that war! Do you smoke? Boris, where are the cigars?’

  He said he did not smoke.

  ‘My friend Gerald does,’ she said. ‘So many men do nowadays, I understand.’

  Both of her white hands now fluttered commandingly and a little irritably as if trying to disperse cigar smoke. It was a signal for Boris to begin doing what was expected of him. The ritual included a slow pouring of sepia-coloured tea into glasses set in fretted silver holders, a topping up with hot water from the tap of the bubbling samovar and the placing of the silver holders on little saucers beside sugar lumps. All this was watched with a kind of momentary absorption as if the ritual would be bound to end in the old man’s shaky movements causing a spill. Attention was suddenly diverted by her voice coming from behind the veil: ‘So, prince, we are in your debt, I understand. My poor, poor boy, he was so terribly ill. I trembled for him, as you can imagine. He had only been with me here such a short time and we had been out just once… He thought he had been shot, you know. It is quite possible, because we have enemies.’

  ‘Surely, madame, not here.’

  ‘Oh, my dear prince, you cannot imagine!’ Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘We have enemies all round us! This house is full of our enemies! Please draw your chair closer so we can talk quietly. I find loud sounds so distracting these days.’

  ‘Not Giles, not Lord Irmingham surely?’ the prince asked, the chair creaking beneath him as he moved forward.

  ‘No, no, Giles has always been my friend. But there are others. People wish to know who I am, you see. Threats have even come to me…’ She pressed her veiled face close to his ear and whispered something about a bath.

  ‘Excuse me, I didn’t…’

  ‘…in my bath! Think of that!’

  She was crazy! Probably like Giles!

  ‘In my bath, my dear prince! And I am not imagining it! I know dear Giles thinks I do, but I do not! I do not! For a recluse like me it may seem easy to imagine things, but I am not imagining anything!’

  ‘Madame, surely…’

  Boris was hovering close by, having poured the tea and awaiting further orders. His eyes met the prince’s with the distressed look of a child who did not know what to do. An instant later they were fastened on his mistress, leaving the prince with an increasing sense that both of them were equally deranged.

  ‘Thank you, Boris, that will be all,’ she announced.

  ‘Mistress.’

  Boris then bowed, shuffled backwards, bowed again and no doubt through long habit managed to avoid crashing into any of the furniture. Before leaving he crossed himself with broad sweeps of his arm in front of an icon and rather theatrically turned, bowed again and beat a retreat through the door.

  ‘Oh, he is so devoted. I need devoted friends,’ she said. ‘I think, prince, I can count on your devotion.’

  He assured her she could.

  ‘Oh, I am so grateful! I am sure you can understand.’ She reached out and patted his hand. For him there was no escaping a sense that she had moved far beyond politeness in her gratitude and was even assuming the right of a seraglio queen to make a covert overture to love. ‘I feel I can be perfectly intimate with you, my dear prince. I can tell you now quite sincerely that there are enemies here. I have enemies. I know I have. That is why I hardly dare go out. Why I want the windows closed. And you will soon find you have enemies, too, now that you have come to see me.’

  ‘Oh, but why?’

  ‘You will find out.’

  She lifted her veil and took a sip of the tea. It was done so skilfully he did not catch sight of her face. He recognised that the sipping of the tea was a move designed to quell further discussion. The veil was impenetrable, that was that. He knew he had no right to ask why she wore it. Instead he sipped his own tea and asked after her health.

  ‘I am all right. Nerves, as always.’

  They both drank in a momentary silence.

  ‘I remember your portrait outside, madame,’ he remarked in an effort not to talk about her nerves. ‘But may I,’ he added, ‘presume upon your good nature and address you in a less formal way? May I call you Anna Arkadyevna?’

  ‘Oh, of course, my dear prince! Please do address me as Anna Arkadyevna. I am so unused to being called that. Like the portrait, you understand, the name belongs to my past, not my present self.’ It pleased him to hear her give a little laugh. ‘Don’t you remember, prince, all those years ago, how we talked about such important things? We talked about painting, I think. The realism of French painting, for example.’

  ‘Oh, I do remember. I was a great enthusiast for the return to realism in those days and the French struck me as exhibiting such a sense of poetry in their respect for the truth of reality.’

  Again she gave a light laugh. ‘I am laughing,’ she said, ‘in the way one does when one sees a portrait that has captured a very good likeness. What you’ve just said captured exactly French art as it was then, their painting and their literature – Zola, I mean, and Daudet. Perhaps it’s always the case that one’s concepts originally have their source in invented, conventional figures and later combinations occur, as it were, so that invented figures become boring and the time comes to think up more natural ones, figures that do more justice to reality.’

  ‘That is absolutely right!’ The prince could not have agreed more.

  ‘You have met my little pupil, have you?’ The glass appeared from underneath the veil and was placed on an occasional table. The sudden change of subject took him off guard.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hannah. Hannah Kempson, as she now is. She has been taking such care of my poor Seriozha. I think she may have fallen a little bit in love with him.’

  ‘I was told she brought you here.’

  ‘She did, yes. She was my only real success, you know. I have had a life full of failures, my dear prince, and she is my only success.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I failed to make a success of my marriage. I failed over my son. I failed over Count Vronskii. But over dear Hannah – no. I expended so much love and care on her and she repaid me by literally
saving my life. I call that a success.’

  ‘Oh, that is most certainly true.’ She was living in the past, he thought, but that in itself tended to prove it was the real Anna Arkadyevna speaking. He took a chance and made a remark very similar to one he remembered making at their first meeting.

  ‘Anna Arkadyevna, forgive me if I speak familiarly…’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Anna Arkadyevna, if you had devoted a hundredth part of the energy you devoted to Hannah to the more general purpose of educating Russian children you would have done a useful and important job.’

  She gave no sign of taking offence. The elegant hands drew apart in unaffected candour: ‘That may be so, but I couldn’t. I was encouraged to take an interest in the school on the Vronskii estate. I went there several times. The peasant children were very nice, but I wasn’t drawn to it. You mentioned my energy. Energy is based on love. But you can’t force love, you know. I loved Hannah, I don’t know why.’

  ‘I understand perfectly,’ he said. ‘One cannot put one’s heart into schools and institutions like that and I think that’s precisely why such philanthropic institutions always produce so few results.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez large to love a whole home of beastly little girls. Cela ne m’ai jamais reussi. So many women have gained a position in society in that way. But you see I never wanted a position in society. And now, of course…’

  A dismissive flutter of the hands elegantly put the subject to rest.

  One thing was now clear: the natural, easy way of talking was exactly what the prince remembered from their meeting in St Petersburg. Like that earlier time, Anna Karenina moved the conversation along with confidence and fluency. She described without embarrassment and with hardly any hesitation how she had entrusted herself completely to Hannah, how Hannah had tended her on the voyage to England and how she had eventually arrived at Stadleigh Court and very slowly recovered from her injuries. He was naturally dying to ask exactly what had caused them. Almost casually she gave him the answer: ‘I was pushed, you know.’

  ‘Pushed! But who…’

  ‘I simply cannot say, but I know someone pushed me.’

  ‘Someone pushed you!’

  ‘Yes, yes, someone pushed me. I think that’s what happened.’

  Oh, it couldn’t be otherwise! The vivacity was still there, after all these years, and though she might be prey to all sorts of fears, not least that of showing the terrible injuries done to her face, she gave no impression of being frightened of life.

  ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am to hear that,’ he said. ‘I know it is the generally accepted version…’

  ‘The published version,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course!’

  ‘And what people read they tend to believe.’

  ‘Yes, but you are clearly alive! And if I may say so, it is because you are alive that I was asked to come here by Giles, by Lord Irmingham. You are an heiress, you know.’

  ‘Oh, that!’

  ‘It is most important apparently. He needs the money so badly.’

  ‘Of course he does, poor dear! I love his idealism.’

  ‘But you have always preferred realism, Anna Arkadyevna.’

  ‘Always,’

  ‘Yet I would never have thought you sentimental.’

  ‘Sentimental? What do you mean?’

  ‘I was riding my bicycle and had an accident. It was just down by what I think is called the old ford. As I lay there I could hardly fail to see a strange sight – a boat decked out in black, with a black canopy. It sailed out into the sunlight and I think you cast a red rose on the water. It was you, wasn’t it, Anna Arkadyevna? Giles said you did it in honour of your late husband.’

  He knew he was taking a risk in mentioning the episode, but the silence that greeted it made him regret it at once. There was no way of telling what the effect was. Neither the veil nor the elegant hands gave any sign of reaction, so it took a little time to realise what was happening.

  Her whole body quivered under the black garment. He assumed at first it was due to anger. Then he realised she was not so much quivering as shaking and he felt alarmed. By quick stages the rapid movement transformed itself into the beginnings of a shoulder-heaving mirth, accompanied by a ripple of unaffected, girlish giggles from behind the veil, which in turn gathered momentum and ended in a long peal of laughter. She threw her head back. Then, as the laughter subsided, a hand stretched out to the occasional table beside her, found a handkerchief and again disappeared beneath the veil, soon to be followed by a lengthy nose-blowing.

  ‘Oh, my dear prince! No! In honour of my late husband indeed!’

  Again a little trill of laughter followed by more sniffing and nose-blowing. He apologised for supposing she had been annoyed and, as he spoke, noticed on the occasional table where the handkerchief had been lying a small silver-framed photograph of someone who looked very like Gerald Kempson.

  ‘No need to be sorry.’ She again patted his hand reassuringly. ‘You weren’t to know. No, it was a little outing for me, a little ceremony. Oh, it’s too silly to talk about. You are quite right, I am sentimental.’

  ‘May I ask what kind of ceremony?’

  ‘Oh, it’s too silly to talk about! It was for my poor Frou-Frou!’ She seemed ready to abandon the subject and then added: ‘Of course, my poor boy thought he had been shot. Could he have been?’

  ‘The doctor could find no sign of any injury. Yet I could see he was suffering from what has been called the disease of wounding. I thought he had been shot, you see, because as I was lying on the riverbank after my accident I distinctly heard a shot fired.’

  ‘You did!’

  She had sat up. Though the black material of the veil was thick, he felt sure he could distinguish a pair of glistening eyes looking at him intently.

  ‘I wasn’t sure. Now I think I was mistaken. Did you say it was a ceremony for your horse?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was in memory of my lovely Frou-Frou who was shot. I have tried to hold a little ceremony each year, but not with a boat as this time. I can’t think now how long ago it was. I fell off, you see, and hurt myself quite badly. This time I stupidly tripped as I got out of the boat.’ She seemed to suppress an embarrassed laugh before suddenly saying: ‘Oh, prince, you know I have enemies! They are all round me. But you will help me, I am sure. Please give me your hand. I must go and see how my son is, how my dear Seriozha is.’

  By that time enough had been said for the prince to be sure beyond any reasonable doubt. The lady in black to whom he now offered his hand was Anna Arkadyevna Karenina. She was the Anna Karenina to whom he had talked in St Petersburg all those years ago. The awkward way she rose from the sofa even with his help and took one or two steps leaning on his arm demonstrated her age and her frailty and if this was not as he had remembered her, her commanding manner was the same. She had seemed then so elegant and commanding but never unnatural. Now the pressure of her weight on his arm was more authoritative than actual. She asserted this slightly fussy authority in directing him hurriedly across the room and out on to the landing, whispering that she was anxious to find out how the cure was working.

  Ever attentive, Boris, hearing her voice, rose from the chair set outside the sickroom and announced in a pronounced whisper that the young master was sleeping. This naturally put her in two minds.

  ‘Oh, what a good thing that is! When will the doctor be coming?’

  ‘I cannot say for sure, dear mistress. He said he would make a visit some time after midday.’

  She remarked something to the effect that no one in England ever seemed to do things at sensible times. The prince remarked that he had long grown used to the English custom of lunch at one o’clock and not dinner in the Russian manner at three o’clock in the afternoon. She then sighed.

  ‘Well, prince, I can see there is no alternative.’

  ‘No alternative?’

  �
��I will show you my secret place.’

  He looked round at once expecting to see the naughty look of a society lady who had just permitted herself a daringly rude double entendre, but her disguise was impenetrable. Unsure whether she was serious, he felt a light tug on his arm, playful as well as authoritative, urging him across the landing. With one hand still resting on his arm, she began a slow step-by-step descent of the curved stairs. She pressed down on him at each footfall. He had to brace himself each time to receive the pressure even though it was not great, because he was reminded of his bruised ribs.

  ‘When I say a secret place, of course it is not really secret at all. You see, there was a time when I enjoyed bathing in the river on hot summer days like this. Then I had my accident. So my good friend, my protector, dear Giles, he built me this secret place. Oh, they have been good to me here! I know I have not shown my gratitude as I should. Mais je ne suis pas ingrate. It is so hard, don’t you find? To be grateful, I mean. It was a defect in my education, I suppose.’

  They arrived by gradual stages at the lower landing. Here were the cooking smells again and the sound of pans being moved about beyond a half-open door. She guided him down a further flight towards a length of landing and a door that turned out to be her bedroom. His gentlemanly reluctance to enter it provoked a characteristic laugh and a reassertion of her authority in urging him onwards into its unaired atmosphere. Scents of perfume and powder fought a losing battle against the room’s general stuffiness, just as the pretty pink ruffled cover on the large bed and the similarly pink drapes over the windows formed a theatrical, light-operatic backdrop against which he glimpsed, in a succession of mirrors on wardrobe doors, their own two figures moving obtrusively and darkly like villains. Slowly they made their way through this boudoir.

  ‘Voila, mon ami!’

  She threw open a further door. He had supposed her ‘secret place’ would be an elegantly furnished little study or private sitting room. Instead he was being shown a bathroom. True, the walls were wood panelled, but the pipe-work and enamelled furnishings, including a cast-iron bath on lion-claw legs, were ordinary, if fairly new and unstained. He felt quite let down by this unremarkable example of English plumbing. Her veiled head, though, was turned towards him in obvious expectation of shared enthusiasm.