VII

1

The Levins had been in Moscow for more than two months. The time had long passed when, according to the most reliable calculations by people knowledgeable in these matters, Kitty should have given birth; but she was still expecting, and there was nothing to show that the time was now closer than it had been two months before. The doctor, the midwife, Dolly, her mother, and especially Levin, who could not think of what was approaching without horror, had all begun to feel an impatience and unease; Kitty alone felt perfectly calm and happy.

She now had a clear awareness of the birth inside her of a new feeling of love for her future and, for her, partly present child and took delight in attending closely to this feeling. He was no longer entirely a part of her but sometimes lived his own life, independently of her. Often she was pained by this but at the same time felt like laughing from this strange new joy.

Everyone she loved was with her, and everyone was so good to her, took such good care of her, and afforded her nothing but pleasure in everything that, had she not known and felt that this was coming to an end very soon, she would have desired no better or more pleasant a life. The one thing that spoiled the charm of this life was the fact that her husband was not the way she loved him and the way he was in the country.

She loved his calm, kind, and hospitable tone in the country. In town he seemed constantly uneasy and on guard, as if he were afraid someone might insult him and, most important, her. There, in the country, obviously knowing he was in his rightful place, he never hurried anywhere and was never without occupation. Here, in town, he was constantly rushing about, as if afraid of missing something, yet there was nothing for him to do. She pitied him. To others, she knew, he did not seem an object of pity; on the contrary, when Kitty looked at him in society, the way people sometimes look at those they love, trying to see him as if he were a stranger, so as to define for themselves the impression he made on others, she saw, even with fear of her own jealousy, that he was not only not pitiful but very attractive with his decency, his rather old-fashioned, bashful courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and what seemed to her his especially expressive face. But she saw him from within, not without; she saw that here he was not himself; she could not define his condition to herself any other way. Sometimes she reproached him inwardly for not knowing how to live in town; sometimes she admitted that it was truly hard for him to arrange his life here in such a way as to be content with it.

In point of fact, what was there for him to do? He did not like to play cards. He did not go to the club. She knew now what it meant to go around with cheerful men like Oblonsky … it meant drinking and going to a certain place after drinking. She could not think without horror where men went in those instances. Enter into society? But she knew that this required finding pleasure in the proximity of young women, and she could not wish that. Sit at home with her, her mother, and her sisters? But no matter how pleasant and cheerful she found the same conversations—the old prince called these conversations among the sisters “Alina-Nadinas”—she knew this had to bore him. What was left for him to do? Continue writing his book? He had tried to do that and at first had visited the library to make extracts and take notes for his book; however, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less time he had left. Besides, he complained to her that he had talked too much here about his book and as a result all his ideas about it had become mixed up in his head and he had lost interest.

The only advantage of this city life was the fact that here, in town, there were never quarrels between them. Whether it was because their conditions in town were different, or because they had both become more cautious and sensible in this respect, in Moscow they had had no quarrels due to jealousy, which they had been so afraid of in moving to town.

In this respect one event that was very important for them both had occurred, namely, Kitty’s encounter with Vronsky.

Old Princess Marya Borisovna, Kitty’s godmother, who had always loved her very much, wished to see her without fail. Kitty, who was not going out because of her condition, went with her father to visit the venerable old woman and there met Vronsky.

At this meeting Kitty could reproach herself only that for a moment, when she recognized the features so familiar to her in civilian dress, she stopped breathing, blood rushed to her heart, and vivid color, she felt this, rose to her face. But it lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who had purposely begun speaking volubly with Vronsky, had finished his conversation she was already fully prepared to look at Vronsky and speak with him, if necessary, just as she spoke with Princess Marya Borisovna, and, most important, so that everything down to the last intonation and smile would have been approved of by her husband, whose invisible presence she seemed to feel over her at that moment.

She exchanged a few words with him and even smiled calmly at his joke about the elections, which he called “our parliament.” (She had to smile to show she understood the joke.) But she turned then immediately to Princess Marya Borisovna and did not glance at him even once until he rose, saying good-bye; then she looked at him, but obviously only because it was impolite not to look at someone when he was bowing.

She was grateful to her father for not saying anything to her about meeting Vronsky; but she could see from his special gentleness after the visit, during their usual walk, that he was pleased with her. She was pleased with herself. She had never expected she would find the strength to restrain somewhere in the depths of her soul all her memories of her former feeling for Vronsky and not only seem but even be perfectly indifferent and calm toward him.

Levin turned considerably redder than she when she told him she had met Vronsky at Princess Marya Borisovna’s. It was very hard for her to tell him this, but it was even harder to talk about the details of the meeting, since he did not ask her but only frowned and looked at her.

“I’m very sorry you weren’t there,” she said. “Not that you weren’t in the room … I would not have been so natural in your presence. I’m blushing now much more, much, much more,” she said, blushing to the point of tears. “But I’m sorry you couldn’t watch through a crack.”

Her truthful eyes told Levin that she was pleased with herself, and, even though she had blushed, he immediately calmed down and began asking her questions, which was all she had wanted. When he had learned everything, even the detail that she had only been unable to keep from blushing the first instant but that afterward it had been as simple and easy for her as with anyone she might chance to meet, Levin became quite cheerful and said that he was very glad and that now he would not act as foolishly as he had at the elections but would try the very next time he met Vronsky to be as amiable as he could.

“It’s so agonizing to think that there is someone who is almost an enemy, whom it is difficult to meet,” said Levin. “I’m very, very glad.”

2

“Do drop in on the Bohls, please,” Kitty told her husband when he came in to see her at eleven o’clock, before leaving the house. “I know you’re dining at the club, Papa put your name down. But what are you doing in the morning?”

“I’m only going to see Katavasov,” Levin replied.

“Why so early?”

“He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I’ve wanted to talk over my work with him, he’s a famous Petersburg scholar,” said Levin.

“Oh, was that his article you were praising so? Well, and what then?” said Kitty.

“To the court as well, perhaps. I’ll stop by on my sister’s business.”

“What about the concert?” she asked.

“Why would I go alone?”

“No, go; they’re playing these new pieces. You were so interested in it. I would certainly go.”

“Well, in any event I’ll stop by home before dinner,” he said, looking at his watch.

“Put on your frock coat so that you can stop by directly to see Countess Bohl.”

“Is that really absolutely necessary?”

“Oh, absolutely! He did call on us. What does it cost you? You stop by, sit down, talk about the weather for five minutes, get up, and leave.”

“Well, you won’t believe how unused to all that I’ve become, I actually feel ashamed. How can it be? A stranger comes, sits down, stays without anything to do, gets in their way, upsets himself, and leaves.”

Kitty burst out laughing.

“Didn’t you pay calls as a bachelor?” she said.

“Yes, but I always felt ashamed, and now I’m so unused to it that, my God, I’d rather miss supper two days in a row than pay this call. I feel so ashamed! I keep thinking they’re going to take offense and say, ‘Why did you come here if you have no business?’”

“No, they won’t take offense. That I can answer for,” said Kitty, looking at his face and laughing. She took his hand. “Good-bye now. … Please go already.”

He was just leaving after kissing his wife’s hand when she stopped him.

“Kostya, you know I only have fifty rubles left.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll stop by and get some from the bank. How much?” he said, with the expression of displeasure familiar to her.

“No, wait a minute.” She held onto his hand. “Let’s talk. It worries me. I don’t seem to be buying anything extra, but the money just floats away. We’re doing something wrong.”

“Not at all,” he said, coughing and looking at her sullenly.

She knew this cough. It was a mark of his severe displeasure, not with her, but with himself. He was indeed displeased, not that so much money had gone out but at being reminded of what he, knowing that there was something wrong in this, wanted to forget.

“I told Sokolov to sell the wheat and borrow for the mill in advance. There will be money in any case.”

“No, but I’m afraid that in general it’s too much.”

“Not at all, not at all,” he repeated. “Well, good-bye, my darling.”

“No, really, sometimes I regret having listened to Mama. How fine it would be in the country! Instead I’ve tortured everyone and we’re spending money.”

“Not at all, not at all. Not once since I’ve been married have I said things could have been better than they are.”

“Really?” she said, looking into his eyes.

He had said it without thinking, only to reassure her. But when he looked at her and saw that these dear, truthful eyes were aimed inquiringly at him, he repeated the same thing with all his heart. “I definitely am forgetting her,” he thought. And he remembered what awaited them so soon.

“But is it soon? How do you feel?” he whispered, taking both her hands.

“I’ve thought of it so many times that now I neither think nor know anything.”

“And you’re not afraid?”

She smiled scornfully.

“Not a bit,” she said.

“So if anything happens, I’ll be at Katavasov’s.”

“No, nothing will happen. Don’t give it a thought. Papa and I are going for a walk on the boulevard. We’ll stop by at Dolly’s. I’ll be expecting you for dinner. Oh yes! Do you know that Dolly’s situation is becoming absolutely impossible? She is in debt all around, and she has no money. Yesterday Mama, Arseny (this was what she called her sister Madame Lvova’s husband), and I decided to let you and him loose on Stiva. It’s absolutely impossible. We can’t talk with Papa about it. … But if you and he were to …”

“What can we do?” said Levin.

“In any case you’re going to see Arseny, so speak with him. He’ll tell you what we decided.”

“Well, I agree with Arseny on everything in advance. So I’ll stop by to see him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I’ll go with Natalie. Well, good-bye.”

On the front steps, his old servant Kuzma from his bachelor days, who was in charge of their household in town, stopped Levin.

“Beauty”—that was the horse, the left trace, brought from the country—“was reshod but she’s still limping,” he said. “What are your instructions?”

At first in Moscow Levin used the horses he’d brought from the country. He wanted to arrange this part of their expenses as well and cheaply as possible; but it turned out that his own horses were more expensive than hired ones, so they hired a carriage anyway.

“Have her sent to the farrier. Could be a bruise.”

“Well, and for Katerina Alexandrovna?” asked Kuzma.

Levin was no longer surprised, as he had been at the beginning of his life in Moscow, that to go from Vozdvizhenskoye to Sivtsev Vrazhek he had to harness a pair of powerful horses to a heavy wagon, pull this wagon over the snowy slush a quarter of a verst, and wait there for four hours, having paid five rubles for this. Now it seemed natural.

“Tell the driver to hitch a pair to our carriage,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Having resolved so simply and easily, thanks to the conditions of city life, a difficulty that in the country would have required so much personal effort and attention, Levin went out on the steps, and calling to the driver, took his seat and left for Nikitskaya Street. On the way he no longer thought about money but contemplated meeting the Petersburg scholar who studied sociology and would talk with him about his book.

It was only at the beginning of his time in Moscow that these unproductive but unavoidable expenses, so strange to the country dweller but demanded of him on every side, had shocked Levin. By now he was used to them. The same thing had happened to him that people say happens to drunkards: the first shot’s a squawk, the second a hawk, and after the third—like tiny little birds. When Levin broke his first hundred-ruble banknote for the purchase of livery for the footman and porter, he could not help considering that these liveries, which no one needed but were unavoidably necessary—judging by how amazed the princess and Kitty were at the suggestion that they might get along without liveries—cost as much as two summer workers, that is, approximately as much as three hundred working days from Holy Week to Lent, each day devoted to heavy labor from early morning until late evening—and this hundred-ruble banknote had stuck in his craw. But the next, broken for the purchase of provisions for a dinner for relatives that cost twenty-eight rubles, although it evoked in Levin the memory that twenty-eight rubles was nine quarters of oats, which, sweating and grunting, they had mown, tied, threshed, winnowed, sown, and spread—this next banknote somehow went more easily. Now, broken banknotes had long ceased to evoke any such considerations and flew by like little birds. Whether the labor invested in the acquisition of money corresponded to the pleasure afforded by what was purchased for it—this consideration long since had been lost. The economic calculation that there is a certain price below which one cannot sell certain grain was also forgotten. Rye, the price of which had held him back for so long, was sold at fifty kopeks a quarter less than had been given for it a month before. Even the calculation that he could not live an entire year given these kinds of expenses without going into debt—even this calculation no longer had any significance. One thing alone was required: to have money in the bank, without asking where it came from, so that he always knew what he would buy beef with tomorrow. Up until now he had observed this calculation and had always had money in the bank. But now the money in the bank was gone, and he did not know very well where to borrow it. And it was this that for a moment, when Kitty reminded him about money, had upset him; but he had no time to think about it. He was on his way, thinking about Katavasov and his imminent introduction to Metrov.

3

During this visit to Moscow, Levin had again become close with a former university classmate, Professor Katavasov, whom he had not seen since his marriage. He liked Katavasov for the clarity and simplicity of his worldview. Levin thought that the clarity of Katavasov’s worldview stemmed from the poverty of his nature; Katavasov thought that the incoherence of Levin’s thought stemmed from his mind’s lack of discipline; but Levin found Katavasov’s clarity pleasing, and Katavasov found Levin’s abundance of undisciplined thoughts pleasing, and they liked to get together and debate.

Levin had read Katavasov a few passages from his writing, and he had liked them. The day before, meeting Levin at a public lecture, Katavasov told him that the celebrated Metrov, whose article Levin had liked so much, was in Moscow and had taken great interest in what Katavasov had told him about Levin’s work, and that Metrov would be at his place tomorrow at eleven o’clock and would be very glad to meet him.

“You have taken a decided turn for the better, old man, it’s a pleasure to see you,” said Katavasov, greeting Levin in the small drawing room. “I hear the bell and think, it can’t be he’s on time! … So, what do you think of those Montenegrins? Fighters by nature.”¹

“Why?” asked Levin.

Katavasov reported the latest news in a few brief words and, entering his study, introduced Levin to a short, solidly built, very pleasant-looking man. This was Metrov. The conversation dwelt briefly on politics and about how the highest spheres in Petersburg viewed the latest events. Metrov conveyed what he had learned from a reliable source and supposedly had been uttered by the sovereign and one of his ministers on the subject. Katavasov had heard also for a certainty that the sovereign had said something completely different. Levin tried to conceive of a situation in which both sets of words could have been uttered, and the conversation on that topic came to a halt.

“Now this man here has written nearly a book on the natural conditions of the worker with respect to the land,” said Katavasov. “I’m not a specialist, but as a naturalist I liked the way he doesn’t take man for something apart from the laws of zoology, but on the contrary, sees his dependence on his environment and in that dependence searches for the laws of development.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Metrov.

“I actually have written an agricultural book, but without intending to, having taken up the main instrument of agriculture, the worker,” said Levin, blushing, “I arrived at quite unexpected results.”

Levin began cautiously, as if testing the ground, to expound his view. He knew that Metrov had written an article against the commonly accepted teaching of political economy, but to what degree he might hope to find sympathy in him for his new views he did not know and could not guess from the scholar’s intelligent and calm face.

“But where do you see the special characteristics of the Russian worker?” said Metrov. “In his zoological characteristics, so to speak, or in the conditions in which he finds himself?”

Levin saw that this question already expressed a thought with which he did not agree, but he continued to expound his thought, which was that the Russian worker has a view of the land that is completely distinct from that of other nations. In order to prove this thesis, he hastened to add that, in his opinion, this view of the Russian people stemmed from their awareness of their calling to settle the vast, unoccupied expanses in the East.

“It is easy to be led astray in drawing a conclusion about the overall calling of a people,” said Metrov, interrupting Levin. “The worker’s condition will always depend upon his relationship to the land and capital.”

Not allowing Levin to finish his thought, Metrov began laying out for him the specificity of his own teaching.

What the specificity of his teaching consisted of Levin did not understand because he made no effort to understand. He could see that Metrov, like others, despite his article, in which he refuted the teaching of economists, nonetheless looked on the situation of the Russian worker only from the standpoint of capital, wages, and rents. Although he ought to have admitted that in the eastern, largest part of Russia rents were still zero, that wages were expressed for nine-tenths of the eighty million Russian people only in subsistence for themselves, and that capital still did not exist other than in the form of the most primitive tools—he still considered any worker only from this standpoint, even though on most points he disagreed with the economists and had his own new theory about wages, which he expounded to Levin.

Levin listened reluctantly and at first voiced objections. He wanted to interrupt Metrov in order to express his own thought, which, in his opinion, should have made further exposition superfluous. But later, convinced that they viewed the matter so differently that they would never understand each other, he stopped contradicting him and merely listened. Even though he had no interest at all now in what Metrov was saying, he did experience a certain satisfaction in listening to him. His self-esteem was flattered by the fact that such a scholarly man was expressing his thoughts to him so eagerly and with such attention and confidence in Levin’s knowledge of the subject, from time to time hinting at an entire aspect of the topic. He ascribed this to his own merit, not knowing that Metrov, having talked it all over with all the people close to him, spoke especially eagerly on this subject with every new person, and in general spoke eagerly with anyone about any subject that interested but was not yet quite clear to himself.

“We are late, though,” said Katavasov, glancing at his watch, as soon as Metrov finished his exposition.

“Yes, today there’s a session at the Society of Amateurs in memory of Svintich’s fiftieth jubilee,” said Katavasov to Levin’s question. “Peter Ivanovich and I were planning to go. I promised to say something about his works on zoology. Come along, it’s very interesting.”

“Yes, in point of fact, it’s time,” said Metrov. “Come along, and from there, if you like, come to my place. I would very much like to hear your work.”

“Oh no. It’s still not finished. But I’d be very happy to go to the session.”

“What is it, old man, have you heard? He’s submitted a separate opinion,” said Katavasov, who had put on his tail coat in the other room.

And a conversation began about the university question.²

The university question was a very important event that winter in Moscow. Three old professors on the council had not accepted the opinion of the younger ones, and the younger ones had submitted a separate opinion. This opinion, in the judgment of some, was terrible; in the judgment of others, it was the simplest and fairest opinion, and the professors had split into two parties.

One, to which Katavasov belonged, saw in the opposing side base denunciation and deceit; the other, puerility and a lack of respect for the authorities. Although he did not belong to the university, Levin had several times already during his stay in Moscow heard and spoken about this question and had formed his own opinion about it; he took part in the conversation, which continued outside as well, until all three reached the Old University.

The session had already begun. There were six men at the cloth-covered table where Katavasov and Metrov took their seats, and one of them, bent closely over his manuscript, was reading something out loud. Levin sat in one of the empty chairs around the table and in a whisper asked a student sitting there what he was reading. The student, looking around in a dissatisfied way at Levin, said, “A biography.”

Although Levin was not interested in the scholar’s biography, he couldn’t help but listen and learn something interesting and new about the famous scholar’s life.

When the reader had finished, the chairman thanked him and read poems sent to him from the poet Ment on this jubilee and a few words in gratitude to the poem’s author. Then Katavasov, in his loud, clamorous voice, read his own note about the celebrant’s scholarly works.

When Katavasov had finished, Levin looked at his watch, saw it was already after one, and thought that he would not have time to read Metrov his work before the concert; and indeed, he no longer cared to do so. During the reading he had been thinking about their conversation. It was clear to him now that although Metrov’s ideas perhaps had significance, so too his thoughts had significance; these thoughts could be clarified and something made of them only when each worked separately on his chosen path, but nothing would ever come of exchanging these thoughts. Having decided to decline Metrov’s invitation, Levin at the end of the session walked over to him. Metrov introduced Levin to the chairman, with whom he was speaking about the political news. In doing so Metrov told the chairman exactly what he had told Levin, and Levin made the same comments which he had already made that morning, but for variety’s sake he also expressed his own new opinion, which had occurred to him here. After this a conversation began about the university question. Since Levin had already heard it all, he hastened to tell Metrov that he regretted he would not be able to accept his invitation, bowed to everyone, and went to see Lvov.

4

Lvov, who was married to Natalie, Kitty’s sister, had spent all his life in the capitals and abroad, where he had been educated as well and served as a diplomat.

The previous year he had left the diplomatic service, though not because of any trouble (he never had any trouble with anyone), and moved on to serving in the court’s ministry in Moscow in order to give his two young sons the very best education.

Despite the very sharp contrast in their habits and views, and despite the fact that Lvov was older than Levin, that winter they had become very close and had come to love each other.

Lvov was at home, and Levin went in to see him unannounced.

Lvov, dressed in his belted house jacket and suede boots, was sitting in an armchair and, wearing a pince-nez with blue lenses, was reading a book that rested on a reading stand, while carefully holding a cigar that was half ash in his handsome outstretched hand.

His splendid, refined, and still youthful face, to which his gleaming, curly silver hair lent an even more thoroughbred expression, lit up with a smile when he saw Levin.

“Excellent! I was about to send for you. Well, how is Kitty? Sit down here, it’s more comfortable.” He rose and moved the rocking chair over. “Have you read the last circular in the Journal de St.-Pétersbourg?³ I find it marvelous,” he said with a vaguely French accent.

Levin recounted what he had heard from Katavasov about what people were saying in Petersburg, and having spoken about politics, he recounted making Metrov’s acquaintance and his trip to the session. Lvov found this very interesting.

“There, I envy you. You have entrée to this interesting scholarly world,” he said. Once he began talking, as usual, he immediately switched to French, which he found more comfortable. “True, I really have no time. My work and the children deprive me of it; and then I’m not ashamed to say that my education falls far short.”

“I don’t think so,” said Levin with a smile and moved, as always, by his low opinion of himself, which was by no means affected out of a desire to seem or even be modest but quite sincerely.

“It’s true! I feel now how poorly educated I am. In order to educate my children I must refresh so much in my memory and simply learn it by heart. Because it is not enough for there to be teachers, there must be an observer, just as your farm needs workers and an overseer. Here I am reading”—he showed him Buslaev’s grammar lying on the reading desk—“they’re requiring it of Misha, and it is so difficult.⁴ Look, explain this to me. Here he says …”

Levin tried to explain to him that it couldn’t be understood, just learned; but Lvov never agreed with him.

“Yes, look, you’re laughing at it!”

“On the contrary, you cannot imagine how, looking at you, I’m always studying the task that is facing me—namely, the education of my children.”

“Well, there’s really nothing to study,” said Lvov.

“I only know,” said Levin, “that I have never seen children better raised than yours, and I could not wish for children better than yours.”

Lvov evidently wanted to restrain himself and not express his delight, but his smile nonetheless beamed.

“Just so they are better than me. That’s all I wish for. You don’t know yet all the work there is,” he began, “with little boys who, like mine, were neglected by that life abroad.”

“You will make up for all that. They are such capable children. Most important is their moral upbringing. This is what I am learning when I look at your children.”

“You say ‘moral upbringing.’ You cannot imagine how difficult that is! No sooner have you overcome one problem when others pop up, and you have to do it again. Without support in religion—remember, you and I were talking about that—no father could rear a child by his own strength alone, without that aid.”

This conversation, which always interested Levin, was interrupted by the beautiful Natalya Alexandrovna, who had walked in already dressed to go out.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, obviously not only not regretting but actually rejoicing in having interrupted an old familiar conversation that had bored her long ago. “Well, how is Kitty? I’m having dinner with you today. I’ll tell you what, Arseny,” she addressed her husband, “you take the carriage.”

Between husband and wife there began a discussion of how they would spend the day. Since the husband needed to go somewhere to see someone from the ministry, and the wife was going to a concert and public meeting of the South-Eastern Committee, they had much to decide and ponder. Levin, who felt quite at home, was supposed to take part in these plans. It was decided that Levin would go with Natalie to the concert and the public meeting, and from there they would send the carriage to the office for Arseny and he would pick her up and drop her off at Kitty’s; or, if he had not finished his business, he would send the carriage, and Levin would go with her.

“You see, he is spoiling me,” Lvov told his wife, “he assures me that our children are marvelous when I know there is so much that is bad in them.”

“Arseny tends to extremes, I always say,” said the wife. “If you seek perfection, you’ll never be satisfied. Papa tells the truth when he says that when we were raised, there was one extreme—we were kept in the attic, while our parents lived on the first floor; now it’s the opposite, the parents are kept in the storeroom and the children on the first floor. Parents are no longer supposed to live, and everything’s for the children.”

“But what if it’s more pleasant like that?” said Lvov, smiling his handsome smile and touching her hand. “Someone who didn’t know you might think you were a stepmother, not a mother.”

“No, extremes are not good in anything,” said Natalie calmly, putting his paper knife in its special place on his desk.

“Well then, come here, my perfect children,” he said to the handsome little boys who had come in and who, after bowing to Levin, went to their father, obviously wanting to ask him something.

Levin felt like talking with them and listening to what they would say to their father, but Natalie began talking to him, and right then Lvov’s friend from the ministry, Makhotin, walked into the room wearing his court uniform, so that they could go together to meet someone, and then their incessant discussion about Herzegovina, Princess Korzinskaya, the town council, and Apraxina’s untimely death began.⁵

Levin had forgotten all about his errand. He remembered it when he was going out the front door.

“Oh yes, Kitty told me to discuss Oblonsky with you,” he said when Lvov had stopped on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin to the door.

“Yes, yes, maman wants us, les beaux-frères, to swoop down on him,” he said, turning red and smiling. “But why me?”

“So I’ll swoop down on him,” said Madame Lvova, smiling, waiting in her white fur cape for the conversation to end. “Well, let’s go.”

5

At the matinee concert, two very interesting pieces were performed.

One was a fantasia, King Lear on the Steppe, the other a quartet dedicated to the memory of Bach.⁶ Both pieces were new and in a new vein, and Levin wanted to form his own opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her seat, he stood next to a column and resolved to listen as attentively and conscientiously as he could. He tried not to be distracted or spoil the impression for himself by watching the white-tied conductor waving his arms, which always distracted his musical attention so unpleasantly, the ladies in hats which they had tied assiduously with ribbons over their ears for the concert, and all these faces which were either not engaged in anything or engaged in their own various interests—anything but the music. He tried to avoid meeting the eyes of the music connoisseurs and chatterboxes but stood, looking straight ahead and down, and listened.

The more he listened to the King Lear fantasia, however, the farther he felt from the possibility of forming any definite opinion for himself. He kept feeling as if a musical expression of an emotion was gathering, but immediately it would fall apart into snatches of the new principles of musical expressions, and sometimes simply into nothing but the composer’s whim, unconnected but extremely complicated sounds. Even the snatches of these musical expressions themselves, though sometimes good, were unpleasant because they were completely unexpected and unprepared for by anything. Good cheer and sadness, despair, tenderness, and triumph appeared for no reason whatsoever, like the emotions of a madman. And just as with a madman, these emotions passed unexpectedly.

Throughout the performance, Levin felt like a deaf man watching dancers. He was in utter disbelief when the piece ended and felt a great weariness from the intense attention, which had rewarded him with nothing. On all sides he heard loud applause. Everyone stood up and began walking around and talking. Wishing to clarify his own perplexity at the impression of others, Levin went to stretch his legs, seeking out the connoisseurs, and was happy when he saw one well-known expert in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.

“Wonderful!” said Pestsov’s deep bass. “How do you do, Konstantin Dmitrievich. It is particularly graphic and sculptural, so to speak, and rich in colors where you feel the approach of Cordelia, where the woman, das ewig Weibliche, joins the struggle with fate. Isn’t that so?”⁷

“What’s Cordelia got to do with it?” asked Levin shyly, completely forgetting that the fantasia depicted King Lear on the steppe.

“Cordelia enters. … Look!” said Pestsov, tapping the satiny program he was holding in his hand and handing it to Levin.

Only then did Levin remember the title of the fantasia and hasten to read Shakespeare’s verse in Russian translation, which was printed on the back of the program.

“Without this you can’t follow it,” said Pestsov, addressing Levin, since his companion had walked away and he had no one else to talk to.

During the entr’acte Levin and Pestsov got into a debate about the merits and faults of the Wagnerian direction in music. Levin tried to prove that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in the fact that the music was trying to move into an alien art form, just as poetry errs when it describes the features of faces, which is what painting is supposed to do, and as an example of this kind of error, he cited the sculptor who took it into his head to carve out of marble the shades of poetic images rising around a poet on a pedestal. “The sculptor’s shades had so little of the shade about them that they were positively holding onto the ladder,” said Levin. He liked this phrase, but he couldn’t remember whether he had spoken this very phrase before and specifically to Pestsov, and once he said it, he became embarrassed.

Pestsov argued that art was one and that it could achieve its loftiest manifestations only by merging all art forms.

Levin could not listen to the concert’s second piece. Pestsov, who was standing next to him, spoke to him nearly the entire time, condemning the piece for its excessive, saccharine, affected simplicity and comparing it with the simplicity of the Pre-Raphaelites in painting. As he was going out, Levin met many more acquaintances with whom he spoke about politics, music, and mutual acquaintances; in passing he met Count Bohl, his visit to whom he had entirely forgotten.

“Well, then go right now,” Madame Lvova said to him when he told her this. “They may not see you, but then you can drive by for me at my meeting. You’ll find me there.”

6

“Maybe they’re not receiving?” said Levin as he entered the front door of Countess Bohl’s home.

“They will see you, right this way,” said the doorman, resolutely removing his coat.

“What a bother,” thought Levin, removing one glove and smoothing his hat with a sigh. “So what did I come for? What am I to speak about with them?”

Passing into the first drawing room, Levin met Countess Bohl giving orders to a servant in the doorway, her face worried and stern. Seeing Levin she smiled and invited him into the next small drawing room, from which voices could be heard. In this drawing room, sitting in armchairs, were the countess’s two daughters and a Moscow colonel whom Levin knew. Levin walked up to him, exchanged greetings, and sat down beside him on the sofa, holding his hat on his knee.

“How is your wife’s health? Were you at the concert? We couldn’t go. Mama had to attend a funeral service.”

“Yes, I heard. Such an untimely death,” said Levin.

The countess came and sat down on the sofa and also inquired about his wife and the concert. Levin replied and repeated his question about Apraxina’s untimely death.

“Actually, she had always been in poor health.”

“Were you at the opera yesterday?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Lucca was very fine.”⁸

“Yes, very fine,” he said, and, since he absolutely did not care what they thought of him, he began repeating what he had heard hundreds of times about the peculiarity of the singer’s talent. Countess Bohl pretended to listen. Then, when he had said enough and fallen silent, the colonel, who had been silent thus far, began speaking. The colonel, too, began about the opera and about the lighting. Finally, having talked about the proposed folle journée at Tyurin’s, the colonel burst into laughter, made a lot of noise, rose, and left.⁹ Levin rose as well, but from the countess’s face he could tell that it was not yet time for him to leave. He had to stay another minute or two. He sat back down.

However, since he had been thinking all this time about how silly this was, he could not find a topic of conversation and was silent.

“Are you going to the public meeting? They say it’s very interesting,” the countess began.

“No, I promised my belle-soeur to drive by for her,” said Levin.

Silence ensued. Mother and daughter again exchanged glances.

“Well, I guess it’s time now,” Levin thought, and he rose. The ladies shook his hand and asked him to convey mille choses to his wife.¹⁰

The doorman asked him as he handed him his coat, “Where is the gentleman staying?” and he immediately noted it down in a large, well-bound book.

“Naturally, I don’t care, but still I feel ashamed and terribly foolish,” thought Levin, consoling himself by saying that everyone does this, and he set out for the Committee’s public meeting, where he was supposed to find his sister-in-law and bring her home.

There was a great crowd at the Committee’s public meeting and nearly all high society. Levin arrived in time for the review, which, as everyone had said, was very interesting. When the reading of the review was concluded, society came together, and Levin met both Sviyazhsky, who invited him to come that evening without fail to the Society of Agriculture, where a distinguished report would be read, and Stepan Arkadyevich, who had only just arrived from the races, and many other acquaintances, and Levin said and heard various opinions about the meeting, the new piece, and the trial. But as a result of the mental fatigue he was beginning to experience, in speaking about the trial he made a mistake, and he recalled this mistake later several times with annoyance. Speaking about the impending punishment of the foreigner who had been tried in Russia and about how it would be wrong to punish him with exile abroad, Levin repeated what he had heard the day before in a conversation with one acquaintance.

“I think that sending him abroad is the same as punishing a pike by dropping it in the water,” said Levin. It wasn’t until later that he recalled that his idea, which he had tried to pass off as his own, and which he had heard from an acquaintance, came out of a Krylov fable and that this acquaintance had repeated the idea from a satirical article in the newspaper.¹¹

After dropping his sister-in-law off at his home and finding Kitty cheerful and well, Levin went to his club.

7

Levin arrived at the club at just the right time. Other guests and members were driving up as he arrived. It was long since Levin had been to the club—not since, after leaving the university, he had lived in Moscow and gone into society. He remembered the club and the outward details of its arrangement but had completely forgotten the impression the club had at one time made on him. But as soon as he rode into the broad, semicircular courtyard and climbed down from the sleigh, he stepped onto the front steps and a doorman wearing a shoulder belt took a step toward him and opened the door and bowed to him without making a sound; as soon as he saw in the coatroom the overshoes and coats of members who had figured that it was less trouble to remove their overshoes downstairs than to carry them upstairs; as soon as he heard the mysterious bell preceding him and saw, as he stepped onto the sloping, carpeted staircase, the statue on the landing and in the upper doorway a third, now aged, familiar doorman in the club livery, who without haste or delay was opening the door and surveying the guest—Levin was gripped by a very old impression of the club, an impression of relaxation, contentment, and propriety.

“Sir, your hat,” the doorman said to Levin, who had forgotten the club’s rule of leaving hats in the coatroom. “You haven’t been here in a long time. The prince registered you yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevich is not here yet.”

The doorman knew not only Levin but all his connections and family and immediately mentioned people close to him.

Passing through an anteroom with screens and turning right into a partitioned room where there was a buffet of fruit, Levin overtook a slow-moving old man and entered the dining room, which was noisy with people.

He walked past tables that were nearly full, surveying the guests. First here, then there, he came across the most diverse men, old and young, some scarcely familiar and some quite close. There was not a single angry or worried face. Everyone seemed to have left their fears and cares in the coatroom along with their hats and had gathered for the leisurely enjoyment of life’s material blessings. Here were Sviyazhsky, and Shcherbatsky, and Nevedovsky, and the old prince, and Vronsky, and Sergei Ivanovich.

“Ah! Why so late?” said the prince, smiling and giving him his hand over his shoulder. “How’s Kitty?” he added, fixing his napkin, which he had tucked behind a vest button.

“Fine, well; the threesome are dining at home.”

“Ah, the Alina-Nadinas. Well, there’s no room with us here. Go over to that table and take a seat quickly,” said the prince, and turning around, he carefully took a plate of turbot soup.

“Levin, over here!” shouted a good-natured voice somewhat farther way. It was Turovtsyn. He was sitting with a young military man, and next to them were two tipped-up chairs. Levin walked over to them with delight. He had always liked the good-natured, hard-drinking Turovtsyn, with whom he linked his memory of his declaration of love to Kitty. But today, after all the intensely intellectual conversations, he found Turovtsyn’s good-natured appearance especially pleasant.

“This is for you and Oblonsky. He’ll be here soon.”

The military man, who held himself very erect and had cheerful, always laughing eyes, was the Petersburger Gagin. Turovtsyn introduced them.

“Oblonsky is perpetually late.”

“Ah, and here he is.”

“You only just arrived?” said Oblonsky, walking quickly toward them. “Excellent. Have you had any vodka? Well, let’s get started.”

Levin rose and went with him to a large table arrayed with vodkas and all different kinds of hors d’oeuvres. One would have thought that of the twenty or so hors d’oeuvres one could find something to one’s taste, but Stepan Arkadyevich ordered something special, and one of the liveried waiters standing there immediately brought what he had requested. They each downed a shot and returned to the table.

Immediately, with the fish soup, Gagin was served Champagne, which he had poured into all four glasses. Levin did not refuse the offered wine and asked for another bottle. He was famished and he ate and drank with great pleasure and with even greater pleasure took part in his companions’ cheerful and simple conversations. Gagin lowered his voice and told a new Petersburg anecdote, an anecdote which, although indecent and silly, was so funny that Levin guffawed loudly enough to make his neighbors look around.

“It’s in the same vein as, ‘I can’t stand that!’ Do you know it?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich. “Ah, this is splendid! Another bottle,” he told the waiter and began telling a story.

“Compliments of Peter Ilich Vinovsky,” the old waiter interrupted Stepan Arkadyevich as he served two slender glasses of Champagne that was losing its bubbles and addressed Stepan Arkadyevich and Levin. Stepan Arkadyevich took the glass and, looking down at the other end of the table and at the bald, red-mustached man, acknowledged him, smiling, with a nod.

“Who’s that?” asked Levin.

“You met him at my place once, remember? A good fellow.”

Levin did just what Stepan Arkadyevich had done and took the glass.

Stepan Arkadyevich’s anecdote was also very amusing. Levin told his own anecdote, which everyone liked as well. Then the talk turned to horses, today’s races, and how spiritedly Vronsky’s Satin had won first prize. Levin did not notice dinner pass.

“Ah! Here they are!” said Stepan Arkadyevich when dinner was already at an end, bending across the back of his chair and extending his hand to Vronsky and a tall colonel of the Guards, who were walking toward him. The club’s general good cheer shone on Vronsky’s face as well. He cheerfully leaned an elbow on Stepan Arkadyevich’s shoulder, whispering something to him, and with the same cheerful smile extended his hand to Levin.

“I’m very glad to see you,” he said. “I looked for you then at the elections, but they told me you’d already left,” he said to him.

“Yes, I left the same day. We were just now talking about your horse. I congratulate you,” said Levin. “That’s very fast riding.”

“I believe you have horses as well.”

“No, my father did. But I remember, and I know something about them.”

“Where were you eating?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

“We were at the second table, behind the columns.”

“They were congratulating him,” said the tall colonel. “His second imperial prize; if only I had the luck at cards that he has with horses.”

“Well, no point wasting this golden time. I’m on my way to the infernal regions,” said the colonel, and he walked away from the table.

“That’s Yashvin,” Vronsky told Turovtsyn, and he sat in the free seat beside them. Drinking down the proffered glass, he ordered a bottle. Under the influence of the club’s impression, or the wine he had drunk, Levin fell into conversation with Vronsky about the best breed of cattle and was very pleased not to feel any hostility toward this man. He even told him, by the way, that he had heard from his wife that she had met him at Princess Marya Borisovna’s.

“Ah, Princess Marya Borisovna, how charming!” said Stepan Arkadyevich, and he told an anecdote about her that amused everyone. Vronsky in particular laughed so good-naturedly that Levin felt quite reconciled with him.

“So, are we finished?” said Stepan Arkadyevich, rising and smiling. “Let’s go!”

8

Rising from the table, Levin, feeling his arms swinging especially well and easily as he walked, set off with Gagin through the high-ceilinged rooms to the billiards room. Passing through the grand hall, he ran into his father-in-law.

“Well, what do you think? How do you like our temple to idleness?” said the prince, taking him by the arm. “Let’s take a turn.”

“I did in fact want to walk around and take a look. It’s interesting.”

“Yes, interesting to you. But I have a different interest than you do. Look over there at those old men,” he said, pointing to a hunched over member with a drooping lip who, shuffling his feet in soft boots, was coming toward them, “and you think they were born rollers like that.”

“What do you mean rollers?”

“You don’t know that name. It’s our club term. You know how they roll eggs, well when you roll them too much, you get a roller. Just like our friend: you keep going to the club and eventually you turn into a roller. Yes, you’re laughing, but our friend is already looking at the day he himself joins the rollers. You know Prince Chechensky?” asked the prince, and Levin could see from his face that he was getting ready to tell him something funny.

“No, I don’t.”

“You don’t? Well, Prince Chechensky is very well known. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. You see he’s always playing billiards. About three years ago he wasn’t one of the rollers and he put on a good show. He was the one to call others rollers. Only one day he comes, and our doorman—you know, Vasily? Well, the fat one. He’s a great one for bons mots. So Prince Chechensky asks him, ‘How about it, Vasily, who’s come? Any rollers?’ And he replied, ‘You’re the third.’ Yes, friend, that’s how it goes!”

Talking and greeting acquaintances as they met, Levin and the prince walked through all the rooms: the main room, where the tables were already up and the usual partners were playing a friendly game; the sitting room, where they were playing chess and Sergei Ivanovich was sitting, talking with someone; the billiards room, where by the sofa in the recess a cheerful Champagne party had convened, of which Gagin was a part; and they looked in on the infernal region, too, where near one table at which Yashvin was already sitting many bettors had crowded around. Trying not to make any noise, they walked into the dimly lit reading room as well, where under shaded lamps sat one young man with an angry face who was picking up one journal after another and a bald general was buried in his reading. They went into the room which the prince called the smart room, too. In that room, three gentlemen were heatedly discussing the latest political news.

“Prince, please, we’re ready,” said one of his partners, finding him here, and the prince left. Levin sat and listened for a while; but recalling all the conversations of that morning, he was suddenly terribly bored. He rose hurriedly and went to find Oblonsky and Turovtsyn, with whom it was cheerful.

Turovtsyn was sitting with a tankard of drink on a high-backed sofa in the billiards room, and Stepan Arkadyevich and Vronsky were discussing something by the door in the far corner of the room.

“It’s not that she’s bored, but this indeterminacy, the unsettledness of her position,” Levin heard, and he wanted to walk away quickly, but Stepan Arkadyevich called him over.

“Levin!” said Stepan Arkadyevich, and Levin noted that his eyes weren’t exactly full of tears, but they were moist, as they always were when he had been drinking, or when he became maudlin. Now it was both. “Levin, don’t leave,” he said, and he squeezed his arm firmly at the elbow, obviously not wishing to let him go for anything.

“This is my true friend, practically my best friend,” he told Vronsky, “and you are closer and dearer to me now, too. And I want and know that you have to be friends and close, because you’re both good men.”

“Well then, all we have to do is kiss,” said Vronsky, joking good-naturedly as he extended his hand.

He quickly took the extended hand and shook it firmly.

“I’m very, very pleased,” said Levin, shaking his hand.

“Waiter, a bottle of Champagne,” said Stepan Arkadyevich.

“I am, too,” said Vronsky.

However, despite Stepan Arkadyevich’s wish and their mutual wish, they had nothing to talk about, and both felt this.

“Do you know he has never met Anna?” Stepan Arkadyevich told Vronsky. “And I definitely want to introduce him to her. Let’s go, Levin!”

“Really?” said Vronsky. “She’ll be very pleased. I would go home right now,” he added, “but Yashvin worries me, and I want to stay here a little longer until he finishes.”

“What, is it going badly?”

“He keeps losing, and I’m the only one who can restrain him.”

“Well, how about a game of pyramids? Levin, will you play? That’s just wonderful,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Set it up,” he told the marker.

“It was ready a long time ago,” replied the marker, who had already placed the balls in the triangle and had been rolling the red for his own amusement.

“Well, let’s begin.”

After the game, Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gagin’s table, and Levin, at Stepan Arkadyevich’s suggestion, began betting on aces. Vronsky kept sitting down at the table, surrounded by a constant stream of acquaintances, and going to the infernal region to check on Yashvin; Levin had a pleasant respite from the morning’s mental strain. He was pleased by the cessation of hostilities with Vronsky, and the impression of tranquility, civility, and pleasure stayed with him.

When the game ended, Stepan Arkadyevich took Levin by the arm.

“Well, then, let’s go see Anna. Right now? Eh? She’s at home. I’ve long promised to bring you to see her. Where were you planning to go this evening?”

“Nowhere in particular. I promised Sviyazhsky I’d go to the Society of Agriculture. Let’s go, if you like,” said Levin.

“Excellent; let’s go! Find out whether my carriage has arrived,” Stepan Arkadyevich spoke to the waiter.

Levin walked over to the table, paid the forty rubles he had lost on the aces, paid the amount known in some mysterious way to the old waiter standing by the lintel, his expenses for the club, and swinging his arms in that special way, walked through all the rooms to the exit.

9

“The Oblonsky carriage!” shouted the doorman in an angry bass. The carriage drove up, and both got in. Only for a while, as the carriage was pulling out of the club gates, did Levin continue to experience the impression of the club’s peace and pleasure and the undoubted civility of the surroundings; but as soon as the carriage drove into the street and he felt the carriage rocking over the uneven road, heard the angry shout of an oncoming driver, and saw in the low light the red sign of a tavern and the shops, this impression was shattered, and he began thinking over his actions and asking himself whether he was doing the right thing in going to see Anna. What would Kitty say? But Stepan Arkadyevich did not give him a chance to think, and as if guessing his doubts, allayed them.

“I’m so pleased that you will get to know her,” he said. “You know, Dolly has wished this for a long time. And Lvov has been to see her. Even though she is my sister,” continued Stepan Arkadyevich, “I can boldly say that this is a remarkable woman. You will see. Her position is very difficult, especially now.”

“Why especially now?”

“We’re negotiating with her husband about a divorce. He agrees, but there are complications regarding the son, and this matter, which ought to have been taken care of a long time ago, has been dragging on for three months. As soon as she has the divorce, she will marry Vronsky. How silly it is, that old custom of walking around in a circle saying, ‘Rejoice, O Isaiah!’ which no one believes in and which stands in the way of people’s happiness!” Stepan Arkadyevich interjected. “Well, and then their situation will be settled, like mine and like yours.”

“Where does the difficulty lie?” said Levin.

“Oh, it’s a long and tedious story! All this is so indeterminate in our country. But the problem is that she has been living in Moscow, where everyone knows her, for three months, waiting for this divorce; she doesn’t go out anywhere, doesn’t see any of the women except Dolly because, you see, she doesn’t want people to visit her out of charity; that fool Princess Varvara—even she left, considering it indecent. So you see, in this situation another woman might not have found the resources in herself. But she, you’ll see it now, how she has arranged her life, how calm and dignified she is. To the left, into the lane, opposite the church!” shouted Stepan Arkadyevich, leaning out the carriage window. “My, it’s hot!” he said, despite a temperature of twelve below zero, opening his already open coat even wider.

“She does have a daughter, though. Isn’t she kept busy with her?” said Levin.

“You apparently imagine any woman only as a female, une couveuse,” said Stepan Arkadyevich.¹² “If she’s busy, then it must be with her children. No, she is raising her beautifully, it seems, but one hears nothing of her. She is busy, first of all, because she is writing. Ah, I see you smiling ironically, but you shouldn’t. She is writing a children’s book and is telling no one about it, but she read it to me and I have given the manuscript to Vorkuyev … you know, the publisher … and he himself is a writer, it seems. He knows what’s what, and he says it’s a marvelous piece. But you think she is an authoress? Not a bit. She is a woman with a heart above all, you’ll see. She now has an English girl and an entire family that keeps her busy.”

“You mean something philanthropic?”

“There you go, you still want to see something bad. Not philanthropic, but sincere. They, I mean, Vronsky, had an Englishman for a trainer, a master of his trade, but a drunkard. He took completely to drink, delirium tremens, and the family was abandoned. She saw them, helped them, was drawn to them, and now the entire family is on her hands; and not just from on high, with money, but she herself is preparing the boys in Russian for high school, and has taken the little girl in. You’ll see her now.”

The carriage drove into the courtyard, and Stepan Arkadyevich rang loudly at the front door, where sleighs were standing.

Without asking the servant who opened the door whether she was home, Stepan Arkadyevich walked into the front hall. Levin followed, wondering more and more whether he was acting rightly or wrongly.

Taking a look in the mirror, Levin noticed he was red in the face; but he was certain he wasn’t drunk, and he walked up the carpeted staircase behind Stepan Arkadyevich. Upstairs, Stepan Arkadyevich asked the footman, who had bowed to him as someone close, who was with Anna Arkadyevna and received the answer: Mr. Vorkuyev.

“Where are they?”

“In the study.”

Passing through a small dining room with dark wood paneling, Stepan Arkadyevich and Levin stepped onto a soft carpet and walked into a dimly lit study illuminated by a single lamp with a dark shade. Another reflector lamp burned on the wall and illuminated a large, full-length portrait of a woman to which Levin could not help but turn his attention. It was the portrait of Anna done in Italy by Mikhailov. While Stepan Arkadyevich stepped behind a treillage and the man’s voice fell silent, Levin looked at the portrait, which, in the brilliant illumination, projected out of its frame, and he could not tear himself away from it.¹³ He even forgot where he was, and not listening to what was being said, he did not take his eyes off the amazing portrait. This was not a picture but a splendid, living woman with black waving hair, bared shoulders and arms, and a pensive half-smile on her lips, which were covered with a tender bloom, who looked at him triumphantly and tenderly with disarming eyes. Only, because she was not alive, she was even more beautiful than a living woman could be.

“I’m very pleased,” he suddenly heard a voice next to him, obviously directed toward him, the voice of the same woman whom he had been admiring in the portrait. Anna came out to meet him from behind the treillage, and in the half-light of the study Levin saw the very same woman from the portrait wearing a dark, variegated blue dress, not in the same position, not with the same expression, but at the same summit of beauty at which she had been captured by the artist in the portrait. She was less brilliant in reality, but on the other hand in real life there was something new and attractive which there had not been in the portrait.

10

She rose to greet him, not concealing her joy at seeing him. In the ease with which she extended her small and energetic hand and introduced him to Vorkuyev and pointed out the pretty little red-haired girl sitting right there at her work, referring to her as her ward, were the familiar and, to Levin, pleasant manners of a woman of high society who is always calm and natural.

“I am very, very pleased,” she repeated, and on her lips these simple words for some reason acquired special significance for Levin. “I’ve known and loved you for a long time, both through your friendship for Stiva and because of your wife. … I only knew her a short while, but she left me with the impression of a lovely flower, yes, a flower. And she is soon to be a mother!”

She spoke freely and without haste, from time to time transferring her gaze from Levin to her brother, and Levin felt that the impression he had made was a good one, and he immediately felt at his ease with her, as simple and pleasant as if he had known her since childhood.

“Ivan Petrovich and I have settled in Alexei’s study,” she said in answer to Stepan Arkadyevich’s question as to whether one could smoke, “precisely so that one could smoke.” Glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he smoked, she pulled over a tortoiseshell cigar box and took out a cigarette.

“How is your health today?” her brother asked her.

“All right. Nerves, as always.”

“Isn’t it true, it’s unusually fine?” said Stepan Arkadyevich when he noticed Levin glancing at the portrait.

“I’ve never seen a better portrait.”

“An extraordinary resemblance, isn’t it?” said Vorkuyev.

Levin looked from the portrait to the original. A special gleam lit up Anna’s face when she felt his glance on her. Levin turned red, and to hide his embarrassment was about to ask whether it had been long since she had seen Darya Alexandrovna, but at that moment Anna began speaking.

“Ivan Petrovich and I were just talking about Vashchenkov’s latest pictures. Have you seen them?”

“Yes, I have,” Levin replied.

“But I’m sorry, I interrupted you, you were about to say …”

Levin asked whether it had been long since she’d seen Dolly.

“She was here yesterday, she was very angry at the school over Grisha. The Latin teacher, it seems, has been unfair toward him.”

“Yes, I did see the pictures. I didn’t like them very much,” Levin returned to the conversation she had begun.

Levin spoke now completely without the workmanlike attitude with which he had spoken that morning. Every word in a conversation with her took on special significance. It was pleasant to talk with her, and even more pleasant to listen to her.

Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently but intelligently and casually, attaching no value whatever to her own thoughts but lending great value to the thoughts of the person she was talking with.

A conversation began about the new trend in art and about the new illustrated Bible by a French artist.¹⁴ Vorkuyev accused the artist of realism taken to the point of coarseness. Levin said that the French had taken convention in art farther than anyone and that for this reason they saw special merit in the return to realism. In the very fact they no longer lie, they see poetry.

Never again did a single clever thing Levin said afford him the kind of pleasure as did this one. Anna’s face suddenly beamed when she suddenly appreciated this idea. She burst into laughter.

“I’m laughing,” she said, “the way you laugh when you see a very good likeness. What you said perfectly characterizes French art now, both painting and even literature. Zola, Daudet.¹⁵ But perhaps it has always been like this, that they build their conceptions from invented, conventional figures and then, once all the combinaisons are made, the invented figures grow tedious, and they begin to come up with more natural and honest figures.”¹⁶

“That is perfectly true!” said Vorkuyev.

“So you were at the club?” she turned to her brother.

“Yes, yes, here is a woman!” thought Levin, forgetting himself and staring at her beautiful, mobile face, which now suddenly had changed completely. Levin had not heard what she was saying, leaning toward her brother, but he was struck by the change in her expression. Formerly so magnificent in its tranquility, her face suddenly expressed a strange curiosity, anger, and pride. This lasted only a minute, however. She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to remember something.

“Well, yes, actually, no one’s interested in that,” she said, and she turned to the English girl:

“Please order the tea in the drawing room.”¹⁷

The girl rose and went out.

“Well, how about it, did she pass her examination?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Beautifully. She’s a very capable girl and a sweet person.”

“It will end with you loving her more than your own.”

“There’s a man talking. In love there is no more or less. I love my daughter in one way, and her in another.”

“Here I’ve been telling Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuyev, “that if she would put one hundredth of that energy she puts into this English girl into the general cause of educating Russian children, Anna Arkadyevna would have done a great and beneficial deed.”

“Yes, that’s what you would like, but I couldn’t. Count Alexei Kirillovich has encouraged me greatly”—as she spoke the words “Count Alexei Kirillovich” she gave Levin a shyly questioning look, and he involuntarily answered her with a respectful and confirming look—“has encouraged me to work with the school in the village. I’ve visited several times. They are very sweet, but I could not get attached to that cause. You say ‘energy.’ Energy is founded on love. But love comes on its own, you can’t force it. Here I’ve come to love this girl, and I don’t know why myself.”

Again she looked at Levin. Both her smile and her look—everything told him that she was addressing him alone, valuing his opinion and at the same time knowing in advance that they understood one another.

“I understand that perfectly,” replied Levin. “You can’t put your heart into a school or any such institution, and that’s why I think these philanthropic institutions always yield such meager results.”

She was silent for a moment, then smiled.

“Yes, yes,” she confirmed. “I never could. Je n’ai pas le coeur assez large, to love an entire orphanage of vile little girls.¹⁸ Cela ne m’a jamais réussi.¹⁹ There are so many women who make a position sociale for themselves that way.²⁰ And now even more so,” she said with a sorrowful, trusting expression aimed outwardly at her brother but obviously only at Levin. “And now, when I so need some occupation, I cannot.” Frowning suddenly (Levin realized that she had frowned at herself for talking about herself), she changed the topic. “I know about you,” she told Levin, “that you are a bad citizen, and I defended you as best I could.”

“Just how did you defend me?”

“It depends on the attack. Actually, wouldn’t you like some tea?” She stood up and picked up a morocco-bound book.

“Let me have that, Anna Arkadyevna,” said Vorkuyev, pointing to the book. “It’s well worth doing.”

“Oh no, it’s still so unfinished.”

“I told him,” Stepan Arkadyevich addressed his sister while pointing to Levin.

“You shouldn’t have. My writing is like those carved baskets made in prisons that Liza Mertsalova used to sell me. She was in charge of the prisons in some society,” again she addressed Levin. “And these wretches made miracles of patience.”

Levin caught a glimpse of yet another feature in this woman to whom he had taken such an extraordinary liking as it was. Apart from her intellect, grace, and beauty, there was something true in her. She did not wish to hide from him the full difficulty of her position. Having said this, she sighed, and her face suddenly took on a stern expression and seemed to turn to stone. With this expression on her face she was even more beautiful than before; however, this expression was new; it was outside that circle of expressions, which both beamed with and emitted happiness, that the artist had captured in the portrait. Levin took one more look at the portrait and at her figure as she took her brother’s arm and walked with him through the tall doors, and he felt a tenderness and pity for her that surprised even him.

She asked Levin and Vorkuyev to proceed to the drawing room, while she herself stayed back to discuss something with her brother. “About the divorce, Vronsky, what he did at the club, me?” thought Levin. He was so agitated by the question of what she was discussing with Stepan Arkadyevich that he barely heard what Vorkuyev was telling him about the merits of the children’s novel Anna Arkadyevna had written.

At tea, the same pleasant conversation, full of real content, continued. Not only was there not a single moment when one had to search for a topic of conversation, but on the contrary, one felt one wouldn’t have time to say what one wanted and willingly held back to hear what someone else was saying. And no matter what was said, not only by her but by Vorkuyev and Stepan Arkadyevich, everything, as it seemed to Levin, acquired special significance from her attention and remarks.

Following the interesting conversation, Levin admired her all the while—her beauty, her mind, her culture, along with her simplicity and deep feeling. He listened and spoke and all the while he was thinking about her and her inner life, trying to guess her feelings. Having judged her so severely before, now, following a certain strange progression of thoughts, he tried to justify her and at the same time pitied her and feared that Vronsky did not fully understand her. After ten o’clock, when Stepan Arkadyevich rose to leave (Vorkuyev had left earlier), it seemed to Levin that he had only just arrived. With regret, Levin rose as well.

“Good-bye,” she said, holding him back by his arm and looking into his eyes with a magnetic gaze. “I’m very glad que la glace est rompue.”²¹

She released his arm and narrowed her eyes.

“Tell your wife that I love her as ever, and that if she cannot forgive me my position, then I do not desire that she ever forgive me. In order to forgive me, you have to suffer what I have suffered, and may God spare her that.”

“Certainly, yes, I will tell her,” said Levin, blushing.

11

“What a wonderful, sweet, and pitiful woman,” he thought as he walked out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Well, what do you think? I told you,” Stepan Arkadyevich said, seeing that Levin was utterly vanquished.

“Yes,” Levin replied thoughtfully, “an exceptional woman! It’s not just her mind, but she has a wonderful heart. I feel terribly sorry for her!”

“Now, God willing, everything will soon be settled. Now, you see, don’t judge in advance,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, opening the carriage door. “Goodbye, we’re not going the same way.”

Without ceasing to think about Anna, about all the very simple conversations he had had with her, and recalling at the same time all the details of her facial expression, entering more and more into her situation and feeling pity for her, Levin arrived home.

At home, Kuzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was well, that her dear sisters had only just left her, and he handed him two letters. Levin read them right there, in the front hall, so that he wouldn’t get distracted later. One was from Sokolov, the steward. Sokolov wrote that the wheat could not be sold, they were giving only five and a half rubles for it, and there was nowhere else to raise any money. The other letter was from his sister. She reproached him because her business had still not been completed.

“Well, we’ll sell it for five and a half if they’re not giving more,” Levin decided the first question, which had previously seemed so difficult to him, with unusual ease. “It’s amazing how taken up my time always is here,” he thought about the second letter. He felt guilty before his sister for not yet having done what she had asked of him. “Today, once again, I did not go to court, but today there really was no time.” Deciding that he would definitely take care of it the next day, he went to see his wife. Walking into her room, Levin quickly ran through his entire day in his memory. All the events of the day were conversations: conversations which he had listened to and in which he had taken part. All the conversations were about subjects which he, had he been alone and in the country, would never have raised, but here they were very interesting, and all the conversations had been good; only in two places had they not been entirely good. One was what he had said about the pike; the other, that there was something wrong in the tender pity he had felt for Anna.

Levin found his wife sad and bored. The three sisters’ dinner would have been very cheerful, but then they had waited and waited for him, and everyone got bored, the sisters had departed, and she was left alone.

“Well, and what did you do?” she asked, looking into his eyes, which for some reason were glittering rather suspiciously. So that she would not prevent him from telling her everything, though, she concealed her attention and with an approving smile listened to his tale of how he had spent the evening.

“Well, I was very glad to have met Vronsky. I found it very easy and simple to be with him. You understand, now I will try never to see him, but an end had to be put to this awkwardness,” he said, and recalling that, in trying never to see him again, he had gone straight to see Anna, he blushed. “Here we are saying that the common people drink; I don’t know who drinks more, the people or our class; the people perhaps on a holiday, but …”

But Kitty was not interested in discussing how much the people drank. She saw him blushing and she wanted to know why.

“Well, then where were you?

“Stiva begged me to go see Anna Arkadyevna.”

Having said that, Levin blushed even more, and his doubts as to whether he had done well or ill in going to see Anna were resolved conclusively. He now knew that he should not have done that.

Kitty’s eyes opened especially wide and glittered at Anna’s name, but making an effort, she concealed her agitation and deceived him.

“Ah!” was all she said.

“You’re right in not getting angry at me for going. Stiva asked me, and Dolly wanted it,” Levin continued.

“Oh no,” she said, and in her eyes he saw the effort she was making, which boded no good.

“She is very sweet, very much to be pitied, a fine woman,” he said, telling her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had told him to tell Kitty.

“Yes, naturally, she is much to be pitied,” said Kitty when he had finished. “Who did you get a letter from?”

He told her, and trusting her calm tone, he went to undress.

Returning, he found Kitty in the same chair. When he walked up to her, she took one look at him and burst into sobs.

“What? What is it?” he asked, already knowing what.

“You’ve fallen in love with that vile woman, she’s bewitched you. I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can come of this? At the club you drank and drank, gambled, and then went … to see whom? No, we’re leaving. … I’m leaving tomorrow.”

It took Levin a long time to calm his wife. At last he did, only by confessing that his feeling of pity in combination with his feeling of guilt had thrown him off balance and he had surrendered to Anna’s clever influence and that he would avoid her. One thing he confessed most sincerely of all was the fact that, living so long in Moscow, he had gone mad on nothing but conversations, food, and drink. They talked on and on, until three o’clock in the morning. It was not until three o’clock that they had reconciled sufficiently to be able to fall asleep.

12

After seeing her guests out, Anna did not sit down but began pacing back and forth in her room. Although unconsciously (as she had been acting of late toward all young men) she had done everything possible the entire evening to arouse in Levin a feeling of love for her, and although she knew that she had achieved this, insofar as possible with an honest married man and in a single evening, and although she liked him very much (despite the sharp difference, from the standpoint of men, between Vronsky and Levin, she, as a woman, saw in them what they had in common for which Kitty, too, had loved both Vronsky and Levin), she had ceased thinking of him the moment he left the room.

One thought and one thought alone pursued her obsessively in various forms. “If I have this effect on others, on this loving, family man, why is he so cold toward me? … Not that he’s indifferent, he loves me, I know that. But something new is driving us apart now. Why hasn’t he been here all evening? He had Stiva send word that he could not leave Yashvin alone and had to keep an eye on his gambling. Is Yashvin a child? Suppose it’s true, for argument’s sake. He never tells a lie. But there is something else in this truth. He’s happy at the chance to show me that he has other obligations. I know that, and I agree to that. But why must he insist on proving it to me? He wants to prove to me that his love for me must not impede his freedom. But I don’t need his proofs, I need his love. He ought to understand the full burden of this life of mine here, in Moscow. Am I really living? I’m not living, I’m waiting for the denouement, which keeps getting put off and put off. Again no answer! And Stiva says that he cannot go to Alexei Alexandrovich. And I cannot write to him again. I can do nothing, begin nothing, change nothing, I keep myself in check and wait, inventing amusements for myself—the Englishwoman’s family, writing, reading—but all this is merely deception, all this is the same as morphine. He ought to take pity on me,” she said, feeling tears of self-pity well up in her eyes.

She heard Vronsky’s impatient ring and hastily wiped away those tears, and not only wiped away the tears but sat down by the lamp and opened a book, pretending to be calm. She had to show him that she was displeased that he had not returned as he had promised—displeased only, but in no way show him her grief and, most important, her self-pity. It was all right for her to pity herself, but not for him. She did not want a fight and reproached him for wanting to fight, but in spite of herself she had put herself in the position of fighting.

“Well, you weren’t bored?” he said, approaching her with animation and cheer. “What a terrible passion gambling is!”

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

“Yes, they wanted to pay you a visit. Well, how did you like Levin?” he said, sitting beside her.

“Very much. They left a little while ago. What did Yashvin do?”

“He was winning, seventeen thousand. I called to him. He was just about to leave. But he went back and now he’s losing.”

“So why did you stay?” she asked, suddenly raising her eyes to him. The expression on her face was cold and hostile. “You told Stiva that you would stay to take Yashvin away. But you left him.”

The same expression of cold readiness for a fight was expressed on his face as well.

“First of all, I didn’t ask him to tell you anything, and second, I never lie. Most important, I wanted to stay and so I did,” he said, frowning. “Why, Anna, why?” he said after a moment’s pause, leaning toward her, and he opened his hand, hoping she would put hers in it.

She was glad of this appeal to her tenderness. But some strange evil force would not let her surrender to her attraction, as if the terms of the fight would not let her be subdued.

“Naturally, you wanted to stay and so you did. You do everything you like. But why are you telling me this? To achieve what?” she said, getting more and more heated. “Has anyone ever disputed your rights? But you want to be right, so be right.”

His hand closed, he leaned back, and his face took on an expression even more stubborn than before.

“For you this is a matter of obstinacy,” she said, staring at him and suddenly finding a name for this expression on his face that so irritated her, “precisely of obstinacy. For you the question is whether you will remain the conqueror with me, while for me …” Once again she took pity on herself and nearly began to cry. “If you only knew what it is for me! When I feel as I do now, that you have a hostile—exactly—a hostile attitude toward me, if you knew what that meant for me! If you knew how close I am to disaster at such moments, how afraid I am, afraid of myself!” And she turned away, concealing her sobs.

“But what are we talking about?” he said, horrified at the expression of her despair and again leaning toward her and taking her hand and kissing it. “What’s it for? Do I look for entertainments outside our home? Don’t I avoid the company of women?”

“If only it were that simple!” she said.

“Well, tell me what I have to do to set your mind to rest. I’m prepared to do anything in order for you to be happy,” he said, touched by her despair. “What I wouldn’t do to relieve you of the sort of grief you’re feeling now, Anna!” he said.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she said. “I myself don’t know whether it’s my lonely life or my nerves. … Oh, let’s not speak of it. What about the race? You didn’t tell me,” she asked, trying to conceal the triumph of the victory, which was, after all, hers.

He asked for supper and began to tell her the details of the races; but in his tone and his looks, which were becoming colder and colder, she could see that he did not forgive her her victory, that the obstinacy with which she had struggled had asserted itself in him. He was colder to her than before, as if he had repented of being subdued, and she, remembering the words which had given her the victory, namely, “I’m close to a terrible disaster and am afraid of myself,” realized that this weapon was dangerous and that she could not wield it again. She felt that along with the love that tied them, there had been established between them the evil spirit of struggle, which she could not drive out of his heart, let alone her own.

13

There are no conditions to which a person cannot accustom himself, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives the same way. Levin would not have believed three months before that he could fall asleep peacefully in the conditions in which he was today; that living an aimless, senseless life, and what’s more, a life beyond his means, after inebriation (there was nothing else he could call what had gone on at the club), the awkward friendly relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and even more the awkward visit to see a woman who could only be called lost, and after his enthusiasm for this woman and his wife’s distress—that under these conditions he could easily fall asleep. Nonetheless, under the influence of weariness, a sleepless night, and the wine he had drunk, he fell into a sound and tranquil sleep.

At five o’clock the creak of a door opening woke him. He jumped up and looked around. Kitty was not in the bed next to him. But behind the screen there was a flickering light, and he heard her steps.

“What? … what is it?” he was speaking while half-awake. “Kitty! What is it?”

“It’s fine,” she said, coming out from behind the screen holding a candle. “I was feeling unwell,” she said, smiling an especially sweet and significant smile.

“What? Has it begun, has it?” he said fearfully. “We must send—” and he rushed to dress.

“No, no,” she said, smiling, and restraining him with her hand. “I’m sure it’s fine. I just felt a little unwell. But it’s passed now.”

Walking to the bed, she put out the candle, lay down, and was quiet. Although he found her stillness suspicious, as if she were holding her breath, and most of all the expression of special gentleness and excitement with which, as she came out from behind the screen, she had said, “It’s fine,” he was so sleepy that he fell right back to sleep. Only later did he recall the quiet of her breathing and realize everything that was taking place in her dear, sweet heart while she, without stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman’s life, lay beside him. At seven o’clock he was awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder and her quiet whisper. She seemed to be struggling between her regret at waking him and her urge to talk.

“Kostya, don’t be frightened. It’s fine. But I think … We should send for Lizaveta Petrovna.”

The candle was lit once again. She was sitting on the bed and holding the knitting she had kept herself busy with the last few days.

“Please, don’t be frightened, it’s fine. I’m not afraid in the least,” she said when she saw his frightened face, and she pressed his hand to her breast, then to her lips.

He quickly jumped up, only half-awake and not taking his eyes off her, put on his robe, and came to a halt, all the while looking at her. He should go, but he couldn’t tear himself away from her gaze. It was not as if he didn’t love her face or did not know her expression, her gaze, but he had never seen it like this. How vile and horrid he imagined himself, recalling how he had grieved her yesterday, standing before her as she was now! Her rosy-cheeked face, haloed by soft curls peeking out from under her night cap, shone with joy and resolve.

Regardless of how little unnaturalness and conventionality there was in Kitty’s general character, Levin was nonetheless struck by what had bared itself before him now, when suddenly all the coverings had been removed and the very core of her soul shone in her eyes. In this simplicity and nakedness, she, her, the one he loved, was even more visible. Smiling, she looked at him; but suddenly her eyebrows trembled, she raised her head, and walking quickly to him, she took him by the hand and pressed her entire body to him, pouring her hot breath over him. She was suffering and seemed to be complaining to him of her sufferings. In that first minute, out of habit, he felt that he was to blame. But in her gaze there was a tenderness which said that she not only did not reproach him, she loved him for these sufferings. “If not I, then who is to blame for this?” he could not help but think, seeking the culprit in these sufferings in order to punish him; but there was no culprit. And though there was no culprit, couldn’t he simply help her, relieve her? But even that was impossible and unnecessary. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing through these sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He could see that something magnificent was taking place in her soul, but what? That he could not understand. It was beyond his understanding.

“I sent for Mama. Now you go quickly for Lizaveta Petrovna. Kostya! It’s fine, it’s passed.”

She walked away from him and rang.

“All right then, you get going, Pasha’s on her way. I’m fine.”

Levin saw with amazement that she had picked up her knitting, which she had brought in during the night, and again begun to knit.

As Levin was going out one door, he heard the maid go in the other. He stopped at the door and listened to Kitty give detailed instructions to the maid and helped her begin to move the bed.

He dressed, and while the horses were being harnessed, since there were no cabs, he again ran into the bedroom, not on tiptoe, but on wings, or so it seemed to him. Two maids were anxiously rearranging something in the bedroom. Kitty was pacing and knitting, quickly throwing the loops over, and giving orders.

“I’m going for the doctor right now. They’ve gone for Lizaveta Petrovna, but I’ll drive by as well. Don’t you need anything? Should I go to Dolly’s?”

She looked at him, obviously not listening to what he was saying.

“Yes, yes. Go, go,” she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand at him.

He was already going into the drawing room when suddenly from the bedroom a pitiful moan broke out and then just as quickly quieted down. He stopped and for a long time failed to understand.

“Yes, that’s her,” he told himself, and clutching his head, he ran downstairs.

“Lord have mercy! Forgive us, help us!” he repeated the words that suddenly came to his lips out of nowhere, and he, a nonbeliever, repeated these words not only with his lips. Now, at this moment, he knew that neither all his doubts nor the very impossibility of believing with his reason, which he had known in himself, in any way prevented him from turning to God. Now all that flew from his soul like dust. Who else was he to turn to if not to the One in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?

The horse was still not ready, but feeling in himself a special intensity of physical strength and attention for what he had to do, so as not to lose a single minute, without waiting for the horse, he left on foot and ordered Kuzma to catch up with him. At the corner he met a speeding night cab. Lizaveta Petrovna was sitting in the small sleigh wearing a velvet coat wrapped with a scarf. “Thank God, thank God!” he murmured, ecstatic to recognize her small, fair face, which bore an especially serious, even grave expression. Without telling the driver to stop, he ran back alongside her.

“So, a couple of hours. No more?” she asked. “You find Peter Dmitrievich, only don’t hurry him. Oh, and pick up the opium at the pharmacy.”

“So you think all may be well? Lord, have mercy and help us!” Levin murmured when he saw his horse coming out of the gates. Climbing up on the sleigh next to Kuzma, he ordered him to drive to the doctor’s.

14

The doctor was not yet up, and his servant said, “He went to bed late and told me not to wake him, but he’ll be getting up soon.” The servant was cleaning the lamp glasses and seemed completely absorbed in doing so. The servant’s attentiveness to the glass and indifference to what was happening with Levin at first astounded him, but immediately, once he had thought it over, he realized that no one knew or was obliged to know his emotions, and that it was all the more necessary to act calmly, carefully, and decisively in order to break through this wall of indifference and achieve his goal. “Don’t rush and don’t leave anything out,” Levin told himself, feeling an increasing surge of physical strength and attention to all he faced.

Having learned that the doctor was still not getting up, Levin, of all the plans that proposed themselves to him, settled on the following: Kuzma would take a note to another doctor, and he himself would go to the pharmacy for the opium, and if, when he returned, the doctor had still not gotten up, then, either by bribing the servant or, if he would not agree, by force, he would wake the doctor no matter what.

At the pharmacy, the lean chemist, with the same indifference with which the servant had been cleaning the glass, sealed up a capsule of powder for a waiting driver and refused him the opium. Trying not to hurry or to get angry, citing the names of the doctor and the midwife and explaining what he needed the opium for, Levin began trying to convince him. The chemist asked advice in German as to whether he should dispense it, and receiving consent from behind the partition, took out the vial and funnel, slowly poured it from a large bottle into a small one, glued on a label, sealed it, despite Levin’s request not to do that, and wanted to wrap it up as well. This was too much for Levin; he grabbed the vial decisively from his hands and ran out the large glass doors. The doctor had not yet gotten up, and the servant, now busy laying a rug, refused to wake him. Without hurrying, Levin took out a ten-ruble note, and slowly uttering the words, but without wasting time either, handed him the note and explained that Peter Dmitrievich (how great and important the once so unimportant Peter Dmitrievich now seemed to Levin!) had promised to come at any time, that he surely would not be angry, and so he should be wakened right away.

The servant consented, went upstairs, and asked Levin into the waiting room.

Behind the door Levin could hear the doctor coughing, walking about, washing, and saying something. A few minutes passed; to Levin it seemed like more than an hour. He could not wait any longer.

“Peter Dmitrievich, Peter Dmitrievich!” he began in an imploring voice through the open door. “For God’s sake, forgive me. Please see me as you are. It’s been more than two hours.”

“Right away, right away!” replied a voice, and Levin was astonished to hear the doctor saying this with a smile.

“Just for a moment.”

“Right away.”

Another couple of minutes passed while the doctor put on his boots, and another couple of minutes while the doctor put on his coat and combed his hair.

“Peter Dmitrievich!” Levin was about to begin again in a pitiful voice, but just then the doctor came out dressed and combed. “These people have no conscience,” thought Levin. “Combing while we perish!”

“Good morning!” the doctor said to him, extending his hand, exactly as if he were taunting him with his calm. “Don’t be in such a hurry. Well?”

Trying to be as thorough as possible, Levin began recounting all the unnecessary details about his wife’s situation, constantly interjecting his story with pleas for the doctor to come away with him right now.

“Now don’t be in such a hurry. You don’t know, you see. I’m probably not needed, but I promised, and if you like, I’ll come. But there’s no hurry. Please take a seat. Wouldn’t you like some coffee?”

Levin looked at him, asking with his gaze whether he was making fun of him. But the doctor had no thought of making fun.

“I know, sir, I know,” said the doctor, smiling. “I’m a family man myself, but we husbands are the most pathetic of people in moments like this. I have one patient whose husband always runs away to the stables during these times.”

“But what do you think, Peter Dmitrievich? Do you think it may turn out well?”

“All the facts point to a favorable outcome.”

“So will you come right away?” said Levin, looking angrily at the servant bringing in the coffee.

“In about an hour.”

“No, for God’s sake!”

“Well, then let me drink my coffee.”

The doctor began to drink his coffee. Both were silent for a while.

“The Turks are getting badly beaten, though. Did you read yesterday’s wire?” the doctor said, chewing on a roll.

“No, I can’t stand it!” said Levin, jumping up. “So will you be there in a quarter of an hour?”

“Half an hour.”

“Word of honor?”

When Levin returned home, he arrived with the princess, and together they walked up to the bedroom door. The princess had tears in her eyes, and her hands were trembling. When she saw Levin, she embraced him and began to weep.

“Oh, how is she, dear Lizaveta Petrovna?” she said, seizing the arm of Lizaveta Petrovna, who had come out to greet them with a beaming and concentrated face.

“It’s going fine,” she said. “Convince her to lie down. It would be easier.”

From the moment he had awakened and realized what was going on, Levin had steeled himself for whatever faced him without thinking, without anticipating anything, locking up all his thoughts and feelings, firmly, trying not to upset his wife but, on the contrary, to soothe her and support her courage, to endure what he faced. Not letting himself even think about what was going to happen or how it would end, judging from his questions as to how long this usually lasts, Levin in his imagination had steeled himself to be patient and to hold his heart in his hands for about five hours, and that had seemed to him possible. But when he returned from the doctor and again saw her suffering, he began repeating more and more often, “Lord, forgive us, help us,” sighing and lifting his head up; and he was terrified that he might not be able to withstand this, might burst into tears or run away. So agonizing was it for him. But only an hour had passed.

But after this hour, another hour passed, then two, three, and all five hours, which he had set for himself as the limit of his patience, and the situation was unchanged; and he had endured everything because there was nothing else to do but endure, each minute thinking that he had reached the outer limits of his patience and that his heart was about to burst from compassion.

However, more minutes and hours, and more hours, passed, and his suffering and horror mounted and became more and more intense.

All the usual conditions of life without which it is impossible to form a conception of anything ceased to exist for Levin. He had lost the sense of time. First the minutes—those minutes when she had called him in and he held her perspiring hand, which at turns squeezed his with uncommon strength and pushed him away—seemed to him like hours, then the hours seemed to him like minutes. He was surprised when Lizaveta Petrovna asked him to light a candle behind the screen and he learned it was already five o’clock in the afternoon. If they had told him that it was now just ten o’clock in the morning, he would have been just as little surprised. He knew just as little where he was at that time as he did when things were happening. He saw her enflamed face, alternately perplexed and suffering, then smiling and reassuring him. He saw the princess as well, red-faced and tense, the curls of her gray hair undone, and in tears, which she made an effort to swallow, biting her lips, and he saw Dolly, and the doctor smoking his fat cigarettes, and Lizaveta Petrovna with her firm, resolute, and reassuring face, and the old prince walking up and down the hall with a scowling face. But how they came and went and where they were, he did not know. The princess was either with the doctor in the bedroom or in the study, where a laid table appeared; or else it was not she but Dolly. Later Levin remembered they kept sending him places. Once they sent him to bring in a table and sofa. He did this diligently, thinking she needed this, and only later learned that he was getting a bed for himself. Then he was sent to see the doctor in the study and ask him something. The doctor replied and then began talking about the unrest in the municipal duma.²² Then they sent him to the bedroom to see the princess and bring the icon with the silver gilt mounting, and he and the princess’s old maid climbed up to the shelf to get it and broke the icon lamp, and the princess’s maid tried to reassure him about his wife and about the lamp, and he brought the icon and placed it at the head of Kitty’s bed, trying hard to slip it in behind the pillows. But where, when, and why all that had been, he did not know. Nor did he understand why the princess took him by the arm, and gazing on him with pity, begged him to calm down, and Dolly tried to talk him into eating something and led him out of the room, and even the doctor looked at him gravely and sympathetically and offered him some drops.

He knew and felt only that what was transpiring was similar to that which had transpired a year before in the provincial town hotel at his brother Nikolai’s deathbed. But that had been grief—and this was joy. Still, both that grief and this joy were identically outside all life’s ordinary conditions; they were like an opening in that ordinary life through which something sublime appeared. What was transpiring had come about with identical difficulty and agony; and with identical incomprehensibility, the soul, when it did contemplate this sublime something, rose to a height as it had never risen before, where reason could not keep up.

“Lord, forgive us and help us,” he repeated to himself incessantly, feeling, in spite of such a long and seemingly total estrangement, that he was addressing God just as trustingly and simply as during his childhood and first youth.

All this time, he was experiencing two distinct moods. One was outside her presence, with the doctor, who was smoking one fat cigarette after another and crushing them on the edge of a full ashtray, and with Dolly and the prince, where the talk was of dinner, politics, and Marya Petrovna’s illness and where Levin suddenly forgot completely for a moment what was happening and felt as if he had just awakened; and the other mood was in her presence, at her bedside, where his heart wanted to but wouldn’t burst from compassion, and he prayed to God without cease. And each time he was brought out of a moment’s forgetfulness by a shriek flying to him from the bedroom, he fell into the same strange error that had descended upon him at first; each time, hearing the shriek, he jumped up, ran to defend himself, remembered on his way that he was not to blame, and was overcome with the urge to protect and help her. Looking at her, though, he again saw that he could not help, and he was horrified and said, “Lord, forgive us and help us.” The more time passed, the more powerful both moods became: outside her presence, he became calmer, forgetting her entirely; the more agonizing her sufferings, the greater his helplessness in the face of them. He would jump up, wish he could run away somewhere, and run in to see her.

Sometimes, when she kept calling him in again and again, he blamed her. But when he saw her meek, smiling face and heard the words, “I’ve been torturing you,” he blamed God, but then remembering about God, he immediately begged for forgiveness and mercy.

15

He didn’t know whether it was late or early. The candles had burned down. Dolly had just been in the study and suggested to the doctor that he lie down. Levin was sitting, listening to the doctor’s stories about a charlatan mesmerist and watching the ash of his cigarette. It was a period of relaxation, and he had forgotten himself. He had completely forgotten about what was now going on. He listened to the doctor’s story and understood him. Suddenly there was a shriek unlike anything else. The shriek was so terrible that Levin didn’t even jump up but held his breath and gave the doctor a frightened, questioning look. The doctor tilted his head to one side, listened closely, and smiled approvingly. It had all been so extraordinary that nothing surprised Levin anymore. “That must be the right thing,” he thought and he continued to sit there. Whose shriek had that been? He jumped up, ran into the bedroom on tiptoe, walked around Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and took his place at the head of the bed. The shriek had stilled, but something had changed. What it was he could not see and did not understand and did not want to see or understand. But he saw this from Lizaveta Petrovna’s face: Lizaveta Petrovna’s face was stern and pale and just as resolute, although her jaw was trembling slightly and her eyes were aimed straight at Kitty. Kitty’s enflamed and tortured face, with the locks of hair stuck to her perspiring face, was turned toward him and sought his gaze. Her raised hands begged for his hands. Grasping his cold hands in her perspiring hands, she began pressing them to her face.

“Don’t leave, don’t leave! I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid!” she said quickly. “Mama, take my earrings. They’re bothering me. You’re not afraid? Quickly, Lizaveta Petrovna, quickly.”

She was speaking very rapidly and tried to smile. But suddenly her face was distorted and she pushed him away.

“No, it’s too horrible! I’m going to die, I’m going to die! Go, go away!” she screamed, and again he heard the same shriek that was like nothing else.

Levin clutched his head and ran out of the room.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, everything’s fine!” Dolly said as he left.

But no matter what they said, he knew now that all was lost. Leaning his head against the lintel, he stood in the next room and listened to someone’s wail, a wail unlike anything he had ever heard, a howl, and he knew that what was screaming was what had once been Kitty. He had long since given up wanting the child. He now hated that child. He didn’t even wish for her life now, he wanted only a cessation to these horrible sufferings.

“Doctor! What is this? What is this? My God!” he said, grabbing the doctor’s hand as he came in.

“It’s almost over,” said the doctor. The doctor’s face was so grave when he said this that Levin understood over in the sense of dying.

Forgetting himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. She was scowling even more and more sternly. Kitty looked awful. In place of her usual face was something terrible both because of the tension there and because of the sound emanating from it. He prostrated himself before the bed’s wooden frame, feeling his heart breaking. The horrible screaming did not stop, it had become even more horrible, and, as if approaching the final limit of horror, suddenly stopped. Levin could not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt: the screaming had stopped, and he could hear a quiet bustling, a rustle, and hurried breathing, and a breaking, vibrant and tender, happy voice softly say, “It’s over.”

He looked up. Her arms limp on the blanket, unusually beautiful and quiet, she looked at him without a word and wanted but was unable to smile.

Suddenly, out of that mysterious and horrible, otherworldly place where he had spent these twenty-two hours, Levin instantaneously felt himself transported to his former, accustomed world, but shining now with a new light of such happiness that he could not bear it. His taut strings all broke. Sobs and tears of joy, which he had in no way foreseen, rose in him with such force, rocking his entire body, that for a long time they prevented him from speaking.

He fell to his knees in front of the bed, held his wife’s hand to his lips, and kissed it, and this hand responded to his kisses with a weak movement of the fingers. Meanwhile, there, at the foot of the bed, in the deft hands of Lizaveta Petrovna, like the flame over a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never been before and who would now, with the same right and same sense of his own importance, live and bear others like him.

“It’s alive! Alive! And it’s a boy! Don’t worry!” Levin heard the voice of Lizaveta Petrovna, who had smacked the baby’s back with a trembling hand.

“Mama, is it true?” said Kitty’s voice.

Only the princess’s sobbing answered her.

Amid the silence, like a sure answer to his mother’s question, a completely different voice was heard than all the subdued voices in the room. It was a bold, impudent cry that did not want to understand anything and that came from the new human being who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Before, if they had told Levin that Kitty had died and that he had died along with her and that their children were angels and that God was right there before them, he would not have been surprised in the least; but now, having returned to the world of reality, he made great mental efforts to understand that she was alive and well and that the being howling so desperately was his son. Kitty was alive and her sufferings were over. And he was inexpressibly happy. This he understood and it made him completely happy. But the child? Where had he come from, and why, and who was he? He simply could not understand, could not get used to this idea. It seemed to him something superfluous, something extra, which he could not get used to for a long time.

16

At ten o’clock the old prince, Sergei Ivanovich, and Stepan Arkadyevich were sitting at Levin’s, and after a few words about the new mother, began talking about unrelated subjects. Levin listened to them and during these conversations could not keep from recalling what had come to pass, what had happened prior to this morning, recalled himself as he had been yesterday, before all this. It was as if a hundred years had passed since then. He felt as if he were on some inaccessible height from which he was making an effort to descend in order not to insult the people he was speaking to. He spoke and thought incessantly about his wife, the details of her present condition, and his son, to the idea of whose existence he was trying to accustom himself. The entire feminine world, which had taken on for him a new, previously unknown significance since he had been married, now in his mind had risen so high that his mind could not grasp it. He listened to the conversation about the dinner yesterday at the club and thought, “What is happening with her now? Has she fallen asleep? How is she feeling? What is she thinking? Is my son Dmitry crying?” And in the middle of the conversation, in the middle of a sentence, he jumped up and left the room.

“Send to tell me whether I can see her,” said the prince.

“Fine, right away,” Levin replied, and without stopping, he went to see her.

She was not sleeping but talking quietly with her mother, making plans for the upcoming christening.

Groomed and coiffed, wearing an elegant cap with something blue on it, her hands freed on the blanket, she lay on her back, and meeting his gaze, pulled him toward her with hers. Her gaze, bright in any case, shone even more brightly the closer he came. On her face was that same alteration from earthly to unearthly that one sees on the face of the dead; but there it is a farewell, here a welcome. Again agitation similar to what he had experienced at the moment of the birth overwhelmed his heart. She took his hand and asked him whether he had slept. He couldn’t answer and turned away, convinced of his own weakness.

“But I dozed off, Kostya!” she told him. “And now I feel so good.”

She looked at him, but suddenly her expression changed.

“Give him to me,” she said, hearing the baby’s chirp. “Give him to me, Lizaveta Petrovna, and he will have a look.”

“Well then, let his papa take a look,” said Lizaveta Petrovna, rising and carrying over something red, strange, and squirming. “Wait a moment, let’s tidy him up first,” and Lizaveta Petrovna put this squirming and red something on the bed and began unwrapping and wrapping the baby, lifting him up and turning him with one finger and sprinkling him with something.

Levin gazed at this tiny, pitiful being and made vain efforts to find in his heart some signs of fatherly feeling toward it. All he felt for it was revulsion. But when he had been undressed and his tiny little hands and feet flashed, saffron yellow, with toes, too, and even a big toe, different from the others, and when he saw how Lizaveta Petrovna held down these flailing little arms, which were just like soft coils, confining them in linen garments, there descended upon him such pity for this being and such fear that she would hurt him that he stayed her hand.

Lizaveta Petrovna burst out laughing.

“No fear, no fear!”

When the baby was clean and transformed into a sturdy little doll, Lizaveta Petrovna rocked him a little, as if proud of her work, and leaned back so that Levin could see his son in all his beauty.

Kitty, not lowering her eyes, and squinting, was looking in the same direction.

“Give him here, give him here!” she said, and she even tried to sit up.

“What are you doing, Katerina Alexandrovna. You’re not allowed such movements! Wait a moment and I’ll give him to you. Now we’re showing his papa what a fine fellow we are!”

Lizaveta Petrovna lifted toward Levin on one arm (the other only supported the swaying head with the fingers) this strange, wobbly red being, which was hiding his head behind the edge of the cloth. But there was also a nose, squinting eyes, and smacking lips.

“A magnificent child!” said Lizaveta Petrovna.

Levin sighed, chagrined. This magnificent child aroused in him only a feeling of revulsion and pity. It was not at all the feeling he had been anticipating.

He turned away while Lizaveta Petrovna arranged him at the unaccustomed breast.

Suddenly laughter made him raise his head. It was Kitty laughing. The child had taken the breast.

“All right, that’s enough, that’s enough!” said Lizaveta Petrovna, but Kitty would not let him go. He fell asleep in her arms.

“Look now,” said Kitty, turning the baby toward him so that he could see him. The wizened little face suddenly wrinkled up even more, and the baby sneezed.

Smiling and barely restraining tears of emotion, Levin kissed his wife and left the darkened room.

What he had experienced for this little being was not at all what he had anticipated. There was no cheer or joy in this feeling; on the contrary, it was a new and agonizing terror: the awareness of a new sphere of vulnerability. And this awareness was so agonizing at first, the fear that this helpless being might suffer was so powerful, that because of it, the strange feeling of senseless joy and even pride which he had experienced when the baby sneezed had gone unnoticed.

17

Stepan Arkadyevich’s affairs were in a bad way.

Two-thirds of the money for the forest had already been spent, and he had borrowed all the remaining third from the merchant at a discount of ten percent. The merchant was not lending any more money, especially since this winter Darya Alexandrovna, for the first time asserting her rights to her own property, had refused to sign the contract in receipt of the money for the final third of the wood. All his salary went for household expenses and to pay his petty, never-ending debts. There was absolutely no money.

This was unpleasant and awkward and, in Stepan Arkadyevich’s opinion, could not go on like this. The reason, in his view, lay in the fact that his salary was too small. The post that he filled had obviously been very good five years ago, but not anymore. Petrov, a bank director, made twelve thousand; Sventitsky, a company director, made seventeen thousand; Mitin, who had founded a bank, made fifty thousand. “Obviously I fell asleep and they forgot me,” Stepan Arkadyevich thought to himself. He began listening and looking more closely, and by the end of the winter he had spied out a very good berth and mounted a campaign for it, first from Moscow, through his aunts, uncles, and friends, and then, when the matter had matured, in the spring, he himself went to Petersburg. It was one of those cozy, lucrative berths, of which there are so many more nowadays than there used to be, being of all sizes, with salaries from a thousand to fifty thousand a year. This berth was that of member of the amalgamated agency of mutual credit balance of southern railroads and accompanying banking institutions. This position, like all such positions, required such tremendous knowledge and activity that it was hard to combine in any one person. And since there was no such person who combined these qualities, then it was at least better for the position to be occupied by an honest, rather than a dishonest man. And Stepan Arkadyevich was not only an “honest man” (in the ordinary sense of the word) but was also an “honest man,” with the special stress that this word has in Moscow when people say: an “honest official,” an “honest writer,” an “honest journal,” an “honest institution,” and an “honest administration,” meaning not only that the person or institution was not dishonest but also that they were capable if need be of standing up to the government. Stepan Arkadyevich moved in those circles in Moscow where this word had been introduced and was considered there an “honest man,” and so had more right than others to this position.

This position yielded between seven and ten thousand a year, and Oblonsky could occupy it without leaving his government position. It depended on two ministers, one lady, and two Jews; and all these people, although they had already been prepared, Stepan Arkadyevich needed to see in Petersburg. Besides, Stepan Arkadyevich had promised his sister Anna that he would get from Karenin a final answer about the divorce. After asking Dolly for fifty rubles, he left for Petersburg.

Sitting in Karenin’s study and listening to his project on the causes for the regrettable state of Russian finances, Stepan Arkadyevich was just waiting for the moment when he would finish so that he could bring up his own business and Anna.

“Yes, that’s quite true,” he said, when Alexei Alexandrovich, removing his pince-nez, without which he could not read now, looked inquiringly at his former brother-in-law, “that was quite true in the details, but nevertheless the principle of our era is freedom.”

“Yes, but I am setting forth another principle that embraces the principle of freedom,” said Alexei Alexandrovich, stressing the word “embraces” and putting his pince-nez back on in order to read once again for his listener the place where this very thing had been said.

Sorting through the handsomely written manuscript with the wide margins, Alexei Alexandrovich once again read through the conclusive section.

“I want to oppose a system of protection, not for the benefit of private individuals but for the public good—for the lower and the upper classes identically,” he said looking at Oblonsky over his pince-nez. “However, they cannot understand this. They are preoccupied with their personal interests and get carried away by phrases.”

Stepan Arkadyevich knew that whenever Karenin began talking about what they were doing and thinking, the very people who did not want to accept his proposals and were the cause of all the evil in Russia, that then the end was not far off; and so he now willingly rejected the principle of freedom and agreed entirely. Alexei Alexandrovich fell silent, pensively leafing through his manuscript.

“Ah, by the way,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “I wanted to ask you, if you happened to see Pomorsky, to put in a word with him about how I would very much like to have the new position of member of the amalgamated agency of mutual credit balance of southern railroads and accompanying banking institutions.”

The title of this position, so dear to his heart, was already such a habit with Stepan Arkadyevich that he uttered it quickly and without error.

Alexei Alexandrovich questioned him as to the activities of this new commission and became lost in thought. He was trying to figure out whether there wasn’t something in the activities of this commission that was in opposition to his proposals. However, since the activities of this new institution were very complicated and his proposals embraced a very large sphere, he could not figure this out right away, and removing his pince-nez, he said, “Without a doubt, I can tell him. But why, actually, do you wish to occupy this position?”

“The salary is good, nearly nine thousand, and my means—”

“Nine thousand,” Alexei Alexandrovich echoed, and he frowned. The high figure of this salary reminded him that from this point of view the activities Stepan Arkadyevich was proposing were antithetical to the main point of his proposals, which always inclined toward economy.

“I consider, and on this matter I have written a memorandum, that in our times these immense salaries betoken the false economic assiette of our administration.”²³

“Yes, but what do you want?” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Look at it this way. A bank director receives ten thousand—well, he’s worth that. Or an engineer receives twenty thousand. It’s vital work, whatever you say!”

“I would suppose that a salary is a payment for a good, and it must be subject to the law of supply and demand. If the fixing of a salary departs from this law, as, for example, when I see that two engineers graduate from an institute, both are identically knowledgeable and capable, and one receives forty thousand while the other makes do with two thousand; or that they appoint lawyers and hussars who have no particular special knowledge to be the directors of company banks, I conclude that the salary has been set not according to the law of supply and demand but by blatant favoritism. Here we have an abuse that is important in and of itself and that has a harmful effect on government service. I think—”

Stepan Arkadyevich hastened to interrupt his brother-in-law.

“Yes, but you must agree that a new and undoubtedly useful institution is being opened. Whatever you say, it’s vital work! People value in particular that the matter is being seen through honestly,” said Stepan Arkadyevich with emphasis.

But Alexei Alexandrovich did not understand the Muscovite meaning of “honest.”

“Honesty is only a negative characteristic,” he said.

“But you would be doing me a great favor nonetheless,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, “by putting in a word with Pomorsky. Casually, in conversation.”

“This would depend more on Bolgarinov, after all,” said Alexei Alexandrovich.

“Bolgarinov for one completely agrees,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, turning red.

Stepan Arkadyevich turned red at the mention of Bolgarinov because that same morning he had been to see the Jew Bolgarinov, and this visit had left him with an unpleasant memory. Stepan Arkadyevich well knew that the matter he wished to serve was a new, vital, and honest matter; but this morning, when Bolgarinov, evidently on purpose, made him wait for two hours with the other petitioners in the waiting room, he suddenly felt awkward.

Whether he had felt awkward because he, Prince Oblonsky, a descendant of Rurik, had waited for two hours in the waiting room of a Jew, or because for the first time in his life he had not followed the example of his ancestors, serving the government, but had entered a new arena, he had felt very awkward. During those two hours of waiting at Bolgarinov’s, Stepan Arkadyevich, jauntily pacing around the waiting room, smoothing his whiskers, entering into conversation with the other petitioners, and trying to come up with a pun he could use about how he had been kept “adjudicating with a Jew,” tried hard to hide from others and even from himself what he had felt.

But this entire time he had felt awkward and annoyed, he himself did not know why: whether it was because nothing was coming of his pun—“I adjudicated with that Jew until June”—or because of something else. When Bolgarinov finally received him with extraordinary civility, obviously triumphing over his humiliation, and nearly refused him, Stepan Arkadyevich hurried to forget it as quickly as possible, and only now remembering, he had turned red.

18

“Now I have another matter, and you know what it is. It’s about Anna,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, pausing briefly and shaking off this unpleasant impression.

As soon as Oblonsky pronounced Anna’s name, Alexei Alexandrovich’s face changed completely. Instead of its former animation it expressed weariness and lifelessness.

“What exactly do you want of me?” he said, turning around in his chair and tapping his pince-nez.

“A decision, some sort of decision, Alexei Alexandrovich. I’m turning to you now (‘not as to an injured husband,’ Stepan Arkadyevich was about to say, but fearful of spoiling the matter this way replaced this with these words) not as a man of state (which came out wrong) but simply as a man, both a good man and a Christian. You must take pity on her,” he said.

“What exactly is this about?” said Karenin quietly.

“Yes, take pity on her. If you had seen her the way I have—I spent the entire winter with her—you would take pity on her. Her situation is awful, simply awful.”

“It seemed to me,” replied Alexei Alexandrovich in a reedier, almost shrill voice, “that Anna Arkadyevich had everything she herself had wanted.”

“Oh, Alexei Alexandrovich, for God’s sake, let’s not cast recriminations! What’s past is past, and you know what she wants and is waiting for—a divorce.”

“But I thought Anna Arkadyevna refused to divorce if I’m demanding that she give me custody of our son. That is what I replied, and I thought that this matter was concluded. I consider it so,” shrieked Alexei Alexandrovich.

“But for God’s sake, don’t get angry,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, lightly touching his brother-in-law’s knee. “The matter is not concluded. If you would permit me to recapitulate, the situation was this. When you separated, you were as magnificent, as magnanimous as one could possibly be; you offered her everything—her freedom, a divorce even. She appreciated this. No, don’t think that. She did appreciate it. To such an extent that at first, feeling her guilt before you, she did not think it through and could not have thought it all through. She refused everything. But reality and time have shown that her situation is agonizing and impossible.”

“Anna Arkadyevna’s life cannot interest me,” Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted, raising his eyebrows.

“Permit me not to believe you,” Stepan Arkadyevich objected gently. “Her situation is both agonizing for her and without any possible benefit for anyone. She has deserved it, you will say. She knows this and is not asking you; she says frankly that she would not dare ask you anything. But I, we, all her family, everyone who loves her, are asking, begging you. Why should she be tortured? Who gains from this?”

“Permit me, you seem to be placing me in the position of the guilty party,” Alexei Alexandrovich intoned.

“Oh no, no, not at all, you must understand me,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, again touching his arm, as if he were confident that this touch would soften his brother-in-law. “I’m only saying one thing: her situation is agonizing, and it can be alleviated by you, and you will lose nothing. I will arrange everything for you in such a way that you won’t notice. After all, you did promise.”

“The promise was made before, and I thought the question of our son decided the matter. Moreover, I had hoped that Anna Arkadyevna would find the magnanimity inside her …”—with difficulty, lips trembling, the suddenly pale-faced Alexei Alexandrovich managed to say.

“She is indeed leaving everything up to your magnanimity. She asks, begs, one thing—to deliver her from this impossible situation in which she finds herself. She is no longer asking for her son. Alexei Alexandrovich, you are a good man. Try for a moment to imagine her situation. The matter of divorce for her, in her situation, is a matter of life and death. If you had not promised before, she would have reconciled herself to her situation and lived in the country. But you did promise, she wrote to you and moved to Moscow. And there in Moscow, where every meeting is a knife to her heart, she has been living for six months, awaiting a decision any day. You see, it’s the same as if someone sentenced to death had been held for months with a noose around her neck, perhaps promised death, perhaps a pardon. Take pity on her, and then I will make it my business to arrange everything. Vos scrupules—”²⁴

“I’m not talking about that, that …” Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted him disgustedly. “But I may have promised what I had no right to promise.”

“So you are refusing what you promised?”

“I never refused to do what is possible, but I wish to have time to think over how possible what I promised is.”

“No, Alexei Alexandrovich!” Oblonsky began, jumping up. “I won’t believe that! She is so unhappy, as only a woman can be unhappy, and you cannot refuse her such a …”

“How possible what I promised is. Vous professez d’être un libre penseur.²⁵ But I, as a believer, cannot in such an important matter act counter to Christian law.”

“But in Christian societies, as well as among us, as far as I know, divorce is permitted,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Divorce is permitted by our church as well. And we see—”

“Permitted, but not in this sense.”

“Alexei Alexandrovich, I don’t recognize you,” said Oblonsky after a pause. “Wasn’t it you (and didn’t we appreciate this?) who forgave everything and, moved by precisely your Christian feeling, were prepared to sacrifice everything? You yourself said, ‘If a man take thy coat, give him thy cloak also,’ and now—”

“I’m asking you,” Alexei Alexandrovich, pale and with trembling jaw, began in a shrill voice, rising suddenly to his feet, “I’m asking you to put an end to, put an end to … this conversation.”

“Oh no! Well, forgive me, forgive me if I’ve grieved you,” Stepan Arkadyevich began, smiling in embarrassment and extending his hand. “But, like an ambassador, I am merely carrying out my instructions.”

Alexei Alexandrovich gave him his hand, lapsed into thought, and spoke:

“I must think it over and seek direction. The day after tomorrow I will give you my final answer,” he said, having thought of something.

19

Stepan Arkadyevich was just about to leave when Kornei came to announce, “Sergei Alexeyevich!”

“Who is this Sergei Alexeyevich?” Stepan Arkadyevich was about to say, but then he remembered.

“Ah, Seryozha!” he said. “‘Sergei Alexeyevich’—I thought it might be the department director. Anna asked me to see him,” he remembered.

And he remembered the timid, pitiful expression with which Anna, letting him go, had said, “No matter what, you must see him. Find out in detail where he is and who is with him. And Stiva … if only it were possible! It is possible after all?” Stepan Arkadyevich realized what this “if only it were possible” meant: if only it were possible to bring about the divorce in such a way as to give her her son. Now Stepan Arkadyevich saw that there was no point even thinking about that; still, he was pleased to see his nephew.

Alexei Alexandrovich reminded his brother-in-law that they never spoke to his son about his mother and that he was asking him not to say a word about her.

“He was very ill after that meeting with his mother, which we had not an-tici-pated,” said Alexei Alexandrovich. “We even feared for his life. But sensible treatment and sea bathing in the summer restored his health, and now I have enrolled him in school, on the doctor’s advice. Indeed, the influence of schoolmates has had a good effect on him, and he is quite healthy and studies well.”

“What a fine young man you’ve become! This isn’t Seryozha but a whole Sergei Alexeyevich!” said Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling as he looked at the handsome, broad-shouldered boy entering smartly and at his ease, wearing a navy blue jacket and long trousers. The boy had a healthy and cheerful look. He bowed to his uncle as if he were a stranger, but when he recognized him he turned red, exactly as if he had been insulted and aggravated by something, and quickly turned away. The boy walked over to his father and handed him a note about the grades he had received at school.

“Well, this is respectable,” said the father, “you may go.”

“He’s grown thinner and taller and ceased to be a baby but has become a boy, I like that,” said Stepan Arkadyevich. “Do you remember me?”

The boy quickly turned to look at his father.

“I remember, mon oncle,” he replied, glancing at his uncle, and again he looked down.

The uncle called the boy over and took his hand.

“Well, how about it, how are you doing?” he said, wishing to initiate a conversation and not knowing what to say.

The boy, turning red and not answering, cautiously drew his hand out of his uncle’s. As soon as Stepan Arkadyevich let go of his hand, he cast a questioning glance at his father with a quick step and left the room, like a bird set free.

A year had passed since Seryozha had last seen his mother. Since then he had not heard anything more about her. During that year he had been sent to school and had come to know and love his schoolmates. Those dreams and memories of his mother that had made him ill after his meeting with her no longer occupied him. When they came back, he strenuously drove them out, considering them shameful and fit only for girls, not a boy who went to school. He knew that there had been a fight between his father and mother that had separated them, knew that he was destined to remain with his father, and he had tried to get used to this idea.

Seeing his uncle, who resembled his mother, was unpleasant because it called up those same memories, which he considered shameful. It was even more unpleasant because from the few words he had heard as he waited outside the study door, and especially from the expression on the face of his father and uncle, he guessed that the talk between them must have been about his mother. So as not to condemn the father with whom he lived and on whom he depended and, most of all, not to succumb to sentimentality, which he considered equally humiliating, Seryozha tried not to look at this uncle who had come to disturb his peace and not to think about what he brought to mind.

But when Stepan Arkadyevich, who left right after him, saw him on the stairs, called him over, and asked him how he spent his time between classes, Seryozha, outside his father’s presence, became quite talkative.

“We play railroad now,” he said, answering his question. “This is how it works: two boys sit on the bench. Those are the passengers. One gets up standing on the bench, and everyone latches on. Either with their arms or their belts, and they start through all the rooms. The doors are opened ahead of time. Oh, and it’s very hard being the conductor!”

“That’s the one standing?” asked Stepan Arkadyevich, smiling.

“Yes, you have to be brave and clever, especially when they stop suddenly or someone falls.”

“Yes, that’s no joke,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, looking with sadness into those animated eyes, so like his mother’s, no longer babyish, not entirely innocent anymore, and although he had promised Alexei Alexandrovich not to speak of Anna, he could not help himself.

“Do you remember your mother?” he asked all of a sudden.

“No, I don’t,” Seryozha spoke quickly, and turning crimson, he looked down. After that his uncle could not get anything more out of him.

Half an hour later the Slav tutor found his pupil on the staircase and for a long time could not tell whether he was angry or crying.

“Well, is it true, you hurt yourself when you fell?” said the tutor. “I’ve said that it’s a dangerous game. The director should be told.”

“If I’d hurt myself, no one would have noticed. That’s for sure.”

“Well then, what is it?”

“Leave me alone! I remember, I don’t remember. What does he care? Why should I remember? Leave me in peace!” He was no longer addressing his tutor but the whole world.

20

Stepan Arkadyevich, as always, did not waste his time in Petersburg idly. In Petersburg, apart from business—his sister’s divorce and the new post—he also needed, as always, to refresh himself after Moscow’s stuffiness, as he put it.

Moscow, despite its cafés chantants and its omnibuses, was nonetheless a backwater.²⁶ Stepan Arkadyevich had always felt this. Living in Moscow, especially around his family, he felt his spirits sinking. When he had spent too long in Moscow without leaving the city, he positively reached the point where he worried about his wife’s ill humor and reproaches, the health and education of his children, and the petty interests of his department; even the fact that he had debts worried him. All he had to do, though, was to spend some time in Petersburg, in that circle in which he moved, where people lived, truly lived, and didn’t stagnate, as in Moscow, and all these thoughts vanished and melted away like wax before a fire.²⁷

His wife? … Only that day he had been speaking with Prince Chechensky. Prince Chechensky had a wife and family—grown children who were pages—and another, illegitimate family, by which he also had children. Although the first family was also good, Prince Chechensky felt happier in his second family. He had taken his older son to see his second family, and he told Stepan Arkadyevich how he found this beneficial and broadening for his son. What would they say to that in Moscow?

His children? In Petersburg, children did not prevent fathers from living. Children were reared in institutions, and there was not that wild notion, which was gaining ground in Moscow—with Lvov, for example—that children should have all of life’s luxury while parents had only work and care. Here they understood that a man is obliged to live for himself, as a cultured man ought to live.

The service? Here, too, the service was not that incessant, hopeless drudgery that was dragged out in Moscow; here there was interest to be had in service. A meeting, a favor, an apt word, a flair for mimicking different people—and suddenly a man had made his career, like Bryantsev, whom Stepan Arkadyevich had met the day before and who was a dignitary of the first rank now. That sort of service did hold interest.

In particular, the Petersburg view of financial affairs had a calming effect on Stepan Arkadyevich. Bartnyansky, who had run through at least fifty thousand on his train, had told him something remarkable about this yesterday.²⁸

Before dinner, after they had struck up a conversation, Stepan Arkadyevich said to Bartnyansky, “You seem to be close to Mordvinsky. You would be doing me a favor if you put in a good word for me, please. There is a position I would like to take. A member of the agency …”

“Well, I won’t remember in any case. … Only what is this longing of yours for railroads and Jews? … As you like, but it’s vile!”

Stepan Arkadyevich did not tell him that this was a vital matter; Bartnyansky would not have understood that.

“I need the money, I have nothing to live on.”

“Aren’t you living now?”

“Yes, but I have debts.”

“You don’t say! A lot?” said Bartnyansky with sympathy.

“Quite a lot, about twenty thousand.”

Bartnyansky burst into cheerful laughter.

“Oh, happy man!” he said. “I have a million and a half and nothing, and as you see, one can still live!”

And Stepan Arkadyevich, not just in words but in deed, saw the justness of this. Zhivakhov had debts of three hundred thousand and not a kopek to his name, but he was living, and in style! Count Krivtsov had run through everything long since, yet he kept two mistresses. Petrovsky had gone through five million and was living exactly the same and even was in charge of a financial department and received twenty thousand in salary. And besides, Petersburg had a pleasant physical effect on Stepan Arkadyevich. It made him younger. In Moscow he glanced now and then at his gray hair, dozed off after dinner, and stretched, breathed heavily going up the stairs, was bored by young women, and did not dance at balls. In Petersburg he always felt ten years younger.

In Petersburg he experienced exactly what sixty-year-old Prince Oblonsky—that’s Peter Oblonsky, who was just returned from abroad—had told him only the day before.

“We don’t know how to live here,” said Peter Oblonsky. “Believe me, I spent the summer in Baden, and really, I felt quite the young man. I’d see a woman, nice and young, and my thoughts … You have dinner, a quick drink—and you feel strong and full of cheer. I arrived in Russia—I had to see my wife and what’s more go to the country—well, you wouldn’t believe it, two weeks later I put on my robe and stopped dressing for dinner. No more nice young women! I was nothing but an old man. All I had left was to save my soul. I went to Paris—and I was back on my feet.”

Stepan Arkadyevich felt the exact same difference as had Peter Oblonsky. In Moscow he had let himself go to such an extent that, if he went on living there for long, he would really reach the point, for all he knew, of saving his soul; whereas in Petersburg he felt himself a proper man again.

Between Princess Betsy Tverskaya and Stepan Arkadyevich there had long existed decidedly odd relations. Stepan Arkadyevich always flirted with her in jest and told her, also in jest, the most improper things, knowing that she liked this more than anything. The day after his conversation with Karenin, Stepan Arkadyevich, who had gone by to see her, felt so young that without meaning to he went so far in this jesting flirtation and nonsense that he didn’t know how to extricate himself, inasmuch as, unfortunately, he not only did not like her but found her repulsive. This tone had been set because she had liked him very much. And so he was very glad at the arrival of Princess Myahkaya, who put an end to their tête-à-tête.

“Ah, so you’re here as well,” she said upon seeing him. “Well, how is your poor sister? Don’t you look at me like that,” she added. “Ever since they’ve all turned against her, people a hundred thousand times worse than she, I’ve thought that she has done a fine thing. I cannot forgive Vronsky for not letting me know when she was in Petersburg. I would have gone to see her and gone everywhere with her. Please send her my love. Well then, tell me all about her.”

“Yes, her situation is difficult, she—” Stepan Arkadyevich, in his heartfelt simplicity having taken Princess Myahkaya’s words “tell me all about your sister” for genuine coin, was just about to tell her. Princess Myahkaya immediately interrupted him, as was her wont, and began telling him what she thought.

“She did what everyone but me does but hides, but she didn’t want to be deceptive and did a fine thing. She did even better because she threw over that half-witted brother-in-law of yours. You must excuse me. Everyone used to say that he was clever, clever, I alone said he was a fool. Now that he has become involved with Lydia and Landau, everyone is saying that he is a half-wit, and I would be happy not to agree with everyone, but this time I have to.”

“Yes, please explain it,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, “what does it mean? Yesterday I went to see him on my sister’s affairs and asked for a final answer. He didn’t give me an answer and said he would think about it, and this morning, instead of an answer, I received an invitation to Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s this evening.”

“Well, that’s it, that’s it!” Princess Myahkaya began with glee. “They’re going to ask Landau what he says.”

“What do you mean Landau? Why? Who is this Landau?”

“You mean you don’t know Jules Landau, le fameux Jules Landau, le clairvoyant?²⁹ He’s a half-wit, too, but your sister’s fate depends on him. That’s what happens when you’re in the provinces, away from life, you don’t know anything. Landau, you see, was a commis at a shop in Paris and went to see a doctor.³⁰ In the doctor’s waiting room he fell asleep and in his sleep he began giving all the patients advice. And wonderful advice it was. Then Yuri Meledinsky—you know, the invalid?—his wife found out about Landau and took him to see her husband. He’s treating her husband. He’s done him no good whatsoever, in my opinion, because he’s just as debilitated, but they believe in him and take him around with them, and they brought him to Russia. Here everyone rushed to him, and he began to treat everyone. He cured Countess Bezzubova, and she became so fond of him that she adopted him.”

“What do you mean adopted him?”

“Just that, adopted him. He’s not Landau anymore but Count Bezzubov. But that’s not the point. Lydia—I love her dearly but her head is not screwed on right—naturally, has rushed now to this Landau, and without him nothing is decided either for her or for Alexei Alexandrovich, and therefore your sister’s fate is now in the hands of this Landau, otherwise known as Count Bezzubov.”

21

After a marvelous dinner and a large quantity of brandy drunk at Bartnyansky’s, Stepan Arkadyevich, who was only a little bit later than the appointed time, entered Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s home.

“Who else is with the countess? The Frenchman?” Stepan Arkadyevich asked the doorman, surveying Alexei Alexandrovich’s familiar coat and an odd, unsophisticated coat with clasps.

“Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin and Count Bezzubov,” the doorman responded sternly.

“Princess Myahkaya guessed,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich as he started up the staircase. “It’s very odd! Though it would be good to get close to her. She has tremendous influence. If she put in a good word with Pomorsky, then it would be a certainty.”

It was still quite light outside, but in Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s small drawing room the blinds were lowered and the lamps were burning.

At a round table under a lamp sat the countess and Alexei Alexandrovich, talking something over quietly. A short, skinny man with feminine hips and knock-kneed, very pale, handsome, with magnificent glittering eyes and long hair which lay on the collar of his frock coat, was standing at the other end, surveying the wall of portraits. After exchanging greetings with his hostess and Alexei Alexandrovich, Stepan Arkadyevich could not help but look once again at the stranger.

“Monsieur Landau!” the countess addressed him with a meekness and caution that struck Oblonsky. She introduced them.

Landau hastily looked around, walked over, and smiling, placed his stiff, sweaty hand in Stepan Arkadyevich’s extended hand and immediately walked away and started looking at the portraits again. The countess and Alexei Alexandrovich exchanged significant glances.

“I’m very happy to see you, especially today,” said Countess Lydia Ivanovna, pointing Stepan Arkadyevich to a seat next to Karenin.

“I introduced him to you as Landau,” she said in a low voice, glancing at the Frenchman and then immediately at Alexei Alexandrovich, “but he is actually Count Bezzubov, as you doubtless know. Only he does not like the title.”

“Yes, I’ve heard,” replied Stepan Arkadyevich. “They say he completely healed Countess Bezzubova.”

“She was just here to see me, she is so to be pitied!” the countess turned to Alexei Alexandrovich. “This separation is horrible for her. For her it is such a blow!”

“But is he definitely going?” asked Alexei Alexandrovich.

“Yes, he’s going to Paris. He heard a voice yesterday,” said Countess Lydia Ivanovna, looking at Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Ah, a voice!” echoed Oblonsky, sensing that he must be as cautious as possible in this company, where something special to which he did not yet have the key was or was about to be happening.

A moment’s silence ensued, after which Countess Lydia Ivanovna, as if moving on to the main topic of conversation, with a faint smile said to Oblonsky, “I’ve known you for a long time and I am very happy to get to know you better. Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis.³¹ But in order to be a friend, one must give careful thought to the state of the friend’s soul, and I fear that you are not doing this with respect to Alexei Alexandrovich. You understand what I mean,” she said, raising her magnificent, pensive eyes.

“In part, Countess, I do understand Alexei Alexandrovich’s position, …” said Oblonsky, not quite understanding what her point was and so wishing to keep things general.

“The change is not in his outward position,” said Countess Lydia Ivanovna sternly, at the same time letting her loving gaze follow Alexei Alexandrovich, who had risen and walked over to Landau. “His heart has changed, he has been given a new heart, and I fear that you have not given full cognizance to the change which has come about in him.”

“Well, I mean, in general terms I can imagine this change. We have always been friendly, and now …” said Stepan Arkadyevich, responding to the countess’s gaze with a gentle gaze, and trying to figure out which of the two ministers she was closer to in order to know which of the two he should ask her about.

“The change that has come about in him cannot weaken his love for his near and dear; on the contrary, the change that has come about in him must increase his love. But I am afraid you are not understanding me. Wouldn’t you like some tea?” she said, indicating with her eyes the footman who was serving tea on a tray.

“Not entirely, Countess. Naturally, his misfortune—”

“Yes, a misfortune which became the supreme happiness, when his heart became new, and was filled with it,” she said, gazing lovingly at Stepan Arkadyevich.

“I think I might be able to ask her to put in a word to both,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Oh, certainly, Countess,” he said. “But I think that these changes are so intimate that no one, even those closest, likes to speak of them.”

“On the contrary! We must speak of them and help one another.”

“Yes, without a doubt, but there can be such a difference in convictions, and moreover …” said Oblonsky with a gentle smile.

“There can be no difference when it comes to the sacred truth.”

“Oh yes, certainly, but …” Confused, Stepan Arkadyevich fell silent. He realized that the topic had turned to religion.

“I think he’s just about to fall asleep,” said Alexei Alexandrovich in a significant whisper as he walked up to Lydia Ivanovna.

Stepan Arkadyevich looked around. Landau was sitting by the window, leaning against the arm and back of the chair, his head lowered. Noticing the glances directed at him, he lifted his head and smiled a childishly naïve smile.

“Pay no attention,” said Lydia Ivanovna, and with an easy movement she pulled up a chair for Alexei Alexandrovich. “I have noticed,” she had been starting to say when the footman entered the room with a letter. Lydia Ivanovna quickly ran over the note and, excusing herself, with extraordinary speed, wrote and handed him a reply and returned to the table. “I have noticed,” she continued the conversation she had begun, “that Muscovites, especially the men, are the most indifferent to religion.”

“Oh no, Countess, I believe Muscovites have a reputation for being the most steadfast,” replied Stepan Arkadyevich.

“Yes, so far as I understand it, you, unfortunately, are among the indifferent,” said Alexei Alexandrovich, addressing him with a weary smile.

“How can one be indifferent!” said Lydia Ivanovna.

“In this respect it is not that I am indifferent but waiting,” said Stepan Arkadyevich with his most mollifying smile. “I do not think that my time for these questions has come.”

Alexei Alexandrovich and Lydia Ivanovna exchanged glances.

“We can never know whether our time has come or not,” said Alexei Alexandrovich sternly. “We must not think about whether we are or are not ready. Grace is not guided by human considerations; it sometimes does not descend upon those striving for it but descends upon the unprepared, as it did on Saul.”³²

“No, not yet, it seems,” said Lydia Ivanovna, following the Frenchman’s movements at this time.

Landau rose and walked over to them.

“Will you allow me to listen?” he asked.

“Oh yes, I did not want to disturb you,” said Lydia Ivanovna, looking at him tenderly. “Please, sit with us.”

“One must merely not shut one’s eyes in order not to be deprived of the light,” continued Alexei Alexandrovich.

“Ah, if you knew the happiness we experience feeling His constant presence in our hearts!” said Countess Ivanovna, smiling blissfully.

“But a man may feel incapable at times of rising to that height,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, feeling like a hypocrite in admitting a religious height, but at the same time reluctant to admit his freethinking in front of the person who with one word to Pomorsky could secure the position he desired.

“Do you mean to say that sin prevents him?” said Lydia Ivanovna. “But that is a false opinion. There is no sin for believers, the sin has already been redeemed. Pardon,” she added, looking at the footman, who had entered again with another note. She read it and spoke her reply, “Tomorrow at the grand duchess’s, tell him. For the believer there is no sin,” she continued their conversation.

“Yes, but faith without works is dead,” said Stepan Arkadyevich, recalling the phrase from the catechism, only with a smile defending his independence.

“There it is, from the Epistle of James the Apostle,” said Alexei Alexandrovich, turning to Lydia Ivanovna with a certain reproach, evidently about a topic they had already spoken of more than once.³³ “How much harm the false interpretation of this passage has done! Nothing so repels a man from faith as this interpretation. ‘I have no works, I cannot believe,’ since nowhere is this said. What is said is the opposite.”

“To strive for God and through one’s strivings, and by fasting save one’s soul,” said Countess Lydia Ivanovna with vile disdain, “these are the savage concepts of our monks. Whereas nowhere is this stated. It is much simpler and easier,” she added, looking at Oblonsky with the same encouraging smile with which she encouraged the young ladies-in-waiting at court who were flustered by their new situation.

“We are saved by Christ, who suffered for us. We are saved by faith,” said Alexei Alexandrovich approvingly, confirming her words with his look.

“Vous comprenez l’anglais?”³⁴ asked Lydia Ivanovna, and receiving an affirmative reply, rose and began looking through the books on her shelf.

“Do I want to read Safe and Happy or Under the Wing?”³⁵ she said, glancing inquiringly at Karenin. Finding the book and sitting back down in her place, she opened it. “It’s very short. Described here is the path by which one acquires faith and the happiness higher than everything earthly, which at the same time fills the soul. A believing man cannot be unhappy because he is not alone. Here, you will see.” She was just about to read when the footman came in again. “Madame Borozdina? Tell her tomorrow at two o’clock. Yes,” she said, resting her finger at her place in the book and with a sigh glancing straight ahead with her fine, pensive eyes. “This is how genuine faith functions. Do you know Marie Sanina? Do you know her misfortune? She lost her only child. She was in despair. So what happened? She found this friend, and she thanks God now for the death of her child. This is the happiness faith gives!”

“Oh yes, that’s very …” said Stepan Arkadyevich, glad that they were going to read and give him a moment to collect himself. “No, obviously it’s better not to ask about anything today,” he thought, “if only I can escape without making a hash of things.”

“You will be bored,” Countess Lydia Ivanovna said, addressing Landau. “You don’t know English, but this is brief.”

“Oh, I shall understand,” said Landau with the same smile, and he closed his eyes.

Alexei Alexandrovich and Lydia Ivanovna exchanged significant glances, and the reading began.

22

Stepan Arkadyevich felt utterly baffled by the strange new talk he was hearing. Generally speaking, the complexity of Petersburg life had a rousing effect on him, drawing him out of his Moscow stagnation, but the complexities he liked and understood were in the spheres congenial and familiar to him; in this alien milieu he was baffled, dumbfounded, and could not take it all in. Listening to Countess Lydia Ivanovna and feeling the handsome, either naïve or knavish—he himself did not know which—eyes of Landau aimed at him, Stepan Arkadyevich began experiencing a peculiar heaviness in his head.

The most incongruous thoughts were getting mixed up in his head. “Marie Sanina is rejoicing that her child died. … It would be nice to have a smoke now. … In order to be saved, one need only believe, and the monks don’t know how to do it, but Countess Lydia Ivanovna does. … Why do I have this heaviness in my head? Is it from the brandy or because all this is so very odd? Still, so far it looks like I haven’t done anything improper. Even so, I can’t ask her help yet. They say they make you pray. I just hope they don’t make me. That would be just too silly. And what is this nonsense she’s reading, though she articulates well. Landau is Bezzubov. Why is he Bezzubov?” All of a sudden Stepan Arkadyevich felt his lower jaw uncontrollably begin to tuck itself up for a yawn. He smoothed his whiskers, trying to conceal his yawn, and gave himself a shake. But immediately after he felt himself already asleep and about to snore. He woke up just as Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s voice said, “He’s asleep.”

Stepan Arkadyevich woke in a fright, feeling guilty and caught. He was immediately reassured, though, when he saw that the words “he’s asleep” referred to Landau, not him. The Frenchman had fallen asleep just as Stepan Arkadyevich had. But Stepan Arkadyevich’s sleeping, so he thought, would have offended them (actually he didn’t think that, so strange did everything seem to him now), whereas Landau’s sleeping delighted them extremely, especially Countess Lydia Ivanovna.

“Mon ami,” said Lydia Ivanovna, cautiously lifting the folds of her silk dress, so as not to make noise, and in her agitation calling Karenin now not Alexei Alexandrovich but “mon ami.”³⁶ “Donnez lui la main. Vous voyez?³⁷ Shh!” she hissed at the footman, who had again entered. “I am not receiving.”

The Frenchman was asleep or pretending to be asleep, leaning his head against the back of the chair, and with the sweaty hand lying on his knee making feeble motions, as if trying to catch something. Alexei Alexandrovich rose, and wanted to walk over cautiously and put his hand in the Frenchman’s hand, but bumped into the table. Stepan Arkadyevich rose as well, opening his eyes wide, wanting to wake himself up if he was asleep, and looked first at one and then the other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyevich’s head was feeling worse and worse all the time.

“Que la personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui demande, qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle sorte!” intoned the Frenchman without opening his eyes.³⁸

“Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez. … Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain.”³⁹

“Qu’elle sorte!”⁴⁰ the Frenchman repeated impatiently.

“C’est moi, n’est-ce pas?”⁴¹

Receiving an affirmative reply, Stepan Arkadyevich, forgetting even what he had wanted to ask Lydia Ivanovna, forgetting even about his sister’s errand, with the sole desire to get out as quickly as possible, left on tiptoe and ran outside, as from a house of plague, and for a long time chatted and joked with the driver, wishing to recover his senses as quickly as possible.

At the Théâtre Français, where he caught the last act, and then at Tatars’ over Champagne, Stepan Arkadyevich caught his breath a little in his own familiar surroundings. Still, that evening he did not feel at all well.

Upon returning home to Peter Oblonsky’s, with whom he was staying in Petersburg, Stepan Arkadyevich found a note from Betsy. She wrote him that she very much wished to finish the conversation they had begun and asked him to come by tomorrow. Scarcely had he read this note through and frowned over it when the heavy steps of men carrying something cumbersome were heard downstairs.

Stepan Arkadyevich went out to look. It was a rejuvenated Peter Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he could not get up the stairs; but he ordered himself put on his feet when he saw Stepan Arkadyevich, and grabbing onto him, went with him into his room and there began telling him about how he had spent his evening, and fell asleep right there.

Stepan Arkadyevich was feeling low, which happened rarely with him, and for a long time could not fall asleep. No matter what he recalled, everything was vile, but vilest of all, like something shameful, he recalled his evening with Countess Lydia Ivanovna.

The next day he received a positive refusal from Alexei Alexandrovich about Anna’s divorce and realized that this decision was based on what the Frenchman had said yesterday in his real or feigned sleep.

23

To undertake anything in family life there must be either complete discord between the spouses or loving agreement. When spouses’ relations are indefinite and there is neither one nor the other, there is no undertaking anything.

Many families stay from one year to the next in their old places, which are repellent to both spouses, merely because there is neither complete discord nor agreement.

For both Vronsky and Anna, Moscow life, in the heat and dust, when the sun was already shining not as in spring but as in summer, and all the trees on the boulevards had long since leafed out and the leaves were already covered with dust, was unbearable. Not moving to Vozdvizhenskoye, as had been decided long before, they stayed on in Moscow, which had become repellent to them both, because lately there had been no agreement between them.

The irritation that separated them did not have any outward cause, and all attempts at explanation not only did not eliminate but magnified it. It was an inner irritation, grounded for her in the diminution of his love and for him in his regret over having placed himself for her sake in a difficult position which she, instead of alleviating, was making even more difficult. Neither one nor the other would utter the reasons for their irritation, but each considered the other wrong and at every pretext attempted to prove this to the other.

For her, all of him—all his habits, thoughts, and desires, all his emotional and physical temperament—came down to one thing: his love for women, and this love, which, according to her feeling, ought to have been concentrated on her alone, this love had diminished; consequently, according to her reasoning, he must have transferred some of his love to other women or another woman—and she was jealous. She was jealous not of any particular woman but over the diminution of his love. Not having an object for her jealousy yet, she was on the watch for one. At the slightest hint she transferred her jealousy from one object to another. First she was jealous of the coarse women with whom, thanks to his bachelor ties, he might easily become involved; then she was jealous of the society women he might meet; then she was jealous of some imagined young woman whom he wanted to marry after sundering his tie with her. This last jealousy tormented her most of all, especially because he himself, incautiously, in a candid moment, told her that his mother understood him so little that she had allowed herself to try to talk him into marrying Princess Sorokina.

In her jealousy, Anna raged at him in indignation and tried to find grounds for indignation in everything. For everything that was difficult in her position she blamed him. The agonizing suspense of waiting, as if between heaven and earth, which she had endured in Moscow, as well as Alexei Alexandrovich’s slowness and indecisiveness and her own isolation—she blamed him for all of it. If he loved her, he would understand the full burden of her position and remove her from it. He was to blame for the fact that she was living in Moscow rather than in the country. He could not live buried in the country, as she wished to do. He required society, and he had put her in this terrible position, the burden of which he chose not to understand. And again, he was the one to blame that she had been separated from her son forever.

Even those rare moments of tenderness that did come between them did not reassure her: in his tenderness she now saw a shade of calm and assurance that had not been there formerly and that irritated her.

It was dusk. Anna, alone, awaiting his return from a bachelor dinner he had gone to, was pacing back and forth in his study (the room where the noise from the street was least audible) and thinking through the expressions of yesterday’s quarrel in all its details. Going back from the quarrel’s memorable words of insult to what their cause had been, she at last reached the beginning of the conversation. For a long time she could not believe that their discord had begun from such an inoffensive conversation close to no one’s heart. But that was indeed the case. It had all begun with him laughing at women’s high schools, considering them unnecessary, while she had spoken up for them. He had a disrespectful attitude toward women’s education in general and said that Hannah, the English girl Anna patronized, had no need whatsoever to know physics.

This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous allusion to her own occupations, and she came up with and uttered a phrase which was supposed to repay him for the pain he had caused her.

“I don’t expect you to remember me or my feelings the way a loving man might remember them, but simple tact I did expect,” she said.

Indeed, he did turn red from annoyance and said something unpleasant. She didn’t remember what she had said in reply, only then, evidently with a desire to cause her pain as well, he said, “I’m not interested in your infatuation for this girl, it’s true, because I can see that it is unnatural.”

This cruelty of his, which was destroying the world she had taken such pains to construct for herself in order to endure her hard life, this unfairness of his in accusing her of pretense, of being unnatural, enraged her.

“I’m very sorry that you find only what is coarse and material understandable and natural,” she said, and she left the room.

When the previous evening he had come into her room, they hadn’t mentioned their former quarrel, but both had felt that the quarrel, although smoothed over, was not settled.

Now he had not been home the entire day, and it was so lonely and hard for her to feel she was quarreling with him that she wanted to forget everything, forgive and reconcile with him, she wanted to blame herself and defend him.

“It’s all my fault. I’m irritable and senselessly jealous. I will reconcile with him and we will go to the country, and there I’ll be calmer,” she told herself.

“Unnatural!” She suddenly recalled not so much the word that had offended her as his intention to cause her pain.

“I know what he meant. He meant it’s unnatural, while not loving your own daughter, to love someone else’s child. What does he understand about love for one’s children, my love for Seryozha, whom I sacrificed for him? But this desire to cause me pain! No, he loves another woman. It cannot be otherwise.”

When she saw that, while wishing to calm herself, she had completed once again the same circle she had passed through so many times already and had returned to her former irritation, she was horrified at herself. “Is it really impossible? Am I really incapable of accepting responsibility?” she said to herself and started again from the beginning. “He is truthful, he is honest, and he loves me. I love him, and in a few days the divorce will come. What else do I need? I need calm and trust, and I will accept the blame. Yes, now, when he comes, I shall tell him that it was my fault, although it wasn’t, and we shall leave.”

In order not to think any more or succumb to irritation, she rang and ordered her trunks brought in for packing her things for the country.

At ten o’clock, Vronsky arrived.

24

“Well, did you have a good time?” she asked with a guilty and meek expression on her face as she came out to meet him.

“As usual,” he replied, immediately realizing from just one look at her that she was in one of her good moods. He had grown used to these transitions and now was especially glad for it because he himself was in the very best of spirits.

“What do I see! Now that is good!” he said, pointing to the trunks in the anteroom.

“Yes, we must go. I went out for a drive, and it was so fine that I felt like going to the country. After all, nothing is keeping you, is it?”

“That’s my one desire. I’ll be right in and we’ll have a talk, I’ll just change my clothes. Have tea served.”

And he went into his study.

There was something insulting in his saying, “Now that is good,” the way people talk to a child when he has stopped fussing; even more insulting was the contrast between her guilty and his self-confident tone; and for an instant she felt inside her a rising desire for a fight; however, making an effort, she suppressed it and greeted Vronsky just as cheerfully.

When he came in to see her, she told him, in part repeating prepared words, about her day and her plans for their departure.

“You know, it was almost an inspiration that came over me,” she said. “Why wait here for the divorce? Wouldn’t it be just the same in the country? I can’t wait any longer. I don’t want to hope, I don’t want to hear anything about the divorce. I’ve decided that this will no longer have any effect on my life. Do you agree?”

“Oh, yes!” he said, looking with concern at her agitated face.

“What were you doing there? Who was there?” she said after a pause.

Vronsky named the guests.

“The dinner was splendid, so was the boat race, and all that was nice enough, but in Moscow they cannot get along without something ridicule. Some lady appeared, the swimming instructor for the Swedish queen, and was demonstrating her art.”

“What do you mean? She swam?” asked Anna, frowning.

“In a red costume de natation.⁴² She was old and hideous. So when are we going?”

“What a silly fantasy! What, does she swim in some special way?” said Anna, not answering.

“There was definitely nothing special. I’m saying, it is terribly silly. So when are you thinking of going?”

Anna shook her head, as if wishing to drive out an unpleasant thought.

“When are we going? The sooner the better. Tomorrow we won’t be ready. The day after tomorrow.”

“Yes … no, wait. The day after tomorrow is Sunday, I must see maman,” said Vronsky, flustered because as soon as he pronounced his mother’s name he felt her suspicious stare. His confusion confirmed her suspicions. She flared up and moved away from him. Now it was no longer the Swedish queen’s instructor whom Anna pictured but Princess Sorokina, who lived in the country outside Moscow with Countess Vronskaya.

“Can you go tomorrow?” she said.

“By no means! I won’t have the warrant and money for the business I’m going on tomorrow,” he replied.

“If that’s how it is, then we won’t go at all.”

“But why not?”

“I won’t go later. It’s Monday or never!”

“Why, though?” said Vronsky as if surprised. “This makes no sense, really!”

“It makes no sense to you because you don’t care about me at all. You don’t want to understand my life. The only thing that has kept me occupied here is Hannah. You say this is pretense. After all, yesterday you said I didn’t love my daughter but pretended to love this English girl, that this was unnatural; I would like to know what kind of life for me here could be natural!”

For an instant she came to her senses and was horrified that she had betrayed her intention. But even knowing that she was ruining herself, she could not refrain, could not keep from trying to show him how wrong he was; she could not submit to him.

“I never said that. I said that I cannot sympathize with this sudden love.”

“Why, boasting of your directness as you do, will you not speak the truth?”

“I have never boasted and I have never not spoken the truth,” he said quietly, trying to quell the fury rising in him. “I’m very sorry if you don’t respect—”

“Respect was invented to hide the void where love ought to be. But if you don’t love me anymore, then it’s better and more honest to say so.”

“No, this is becoming intolerable!” exclaimed Vronsky, rising from his chair. And halting in front of her, he spoke slowly. “Why are you trying my patience?” he said with a look as if he could say even more but was refraining. “It has its limits.”

“What do you mean by that?” she exclaimed, looking with horror into the frank expression of hatred that was all over his face and especially in his cruel, menacing eyes.

“I mean …” he was about to begin, but he stopped. “I must ask what it is you want of me.”

“What can I want? I can want only for you not to abandon me, as you are thinking of doing,” she said, understanding everything he had not said. “But I don’t want this, this is secondary. I want love, but you don’t have it. Consequently, it’s all over!”

She headed for the door.

“Wait! Wait!” said Vronsky, not relaxing the somber fold of his brow but stopping her by the arm. “What’s the matter? I said the departure had to be postponed for three days, and to that you said I was lying, that I was a dishonest man.”

“Yes, and I repeat that a man who reproaches me by saying that he has sacrificed everything for me,” she said, recalling the words from an even earlier quarrel, “that this is worse than a dishonest man. He’s a heartless man.”

“No, there are limits to my patience!” he exclaimed, and he quickly released her arm.

“He despises me, that’s clear,” she thought, and silently, without looking around, she walked out of the room with unsure steps.

“He loves another woman. That’s even clearer,” she told herself as she entered her room. “I want his love, but he has none. Consequently, it’s all over,” she repeated the words she had said, “and it must end.”

“But how?” she asked herself, and she sat down in the chair in front of the mirror.

Thoughts about where she would go now—whether to her aunt, who had raised her, to Dolly’s, or simply alone abroad—and about what he was doing now alone in his study, whether this was their final quarrel or a reconciliation was yet possible, and about the fact that now all her former Petersburg acquaintances would be talking about her, how Alexei Alexandrovich would look on this, and many other thoughts about what would happen now, after their rupture, came to her mind, but she could not surrender wholeheartedly to these thoughts. In her soul was something vague, which interested her, but which she could not clarify for herself. Recalling once more Alexei Alexandrovich, she recalled as well the time of her illness after the birth and the emotion that would not leave her at the time. “Why didn’t I die?” Her words then and her emotion at the time came back to her. Suddenly she realized what was in her heart. Yes, it was this idea which alone solved everything. “Yes, to die!”

“Alexei Alexandrovich’s shame and disgrace, and Seryozha, and my horrible shame—everything is saved by my death. Die—and he will repent, and regret, and love, and suffer over me.” With a frozen smile of compassion for herself, she sat in the chair, removing and replacing the ring on her left hand, animatedly imagining from all angles his emotions after her death.

Approaching steps, his steps, distracted her. As if occupied with putting away her ring, she did not even turn toward him.

He walked up to her, took her by the hand, and said quietly:

“Anna, we’ll go the day after tomorrow if you want. I agree to everything.”

She was silent.

“What is it?” he asked.

“You know yourself,” she said, and that same minute, unable to hold back any longer, she broke down sobbing.

“Leave me, leave me!” she managed to get out between sobs. “I will go away tomorrow. I’ll do more. Who am I? A depraved woman. A stone around your neck. I don’t want to torture you, I don’t! I’m setting you free. You don’t love me. You love another!”

Vronsky implored her to calm down and assured her that there was not the ghost of a foundation for her jealousy, that he had never stopped and never would stop loving her, that he loved her more than ever.

“Anna, why must you torture yourself and me so?” he said, kissing her hands. Expressed on his face now was a tenderness, and she thought she heard the sound of tears in his voice and felt their moisture on her hand. Instantly Anna’s desperate jealousy changed to desperate, passionate tenderness; she put her arms around him, and covered his head, neck, and hands with kisses.

25

Feeling that their reconciliation was complete, Anna eagerly set about in the morning preparing for their departure. Although it had not been decided whether they were going on Monday or Tuesday, since each had given in to the other yesterday, Anna was busily preparing for the departure, feeling now utterly indifferent as to whether they left a day earlier or later. She was standing in her room over an open trunk, selecting things, when he, already dressed, came in to see her earlier than usual.

“I’m driving out to see maman right now; she can send me money by Egorov, and tomorrow I shall be ready to go,” he said.

Regardless of how good her mood, the mention of the trip to the dacha to see his mother stung her.

“No, I won’t be ready then myself,” she said, and immediately thought, “So then it was possible to have been arranged to do as I wanted.” “No, do as you had wanted. Go to the dining room, I’ll be right there, I just have to take out these things I don’t need,” she said, putting something more on Annushka’s arm, where a mountain of finery lay already.

Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she went out to the dining room.

“You can’t believe how repellent these rooms are to me,” she said, sitting down beside him for her coffee. “There is nothing worse than these chambres garnies.⁴³ They have no expression, no soul. This clock, these curtains, and mainly the wallpaper—it’s a nightmare. I think of Vozdvizhenskoye as the Promised Land. You aren’t sending out the horses yet?”

“No, they can follow us. Are you going anywhere?”

“I wanted to go out to Wilson’s. I need to bring her the dresses. So it’s definitely tomorrow?” she said in a cheerful voice; but all of a sudden her face changed.

Vronsky’s valet came and asked him for a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing special in Vronsky receiving a dispatch, but as if wishing to hide something from her, he said that the receipt was in his study, and he hastily turned toward her.

“I will definitely finish everything tomorrow.”

“Who is the dispatch from?” she asked, not listening to him.

“Stiva,” he answered reluctantly.

“Why didn’t you show it to me? What kind of secret can there be between Stiva and me?”

Vronsky brought the valet back and told him to bring the dispatch.

“I didn’t want to show it because Stiva has a passion for telegraphing; why telegraph when nothing is decided?”

“About the divorce?”

“Yes, but he writes: ‘I still haven’t been able to accomplish anything.’ A few days ago he promised a definite answer. Here, read it.”

With trembling hands Anna took the dispatch and read the same thing Vronsky had said. Added at the end also was: “Little hope, but I’ll do everything possible and impossible.”

“I said yesterday that I absolutely don’t care when or even if I get the divorce,” she said, turning red. “There was no need to hide it from me.” “So he could and does hide his correspondence with women from me this way,” she thought.

“Yashvin wanted to come this morning with Voitov,” said Vronsky. “It seems he won everything off Pevtsov, and even more than he can pay—about sixty thousand.”

“No,” she said, irritated that with this change of topic he was so obviously showing her that she was irritated, “why do you think this news interests me so much that you even have to hide it? I said I don’t want to think about it, and I would like you to take as little interest in it as I do.”

“I take an interest because I like clarity,” he said.

“Clarity is not in the form but in the love,” she said, growing more and more irritated not by his words but by the tone of cold calm with which he spoke. “What do you want it for?”

“My God, love again,” he thought, frowning.

“But you know what for: for you and for the children there are to be,” he said.

“There are to be no more children.”

“That’s very sad,” he said.

“You need it for the children, but you don’t think about me?” she said, having completely forgotten or not having heard that he had said, “for you and for the children.”

The question of the possibility of having children was a long-disputed one that had irritated her. She explained his desire to have children by the fact that he did not treasure her beauty.

“Oh, I did say ‘for you.’ For you most of all,” he repeated, frowning as if in pain, “because I’m certain that most of your irritation stems from the indeterminacy of your situation.”

“Yes, now he’s stopped all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is there to be seen,” she thought, not listening to his words but looking with horror at that cold and cruel judge who, taunting her, was looking out from his eyes.

“That’s not the reason,” she said, “and I don’t even understand how the reason for my irritation, as you call it, could be the fact that I am entirely in your power. What indeterminacy is there to the situation? On the contrary.”

“I regret very much that you don’t want to understand,” he interrupted her, doggedly wishing to finish his thought, “the indeterminacy consists in the fact that you think I am free.”

“On that score you may be perfectly at ease,” she said, and turning away from him she began drinking her coffee.

She raised her cup, lifting her pinky, and brought it to her mouth. After taking a few sips, she glanced at him and from the expression on his face clearly realized that he found offensive her hand, her gesture and the sound she was making with her lips.

“I absolutely do not care what your mother thinks or how she wants to marry you off,” she said, putting down her cup with a trembling hand.

“But we’re not talking about that.”

“No, that’s just what we’re talking about. Believe me, for me a woman without a heart, whether she’s old or not, your mother or a stranger, is of no interest and I do not want to know her.”

“Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.”

“A woman who has not guessed with her heart where her son’s happiness and honor lie, that woman has no heart.”

“I repeat my request not to speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I do respect,” he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.

She did not reply. Staring at him, at his face and hands, she recalled in all its details the scene of yesterday’s reconciliation and his passionate caresses. “These caresses, these exact same caresses he has lavished and will and wants to lavish on other women!” she thought.

“You don’t love your mother. These are all words, words, words!” she said with hatred, looking at him.

“But if that is so, then we must—”

“We must decide, and I have decided,” she said, and she was about to go but right then Yashvin walked into the room.

Anna greeted him and stayed.

Why, when there was a storm in her soul and she felt she was standing at a turning point in her life which could have terrible consequences, why in that minute did she have to pretend before a strange man who sooner or later would learn everything, she didn’t know; but instantly quieting the storm inside her, she sat down and began talking with their guest.

“Well, how did your business go? Did you collect your debt?” she asked Yashvin.

“Oh it’s all right. I don’t think I’ll get it all, but I have to go on Wednesday. When are you leaving?” said Yashvin, looking at Vronsky with narrowed eyes and evidently guessing at the quarrel going on.

“The day after tomorrow, it seems,” said Vronsky.

“You’ve actually been planning this for a long time.”

“But now it’s definite,” said Anna, looking straight into Vronsky’s eyes with a look that told him he shouldn’t even think about the possibility of reconciliation.

“Don’t you feel sorry for the unfortunate Pevtsov?” she continued the conversation with Yashvin.

“I’ve never asked myself whether I do or don’t, Anna Arkadyevna. After all, my fortune is here”—he pointed to his side pocket—“and now I’m a rich man. But today I’ll go to the club and perhaps walk out a beggar. After all, anyone who sits down with me also wants to leave me without my shirt, and I him. And so we struggle. Herein lies the pleasure.”

“Well, but what if you were married,” said Anna, “what would it be like for your wife?”

Yashvin laughed.

“Which is evidently why I haven’t married and have never planned to marry.”

“What about Helsingfors?” said Vronsky, joining the conversation, and he glanced at the smiling Anna.

Meeting his glance, Anna’s face suddenly became cold and stern, as if she were saying to him, “It’s not forgotten. Everything is the same.”

“Don’t tell me you were in love?” she said to Yashvin.

“Oh Lord! So many times! But you have to understand, a single man can sit down to cards, but in such a way as to always rise when the time comes for a rendezvous. I can make love, but in such a way as not to be late for the game in the evening. That’s how I arrange it.”

“No, I’m not asking about that but about the real thing.” She wanted to say Helsingfors, but she did not want to say a word said by Vronsky.

Voitov arrived, having purchased a stallion; Anna rose and left the room.

Before leaving the house, Vronsky went in to see her. She intended to pretend she was looking for something on the table, but ashamed of her pretense, she looked him straight in the eye with a cold gaze.

“What do you need?” she asked him in French.

“To get Gabetta’s pedigree. I sold him,” he said in the kind of tone that expressed more clearly than words, “I have no time to go into explanations, and it would lead to nothing.”

“I’m not to blame before her,” he thought. “If she wants to punish herself, tant pis pour elle.”⁴⁴ But as he was going out, he thought she had said something, and his heart suddenly shuddered from compassion for her.

“What is it, Anna?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she replied just as coldly and calmly.

“Fine, tant pis,” he thought, and becoming cold once again, he turned and went. As he was walking out, he saw her face in the mirror, pale, with trembling lips. He did want to stop and say something reassuring, but his feet carried him out of the room before he could think of what to say. He spent the entire day away from home, and when he arrived late at night, the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and had asked him not to come in to see her.

26

Never before had a day been spent in a quarrel. Today was the first time. And this was not a quarrel. It was open acknowledgment of their complete cooling. Could he really have looked at her the way he did when he entered the room for the pedigree? Looked at her and seen that her heart was breaking from despair and walked by in silence with that indifferent and calm face? Perhaps he hadn’t cooled toward her, but he did hate her because he loved another woman. That was clear.

And remembering all the harsh words he had spoken, Anna thought up still other words that he obviously had wished to say and might have said to her, and she became more and more irritated.

“I’m not holding you,” he might have said. “You may go where you like. You didn’t want to divorce your husband, probably so you could go back to him. So go back to him. If you need money, I’ll give it to you. How many rubles do you need?”

All the very cruelest words a coarse man might say he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as if he had actually said them.

“But wasn’t it just yesterday that he swore his love, he, a truthful and honest man? Haven’t I despaired in vain many times before?” she told herself immediately thereafter.

All that day, with the exception of her trip to Wilson’s, which took up two hours, Anna spent in doubts about whether it was all over or there was hope of reconciliation, whether she should leave now or see him one more time. She waited for him all day, and in the evening, going to her room, after having ordered he be told she had a headache, she thought privately, “If he does come, in spite of what the maid says, that means he still loves me. If not, then that means it’s all over, and then I shall decide what I am to do!”

In the evening she heard the sound of his carriage coming to a halt, his ring, his steps, and his conversation with the maid. He believed what he was told, did not try to learn anything more, and went to his room. So then everything was over.

She pictured death, clearly and vibrantly, as the sole means for restoring love for her in his heart, for punishing him and gaining a victory in the battle that the evil spirit which had settled in her heart was waging with him.

Now nothing mattered—going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoye, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband—they meant nothing to her. The only thing that meant anything was punishing him.

When she poured herself her usual dose of opium and thought that all she had to do was drink the entire vial in order to die, it seemed so easy and simple to her that she again began thinking with pleasure about how he would agonize, repent, and love her memory, when it was already too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, looking by the light of a single, burning candle nearby at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow from the screen that enveloped part of it, and created lively pictures for herself of what he would feel when she was no more and was but a memory for him. “How could I have spoken those cruel words to her?” he would say. “How could I have left the room without saying anything? But now she is gone. She has left us forever. She is there …” Suddenly the screen’s shadow wavered and enveloped the entire cornice, the entire ceiling, and other shadows from the other side rushed to meet it; for an instant the shadows ran together but then with new speed they drew nearer, wavered, merged, and all was dark. “Death!” she thought. Such horror descended upon her that for a long time she couldn’t understand where she was, and for a long time her trembling hands could not find the matches to light another candle instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. “No, anything—only live! After all, I love him. After all, he loves me! This has happened before and it will pass,” she said, feeling tears of joy at her return to life course down her cheeks. To save herself from her terror, she hurried to his study to see him.

He was sleeping soundly in his study. She walked up to him and, shining a light on his face from above, watched him for a long time. Now, when he was sleeping, she loved him so much that at the sight of him she could not restrain tears of tenderness; but she knew that if he were to awaken, he would look at her with a cold gaze conscious of his own correctness, and that before speaking to him of her love she would have to prove to him how guilty he was before her. Without waking him, she returned to her room, and after a second dose of opium, just before dawn, fell into a heavy, partial sleep, during which she never ceased to be aware of herself.

In the morning, a terrible nightmare, which had been repeated in her dreams even before her liaison with Vronsky, came to her again and woke her up. A little old peasant with an unkempt beard was doing something, leaning over something iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as always in this nightmare (which is what made it so horrible), felt that this little peasant was paying no attention to her but was doing something horrible with the iron over her, something horrible over her. She woke up in a cold sweat.

When she got up, she remembered the previous day as if in a fog.

“There was a quarrel. Just what has already happened several times. I said I had a headache, and he didn’t come in. We’re leaving tomorrow, I must see him and prepare for our departure,” she told herself. Learning that he was in his study, she went to see him. Passing through the drawing room, she heard a carriage stop at the front door, and peering out the window, she saw a coach; a young woman in a lilac bonnet was leaning out, ordering the footman who was ringing the bell to do something. After negotiations in the front hall, someone went upstairs, and next to the drawing room Vronsky’s steps were heard. He was descending the staircase with quick steps. Anna again went to the window. Here he was going out without a hat onto the front steps and approaching the carriage. The young woman in the violet bonnet handed him a package. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The carriage drove off; he quickly ran back up the steps.

The fog that had obscured everything in her soul suddenly dispersed. Yesterday’s emotions shattered her sensitive heart with new pain. She could not understand now how she could have lowered herself to the point of spending an entire day with him in his house. She went into his study to announce her decision.

“That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter driving by and bringing me money and papers from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How is your head, better?” he said calmly, refusing to see or understand the gloomy and solemn expression on her face.

She stared at him in silence, standing in the middle of the room. He glanced at her, frowned for an instant, and continued reading a letter. She turned and slowly left the room. He might still have brought her back, but she reached the door, he was still silent, and all that could be heard was the rustling of the pieces of paper being turned.

“Yes, by the way,” he said when she was already in the doorway, “tomorrow we are definitely going? Is it true?”

“You are, but I am not,” she said, turning around to him.

“Anna, this is no way to live.”

“You are, but I’m not,” she repeated.

“This is becoming intolerable!”

“You … you will regret this,” she said, and she went out.

Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were said, he jumped up and was about to run after her, but coming to his senses he sat down again, firmly clenched his teeth, and frowned. This vulgar—as he found it—threat had irritated him. “I’ve tried everything,” he thought, “only one thing remains: to pay no attention,” and he began preparing to go to town and again to see his mother, from whom he needed to obtain a signature for her power of attorney.

She heard the sounds of his steps going through the study and dining room. At the drawing room, he stopped. But he did not turn to see her, he only gave instructions to let the stallion go to Voitov if he was out. Then she heard them bringing round the carriage, the door opening, and him going out again. And here he was going back into the vestibule, and someone ran upstairs. It was the valet running after his forgotten gloves. She went to the window and saw him take the gloves without looking, and touching the driver’s back, say something to him. Then, without looking at the windows, he settled into his usual posture in the carriage, one leg crossed over the other, and as he was putting on his gloves, he vanished around the corner.

27

“He’s gone! It’s over!” Anna told herself, standing by the window; and in response to this thought, the impressions of darkness at the extinguished candle and her terrifying dream, merging into one, filled her heart with cold horror.

“No, it can’t be!” she cried, and crossing the room, she rang firmly. She was so afraid now of being left alone that, not waiting for the servant to come, she went to meet him.

“Find out where the count went,” she said.

The servant replied that the count had gone to the stable.

“He instructed me to report that if you wanted to go out, the carriage would be coming right back.”

“Good. Wait there. I’ll write a note immediately. Send Mikhail to the stable with a note. Quickly.”

She sat down and wrote:

“I’m to blame. Come home. We must talk. For God’s sake, come. I’m frightened.”

She sealed it and handed it to the servant.

She was afraid of being alone now and so followed the servant out of the room and went to the nursery.

“What is this? It’s wrong, it’s not he! Where are his blue eyes and his sweet, shy smile?” was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy-cheeked daughter with the curly black hair instead of Seryozha, whom she, in the confusion of her thoughts, had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl, sitting at a table, kept banging a cork on it persistently and firmly and looking at her mother uncomprehendingly with two currants—her black eyes. Replying to the English nurse that she was quite well and that tomorrow she was leaving for the country, Anna sat down with the little girl and began rolling the cork from the pitcher in front of her. But the loud, ringing laughter of the child and the movement she made with her forehead reminded her so vividly of Vronsky that, trying to hold back her sobs, she hurriedly got up and went out. “Can it really all be over? No, it can’t be,” she thought. “He’ll come back. But how will he explain to me that smile, that animation after he spoke with her? Even if he doesn’t explain, I’ll believe him anyway. If I don’t, I’m left with only one choice—and I don’t want that.”

She looked at the clock. Twelve minutes had passed. “Now he has received the note and is coming back. It won’t be long, another ten minutes. … But what if he doesn’t come? No, that can’t be. He mustn’t see me with tear-stained eyes. I’ll go wash my face. Yes, yes, did I comb my hair or not?” she asked herself. And she couldn’t remember. She felt her head with her hand. “Yes, I combed my hair, but when, I absolutely don’t remember.” She didn’t even believe her own hand and walked over to the pier glass to see whether or not she was in fact combed. She was combed and could not recall when she had done it. “Who is this?” she thought, looking in the mirror at the enflamed face with the strangely glittering eyes that looked at her in fright. “Yes, it’s me,” she suddenly realized, and surveying her entire self, all of a sudden she felt his kisses, and shuddering, she moved her shoulders. Then she raised her hand to her lips and kissed it.

“What is this? I’m going out of my mind.” She went to her bedroom, where Annushka was straightening the room.

“Annushka,” she said, stopping in front of her and looking at the maid, herself not knowing what to say to her.

“You wanted to go see Darya Alexandrovna,” said the maid, as if understanding.

“Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I’ll go.”

“Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He’s still on his way, he’ll be here soon.” She took out her watch and looked at it. “But how could he go, leaving me in this state? How could he live without reconciling with me?” She went to the window and began looking out. Judging by the time, he could be back by now. But her calculation might be wrong, and once again she began trying to remember when he had left and to count the minutes.

Just as she was walking over to the clock, to check her watch, someone drove up. Looking out the window she saw his carriage. But no one was walking toward the stairs, and voices could be heard downstairs. It was the messenger, returning in the carriage. She went down to see him.

“I didn’t catch the count. He’d left for the Nizhni Novgorod line.”

“What are you saying? What is it?” she addressed the rosy-cheeked, cheerful Mikhail, who had handed her back her note.

“So he didn’t receive it after all,” she remembered.

“Take this note to the country, to Countess Vronskaya’s place, do you know it? And bring me back an answer right away,” she told the messenger.

“But what about me, what am I going to do?” she thought. “Yes, I’ll go see Dolly, that’s right, or I’ll go out of my mind. Yes, I can also telegraph him.” She sent a telegram:

“I absolutely must speak with you. Come immediately.”

After sending the telegram, she went to dress. Already dressed and wearing her hat, she again looked into the eyes of the plump, calm Annushka. She saw frank compassion in those good little gray eyes.

“Annushka, dear, what am I to do?” said Anna, sobbing, and dropping helplessly into a chair.

“Don’t upset yourself like that, Anna Arkadyevna! This sort of thing happens all the time. Go out and take your mind off it,” said the maid.

“Yes, I’ll go,” said Anna, coming to her senses and getting up. “If there is a telegram and I’m not here, send it to Darya Alexandrovna’s. No, I shall be back myself.”

“Yes, I mustn’t think, I must do something, go, most important—leave this house,” she said, listening with horror to the terrible pounding going on in her heart, and she hurried out and got into the carriage.

“Where to?” asked Peter before sitting on the box.

“Znamenka, the Oblonskys.’”

28

The weather was clear. All morning there had been intermittent drizzle, and just now it had cleared up. The metal roofs, the sidewalk slabs, the gravel on the pavement, the wheels, and the leather, brass, and tin of the carriages—everything sparkled brightly in the May sun. It was three o’clock and the liveliest time on the streets.

Sitting in the corner of the comfortable carriage, which barely rocked on its stiff springs at the quick gait of the grays, Anna, to the incessant rumble of wheels and quickly changing impressions in the fresh air, once again sorting through the events of the last few days, saw her situation completely differently from the way it had seemed at home. Now the thought of death did not seem so terrible and clear to her, and death itself did not seem impossible anymore. Now she reproached herself for the humiliation to which she had descended. “I begged him to forgive me. I’ve surrendered to him. I’ve admitted that I’m to blame. Why? Can’t I live without him?” Without answering the question of how she would live without him she began reading the signs. “Office and warehouse. Dentist. Yes, I’ll tell Dolly everything. She doesn’t like Vronsky. It will be shameful and painful, but I’ll tell her everything. She loves me, and I’ll follow her advice. I won’t surrender to him; I won’t let him patronize me. Filippov, buns. They say they send the dough to Petersburg. Moscow water is so good. Oh, the springs of Mytishchi and the pancakes.” She recalled how long, long ago, when she was just seventeen years old, she had gone with her aunt to the Trinity Monastery.⁴⁵ “On horses even. Was that really me, with red hands? How much of what at the time seemed so wonderful and beyond my reach has become insignificant, and what there was then is now forever out of reach. Would I have believed it then that I might come to such humiliation? How proud and satisfied he’ll be when he receives my note! But I’ll show him. … How awful this paint smells. Why are they always painting and building? Fashions and millinery,” she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka’s husband. “Our parasites,” she recalled Vronsky saying. “Our? Why our? It’s terrible one can’t tear up the past by the roots. We can’t tear it up, but we can hide our memory of it. And I will hide it.” And here she recalled her past with Alexei Alexandrovich and how she had blotted him out of her memory. “Dolly will think that I’m leaving my second husband so I must be in the wrong. As if I cared about being right! I can’t!” she said, and she felt like crying. But immediately she began thinking about what those two young girls might be smiling about. “Love, I’d guess? They don’t know how dreary, how base it is. … The boulevard and the children. Three little boys are running, playing at horses. Seryozha! I’m losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I will lose everything if he doesn’t return. Perhaps he missed the train and has already returned. Again you’re asking for humiliation!” she told herself. “No, I’ll go in to see Dolly and tell her frankly that I am unhappy, I deserve it, I’m to blame, but nonetheless I am unhappy, help me. These horses, this carriage—how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage—everything is his; but I won’t see them anymore.”

Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly everything, and purposely trying to poison her own heart, Anna stepped onto the stairs.

“Is anyone here?” she asked in the front hall.

“Katerina Alexandrovna Levina,” answered the footman.

“Kitty! The very Kitty Vronsky was in love with,” thought Anna, “the very one whom he recalled with love. He regrets not marrying her. But me he thinks of with hatred and regrets he ever got involved with me.”

The sisters, at the time Anna arrived, were conferring on breast-feeding. Dolly came out alone to greet the visitor who was interrupting their conversation at that moment.

“Ah, so you haven’t left yet? I wanted to see you myself,” she said. “I’ve just received a letter from Stiva.”

“We received a wire as well,” replied Anna, looking around for Kitty.

“He writes that he cannot figure out exactly what Alexei Alexandrovich wants but that he won’t leave without an answer.”

“I thought you had someone with you. May I read the letter?”

“Yes, Kitty,” said Dolly, flustered. “She stayed in the nursery. She was very ill.”

“I heard. May I read the letter?”

“I’ll bring it right away. But he is not refusing; on the contrary, Stiva has hopes,” said Dolly, stopping in the doorway.

“I neither hope nor wish,” said Anna.

“What is this? Does it mean Kitty considers it humiliating to meet me?” thought Anna when she was left alone. “Perhaps she’s right. But it’s not for her, someone who was in love with Vronsky, it’s not for her to point this out to me, even if it’s true. I know that in my situation no decent woman can receive me. I know that from the very first minute I sacrificed everything for him! And here is my reward! Oh, how I hate him! Why did I come here? It’s even worse, even harder for me.” From the next room she heard the voices of the sisters talking something over. “What am I going to tell Dolly now? Console Kitty with the fact that I am unhappy and yield to her patronizing? No, and Dolly won’t understand anything anyway. I have nothing to say to her. Only it would be interesting to see Kitty and show her how I despise everyone and everything, how I don’t care anymore.”

Dolly came in with the letter. Anna read it and handed it back in silence.

“I knew all that,” she said, “and it does not interest me one bit.”

“But why? I, on the contrary, have hope,” said Dolly, looking with curiosity at Anna. She had never seen her in such a strange and irritable state. “When are you leaving?” she asked.

Anna narrowed her eyes, looked straight ahead, and did not answer her.

“Why is Kitty hiding from me?” she said, looking at the door and turning red.

“Oh, what nonsense! She’s nursing, and it’s not going well, I was advising her. She’s very pleased you’re here. She’ll be right out,” said Dolly awkwardly, unable to tell a lie. “And here she is.”

When she learned that Anna had come, Kitty had not wanted to come out, but Dolly had persuaded her. Summoning her courage, Kitty came out, and blushing, walked up to her and extended her hand.

“I’m very pleased to see you,” she said in a trembling voice.

Kitty was confused by the struggle taking place inside her, between hostility toward this bad woman and a desire to be indulgent; but as soon as she saw Anna’s beautiful, sympathetic face, all her hostility vanished instantly.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if you hadn’t wanted to see me. I’m used to everything. You were ill? Yes, you have changed,” said Anna.

Kitty felt Anna looking at her hostilely. She explained this hostility by the awkward position in which Anna, who previously had taken her under her wing, now felt herself, and she felt sorry for her.

They talked about her illness, her baby, and Stiva, but it was obvious that nothing interested Anna.

“I stopped by to say good-bye,” she said, standing.

“When are you leaving?”

Again, though, Anna, not answering, turned to Kitty.

“Yes, I’m very glad I saw you,” she said with a smile. “I’d heard so much about you from all parties, even from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him very much,” she added, obviously with malicious intent. “Where is he?”

“He’s gone to the country,” said Kitty, blushing.

“Give him my regards. Be sure to give him my regards.”

“I’ll be sure to!” Kitty echoed naïvely, looking sympathetically into her eyes.

“So good-bye, Dolly!” And kissing Dolly and shaking Kitty’s hand, Anna hurried out.

“She’s still the same and so attractive. Very pretty!” said Kitty when she was left alone with her sister. “But there is something pathetic about her! Terribly pathetic!”

“No, today there is something unusual about her,” said Dolly. “When I was seeing her out in the front hall, I thought she was about to cry.”

29

Anna got into the carriage in an even worse state than when she had set out from home. Added to her past agonies now was the sense of insult and rejection she had felt so clearly on meeting Kitty.

“Where to? Home?” asked Peter.

“Yes, home,” she said, now not even thinking about where she was going.

“How they looked at me, as if I were something terrible, incomprehensible, and curious. What could he be telling him with such heat?” she thought, gazing at two passersby. “Can one really tell someone else what one is feeling? I wanted to tell Dolly, and it’s good that I didn’t. How pleased she would have been at my misfortune! She would have hidden it; but her chief emotion would have been joy that I have been punished for the pleasures she envied me. Kitty, she would have been even more pleased. How well I see right through her! She knows that I was more than usually amiable to her husband. She’s jealous of me, she hates me. And despises me as well. In her eyes, I’m an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman, I could have made her husband fall in love with me … if I had wanted to. And I did want to. There’s someone who’s pleased with himself,” she thought about the fat, ruddy-cheeked gentleman driving past her, who had taken her for an acquaintance and tipped the glossy hat over his glossy bald head and then realized his mistake. “He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me just as little as anyone on earth knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my own appetites, as the French say. They want some of that dirty ice cream. That they know for certain,” she thought, looking at two boys who had stopped by the ice cream vendor, who had removed his cap from his head and was wiping his sweaty face with the end of a towel. “We all want something sweet and tasty. If there aren’t any candies, then dirty ice cream. Kitty, too: if not Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies me. And hates me. And we all hate each other. I Kitty, and Kitty me. That’s the truth. Tyutkin, coiffeur. Je me fais coiffer par Tyutkin. …⁴⁶ I’ll tell him that when he comes,” she thought and she smiled. But at that same moment she remembered that she had no one now to tell anything amusing. “And there isn’t anything amusing, there isn’t anything cheerful. Everything is vile. The bells are ringing for vespers, and how carefully that merchant is crossing himself!—just as if he were afraid of dropping something. What are these churches for, this bell ringing, and this hypocrisy? Only to hide the fact that we all hate one another, like these cabbies cursing so viciously. Yashvin says he wants to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his. Now that’s the truth!”

At these thoughts, which distracted her so much that she ceased even to think about her own situation, she found herself stopping at the front steps of her own house. Only when she saw the butler coming out to meet her did she remember that she had sent a note and telegram.

“Is there a reply?” she asked.

“I’ll look right now,” answered the doorman, and glancing at the desk, he found and handed her the thin rectangular envelope of a telegram. “I cannot come before ten o’clock. Vronsky,” she read.

“Hasn’t the messenger returned?”

“Absolutely not,” answered the doorman.

“But if that is so, then I know what I must do,” she said, and feeling an undefined fury and a need for revenge rising inside her, she ran upstairs. “I’ll go see him myself. Before leaving for good, I’ll tell him everything. I have never hated anyone the way I hate that man!” she thought. When she saw his hat on the hook, she shuddered from revulsion. She had not figured out that his telegram was an answer to her telegram or that he had not yet received her note. She imagined him now calmly conversing with his mother and Madame Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings. “Yes, I must go quickly,” she told herself, still not knowing where to go. She felt she had to get away from the emotions she was experiencing in this terrible house as quickly as possible. The servants, the walls, the things in this house—everything evoked revulsion and spite and crushed her with its weight.

“Yes, I must go to the train station, and if he’s not there, then go there and unmask him.” Anna looked in the papers for the train schedule. In the evening there was one leaving at two minutes past eight. “Yes, I’ll make it in time.” She ordered the other horses harnessed and got busy packing her traveling case with the things she would need for a few days. She knew she would not be coming back here anymore. She had vaguely decided for herself, among the plans that had come to mind, that after what happened there at the station or at the countess’s estate, she would take the Nizhni Novgorod line to the first town and stop there.

Dinner was on the table; she walked over, sniffed the bread and cheese, convincing herself that the smell of anything edible was disgusting to her, ordered the carriage brought around, and went out. The house already cast a shadow across the entire street, and it was a clear evening still warm in the sun. Annushka, who was accompanying her with her things, and Peter, who placed her things in the carriage, and the driver, who was obviously displeased—everyone was repulsive to her and irritated her with their words and movements.

“I don’t need you, Peter.”

“But what about your ticket?”

“Well, as you like, I don’t care,” she said with annoyance.

Peter jumped up on the box and, setting his arms akimbo, ordered the driver to take them to the station.

30

“Here it is again! I understand everything again,” Anna told herself as soon as the carriage began to move and, rocking, rumbled over the small cobblestones, and again impressions began yielding one to the other.

“Yes, what was the last thing I was thinking about so well?” She tried to remember. “Tyutkin, coiffeur? No, not that. Yes, about what Yashvin says: the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that ties people together. No, there’s no point in going,” she mentally addressed a party in a carriage with a team of four who obviously were on their way out of town to have a good time. “And the dog you are taking with you won’t help you. You can’t get away from yourselves.” Casting a glance in the direction in which Peter was turned, she caught sight of a factory worker dead drunk, with a bobbing head, whom a policeman was leading somewhere. “That’s a faster way,” she thought. “Count Vronsky and I did not find that satisfaction either, though we had expected a great deal from it.” For the first time today, Anna turned that bright light by which she was seeing everything on her relations with him, about which she had been trying to avoid thinking. “What was he looking for in me? Not so much love as the satisfaction of vanity.” She recalled his words, the expression on his face, which resembled a submissive setter dog, during the first period of their liaison. And everything now confirmed this. “Yes, he had in him the triumph of the success of vanity. Naturally, there was love as well, but the larger part was the pride of success. He bragged about me. Now that’s passed. There’s nothing to be proud of; he’s ashamed, not proud. He took all he could from me, and now he doesn’t need me. He’s weighed down by me and is trying not to be dishonorable with regard to me. He let the truth slip yesterday—he wants a divorce and marriage, in order to burn his boats. He loves me—but how? The zest is gone.⁴⁷ That fellow wants to amaze everyone and is very pleased with himself,” she thought, looking at a rosy-cheeked shop assistant on a riding-school horse. “Yes, he no longer has the same taste for me. If I leave him, in his heart of hearts he’ll be pleased.”

This was not speculation. She clearly saw this in that penetrating light which had revealed to her the meaning of life and human relations.

“My love keeps getting more passionate and selfish, but his keeps dying, and this is why we are drifting apart,” she continued to think. “There’s no help for it. For me everything is in him alone, and I need him to give himself to me entirely more and more. While he wants to get away from me more and more. It is as if we had been heading toward one another until we connected, and since then we have been moving in opposite directions irresistibly, and this cannot change. He tells me I am senselessly jealous, and I myself have told myself that I am senselessly jealous; but it’s not true. I’m not jealous, but I am dissatisfied. But …” She parted her lips and changed places in the carriage due to the agitation aroused in her by the thought that had suddenly occurred to her. “If I could only be something other than his mistress passionately loving his caresses alone; but I can’t and don’t want to be anything else. And by this desire I arouse revulsion in him, and he anger in me, and it can’t be otherwise. Don’t I know that he would never deceive me, that he has no designs on Princess Sorokina, that he is not in love with Kitty, that he would not betray me? I know all this, but it does not make things any easier for me. If without loving me, he is good and tender toward me out of duty, but what I want is missing—yes, this is a thousand times worse than anger! That’s hell! And that’s just the way it is. He has not loved me for a long time. And where love ends, hatred begins. I don’t know these streets at all. Some sort of hills, and all the houses, and more houses. … And in the houses all the people, and more people. … So many of them, there’s no end, and they all hate one another. Well, let me think what I want in order to be happy. Well? Suppose I get a divorce, Alexei Alexandrovich gives me Seryozha, and I marry Vronsky.” Recalling Alexei Alexandrovich, she pictured him immediately, and unusually vividly, as if he were alive in front of her, with his meek, lifeless, lackluster eyes, the blue veins on his white hands, his intonations and the cracking of his knuckles, and recalling the emotion that there had been between them and that was also called love, she shuddered with revulsion. “Well, say I do get the divorce and become Vronsky’s wife. Would Kitty cease to look at me as she looked today? No. Would Seryozha stop asking me or thinking about my two husbands? And between Vronsky and me, what new emotion can I invent? Is the only thing possible not happiness but agony? No and no!” she answered herself now without the slightest hesitation. “This is impossible! Life is pulling us apart, and I constitute his misfortune, and he mine, and there’s no changing him or me. Every attempt has been made; but the screw has been stripped. Yes, a beggar woman and her baby. She thinks I feel sorry for her. Aren’t we all cast into the world only to hate one another and so torment ourselves and others? Schoolboys walking and laughing. Seryozha?” she remembered. “I too thought that I loved him, and I was moved by my own tenderness. But I have lived without him. I exchanged his for another love and did not complain of this exchange so long as I was satisfied with that love.” She remembered with revulsion what she had called love. The clarity with which she now saw her own life and the life of all people gladdened her. “It’s like that with me, and Peter, and Fyodor the driver, and this merchant, and all those people who are living there along the Volga where these advertisements invite people to go, and everywhere, and always,” she thought when they were already driving up to the low structure of the Nizhni Novgorod station and the porters were running toward her.

“A ticket to Obiralovka?” said Peter.

She had entirely forgotten where she was going and why, and only with great effort was she able to understand the question.

“Yes,” she told him, handing him her purse with the money, and picking up her small red bag, she stepped out of the carriage.

Heading through the crowd to the first-class waiting room, little by little she remembered all the details of her position and the choices between which she had been vacillating. And again, first hope, then despair over old sore spots began reopening the wounds of her tormented, terribly palpitating heart. Sitting on a star-shaped sofa waiting for the train, looking with revulsion at the people going in and out (they were all repulsive to her), she thought about how she would arrive at the station and write him a note and what she would write him, about how now he was complaining to his mother (without understanding her sufferings) of his own situation and how she would enter the room and what she would tell him. Then she thought about how her life might still be happy and how agonizingly she loved and hated him, and how terribly her heart was beating.

31

The bell rang, several young men walked by, hideous, rude, and rushing, and at the same time attentive to the impression they were making; Peter, too, walked through the hall in his livery and gaiters with a dull, brutish face and came over to accompany her to the train car. The noisy men fell quiet when she walked past them down the platform, and one of them whispered something about her to another, naturally something vile. She mounted the high step and took a seat alone in a compartment on a springy, stained, once-white seat. Her bag, shuddering on the springs, fell on its side. Peter, with an idiotic smile, tipped his lace-trimmed hat at the window in a sign of farewell, and the insolent conductor slammed the door and latch shut. A lady, hideous, with a bustle (Anna mentally undressed this woman and was horrified at her ugliness), and a girl laughing unnaturally, ran by below.

“Katerina Andreyevna, she has everything, ma tante!”⁴⁸ shouted the girl.

“A little girl—and even she deformed and affected,” thought Anna. To avoid seeing anyone, she quickly rose and sat by the opposite window in the empty train car. A hideous, dirty peasant whose snarled hair poked out from his cap walked past this window, bending over toward the train’s wheels. “There’s something familiar about that hideous peasant,” thought Anna. When she recalled her dream, she moved toward the opposite door, shaking from terror. The conductor was opening the door, letting in a husband and wife.

“Would you like to get out?”

Anna did not reply. The conductor and the couple who entered did not notice under her veil the horror on her face. She returned to her corner and sat down. The couple sat down on the opposite side, attentively but covertly surveying her dress. Both husband and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked whether she would allow him to smoke, evidently not in order to smoke but to strike up a conversation with her. Having received her consent, he began speaking with his wife in French about something he needed to talk about even less than he did to smoke.

They uttered idiocies, affectedly, merely so that she would hear. Anna saw clearly how sick and tired they were of and hated each other. Indeed it was impossible not to hate such pathetic freaks.

She heard the second bell and after that the movement of baggage, noise, shouts, and laughter. It was so clear to Anna that no one had anything to rejoice at, that this laughter irritated her to the point of pain, and she felt like stopping her ears so as not to hear it. Finally, the third bell rang, the whistle blew, and the locomotive shrieked; a chain jerked and the husband crossed himself. “It would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that,” thought Anna, glancing at him angrily. She looked past the lady, out the window, at the people seeing the train off and standing on the platform, who looked as if they were rolling backward. Shaking regularly at the joins of the rails, the train car in which Anna was sitting rolled past the platform, a stone wall and a signal box, past other train cars; the well-oiled and smoothly rolling wheels made a light ringing sound over the rails, the window lit up with the bright evening sun, and a breeze played with the curtain. Anna forgot about her fellow passengers in the car, and breathing in the fresh air in the light rocking motion, she again began to think.

“Yes, where had I left off? At the thought that I cannot imagine a situation in which life would not be agony, that we are all created to suffer, and that we all know this and all try to come up with means for deceiving ourselves. But when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”

“That is why man was given reason, to rid himself of what disturbs him,” the lady was saying in French, evidently pleased with her phrase and lisping.

These words seemed like an answer to Anna’s thought.

“Rid himself of what disturbs him,” Anna echoed. And looking at the red-cheeked husband and thin wife, she realized that the sickly wife considered herself a misunderstood woman and that her husband was deceiving her and supporting her in this opinion of herself. By shifting her light on them, Anna seemed to see their history and all the crannies of their souls. But there was nothing interesting there, and she pursued her own thoughts.

“Yes, I am very troubled, and that’s why we were given reason, escape; therefore, I must rid myself of it. Why shouldn’t I extinguish the candle when there is nothing more to look at, when it’s vile to look at all this? But how? Why did this conductor rush down the running board? Why are they shouting, those young men in that car? Why are they talking, why are they laughing? It’s all untrue, all hypocrisy, all deceit, all evil! …”

When the train pulled into the station, Anna got out into the crowd of other passengers, and shunning them like lepers, she stopped on the platform, trying to remember why she had come here and what she had intended to do. Everything that had seemed possible to her before now was so difficult to imagine, especially in the noisy crowd of all these hideous people who would not leave her in peace. Now porters ran up to her, proffering their services; now young men, tapping their heels on the boards of the platform and talking loudly, were looking her over; now people coming toward her moved over to the wrong side. Recalling that she wanted to continue on if there was no reply, she stopped one of the porters and asked whether there wasn’t a driver here with a note for Count Vronsky.

“Count Vronsky? They’ve just been here from him. Meeting Princess Sorokina and her daughter. Now what does the coachman look like?”

As she was speaking with the porter, Mikhail the driver, ruddy and cheerful, wearing a jaunty, snug-fitting navy blue coat and chain, obviously proud of having carried out his instruction so well, walked up to her and handed her a note. She broke the seal, and her heart sank even before she had read it through.

“I am very sorry the note didn’t find me. I’ll be there at ten o’clock,” wrote Vronsky in a casual hand.

“So! As I expected!” she told herself with an evil smile.

“Fine, now go home,” she said quietly, addressing Mikhail. She spoke quietly because the rapidity of her heartbeat made it hard for her to breathe. “No, I won’t let you torture me,” she thought, addressing her threat not to him, not to herself, but to the one who had caused her such agony, and she walked down the platform past the station.

Two servant girls walking up and down the platform craned their heads to look at her, loudly discussing her gown. “It is real,” they said about the lace she was wearing. The young men would not leave her in peace. Once again, looking into her face and shouting something in an unnatural voice, laughing, they walked past. The stationmaster, walking by, asked whether she was taking the train. A boy, a kvass seller, couldn’t take his eyes off her. “My God, where am I to go?” she thought, walking farther and farther down the platform. She stopped at the end. Some ladies and children meeting a gentleman in spectacles and laughing and talking loudly fell silent, looking her over, when she drew even with them. She picked up her pace and moved away from them toward the edge of the platform. A freight train was pulling in. The platform shook, and it felt as if she were in the train once again.

Suddenly, recalling the man who was crushed the day she first met Vronsky, she realized what she had to do. Descending the stairs leading from the water pump to the rails with a quick light step, she stopped alongside the train passing close by her. She looked at the bottom of the train cars, at the bolts and chains and at the tall iron wheels of the slowly rolling first car and tried to estimate by eye the midpoint between the front and back wheels and the moment when that midpoint would be opposite her.

“Right there!” she told herself, looking into the shadow of the train car, at the sand mixed with coal sprinkled over the ties. “Right there, in the very middle, and I shall punish him and rid myself of everyone and myself.”

She wanted to fall under the middle of the first car that was drawing even with her. But the red bag she began removing from her arm detained her and it was already too late: the middle had passed her by. She had to wait for the next car. A feeling like the one she had experienced when about to take the first plunge in bathing gripped her, and she crossed herself. The familiar gesture of making the sign of the cross evoked in her soul a whole series of memories from her childhood and girlhood, and suddenly the darkness covering everything for her was torn apart, and life appeared to her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes off the wheels of the approaching second car. And at the exact moment when the middle between the wheels came even with her she tossed aside her red bag and, tucking her head into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the car and, with a light movement, as though she would rise immediately, dropped on her knees. And at that instant she was horrified at what she had done. “Where am I? What am I doing? What for?” She wanted to get up and throw herself back; but something huge and implacable struck her in the head and dragged her down on her back. “Lord, forgive me for everything!” she said, feeling the impossibility of struggle. A little peasant, muttering something, was working on the iron. And the candle by which she had read that book full of alarm, deceit, grief, and evil flared up with a light brighter than ever before, lighted up for her everything covered in darkness, flickered, faded, and was snuffed out forever.