CHAPTER 13

VRONSKY SAT UP that night, viewing Memories in the monitor of his Class III, which was located in a smooth, furless patch of the animal’s exterior, where the “soft underbelly” of a real Canis lupus would be found.

Alexei Kirillovich had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life, and still more afterward, many love affairs notorious in the whole fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been educated in the Regimental Underschool, where he was assigned and instructed in his special military issue Class III, soon growing to cherish the ersatz hunting wolf with its thick collar of bristling metal “fur” and menacing voice-box growl.

Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, after a distinguished six-month tour along the border, Vronsky had at once gotten into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go more or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always hitherto been outside it. In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered his head that there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty. At the floats he danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at their house. He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he liked it, and the more tender was his feeling for her. He did not know that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, that of courting young girls with no intention of ever marrying, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.

If he could have put himself at the point of view of the family and have heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed that he ought to marry.

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only disliked family life, but the very idea of starting a family was, in accordance with the general views in the bachelor world in which he lived, as alien and ridiculous as the so-called Honored Guests so fervently awaited by Countess Nordstron and her set.

Lupo finished the Memory and, before cuing the next one, chased a I/Mouse/9 across the floor. The beasts had recently become decommed, and Vronsky had begged a box of them from his friend Stepan Arkadyich, in the Ministry, as a source of amusement and exercise for Lupo. The fierce animal machine, having caught the unfortunate little Class I in his jaws and efficiently cracked its groznium spine, rolled again onto his back to reveal his monitor and the next Memory.

Vronsky felt on coming away from the Shcherbatskys’ that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so much stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could and ought to be taken, he could not imagine.

“What is so exquisite,” he mused to Lupo, “is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer, like I have exited Earth’s atmosphere, and am moon-bound. I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: ‘Indeed I do . . .’”

He trailed off, whereupon Lupo tilted his head and barked inquiringly.

“Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and good for her.” And he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review the places he might go to. “The Blasting Club? A game of Flickerfly champagne with Ignatov? No, I’m not going. Château des Fleurs; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick of it. That’s why I like the Shcherbatskys’, because I’m growing . . . better.” Instead of going out, he ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow and he felt the reassuring weight of Lupo’s warm, gently thrumming metal snout curled against his chest, he fell into a sound sleep.