CHAPTER 12

VRONSKY HAD SEVERAL TIMES ALREADY, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this that she could not or would not face, as though the moment she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved to have it out.

“Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute tone, “that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot . . . you cannot stay like this, especially now.”

“What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step.

“Tell him everything, and leave him.”

“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, which had been so soft a minute before. “‘Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?’” (Mimicking her husband’s singular appearance, she covered one side of her face with the flat of her hand). “‘I warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name’”—and my son, she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest—’“disgrace my name, and’—and more in the same style,” she added. “In general terms, he’ll say in his official manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen. He’s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s angry,” she added, recalling Alexei Alexandrovich as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking and bifurcated apperance, and reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself was doing him.

It was then she sensed that Vronsky was not listening, and saw that his eyes were fixed on some spot behind her head.

“The swirling . . . ,” he said in a low voice, as if hypnotized, and Anna felt irritated by his lack of attention.

“What?”

“The fountain . . . the swirling. . . .” he repeated, and then with sudden force shouted, “Jump!”

Anna, shocked into action by this sudden urgency, leapt forward from where she sat on the wall of the fountain, landing in a disordered heap at Vronsky’s feet; he scrambled forward to grasp as her forearms and pulled as hard as he could. Directly behind her, hovering like a storm cloud over the fountain’s swirling waters, was what could only be described as a terrible, undulating nothingness: a grey-black hole in the fabric of the atmosphere, wavering in the air above the fountain, and pulling, pulling Anna Karenina in toward itself.

Vronsky gripped her with all his strength, bracing his feet against the wall of the fountain, resisting with all his strength the violent force, ten times stronger than gravity, that was drawing Anna in. Android Karenina joined the struggle, lacing her fingers around Anna’s waist and digging in the base of her heels at the base of the fountain wall.

“What . . . what is . . . ,” Anna began, and Vronsky answered immediately: “A godmouth!” Anna’s skirts billowed up behind her, rustled by the phantasmagoric wind bellowing from the portal. “UnConSciya creates them . . . somehow . . . oof. . .”

His fingers slipping a little, Vronsky cursed. “Hold on, Anna. Only hold on, a bit longer . . . it will not last long.”

“Let me go,” said Anna weakly.

“What?”

“What good is living,” she said, louder now, “if our life is to be under my husband’s control? Let me go!” She directed this last command to Android Karenina, who by virtue of the Iron Laws could not disobey; she turned her faceplate apologetically to Vronsky and released her grasp.

“But, Anna,” said Vronsky, renewing his grip and putting steel into his voice, “we simply must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by the line he takes.”

“And what, run away?”

“And why not run away?” he shouted desperately. “I don’t see how we can keep on like this. And not for my sake—I see that you suffer!”

A fierce wind blew from the terrible depths of the demonic spiral; one of Anna’s shoes slipped from her feet and was sucked into the vortex. Vronsky redoubled his efforts to pull her free, nearly dislodging Anna’s arm from the socket. He stared over her shoulder at the space-hole still hovering in the air behind her, glowing like the malevolent eye of a hungry beast. One of Anna’s hands came loose from his, and she made no effort to let him grab it again. Her body was virtually slack, and he felt she had given up, in her body and her mind, and was ready to be consumed.

“Anna,” he pleaded, “do not quit!”

“Yes,” she muttered, almost talking to herself. “Run away, become your mistress, and complete the ruin of. . .”

And she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter those words—whether because she could not bear to, or because the force on her body was squeezing the very air from her lungs, Vronsky could not say.

Anna thought of her son, pictured his innocent body hovering before the unfathomable grey void behind her, imagined him caught in such a trap. It came to her that she had set a trap for him, by falling in love; she thought of his future attitude toward his mother, who had abandoned his father, and she felt such terror at what she had done that she could not face it. She cried out and writhed, and Vronsky lost his grip. The godmouth widened, like a snake mouth opening to accommodate a rabbit or possum.

It was then that Android Karenina broke the Iron Law of obedience.

Dismissing the earlier command to let go, she grabbed Anna by the waist, and with furious mechanical strength pulled her to safety. Together, mistress and robot landed with a thud on the stones of the fountain, and Anna watched with shaded eyes as the queer dimensional portal whooshed shut and disappeared.

For a long moment, Anna stared into the pale purple gleam of Android Karenina’s faceplate—and then mouthed the words thank you. Android Karenina, as ever, said nothing, only straightened up and motored respectfully away, as Vronsky rushed to his lover’s side and placed her head lovingly in his lap.

“I beg you, I entreat you,” Anna said, turning her head away from Vronsky’s eyes. “Never speak to me of that!”

“To the contrary!” Vronsky began. “I shall not rest until I discover what cell, what madman, would dare to launch such an attack on you—and why—”

“No,” said Anna, shaking her head with impatience. “Never speak to me of my becoming your mistress. Of my ruin, and that of. . .”

“But, Anna . . .”

“Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my position; but it’s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me? . . . No, no, promise!”

“I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially after what you have told me. I can’t be at peace, when you can’t be at peace . . .”

“I?” she repeated. “Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if you will never talk about this. When you talk about it—it’s only then it worries me.”

“I don’t understand—” he said.

“I know,” she interrupted him, “how hard it is for your truthful nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have ruined your whole life for me.”

“I was just thinking the very same thing,” he said. “How could you sacrifice everything for my sake? I can’t forgive myself that you’re unhappy!”

“I unhappy?” she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with an ecstatic smile of love. “I am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness. . . .”

She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming toward them, and glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long moment into his face, and, raising her face with smiling, parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth while Android Karenina kept her gaze discretely averted, then pushed him away. She would have gone, but he held her back.

“When?” he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.

“Tonight, at one o’clock,” she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh, she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.

Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly, plagued by questions about the encounter: Why would UnConSciya plant such a trap here? Was it meant for Anna . . . or for him?

And was it UnConSciya at all?