CHAPTER 3

ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove, as he had intended, to the Vox Fourteen. He sat through two acts there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his usual habit; he did not go to bed; he walked up and down his study till three o’clock in the morning.

The feeling of furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her own home, gave him no peace.

YOU COULD HAVE SLAIN HIM SO EASILY.

COULD HAVE LEFT HIM IN A SHATTERED HEAP IN THE FRONT HALLWAY.

Alexei tried to argue with the furious anger of the Face. “Such an extreme measure, driven out of personal passion, would gain so little and risk so much.”

YOU ARE TOO TIMID. A SIMPLE BLOW TO THE HEAD . . .

“No!”

A RAPID CONSTRICTION OF THE WINDPIPE . . .

“For God’s sake, no!”

This internal dissension—perfectly sensible to Alexei Alexandrovich, who could hear the voice in his head as clearly as that of any other person, but no different to an outside observer than the ravings of a madman—continued into the late hours of the night. She had not complied with his request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his threat: obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry out his threat.

OR YOU COULD SIMPLY—

“No! That I cannot do! Now I bid you be silent!”

He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her room as soon as he heard she was up.

Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at the violence of his arrival. Lying still in her bedclothes, she flung up her hand before her eyes as the door flew inward off its hinges and smashed into splinters on the ground.

His brow was lowering, and his telescopic eye zoomed toward her, scanning every inch of her body—except her eyes, scrupulously he avoided her eyes; his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never seen in him.

“What do you want?” she cried, leaping from the bed.

“Sit down! Sit!” he commanded. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this house.”

“I had to see him to . . .”

She stopped, not finding a reason. Words poured into Alexei Alexandrovich’s mind:

DO IT SAY IT DO IT SAY IT

“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover.”

YOU WASTE WORDS YOU WASTE TIME DO IT SAY IT

“I meant, I only . . . ,” she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?” she said.

“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.”

“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”

“There is much of me you do not know. There are facets of my life, of my being, let alone of the being of this world, this universe, that you cannot understand, and secrets that if I revealed them to you would seal your destruction.”

His cruelty was overtaking him; with every moment it was overwhelming him, rising up in his blood like a fever. The Face sang out in his mind:

IMPLORE CONTROL INSULT INSIST OVERMASTER

With a physical effort he calmed himself, strove to regain himself, to speak with his own voice and with words chosen from his own mind. “You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty and the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”

“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried in a rush of hatred, and rose to leave.

“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and at once she felt what Vronsky had felt in the hallway: her body frozen and then snatched up like a poppet in the hand of a child, tossed in the air and slammed into the ceiling, helpless, pressure squeezing upon her throat, the breath choked out of her. Her husband stared up at her where she flailed in the air, a fish on a hook.

“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”

He stared up at her, his oculus telescoping forward ominously, click by click, and she felt the whole of her body forced flatter against the ceiling. She had to argue her case, make him feel her, her humanity, or this was the end—he would destroy her.

“NO!” HE SHRIEKED, AND ANNA FELT HER BODY SLAMMED INTO THE CEILING, PRESSURE SQUEEZING UPON HER THROAT

“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself,” she cried out desperately. “Alexei . . .

“I beg of you, Alexei . . .

“Alexei . . .”

“Ah!” he shouted finally, and released his mental hold. She fell, landing fortuitously—or had some breath of humanity inside him guided her there?—into her chair.

COWARD COWARD COWARD

Anna gasped for breath in the chair, each swallow of air as delicious as the finest wine. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt glad to be alive, and in that state she could not help but feel all the justice of his words. She sat in silence as he continued.

“You may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.”

“Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said.

“It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion . . .”

“Alexei Alexandrovich! I won’t say it’s not generous, but it’s not like a gentleman to strike anyone who’s down.”

“Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you. You don’t care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff. . . thuff. . .”

Alexei Alexandrovich was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word “suffering.”

DONKEY!

IF YOU CANNOT DESTROY, AT LEAST SUMMON THE COURAGE TO SPEAK PLAINLY, YOU FOOL—YOU FAKE—YOU—

In a paroxysm of anger and exasperation, Alexei Alexandrovich clutched at his Face, trying in vain to tear it from him, to rip free the millions of tiny neural junctures that connected the Face’s circuits to his own cell walls. Anna watched in horrified fascination as her husband, screaming with the full force of his lungs, turned in haphazard circles about the room, wrenching at the cruel metal mask. Though she did not, could not, understand what had overtaken him, for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no special significance.

At last he gave up, collapsed in a woeful heap in the opposite corner of the room.

“I came to tell you . . . ,” he said at last, softly and slowly. . . .

She glanced at him. No, to feel sorry for him, it was my fancy, she thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word “suffering.” No, can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?

“I cannot change anything,” she whispered.

“I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall entrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister’s,” said Alexei Alexandrovich, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about his son.

“You take Seryozha to hurt me,” she said, looking at him from under her brows. “You do not love him. . . . Leave me Seryozha!”

“Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Good-bye!”

The interview was complete. Anna revivified her beloved-companion and left in tears.

In the echoing chambers of Alexei Alexandrovich’s brain, the Face was silent; but it was the silence of the victor, a jubilant silence, anticipating glories to come. Its goal grew closer—closer with every passing day.