CHAPTER 18

STILL ANNA WAITED. She read but could not understand, in her overwrought state, a sign announcing the impending replacement of this Grav with something called a “train,” and explicating in righteous and moralistic terms the spiritual benefits of the longer waits, cramped conditions, and ricketier rides that could be expected. Finally a bell rang, announcing the Grav’s arrival in short order, and some young men, ugly and impudent, and at the same time careful of the impression they were making, hurried by. Some noisy men were quiet as she passed them on the platform, and one whispered something about her to another—something vile, no doubt. A grotesque-looking lady wearing a bustle (Anna mentally undressed the woman, and was appalled at her hideousness) and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down the platform.

Even the child’s hideous and affected, thought Anna. To avoid seeing anyone, she walked past them quickly and seated herself at a far bench. A misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a cap from which his tangled hair stuck out all round, shuffled slowly by, staring at the long, powerful magnet bed, and Anna was reminded of the man who had been struck and killed by the Grav, at this very station, the day she first met Alexei Kirillovich; she moved to the next bench, shaking with terror. A moment later, a man and his wife motioned to the seat next to her.

“May we sit here?”

Anna, lost in her thoughts, gave no answer. Alexei can never love me; that I must admit to myself: he has already ceased to love me, and once he understands that I am a machine-woman, he will be glad for the excuse to be through with our connection.

The couple did not notice, under her veil, her panic-stricken face. They seated themselves, and intently but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both husband and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked, would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with a view to smoking but to getting into conversation with her. Taking her silence for assent, he said to his wife in French something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made inane and affected remarks to one another about how they hoped this ride would be free of koschei, and about how someone or other’s old maiden aunt had been eaten by an alien; all these comments, she felt sure, made entirely for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities.

A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to Anna that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that this laughter irritated her agonizingly, and she would have liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third bell rang, there was the electric crackle in the air, the loud, bright hum of the repulsion magnets engaging, and the man next to her crossed himself. It would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that, thought Anna, looking angrily at him. She rapidly rose from the bench; in a moment she forgot the couple who had so irritated her, and she stood on the platform, breathing the fresh air.

Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn’t conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable; some of us are created by God, and some of us by man. We all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one understands the truth, what is one to do?

Yes, I’m very much worried, for my mind has been subsumed by a machine, a machine with a deadly purpose in contravention of all that my heart cries out that I am! This is what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there’s nothing more to look at, when it’s sickening to look at it all? But how?

Why are they talking, why are they laughing? It’s all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty! . . .

The cruelty, the cruelty of this machine that was a part of her, forever a part. She had insisted to Android Karenina that she could not perform such a mission, and yet—as long as she lived, this cruel Mechanism would be lurking within her, bidding her to kill, to destroy, to do evil.

With a rapid, light step she went down the steps that led from the platform to the magnet bed and saw in the near distance the approaching Grav.

She looked at the lower part of its carriages, at the rivets and wires and the long, vibrating pylons of the first carriage slowly oscillating, and tried to measure the middle between the left and right pylons, and the very minute when the Grav would arrive.

There, she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the carriage, as the sunlight reflected magnificently off the spotless prow of the Grav. There, in the very middle, and I will punish him, and I will escape from this hateful machine that I have become.

A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. And exactly at the moment when she could wait no longer, she drew her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. Where am I? What am I doing? What for? She tried to get up, to drop backward but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. Lord, forgive me all! she thought, feeling it impossible to struggle.

And the monitor on which she had viewed that great communiqué filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.

“I WILL PUNISH HIM, AND I WILL ESCAPE FROM THIS HATEFUL MACHINE THAT I HAVE BECOME”