Anna Karenina
consider how that body was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated
legs and thighs and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could
not be made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to
make things, if not better, at least less bad. It made his blood run
cold when he began to think of all these details. He was absolutely
convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his brother’s life or
to relieve his suffering. But a sense of his regarding all aid as out
of the question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him. And this
made it still more painful for Levin. To be in the sick-room was agony
to him, not to be there still worse. And he was continually, on various
pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was
unable to remain alone.
But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the
sick man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse
at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her
husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state,
and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it
was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible,
and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of
which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention.
She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist’s, set the maid who had
come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she
herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid something
under the quilt. Something was by her directions brought into the
sick-room, something else was carried out. She herself went several
times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got
out and brought in sheets, pillow cases, towels, and shirts.
The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining
hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her
summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them
with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did
not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to
the patient. Above all, he feared the patient would be angry at it. But
the sick man, though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not
angry, but only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what
she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had
sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the
instant when, by Kitty’s directions, they were changing his linen. The
long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades
and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the
waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the night shirt, and could
not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door
after Levin, was not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and
she moved rapidly towards him.
“Make haste,” she said.
“Oh, don’t you come,” said the sick man angrily. “I’ll do it my
myself....”
“What say?” queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw he was
ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.
“I’m not looking, I’m not looking!” she said, putting the arm in.
“Marya Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it,” she added.
“Please go for me, there’s a little bottle in my small bag,” she said,
turning to her husband, “you know, in the side pocket; bring it,
please, and meanwhile they’ll finish clearing up here.”
Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled comfortably
and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was
replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with pouting
lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little pipe.
There was no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bedside. On
the table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the
linen needed was folded up there, and Kitty’s _broderie anglaise_. On
the other table by the patient’s bed there were candles and drink and
powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets
on high raised pillows, in a clean night-shirt with a white collar
about his astoundingly thin neck, and with a new expression of hope
looked fixedly at Kitty.
The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was not the
one who had been attending Nikolay Levin, as the patient was
dissatisfied with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and sounded
the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with extreme
minuteness explained first how to take the medicine and then what diet
was to be kept to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked, and seltzer
water, with warm milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor had
gone away the sick man said something to his brother, of which Levin
could distinguish only the last words: “Your Katya.” By the expression
with which he gazed at her, Levin saw that he was praising her. He
called indeed to Katya, as he called her.
“I’m much better already,” he said. “Why, with you I should have got
well long ago. How nice it is!” he took her hand and drew it towards
his lips, but as though afraid she would dislike it he changed his
mind, let it go, and only stroked it. Kitty took his hand in both hers
and pressed it.
“Now turn me over on the left side and go to bed,” he said.
No one could make out what he said but Kitty; she alone understood. She
understood because she was all the while mentally keeping watch on what
he needed.
“On the other side,” she said to her husband, “he always sleeps on that
side. Turn him over, it’s so disagreeable calling the servants. I’m not
strong enough. Can you?” she said to Marya Nikolaevna.
“I’m afraid not,” answered Marya Nikolaevna.
Terrible as it was to Levin to put his arms round that terrible body,
to take hold of that under the quilt, of which he preferred to know
nothing, under his wife’s influence he made his resolute face that she
knew so well, and putting his arms into the bed took hold of the body,
but in spite of his own strength he was struck by the strange heaviness
of those powerless limbs. While he was turning him over, conscious of
the huge emaciated arm about his neck, Kitty swiftly and noiselessly
turned the pillow, beat it up and settled in it the sick man’s head,
smoothing back his hair, which was sticking again to his moist brow.
The sick man kept his brother’s hand in his own. Levin felt that he
meant to do something with his hand and was pulling it somewhere. Levin
yielded with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed
it. Levin, shaking with sobs and unable to articulate a word, went out
of the room.
Chapter 19
“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes.” So Levin thought about his wife as he talked
to her that evening.
Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself “wise and
prudent.” He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing
that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he
could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with
all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many
great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet
knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew
about it. Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and
Katya, as his brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly
liked to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew,
without a shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what was
death, and though neither of them could have answered, and would even
not have understood the questions that presented themselves to Levin,
both had no doubt of the significance of this event, and were precisely
alike in their way of looking at it, which they shared with millions of
people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the nature of death
lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to
deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and other
men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death,
obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were
absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Levin had
been alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him
with terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have
known what else to do.
More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move.
To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk
of death and depressing subjects—also impossible. To be silent, also
impossible. “If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am
afraid; if I don’t look at him, he’ll think I’m thinking of other
things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I’m
ashamed.” Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to
think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew
something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and about
her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and petted him, and
talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she must know.
The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna’s was not instinctive,
animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment, the
relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the
dying man something else more important than the physical treatment,
and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions.
Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: “Well, thank
God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one
of us such a death.” Katya in just the same way, besides all her care
about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade
the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving
absolution.
On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the
night, Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak
of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to
do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on
the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than
usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things,
and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to
sprinkle them with Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that
swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in
conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life—those moments
when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has
not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.
Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o’clock
all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such
a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made,
brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were
spread.
Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now,
and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She
arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing
shocking in it.
They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they
could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.
“I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow,”
she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding
looking-glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. “I
have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers
said for recovery.”