Anna Karenina
“Do you suppose he can possibly recover?” said Levin, watching a
slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually
hidden when she passed the comb through the front.
“I asked the doctor; he said he couldn’t live more than three days. But
can they be sure? I’m very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him,” she
said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. “Anything is
possible,” she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was
always in her face when she spoke of religion.
Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither
of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed
all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on,
always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite
of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was
as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that
he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as
he would say about her _broderie anglaise_ that good people patch
holes, but that she cut them on purpose, and so on.
“Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to manage
all this,” said Levin. “And ... I must own I’m very, very glad you
came. You are such purity that....” He took her hand and did not kiss
it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him
improper); he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her
brightening eyes.
“It would have been miserable for you to be alone,” she said, and
lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted
her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. “No,” she
went on, “she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden.”
“Surely there are not people there so ill?”
“Worse.”
“What’s so awful to me is that I can’t see him as he was when he was
young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did
not understand him then.”
“I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been
friends!” she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked
round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.
“Yes, _might have been_,” he said mournfully. “He’s just one of those
people of whom they say they’re not for this world.”
“But we have many days before us; we must go to bed,” said Kitty,
glancing at her tiny watch.
Chapter 20
The next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme unction.
During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently. His great eyes,
fastened on the holy image that was set out on a card-table covered
with a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that
it was awful to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this passionate prayer
and hope would only make him feel more bitterly parting from the life
he so loved. Levin knew his brother and the workings of his intellect:
he knew that his unbelief came not from life being easier for him
without faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary
scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the
possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a
legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of his
intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a
desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened
his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she had heard of.
Levin knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful to him to behold
the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with
difficulty, making the sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the
prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel
consistent with the life the sick man was praying for. During the
sacrament Levin did what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand times.
He said, addressing God, “If Thou dost exist, make this man to recover”
(of course this same thing has been repeated many times), “and Thou
wilt save him and me.”
After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did
not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand,
thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain,
and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself
when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly
ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not
recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of
excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.
“Is he better?”
“Yes, much.”
“It’s wonderful.”
“There’s nothing wonderful in it.”
“Anyway, he’s better,” they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.
This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a
quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And
all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The
reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in
the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.
Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as
though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a
bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and
the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament
was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of
the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.
“Is Katya not here?” he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly
assented to the doctor’s words. “No; so I can say it.... It was for her
sake I went through that farce. She’s so sweet; but you and I can’t
deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,” he said, and, squeezing
the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.
At eight o’clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in
their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was
pale, and her lips were quivering. “He is dying!” she whispered. “I’m
afraid will die this minute.”
Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the
bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.
“How do you feel?” Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.
“I feel I’m setting off,” Nikolay said with difficulty, but with
extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not
raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their
reaching his brother’s face. “Katya, go away!” he added.
Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.
“I’m setting off,” he said again.
“Why do you think so?” said Levin, so as to say something.
“Because I’m setting off,” he repeated, as though he had a liking for
the phrase. “It’s the end.”
Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.
“You had better lie down; you’d be easier,” she said.
“I shall lie down soon enough,” he pronounced slowly, “when I’m dead,”
he said sarcastically, wrathfully. “Well, you can lay me down if you
like.”
Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at
his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but
the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one
thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of
what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his
mental efforts to go along with him he saw by the expression of that
calm, stern face that for the dying man all was growing clearer and
clearer that was still as dark as ever for Levin.
“Yes, yes, so,” the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. “Wait a
little.” He was silent. “Right!” he pronounced all at once
reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. “O Lord!” he murmured,
and sighed deeply.
Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. “They’re getting cold,” she whispered.
For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick man
lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he
sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that,
with no mental effort, could he understand what it was that was
_right_. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but
with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to
do next; closing the dead man’s eyes, dressing him, ordering the
coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not
conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If
he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the
knowledge the dying man had now that he could not have.
A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But
the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up
to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound
of the dying man stirring.
“Don’t go away,” said Nikolay and held out his hand. Levin gave him
his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.
With the dying man’s hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an
hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered
what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor
lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He
cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold,
but the sick man was still breathing. Levin tried again to move away on
tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said: “Don’t go.”
The dawn came; the sick man’s condition was unchanged. Levin stealthily
withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went off to
his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his
brother’s death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had
returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again,
coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased
to talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and
had become more irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither
his brother nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was angry with everyone,
and said nasty things to everyone, reproached everyone for his
sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a celebrated doctor
from Moscow. To all inquiries made him as to how he felt, he made the
same answer with an expression of vindictive reproachfulness, “I’m
suffering horribly, intolerably!”
The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores,
which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry
with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially
for not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in every
possible way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and
Levin saw that she herself was exhausted both physically and morally,
though she would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been
evoked in all by his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent
for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must inevitably
die soon, that he was half dead already. Everyone wished for nothing
but that he should die as soon as possible, and everyone, concealing
this, gave him medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors, and
deceived him and themselves and each other. All this was falsehood,
disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his character,
and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, Levin was
most painfully conscious of this deceit.
Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey
Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter
to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come
himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother’s forgiveness.