Anna Karenina
lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers,
responded to his kiss. And meanwhile, there at the foot of the bed, in
the deft hands of Lizaveta Petrovna, like a flickering light in a lamp,
lay the life of a human creature, which had never existed before, and
which would now with the same right, with the same importance to
itself, live and create in its own image.
“Alive! alive! And a boy too! Set your mind at rest!” Levin heard
Lizaveta Petrovna saying, as she slapped the baby’s back with a shaking
hand.
“Mamma, is it true?” said Kitty’s voice.
The princess’s sobs were all the answers she could make. And in the
midst of the silence there came in unmistakable reply to the mother’s
question, a voice quite unlike the subdued voices speaking in the room.
It was the bold, clamorous, self-assertive squall of the new human
being, who had so incomprehensibly appeared.
If Levin had been told before that Kitty was dead, and that he had died
with her, and that their children were angels, and that God was
standing before him, he would have been surprised at nothing. But now,
coming back to the world of reality, he had to make great mental
efforts to take in that she was alive and well, and that the creature
squalling so desperately was his son. Kitty was alive, her agony was
over. And he was unutterably happy. That he understood; he was
completely happy in it. But the baby? Whence, why, who was he?... He
could not get used to the idea. It seemed to him something extraneous,
superfluous, to which he could not accustom himself.
Chapter 16
At ten o’clock the old prince, Sergey Ivanovitch, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch were sitting at Levin’s. Having inquired after Kitty, they
had dropped into conversation upon other subjects. Levin heard them,
and unconsciously, as they talked, going over the past, over what had
been up to that morning, he thought of himself as he had been yesterday
till that point. It was as though a hundred years had passed since
then. He felt himself exalted to unattainable heights, from which he
studiously lowered himself so as not to wound the people he was talking
to. He talked, and was all the time thinking of his wife, of her
condition now, of his son, in whose existence he tried to school
himself into believing. The whole world of woman, which had taken for
him since his marriage a new value he had never suspected before, was
now so exalted that he could not take it in in his imagination. He
heard them talk of yesterday’s dinner at the club, and thought: “What
is happening with her now? Is she asleep? How is she? What is she
thinking of? Is he crying, my son Dmitri?” And in the middle of the
conversation, in the middle of a sentence, he jumped up and went out of
the room.
“Send me word if I can see her,” said the prince.
“Very well, in a minute,” answered Levin, and without stopping, he went
to her room.
She was not asleep, she was talking gently with her mother, making
plans about the christening.
Carefully set to rights, with hair well-brushed, in a smart little cap
with some blue in it, her arms out on the quilt, she was lying on her
back. Meeting his eyes, her eyes drew him to her. Her face, bright
before, brightened still more as he drew near her. There was the same
change in it from earthly to unearthly that is seen in the face of the
dead. But then it means farewell, here it meant welcome. Again a rush
of emotion, such as he had felt at the moment of the child’s birth,
flooded his heart. She took his hand and asked him if he had slept. He
could not answer, and turned away, struggling with his weakness.
“I have had a nap, Kostya!” she said to him; “and I am so comfortable
now.”
She looked at him, but suddenly her expression changed.
“Give him to me,” she said, hearing the baby’s cry. “Give him to me,
Lizaveta Petrovna, and he shall look at him.”
“To be sure, his papa shall look at him,” said Lizaveta Petrovna,
getting up and bringing something red, and queer, and wriggling. “Wait
a minute, we’ll make him tidy first,” and Lizaveta Petrovna laid the
red wobbling thing on the bed, began untrussing and trussing up the
baby, lifting it up and turning it over with one finger and powdering
it with something.
Levin, looking at the tiny, pitiful creature, made strenuous efforts to
discover in his heart some traces of fatherly feeling for it. He felt
nothing towards it but disgust. But when it was undressed and he caught
a glimpse of wee, wee, little hands, little feet, saffron-colored, with
little toes, too, and positively with a little big toe different from
the rest, and when he saw Lizaveta Petrovna closing the wide-open
little hands, as though they were soft springs, and putting them into
linen garments, such pity for the little creature came upon him, and
such terror that she would hurt it, that he held her hand back.
Lizaveta Petrovna laughed.
“Don’t be frightened, don’t be frightened!”
When the baby had been put to rights and transformed into a firm doll,
Lizaveta Petrovna dandled it as though proud of her handiwork, and
stood a little away so that Levin might see his son in all his glory.
Kitty looked sideways in the same direction, never taking her eyes off
the baby. “Give him to me! give him to me!” she said, and even made as
though she would sit up.
“What are you thinking of, Katerina Alexandrovna, you mustn’t move like
that! Wait a minute. I’ll give him to you. Here we’re showing papa what
a fine fellow we are!”
And Lizaveta Petrovna, with one hand supporting the wobbling head,
lifted up on the other arm the strange, limp, red creature, whose head
was lost in its swaddling clothes. But it had a nose, too, and slanting
eyes and smacking lips.
“A splendid baby!” said Lizaveta Petrovna.
Levin sighed with mortification. This splendid baby excited in him no
feeling but disgust and compassion. It was not at all the feeling he
had looked forward to.
He turned away while Lizaveta Petrovna put the baby to the unaccustomed
breast.
Suddenly laughter made him look round. The baby had taken the breast.
“Come, that’s enough, that’s enough!” said Lizaveta Petrovna, but Kitty
would not let the baby go. He fell asleep in her arms.
“Look, now,” said Kitty, turning the baby so that he could see it. The
aged-looking little face suddenly puckered up still more and the baby
sneezed.
Smiling, hardly able to restrain his tears, Levin kissed his wife and
went out of the dark room. What he felt towards this little creature
was utterly unlike what he had expected. There was nothing cheerful and
joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of
apprehension. It was the consciousness of a new sphere of liability to
pain. And this sense was so painful at first, the apprehension lest
this helpless creature should suffer was so intense, that it prevented
him from noticing the strange thrill of senseless joy and even pride
that he had felt when the baby sneezed.
Chapter 17
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s affairs were in a very bad way.
The money for two-thirds of the forest had all been spent already, and
he had borrowed from the merchant in advance at ten per cent discount,
almost all the remaining third. The merchant would not give more,
especially as Darya Alexandrovna, for the first time that winter
insisting on her right to her own property, had refused to sign the
receipt for the payment of the last third of the forest. All his salary
went on household expenses and in payment of petty debts that could not
be put off. There was positively no money.
This was unpleasant and awkward, and in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s opinion
things could not go on like this. The explanation of the position was,
in his view, to be found in the fact that his salary was too small. The
post he filled had been unmistakably very good five years ago, but it
was so no longer.
Petrov, the bank director, had twelve thousand; Sventitsky, a company
director, had seventeen thousand; Mitin, who had founded a bank,
received fifty thousand.
“Clearly I’ve been napping, and they’ve overlooked me,” Stepan
Arkadyevitch thought about himself. And he began keeping his eyes and
ears open, and towards the end of the winter he had discovered a very
good berth and had formed a plan of attack upon it, at first from
Moscow through aunts, uncles, and friends, and then, when the matter
was well advanced, in the spring, he went himself to Petersburg. It was
one of those snug, lucrative berths of which there are so many more
nowadays than there used to be, with incomes ranging from one thousand
to fifty thousand roubles. It was the post of secretary of the
committee of the amalgamated agency of the southern railways, and of
certain banking companies. This position, like all such appointments,
called for such immense energy and such varied qualifications, that it
was difficult for them to be found united in any one man. And since a
man combining all the qualifications was not to be found, it was at
least better that the post be filled by an honest than by a dishonest
man. And Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely an honest
man—unemphatically—in the common acceptation of the words, he was an
honest man—emphatically—in that special sense which the word has in
Moscow, when they talk of an “honest” politician, an “honest” writer,
an “honest” newspaper, an “honest” institution, an “honest” tendency,
meaning not simply that the man or the institution is not dishonest,
but that they are capable on occasion of taking a line of their own in
opposition to the authorities.
Stepan Arkadyevitch moved in those circles in Moscow in which that
expression had come into use, was regarded there as an honest man, and
so had more right to this appointment than others.
The appointment yielded an income of from seven to ten thousand a year,
and Oblonsky could fill it without giving up his government position.
It was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two Jews, and all
these people, though the way had been paved already with them, Stepan
Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg. Besides this business, Stepan
Arkadyevitch had promised his sister Anna to obtain from Karenin a
definite answer on the question of divorce. And begging fifty roubles
from Dolly, he set off for Petersburg.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sat in Karenin’s study listening to his report on
the causes of the unsatisfactory position of Russian finance, and only
waiting for the moment when he would finish to speak about his own
business or about Anna.
“Yes, that’s very true,” he said, when Alexey Alexandrovitch took off
the pince-nez, without which he could not read now, and looked
inquiringly at his former brother-in-law, “that’s very true in
particular cases, but still the principle of our day is freedom.”
“Yes, but I lay down another principle, embracing the principle of
freedom,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with emphasis on the word
“embracing,” and he put on his pince-nez again, so as to read the
passage in which this statement was made. And turning over the
beautifully written, wide-margined manuscript, Alexey Alexandrovitch
read aloud over again the conclusive passage.
“I don’t advocate protection for the sake of private interests, but for
the public weal, and for the lower and upper classes equally,” he said,
looking over his pince-nez at Oblonsky. “But _they_ cannot grasp that,
_they_ are taken up now with personal interests, and carried away by
phrases.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch knew that when Karenin began to talk of what _they_
were doing and thinking, the persons who would not accept his report
and were the cause of everything wrong in Russia, that it was coming
near the end. And so now he eagerly abandoned the principle of
free-trade, and fully agreed. Alexey Alexandrovitch paused,