Anna Karenina
When she was dressed and in her hat, she glanced again into the eyes of
the plump, comfortable-looking Annushka. There was unmistakable
sympathy in those good-natured little gray eyes.
“Annushka, dear, what am I to do?” said Anna, sobbing and sinking
helplessly into a chair.
“Why fret yourself so, Anna Arkadyevna? Why, there’s nothing out of the
way. You drive out a little, and it’ll cheer you up,” said the maid.
“Yes, I’m going,” said Anna, rousing herself and getting up. “And if
there’s a telegram while I’m away, send it on to Darya Alexandrovna’s
... but no, I shall be back myself.”
“Yes, I mustn’t think, I must do something, drive somewhere, and most
of all, get out of this house,” she said, feeling with terror the
strange turmoil going on in her own heart, and she made haste to go out
and get into the carriage.
“Where to?” asked Pyotr before getting onto the box.
“To Znamenka, the Oblonskys’.”
Chapter 28
It was bright and sunny. A fine rain had been falling all the morning,
and now it had not long cleared up. The iron roofs, the flags of the
roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass
and the tinplate of the carriages—all glistened brightly in the May
sunshine. It was three o’clock, and the very liveliest time in the
streets.
As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that hardly swayed
on its supple springs, while the grays trotted swiftly, in the midst of
the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure
air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, and she saw her
position quite differently from how it had seemed at home. Now the
thought of death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear to her, and
death itself no longer seemed so inevitable. Now she blamed herself for
the humiliation to which she had lowered herself. “I entreat him to
forgive me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What
for? Can’t I live without him?” And leaving unanswered the question how
she was going to live without him, she fell to reading the signs on the
shops. “Office and warehouse. Dental surgeon. Yes, I’ll tell Dolly all
about it. She doesn’t like Vronsky. I shall be sick and ashamed, but
I’ll tell her. She loves me, and I’ll follow her advice. I won’t give
in to him; I won’t let him train me as he pleases. Filippov, bun shop.
They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so
good for it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!”
And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of
seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. “Riding, too. Was
that really me, with red hands? How much that seemed to me then
splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then
has gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have believed then that
I could come to such humiliation? How conceited and self-satisfied he
will be when he gets my note! But I will show him.... How horrid that
paint smells! Why is it they’re always painting and building? _Modes et
robes_, she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka’s husband. “Our
parasites”; she remembered how Vronsky had said that. “Our? Why our?
What’s so awful is that one can’t tear up the past by its roots. One
can’t tear it out, but one can hide one’s memory of it. And I’ll hide
it.” And then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of
how she had blotted the memory of it out of her life. “Dolly will think
I’m leaving my second husband, and so I certainly must be in the wrong.
As if I cared to be right! I can’t help it!” she said, and she wanted
to cry. But at once she fell to wondering what those two girls could be
smiling about. “Love, most likely. They don’t know how dreary it is,
how low.... The boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing
at horses. Seryozha! And I’m losing everything and not getting him
back. Yes, I’m losing everything, if he doesn’t return. Perhaps he was
late for the train and has come back by now. Longing for humiliation
again!” she said to herself. “No, I’ll go to Dolly, and say straight
out to her, I’m unhappy, I deserve this, I’m to blame, but still I’m
unhappy, help me. These horses, this carriage—how loathsome I am to
myself in this carriage—all his; but I won’t see them again.”
Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly, and mentally
working her heart up to great bitterness, Anna went upstairs.
“Is there anyone with her?” she asked in the hall.
“Katerina Alexandrovna Levin,” answered the footman.
“Kitty! Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!” thought Anna, “the girl
he thinks of with love. He’s sorry he didn’t marry her. But me he
thinks of with hatred, and is sorry he had anything to do with me.”
The sisters were having a consultation about nursing when Anna called.
Dolly went down alone to see the visitor who had interrupted their
conversation.
“Well, so you’ve not gone away yet? I meant to have come to you,” she
said; “I had a letter from Stiva today.”
“We had a telegram too,” answered Anna, looking round for Kitty.
“He writes that he can’t make out quite what Alexey Alexandrovitch
wants, but he won’t go away without a decisive answer.”
“I thought you had someone with you. Can I see the letter?”
“Yes; Kitty,” said Dolly, embarrassed. “She stayed in the nursery. She
has been very ill.”
“So I heard. May I see the letter?”
“I’ll get it directly. But he doesn’t refuse; on the contrary, Stiva
has hopes,” said Dolly, stopping in the doorway.
“I haven’t, and indeed I don’t wish it,” said Anna.
“What’s this? Does Kitty consider it degrading to meet me?” thought
Anna when she was alone. “Perhaps she’s right, too. But it’s not for
her, the girl who was in love with Vronsky, it’s not for her to show me
that, even if it is true. I know that in my position I can’t be
received by any decent woman. I knew that from the first moment I
sacrificed everything to him. And this is my reward! Oh, how I hate
him! And what did I come here for? I’m worse here, more miserable.” She
heard from the next room the sisters’ voices in consultation. “And what
am I going to say to Dolly now? Amuse Kitty by the sight of my
wretchedness, submit to her patronizing? No; and besides, Dolly
wouldn’t understand. And it would be no good my telling her. It would
only be interesting to see Kitty, to show her how I despise everyone
and everything, how nothing matters to me now.”
Dolly came in with the letter. Anna read it and handed it back in
silence.
“I knew all that,” she said, “and it doesn’t interest me in the least.”
“Oh, why so? On the contrary, I have hopes,” said Dolly, looking
inquisitively at Anna. She had never seen her in such a strangely
irritable condition. “When are you going away?” she asked.
Anna, half-closing her eyes, looked straight before her and did not
answer.
“Why does Kitty shrink from me?” she said, looking at the door and
flushing red.
“Oh, what nonsense! She’s nursing, and things aren’t going right with
her, and I’ve been advising her.... She’s delighted. She’ll be here in
a minute,” said Dolly awkwardly, not clever at lying. “Yes, here she
is.”
Hearing that Anna had called, Kitty had wanted not to appear, but Dolly
persuaded her. Rallying her forces, Kitty went in, walked up to her,
blushing, and shook hands.
“I am so glad to see you,” she said with a trembling voice.
Kitty had been thrown into confusion by the inward conflict between her
antagonism to this bad woman and her desire to be nice to her. But as
soon as she saw Anna’s lovely and attractive face, all feeling of
antagonism disappeared.
“I should not have been surprised if you had not cared to meet me. I’m
used to everything. You have been ill? Yes, you are changed,” said
Anna.
Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with hostile eyes. She ascribed
this hostility to the awkward position in which Anna, who had once
patronized her, must feel with her now, and she felt sorry for her.
They talked of Kitty’s illness, of the baby, of Stiva, but it was
obvious that nothing interested Anna.
“I came to say good-bye to you,” she said, getting up.
“Oh, when are you going?”
But again not answering, Anna turned to Kitty.
“Yes, I am very glad to have seen you,” she said with a smile. “I have
heard so much of you from everyone, even from your husband. He came to
see me, and I liked him exceedingly,” she said, unmistakably with
malicious intent. “Where is he?”
“He has gone back to the country,” said Kitty, blushing.
“Remember me to him, be sure you do.”
“I’ll be sure to!” Kitty said naïvely, looking compassionately into her
eyes.
“So good-bye, Dolly.” And kissing Dolly and shaking hands with Kitty,
Anna went out hurriedly.
“She’s just the same and just as charming! She’s very lovely!” said
Kitty, when she was alone with her sister. “But there’s something
piteous about her. Awfully piteous!”
“Yes, there’s something unusual about her today,” said Dolly. “When I
went with her into the hall, I fancied she was almost crying.”
Chapter 29
Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind than
when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was added now that
sense of mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so
distinctly on meeting Kitty.
“Where to? Home?” asked Pyotr.
“Yes, home,” she said, not even thinking now where she was going.
“How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and
curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?” she
thought, staring at two men who walked by. “Can one ever tell anyone
what one is feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it’s a good thing I
didn’t tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery! She
would have concealed it, but her chief feeling would have been delight
at my being punished for the happiness she envied me for. Kitty, she
would have been even more pleased. How I can see through her! She knows
I was more than usually sweet to her husband. And she’s jealous and
hates me. And she despises me. In her eyes I’m an immoral woman. If I
were an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with
me ... if I’d cared to. And, indeed, I did care to. There’s someone
who’s pleased with himself,” she thought, as she saw a fat, rubicund
gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an acquaintance, and
lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived
his mistake. “He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as
anyone in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my appetites,
as the French say. They want that dirty ice cream, that they do know
for certain,” she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice cream
seller, who took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring
face with a towel. “We all want what is sweet and nice. If not
sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Kitty’s the same—if not Vronsky, then
Levin. And she envies me, and hates me. And we all hate each other. I
Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that’s the truth. ‘_Tiutkin, coiffeur._’ _Je me
fais coiffer par Tiutkin...._ I’ll tell him that when he comes,” she
thought and smiled. But the same instant she remembered that she had no
one now to tell anything amusing to. “And there’s nothing amusing,
nothing mirthful, really. It’s all hateful. They’re singing for
vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if he were
afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this singing and
this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other like these
cab drivers who are abusing each other so angrily. Yashvin says, ‘He
wants to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his.’ Yes, that’s the
truth!”
She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that she left