Anna Karenina
away, in God’s name go away!” he shrieked, getting up from his chair.
“And go away, and go away!”
“I don’t look down on it at all,” said Konstantin Levin timidly. “I
don’t even dispute it.”
At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay Levin looked round
angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.
“I’m not well; I’ve grown irritable,” said Nikolay Levin, getting
calmer and breathing painfully; “and then you talk to me of Sergey
Ivanovitch and his article. It’s such rubbish, such lying, such
self-deception. What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of
it? Have you read his article?” he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at
the table, and moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so
as to clear a space.
“I’ve not read it,” Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring
to enter into the conversation.
“Why not?” said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon
Kritsky.
“Because I didn’t see the use of wasting my time over it.”
“Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time?
That article’s too deep for many people—that’s to say it’s over their
heads. But with me, it’s another thing; I see through his ideas, and I
know where its weakness lies.”
Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap.
“Won’t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow with
the locksmith.”
Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin smiled and winked.
“He’s no good either,” he said. “I see, of course....”
But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him....
“What do you want now?” he said, and went out to him in the passage.
Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.
“Have you been long with my brother?” he said to her.
“Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch’s health has become very
poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal,” she said.
“That is ... how does he drink?”
“Drinks vodka, and it’s bad for him.”
“And a great deal?” whispered Levin.
“Yes,” she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay
Levin had reappeared.
“What were you talking about?” he said, knitting his brows, and turning
his scared eyes from one to the other. “What was it?”
“Oh, nothing,” Konstantin answered in confusion.
“Oh, if you don’t want to say, don’t. Only it’s no good your talking to
her. She’s a wench, and you’re a gentleman,” he said with a jerk of the
neck. “You understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of
everything, and look with commiseration on my shortcomings,” he began
again, raising his voice.
“Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” whispered Marya
Nikolaevna, again going up to him.
“Oh, very well, very well!... But where’s the supper? Ah, here it is,”
he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. “Here, set it here,” he added
angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a glassful and
drank it greedily. “Like a drink?” he turned to his brother, and at
once became better humored.
“Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I’m glad to see you, anyway. After
all’s said and done, we’re not strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me
what you’re doing,” he went on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and
pouring out another glassful. “How are you living?”
“I live alone in the country, as I used to. I’m busy looking after the
land,” answered Konstantin, watching with horror the greediness with
which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed
it.
“Why don’t you get married?”
“It hasn’t happened so,” Konstantin answered, reddening a little.
“Why not? For me now ... everything’s at an end! I’ve made a mess of my
life. But this I’ve said, and I say still, that if my share had been
given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different.”
Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.
“Do you know your little Vanya’s with me, a clerk in the countinghouse
at Pokrovskoe.”
Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.
“Yes, tell me what’s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing
still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the
gardener, is he living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind
and don’t alter anything in the house, but make haste and get married,
and make everything as it used to be again. Then I’ll come and see you,
if your wife is nice.”
“But come to me now,” said Levin. “How nicely we would arrange it!”
“I’d come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey
Ivanovitch.”
“You wouldn’t find him there. I live quite independently of him.”
“Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and
him,” he said, looking timidly into his brother’s face.
This timidity touched Konstantin.
“If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell you
that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take neither side. You’re
both wrong. You’re more wrong externally, and he inwardly.”
“Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!” Nikolay shouted joyfully.
“But I personally value friendly relations with you more because....”
“Why, why?”
Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay was
unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this was just what
he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka again.
“Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!” said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching out
her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.
“Let it be! Don’t insist! I’ll beat you!” he shouted.
Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at
once reflected on Nikolay’s face, and she took the bottle.
“And do you suppose she understands nothing?” said Nikolay. “She
understands it all better than any of us. Isn’t it true there’s
something good and sweet in her?”
“Were you never before in Moscow?” Konstantin said to her, for the sake
of saying something.
“Only you mustn’t be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her. No
one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who tried her
for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the
senselessness in the world!” he cried suddenly. “These new
institutions, these justices of the peace, rural councils, what
hideousness it all is!”
And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.
Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all
public institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was
distasteful to him now from his brother’s lips.
“In another world we shall understand it all,” he said lightly.
“In another world! Ah, I don’t like that other world! I don’t like it,”
he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother’s eyes. “Here one
would think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one’s own
and other people’s, would be a good thing, and yet I’m afraid of death,
awfully afraid of death.” He shuddered. “But do drink something. Would
you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let’s go to the
Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian
songs.”
His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject
to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go
out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.
Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to persuade
Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.
Chapter 26
In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he
reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors
about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was
overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with
himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own
station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of
his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station
fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up,
in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman
Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the
contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little
by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and
self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight
of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought
for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off
pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring
at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now,
but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to
him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be
anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the
first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for
any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and
consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he
would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of
which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make
an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself
that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow
him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when
things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then,
too, his brother’s talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly
at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic
conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own
abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he
determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked
hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still
harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed
to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in
the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new,
better life, he reached home before nine o’clock at night.
The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a
light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who
performed the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet
asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the
steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and
whining, turned round about Levin’s knees, jumping up and longing, but
not daring, to put her forepaws on his chest.
“You’re soon back again, sir,” said Agafea Mihalovna.
“I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at
home, one is better,” he answered, and went into his study.
The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar
details came out: the stag’s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass,
the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his
father’s sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken
ashtray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this,
there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of
arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All
these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: “No,
you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re not going to be
different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with
doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to
amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you
won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.”
This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling
him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can
do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the