Anna Karenina
speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our
son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words seem to
you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that they are
called forth by my mistaken impression. In that case, I beg you to
forgive me. But if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest
foundation for them, then I beg you to think a little, and if your
heart prompts you, to speak out to me....”
Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly unlike
what he had prepared.
“I have nothing to say. And besides,” she said hurriedly, with
difficulty repressing a smile, “it’s really time to be in bed.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying more, went into the
bedroom.
When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were
sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna got into
her bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to
her again. She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was
silent. She waited for a long while without moving, and had forgotten
about him. She thought of that other; she pictured him, and felt how
her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought of
him. Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first instant
Alexey Alexandrovitch seemed, as it were, appalled at his own snoring,
and ceased; but after an interval of two breathings the snore sounded
again, with a new tranquil rhythm.
“It’s late, it’s late,” she whispered with a smile. A long while she
lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost fancied
she could herself see in the darkness.
Chapter 10
From that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for his
wife. Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society, as she had
always done, was particularly often at Princess Betsy’s, and met
Vronsky everywhere. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw this, but could do
nothing. All his efforts to draw her into open discussion she
confronted with a barrier which he could not penetrate, made up of a
sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly everything was the same, but their
inner relations were completely changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch, a man
of great power in the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this.
Like an ox with head bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he
felt was lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he
felt that he must try once more, that by kindness, tenderness, and
persuasion there was still hope of saving her, of bringing her back to
herself, and every day he made ready to talk to her. But every time he
began talking to her, he felt that the spirit of evil and deceit, which
had taken possession of her, had possession of him too, and he talked
to her in a tone quite unlike that in which he had meant to talk.
Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering at
anyone who should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was
impossible to say what needed to be said to her.
Chapter 11
That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one absorbing
desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that which for Anna
had been an impossible, terrible, and even for that reason more
entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been fulfilled. He stood
before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be calm,
not knowing how or why.
“Anna! Anna!” he said with a choking voice, “Anna, for pity’s sake!...”
But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay,
now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa
where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have
fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.
“My God! Forgive me!” she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her
bosom.
She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to
humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no one in
her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness.
Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she
could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees
the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was
their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful
and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful
price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and
infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body
of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what
he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body,
and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with
kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. “Yes, these kisses—that is
what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will
always be mine—the hand of my accomplice.” She lifted up that hand and
kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid
it, and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself,
she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it
was only the more pitiful for that.
“All is over,” she said; “I have nothing but you. Remember that.”
“I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this
happiness....”
“Happiness!” she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. “For pity’s sake, not a word, not a word
more.”
She rose quickly and moved away from him.
“Not a word more,” she repeated, and with a look of chill despair,
incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that
moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and
of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to
speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But
later too, and the next day and the third day, she still found no words
in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she
could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all
that was in her soul.
She said to herself: “No, just now I can’t think of it, later on, when
I am calmer.” But this calm for thought never came; every time the
thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and
what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those
thoughts away.
“Later, later,” she said—“when I am calmer.”
But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her position
presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness. One dream haunted
her almost every night. She dreamed that both were her husbands at
once, that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was weeping, kissing her hands, and saying, “How happy we are now!” And
Alexey Vronsky was there too, and he too was her husband. And she was
marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to
them, laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both
of them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her like a
nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.
Chapter 12
In the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin
shuddered and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his rejection, he
said to himself: “This was just how I used to shudder and blush,
thinking myself utterly lost, when I was plucked in physics and did not
get my remove; and how I thought myself utterly ruined after I had
mismanaged that affair of my sister’s that was entrusted to me. And
yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could
distress me so much. It will be the same thing too with this trouble.
Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.”
But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about it;
and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been those first
days. He could not be at peace because after dreaming so long of family
life, and feeling himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and
was further than ever from marriage. He was painfully conscious
himself, as were all about him, that at his years it is not well for
man to be alone. He remembered how before starting for Moscow he had
once said to his cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he
liked talking to: “Well, Nikolay! I mean to get married,” and how
Nikolay had promptly answered, as of a matter on which there could be
no possible doubt: “And high time too, Konstantin Dmitrievitch.” But
marriage had now become further off than ever. The place was taken, and
whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew in that place, he
felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the
rejection and the part he had played in the affair tortured him with
shame. However often he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in
it, that recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a
similar kind, made him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as
in every man’s, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his
conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil
actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but
humiliating reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with these
memories was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in which
he must have appeared to others that evening. But time and work did
their part. Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the
incidents—paltry in his eyes, but really important—of his country life.
Every week he thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking
forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married,
hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure
him.
Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the delays and
treacheries of spring,—one of those rare springs in which plants,
beasts, and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused Levin still
more, and strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his past
and building up his lonely life firmly and independently. Though many
of the plans with which he had returned to the country had not been
carried out, still his most important resolution—that of purity—had
been kept by him. He was free from that shame, which had usually
harassed him after a fall; and he could look everyone straight in the
face. In February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna
telling him that his brother Nikolay’s health was getting worse, but
that he would not take advice, and in consequence of this letter Levin
went to Moscow to his brother’s and succeeded in persuading him to see
a doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well in
persuading his brother, and in lending him money for the journey
without irritating him, that he was satisfied with himself in that
matter. In addition to his farming, which called for special attention
in spring, and in addition to reading, Levin had begun that winter a
work on agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account
the character of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data
of the question, like the climate and the soil, and consequently
deducing all the principles of scientific culture, not simply from the
data of soil and climate, but from the data of soil, climate, and a
certain unalterable character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his
solitude, or in consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly
full. Only rarely he suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate
his stray ideas to someone besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he
not infrequently fell into discussion upon physics, the theory of
agriculture, and especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea