Anna Karenina
“I am a nice person ... I positively forgot it ... I’ve brought you a
visitor. And here he comes.” The unexpected young visitor, whom Sappho
had invited, and whom she had forgotten, was, however, a personage of
such consequence that, in spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on
his entrance.
He was a new admirer of Sappho’s. He now dogged her footsteps, like
Vaska.
Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with Stremov.
Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental, languid type of
face, and—as everyone used to say—exquisite enigmatic eyes. The tone of
her dark dress (Anna immediately observed and appreciated the fact) was
in perfect harmony with her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and
enervated as Sappho was smart and abrupt.
But to Anna’s taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said to
Anna that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but when Anna
saw her, she felt that this was not the truth. She really was both
innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive woman. It is true that
her tone was the same as Sappho’s; that like Sappho, she had two men,
one young and one old, tacked onto her, and devouring her with their
eyes. But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her.
There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations.
This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary,
and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by
dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking
into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not
but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face lighted up at once
with a smile of delight.
“Ah, how glad I am to see you!” she said, going up to her. “Yesterday
at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but you’d gone away. I did
so want to see you, yesterday especially. Wasn’t it awful?” she said,
looking at Anna with eyes that seemed to lay bare all her soul.
“Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling,” said Anna, blushing.
The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.
“I’m not going,” said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to Anna.
“You won’t go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?”
“Oh, I like it,” said Anna.
“There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It’s delightful
to look at you. You’re alive, but I’m bored.”
“How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in
Petersburg,” said Anna.
“Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored; but
we—I certainly—are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored.”
Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two young
men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.
“What, bored!” said Betsy. “Sappho says they did enjoy themselves
tremendously at your house last night.”
“Ah, how dreary it all was!” said Liza Merkalova. “We all drove back to
my place after the races. And always the same people, always the same.
Always the same thing. We lounged about on sofas all the evening. What
is there to enjoy in that? No; do tell me how you manage never to be
bored?” she said, addressing Anna again. “One has but to look at you
and one sees, here’s a woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn’t
bored. Tell me how you do it?”
“I do nothing,” answered Anna, blushing at these searching questions.
“That’s the best way,” Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of fifty,
partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a
characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was his wife’s
niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her. On meeting Anna
Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the government, he
tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the world, to be particularly
cordial with her, the wife of his enemy.
“‘Nothing,’” he put in with a subtle smile, “that’s the very best way.
I told you long ago,” he said, turning to Liza Merkalova, “that if you
don’t want to be bored, you mustn’t think you’re going to be bored.
It’s just as you mustn’t be afraid of not being able to fall asleep, if
you’re afraid of sleeplessness. That’s just what Anna Arkadyevna has
just said.”
“I should be very glad if I had said it, for it’s not only clever but
true,” said Anna, smiling.
“No, do tell me why it is one can’t go to sleep, and one can’t help
being bored?”
“To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to
work too.”
“What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I can’t
and won’t knowingly make a pretense about it.”
“You’re incorrigible,” said Stremov, not looking at her, and he spoke
again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing but
commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to when she was
returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia Ivanovna was of
her, with an expression which suggested that he longed with his whole
soul to please her and show his regard for her and even more than that.
Tushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the other
players to begin croquet.
“No, don’t go away, please don’t,” pleaded Liza Merkalova, hearing that
Anna was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.
“It’s too violent a transition,” he said, “to go from such company to
old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her a chance for
talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such different feelings
of the highest and most opposite kind,” he said to her.
Anna pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man’s
flattering words, the naïve, childlike affection shown her by Liza
Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,—it was all so
easy, and what was in store for her was so difficult, that she was for
a minute in uncertainty whether to remain, whether to put off a little
longer the painful moment of explanation. But remembering what was in
store for her alone at home, if she did not come to some decision,
remembering that gesture—terrible even in memory—when she had clutched
her hair in both hands—she said good-bye and went away.
Chapter 19
In spite of Vronsky’s apparently frivolous life in society, he was a
man who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of Pages, he
had experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he had tried, being
in difficulties, to borrow money, and since then he had never once put
himself in the same position again.
In order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about five
times a year (more or less frequently, according to circumstances) to
shut himself up alone and put all his affairs into definite shape. This
he used to call his day of reckoning or _faire la lessive_.
On waking up the day after the races, Vronsky put on a white linen
coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about the
table moneys, bills, and letters, and set to work. Petritsky, who knew
he was ill-tempered on such occasions, on waking up and seeing his
comrade at the writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without
getting in his way.
Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the
conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity
of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is
something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never
supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of
personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky. And not
without inward pride, and not without reason, he thought that any other
man would long ago have been in difficulties, would have been forced to
some dishonorable course, if he had found himself in such a difficult
position. But Vronsky felt that now especially it was essential for him
to clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into
difficulties.
What Vronsky attacked first as being the easiest was his pecuniary
position. Writing out on note paper in his minute hand all that he
owed, he added up the amount and found that his debts amounted to
seventeen thousand and some odd hundreds, which he left out for the
sake of clearness. Reckoning up his money and his bank book, he found
that he had left one thousand eight hundred roubles, and nothing coming
in before the New Year. Reckoning over again his list of debts, Vronsky
copied it, dividing it into three classes. In the first class he put
the debts which he would have to pay at once, or for which he must in
any case have the money ready so that on demand for payment there could
not be a moment’s delay in paying. Such debts amounted to about four
thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and two thousand five
hundred as surety for a young comrade, Venovsky, who had lost that sum
to a cardsharper in Vronsky’s presence. Vronsky had wanted to pay the
money at the time (he had that amount then), but Venovsky and Yashvin
had insisted that they would pay and not Vronsky, who had not played.
That was so far well, but Vronsky knew that in this dirty business,
though his only share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be
surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for him to have the
two thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling it at the
swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for this first and
most important division he must have four thousand roubles. The second
class—eight thousand roubles—consisted of less important debts. These
were principally accounts owing in connection with his race horses, to
the purveyor of oats and hay, the English saddler, and so on. He would
have to pay some two thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to
be quite free from anxiety. The last class of debts—to shops, to
hotels, to his tailor—were such as need not be considered. So that he
needed at least six thousand roubles for current expenses, and he only
had one thousand eight hundred. For a man with one hundred thousand
roubles of revenue, which was what everyone fixed as Vronsky’s income,
such debts, one would suppose, could hardly be embarrassing; but the
fact was that he was far from having one hundred thousand. His father’s
immense property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two hundred
thousand, was left undivided between the brothers. At the time when the
elder brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess Varya Tchirkova,
the daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune whatever, Alexey had
given up to his elder brother almost the whole income from his father’s
estate, reserving for himself only twenty-five thousand a year from it.
Alexey had said at the time to his brother that that sum would be
sufficient for him until he married, which he probably never would do.
And his brother, who was in command of one of the most expensive
regiments, and was only just married, could not decline the gift. His
mother, who had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every
year twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had
reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother, incensed
with him on account of his love affair and his leaving Moscow, had
given up sending him the money. And in consequence of this, Vronsky,
who had been in the habit of living on the scale of forty-five thousand
a year, having only received twenty thousand that year, found himself
now in difficulties. To get out of these difficulties, he could not
apply to his mother for money. Her last letter, which he had received
the day before, had particularly exasperated him by the hints in it
that she was quite ready to help him to succeed in the world and in the
army, but not to lead a life which was a scandal to all good society.
His mother’s attempt to buy him stung him to the quick and made him
feel colder than ever to her. But he could not draw back from the