'Why do you confuse them? I've never been a communist.'
'But I have been, and I find that it's premature but reasonable, and that it has a future, like Christianity in the first centuries.'
'I only suppose that the work force must be considered from the point of view of natural science - that is, study it, recognize its properties, and...'
'But that's all useless. This force itself finds a certain way of action, according to its degree of development. Everywhere there were slaves, then metayers;* and with us, too, there's sharecropping, leasing, hired help - what are you seeking?'
Levin suddenly became aroused at these words because in the depths of his soul he was afraid it was true - true that he wanted to balance between communism and the established forms and that this was hardly possible.
* Tenant farmers.
'I'm seeking a productive way of working, both for my own sake and for the workers,' he answered hotly. 'I want to set up ...'
'You don't want to set up anything, you simply want to be original, as you have all your life, to show that you don't simply exploit the muzhiks but do it with an idea.'
'Well, so you think - and let's drop it!' Levin replied, feeling the muscle on his left cheek quivering uncontrollably.
'You have no convictions and never had any, you only want to coddle your own vanity.'
'Well, splendid, then leave me alone!'
'And so I will! And it's high time, and you can go to the devil! I'm very sorry I came!'
No matter how Levin tried afterwards to calm his brother down, Nikolai would not listen to anything, saying that it was much better to part, and Konstantin saw that for his brother life had simply become unbearable.
Nikolai was already on the point of leaving when Konstantin came to him again and asked him in an unnatural manner to forgive him if he had offended him in any way.
'Ah, magnanimity!' Nikolai said and smiled. 'If you want to be in the right, I can give you that pleasure. You're right, but I'm still leaving!'
Only just before his departure Nikolai exchanged kisses with him and said, suddenly giving his brother a strangely serious look:
'Anyhow, don't think badly of me, Kostya!' and his voice trembled.
These were the only sincere words spoken. Levin understood that they implied: 'You see and know that I'm in a bad way and we may never see each other again.' Levin understood it, and tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his brother once more, but there was nothing he could or knew how to say to him.
Three days after his brother's departure, Levin also left for abroad. Running into Shcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, at the railway station, Levin amazed him with his gloominess.
'What's the matter with you?' Shcherbatsky asked him.
'Nothing, it's just that there's not much cheer in the world.'
'Not much? Come with me to Paris instead of some Mulhouse. You'll see how cheerful it is!'
'No, I'm finished. It's time for me to die.'
'A fine thing!' Shcherbatsky said, laughing. 'I'm just ready to begin.'
'I thought the same not long ago, but now I know that I'll die soon.' Levin said what he had really been thinking lately. He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. But his undertaking now occupied him all the more. He had to live his life to the end, until death came. Darkness covered everything for him; but precisely because of this darkness he felt that his undertaking was the only guiding thread in this darkness, and he seized it and held on to it with all his remaining strength.
Part Four
* * *
I
The Karenins, husband and wife, went on living in the same house, met every day, but were completely estranged from each other. Alexei Alexandrovich made it a rule to see his wife every day, so as to give the servants no grounds for conjecture, but he avoided dining at home. Vronsky never visited Alexei Alexandrovich's house, but Anna saw him elsewhere and her husband knew it.
The situation was painful for all three of them, and none of them would have been able to live even one day in that situation had they not expected that it would change and that it was only a temporary, grievous difficulty which would pass. Alexei Alexandrovich expected that this passion would pass, as all things pass, that everyone would forget about it and his name would remain undisgraced. Anna, upon whom the situation depended and for whom it was most painful of all, endured it because she not only expected but was firmly convinced that it would all resolve and clarify itself very soon. She decidedly did not know what would resolve this situation, but was firmly convinced that this something would now come very soon. Vronsky, involuntarily yielding to her, also expected something independent of himself which would clear up all the difficulties.
In the middle of winter Vronsky spent a very dull week. He was attached to a foreign prince who came to Petersburg,[1] and had to show him the sights of Petersburg. Vronsky himself was of impressive appearance; besides that, he possessed the art of bearing himself with dignified respect and was accustomed to dealing with people of this sort; that was why he had been attached to the prince. But he found the duty very burdensome. The prince wished to miss nothing of which he might be asked at home whether he had seen it in Russia; and he himself wished to take advantage, as far as possible, of Russian pleasures. Vronsky's duty was to be his guide in the one and the other. In the morning they went around seeing the sights; in the evening they partook of national pleasures. The prince enjoyed a health remarkable even among princes; by means of gymnastics and good care of his body, he had attained to such strength that, despite the intemperance with which he gave himself up to pleasure, he was as fresh as a big, green, waxy Dutch cucumber. The prince travelled a great deal and found that one of the main advantages of the modern ease of communication was the accessibility of national pleasures. He had been to Spain, where he had given serenades and become close with a Spanish woman who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he had shot a Gemse.* In England he had galloped over fences in a red tailcoat and shot two hundred pheasant for a bet. In Turkey he had visited a harem, in India he had ridden an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specifically Russian pleasures.
Vronsky, who was, so to speak, his chief master of ceremonies, went to great lengths in organizing all the pleasures offered to the prince by various people. There were trotting races, and pancakes, and bear hunts, and troikas, and gypsies, and carousing with a Russian smashing of crockery. And the prince adopted the Russian spirit with extreme ease, smashed whole trays of crockery, sat gypsy girls on his knees and seemed to be asking: 'What else, or is this all that makes up the Russian spirit?'
In fact, of all Russian pleasures, the prince liked French actresses, a certain ballet dancer and champagne with the white seal best of all. Vronsky was accustomed to princes but, either because he himself had changed lately, or because he had been much too close to this prince, this week seemed terribly burdensome to him. During the whole week he kept feeling like a man attached to some dangerous lunatic, fearing the lunatic and at the same time, from his closeness to him, fearing for his own reason. Vronsky constantly felt the necessity of not relaxing his tone of official deference for a second, so as not to be insulted. The prince had a contemptuous manner of treating those very people who, to Vronsky's surprise, turned themselves inside out to supply him with Russian pleasures. His judgements of Russian women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky flush with indignation. But what made the prince especially burdensome was that Vronsky could
* Chamois.
not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in that mirror was not flattering to his vanity. This was a very stupid, very self-confident, very healthy and very cleanly man, and nothing more. He was a gentleman -that was true, and Vronsky could not deny it. He was equable and unservile with his superiors, free and simple with his equals, and contemptuously good-natured with his inferiors. Vronsky was like that himself and considered it a great virtue; but with respect to the prince he was an inferi
or and this contemptuously good-natured attitude made him indignant.
'Stupid ox! Am I really like that?' he thought.
Be that as it may, when he said goodbye to him on the seventh day, before the prince's departure for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was happy to be rid of this awkward situation and unpleasant mirror. He said goodbye to him at the station, on the way back from a bear hunt, where they had spent the whole night in a display of Russian bravado.
II
On returning home, Vronsky found a note from Anna. She wrote: 'I am ill and unhappy. I cannot go out, but neither can I go on without seeing you. Come in the evening. At seven o'clock Alexei Alexandrovich is going to a meeting and will be there till ten.' After a moment's reflection about the strangeness of her summoning him directly to her home, despite her husband's demand that she not receive him, he decided to go.
That winter Vronsky had been promoted to colonel, had left regimental quarters and was living alone. After lunch he immediately lay down on the sofa and in five minutes the memories of the outrageous scenes he had witnessed over the last few days became confused and joined with the thought of Anna and the muzhik tracker who had played an important role in the bear hunt, and he fell asleep. He woke up in the dark, trembling with fear, and hastened to light a candle. 'What was that? What? What was that terrible thing I saw in my dream? Yes, yes. The muzhik tracker, I think, small, dirty, with a dishevelled beard, was bending down and doing something, and he suddenly said some strange words in French. Yes, that's all there was to the dream,' he said to himself. 'But why was it so horrible?' He vividly recalled the peasant again and the incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and horror sent a chill down his spine.
'What is this nonsense!' thought Vronsky, and he glanced at his watch.
It was already half-past eight. He rang for his servant, hurriedly got dressed and went out to the porch, forgetting the dream entirely and suffering only over being late. Driving up to the Karenins' porch, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was ten minutes to nine. A tall, narrow carriage hitched to a pair of grey horses stood at the entrance. He recognized Anna's carriage. 'She's coming to me,' thought Vronsky, 'and that would be better. I don't like going into this house. But never mind, I can't start hiding,' he said to himself; and, with the manner habitual to him since childhood of one who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of the sleigh and went to the door. The door opened and the hall porter with a rug over his arm beckoned to the carriage. Vronsky, who was not in the habit of noticing details, nevertheless noticed the astonished expression with which the porter glanced at him. Just at the doorway he nearly ran into Alexei Alexandrovich. The gaslight fell directly on the bloodless, pinched face under the black hat and the white tie gleaming from inside the beaver coat. The immobile, dull eyes of Karenin fixed themselves on Vronsky's face. Vronsky bowed, and Alexei Alexandrovich, chewing his lips, raised his hand to his hat and passed by. Vronsky saw him get into the carriage without looking back, receive the rug and a pair of opera glasses, and disappear. Vronsky went into the front hall. His eyebrows frowned, his eyes gleamed with anger and pride.
'What a position!' he thought. 'If he'd fight, if he'd stand up for his honour, I'd be able to act, to express my feelings; but this weakness or meanness... He puts me in the position of a deceiver, which is something I never wanted and do not want to be.'
Since the time of his talk with Anna in Vrede's garden, Vronsky's thinking had changed greatly. Involuntarily submitting to the weakness of Anna, who had given herself to him entirely and expected the deciding of her fate from him alone, submitting to everything beforehand, he had long ceased to think that this liaison might end, as he had thought earlier. His ambitious plans retreated into the background again, and, feeling that he had left the circle of activity in which everything was definite, he gave himself wholly to his feeling, and this feeling bound him to her more and more strongly.
Still in the front hall, he heard her retreating footsteps. He realized that she had been waiting for him, listening, and had now returned to the drawing room.
'No!' she cried, seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice, tears came to her eyes. 'No, if it goes on like this, it will happen much, much sooner!'
'What is it, my love?'
'What? I've been waiting, suffering, one hour, two ... No, I won't!... I cannot quarrel with you. Surely you couldn't help it. No, I won't!'
She placed both hands on his shoulders and gazed at him for a long time with a deep, rapturous and at the same time searching look. She studied his face to make up for the time in which she had not seen him. As at every meeting, she was bringing together her imaginary idea of him (an incomparably better one, impossible in reality) with him as he was.
III
'You met him?' she asked, when they sat down by the table under the lamp. 'That's your punishment for being late.'
'Yes, but how? Wasn't he supposed to be at the council?'
'He went and came back and went somewhere again. But never mind that. Don't talk about it. Where have you been? With the prince all the time?'
She knew all the details of his life. He wanted to say that he had not slept all night and had fallen asleep, but, looking at her excited and happy face, he felt ashamed. And he said that he had had to go and give a report about the prince's departure.
'But it's over now? He's gone?'
'Yes, thank God. You wouldn't believe how unbearable it was for me.'
'Why so? It's the usual life for all you young men,' she said, frowning, and taking up her crochet, which was lying on the table, she began extricating the hook from it without looking at Vronsky.
'I gave up that life long ago,' he said, surprised at the change of expression in her face and trying to penetrate its meaning. 'And I confess,' he said, his smile revealing his close-set white teeth, 'looking at that life all this week, it was as if I were seeing myself in a mirror, and I didn't like it.'
She held her crochet in her hands, not crocheting but looking at him with strange, shining and unfriendly eyes.
'This morning Liza came to see me - they're not afraid to visit me yet, in spite of Countess Lydia Ivanovna,' she put in. 'She told me about your Athenian night.[2] How vile!'
'I was just going to say that...'
She interrupted him:
'Was it the Therese you knew before?'
'I was going to say ...'
'How vile you men are! How can you not imagine to yourselves that a woman cannot forget that?' she said, becoming increasingly angry and thereby betraying the cause of her vexation. 'Especially a woman who cannot know your life. What do I know? What did I know?' she said. 'Only what you tell me. And how do I know whether what you've told me is true ...'
'Anna! That's insulting. Don't you believe me? Haven't I told you that I don't have a single thought that I wouldn't reveal to you?'
'Yes, yes,' she said, obviously trying to drive the jealous thoughts away. 'But if you knew how painful it is for me! I believe you, I do! ... So what were you saying?'
But he could not immediately recall what he was going to say. These fits of jealousy, which had come over her more and more often lately, horrified him and, no matter how he tried to conceal it, made him cooler towards her, though he knew that the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How many times he had told himself that her love was happiness; and here she loved him as only a woman can for whom love outweighs all that is good in life - yet he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had considered himself unhappy, but happiness was ahead of him; while now he felt that the best happiness was already behind. She was not at all as he had seen her in the beginning. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out, and her face, when she spoke of the actress, was distorted by a spiteful expression. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has plucked, in which he can barely recognize the beauty that had made him pluck and destroy it. And
, despite that, he felt that when his love was stronger, he might have torn that love from his heart, had he strongly wished to do so, but now, when it seemed to him, as it did at that moment, that he felt no love for her, he knew that his bond with her could not be broken.
'Well, what did you want to tell me about the prince? I've driven him away, I've driven the demon away,' she added. The demon was their name for jealousy. 'Yes, what did you start to tell me about the prince? Why was it so burdensome for you?'
'Ah, unbearable!' he said, trying to catch the thread of his lost thought. 'He doesn't gain from closer acquaintance. If I were to define him, he's a superbly nourished animal, the sort that gets first prize at exhibitions, and nothing more,' he said with a vexation that she found interesting.
'No, how can you,' she objected. 'After all, he's seen a lot, he's educated, isn't he?'
'It's quite a different education - their education. You can see he's been educated only so that he can have the right to despise education, as they despise everything except animal pleasures.'