Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
The Princess Shcherbatskaya found it would not be possible to have the wedding before Lent, which would come in five weeks, because the trousseau would not be half done; but she could not help agreeing with Levin that after Lent it might be too late, as an old aunt of the prince's was very ill and liable to die, and then mourning would still further postpone it. So having decided to divide the trousseau into two parts,—one large, the other small,—the princess agreed to have the wedding before Lent. She decided that she would prepare the smaller part of the trousseau at once, and send the larger part afterward, and she was very indignant with Levin because he would not answer her seriously whether this would suit him or not. This arrangement was all the more convenient because the young couple intended to set out for the country immediately after the ceremony, and would not need the larger part of the things.
Levin continued in the same condition of lunacy, in which it seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and only aim of creation, and that it was wholly unnecessary for him to think or to bother himself about anything but that his friends would arrange everything for him. He did not even make any plans or arrangements for his coming life, but left others to decide for him, knowing all would be admirable. His brother, Sergyeï Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, and the princess ruled him absolutely; he was satisfied to accept whatever they proposed.
His brother borrowed the money that he needed; the princess advised him to leave Moscow after the wedding; Stepan Arkadyevitch advised him to go abroad. He consented to everything.
"Make whatever plans you please," he thought, "I am happy; and whatever you may decide on, my joy will be neither greater nor less."
But when he told Kitty of Stepan Arkadyevitch's suggestion about going abroad, he was surprised to see that she did not approve of it, and that she had her own very decided plans for the future. She knew that Levin's heart was at home in his work, and although she neither understood his affairs, nor tried to understand them, still they seemed to her very important; as their home would be in the country, she did not wish to go abroad where they were not going to live, but insisted on settling down in the country where their home was to be. This very firm determination surprised Levin; but as it seemed to him all right, he begged Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had excellent taste, to go to Pokrovsky and take charge of the improvements in his house. It seemed to him that that belonged to his friend's province.
"By the way," said Stepan Arkadyevitch one day, after his return from the country, where he had arranged everything for the young couple's reception, "have you your certificate of confession?"
"No; why?"
"You can't be married without it."
"Aï, aiï, aï!" cried Levin; "but it is nine years since I have been to confession! I hadn't even thought of it!"
"That is good!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, "and you call me a nihilist! But that can't be allowed to go on; you must prepare for the sacrament!"
"When? there are only four days more!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this matter also, and Levin prepared for his devotions. For Levin as for any man who is an unbeliever, yet respects the faith of others, it was very hard to attend and participate in all religious ceremonies. Now in his tender and sentimental frame of mind, the necessity of dissimulating was not only odious to him, it was well-nigh impossible. Now, he would be obliged either to lie or to mock at sacred things, at a time when his heart was bursting, when he felt at the height of bliss. He felt that he could do neither. But in spite of all his efforts to persuade Stepan Arkadyevitch that there must be some other way of obtaining a certificate without being forced to confess, Stepan Arkadyevitch declared that it was impossible.
"Yes, but what harm will it do you? only two days! and the priest is a capital, bright little old man. He will pull this tooth for you without your knowing it."
During the first mass that he attended Levin did his best to recall the strong religious impressions of his youth, when he was between sixteen and seventeen years old; but he found that this was perfectly impossible. He then tried to look on religious forms as an ancient custom, without any real meaning, something like the habit of making calls; this also he felt that he could never do. Like most of his contemporaries. Levin was completely undecided in regard to his religious views. He could not believe; at the same time he was not firmly convinced that all these things were unreasonable. And therefore not being in a condition to believe in the efficacy of what he was doing, or to look on it with utter indifference as on an empty formality, he experienced a sense of pain and annoyance during the time allotted to his devotions; his conscience cried out that to do what he himself did not understand was false and wicked.
During the time of the service, he listened to the prayers, striving to attribute to them some significance which should not be in too open contradiction with his convictions; but finding that he could not understand them, but was compelled to criticize them, he tried not to listen, but occupied himself with his thoughts—with the observations and recollections that arose in his mind with extraordinary vividness during the solemn night-office in the church. He stayed through mass, vespers, and evening prayers and on the next morning he rose earlier than usual, and came at eight o'clock, without having eaten anything, to morning prayers and confession.
There was no one in the church except a mendicant soldier, two old women, and the officiating priests. A young deacon with a long, thin back clearly defined in two halves beneath his short cassock came to meet him, and going to a little table near the wall, began to read prayers. Levin, hearing him repeat in a hurried, monotonous voice, clipping his words, the words, "Lord, have mercy upon us,"[1] felt that his thought was locked up and sealed, and that to touch it and stir it now was out of the question, since, if he did, confusion would ensue; and therefore he stood behind the deacon, not listening and not trying to fathom what he said, but thinking his own thoughts.
"What a wonderful amount of expression there is about her hands," he thought, recalling the evening before, which he had spent with Kitty at the table in one corner of the drawing-room. There had not been much to talk about, as was usually the case at this time; she had rested her hand on the table, opening and shutting it, and laughing as she made this motion. He remembered how he had kissed this hand and then examined the lines that crossed the pink palm.
"Have merc' on us again," thought Levin, making the sign of the cross, and bowing, while he noticed the deacon's supple movements, as he prostrated himself in front of him. "Then she took my hand, and in turn examined it. 'You have a famous hand,' she said to me." He looked at his own hand, and then at the deacon's, with its stubbed fingers. "Yes! Now it will soon be over. No; he is beginning another prayer. Yes; he is bowing to the ground; that always comes just before the end."
The deacon took the three-ruble note, discreetly slipped into his hand, under his rough shaggy cuff, and promised to register Levin's name; then quickly clacking in his new boots across the flagstones of the empty church, he went to the altar. In a moment he looked out and beckoned to Levin. The thought till that moment locked up in Levin's brain began to stir, but he made haste to bring it to order. "It will be arranged somehow," he said to himself and went toward the ambo. He mounted several steps, turned to the right, and saw the priest, a little old man, whose thin beard was almost white, with kindly but rather weary eyes, standing near the reading-desk, turning over the leaves of a missal. After a slight bow to Levin, he began to read the prayers; having iinished them, he kneeled and faced Levin:—
"Christ is here, invisible though, to hear your confession," said he, pointing to the crucifix. "Do you believe all that the Holy Apostolic Church teaches us?" he continued, turning his eyes from Levin's face and crossing his hand under his stole.
"I have doubted, I still doubt everything ...." said Levin, in a voice which sounded disagreeable to his own ears, and he was silent.
The priest waited a few moments to see if he would say anything more, then closing his eyes and speaking rapidly with a Vladimirsky accent, he said:—
"To doubt is characteristic of human weakness; we must pray the Lord Almighty to strengthen you. What are your principal sins?"
The priest spoke without the least interruption, and as if he were afraid of losing time.
"My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and I am generally doubting."
"To doubt is characteristic of human weakness," said the priest, using the same words; "what do you doubt principally?"
"Everything. I sometimes even doubt the existence of God," said Levin, in spite of himself, horrified at the impropriety of what he was saying. But his words seemed to make no impression on the priest.
"How can you doubt the existence of God?" he asked, with an almost imperceptible smile.
Levin was silent.
"What doubts can you have about the Creator when you contemplate His works?" pursued the priest, in his quick habitual utterance, "Who ornamented the celestial vault with its stars? who decked the earth with all its beauty? How can these things exist without a Creator?" And he cast a questioning glance at Levin.
Levin felt that it would be out of place to enter into a philosophical discussion with the priest, and, therefore, in his reply said only what referred directly to the question:—
"I do not know."
"You do not know? Then how can you doubt that God has created everything?" asked the priest, with a light-hearted perplexity.
"I cannot understand it," replied Levin, blushing, and feeling that his words were stupid, and that in such a position they could not be other than stupid.
"Pray to God, have recourse to Him; the Fathers of the Church themselves doubted, and asked God to strengthen their faith. The devil has mighty power, and we should resist him. Pray to God, pray to God," repeated the priest, rapidly.
Then he kept silent for a moment, as if he were buried in thought.
"They tell me that you intend to marry the daughter of my parishioner and spiritual son, the Prince Shcherbatsky," he added with a smile. "She is a beautiful girl."
"Yes," replied Levin, blushing for the priest. "Why does he need to ask such questions at confession?" he said to himself.
And, as if replying to his thought, the priest continued:—
"You are preparing for marriage, and perhaps God may grant you offspring. Isn't that so? Now, what education will you give to your little children if you do not conquer the temptations of the devil, who causes you to doubt?" he asked with gentle reproach. "If you love your children as a good father, you will not only wish for them riches, luxury, and honor, but still more, their salvation and their spiritual enlightenment by the light of truth; is this not so? How will you reply to the innocent child who asks you, 'Papasha, who made all that delights me on the earth,—the water, the sunshine, the flowers, the plants?' Will you answer, 'I know nothing about it'? Can you ignore what the Lord God in His infinite goodness has revealed to you? And if the child asks you, 'What awaits me beyond the tomb?' what will you say to him if you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you give him up to the seductions of the world and the devil? That is not right!" said he, stopping, and turning his head on one side, looked at Levin out of his kindly, gentle eyes.
Levin was silent, not because he was afraid this time to enter into a discussion with the priest, but because nobody had ever put such questions to him before, and because he thought there was plenty of time to consider them before his children should be in a state to question him.
"You are about to enter upon a phase of life," continued the priest, "where one must choose his path and keep to it. Pray God in His mercy to keep and sustain you; and in conclusion: May our Lord God, Jesus Christ, pardon you, my son, in His goodness and loving-kindness to all mankind." And the priest, ending the formulas of absolution, took leave of him, after giving him his blessing.
Levin, returning home that day, felt happy enough at the thought of being free from a false situation without having been obliged to lie. Besides, there remained with him a vague idea that what that good and gentle little old man said to him was not altogether so stupid as he at first had thought it was going to be, and that he really had something worth clearing up sometime.
"Not now, of course," he thought, "but later on."
Levin felt more than ever at this time that there were troubled and obscure places in his soul, and that, concerning his religion, he was in exactly the same position which he so clearly saw others occupying, and disliked, and which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky for.
Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly's, and in trying to explain to Stepan Arkadyevitch the excitable condition in which he found himself, was very gay; he said that he was like a dog being trained to jump through a hoop, which, delighted at having learned his lesson, wags his tail, and is eager to leap over the table and through the window.
- ↑ Gospodi pomiluï, shortened by his rapid speech into pomilos, pomilos.