Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Four/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
"Did you meet him?" she asked, when they were seated under the lamp by the drawing-room table. "That is your punishment for coming so late."
"Yes; how did it happen? Should he not have been at the council?"
"He went there, but he came back again, and now he has gone off somewhere again. But that is no matter; let us talk no more about it; where have you been? All this time with the prince?"
She knew the most minute details of his life.
He wanted to reply that as he had no rest the night before, he allowed himself to oversleep; but the sight of her happy, excited face, made this acknowledgment difficult, and he excused himself on the plea of having been obliged to go and present his report about the prince's departure.
"It is over now, is it? Has he gone?""Yes, thank the Lord, it is all done with! You have no idea how intolerable this week has seemed to me."
"Why so? Here you have not been leading the life customary to young men," she said, frowning, and, without looking at Vronsky, she took up some crocheting that was lying on the table and pulled out the needle.
"I renounced that life long ago," he replied, wondering at the sudden change in her beautiful face, and trying to discover what it portended. "I assure you," he added, smiling, and showing his white teeth, "that it was overpoweringly unpleasant to me to look at that old life again, as it were, in a mirror."
She kept her crocheting in her hand, though she did not work, but looked at him with strange, brilliant, not quite friendly eyes.
"Liza came to see me this morning—they are not yet afraid to come to my house, in spite of the Countess Lidya Ivanovna"—and here she stood up—"and told me about your Athenian nights. What an abomination!"
"I only wanted to tell you that...."
She interrupted him:—
"That it was Thérèse whom you used to know?"
"I was going to say...."
"How odious you men are! How can you suppose that a woman forgets?" said she, growing more and more animated, and then disclosing the cause of her irritation,—"and above all a woman who can know nothing of your life? What do I know? What can I know?" she kept repeating. "What can I know except what you wish to tell me? And how can I know whether it is the truth?" ....
"Anna, you insult me! have you no longer any faith in me? Have I not told you that I have no thoughts which I would conceal from you?"
"Yes, yes," she said, trying to drive away her jealous fears; "but if you only knew how I suffer! I believe in you, I do believe in you. .... But what did you want to say to me?"
But he could not instantly remember what he wanted to say. Anna's fits of jealousy were becoming more and more frequent, and, however much he tried to conceal it, these scenes made him grow cool toward her, although he knew that the cause of the jealousy was her very love for him. How many times had he not said to himself that happiness existed for him only in this love; and now that she loved him as only a woman can love for whom love outweighs all other treasures in life, happiness seemed farther off than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he considered himself unhappy, but happiness was in sight; now he felt that their highest happiness was in the past. She was entirely different from what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. The beauty of her form was gone, and when she spoke about the French actress a wicked expression came over her face which spoiled it. He looked at her as a man looks at a flower which he has plucked and which has faded, and he finds it hard to recognize the beauty for the sake of which he has plucked it and despoiled it. And yet he felt that at the time when his passion was more violent, he might, if he had earnestly desired it, have torn his love out of his heart; but now, at the very time when it seemed to him that he felt no love for her, he knew that the tie that bound him to her was indissoluble.
"Well, well, tell me what you have to say about the prince," replied Anna. "I have driven away the demon, I have driven him away," she added. Between themselves they called her jealousy the demon. "You began to tell me something about the prince. Why was it so disagreeable to you?"
"Oh, it was unbearable," replied Vronsky, trying to pick up the thread of his thought again. "The prince does n't improve on close acquaintance. I can only compare him to one of those highly fed animals which take first prizes at exhibitions," he added, with an air of vexation, which seemed to interest Anna.
"No, but how? Is he not a cultivated man, who has seen much of the world?""It is an entirely different kind of cultivation—their cultivation! One would say that he was cultivated only for the sake of scorning cultivation, as he scorns everything else, except animal pleasures."
"But are you not also fond of all these animal pleasures yourself?" said Anna, and once more he noticed the gloomy look in her eyes which avoided his.
"Why do you defend him?" he asked, smiling.
"I am not defending him; it is all absolutely indifferent to me. But it seems to me if you did not like these pleasures, you might dispense with them. But you enjoyed going to see that Thérèse in the costume of Eve." ....
"There is the demon again," said Vronsky, taking her hand which lay on the table and kissing it.
"Yes; but I can't help it. You can't imagine what I suffered while I was waiting for you. I do not think I am jealous; I am not jealous: when you are here with me I believe in you; but when you are away, leading a life so incomprehensible to me...."
She drew away from him, drew the crochet-needle out of her work, and speedily, with the help of her index finger, the stitches of white wool gleaming in the lamplight began one after the other to take form, and swiftly, nervously, the delicate wrist moved back and forth in the embroidered cuff.
"Tell me, how was it? where did you meet Alekseï Aleksandrovitch," she asked suddenly, in a voice still sounding unnatural.
"We ran against each other at the door."
"And did he greet you like this?"
She drew down her face and, half closing her eyes, instantly changed her whole expression, and Vronsky suddenly saw the same look in her pretty features which Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had worn when he bowed to him. He smiled, and Anna began to laugh, with that fresh, ringing laugh which was one of her greatest charms.
"I really do not understand him," said Vronsky. "I should have supposed that after your explanation at the datcha, he would have broken off with you, and provoked a duel with me; but how can he endure such a situation? He suffers, that is evident."
"He?" said she, with a sneer. "Oh! he is perfectly content."
"Why should we all torture ourselves in this way, when everything might be so easily arranged?"
"Only that does n't suit him. Oh, don't I know him, and the falsity on which he subsists. How could he live as he lives with me if he had any feelings? He has no susceptibilities, no feelings! Could a man of any susceptibilities live in the same house with his guilty wife? How can he talk with her? How can he address her familiarly?"[1]
And again she imitated the way her husband would say, "Tui, ma chère, tui, Anna."
"He is not a man, I tell you; he is a puppet. No one knows it, but I know it. Oh, if I had been in his place, I would long ago have killed, have torn in pieces, a wife like myself, instead of saying, "Tui, ma chère Anna," to her; but he is not a man; he is a ministerial machine. He does not understand that I am your wife, that he is nothing to. me, that he is in the way No, no, let us not talk about him."
"You are unjust, my dear," said Vronsky, trying to calm her; "but all the same, let us not talk any more about him. Tell me how you do. How are you? You wrote me you were ill; what did the doctor say?"
She looked at him with gay raillery. Evidently she still saw ridiculous and abominable traits in her husband, and would willingly have continued to speak about them.
But he added:—
"I suspect you were not really ill, but that it comes from your condition .... when will it be?"
The sarcastic gleam disappeared from Anna's eyes, but suddenly a different kind of smile—the token of a gentle melancholy, of some feeling he could not comprehend—took its place.
"Soon, very soon. You said our position is painful, and that it must be changed. If you knew how hard it is for me, what I would give to be able to love you freely and openly! I should not torment myself and I should not torment you with my jealousy. .... And this will be soon, but not in the way we think."
And at the thought of how this would take place she felt such pity for herself that the tears filled her eyes and she could not go on. She put her white hand, with the rings sparkling in the lamplight, on Vronsky's arm.
"This will not be as we think. I did not intend to speak to you about this, but you compel me to. Soon, soon, every knot will be disentangled, and all of us, all, will be at peace, and we shall not be tormented any more."
"I don't know what you mean," he said; yet he understood her.
"You ask, 'When will it be?' Soon. And I shall not survive it. .... Don't interrupt me!"
And she went on speaking rapidly:—
"I know it, I am perfectly certain I am going to die; and I am glad to die, and to free myself and you."
Her tears continued to fall. Vronsky bent over her hand and began to kiss it, and tried to conceal his own emotion, which he knew he had no ground for feeling, but which he could not overcome.
"It is better that it should be so," she said, pressing his hand fervently. "It is the only thing, the only thing left for us."
"What a foolish idea!" said Vronsky, lifting up his head and regaining his self-possession. "What utter nonsense you are talking!"
"No; it is the truth."
"What do you mean by the truth?"
"That I am going to die. I have seen it in a dream."
"In a dream?" repeated Vronsky, involuntarily recalling the muzhik of his nightmare."Yes, in a dream," she continued. "I had this dream a long time ago. I dreamed that I ran into my room to get something or other. I was searching about, you know, as one does in dreams," said she, opening her eyes wide with horror, "and I noticed something standing in the corner of my room,"
"What nonsense! How do you suppose ...."
But she would not let him interrupt her; what she was telling was too important to her.
"And this something turned around, and I saw a little dirty muzhik, with an unkempt beard. I wanted to run away, but he bent toward a bag, in which he moved some object."
She made the motion of a person rummaging in a bag; terror was depicted on her face; and Vronsky, recalling his own dream, felt the same terror seize his soul.
"And all the while he was searching, he talked fast, very fast, in French, lisping, you know,' Il faut le battre, le fer, le broyer, le pétrir .... ' I tried to wake up, but I only woke up in my dream, asking what it could mean. And Karneï said to me, 'You are going to die, you are going to die in child-bed, matushka.' And at last I woke up." ....
"What an absurd dream!" said Vronsky, but he himself felt that there was no conviction in his voice.
"But let us say no more about it. Ring; I am going to give you some tea, so stay a little longer. It is a long time since I ...."
She suddenly ceased speaking. The expression of her face instantly changed. Horror and emotion disappeared from her face, which assumed an expression of gentle, serious, and affectionate solicitude. He could not understand the significance of that change.
She had felt within her the motion of a new life.
- ↑ Literally, "say tui, thou, to her." In Russian, as in French and German, the second person singular is used in familiar intercourse among relatives and friends.—Ed.