Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Seven/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
"Please don't forget to call at the Bohls'," said Kitty, as her husband came to her room, about eleven o'clock in the morning, before going out. "I know that you are going to dine at the club, because papa wrote you. But what are you going to do this morning?"
"I'm only going to Katavasof's."
"Why are you going so early?"
"He promised to introduce me to Metrof. He's a famous scholar from Petersburg. I want to talk over my book with him."
"Oh, yes; wasn't it his article you were praising? Well, and after that?"
"Possibly to the tribunal, about that affair of my sister's."
"Aren't you going to the concert?" she asked.
"No; why should I go all alone?"
"Do go. They're going to give those new pieces.... it will interest you. I should certainly go."
"Well, at all events, I shall come home before dinner," said he, looking at his watch.
"Put on your best coat, so as to go to the Countess Bohl's."
"Why, is that really necessary?"
"Akh! certainly. The count himself came here. Now, what does it cost you? You go, you sit down, you talk five minutes about the weather, then you get up and go."
"Well, you don't realize that I am so out of practice, that I feel abashed. How absurd it is for a strange man to come to a house, to sit down, to stay a little while without any business, to find himself in the way, feel awkward, and then go."
Kitty laughed.
"Yes; but didn't you use to make calls before you were married?"
"Yes, but I was always bashful," said he; "and now I am so out of the way of it, that, by Heavens,[1] I would rather not have any dinner for two days than make this call. I am so bashful. It seems to me as if they must take offense, and say, 'Why do you come without business?'"
"No, they don't take offense. I will answer that for you," said Kitty, looking brightly into his face. She took his hand. "Now, prashchaï!—please go!"
He kissed his wife's hand, and was about to go, when she stopped him.
"Kostia, do you know I have only fifty rubles left?""Well, I will go and get some from the bank. How much do you want?" said he, with his well-known expression of vexation.
"No, wait!" She detained him by the arm. "Let us talk about this a moment; this troubles me. I try not to buy anything unnecessary;' still, the money runs away. We must retrench somehow or other."
"Not at all," said Levin, with a little cough, and looking askance upon her.
She knew this cough. It was a sign of strong vexation, not with her, but with himself. He was actually discontented, not because much money was spent, but because he was reminded of what he wanted to forget.
"I have ordered Sokolof to sell the corn, and to get the rent of the mill in advance. We shall have money enough."
"No; but I fear that, as a general thing ...."
"Not at all, not at all," he repeated. "Well, good-by, darling." [2]
"Sometimes I wish I hadn't listened to mamma. How happy we were in the country! I tire you all, waiting for me; and the money we spend ...."
"Not at all, not at all! Not one single time since we were married till now have I thought that things would have been better than they are."
"Truly?" said she, looking into his face.
He said that, thinking only to comfort her. But when he saw her gentle, honest eyes turned to him with an inquiring look, he repeated what he had said with his whole heart; and he remembered what was coming to them so soon.
"How do you feel this morning? Do you think it will be soon?" he asked, taking both her hands in his.
"I sometimes think that I don't think and don't know anything."
"And don't you feel afraid?"
She smiled disdainfully:—
"Not the least bit. No, nothing will happen to-day; don't worry.""If that is so, then I am going to Katavasof's."
"I am going with papa to take a little walk on the boulevard. We are going to see Dolly. I shall expect you back before dinner. Oh, there! Do you know, Dolly's position is getting to be entirely unendurable? She is in debt on every side, and has n't any money at all. We talked about it yesterday with mamma and Arseny,"—this was her sister Natali Lvova's husband,—"and they decided that you should scold Stiva. It is truly unendurable. It is impossible for papa to speak about it; but if you and he ...."
"Well, what can we do?" asked Levin.
"You had better go to Arseny's, and talk with him; he will tell you what we decided about it."
"All right! I will follow Arseny's advice. Then, I will go directly to his house. By the way, if he is at the concert, then I will go with Natali. So good-by."
On the staircase, the old bachelor servant, Kuzma, who acted in the city as steward, stopped his master.
"Krasavtchika[3] has just been shod, and it lamed her,"—this was Levin's left pole-horse, which he had brought from the country;—"what shall I do?" said he.
When Levin established himself in Moscow, he brought his horses from the country. He wished to set up as good a stable as possible, but not to have it cost too much. It seemed to him now that hired horses would have been less expensive; and even as it was, he was often obliged to hire of the izvoshchik.
"Take her to the veterinary; perhaps she is going to have a swimmer."
"Well, how shall you arrange for Katerina Aleksandrovna?" asked Kuzma.
Levin was now no longer troubled as he had been at first, when he first came to Moscow, that for the drive from Vozdvizhenko to Svintsef Vrazhek it was necessary to have a span of heavy horses harnessed into his heavy carriage and drive in it four versts through mealy snow, and keep them waiting four hours there, and have to pay five rubles for it. Now it seemed to him the natural thing to do.
"Get a pair of horses from the izvoshchik, and put them into our carriage."
"I will obey."
And having thus decided simply and quickly, thanks to his training in city ways, a labor which in the country would have cost him much trouble and attention. Levin went out on the porch, and, beckoning to an izvoshchik, took his seat in the cab, and rode off to the Nikitskaya Street.
On the way the question of money did not occupy him, but he thought over how he was about to make the acquaintance of the sociological savant from Petersburg, and what he should say to him in regard to his treatise.
It was only during the first part of his stay in Moscow that Levin, who had been used to the productive ways of the country, was amazed at the strange and unavoidable expenses which met him on every side. But now he was wonted to them. He had somewhat the same experience as he had been told drunken men went through: each successive glass made him more reckless. [4]
When Levin took the first hundred-ruble note for the purchase of liveries for the lackey and Swiss, he could not avoid the consideration that these liveries were wholly useless to any one; and yet they seemed to be unavoidable and indispensable, judging from the amazement of Kitty and her mother, when he made the remark that they might go without them—and he put it to himself that these liveries represented the wages of two laborers for a year, that is to say, about three hundred working days from early in the morning till late at night; so that the first hundred-ruble note corresponded to the first glass.[5]
But the second bill of twenty-eight rubles, expended for the purchase of provisions for a family dinner, cost him less trouble, though he still mentally computed that this money represented nine chetverts, or more than fifty bushels, of oats which these same workmen, at the cost of many groans, had mowed, bound into sheaves, threshed, winnowed, gathered up, and put into bags.
And now the money spent in this way had long ceased to evoke any such considerations, but they flew around him like little birds. He had long ceased to ask him- self whether the pleasure purchased by his money was anywhere near commensurate with the labor spent in acquiring it. He also forgot the common principle of economics, that there is a certain price below which it is impossible to sell grain except at a loss. His rye, the price of which he had kept up so long, had to be sold at ten kopeks a bushel cheaper than he had sold it a month earlier. Even the calculation that if he kept on at his present rate of expenditure it would be impossible to get through the year without getting into debt, did not cause him any anxiety.
Only one thing troubled him: the keeping up his bank account, without asking how, so that there might be always enough for the daily needs of the household. And up to the present time he had succeeded in doing this. But now his deposit at the bank had run low, and he did not know exactly how to restore it. And this problem was causing him some anxiety just at the time when Kitty asked him for some more money. But he did not want to bother about that just now. So he drove away, thinking of Katavasof and his approaching acquaintance with Metrof.