Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

[shirin71]

.’
‘Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she’s a real angel, allez,’
Madame Berthe assented.
In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was
walking rapidly towards them carrying an elegant red bag.
‘Here is papa come,’ Kitty said to her.
Varenka made—simply and naturally as she did
everything—a movement between a bow and curtsey, and
immediately began talking to the prince, without shyness,
naturally, as she talked to everyone.
‘Of course I know you; I know you very well,’ the
prince said to her with a smile, in which Kitty detected
with joy that her father liked her friend. ‘Where are you
off to in such haste?’
‘Maman’s here,’ she said, turning to Kitty. ‘She has not
slept all night, and the doctor advised her to go out. I’m
taking her her work.’
‘So that’s angel number one?’ said the prince when
Varenka had gone on.
Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of
Varenka, but that he could not do it because he liked her.
‘Come, so we shall see all your friends,’ he went on,
‘even Madame Stahl, if she deigns to recognize me.’
‘Why, did you know her, papa?’ Kitty asked
apprehensively, catching the gleam of irony that kindled in
the prince’s eyes at the mention of Madame Stahl.
‘I used to know her husband, and her too a little,
before she’d joined the Pietists.’
‘What is a Pietist, papa?’ asked Kitty, dismayed to find
that what she prized so highly in Madame Stahl had a
name.
‘I don’t quite know myself. I only know that she thanks
God for everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God
too that her husband died. And that’s rather droll, as they
didn’t get on together.’
‘Who’s that? What a piteous face!’ he asked, noticing a
sick man of medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a
brown overcoat and white trousers that fell in strange folds
about his long, fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat,
showed his scanty curly hair and high forehead, painfully
reddened by the pressure of the hat.
‘That’s Petrov, an artist,’ answered Kitty, blushing.
‘And that’s his wife,’ she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna,
who, as though on purpose, at the very instant they
approached walked away after a child that had run off
along a path.
‘Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!’ said the
prince. ‘Why don’t you go up to him? He wanted to
speak to you.’
‘Well, let us go, then,’ said Kitty, turning round
resolutely. ‘How are you feeling today?’ she asked Petrov.
Petrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at
the prince.
‘This is my daughter,’ said the prince. ‘Let me
introduce myself.’
The painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely
dazzling white teeth.
‘We expected you yesterday, princess,’ he said to Kitty.
He staggered as he said this, and then repeated the motion,
trying to make it seem as if it had been intentional.
‘I meant to come, but Varenka said that Anna Pavlovna
sent word you were not going.’
‘Not going!’ said Petrov, blushing, and immediately
beginning to cough, and his eyes sought his wife. ‘Anita!
Anita!’ he said loudly, and the swollen veins stood out like
cords on his thin white neck.
Anna Pavlovna came up.
‘So you sent word to the princess that we weren’t
going!’ he whispered to her angrily, losing his voice.
‘Good morning, princess,’ said Anna Pavlovna, with an
assumed smile utterly unlike her former manner. ‘Very
glad to make your acquaintance,’ she said to the prince.
‘You’ve long been expected, prince.’
‘What did you send word to the princess that we
weren’t going for?’ the artist whispered hoarsely once
more, still more angrily, obviously exasperated that his
voice failed him so that he could not give his words the
expression he would have liked to.
‘Oh, mercy on us! I thought we weren’t going,’ his
wife answered crossly.
‘What, when....’ He coughed and waved his hand. The
prince took off his hat and moved away with his daughter.
‘Ah! ah!’ he sighed deeply. ‘Oh, poor things!’
‘Yes, papa,’ answered Kitty. ‘And you must know
they’ve three children, no servant, and scarcely any means.
He gets something from the Academy,’ she went on
briskly, trying to drown the distress that the queer change
in Anna Pavlovna’s manner to her had aroused in her.
‘Oh, here’s Madame Stahl,’ said Kitty, indicating an
invalid carriage, where, propped on pillows, something in
gray and blue was lying under a sunshade. This was
Madame Stahl. Behind her stood the gloomy, healthylooking
German workman who pushed the carriage. Close
by was standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count, whom
Kitty knew by name. Several invalids were lingering near
the low carriage, staring at the lady as though she were
some curiosity.
The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that
disconcerting gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to
Madame Stahl, and addressed her with extreme courtesy
and affability in that excellent French that so few speak
nowadays.
‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I must recall
myself to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,’ he
said, taking off his hat and not putting it on again.
‘Prince Alexander Shtcherbatsky,’ said Madame Stahl,
lifting upon him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty
discerned a look of annoyance. ‘Delighted! I have taken a
great fancy to your daughter.’
‘You are still in weak health?’
‘Yes; I’m used to it,’ said Madame Stahl, and she
introduced the prince to the Swedish count.
‘You are scarcely changed at all,’ the prince said to her.
‘It’s ten or eleven years since I had the honor of seeing
you.’
‘Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear
it. Often one wonders what is the goal of this life?... The
other side!’ she said angrily to Varenka, who had
rearranged the rug over her feet not to her satisfaction.
‘To do good, probably,’ said the prince with a twinkle
in his eye.
‘That is not for us to judge,’ said Madame Stahl,
perceiving the shade of expression on the prince’s face. ‘So
you will send me that book, dear count? I’m very grateful
to you,’ she said to the young Swede.
‘Ah!’ cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow
colonel standing near, and with a bow to Madame Stahl
he walked away with his daughter and the Moscow
colonel, who joined them.
‘That’s our aristocracy, prince!’ the Moscow colonel
said with ironical intention. He cherished a grudge against
Madame Stahl for not making his acquaintance.
‘She’s just the same,’ replied the prince.
‘Did you know her before her illness, prince—that’s to
say before she took to her bed?’
‘Yes. She took to her bed before my eyes,’ said the
prince.
‘They say it’s ten years since she has stood on her feet.’
‘She doesn’t stand up because her legs are too short.
She’s a very bad figure.’
‘Papa, it’s not possible!’ cried Kitty.
‘That’s what wicked tongues say, my darling. And your
Varenka catches it too,’ he added. ‘Oh, these invalid
ladies!’
‘Oh, no, papa!’ Kitty objected warmly. ‘Varenka
worships her. And then she does so much good! Ask
anyone! Everyone knows her and Aline Stahl.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said the prince, squeezing her hand with
his elbow; ‘but it’s better when one does good so that you
may ask everyone and no one knows.’
Kitty did not answer, not because she had nothing to
say, but because she did not care to reveal her secret
thoughts even to her father. But, strange to say, although
she had so made up her mind not to be influenced by her
father’s views, not to let him into her inmost sanctuary,
she felt that the heavenly image of Madame Stahl, which
she had carried for a whole month in her heart, had
vanished, never to return, just as the fantastic figure made
up of some clothes thrown down at random vanishes
when one sees that it is only some garment lying there. All
that was left was a woman with short legs, who lay down
because she had a bad figure, and worried patient Varenka
for not arranging her rug to her liking. And by no effort of
the imagination could Kitty bring back the former
Madame Stahl.
Chapter 35
The prince communicated his good humor to his own
family and his friends, and even to the German landlord in
whose rooms the Shtcherbatskys were staying.
On coming back with Kitty from the springs, the
prince, who had asked the colonel, and Marya
Yevgenyevna, and Varenka all to come and have coffee
with them, gave orders for a table and chairs to be taken
into the garden under the chestnut tree, and lunch to be
laid there. The landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker
under the influence of his good spirits. They knew his
open-handedness; and half an hour later the invalid doctor
from Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked
enviously out of the window at the merry party of healthy
Russians assembled under the chestnut tree. In the
trembling circles of shadow cast by the leaves, at a table,
covered with a white cloth, and set with coffeepot, breadand-
butter, cheese, and cold game, sat the princess in a
high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and breadand-
butter. At the other end sat the prince, eating heartily,
and talking loudly and merrily. The prince had spread out
near him his purchases, carved boxes, and knick-knacks,
paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap at
every watering-place, and bestowed them upon everyone,
including Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord, with
whom he jested in his comically bad German, assuring
him that it was not the water had cured Kitty, but his
splendid cookery, especially his plum soup. The princess
laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but she was
more lively and good-humored than she had been all the
while she had been at the waters. The colonel smiled, as
he always did, at the prince’s jokes, but as far as regards
Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a
careful study, he took the princess’s side. The simplehearted
Marya Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter
at everything absurd the prince said, and his jokes made
Varenka helpless with feeble but infectious laughter,
which was something Kitty had never seen before.
Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be lighthearted.
she could not solve the problem her father had
unconsciously set her by his goodhumored view of her
friends, and of the life that had so attracted her. To this
doubt there was joined the change in her relations with
the Petrovs, which had been so conspicuously and
unpleasantly marked that morning. Everyone was good
humored, but Kitty could not feel good humored, and this
increased her distress. She felt a feeling such as she had
known in childhood, when she had been shut in her room
as a punishment, and had heard her sisters’ merry laughter
outside.
‘Well, but what did you buy this mass of things for?’
said the princess, smiling, and handing her husband a cup
of coffee.
‘One goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask
you to buy. ‘Erlaucht, Durchlaucht?’ Directly they say
‘Durchlaucht,’ I can’t hold out. I lose ten thalers.’
‘It’s simply from boredom,’ said the princess.
‘Of course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one
doesn’t know what to do with oneself.’
‘How can you be bored, prince? There’s so much that’s
interesting now in Germany,’ said Marya Yevgenyevna.
‘But I know everything that’s interesting: the plum
soup I know, and the pea sausages I know. I know
everything.’
‘No, you may say what you like, prince, there’s the
interest of their institutions,’ said the colonel.
‘But what is there interesting about it? They’re all as
pleased as brass halfpence. They’ve conquered everybody,
and why am I to be pleased at that? I haven’t conquered
anyone; and I’m obliged to take off my own boots, yes,
and put them away too; in the morning, get up and dress
at once, and go to the dining room to drink bad tea! How
different it is at home! You get up in no haste, you get
cross, grumble a little, and come round again. You’ve time
to think things over, and no hurry.’
‘But time’s money, you forget that,’ said the colonel.
‘Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there’s time one
would give a month of for sixpence, and time you
wouldn’t give half an hour of for any money.
Isn’t that so, Katinka? What is it? why are you so
depressed?’
‘I’m not depressed.’
‘Where are you off to? Stay a little longer,’ he said to
Varenka.
‘I must be going home,’ said Varenka, getting up, and
again she went off into a giggle. When she had recovered,
she said good-bye, and went into the house to get her hat.
Kitty followed her. Even Varenka struck her as
different. She was not worse, but different from what she
had fancied her before.
‘Oh, dear! it’s a long while since I’ve laughed so much!’
said Varenka, gathering up her parasol and her bag. ‘How
nice he is, your father!’
Kitty did not speak.
‘When shall I see you again?’ asked Varenka.
‘Mamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won’t you
be there?’ said Kitty, to try Varenka.
‘Yes,’ answered Varenka. ‘They’re getting ready to go
away, so I promised to help them pack.’
‘Well, I’ll come too, then.’
‘No, why should you?’
‘Why not? why not? why not?’ said Kitty, opening her
eyes wide, and clutching at Varenka’s parasol, so as not to
let her go. ‘No, wait a minute; why not?’
‘Oh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they
will feel awkward at your helping.’
‘No, tell me why you don’t want me to be often at the
Petrovs’. You don’t want me to—why not?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Varenka quietly.
‘No, please tell me!’
‘Tell you everything?’ asked Varenka.
‘Everything, everything!’ Kitty assented.
‘Well, there’s really nothing of any consequence; only
that Mihail Alexeyevitch’ (that was the artist’s name) ‘had
meant to leave earlier, and now he doesn’t want to go
away,’ said Varenka, smiling.
‘Well, well!’ Kitty urged impatiently, looking darkly at
Varenka.
‘Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him
that he didn’t want to go because you are here. Of course,
that was nonsense; but there was a dispute over it—over
you. You know how irritable these sick people are.’
Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and
Varenka went on speaking alone, trying to soften or
soothe her, and seeing a storm coming—she did not know
whether of tears or of words.
‘So you’d better not go.... You understand; you won’t
be offended?..’
‘And it serves me right! And it serves me right!’ Kitty
cried quickly, snatching the parasol out of Varenka’s hand,
and looking past her friend’s face.
Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish
fury, but she was afraid of wounding her.
‘How does it serve you right? I don’t understand,’ she
said.
‘It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it
was all done on purpose, and not from the heart. What
business had I to interfere with outsiders? And so it’s come
about that I’m a cause of quarrel, and that I’ve done what
nobody asked me to do. Because it was all a sham! a sham!
a sham! . . .’
‘A sham! with what object?’ said Varenka gently.
‘Oh, it’s so idiotic! so hateful! There was no need
whatever for me.... Nothing but sham!’ she said, opening
and shutting the parasol.
‘But with what object?’
‘To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to
deceive everyone. No! now I won’t descend to that. I’ll
be bad; but anyway not a liar, a cheat.’
‘But who is a cheat?’ said Varenka reproachfully. ‘You
speak as if..’
But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she
would not let her finish.
‘I don’t talk about you, not about you at all. You’re
perfection. Yes, yes, I know you’re all perfection; but
what am I to do if I’m bad? This would never have been if
I weren’t bad. So let me be what I am. I won’t be a sham.
What have I to do with Anna Pavlovna? Let them go their
way, and me go mine. I can’t be different.... And yet it’s
not that, it’s not that.’
‘What is not that?’ asked Varenka in bewilderment.
‘Everything. I can’t act except from the heart, and you
act from principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely
only wanted to save me, to improve me.’
‘You are unjust,’ said Varenka.
‘But I’m not speaking of other people, I’m speaking of
myself.’
‘Kitty,’ they heard her mother’s voice, ‘come here,
show papa your necklace.’
Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with
her friend, took the necklace in a little box from the table
and went to her mother.
‘What’s the matter? Why are you so red?’ her mother
and father said to her with one voice.
‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘I’ll be back directly,’ and she
ran back.
‘She’s still here,’ she thought. ‘What am I to say to her?
Oh, dear! what have I done, what have I said? Why was I
rude to her? What am I to do? What am I to say to her?’
thought Kitty, and she stopped in the doorway.
Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands
was sitting at the table examining the spring which Kitty
had broken. She lifted her head.
‘Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me,’ whispered Kitty,
going up to her. ‘I don’t remember what I said. I..’
‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you,’ said Varenka,
smiling.
Peace was made. But with her father’s coming all the
world in which she had been living was transformed for
Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned, but
she became aware that she had deceived herself in
supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes
were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of
maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on
the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount.
Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the
world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she
had been living. The efforts she had made to like it
seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get
back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo,
where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had
already gone with her children.
But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said
good-bye, Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia.
‘I’ll come when you get married,’ said Varenka.
‘I shall never marry.’
‘Well, then, I shall never come.’
‘Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind
now, remember your promise,’ said Kitty.
The doctor’s prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned
home to Russia cured. She was not so --- and thoughtless
as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had
become a memory to her

.
PART THREE



Chapter 1
Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from
mental work, and instead of going abroad as he usually
did, he came towards the end of May to stay in the
country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of
life was a country life. He had come now to enjoy such a
life at his brother’s. Konstantin Levin was very glad to
have him, especially as he did not expect his brother
Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and
respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was
uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made
him uncomfortable, and it positively annoyed him to see
his brother’s attitude to the country. To Konstantin Levin
the country was the background of life, that is of pleasures,
endeavors, labor. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country meant
on one hand rest from work, on the other a valuable
antidote to the corrupt influences of town, which he took
with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To Konstantin
Levin the country was good first because it afforded a field
for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be no
doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly
good, because there it was possible and fitting to do
nothing. Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch’s attitude to the
peasants rather piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used
to say that he knew and liked the peasantry, and he often
talked to the peasants, which he knew how to do without
affectation or condescension, and from every such
conversation he would deduce general conclusions in
favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing
them. Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude to
the peasants. To Konstantin the peasant was simply the
chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the
respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for
the peasant— sucked in probably, as he said himself, with
the milk of his peasant nurse—still as a fellow-worker with
him, while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor,
gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often,
when their common labors called for other qualities,
exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of
method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked
whether he liked or didn’t like the peasants, Konstantin
Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply.
He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and
did not like men in general. Of course, being a goodhearted
man, he liked men rather than he disliked them,
and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike ‘the
people’ as something apart he could not, not only because
he lived with ‘the people,’ and all his interests were bound
up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a
part of ‘the people,’ did not see any special qualities or
failings distinguishing himself and ‘the people,’ and could
not contrast himself with them. Moreover, although he
had lived so long in the closest relations with the peasants,
as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser
(the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round they
would come to ask his advice), he had no definite views of
‘the people,’ and would have been as much at a loss to
answer the question whether he knew ‘the people’ as the
question whether he liked them. For him to say he knew
the peasantry would have been the same as to say he knew
men. He was continually watching and getting to know
people of all sorts, and among them peasants, whom he
regarded as good and interesting people, and he was
continually observing new points in them, altering his
former views of them and forming new ones. With Sergey
Ivanovitch it was quite the contrary. Just as he liked and
praised a country life in comparison with the life he did
not like, so too he liked the peasantry in contradistinction
to the class of men he did not like, and so too he knew the
peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men
generally. In his methodical brain there were distinctly
formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly
from that life itself, but chiefly from contrast with other
modes of life. He never changed his opinion of the
peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.
In the discussions that arose between the brothers on
their views of the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got
the better of his brother, precisely because Sergey
Ivanovitch had definite ideas about the peasant—his
character, his qualities, and his tastes. Konstantin Levin had
no definite and unalterable idea on the subject, and so in
their arguments Konstantin was readily convicted of
contradicting himself.
I Sergey Ivanovitch’s eyes his younger brother was a
capital fellow, with his heart in the right place (as he
expressed it in French), but with a mind which, though
fairly quick, was too much influenced by the impressions
of the moment, and consequently filled with
contradictions. With all the condescension of an elder
brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of
things, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with
him because he got the better of him too easily.
Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of
immense intellect and culture, as generous in the highest
sense of the word, and possessed of a special faculty for
working for the public good. But in the depths of his
heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he
knew his brother, the more and more frequently the
thought struck him that this faculty of working for the
public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was
possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something —
not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a
lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse
which drives a man to choose someone out of the
innumerable paths of life, and to care only for that one.
The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed that
Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked
for the public welfare, were not led by an impulse of the
heart to care for the public good, but reasoned from
intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to take
interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest in
them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by
observing that his brother did not take questions affecting
the public welfare or the question of the immortality of
the soul a bit more to heart than he did chess problems, or
the ingenious construction of a new machine.
Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with
his brother, because in summer in the country Levin was
continually busy with work on the land, and the long
summer day was not long enough for him to get through
all he had to do, while Sergey Ivanovitch was taking a
holiday. But though he was taking a holiday now, that is
to say, he was doing no writing, he was so used to
intellectual activity that he liked to put into concise and
eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to
have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural
listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness
and directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an
awkwardness in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch
liked to stretch himself on the grass in the sun, and to lie
so, basking and chatting lazily.
‘You wouldn’t believe,’ he would say to his brother,
‘what a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in
one’s brain, as empty as a drum!’
But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening
to him, especially when he knew that while he was away
they would be carting dung onto the fields not ploughed
ready for it, and heaping it all up anyhow; and would not
screw the shares in the ploughs, but would let them come
off and then say that the new ploughs were a silly
invention, and there was nothing like the old Andreevna
plough, and so on.
‘Come, you’ve done enough trudging about in the
heat,’ Sergey Ivanovitch would say to him.
‘No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a
minute,’ Levin would answer, and he would run off to the
fields.
Chapter 2