【有声英语文学名著】安娜卡列宁娜（82）

EIGHTY-TWO

 

 

 

Chapter 22

 

 

 

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OBLONSKY felt completely puzzled by the strange and novel language he was listening to. Generally the complications of Petersburg life had an exhilarating effect on him, lifting him out of the Moscow stagnation. But he liked and understood complications in spheres congenial and familiar to him; in these strange surroundings he felt puzzled and dazed and could not take it all in. Listening to the Countess Lydia Ivanovna and feeling the fine eyes, naïve or roguish — he did not know which — of Landau fixed upon him, Oblonsky began to be conscious of a peculiar sort of heaviness in his head.

 

The most varied ideas were mixed up in his mind. ‘Mary Sanina is glad that her child is dead. . . . I should like to have a smoke. . . . To be saved one need only have faith; the monks don’t know how to do it, but the Countess Lydia Ivanovna knows. . . . And what is so heavy in my head? Is it the brandy, or is it because all this is so very strange? All the same, I think I have not done anything to shock them up till now. But still, it won’t do to ask her help now. I have heard that they make one pray. Supposing they make me pray! That would be too stupid! And what nonsense she is reading, but her enunciation is good. . . . Landau Bezzubov. . . . Why is he Bezzubov?’ Suddenly Oblonsky felt his nether jaw dropping irresistibly for a yawn. He smoothed his whiskers to hide the yawn, and gave himself a shake. But then he felt himself falling asleep, and nearly snored. He roused himself, just when the Countess Lydia Ivanovna uttered the words: ‘He is asleep.’

 

Oblonsky awoke in a fright, feeling guilty and detected.

 

But he was immediately comforted by noticing that the words ‘He is asleep’ did not apply to him but to Landau. The Frenchman had fallen asleep just as Oblonsky had done. But whereas Oblonsky’s sleep would, he imagined, have offended them — he did not really even think this, for everything seemed so strange — Landau’s sleep delighted them extremely, especially Lydia Ivanovna.

 

‘Mon ami,’ said she, carefully holding the folds of her silk dress to prevent its rustling, and in her excitement calling Karenin not ‘Alexis Alexandrovich’ but ‘mon ami,’ ‘donnez-lui la main. Vous voyez? [my friend, give him your hand. You see?] . . . Hush!’ she said to the footman, who came in again. ‘I am not receiving.’

 

The Frenchman slept or pretended to sleep, leaning his head against the back of the chair, and his moist hand lying on his knee moved feebly, as if catching something. Karenin rose, and though he tried to be cautious he caught against the table. He went up to the Frenchman and placed his hand in his. Oblonsky also rose and, opening his eyes wide to wake himself up in case he was asleep, looked first at one and then at the other. It was all quite real, and Oblonsky felt his head getting worse and worse.

 

‘Que la personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui demande, qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle sorte! [Let the person who arrived last, the one who questions, go out! Let him go out!]’ the Frenchman said, without opening his eyes.

 

‘Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez. . . . Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain. [You must excuse me, but you see. . . . Come back at about ten, or better still, to-morrow.]’

 

‘Qu’elle sorte!’ repeated the Frenchman impatiently.

 

‘C’est moi, n’est-ce pas? [It’s I, is it not?]’ And having received an answer in the affirmative, Oblonsky — forgetting the request he had wanted to make to Lydia Ivanovna, forgetting his sister’s affairs, and with the one desire to get away from there as quickly as possible — went out on tiptoe, and ran out into the street as from an infected house. After which he talked and joked for a long time with an izvoshchik, trying to regain his senses as soon as possible.

 

At the French Theatre, where he arrived in time for the last act, and afterwards at the Tartar Restaurant, where he had some champagne, Oblonsky was able to some extent to breathe again in an atmosphere congenial to him, but nevertheless he was not at all himself that evening.

 

When he returned to Peter Oblonsky’s house, where he was staying, he found a note from Betsy. She wrote that she greatly wished to finish the conversation they had begun, and asked him to call next day. Scarcely had he finished reading the note and made a wry face over it, when he heard downstairs the heavy steps of men carrying something heavy.

 

He went down to see what it was. It was Peter Oblonsky, grown young again. He was so drunk that he could not get up the stairs, but on seeing Oblonsky he ordered the men to put him on his feet and, clinging to Stephen, he went with him to his room, began relating how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep there.

 

Oblonsky was in low spirits, a thing that rarely happened to him, and could not fall asleep for a long time. Everything he recalled was nauseous, but most repulsive of all, like something shameful, was the memory of the evening at Lydia Ivanovna’s.

 

Next day he received from Karenin a definite refusal to divorce Anna, and understood that this decision was based on what the Frenchman had said the evening before, in his real or pretended sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 23

 

 

 

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BEFORE any definite step can be taken in a household, there must be either complete division or loving accord between husband and wife. When their relations are indefinite it is impossible for them to make any move.

 

Many families continue for years in their old ruts, hated by both husband and wife, merely because there is neither complete discord nor harmony.

 

Both for Vronsky and for Anna life in Moscow in the heat and dust, when the sun no longer shone as in spring but burned as in summer, when all the trees on the boulevards had long been in leaf and the leaves were already covered with dust, was intolerable; nevertheless they did not move to Vozdvizhensk, as they had long ago decided to do, but stayed in Moscow, which had become obnoxious to them both, because of late there had not been harmony between them.

 

The irritation which divided them had no tangible cause, and all attempts at an explanation not only failed to clear it away but increased it. It was an inner irritation, caused on her side by a diminution of his love for her, and on his by regret that for her sake he had placed himself in a distressing situation, which she, instead of trying to alleviate, made still harder. Neither of them spoke of the cause of their irritation, but each thought the other in the wrong, and at every opportunity tried to prove that this was so.

 

For her he, with all his habits, thoughts, wishes, mental and physical faculties — the whole of his nature — consisted of one thing only: love for women, and this love she felt ought to be wholly concentrated on her alone. This love was diminishing; therefore, in her judgment, part of his love must have been transferred to other women, or to one other woman. She was jealous, not of any one woman; but of the diminution of his love. Not having as yet an object for her jealousy, she sought one. At the slightest hint she transferred her jealousy from one object to another. Now she was jealous of the coarse women with whom, through his bachelor connections, he might so easily have intercourse; now of the Society women whom he might meet; now of some imaginary girl whom he might marry after repudiating her. This last jealousy tormented her more than anything else, especially since in an expansive moment he had carelessly told her that his mother understood him so little that she had tried to persuade him to marry the young Princess Sorokina.

 

And being jealous, Anna was indignant with him and constantly sought reasons to justify her indignation. She blamed him for everything that was hard in her situation. The torture of expectation, living betwixt heaven and earth, which she endured there in Moscow, Karenin’s dilatoriness and indecision, her loneliness — she attributed all to him. If he loved her he would fully understand the difficulty of her situation, and would deliver her from it. That they were living in Moscow, instead of in the country, was also his fault. He could not live buried in the country as she desired. He needed society, and so he had placed her in this terrible position, the misery of which he would not understand. And it was likewise his fault that she was for ever parted from her son.

 

Even the rare moments of tenderness which occurred between them did not pacify her; in his tenderness she now saw a tinge of calm assurance which had not been there before and irritated her.

 

It was growing dusk. Anna, all alone, awaiting his return from a bachelor dinner-party, paced up and down his study (which was the room in which the street noises were least audible), recalling in detail every word of their yesterday’s quarrel. Passing ever backwards from the memorably offensive words of the quarrel to their cause, she at last got back to the beginning of their conversation. For a long time she could not believe that the dispute had begun from a perfectly inoffensive conversation about a matter that did not touch the hearts of either. Yet it was so. It had all begun by his laughing at High Schools for girls, which he considered unnecessary and she defended. He spoke disrespectfully of the education of women in general, and said that Hannah, her little English protégée, did not at all need to know physics.

 

This provoked Anna. She saw in it a contemptuous allusion to her own knowledge; and she invented and uttered a phrase in retaliation which should revenge the pain he had caused her.

 

‘I don’t expect you to understand me and my feelings, as an affectionate man would; but I did expect ordinary delicacy,’ she said.

 

And he really had flushed with vexation and had said something disagreeable. She did not remember her reply to it, but remembered that in answer he had said with obvious intent to hurt her too:

 

‘I can take no interest in your partiality for that little girl, because I can see that it is unnatural.’

 

The cruelty with which he annihilated the world which she had so painfully constructed for herself to be able to endure her hard life, the injustice of his accusation that she was dissembling and unnatural, roused her indignation.

 

‘I am very sorry that only what is coarse and material is comprehensible and natural to you,’ she retorted and left the room.

 

When he came to her in the evening they did not refer to the quarrel, but both felt that it was only smoothed over, not settled.

 

To-day he had been away from home all day, and she had felt so lonely, and it was so painful to feel herself at discord with him, that she wished to forget it all, to forgive and make it up with him. Wishing even to blame herself and to justify him, she said to herself:

 

‘I am to blame; I am irritable and unreasonably jealous. I will make it up with him and we will go back to the country. There I shall be calmer.’

 

‘Unnatural!’ She suddenly remembered the word that had hurt her most, though it was not so much the word as his intention to pain her. ‘I know what he wanted to say: he wanted to say that it is unnatural not to love one’s own daughter and yet to love another’s child. What does he know of love for children, — of my love for Serezha whom I have given up for his sake? And that desire to hurt me! No, he must be in love with some other woman; it can’t be anything else.’

 

Then, realizing that in her attempt to quiet herself she had again completed the circle she had already gone round so often, and had returned to her former cause of irritation, she was horror-struck at herself. ‘Is it possible that I can’t . . . ? Is it possible that I can’t take it on myself?’ she wondered, and began again from the beginning. ‘He is truthful, he is honest. He loves me. I love him. In a few days I shall get my divorce. What more do I need? I need calm and confidence; and I will take the blame on myself. Yes, now, as soon as he comes back, I will tell him I was to blame, though in fact I was not, and we will go away!’

 

And not to continue thinking, and not to yield to irritation, she rang and ordered her trunks to be brought, to pack their things for the country.

 

At ten o’clock Vronsky returned.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 24

 

 

 

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‘WELL, have you had a good time?’ she asked, coming out to meet him with a meek and repentant look on her face.

 

‘Just as usual,’ he answered, perceiving at a glance that she was in one of her pleasant moods. He was already accustomed to these transitions, and to-day was specially glad, because he himself was in the best of spirits.

 

‘What do I see? Ah, that’s right!’ he said, pointing to the trunks in the ante-room.

 

‘Yes, we must go away. I went for a drive, and it was so lovely that I longed to be in the country. There isn’t anything to keep you, is there?’

 

‘It is my only wish. I’ll come in a moment and we’ll have a talk. I will only go and change. Order tea.’

 

And he went to his room.

 

There was something offensive in his saying: ‘Ah, that’s right!’ — as one speaks to a child when it stops being capricious — and still more offensive was the contrast between her guilty tone and his self-confident one. For a moment she felt a desire to fight rising within her, but with an effort she mastered it and met him with her former cheerfulness.

 

When he returned she told him, partly repeating words she had prepared, how she had spent the day and her plans for the move to the country.

 

‘Do you know, it came to me almost like an inspiration?’ said she. ‘Why must we wait here for the divorce? Won’t it do just as well in the country? I can’t wait any longer. I don’t want to hope, I don’t want to hear anything about the divorce. I have made up my mind that it shall not influence my life any more. Do you agree?’

 

‘Oh yes!’ he answered, looking uneasily at her excited face.

 

‘Well, and what have you been doing? Who was there?’ she asked after a pause.

 

Vronsky named the guests. ‘The dinner was capital, the boat-races and everything quite nice, but in Moscow they can’t get on without doing something ridiculous. . . . Some sort of a lady turned up — the Queen of Sweden’s swimming instructress — and displayed her art.’

 

‘What? She swam?’ asked Anna, with a frown.

 

‘Yes, in some sort of red costume de natation [swimming costume] — a hideous old creature! Well then, when are we to be off?’

 

‘What an absurd fancy! And did she swim in some particular way?’ asked Anna, without answering his question.

 

‘Nothing particular at all. I said it was awfully absurd. . . . Well, when do you think of going?’

 

Anna shook her head, as though driving away an unpleasant thought.

 

‘When are we going? Why, the sooner the better. We can’t get ready by to-morrow; but the day after?’

 

‘Yes. . . . No! Wait a bit! The day after to-morrow is Sunday, and I must go and see maman,’ said Vronsky, and became confused, because as soon as he had mentioned his mother he felt an intent and suspicious gaze fixed upon him. His embarrassment confirmed her suspicions. She flushed and moved away from him. It was no longer the Queen of Sweden’s instructress, but the Princess Sorokina who lived in the country near Moscow with the Countess Vronskaya who presented herself to Anna’s imagination.

 

‘You could go there to-morrow!’ she said.

 

‘No, I tell you! The things about which I have to go — to fetch a power of attorney and some money — will not have arrived by to-morrow,’ he replied.

 

‘If that’s so, then we won’t go at all!’

 

‘But why not?’

 

‘I won’t go any later! Monday, or not at all.’

 

‘Why’s that?’ said Vronsky, as if in surprise. ‘There’s no sense in that.’

 

‘You see no sense in it because you don’t care at all about me. You don’t want to understand what my life is. The one person I was interested in here was Hannah — you say that is all pretence! You said yesterday that I don’t love my daughter but pretend to love that English girl, and that it is unnatural! I should like to know what sort of life can be natural for me here!’

 

For a moment she recollected herself and was horrified at having broken her resolution. Yet though she knew she was ruining her cause, she could not restrain herself, could not forbear pointing out to him how wrong he was, and could not submit to him.

 

‘I never said that; I only said that I do not sympathize with that sudden affection.’

 

‘Why do you, who boast of your truthfulness, not speak the truth?’

 

‘I never boast and never tell untruths,’ he said softly, restraining his rising anger. ‘It is a great pity if you don’t respect . . .’

 

‘Respect was invented to fill the empty place where love ought to be! But if you no longer love me, it would be better and more honourable to say so!’

 

‘Dear me! This is becoming unbearable!’ exclaimed Vronsky, rising from his chair. And standing before her he slowly brought out: ‘Why are you testing my patience?’ He looked as if he could have said much more, but restrained himself. ‘It has its limits!’

 

‘What do you mean by that?’ she cried, glancing with terror at the definite expression of hatred on his whole face, and especially in the cruel, menacing eyes.

 

‘I mean to say . . .’ he began, but stopped. ‘I must ask what you want of me!’

 

‘What can I want? I can only want you not to abandon me, as you are thinking of doing,’ she said, having understood all that he had left unsaid. ‘But I don’t want that, that is secondary. What I want is love, and it is lacking. Therefore all is finished!’

 

She moved toward the door.

 

‘Stop! St-o-op!’ said Vronsky, his brow still knit, but holding her back by the hand. ‘What is the matter? I said we must put off our departure for three days, and you replied that I lie and am not an honourable man.’

 

‘Yes! And I repeat that a man who reproaches me because he has given up everything for my sake,’ said she, recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, ‘is worse than a dishonourable man! He is a heartless man!’

 

‘No! There are limits to one’s endurance,’ he exclaimed, and quickly let go her hand.

 

‘He hates me, that is clear,’ thought she, and silently, without looking round and with faltering steps, she left the room. ‘He loves another woman, that is clearer still,’ she said to herself as she entered her own room. ‘I want love, and it is lacking. So everything is finished!’ she repeated her own words, ‘and it must be finished.’

 

‘But how?’ she asked herself, and sat down in the armchair before the looking-glass.

 

Thoughts of where she would now go: to the aunt who had brought her up, to Dolly, or simply abroad by herself; of what he was now doing, alone in the study; of whether this quarrel was final or whether a reconciliation was still possible; of what all her former Petersburg acquaintances would say of her now; how Karenin would regard it; and many other thoughts about what would happen now after the rupture, passed through her mind, but she did not give herself up entirely to these thoughts. In her soul there was another vague idea, which alone interested her, but of which she could not get hold. Again remembering Karenin, she also remembered her illness after her confinement, and the feeling that never left her at that time. She remembered her words, ‘Why did I not die?’ and her feelings then. And suddenly she understood what was in her soul. Yes, that was the thought which would solve everything. ‘Yes, to die! Alexis Alexandrovich’s shame and disgrace, and Serezha’s, and my own terrible shame — all will be saved by my death. If I die he too will repent, will pity me, will love me and will suffer on my account!’ With a fixed smile of self-pity on her lips she sat in the chair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand, and vividly picturing to herself from various points of view his feelings after she was dead.

 

Sounds of approaching steps, his steps, distracted her thoughts. Pretending to be putting away her rings, she did not even turn round.

 

He came up to her, and taking her hand said softly:

 

‘Anna, let us go the day after to-morrow, if you wish it. I will agree to anything.’

 

She remained silent.

 

‘What is it?’ he asked.

 

‘You know yourself!’ said she, and at the same moment, unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst into tears.

 

‘Abandon me! Abandon me!’ she murmured between her sobs. ‘I will go away to-morrow. I will do more. . . . What am I? A depraved woman. A stone round your neck! I don’t wish to torment you, I don’t! I will set you free. You don’t love me, you love some one else!’

 

Vronsky implored her to be calm, and assured her that there was not an atom of foundation for her jealousy, that he never had ceased, and never would cease, to love her, that he loved her more than ever.

 

‘Anna, why torture yourself and me like this?’ he said, kissing her hands. His face now wore a tender expression, and she thought she detected in his voice the sound of tears, and their moisture on her hand. And instantly her despairing jealousy changed into desperate, passionate tenderness. She embraced him, and covered his head, his neck, and his hands with kisses.