Читать книгу Anna Karenina - 2 Classic Unabridged Translations in one eBook (Garnett and Maude translations) - Leo Tolstoy - Страница 108

HALFWAY to the front door Levin heard a familiar sound of coughing in the hall, but the noise of his own footsteps prevented his hearing it clearly and he hoped he was mistaken. Then he saw the whole of his brother’s long, bony, familiar figure, and it seemed that there could be no mistake, but he still hoped he was mistaken and that this tall man, who was taking off his overcoat and coughing, was not his brother Nicholas.

Levin was fond of his brother, but to be with him was always a torment. Under the sway of the thoughts that had come to him and of Agatha Mikhaylovna’s reminders, he was in an unsettled and confused state of mind and the forthcoming meeting with his brother seemed particularly distressing. Instead of a cheerful, healthy stranger who, he hoped, would have diverted him from his mental perplexity, he had to meet his brother, who knew him through and through and would disturb his innermost thoughts and force him to make a clean breast of everything. And that was what he did not desire.

Angry with himself for this bad feeling Levin ran into the hall; and as soon as he had a near view of his brother this feeling of disappointment vanished and was replaced by pity. Dreadful as his emaciation and illness had previously made Nicholas, he was now still thinner and weaker. He was a mere skeleton covered with skin.

He stood in the hall jerking his long, thin neck, drawing a scarf from it, and smiling in a strangely piteous manner. When he saw this meek, submissive smile, Levin felt his throat contract convulsively.

‘There! I have come to see you,’ said Nicholas in a hollow voice, without taking his eyes for an instant from his brother’s face. ‘I have long wanted to, but did not feel well. Now I am much better,’ and he wiped his beard with the thin palms of his hands.

‘Yes, yes!’ answered Levin. He was still more terrified when, kissing his brother’s face, his lips felt the dryness of the skin and he saw his large strangely brilliant eyes close at hand.

Some weeks before this Constantine Levin had written to tell his brother that, after the sale of a few things which till then had remained undivided, Nicholas was entitled to his share, which came to about 2000 roubles.

Nicholas said that he had now come to fetch that money, but chiefly to visit his own nest and touch his native soil, in order like the heroes of old to gather strength from it for the work that lay before him. In spite of the fact that he was more round-shouldered than ever and that, being so tall, his leanness was startling, his movements were quick and sudden as formerly. Levin took him to his room.

Nicholas dressed carefully, a thing he never used to do, brushed his thin, straight hair and went smiling upstairs.

He was in a most affectionate and cheerful mood, such as Levin remembered his often being in as a child: and he even mentioned Sergius Ivanich without irritation. When he met Agatha Mikhaylovna he joked with her and questioned her about the other old servants. The news of Parfen Denisich’s death affected him strangely. A look of fear appeared on his face but he immediately recovered himself

‘After all, he was old,’ he remarked and changed the subject. ‘Well, I will spend a month or two with you and then I will go to Moscow. D’you know, Myagkov has promised me a post and I am entering the Civil Service. I will now arrange my life quite differently,’ he continued. ‘You know, I have got rid of that woman?’

‘Mary Nikolavna? Why, what for?’

‘Oh, she was a horrid woman! She has caused me a lot of unpleasantness,’ but he did not say in what the unpleasantness consisted. He could not explain that he had turned Mary Nikolavna away because she made his tea too weak, and chiefly because she waited on him as on an invalid.

‘Besides, I want to alter my life completely. Of course, like everybody else, I have done stupid things, but property is the least consideration and I don’t regret mine. Health is the great thing, and my health, thank God, has improved.’

Levin listened, trying but unable to think of what to say. Nicholas probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother about his affairs, and Levin was glad to talk about himself because he could do so without any pretence. He told Nicholas of his plans and activities.

Nicholas listened but evidently was not interested.

These two men were so near akin and so intimate with one another, that between them the least movement or intonation expressed more than could be said in words.

At present the same thought filled both their minds and dominated all else: Nicholas’s illness and approaching death. But neither of them dared speak of it, and not having expressed the one thing that occupied their thoughts, whatever they said rang false. Never before had Levin felt so glad when an evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never had he been so unnatural and artificial, even with an outsider or when making a formal call, as he was that day. And his consciousness of this artificiality and his repentance made him more unnatural. He wished to weep over his dear, dying brother, but had to listen and keep up a conversation about how Nicholas was going to live.

The house being damp, and only his bedroom heated, Levin put his brother to sleep behind a partition in that room.

Nicholas went to bed but, whether he slept or not, kept tossing and coughing like a sick man and, when unable to clear his throat, muttering some complaint. Sometimes he sighed deeply and said, ‘Oh, my God!’ Sometimes, when the phlegm choked him, he muttered angrily, ‘Oh, the devil!’ Levin long lay awake listening to him. His thoughts were very various, but they all led up to death.

Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. And that Death which was present in this dear brother (who, waking up, moaned and by habit called indiscriminately on God and on the devil) was not so far away as it had hitherto seemed to be. It was within himself too — he felt it. If not to-day, then to-morrow or thirty years hence, was it not all the same? But what that inevitable Death was, he not only did not know, not only had never considered, but could not and dared not consider.

‘I am working, I want to do something, and I had forgotten that it will all end in Death!’

He sat on his bed in the dark, doubled his arms round his knees and thought, scarcely breathing from the mental strain. But the more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life — that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and that there was no help for it. Yes, it was terrible, but true.

‘But I am still alive: what am I to do now? What am I to do?’ he said despairingly. He lit a candle, got up carefully, went to the looking-glass, and began examining his face and hair. Yes! There were grey hairs on his temples. He opened his mouth: his double teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, he was very strong. But Nicholas, who was breathing there with the remains of his lungs, had once had a healthy body too; and he suddenly remembered how as children they used to go to bed together and only waited till Theodore Bogdanich had left the room, to throw pillows at one another and to laugh and laugh so irrepressibly that even the fear of Theodore Bogdanich could not stop that overflowing bubbling consciousness of the joy of living. ‘And now that sunk and hollow chest… . And I, who do not know what will happen to me, or why …’

‘Kha, kha! Oh, the devil! What are you fidgeting for? Why don’t you sleep?’ his brother’s voice called to him.

‘Oh, I don’t know, just sleeplessness.’

‘And I have slept well; I don’t perspire now. See, feel my shirt, it’s not damp!’

Levin felt it, returned behind the partition, and put out the candle, but was long unable to sleep. Just when the question of how to live had become a little clearer to him, a new insoluble problem presented itself — Death.

‘Well, he is dying, he will die before spring. How can he be helped. What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I had forgotten there was such a thing!’