Читать книгу Anna Karenina - 2 Classic Unabridged Translations in one eBook (Garnett and Maude translations) - Leo Tolstoy - Страница 112

‘YOU met him?’ she asked when they sat down at a table under the lamp. ‘That is your punishment for being late.’

‘Yes, but how did it happen? He had to be at the Council!’

‘He had been and had come back, and afterwards went somewhere else. But never mind: don’t speak about it. Where have you been? With the Prince all the time?’

She knew all the details of his life. He wished to say that he had been up all night and had fallen asleep, but seeing her excited and happy face he felt ashamed. So he said that he had to go and report the Prince’s departure.

‘But now that is all over? He has gone?’

‘Yes, thank heaven! That is all over. You would hardly believe how intolerable it was.’

‘Why? Is it not the kind of life all you young men lead?’ she said, frowning; and taking up her crochet-work from the table began disentangling the hook without looking at Vronsky.

‘I have long since abandoned that kind of life,’ he said, wondering at the change in her face and trying to penetrate its meaning. ‘And I must own,’ he went on, smiling and showing his compact row of teeth, ‘that I seem to have been looking in a mirror the whole of this week while watching that kind of life, and it was very unpleasant.’ She held her work in her hands, without crocheting, gazing at him with a strange, glittering, unfriendly look.

‘Lisa called on me this morning; they still visit me in spite of the Countess Lydia Ivanovna,’ she said, ‘and she told me about your Athenian party. How disgusting!’

‘I was only going to say that …’

She interrupted him.

‘It was Thérèse, whom you knew before?’

‘I was going to say …’

‘How horrid you men are! How is it that you can forget that a woman cannot forget these things?’ she said, getting more and more heated and thereby betraying the cause of her irritation. ‘Especially a woman who cannot know your life. What do I know? What did I know? Only what you tell me. And what proof have I that you tell me the truth?’

‘Anna, you hurt me. Don’t you believe me? Have I not told you that I have not a thought that I would hide from you?’

‘Yes, yes!’ she said, evidently trying to drive away her jealous thoughts. ‘But if you only knew how hard it is for me! I believe you, I do believe you… . Well, what were you going to say?’

But he could not at once remember what he had wished to say. These fits of jealousy which had lately begun to repeat themselves more and more frequently, horrified him and, however much he tried to hide the fact, they made him feel colder toward her, although he knew that the jealousy was caused by love for him. How often he had told himself that to be loved by her was happiness! and now that she loved him as only a woman can for whom love outweighs all else that is good in life, he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past. She was not at all such as he had first seen her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out, and as she spoke of the actress there was a malevolent look on her face which distorted its expression. He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it. Yet in spite of this he felt that though at first while his love was strong he would have been able, had he earnestly desired it, to pull that love out of his heart — yet now when he imagined, as he did at that moment, that he felt no love for her, he knew that the bond between them could not be broken.

‘Well, what were you going to tell me about the Prince? I have driven away the demon,’ she added. They spoke of jealousy as ‘the demon’. ‘Yes, what had you begun telling me about the Prince? What was it you found so hard to bear?’

‘Oh, it was intolerable!’ he said, trying to pick up the lost thread of what he had in his mind. ‘He does not improve on nearer acquaintance. If I am to describe him, he is a finely-bred animal, like those that get prizes at cattle-shows, and nothing more,’ he concluded in a tone of vexation which awoke her interest.

‘Oh, but in what way?’ she rejoined. ‘Anyhow he must have seen much, and is well educated… .’

‘It is quite a different kind of education — that education of theirs. One can see that he has been educated only to have the right to despise education, as they despise everything except animal pleasures.’

‘But don’t all of you like those animal pleasures?’ she remarked, and he again noticed on her face that dismal look which evaded his.

‘Why do you take his part so?’ he said, smiling.

‘I don’t take his part, and it is a matter of complete indifference to me, but I should say that as you did not like these pleasures you might have declined to go. But it gives you pleasure to see Thérèse dressed as Eve …’

‘Again! Again the demon!’ said Vronsky, taking the hand which she had put on the table, and kissing it.

‘Yes, but I can’t help it! You don’t know how I have suffered while waiting for you! I don’t think I have a jealous nature. I am not jealous; I trust you when you are here near me; but when you are away, living your life, which I don’t understand …’

She turned away from him and, managing at last to disentangle her hook, with the aid of her forefinger began to draw the stitches of white wool, shining in the lamplight, through each other, the delicate wrist moving rapidly and nervously within her embroidered cuff.

‘Well, and what happened? Where did you meet Alexis Alexandrovich?’ she suddenly asked, her voice ringing unnaturally.

‘I knocked up against him in the doorway.’

‘And he bowed like this to you?’ She drew up her face, half closed her eyes and quickly changed the expression of her face, folding her hands; and Vronsky saw at once upon her beautiful face the very look with which Karenin had bowed to him. He smiled, and she laughed merrily, with that delightful laughter from the chest which was one of her special charms.

‘I can’t at all understand him,’ said Vronsky. ‘Had he after your explanation in the country broken with you, had he challenged me, yes! But this sort of thing I do not understand. How can he put up with such a position? He suffers, that is evident.’

‘He?’ she said, sarcastically. ‘He is perfectly contented.’

‘Why are we all tormenting each other when everything might be so comfortable?’

‘But not he! As if I did not know him, and the falsehood with which he is saturated! … As if it were possible for anyone to live as he is living with me! He understands and feels nothing. Could a man who has any feelings live in the same house with his guilty wife? Could he talk to her and call her by her Christian name?’ And without meaning to, she again mimicked him: ‘Ma chère Anna; my dear!’

‘He is not a man, not a human being. He is … a doll! No one else knows it, but I do. Oh, if I were he, I should long since have killed, have torn in pieces, a wife such as I, and not have called her “Ma chère Anna”. He is not a man but an official machine. He does not understand that I am your wife, that he is a stranger, a superfluous … But don’t let us talk about him.’

‘You are unjust, unjust, my dear,’ said Vronsky, trying to pacify her. ‘But still, don’t let us talk about him. Tell me what you have been doing? What is the matter with you? What is that illness of yours? What does the doctor say?’

She looked at him with quizzical joy. She had evidently remembered other comical and unpleasant sides of her husband’s character and waited for an opportunity to mention them.

He continued:

‘I expect it is not illness at all, but only your condition. When is it to be?’

The mocking light in her eyes faded, but a smile of a different kind — the knowledge of something unknown to him, and gentle sadness — replaced the former expression of her face.

‘Soon, soon. You were saying that our position was full of torment and should be put an end to. If you only knew how hard it is on me! What would I not give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I should not be tortured, I would not torment you with my jealousy… . It will happen soon, but not in the way you think.’ And at the thought of how it was going to happen she felt so sorry for herself that the tears came into her eyes and she could not continue. She laid her hand, sparkling with rings and the whiteness of the skin, on his sleeve.

‘It will not happen as we think. I did not want to tell you, but you make me do it. Soon, very soon, everything will get disentangled and we shall be able to rest and not torment each other any more.’

‘I do not understand,’ he said, though he did understand.

‘You were asking when? Soon, and I shall not survive it. Don’t interrupt,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I shall die, and I am very glad that I shall die: I shall find deliverance and deliver you.’

The tears ran down her cheeks; he stooped over her hand and began kissing it, trying to hide the emotion which he knew to be groundless but could not master.

‘That is right, that is better,’ she said, firmly pressing his hand. ‘This is all, all that remains to us.’

He recovered and lifted his head.

‘What rubbish, what senseless rubbish you are talking!’

‘No, it is not! It is true.’

‘What is true?’

‘That I am going to die; I have had a dream.’

‘A dream?’ Vronsky instantly remembered the peasant of his dream.

‘Yes, a dream,’ she said. ‘I dreamed it a long time ago. I thought I had run into my bedroom, that I had to fetch or find out something there: you know how it happens in dreams,’ and her eyes dilated with horror. ‘And in the bedroom there was something standing in the corner.’

‘Oh what nonsense! How can one believe? …’

But she would not allow him to stop her. What she was saying was of too much importance to her.

‘And that something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with a rough beard, small and dreadful. I wanted to run away, but he stooped over a sack and was fumbling about in it… .’

She showed how he fumbled in the sack. Her face was full of horror. And Vronsky, remembering his dream, felt the same horror filling his soul.

‘He fumbles about and mutters French words, so quickly, so quickly, and with a burr, you know: “Il faut le battre, le fer: le broyer, le pétrir… .” [“It must be beaten, the iron: pound it, knead it… .”] And in my horror I tried to wake, but I woke still in a dream and began asking myself what it could mean; and Korney says to me: “You will die in childbed, in childbed, ma’am… .” Then I woke.’

‘What nonsense, what nonsense!’ said Vronsky, but he felt that there was no conviction in his voice.

‘Well, don’t let us talk about it. Ring the bell, I will order tea. But wait, it won’t be long and I …’

But suddenly she stopped. The expression of her face changed instantaneously. The horror and agitation were replaced by an expression of quiet, serious, and blissful attention. He could not understand the meaning of this change. She had felt a new life quickening within her.