Читать книгу Anna Karenina - 2 Classic Unabridged Translations in one eBook (Garnett and Maude translations) - Leo Tolstoy - Страница 92

THOUGH Anna had angrily and obstinately contradicted Vronsky when he said that her position was an impossible one, in the depths of her soul she felt that the situation was a false one and wished with all her heart to put an end to it. On her way back from the races, in a moment of excitement — in spite of the pain it caused her — she had told her husband everything, and she was glad she had done so. After he left her, she told herself that she was glad she had told him, that now everything would be definite — at any rate, the falsehood and deception would no longer exist. She thought it quite certain that her position would be cleared up for good. Her new position might be a bad one but it would be definite, and there would be no vagueness or falsehood. The pain she had inflicted on herself and her husband would now, she thought, be compensated for by the fact that the matter would be settled. She saw Vronsky that same evening, but did not tell him what had passed between her and her husband, though he would have to be told before her position could be settled.

When she woke up in the morning the first thing that came into her mind was what she had said to her husband, and it now appeared so terrible that she could not understand how she had been able to utter such strange and coarse words and could not imagine what result they would have. But the words had been spoken and Karenin had gone away without saying anything.

‘I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. Just as he was going away I wished to call him back and tell him, but changed my mind, because my not having done so at first would have appeared strange. Why did I not tell him?’

And in answer to this question a hot blush of shame spread all over her face. She knew what had stopped her, knew she had been ashamed. The situation which the night before had appeared to be clearing up now seemed quite hopeless. She dreaded the disgrace, which she had not considered before.

When she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible fancies came into her head. She fancied that presently the steward would come and turn her out of the house and that her disgrace would be proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she would go when turned out, and found no answer.

When she thought about Vronsky, she imagined that he did not love her, that he was beginning to find her a burden, and that she could not offer herself to him; and in consequence she felt hostile toward him. She felt as if the words she had used to her husband, which she kept repeating in imagination, had been said by her to every one and that every one had heard them.

She had not the courage to look into the eyes of the people she lived with. She could not make up her mind to call her maid, and still less to go down and face her son and his governess.

The maid, who had long been listening at the door, at last came in of her own accord. Anna looked inquiringly into her eyes and blushed with alarm. The maid begged pardon and said she thought she had heard the bell.

She brought a dress and a note. The note was from Betsy, who reminded her that she (Betsy) was that day expecting Lisa Merkalova and the Baroness Stolz, with their admirers Kaluzhsky and old Stremov, to a game of croquet.

‘Do come, if only to study manners and customs. I expect you,’ she wrote in conclusion.

Anna read the note and sighed deeply.

‘I don’t want anything, anything at all,’ she said to Annushka, who was moving the bottles and brushes on the dressing-table. ‘I will get dressed and come down at once. I want nothing, nothing at all.’

Annushka went out, but Anna did not get dressed. She remained in the same position with head and arms drooping. Every now and then her whole body shuddered as she tried to make some movement or to say something, and then became rigid again. ‘Oh, my God! My God!’ she kept repeating, but neither the word God or my had any meaning for her. The thought of seeking comfort in religion, though she had never doubted the truth of the religion in which she had been brought up, was as foreign to her as asking Karenin for help would have been. She knew that she could find no help in religion unless she was prepared to give up that which alone gave a meaning to her life. She was not only disturbed, but was beginning to be afraid of a new mental condition such as she had never before experienced. She felt as if everything was being doubled in her soul, just as objects appear doubled to weary eyes. Sometimes she could not tell what she feared and what she desired. Whether she feared and desired what had been, or what would be, and what it was she desired she did not know.

‘Oh, dear! What am I doing!’ she said to herself suddenly, feeling pain in both sides of her head. When she came to her senses she found that she was clutching her hair and pressing her temples with both hands. She jumped up and began pacing up and down the room.

‘Coffee is ready, and Ma’m’selle and Serezha are waiting,’ said Annushka, coming in again and finding Anna in the same position.

‘Serezha? What of Serezha?’ Anna asked, reviving suddenly, as for the first time that morning she remembered the existence of her son.

‘It seems he has got into trouble,’ answered Annushka with a smile.

‘Into trouble, how?’

‘You had some peaches in the corner room; it seems he has eaten one of them on the quiet.’

The thought of her son at once took Anna out of the hopeless condition she had been in. She remembered that partly sincere but greatly exaggerated rôle of a mother living for her son which she had assumed during the last five years; and felt with joy that in the position in which she found herself she had still one stay, independent of her relations with her husband and Vronsky. That stay was her son. Whatever position she might accept she could not give up her son.

Let her husband disgrace her, let Vronsky grow cold toward her and continue to live his own independent life (again she thought of him with bitterness and reproach), she could not give up her son. She had an aim in life and must act so as to ensure her position toward her son, while they had not yet taken him from her. She must take him away. That was the only thing to do at present. She must be calm and escape from this terrible situation.

The thought of decided action concerned with her son — of going away somewhere with him — made her feel calmer.

She dressed quickly and with determined steps entered the drawing-room, where Serezha and his governess were waiting breakfast for her as usual. Serezha, dressed all in white, was standing by a table under a looking-glass, and arranging some flowers he had brought, with bent head and back, showing that strained attention familiar to her in which he resembled his father.

His governess was looking exceptionally stern. Serezha exclaimed in a piercing voice, as he often did, ‘Ah! Mama!’ and stopped, hesitating whether to go and bid her good-morning and leave the flowers, or to finish the crown he was making and take it to her.

The governess began to give a long and detailed account of his misconduct, but Anna did not listen to her. She was wondering whether to take her also or not.

‘No, I won’t,’ she decided. ‘I will go alone with my son.’

‘Yes, that was very wrong,’ said Anna, and putting her hand on his shoulder she looked at him not with a severe but with a timid expression which confused and gladdened the boy. She kissed him.

‘Leave him to me,’ she said to the astonished governess, and still holding his hand she sat down at the breakfast table.

‘Mama! I … I … I …’ he said, trying to find out from her face what he was to expect for eating the peach.

‘Serezha,’ she said as soon as the governess had gone away, ‘it was wrong, but you won’t do it again? … You love me?’

She felt the tears coming into her eyes.

‘As if I could help loving him,’ she said to herself looking into his frightened and yet happy face. ‘And is it possible that he would take sides with his father to torment me?’ The tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and in order to hide them she jumped up abruptly and went out on to the verandah.

After the thunderstorms of the last few days the weather had grown clear and cold.

She shivered with cold, and with the terror that seized her with new power out in the open air.

‘Go to Mariette,’ she said to Serezha, who had come out after her; and she began pacing up and down the straw matting of the verandah.

‘Is it possible that they could not forgive me or understand that it could not have been otherwise?’ she asked herself.

She stopped and looked at the crown of an aspen trembling in the wind, with its clean-washed leaves glistening brilliantly in the cold sunshine, and she felt that they would not forgive, that everybody would now be as pitiless toward her as the sky and the trees, and again she felt that duality in her soul.

‘No, no, I must not think,’ she said to herself; ‘I must get ready to go. Where? When? Whom shall I take with me?’

‘To Moscow? Yes, by the evening train, with Annushka and Serezha, and with only the most necessary things. But first I must write to both of them.’

She quickly went to her sitting-room and wrote to her husband.

‘After what has happened I can no longer remain in your house. I am going away and taking my son. I do not know the law and therefore I do not know to which of his parents a son must be left, but I am taking him because I cannot live without him. Be generous and leave him to me!’

Up to that point she wrote quickly and naturally; but the appeal to his generosity, in which she did not believe, and the necessity of finishing the letter with something moving, stopped her… .

‘I cannot speak of my fault and my repentance, because …’ She stopped again, unable to connect her thoughts. ‘No, I will say nothing,’ she thought, tore up the letter, rewrote it, omitting the reference to his generosity, and sealed it.

The other letter she meant to write was to Vronsky.

‘I have informed my husband,’ she began, and was unable to write any more. It seemed so coarse and unwomanly. ‘Besides, what can I write to him?’ she asked herself; and again she blushed with shame. She thought of his calmness, and a feeling of vexation with him made her tear the paper to pieces, with the one sentence written on it.

‘There is no need to write anything,’ she thought, closed her blotting-book, went upstairs to tell the governess and the servant that she was going to Moscow that evening, and then began packing.