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FORTY-NINE

Chapter 23

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ALTHOUGH Vronsky’s wound had missed the heart it was dangerous, and for several days he lay between life and death. When he was first able to talk again his brother’s wife Varya was alone with him.
‘Varya!’ he said looking sternly at her, ‘it went off accidentally! Never speak of it, please, and tell everybody else that. Or else it would be too stupid.’
Without saying a word Varya bent over him and looked in his face with a joyful smile. His eyes were clear and no longer feverish, but their expression was stern.
‘Well, thank God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You are not in pain?’
‘A little, here,’ and he pointed to his chest.
‘Then let me change the bandage.’
He looked at her silently, his broad jaws set, while she bandaged him. When she had finished he said:
‘I am not delirious. . . . Please arrange so that no one shall say that I shot myself on purpose.’
‘But no one does say so. Only I hope you will not go letting it off accidentally any more,’ said she with an inquiring smile.
‘I expect I shan’t, but it would have been better . . .’ and he smiled gloomily.
Despite these words and that smile, which greatly perturbed Varya, when the inflammation left him and he became convalescent he felt that he had rid himself entirely of one part of his grief. By his action he seemed to have washed off the shame and degradation he had previously felt. Now he could think quietly about Karenin, fully realizing his generosity without being humiliated thereby. Besides that, he got into his old rut again. He found he could look people in the face once more, and he was able to live in accord with his former habits. The one thing he could not tear out of his heart, although he continually struggled against it, was a regret bordering on despair at having lost Anna for ever. That now, having atoned for his guilt toward her husband, he would be obliged to give her up and never place himself between her with her remorse and her husband, was clear to his mind; but he could not eradicate from his heart a regret for the loss of her love — could not efface from his memory the moments of happiness he had known with her, moments he had valued so lightly, but the image of which with all their charm pursued him still.
Serpukhovskoy thought out a post for him in Tashkend and Vronsky accepted the proposition without the least hesitation. But the nearer the hour for his departure approached the harder seemed the sacrifice he was making to what he considered his duty. His wound was quite healed and he went about making preparations for his journey to Tashkend. ‘Only to see her once more, and then to bury myself, to die!’ he thought, as he was making a round of farewell calls, and he expressed this thought to Betsy. It was with this message that Betsy went to Anna, and she brought him an answer in the negative.
‘So much the better,’ thought Vronsky when he heard it. ‘It would have been a weakness — would have taken away all the strength I have left.’
Next day Betsy herself came and announced that she had received, through Oblonsky, the definite news that Karenin consented to a divorce and that therefore Vronsky might see Anna. Without so much as taking the trouble of seeing Betsy to the door, or of asking when he could see Anna and where her husband was, Vronsky, in spite of all his resolutions, at once went to the Karenins’. Without seeing anyone or anything he ran up the stairs and entered her room with hurried steps — almost at a run. Without thinking, or considering whether they were alone or not, he embraced her and covered her face, hands, and neck with kisses.
Anna had prepared herself for this meeting and had thought about what she would say to him; but she had no time to say any of it, seized by his passion. She wished to calm him and herself, but it was too late. His passion communicated itself to her. Her lip trembled so that for a long time she could not speak.
‘Yes, you have taken possession of me and I am yours,’ she brought out at last, pressing his hands to her bosom.
‘It had to be!’ said he. ‘As long as we live it will have to be. Now I am sure of it.’
‘It is true,’ she said, growing paler and paler, putting her arms about his head. ‘Still, there is something terrible in this, after what has been.’
‘It will pass, it will all pass, and we shall be so happy! If our love could be stronger, there being something terrible in it would make it so,’ he said, raising his head with a smile that showed his fine teeth.
She could not help smiling in answer, not to his words but to his enamoured eyes. She took his hand and stroked with it her cold cheek and cropped hair.
‘I don’t know you with this short hair! You have improved so, you little boy ! — But how pale you are!’
‘Yes, I feel very weak,’ she said with a smile, and her lip trembled again.
‘We shall go to Italy and you will soon get well,’ said he.
‘Is it possible that we shall be like husband and wife, alone, a family, you and I?’ she said, looking closely into his eyes.
‘I am only surprised that it could ever have been otherwise.’
‘Stiva says he will agree to anything, but I cannot accept his generosity,’ she said dreamily, gazing past Vronsky’s face. ‘I don’t want a divorce. Nothing matters to me now. Only I don’t know what to decide about Serezha.’
He was quite unable to understand how she could, at the moment of their first reunion, think about her son and divorce. As if all that were not immaterial!
‘Don’t talk and don’t think about it,’ he said, playing with her hand and trying to draw her attention to himself; but she continued to gaze past him.
‘Oh, why did I not die? It would have been best!’ she said, the tears streaming noiselessly down her cheeks; but unwilling to pain him, she tried to smile.
To refuse the flattering offer of a post at Tashkend, which was a dangerous one, would have seemed disgraceful and impossible according to Vronsky’s former views. But now without a moment’s hesitation he did refuse it and, observing that his superiors frowned upon his action, at once resigned his commission. A month later Karenin and his son were left alone in the house, and Anna went abroad with Vronsky — not only without getting a divorce but having resolutely refused it.

PART FIVE

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Chapter 1

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THE Princess Shcherbatskaya at first considered it out of the question to have the wedding before Advent, to which there remained but five weeks, but could not help agreeing with Levin that to put it off until after the Fast might involve waiting too long, for Prince Shcherbatsky’s old aunt was very ill and likely to die soon, and then the family would be in mourning and the wedding would have to be considerably deferred. Consequently, having decided to divide her daughter’s trousseau into two parts, a lesser and a larger, the Princess eventually consented to have the wedding before Advent. She decided that she would have the smaller part of the trousseau got ready at once, and would send on the larger part later; and she was very cross with Levin because he could not give her a serious answer to her question whether he agreed with this arrangement or not. This plan would be all the more convenient because the young couple intended immediately after the wedding to go to the country, where the larger part of the trousseau would not be required.
Levin continued in the same condition of delirium as before, imagining that he and his joy were the chief or only purpose of all existence, and that he need not now think or bother about anything, as other people would see to everything for him. He had not even any plans or aims for the future, but left these to others to decide, quite sure that everything would turn out splendidly. His brother Sergius Ivanich, Oblonsky, and the Princess directed his actions. He quite agreed to every proposal. His brother borrowed money for him, the Princess advised him to return to the country after the wedding, and Oblonsky suggested going abroad. He agreed to everything. ‘Do whatever you like, whatever pleases you! I am happy, and my happiness cannot be made or marred by anything you do,’ he thought. When he told Kitty of Oblonsky’s advice that they should go abroad, he was quite surprised at her opposition to it and to find that she had definite ideas of her own about their future life. She knew that in the country Levin had work of which he was fond. As he saw, she not only did not understand that work but did not wish to understand it. This, however, did not prevent her considering it very important, and besides, she knew their home would be in the country, and she wanted to go — not abroad, where they were not going to live — but to where her home would be. This decided expression of her wish surprised Levin, but, as it was quite immaterial to him, he at once begged Oblonsky to go to the house in the country, just as if it were Oblonsky’s duty to go, and arrange everything there according to his own good taste.
‘I say,’ Oblonsky asked Levin one day after his return from the country, where he had made all preparations for the young couple, ‘have you got a certificate to show that you have received communion?’
‘No. Why?’
‘They won’t marry you without it.’
‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Levin. ‘I think it is nine years since I went to communion! I haven’t thought about it.’
‘You are a good one!’ remarked Oblonsky, laughing. ‘And you call me a Nihilist! But it won’t do, you know; you must confess and receive the sacrament.’
‘When? There are only four days left.’
But Oblonsky arranged that too. Levin began to prepare himself. To him, as an agnostic who yet respected the religious beliefs of others, it was always very trying to be present at, or to take part in, any religious ceremony. In his present state of mind, softened and sensitive to everything, to be obliged to pretend was not only trying but appeared impossible. Now, in his state of triumph at the flowering time of his life, he was to be obliged to lie or blaspheme! He felt unable to do either. But question Oblonsky as he would, as to whether he could not obtain a certificate without going to communion, Oblonsky declared that he must go through with it.
‘Besides, what does it amount to — two days! And the priest is such a nice old man. He will draw that tooth for you so that you will scarcely feel it.’
Standing in church during the first service he attended, Levin tried to revive the memories of his youth and the strong religious feeling with which at the age of sixteen or seventeen he had been imbued. But he immediately became convinced that it was out of his power to do so. He then tried to regard it all as a meaningless, empty custom, like making a round of calls, but felt equally unable to do that. In matters of religion Levin, like most of his contemporaries, had very indefinite views. He could not believe in it, and yet was not firmly convinced that it was all false. Therefore, unable either to believe in the importance of what he was doing or to look upon it with indifference as an empty form, he, while preparing for confession, felt awkward and ashamed at doing something incomprehensible and therefore — as an inner voice told him — necessarily false and wrong.
During the service he would sometimes listen to the prayers, trying to see in them a meaning which would not clash with his opinions, or, finding that he could not understand and had to disapprove of them, he would try not to listen but to occupy his mind with observation of what was going on or with recollections which passed with extraordinary clearness through his brain as he stood idly in the church. He stood through the mass and vespers and evensong, and the next day, having got up earlier than usual, he went to church before breakfast to hear morning prayers and to confess.
No one else was in the church except a soldier-beggar, two old women, and the clergy.
The young deacon, the two halves of his long back clearly distinguishable through his thin under-cassock, met him, and going at once to a small table beside the wall, began reading the prayers. While he was reading, and especially during the frequent and rapid repetitions of ‘Lord, have mercy upon us!’ — which sounded like ‘Lordvmercypons!’ — Levin felt as if his mind were closed and sealed up, and that, if he did make it stir now, nothing but confusion would result; therefore as he stood behind the deacon he continued his own train of thought, without listening or trying to comprehend what was being read. ‘How wonderfully expressive her hand is!’ he thought, recalling how they had sat at the corner table the day before. As was nearly always the case just then, they had nothing to say to each other, and she had put her hand on the table and kept opening and closing it until she herself began to laugh at its motions. He remembered how he had kissed the hand and afterwards examined the converging lines on the rosy palm. Again ‘Lordvmercypons!’ thought he, crossing himself, bowing, and watching the movements of the bowing deacon’s flexible back. ‘Then she took my hand and examined the lines and said, “You have a splendid hand!” ’ and he glanced at the deacon’s stumpy hand and at his own. ‘Well, it will soon be over now,’ he thought. ‘No — I believe it is all going to begin again,’ and he listened to the prayer. ‘Yes, it is coming to an end. There he is, bowing down to the ground. That always happens just before the end.’ Having stealthily received a three-rouble note into his hand under its velvet cuff, the deacon said he would put down Levin’s name, and went briskly into the chancel, his new boots clattering over the paved floor of the empty church. A minute later he put his head out and beckoned to Levin. The sealed-up thoughts began stirring in Levin’s head, but he hastened to drive them away. ‘It will get settled somehow,’ he thought, and went to the ambo. On going up the steps and turning to the right he saw the priest. The latter, an old man with a thin grizzled beard and kind, weary eyes, stood beside the lectern turning over the leaves of a missal. Bowing slightly to Levin he began at once in his stereotyped tone to read the prayers. At the end he bowed to the ground and turned to Levin.
‘Christ, though unseen, is here present to receive your confession,’ he said, pointing to a crucifix. ‘Do you believe in the teachings of the Holy Apostolic Church?’ continued the priest, turning his eyes away and folding his hands beneath his stole.
‘I have doubted, and still doubt, everything,’ replied Levin in a voice unpleasant to himself, and stopped.
The priest paused a few seconds to see whether Levin would say anything more, and then closing his eyes said rapidly, with a strong provincial accent:
‘Doubts are natural to human weakness, but we must pray that our merciful Lord will strengthen us. What are your particular sins?’ he continued without the slightest pause, as if anxious not to waste time.
‘My chief sin is doubt. I doubt everything and am in doubt nearly all the time.’
‘Doubt is natural to human weakness,’ repeated the priest. ‘What do you doubt in particular?’
‘Everything. Sometimes I even doubt the existence of God,’ said Levin involuntarily, and was horrified at the impropriety of his words. But they seemed to have no effect on the priest.
‘What doubt can there be of the existence of God?’ he asked with a faint smile.
Levin was silent.
‘What doubt can you have of the Creator when you see His creation?’ continued the priest in his rapid, stereotyped voice. ‘Who has adorned the vault of Heaven with luminaries? Who has decked the earth with beauty? How could it all be, without a Creator?’ he asked, with an inquiring glance at Levin.
Levin felt that it would not be proper to enter into a philosophic discussion with a priest, and therefore merely replied to the direct questions, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? Then how can you doubt that God created everything?’ said the priest in puzzled amazement.
‘I don’t understand it at all,’ said Levin, blushing, and feeling that his words were silly and that they could not but be silly.
‘Pray to God and entreat Him! Even the holy Fathers doubted and prayed God to strengthen their faith. The devil is very powerful and we must resist him. Pray to God,’ he repeated hurriedly.
The priest paused awhile as if in thought.
‘I hear you are about to enter into holy matrimony with the daughter of my parishioner and spiritual son, Prince Shcherbatsky?’ he added with a smile. ‘A splendid young woman!’
‘Yes,’ answered Levin, with a blush for the priest. ‘Why need he ask me that at confession?’ he thought.
And as if in answer to the thought, the priest said:
‘You are about to enter into matrimony and God may give you children, is it not so? Then what sort of education can you give your little ones if you do not conquer in yourself the temptations of the devil, who is leading you into unbelief?’ he asked in mild rebuke. ‘If you love your offspring, then you, as a kind father, will desire not only riches, luxury, and honours for your child, but will desire his salvation, his spiritual advancement by the light of truth. Is that not so? And when your innocent little one asks, “Papa, who has created everything that pleases me in this world — earth, water, sun, flowers, grass?” what will you say? Will you really say to him, “I don’t know”? You cannot help knowing, since God in His great mercy has revealed it to you. Or your child may ask you, “What awaits me beyond the tomb?” What will you tell him if you yourself know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to the temptations of the world and the devil? That is wrong!’ The priest ceased and, with his head on one side, regarded Levin with mild kindly eyes.
This time Levin did not reply, not because he did not wish to enter upon a discussion with a priest, but because no one had ever yet put such questions to him; and also because, before his little one could begin asking such questions, there would be plenty of time to consider what the answers should be.
‘You are entering upon a time of life,’ the priest went on, ‘when you must choose your path and keep to it, so pray that God in His goodness may help you and have mercy on you!’ he concluded. ‘May the Lord our God Jesus Christ, in the goodness and bounty of His love for mankind, pardon thee . . .’; and having pronounced the absolution, the priest blessed him and let him go.
When he got home that day Levin felt relieved at having done with an unpleasant episode in such a way that he had not been obliged to tell lies. Besides, he was left with a vague feeling that what the nice kind old man had said to him was not as stupid as it had seemed at first, and that there was something in it that ought to be elucidated. ‘Of course, not now,’ thought he, ‘but later on.’ He felt more than ever before that there was a kind of vagueness in his soul, a want of clearness, and that with regard to religion he was in the same position that he saw so distinctly and disliked in others, and for which he found fault with his friend Sviyazhsky.
He spent that evening with his betrothed at the Oblonskys’ and was in particularly high spirits. Explaining to Oblonsky the state of elation he was in, he said he felt as pleased as a dog that was being taught to jump through a hoop, and which, having accomplished what was demanded of it, barks and wags its tail and jumps for joy upon the tables and window-sills.