ANNA KARENINA
PART 35
Chapter 31
Running
halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a familiar cough in
the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of his own footsteps,
and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar
figure, and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still
went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not
his brother Nikolay.
Levin
loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just now, when
Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to him, and Agafea
Mihalovna’s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain humour, the meeting with his
brother that he had to face seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively,
healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his
uncertain humour, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through,
who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to
show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.
Angry with
himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as soon as he had seen
his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment vanished instantly
and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolay had been before in
his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more
wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.
He stood
in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf off it, and
smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile, submissive and
humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.
“You see,
I’ve come to you,” said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for one second taking
his eyes off his brother’s face. “I’ve been meaning to a long while, but I’ve
been unwell all the time. Now I’m ever so much better,” he said, rubbing his
beard with his big thin hands.
“Yes,
yes!” answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when, kissing him, he
felt with his lips the dryness of his brother’s skin and saw close to him his
big eyes, full of a strange light.
A few
weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that through the sale
of the small part of the property, that had remained undivided, there was a sum
of about two thousand roubles to come to him as his share.
Nikolay
said that he had come now to take this money and, what was more important, to
stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the earth, so as to renew
his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay before him. In spite
of his exaggerated stoop, and the emaciation that was so striking from his
height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his
study.
His
brother dressed with particular care—a thing he never used to do—combed his
scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.
He was in
the most affectionate and good-humoured mood, just as Levin often remembered
him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey Ivanovitch without rancour. When
he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes with her and asked after the old
servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression
on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he regained his serenity
immediately.
“Of course
he was quite old,” he said, and changed the subject. “Well, I’ll spend a month
or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow. Do you know, Myakov has promised
me a place there, and I’m going into the service. Now I’m going to arrange my
life quite differently,” he went on. “You know I got rid of that woman.”
“Marya
Nikolaevna? Why, what for?”
“Oh, she
was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.” But he did not say
what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had cast off Marya
Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all, because she would look
after him, as though he were an invalid.
“Besides,
I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done silly things, of
course, like everyone else, but money’s the last consideration; I don’t regret
it. So long as there’s health, and my health, thank God, is quite restored.”
Levin
listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to say. Nikolay
probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother about his affairs; and
Levin was glad to talk about himself, because then he could speak without
hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans and his doings.
His
brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.
These two
men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest gesture, the tone of
voice, told both more than could be said in words.
Both of
them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay and the nearness of his
death—which stifled all else. But neither of them dared to speak of it, and so
whatever they said—not uttering the one thought that filled their minds—was all
falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad when the evening was over and it was
time to go to bed. Never with any outside person, never on any official visit
had he been so unnatural and false as he was that evening. And the
consciousness of this unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him
even more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother,
and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.
As the
house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin put his
brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.
His
brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed about like
a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat clear, mumbled
something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he said, “Oh, my God!”
Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily, “Ah, the devil!” Levin could
not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His thoughts were of the most various,
but the end of all his thoughts was the same—death. Death, the inevitable end
of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And
death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from
habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it
had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If not today,
tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all the same! And what
was this inevitable death—he did not know, had never thought about it, and what
was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it.
“I work, I
want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had
forgotten—death.”
He sat on
his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and holding his breath
from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the
clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking
upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death will come, and all ends;
that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway.
Yes, it was awful, but it was so.
“But I am
alive still. Now what’s to be done? what’s to be done?” he said in despair. He
lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the looking-glass, and began
looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples. He
opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular
arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing
with what was left of lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly
he recalled how they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only
waited till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling pillows at each
other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fyodor
Bogdanitch could not check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and
happiness. “And now that bent, hollow chest ... and I, not knowing what will
become of me, or wherefore....”
“K...ha!
K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don’t you go to sleep?” his
brother’s voice called to him.
“Oh, I
don’t know, I’m not sleepy.”
“I have
had a good sleep, I’m not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my shirt; it’s not
wet, is it?”
Levin
felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle, but for a long while
he could not sleep. The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little
clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself—death.
“Why, he’s
dying—yes, he’ll die in the spring, and how help him? What can I say to him?
What do I know about it? I’d even forgotten that it was at all.”
Chapter 32
Levin had
long before made the observation that when one is uncomfortable with people
from their being excessively amenable and meek, one is apt very soon after to
find things intolerable from their touchiness and irritability. He felt that
this was how it would be with his brother. And his brother Nikolay’s gentleness
did in fact not last out for long. The very next morning he began to be
irritable, and seemed doing his best to find fault with his brother, attacking
him on his tenderest points.
Levin felt
himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both
not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart—that
is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling—they would
simply have looked into each other’s faces, and Konstantin could only have
said, “You’re dying, you’re dying!” and Nikolay could only have answered, “I
know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” And they could have
said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life
like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying
to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could
observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no
living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt
continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in
it, and was exasperated at it.
The third
day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to him again, and began not
merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding it with communism.
“You’ve
simply borrowed an idea that’s not your own, but you’ve distorted it, and are
trying to apply it where it’s not applicable.”
“But I
tell you it’s nothing to do with it. They deny the justice of property, of
capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief stimulus.” (Levin felt
disgusted himself at using such expressions, but ever since he had been
engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come more and more frequently to
use words not Russian.) “All I want is to regulate labour.”
“Which
means, you’ve borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it its force, and
want to make believe that it’s something new,” said Nikolay, angrily tugging at
his necktie.
“But my
idea has nothing in common....”
“That,
anyway,” said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes flashing
malignantly, “has the charm of—what’s one to call it?—geometrical symmetry, of
clearness, of definiteness. It may be a Utopia. But if once one allows the
possibility of making of all the past a tabula rasa—no property, no
family—then labour would organize itself. But you gain nothing....”
“Why do
you mix things up? I’ve never been a communist.”
“But I
have, and I consider it’s premature, but rational, and it has a future, just
like Christianity in its first ages.”
“All that
I maintain is that the labour force ought to be investigated from the point of
view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities
ascertained....”
“But
that’s utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of activity of
itself, according to the stage of its development. There have been slaves first
everywhere, then metayers; and we have the half-crop system, rent, and day labourers.
What are you trying to find?”
Levin
suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of his heart he
was afraid that it was true—true that he was trying to hold the balance even
between communism and the familiar forms, and that this was hardly possible.
“I am
trying to find means of working productively for myself and for the labourers.
I want to organize....” he answered hotly.
“You don’t
want to organize anything; it’s simply just as you’ve been all your life, that
you want to be original to pose as not exploiting the peasants simply, but with
some idea in view.”
“Oh, all
right, that’s what you think—and let me alone!” answered Levin, feeling the
muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.
“You’ve
never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to please your vanity.”
“Oh, very
well; then let me alone!”
“And I
will let you alone! and it’s high time I did, and go to the devil with you! and
I’m very sorry I ever came!”
In spite
of all Levin’s efforts to soothe his brother afterwards, Nikolay would listen
to nothing he said, declaring that it was better to part, and Konstantin saw
that it simply was that life was unbearable to him.
Nikolay
was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him again and begged
him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt his feelings in any way.
“Ah,
generosity!” said Nikolay, and he smiled. “If you want to be right, I can give
you that satisfaction. You’re in the right; but I’m going all the same.”
It was
only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking with sudden
strangeness and seriousness at his brother:
“Anyway,
don’t remember evil against me, Kostya!” and his voice quivered. These were the
only words that had been spoken sincerely between them. Levin knew that those
words meant, “You see, and you know, that I’m in a bad way, and maybe we shall
not see each other again.” Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes.
He kissed his brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to
say.
Three days
after his brother’s departure, Levin too set off for his foreign tour.
Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty’s cousin, in the railway train, Levin
greatly astonished him by his depression.
“What’s
the matter with you?” Shtcherbatsky asked him.
“Oh,
nothing; there’s not much happiness in life.”
“Not much?
You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall see how to be
happy.”
“No, I’ve
done with it all. It’s time I was dead.”
“Well,
that’s a good one!” said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; “why, I’m only just getting
ready to begin.”
“Yes, I
thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be dead.”
Levin said
what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing but death or the
advance towards death in everything. But his cherished scheme only engrossed
him the more. Life had to be got through somehow till death did come. Darkness
had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt
that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and
clung to it with all his strength.
To be continued
