Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 148
1443 words | Chapter 148
From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from his
interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was
expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her
with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so
distraught that he could come to no decision of himself; he did not
know himself what he wanted now, and putting himself in the hands of
those who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he met
everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left his
house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she should
dine with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly
comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of
all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect
and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past when he
had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from
that past to a knowledge of his wife’s unfaithfulness he had lived
through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could
understand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her
unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he
would not have been in the hopeless position—incomprehensible to
himself—in which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his
immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the
other man’s child with what was now the case, that is with the fact
that, as it were, in return for all this he now found himself alone,
put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and despised by
everyone.
For the first two days after his wife’s departure Alexey Alexandrovitch
received applicants for assistance and his chief secretary, drove to
the committee, and went down to dinner in the dining-room as usual.
Without giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained
every nerve of his being for those two days, simply to preserve an
appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries
about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna’s rooms and belongings, he had
exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what
had occurred was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of
events, and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him
signs of despair. But on the second day after her departure, when
Korney gave him a bill from a fashionable draper’s shop, which Anna had
forgotten to pay, and announced that the clerk from the shop was
waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to show the clerk up.
“Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if you
direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us
with her address?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at
once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink
into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times
attempted to speak and stopped short. Korney, perceiving his master’s
emotion, asked the clerk to call another time. Left alone, Alexey
Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the
line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the
carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be
admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.
He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and
exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and
of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during
those two days. He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the
hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in
that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being
shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very
fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to
him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog
yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against
people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to
do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the
unequal struggle.
His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was
utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human
being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for
him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as
a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.
Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They
did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey
Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their
uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a
favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.
On completing his high school and university courses with medals,
Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle’s aid, immediately started in
a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had
devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school
and the university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey
Alexandrovitch had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His
brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had
died shortly after Alexey Alexandrovitch’s marriage.
While he was governor of a province, Anna’s aunt, a wealthy provincial
lady, had thrown him—middle-aged as he was, though young for a
governor—with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a
position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. There were at the
time as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no
overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of
abstaining when in doubt. But Anna’s aunt had through a common
acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl, and
that he was in honor bound to make her an offer. He made the offer, and
concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he
was capable.
The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of
intimate relations with others. And now among all his acquaintances he
had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called connections, but no
friendships. Alexey Alexandrovitch had plenty of people whom he could
invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could appeal in any public
affair he was concerned about, whose interest he could reckon upon for
anyone he wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other
people’s business and affairs of state. But his relations with these
people were confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain
routine from which it was impossible to depart. There was one man, a
comrade of his at the university, with whom he had made friends later,
and with whom he could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this
friend had a post in the Department of Education in a remote part of
Russia. Of the people in Petersburg the most intimate and most possible
were his chief secretary and his doctor.
Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a
straightforward, intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious man, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal goodwill. But their
five years of official work together seemed to have put a barrier
between them that cut off warmer relations.
After signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for
a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, and several
times he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already prepared the
phrase: “You have heard of my trouble?” But he ended by saying, as
usual: “So you’ll get this ready for me?” and with that dismissed him.
The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him;
but there had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that
both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.
Of his women friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were
terrible and distasteful to him.
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