Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 86
1406 words | Chapter 86
All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters, gardeners, and
footmen going to and fro carrying out things. Cupboards and chests were
open; twice they had sent to the shop for cord; pieces of newspaper
were tossing about on the floor. Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up
rugs, had been carried down into the hall. The carriage and two hired
cabs were waiting at the steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation
in the work of packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing
her traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle of
some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window and saw Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s courier on the steps, ringing at the front door bell.
“Run and find out what it is,” she said, and with a calm sense of being
prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her hands
on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet directed in Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s hand.
“The courier has orders to wait for an answer,” he said.
“Very well,” she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore
open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded notes done
up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the letter and began
reading it at the end. “Preparations shall be made for your arrival
here ... I attach particular significance to compliance....” she read.
She ran on, then back, read it all through, and once more read the
letter all through again from the beginning. When she had finished, she
felt that she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as
she had not expected, had burst upon her.
In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband,
and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken.
And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she
had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her more awful than anything
she had been able to conceive.
“He’s right!” she said; “of course, he’s always right; he’s a
Christian, he’s generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one
understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can’t explain it.
They say he’s so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever;
but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has crushed
my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me—he
has not once even thought that I’m a live woman who must have love.
They don’t know how at every step he’s humiliated me, and been just as
pleased with himself. Haven’t I striven, striven with all my strength,
to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven’t I struggled to
love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time
came when I knew that I couldn’t cheat myself any longer, that I was
alive, that I was not to blame, that God has made me so that I must
love and live. And now what does he do? If he’d killed me, if he’d
killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven
anything; but, no, he.... How was it I didn’t guess what he would do?
He’s doing just what’s characteristic of his mean character. He’ll keep
himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he’ll drive still lower to
worse ruin yet....”
She recalled the words from the letter. “You can conjecture what awaits
you and your son....” “That’s a threat to take away my child, and most
likely by their stupid law he can. But I know very well why he says it.
He doesn’t believe even in my love for my child, or he despises it
(just as he always used to ridicule it). He despises that feeling in
me, but he knows that I won’t abandon my child, that I can’t abandon my
child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with
him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from
him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He
knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that.”
She recalled another sentence in the letter. “Our life must go on as it
has done in the past....” “That life was miserable enough in the old
days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all
that; he knows that I can’t repent that I breathe, that I love; he
knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to
go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he’s at home and is happy
in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won’t give him that
happiness. I’ll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants
to catch me, come what may. Anything’s better than lying and deceit.”
“But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am?...”
“No; I will break through it, I will break through it!” she cried,
jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to the
writing-table to write him another letter. But at the bottom of her
heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break through
anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of her old
position, however false and dishonorable it might be.
She sat down at the writing-table, but instead of writing she clasped
her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them, burst into tears,
with sobs and heaving breast like a child crying. She was weeping that
her dream of her position being made clear and definite had been
annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that everything would go on in
the old way, and far worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that
the position in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her
of so little consequence in the morning, that this position was
precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange it
for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband and
child to join her lover; that however much she might struggle, she
could not be stronger than herself. She would never know freedom in
love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the menace of
detection hanging over her at every instant; deceiving her husband for
the sake of a shameful connection with a man living apart and away from
her, whose life she could never share. She knew that this was how it
would be, and at the same time it was so awful that she could not even
conceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint, as
children cry when they are punished.
The sound of the footman’s steps forced her to rouse herself, and,
hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.
“The courier asks if there’s an answer,” the footman announced.
“An answer? Yes,” said Anna. “Let him wait. I’ll ring.”
“What can I write?” she thought. “What can I decide upon alone? What do
I know? What do I want? What is there I care for?” Again she felt that
her soul was beginning to be split in two. She was terrified again at
this feeling, and clutched at the first pretext for doing something
which might divert her thoughts from herself. “I ought to see Alexey”
(so she called Vronsky in her thoughts); “no one but he can tell me
what I ought to do. I’ll go to Betsy’s, perhaps I shall see him there,”
she said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him
the day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya’s, he had
said that in that case he should not go either. She went up to the
table, wrote to her husband, “I have received your letter.—A.”; and,
ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.
“We are not going,” she said to Annushka, as she came in.
“Not going at all?”
“No; don’t unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I’m going
to the princess’s.”
“Which dress am I to get ready?”
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