Anna Karenina (Annotated Maude Translation). Leo Tolstoy

      Chapter 9

      ANNA walked in with bowed head, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face shone with a vivid glow, but it was not a joyous glow — it resembled the terrible glow of a conflagration on a dark night. On seeing her husband she lifted her head and, as if awakening from sleep, smiled.

      ‘You’re not in bed? What a wonder!’ she said, throwing off her hood, and without pausing she went on to her dressing-room. ‘Alexis Alexandrovich, it’s high time!’ she added from beyond the door.

      ‘Anna, I must have a talk with you.’

      ‘With me?’ she said with surprise, coming back from the other room and looking at him. ‘What is it? What about?’ she asked, seating herself. ‘Well, let us have a talk, if it is so important. But it would be better to go to bed.’

      Anna said what came into her head, and hearing her own words was astonished at her capacity for deception. How simple and natural her words sounded, and how really it seemed as if she were merely sleepy! She felt herself clothed in an impenetrable armour of lies and that some unseen power was helping and supporting her.

      ‘Anna, I must warn you,’ said he.

      ‘Warn me?’ she asked; ‘what about?’

      She looked so naturally and gaily at him, that one who did not know her as her husband did could not have noticed anything strange in the intonation or the meaning of her words. But for him, who knew her — knew that when he went to bed five minutes late she noticed it and asked the reason — knew that she had always immediately told him all her joys, pleasures and sorrows — for him, her reluctance to notice his state of mind, or to say a word about herself, meant much. He saw that the depths of her soul, till now always open, were closed to him. More than that, he knew from her tone that she was not ashamed of this, but seemed to be saying frankly: ‘Yes, it is closed, and so it should be and will be in future.’ He now felt like a man who on coming home finds his house locked against him. ‘But perhaps the key can still be found,’ thought Karenin.

      ‘I wish to warn you,’ he said in low tones, ‘that you may, by indiscretion and carelessness, give the world occasion to talk about you. Your too animated conversation tonight with Count Vronsky’ (he pronounced the name firmly and with quiet deliberation) ‘attracted attention.’

      As he spoke he looked at her laughing eyes, terrible to him now in their impenetrability, and felt the uselessness and idleness of his words.

      ‘You are always like that,’ she replied, as if not understanding him at all, and intentionally taking notice only of his last words. ‘One day you dislike my being dull, another day my being happy. I was not dull. Does that offend you?’

      Karenin started and bent his hands to crack his fingers.

      ‘Oh, please don’t crack your fingers! I dislike it so!’ she said.

      ‘Anna, is this you?’ said he softly, making an effort and refraining from moving his hands.

      ‘But whatever is the matter?’ she asked in a tone of comical surprise and sincerity. ‘What do you want of me?’

      Karenin paused and rubbed his forehead and eyes. He felt that instead of doing what he had meant to do and warning his wife that she was making a mistake in the eyes of the world, he was involuntarily getting excited about a matter which concerned her conscience, and was struggling against some barrier of his imagination.

      ‘This is what I intended to say,’ he continued coldly and calmly, ‘and I ask you to listen to me. As you know, I consider jealousy an insulting and degrading feeling and will never allow myself to be guided by it; but there are certain laws of propriety which one cannot disregard with impunity. I did not notice it this evening, but, judging by the impression created, all present noticed that you behaved and acted not quite as was desirable.’

      ‘Really, I don’t understand at all,’ said Anna, shrugging her shoulders. ‘It is all the same to him!’ she said to herself. ‘But Society noticed, and that disturbs him!’ ‘You are not well, Alexis Alexandrovich!’ she added, rose and was about to pass out of the room, but he moved forward as if wishing to stop her.

      His face looked plainer and gloomier than she had ever yet seen it. Anna stopped and, throwing back her head and bending it to one side, she began with her quick hands to take out her hairpins.

      ‘Well, I’m listening! What next?’ said she quietly and mockingly. ‘I am even listening with interest, because I should like to understand what it is all about.’

      As she spoke she wondered at her quietly natural tone and at her correct choice of words.

      ‘I have not the right to inquire into all the details of your feelings, and in general I consider it useless and even harmful to do so,’ began Karenin. ‘By digging into our souls, we often dig up what might better have remained there unnoticed. Your feelings concern your own conscience, but it is my duty to you, to myself and to God, to point out to you your duties. Our lives are bound together not by men but by God. This bond can only be broken by a crime, and that kind of crime brings its punishment.’

      ‘I don’t understand anything… . Oh dear! And as ill-luck will have it, I am dreadfully sleepy!’ said she, while with deft fingers she felt for the remaining pins in her hair.

      ‘Anna, for God’s sake don’t talk like that!’ he said mildly. ‘Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me that what I am saying I say equally for my own sake and for yours. I am your husband, and I love you.’

      For an instant her head had drooped and the mocking spark in her eyes had died away, but the word ‘love’ aroused her again. ‘Love!’ she thought, ‘as if he can love! If he had never heard people talk of love, he would never have wanted that word. He does not know what love is.’

      ‘Alexis Alexandrovich, I really do not understand,’ she replied. ‘Explain what you consider …’

      ‘Allow me to finish. I love you. But I am not talking of myself. The chief persons concerned are our son and yourself. I repeat — perhaps my words may seem quite superfluous to you; perhaps they result from a mistake of mine. In that case I ask your pardon! But if you feel that there are any grounds, however slight, I beg you to reflect, and if your heart prompts you to tell me …’

      Karenin did not notice that he was saying something quite different from what he had prepared.

      ‘I have nothing to say. Besides …’ she added, rapidly, and hardly repressing a smile, ‘it really is bedtime.’

      Karenin sighed, and without saying anything more went into the bedroom.

      When she went there he was already in bed. His lips were sternly compressed and his eyes did not look at her. Anna got into her bed, and every moment expected that he would address her. She was afraid of what he would say, and yet wished to hear it. But he remained silent. She lay waiting and motionless for a long time, and then forgot him. She was thinking of another; she saw him, and felt her heart fill with excitement and guilty joy at the thought. Suddenly she heard an even, quiet, nasal sound like whistling. For a moment the sound he emitted seemed to have startled Karenin, and he stopped; but, after he had breathed twice, the whistling recommenced with fresh and calm regularity.

      ‘It’s late, it’s late,’ she whispered to herself, and smiled. For a long time she lay still with wide-open eyes, the brightness