ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 16

      IN all the rooms of the country house porters, gardeners, and footmen went about carrying out the things. Cupboards and chests of drawers stood open, twice the nearest shop had been sent to for balls of string. The floor was strewn with newspapers. Two trunks, several bags, and some strapped-up rugs had been taken down to the hall. A closed carriage and two izvoshchiks [one-horse cabs] were waiting at the front porch. Anna, who had forgotten her agitation while she was working, stood at a table in the sitting-room packing her handbag when Annushka drew her attention to the noise of approaching carriage wheels. Anna looked out and saw Karenin’s messenger in the porch ringing the bell.

      ‘Go and see what it is,’ she said, and, calmly prepared for anything, sat down in an easy-chair and folded her hands on her knees. A footman brought her a thick envelope addressed in her husband’s handwriting.

      ‘The messenger has been told to wait for an answer,’ he said.

      ‘All right,’ she replied, and as soon as he had gone she tore open the envelope with trembling fingers.

      A packet of new still unfolded notes in a paper band fell out. She unfolded the letter and read the end first: ‘All necessary preparations shall be made for your return. I beg you will note that I attach importance to this request of mine,’ she read. Having glanced through it, she went back and read it again from the beginning. When she had finished she felt cold, and knew that a more dreadful misfortune had befallen her than she had ever expected.

      She had that morning repented of having told her husband and wished it were possible to unsay her words; and here was a letter treating her words as unsaid and giving her what she had desired; but now the letter appeared more terrible than anything she could have imagined.

      ‘He’s in the right, he’s in the right!’ she muttered; ‘of course he always is in the right, he is a Christian, he is magnanimous! Yes, a mean, horrid man! And no one but I understands or will understand it, and I cannot explain it. They say he’s a religious, moral, honest, and wise man, but they do not see what I have seen. They do not know how for eight years he has been smothering my life, smothering everything that was alive in me, that he never once thought I was a live woman, in need of love. They do not know how at every step he hurt me and remained self-satisfied. Have I not tried, tried with all my might, to find a purpose in my life? Have I not tried to love him, tried to love my son when I could no longer love my husband? But the time came when I understood that I could no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, and cannot be blamed because God made me so, that I want to love and to live. And now? If he killed me — if he had killed him, — I would have borne anything, I would have forgiven anything! But no! He …

      ‘How was it I did not guess what he would do? He will do what is consistent with his low nature. He will be in the right, but as for me who am already disgraced he will disgrace me more and more!

      “You can yourself foresee what awaits you and your son!” ’ — she repeated the words of the letter. ‘That is a threat that he will take my son from me, and probably their stupid laws will permit it. But don’t I know why he said it? He does not believe in my love for my son or he despises it. He always did snigger at it! He despises that feeling of mine, but he knows that I will not give up my son, that I cannot give him up, that without my son I cannot live even with the man I love, — that if I forsook my son I should act like a horrid disreputable woman. He knows that and knows that I have not the power to do it.’

      ‘ “Our life must go on as heretofore” ’ — she recalled another sentence of the letter. ‘That life was painful before, lately it had been dreadful. What will it be now? And he knows it all; knows that I cannot repent of breathing, of loving, knows that nothing but lies and deception can come of this arrangement, but he wants to continue to torture me. I know him; I know that he swims and delights in falsehood as a fish does in water. But no! I will not give him that pleasure, come what will. I will break this web of lies in which he wishes to entangle me. Anything is better than lies and deception!

      ‘But how? Oh God! oh God! Was a woman ever as unhappy as I am? … No, I shall break it off, break it off!’ she exclaimed, jumping up and forcing back her tears. And she went to the table to write him another note, though she knew in the depths of her soul that she would not have the strength to break anything off nor to escape from her former position, however false and dishonest it might be.

      She sat down at her writing-table, but instead of writing she folded her arms on the table and put her head on them, and began to cry, sobbing with her whole bosom heaving, as a child cries.

      She wept because the hopes of clearing up and defining her position were destroyed for ever. She knew beforehand that everything would remain as it was and would be even far worse than before. She felt that, insignificant as it had appeared that morning, the position she held in Society was dear to her, and that she would not have the strength to change it for the degraded position of a woman who had forsaken husband and СКАЧАТЬ