ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 20

      THE whole of that day Anna remained at home, that is at the Oblonskys’ house, and did not receive anybody, although several of her acquaintances who had heard of her arrival came to see her. She spent the earlier part of the day with Dolly and the children, and sent a note to her brother to be sure and come home to dinner. ‘Come,’ she wrote. ‘God is merciful.’

      Oblonsky dined at home, the conversation was general, and his wife addressed him familiarly in the second person singular, which she had not done all these days. There was still the same estrangement in their manner to each other, but no longer any question of separating, and Oblonsky saw that explanation and reconciliation were possible.

      Immediately after dinner Kitty came. She knew Anna, but only slightly, and came to her sister’s not without fear of how she might be received by this Petersburg Society woman whom everybody admired so much. But she noticed at once that Anna liked her. It was evident that her beauty and youth gave Anna pleasure, and before Kitty had time to regain her self-possession she felt not only that she was under Anna’s influence but that she was in love with her, as young girls often are with married women older than themselves. Anna was not like a Society woman or the mother of an eight-year-old son. The flexibility of her figure, her freshness, and the natural animation of her face appearing now in her smile, now in her eyes, would have made her look more like a girl of twenty had it not been for a serious and sometimes even sad expression in her eyes which struck Kitty and attracted her. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly unaffected and was not trying to conceal anything, but that she lived in another, higher world full of complex poetic interests beyond Kitty’s reach.

      After dinner, when Dolly had gone to her own room, Anna got up quickly and went to her brother who was just lighting a cigar.

      ‘Stiva,’ she said to him with a merry twinkle in her eye and making the sign of the cross over him as she indicated the door with a look. ‘Go, and may God help you.’ He understood, threw down his cigar, and disappeared through the door.

      When Oblonsky had gone, she returned to the sofa where she had been sitting surrounded by the children. Whether because they saw that ‘Mama’ was fond of this aunt, or because they themselves felt her peculiar charm, first the two older children and then the younger ones, as is often the way with children, had even before dinner begun clinging to her, and now would not leave her side. And they started something like a game which consisted in trying to get as close to her as possible, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss her, play with her ring, or at least touch the frills of her dress.

      ‘Now how were we sitting before?’ said Anna, resuming her seat.

      And Grisha again pushed his head under her arm and leaning against her dress beamed with pride and joy.

      ‘And when is the ball to be?’ said Anna, turning to Kitty.

      ‘Next week, and it will be a delightful ball. One of those balls which are always jolly.’

      ‘Are there any that are always jolly?’ asked Anna with tender irony.

      ‘It is strange, but there are! It’s always jolly at the Bobrishchevs’ and also at the Nikitins’, while it’s always dull at the Meshkovs’. Haven’t you noticed it?’

      ‘No, my dear, there are no more jolly balls for me,’ said Anna, and Kitty saw in her eyes that peculiar world which was not yet revealed to her. ‘There are some that are not as difficult and dull as the rest.’

      ‘How can you be dull at a ball?’

      ‘Why cannot I be dull at a ball?’ asked Anna.

      Kitty saw that Anna knew the answer that would follow.

      ‘Because you must always be the belle of the ball.’

      Anna had a capacity for blushing. She blushed and answered, ‘In the first place, I never am: but even if I were, what use would it be to me?’

      ‘Will you go to that ball?’ asked Kitty.

      ‘I suppose I shall have to. Here take this,’ she said, turning to Tanya who was drawing off a ring which fitted loosely on her aunt’s small tapering finger.

      ‘I shall be very glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a ball.’

      ‘Well, then, if I have to go, I shall console myself with the reflection that it will give you pleasure… . Grisha, please don’t pull so hard, it is all in a tangle already,’ she said, arranging a loose lock of hair with which Grisha was playing.

      ‘I imagine you at that ball in lilac!’

      ‘Why must it be lilac?’ asked Anna half laughing. ‘Now, children, run away, run away. Don’t you hear? There’s Miss Hull calling you to tea,’ she went on, disengaging herself from the children and dispatching them to the dining-room. ‘But I know why you are asking me to go to that ball. You’re expecting much from it, and would like everybody to be there and have a share in it.’

      ‘How do you know? Well, yes!’

      ‘Oh yes, it is good to be your age,’ Anna continued. ‘I remember and know that blue mist, like the mist on the Swiss mountains … that mist which envelops everything at that blissful time when childhood is just, just coming to an end, and its immense, blissful circle turns into an ever-narrowing path, and you enter the defile gladly yet with dread, though it seems bright and beautiful… . Who has not passed through it?’

      Kitty smiled and remained silent. ‘How did she pass through it? How I should like to know her story!’ thought she, recollecting the unpoetic appearance of Anna’s husband Alexis Karenin.

      ‘I know something — Stiva told me and I congratulate you. I like him very much,’ Anna continued. ‘I met Vronsky at the railway station.’

      ‘Oh, was he there?’ asked Kitty, blushing. СКАЧАТЬ