Part One - Chapter 24

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_ "Yes, there is something in be hatful, repulsive," thought Levin,
as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys', and walked in the
direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with
other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had
any pride, I should not have put myslef in such a position." And
he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and
self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in
which he had been that evening. "Yes, she was bound to choose
him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of any one or
anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine whe
would care to join her life to mine? Whom am I and what am I? A
nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody." And he
recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the
thought of him. "Isn't he right that everytthing in the world is
base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother
Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing
him in a forn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But I
know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like
him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner,
and came here." Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his
brother's address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a
sledge. All the long way to his brother's, Levin vividly
recalled all the facts familair to him of his brother Nikolay's
life. He remembered how his brother, while at the university,
and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his
companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious
rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure,
especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken
out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed
into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the
scandal over a boy, howm he had taken from the country to bring
up, and, in a fit of rage, ahd so violently beaten that
proceedings were brought aginst him for unlawfully wounding.
Then he recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he ad lost
money, and given a promissory note, and against whom he had
himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him.
(This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he
remembered how he had spent a night in the lockup for disorderly
conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful proceedings he
had tried to get up against his brother Sergey Ivanovitch,
accusing him of not having paid him his share of his mothers
fortune, and the last scandal. when he had gone to a western
province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble
for assaulting a village elder...It was all horribly disgusting,
yet to Levin ti appeared not at all in the same disgusting light
as it inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolay, did not
know all his story, did not know his heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage,
the period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was
seeking in religion a support and a curb for his passinate
temperament, every one, far from encouraging him, had jeered at
him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him, called
him Noah and Monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped
him, but every one had turned away from thim with horror and
disgust.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his
brother Nikolay, in his sould, in the very deptsh of his soul,
was no more in the wrong thant the people who despised him. He
was not to blame for having been born with his unbridled
temperament and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had
always wanted to be good. "I will tell him everything, without
reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve, too, and I'll
show him that I love him, and so understand him," Levin resolved
to himself, as, towards eleven o'clock, he reached the hotel of
which he had the address.

"At the top, 12 and 13," the porter answered Levin's inquiry.

"At home?"

"Sure to be at home."

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the
streak of light htick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound
of a voice, unknown to Levin; but he knw at once that his brother
was there; he heard his cough.

As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:

"It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's
done."

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker
was a young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian
jerkin, and that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without
collar or cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to
be seen. Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the
thought of the strange company in which his brother spent his
life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his
goloshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was
saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

"Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes," his
brother's voice responded, with a cough. "Masha! get us some
supper and some wine if there's any left; or else go and get
some."

The wonan rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw
Konstantin.

"There's some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievtich," she said.

"Whom do you want?" said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

"It's I," answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the
light.

"Who's I?" Nikolay's voice said again, still more angrily. He
could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against somehting,
and Levin saw, facing him i the doorway, the big, scared eyes,
and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familair,
and yet astonishing in it weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin
Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his
hands and big bones seemed huger htan ever. His hair had grown
thinner, the same traight mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes
gazed strangely and naively at his visitor.

"Ah, Kostya!" he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and
his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at
the young man, and gave the vervous jerk of his head and neck
that Konstantin knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a
quite different expressiion, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested
on his emaciated fact.

"I wrote to you nad Sergey Ivanovitch botyh that I don't know you
and don't want to know you. What is it you want?"

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him.
The worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all
relation with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin
Levin when he thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and
especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it
all.

"I didn't want to see you for anythng," he answered timidly.
"I've simply come to see you."

His brother's timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips
twitched.

"Oh, so that's it?" he said. "Well, come in; sit down. Like
some supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No. stop a minute.
Do you know who this is?" he said, addressing his brither, and
indicating the gentleman in the jerkin: "This is Mr. Kritsky, my
friend from Kiev, a very remarkable man. He's persecuted by the
police, of course, because he's not a scoundrel."

And he looked round in the way he always did at every one in the
room. Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving
to go, he shouted to her, "Wait a minute, I said." And with the
inability to express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin
knew so well, he began, with another look round at every one, to
tell his brother Kritsky's story: how he had been expelled from
the university for starting a benefit society for the poor
students and Sunday schools; and how he had afterwards been a
teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been driven out of
that too, and had afterwards been condemned for something.

"You're of the Kiev university?" said Konstantin Levin to
Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.

"Yes, I was of Kiev," Kritsky replied angrily, his face
darkening.

"And this woman," Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her,
"is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of
a bad house," and he jerked his neck saying this; "but I love her
and respect her, and any one who wants to know me," he added,
raising his voice and knitting his brows, "I beg to love her and
respec her. She's just the same as my wife, just the same. So
now you know whom you've to to do with. And if you think you're
lowering ourself, well, here's the foor, there's the door."

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

"Why I should be lowering myself, I don't understand."

"Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits
and wine...No, wait a minute...No, it doesn't matter...Go along." _

Read next: Part One: Chapter 25

Read previous: Part One: Chapter 23

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