________________________________________________
_ The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying
ill was one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on
the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions
of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the
public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity
transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern
improvement that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned,
honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that
stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry,
supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery,
dark, and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in
a filthy frock coat, and the common dining-room with a dusty
bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and
disorder everywhere, and at the same time the sort of modern
up-to-date self-complacent railway uneasiness of this hotel,
aroused a most painful feeling in Levin after their fresh young
life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the
hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.
As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what
price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one
decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the
inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third
by Princess Astafieva from the country. There remained only one
filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be
empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what he
had expected had come to pass, which was that at the moment of
arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know
how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after
her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted
her to the room assigned them.
"Go, do go!" she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.
He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over
Marya Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared
to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in
Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the
same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little
plumper.
"Well, how is he? how is he?"
"Very bad. He can't get up. He has kept expecting you. He . . .
Are you ...with your wife?"
Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was
confused her, but she immediately enlightened him.
"I'll go away. I'll go down to the kitchen," she brought out.
"Nikolay Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and
knows your lady, and remembers her abroad."
Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what
answer to make.
"Come along, come along to him!" he said.
But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty
peeped out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his
wife, who had put herself and him in such a difficult position;
but Marya Nikolaevna crimsoned still more. She positively shrank
together and flushed to the point of tears, and clutching the
ends of her apron in both hands, twisted them in her red fingers
without knowing what to say and what to do.
For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity
in the eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so
incomprehensible to her; but it lasted only a single instant.
"Well! how is he?" she turned to her husband and then to her.
"But one can't go on talking in the passage like this!" Levin
said, looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that
instant across the corridor, as though about his affairs.
"Well then, come in," said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna,
who had recovered herself, but noticing her husband's face of
dismay, "or go on; go, and then come for me," she said, and went
back into the room.
Levin went to his brother's room. He had not in the least
expected what he saw and felt in his brother's room. He had
expected to find him in the same state of self-deception which he
had heard was so frequent with the consumptive, and which had
struck him so much during his brother's visit in the autumn. He
had expected to find the physical signs of the approach of death
more marked--greater weakness, greater emaciation, but still
almost the same condition of things. He had expected himself to
feel the same distress at the loss of the brother he loved and
the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only in a
greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he
found something utterly different.
In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls
filthy with spittle, and conversation audible through the thin
partition from the next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated
with impurities, on a bedstead moved away from the wall, there
lay covered with a quilt, a body.
One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as
a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the
thin, long bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the
middle. The head lay sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the
scanty locks wet with sweat on the temples and tense,
transparent-looking forehead.
"It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?"
thought Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became
impossible. In spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin
had only to glance at those eager eyes raised at his approach,
only to catch the faint movement of the mouth under the sticky
mustache, to realize the terrible truth that this death-like body
was his living brother.
The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his
brother as he drew near. And immediately this glance established
a living relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt
the reproach in the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his
own happiness.
When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile
was faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the
stern expression of the eyes was unchanged.
"You did not expect to find me like this," he articulated with
effort.
"Yes ...no," said Levin, hesitating over his words. "How was
it you didn't let me know before, that is, at the time of my
wedding? I made inquiries in all directions."
He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what
to say, especially as his brother made no reply, and simply
stared without dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the
inner meaning of each word. Levin told his brother that his wife
had come with him. Nikolay expressed pleasure, but said he was
afraid of frightening her by his condition. A silence followed.
Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and began to say something. Levin
expected something of peculiar gravity and importance from the
expression of his face, but Nikolay began speaking of his health.
He found fault with the doctor, regretting he had not a
celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still hoped.
Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to
escape, if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and
said that he would go and fetch his wife.
"Very well, and I'll tell her to tidy up here. It's dirty and
stinking here, I expect. Marya! clear up the room," the sick man
said with effort. "Oh, and when you've cleared up, go away
yourself," he added, looking inquiringly at his brother.
Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped
short. He had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock
of the emotion he was feeling, he decided that he would try on
the contrary to persuade her not to go in to the sick man. "Why
should she suffer as I am suffering?" he thought.
"Well, how is he?" Kitty asked with a frightened face.
"Oh, it's awful, it's awful! What did you come for?" said Levin.
Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully
at her husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with
both hands.
"Kostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it
together. You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away,"
she said. "You must understand that for me to see you, and not to
see him, is far more painful. There I might be a help to you and
to him. Please, let me!" she besought her husband, as though the
happiness of her life depended on it.
Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and
completely forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went
again in to his brother with Kitty.
Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband,
showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the
sick-room, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the
door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man's
bedside, and going up so that he had not to turn his head, she
immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his
huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft
eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to
women.
"We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden," she said.
"You never thought I was to be your sister?"
"You would not have recognized me?" he said, with a radiant smile
at her entrance.
"Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has
passed that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious."
But the sick man's interest did not last long.
Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his
face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man's envy of
the living.
"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here," she said,
turning away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room.
"We must ask about another room," she said to her husband, "so
that we might be nearer." _
Read next: Book Five: Chapter 18
Read previous: Book Five: Chapter 16
Table of content of Anna Karenina
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
