________________________________________________
_ "There it is again! Again I understand it all!" Anna said to
herself, as soon as the carriage had started and swaying lightly,
rumbled over the tiny cobbles of the paved road, and again one
impression followed rapidly upon another.
"Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?" she tried
to recall it. "'Tiutkin, coiffeur?'--no, not that. Yes, of what
Yashvin says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one
thing that holds men together. No, it's a useless journey you're
making," she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach and
four, evidently going for an excursion into the country. "And the
dog you're taking with you will be no help to you. You can't get
away from yourselves." Turning her eyes in the direction Pyotr
had turned to look, she saw a factory-hand almost dead-drunk,
with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. "Come, he's
found a quicker way," she thought. "Count Vronsky and I did not
find that happiness either, though we expected so much from it."
And now for the first time Anna turned that glaring light in
which she was seeing everything on to her relations with him,
which she had hitherto avoided thinking about. "What was it he
sought in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity."
She remembered his words, the expression of his face, that
recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of their
connection. And everything now confirmed this. "Yes, there was
the triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but
the chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now
that's over. There's nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of,
but to be ashamed of. He has taken from me all he could, and now
I am no use to him. He is weary of me and is trying not to be
dishonorable in his behavior to me. He let that out yesterday--he
wants divorce and marriage so as to burn his ships. He loves me,
but how? The zest is gone, as the English say. That fellow wants
every one to admire him and is very much pleased with himself,"
she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk, riding on a riding-
school horse. "Yes, there's not the same flavor about me for him
now. If I go away from him, at the bottom of his heart he will be
glad."
This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in the
piercing light, which revealed to her now the meaning of life and
human relations.
"My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is
waning and waning, and that's why we're drifting apart." She went
on musing. "And there's no help for it. He is everything for me,
and I want him more and more to give himself up to me entirely.
And he wants more and more to get away from me. We walked to meet
each other up to the time of our love, and then we have been
irresistibly drifting in different directions. And there's no
altering that. He tells me I'm insanely jealous, and I have told
myself that I am insanely jealous; but it's not true. I'm not
jealous, but I'm unsatisfied. But . . ." she opened her lips, and
shifted her place in the carriage in the excitement, aroused by
the thought that suddenly struck her. "If I could be anything but
a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his caresses; but
I can't and I don't care to be anything else. And by that desire
I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot
be different. Don't I know that he wouldn't deceive me, that he
has no schemes about Princess Sorokina, that he's not in love
with Kitty, that he won't desert me! I know all that, but it
makes it no better for me. If without loving me, from duty he'll
be good and kind to me, without what I want, that's a thousand
times worse than unkindnessl That's--hell! And that's just how it
is. For a long while now he hasn't loved me. And where love ends,
hate begins. I don't know these streets at all. Hills it seems,
and still houses, and houses ...And in the houses always
people and people ...How many of them, no end, and all hating
each otherl Come, let me try and think what I want, to make me
happy. Well? Suppose I am divorced, and Alexey Alexandrovitch
lets me have Seryozha, and I marry Vronsky." Thinking of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, she at once pictured him with extraordinary
vividness as though he were alive before her, with his mild,
lifeless, dull eyes, the blue veins in his white hands, his
intonations and the cracking of his fingers, and remembering the
feeling which had existed between them, and which was also called
love, she shuddered with loathing. "Well, I'm divorced, and
become Vronsky's wife. Well, will Kitty cease looking at me as
she looked at me to-day? No. And will Seryozha leave off asking
and wondering about my two husbands? And is there any new feeling
I can awaken between Vronsky and me? Is there possible, if not
happiness, some sort of ease from misery? No, not" she answered
now without the slightest hesitation. "Impossible! We are drawn
apart by life, and I make his unhappiness, and he mine, and
there's no altering him or me. Every attempt has been made, the
screw has come unscrewed. Oh, a beggarwoman with a baby. She
thinks I'm sorry for her. Aren't we all flung into the world only
to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each other?
Schoolboys coming--laughing--Seryozha?" she thought. "I thought,
too, that I loved him, and used to be touched by my own
tenderness. But I have lived without him, I gave him up for
another love, and did not regret the exchange till that love was
satisfied." And with loathing she thought of what she meant by
that love. And the clearness with which she saw life now, her own
and all men's, was a pleasure to her. "It's so with me and Pyotr,
and the coachman, Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the people
living along the Volga, where those placards invite one to go,
and everywhere and always," she thought when she had driven under
the low-pitched roof of the Nizhigorod station, and the porters
ran to meet her.
"A ticket to Obiralovka?" said Pyotr.
She had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and only
by a great effort she understood the question.
"Yes," she said, handing him her purse, and taking a little red
bag in her hand, she got out of the carriage.
Making her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room,
she gradually recollected all the details of her position, and
the plans between which she was hesitating. And again at the old
sore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of her
tortured, fearfully throbbing heart. As she sat on the
star-shaped sofa waiting for the train, she gazed with aversion
at the people coming and going (they were all hateful to her),
and thought how she would arrive at the station, would write him
a note, and what she would write to him, and how he was at this
moment complaining to his mother of his position, not
understanding her sufferings, and how she would go into the room,
and what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might
still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and
how fearfully her heart was beating. _
Read next: Part Seven: Chapter 31
Read previous: Part Seven: Chapter 29
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
