Anna Karenina

Stepan Arkadyich was on familiar terms with almost all his acquaintances : with old men of sixty and with boys of twenty, with actors, ministers, merchants and imperial adjutants, so that a great many of those who were his intimates occupied opposite ends of the social ladder and would have been very surprised to learn they had something in common through Oblonsky. He was on familiar terms with everyone with whom he drank champagne, and he drank champagne with everyone ; therefore when, in the presence of his subordinates, he met his ‘disreputable familiars’, as he jokingly called many of his friends, he was able, with his peculiar tact, to lessen the unpleasantness of the impression for his subordinates. Levin was not a disreputable familiar, but Oblonsky sensed that Levin was thinking he might not want to show his closeness to him in front of his staff, and therefore hastened to take him to his office.

Levin was almost the same age as Oblonsky and was his familiar not only in the champagne line. Levin had been the comrade and friend of his early youth. They loved each other, in spite of the difference in their characters and tastes, as friends love each other who become close in early youth. But in spite of that, as often happens between people who have chosen different ways, each of them, while rationally justifying the other’s activity, despised it in his heart. To each of them it seemed that the life he led was the only real life, and the one his friend led was a mere illusion. Oblonsky could not repress a slightly mocking smile at the sight of Levin. So many times he had seen him come to Moscow from the country, where he did something or other, though Stepan Arkadyich could never understand precisely what, nor did it interest him. Levin always came to Moscow agitated, hurried, a little uneasy, and annoyed at this uneasiness, and most often with a completely new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyich laughed at this and loved it. In just the same way, at heart Levin despised both his friend’s city style of life and his job, which he regarded as trifling, and he laughed at it all. But the difference was that Oblonsky, while doing as everyone else did, laughed confidently and good-naturedly, whereas Levin laughed unconfidently and sometimes crossly.

‘We’ve long been expecting you,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, going into his office and releasing Levin’s arm, as if to show that the dangers were past. ‘I’m very, very glad to see you,’ he went on. ‘Well, how are you doing? When did you arrive?’

Levin was silent, glancing at the unfamiliar faces of Oblonsky’s two colleagues and especially at the elegant Grinevich’s hands, with such long white fingers, such long yellow nails curving at the tips, and such huge glittering cuff links on his sleeves, that these hands clearly absorbed all his attention and did not allow him any freedom of thought. Oblonsky noticed it at once and smiled.

‘Ah, yes, let me introduce you,’ he said. ‘My colleagues: Filipp Ivanych Nikitin, Mikhail Stanislavich Grinevich,’ and turning to Levin: ‘A zemstvo activist,¹⁰ a new zemstvo man, a gymnast, lifts a hundred and fifty pounds with one hand, a cattle-breeder and hunter, and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, the brother of Sergei Ivanych Koznyshev.’

‘Very pleased,’ said the little old man.

‘I have the honour of knowing your brother, Sergei Ivanych,’ said Grinevich, proffering his slender hand with its long nails.

Levin frowned, shook the hand coldly, and turned at once to Oblonsky. Though he had great respect for his maternal half-brother, a writer known to all Russia, nevertheless he could not stand being addressed as the brother of the famous Koznyshev rather than as Konstantin Levin.

‘No, I’m no longer a zemstvo activist. I’ve quarrelled with them all and no longer go to the meetings,’ he said, addressing Oblonsky.

‘That was quick!’ Oblonsky said with a smile. ‘But how? why?’

‘A long story. I’ll tell you some day,’ said Levin, but he began telling it at once. ‘Well, to make it short, I became convinced that there is not and cannot be any zemstvo activity.’ He spoke as if someone had just offended him. ‘On the one hand, it’s just a plaything, they play at parliament, and I’m neither young enough nor old enough to amuse myself with playthings. And on the other ...’ (he faltered) ‘hand, it’s a way for the district coterie to make a little money. Before there were custodies, courts, but now it’s the zemstvo ... not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned salaries.’ He spoke as hotly as if someone there had argued against his opinion.¹¹

‘Oho! I see you’re in a new phase again, a conservative one,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘However, of that later.’

‘Yes, later. But I had to see you,’ Levin said, looking with hatred at Grinevich’s hand.

Stepan Arkadyich smiled almost imperceptibly.

‘Didn’t you say you’d never put on European clothes again?’ he said, looking over his new clothes, obviously from a French tailor. ‘So! I see - a new phase.’