Anna Karenina

Levin listened no more and waited until the professor left.

VIII

When the professor had gone, Sergei Ivanovich turned to his brother.

‘Very glad you’ve come. Staying long? How’s the farming?’

Levin knew that his older brother had little interest in farming and that he asked about it only as a concession to him, and therefore he answered only about the sales of wheat and about money.

Levin wanted to tell his brother of his intention to marry and to ask his advice; he was even firmly resolved on it. But when he saw his brother, listened to his conversation with the professor, and then heard the inadvertently patronizing tone with which his brother asked him about farm matters (their mother’s estate had not been divided, and Levin was in charge of both parts), for some reason he felt unable to begin talking with his brother about his decision to marry. He felt that his brother would not look upon it as he would have wished.

‘Well, how are things with your zemstvo?’ asked Sergei Ivanovich, who was very interested in the zemstvo and ascribed great significance to it.

‘I don’t really know ...’

‘How’s that? Aren’t you a member of the board?’

‘No, I’m no longer a member. I resigned,’ replied Konstantin Levin, ‘and I don’t go to the meetings any more.’

‘Too bad!’ said Sergei Ivanovich, frowning.

Levin, to vindicate himself, began to describe what went on at the meetings in his district.

‘But it’s always like that!’ Sergei Ivanovich interrupted. ‘We Russians are always like that. Maybe it’s a good feature of ours - the ability to see our own failings - but we overdo it, we take comfort in irony, which always comes readily to our tongues. I’ll tell you only that if they gave some other European nation the same rights as in our zemstvo institutions - the Germans or the English would have worked their way to freedom with them, while we just laugh.’

‘But what to do?’ Levin said guiltily. ‘This was my last attempt. And I put my whole soul into it. I can’t. I’m incapable.’

‘Not incapable,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, ‘but you don’t have the right view of the matter.’

‘Maybe,’ Levin replied glumly.

‘You know, brother Nikolai is here again.’

Brother Nikolai was Konstantin Levin’s older brother and Sergei Ivanovich’s half-brother, a ruined man, who had squandered the greater part of his fortune, moved in very strange and bad society, and had quarrelled with his brothers.

‘What did you say?’ Levin cried out with horror. ‘How do you know?’

‘Prokofy saw him in the street.’

‘Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?’ Levin got up from his chair, as though he were about to leave at once.

‘I’m sorry I told you,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head at his brother’s agitation. ‘I sent to find out where he’s living, and returned him his promissory note to Trubin, which I paid. Here’s how he answered me.’

And Sergei Ivanovich handed his brother a note from under a paper-weight.

Levin read what was written in that strange, so familiar handwriting: ‘I humbly beg you to leave me alone. That is the one thing I ask of my gentle little brothers. Nikolai Levin.’

Levin read it and, not raising his head, stood before Sergei Ivanovich with the note in his hand.

His soul was struggling between the desire to forget just then about his unfortunate brother, and the consciousness that to do so would be wrong.

‘He obviously wants to insult me,’ Sergei Ivanovich went on, ‘but insult me he cannot, and I wish with all my heart that I could help him, yet I know it’s impossible.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Levin repeated. ‘I understand and appreciate your attitude towards him; but I will go and see him.’

‘Go if you like, but I don’t advise it,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘That is, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not afraid of it, he won’t make us quarrel with each other; but for your own sake, I advise you not to go. You can’t help. However, do as you please.’

‘Maybe I can’t help, but I feel, especially at this moment - though that’s another matter - 1 feel I can’t be at peace.’

‘Well, that I don’t understand,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘I understand only one thing,’ he added, ‘that it’s a lesson in humility. I’ve begun to take a different and more lenient view of what’s known as baseness since brother Nikolai became what he is ... You know what he’s done ...’

‘Ah, it’s terrible, terrible!’ Levin repeated.

Having obtained his brother’s address from Sergei Ivanovich’s footman, Levin wanted to go to him at once, but, on reflection, decided to postpone his visit till evening. First of all, to be at peace with himself, he had to resolve the matter that had brought him to Moscow. From his brother’s Levin went to Oblonsky’s office and, learning about the Shcherbatskys, went where he was told he could find Kitty.

IX

At four o‘clock, feeling his heart pounding, Levin got out of a cab at the Zoological Garden and walked down the path towards the sledging hills and the skating rink, knowing for certain that he would find her there, because he had seen the Shcherbatskys’ carriage at the entrance.