Anna Karenina

‘I understand, and I wanted to offer you my services,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, peering into Vronsky’s obviously suffering face. ‘Might you need a letter to Ristich, or to Milan?’⁵

‘Oh, no!’ said Vronsky, as though he had difficulty understanding. ‘If you don’t mind, let’s walk a bit more. It’s so stuffy on the train. A letter? No, thank you. One needs no recommendations in order to die. Unless it’s to the Turks ...’ he said, smiling with his lips only. His eyes kept their expression of angry suffering.

‘Yes, but perhaps it will be easier for you to enter into relations, which are necessary in any case, with someone who has been prepared. However, as you wish. I was very glad to hear of your decision. There are so many attacks on the volunteers that a man like you raises them in public opinion.’

‘As a man,’ said Vronsky, ‘I’m good in that life has no value for me. And I have enough physical energy to hack my way into a square and either crush it or go down - that I know. I’m glad there’s something for which I can give my life, which is not so much needless as hateful to me. It will be useful to somebody.’ And he made an impatient movement with his jaw, caused by an incessant, gnawing toothache, which even prevented him from speaking with the expression he would have liked.

‘You’ll come back to life, I predict it,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, feeling moved. ‘Delivering one’s brothers from the yoke is a goal worthy of both death and life. May God grant you outward success - and inner peace,’ he added and held out his hand.

Vronsky firmly pressed Sergei Ivanovich’s hand.

‘Yes, as a tool I may prove good for something. But as a human being I am a wreck,’ he said measuredly.

The nagging pain in the strong tooth, filling his mouth with saliva, prevented him from speaking. He fell silent, peering into the wheels of a tender rolling slowly and smoothly towards him on the rails.

And suddenly a quite different feeling, not pain but a general, tormenting inner discomfort, made him forget his toothache for a moment. As he looked at the tender and the rails, influenced by the conversation with an acquaintance he had not met since his misfortune, he suddenly remembered her - that is, what was left of her when he came running like a madman into the shed of the railway station: on a table in the shed, sprawled shamelessly among strangers, lay the blood-covered body, still filled with recent life; the intact head with its heavy plaits and hair curling at the temples was thrown back, and on the lovely face with its half-open red lips a strange expression was frozen, pitiful on the lips and terrible in the fixed, unclosed eyes, as if uttering the words of that terrible phrase - that he would regret it - which she had spoken to him when they had quarrelled.

And he tried to remember her as she had been when he first met her, also at a station, mysterious, enchanting, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly vengeful as he remembered her in the last moment. He tried to remember his best moments with her, but those moments were for ever poisoned. He remembered only her triumphant, accomplished threat of totally unnecessary but ineffaceable regret. He ceased to feel the toothache, and sobs distorted his face.

After silently walking past the sacks a couple of times and regaining control of himself, he calmly addressed Sergei Ivanovich:

‘Have you had any telegrams since yesterday’s? Yes, they were beaten for a third time, but tomorrow the decisive battle is expected.’

And having talked more about Milan being proclaimed king and the enormous consequences it might have, they went back to their carriages after the second bell.

VI

As he had not known when he would be able to leave Moscow, Sergei Ivanovich had not telegraphed his brother in order to be met. Levin was not at home when Katavasov and Sergei Ivanovich, dusty as Moors, in a little tarantass hired at the station, drove up to the porch of the Pokrovskoe house at around noon. Kitty, who was sitting on the balcony with her father and sister, recognized her brother-in-law and ran down to meet him.

‘Shame on you for not letting us know,’ she said, giving Sergei Ivanovich her hand and offering her forehead.

‘We had a wonderful ride, and without bothering you,’ replied Sergei Ivanovich. ‘I’m so dusty I’m afraid to touch you. I’ve been so busy I didn’t know when I’d be able to get away. And you, as ever,’ he said, smiling, ‘are enjoying quiet happiness far from all the currents in your quiet backwater. And our friend Fyodor Vassilyevich also finally decided to come.’

‘And I’m no Negro-I’ll wash and look like a human being,’ Katavasov said with his usual jocularity, giving her his hand and smiling, his teeth gleaming especially on account of his black face.

‘Kostya will be very glad. He’s gone out to the farmstead. He ought to be home any time now.’