‘Ah, it was excruciating!’ said Liza Merkalov. ‘We all went to my house after the races. And it was all the same people, all the same! All one and the same thing. We spent the whole evening lolling on the sofa. What’s gay about that? No, how do you manage not to be bored?’ She again turned to Anna. ‘One looks at you and sees - here is a woman who can be happy or unhappy, but not bored. Tell me, how do you do it?’
‘I don’t do anything,’ said Anna, blushing at these importunate questions.
‘That’s the best way,’ Stremov mixed in the conversation.
Stremov was a man of about fifty, half grey, still fresh, very ugly, but with an expressive and intelligent face. Liza Merkalov was his wife’s niece, and he spent all his free time with her. Meeting Anna Karenina, he, who was Alexei Alexandrovich’s enemy in the service, being an intelligent man of the world, tried to be especially amiable to her, his enemy’s wife.
‘Don’t do anything,’ he repeated with a subtle smile, ‘that’s the best way. I’ve long been telling you,’ he turned to Liza Merkalov, ‘that to keep things from being boring, you mustn’t think they’ll be boring. Just as you mustn’t be afraid you won’t fall asleep if you fear insomnia. And Anna Arkadyevna is telling you the same thing.’
‘I’d be very glad if I had said that, because it’s not only intelligent, but also true,’ Anna said, smiling.
‘No, tell me, why is it impossible to fall asleep and impossible not to be bored?’
‘To fall asleep you must work, and to be gay you also must work.’
‘But why should I work, if nobody needs my work? And I cannot and do not want to pretend on purpose.’
‘You’re incorrigible,’ said Stremov without looking at her, and again he turned to Anna.
As he met Anna rarely, he could say nothing but banalities, but he uttered these banalities about when she was moving back to Petersburg, about how Countess Lydia Ivanovna loved her, with an expression which showed that he wished with all his heart to be agreeable to her and show his respect and even more.
Tushkevich came in, announcing that the whole company was waiting for the croquet players.
‘No, please don’t leave,’ begged Liza Merkalov, learning that Anna was leaving. Stremov joined her.
‘It’s too great a contrast,’ he said, ‘to go to old Vrede after this company. And besides you’ll give her an occasion for malicious gossip, while here you’ll call up only other, very good, feelings, the opposite of malicious gossip.’
Anna reflected hesitantly for a moment. The flattering talk of this intelligent man, the naïve, childlike sympathy that Liza Merkalov showed for her, and this whole accustomed social situation was so easy, while what awaited her was so difficult, that for a moment she was undecided whether she might not stay, whether she might not put off the painful moment of explanation a little longer. But, remembering what awaited her at home alone if she took no decision, remembering that gesture, which was terrible for her even in remembrance, when she had clutched her hair with both hands, she said good-bye and left.
XIX
Vronsky, despite his seemingly frivolous social life, was a man who hated disorder. While young, still in the corps, he had experienced the humiliation of refusal when, having got entangled, he had asked for a loan, and since then he had never put himself into such a position.
To keep his affairs in order at all times, he would go into seclusion more or less frequently, some five times a year, depending on the circumstances, and clear up all his affairs. He called it squaring accounts or
Waking up late the day after the races, Vronsky put on his uniform jacket without shaving or bathing and, laying out money, bills and letters on the table, set to work. When Petritsky, who knew that in such situations he was usually cross, woke up and saw his friend at the writing desk, he quietly got dressed and went out without bothering him.
Every man, knowing to the smallest detail all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of comprehending them are only his personal, accidental peculiarity, and never thinks that others are surrounded by the same complexity as he is. So it seemed to Vronsky. And he thought, not without inner pride and not groundlessly, that anyone else would long ago have become entangled and been forced to act badly if he had found himself in such difficult circumstances. Yet he felt that to avoid getting entangled he had to do the accounts and clear up his situation there and then.
