Anna Karenina полностью

Stepan Arkadyich loved dining, but still more he loved giving a dinner, not a big dinner, but a refined one as to the food, the drinks and the selection of guests. The programme for today’s dinner was very much to his liking: there would be live perch, asparagus and la pièce de résistance - a superb but simple roast beef - and the appropriate wines. So much for the food and drink. And as guests there would be Kitty and Levin, and, to make it less conspicuous, another girl cousin and the young Shcherbatsky, and la pièce de résistance among the guests - Sergei Koznyshev and Alexei Alexandrovich - Muscovite philosopher and Petersburg politician. And he would also invite the well-known eccentric and enthusiast Pestsov, a liberal, a talker, a musician, a historian, and the dearest fifty-year-old boy, who would be like the gravy or garnish for Koznyshev and Karenin. He would rile them up and set them on each other.

The second instalment of the merchant’s money for the wood had been received and was not yet all spent, Dolly had been very sweet and kind lately, and the thought of the dinner gladdened Stepan Arkadyich in all respects. He was in the merriest state of mind. There were two slightly unpleasant circumstances, but they both drowned in the sea of good-natured merriment that surged in his soul. These two circumstances were: first, that yesterday, when he met Alexei Alexandrovich in the street, he noticed that he was dry and stern with him, and, putting together the look on Alexei Alexandrovich’s face, plus the fact that he had not called on them and had not let them know he was there, with the talk he had heard about Anna and Vronsky, Stepan Arkadyich guessed that something was wrong between the husband and wife.

That was one unpleasantness. The other slight unpleasantness was that his new superior, like all new superiors, already had the reputation of being a terrible man, who got up at six o‘clock in the morning, worked like a horse, and demanded that his subordinates work in the same way. Besides, this new superior was also reputed to have the manners of a bear and, according to rumour, was a man of the completely opposite tendency from that to which the former superior had adhered and to which, till then, Stepan Arkadyich himself had also adhered. The day before, Stepan Arkadyich had come to work in his uniform and the new superior had been very amiable and had got to talking with him as with an acquaintance. Therefore Stepan Arkadyich felt obliged to call on him in a frock coat.⁵ The thought that the new superior might not take it well was that second unpleasant circumstance. But Stepan Arkadyich felt instinctively that it would all shape up beautifully. ‘They’re human, they’re people, just like us sinners: why get angry and quarrel?’ he thought, going into the hotel.

‘Greetings, Vassily,’ he said, walking down the corridor with his hat cocked and addressing a servant he knew. ‘So you’re letting your side-whiskers grow? Levin’s in number seven, eh? Take me there, please. And find out whether Count Anichkin’ (that was the new superior) ‘will receive me.’

‘Very well, sir,’ Vassily replied, smiling. ‘You haven’t been here for a long time.’

‘I was here yesterday, only I used a different entrance. Is this number seven?’

Levin was standing in the middle of the room with a muzhik from Tver measuring a fresh bear-skin with a yardstick when Stepan Arkadyich came in.

‘Ah, you shot it?’ Stepan Arkadyich cried. ‘A fine thing! A she-bear? Hello, Arkhip.’

He shook hands with the muzhik and sat down on a chair without taking off his coat and hat.

‘But do take it off and stay a while,’ said Levin, taking his hat off him.

‘No, I have no time, I’ll stay for one little second,’ Stepan Arkadyich replied. He threw his coat open, but then took it off and sat for a whole hour talking with Levin about hunting and the most heartfelt subjects.

‘Well, kindly tell me, what did you do abroad? Where did you go?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, when the muzhik left.

‘I was in Germany, in Prussia, in France, in England - not in the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns - and saw many new things. I’m glad I went.’

‘Yes, I know your idea about setting up the workers.’

‘Not at all: there can be no workers problem in Russia. In Russia there’s a problem of the relation of working people to the land. It exists there, too, but there it’s the repairing of something damaged, while here ...’

Stepan Arkadyich listened attentively to Levin.

‘Yes, yes!’ he said. ‘It’s very possible that you’re right,’ he observed. ‘But I’m glad you’re in cheerful spirits - hunting bear, and working, and getting enthusiastic. Shcherbatsky told me he met you and that you were in some sort of despondency, kept talking about death ...’