Anna Karenina полностью

It was not without inner struggle that Levin gave her his diary. He knew that there could not and should not be any secrets between them, and therefore he decided that it had to be so: but he did not realize how it might affect her, he did not put himself in her place. Only when he came to them that evening before the theatre, went to her room and saw her tear-stained, pathetic and dear face, miserable from the irremediable grief he had caused her, did he understand the abyss that separated his shameful past from her dove-like purity and feel horrified at what he had done.

‘Take them, take these terrible books!’ she said, pushing away the notebooks that lay before her on the table. ‘Why did you give them to me! ... No, all the same it’s better,’ she added, taking pity on his desperate face. ‘But it’s terrible, terrible!’

He bowed his head and was silent. There was nothing he could say.

‘You won’t forgive me,’ he whispered.

‘No, I’ve forgiven you, but it’s terrible!’

However, his happiness was so great that this confession did not destroy it, but only added a new shade to it. She forgave him; but after that he considered himself still more unworthy of her, bowed still lower before her morally, and valued still more highly his undeserved happiness.

XVII

Involuntarily going over in his memory the impressions of the conversations during and after dinner, Alexei Alexandrovich went back to his lonely hotel room. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about forgiveness produced nothing in him but vexation. The applicability or non-applicability of the Christian rule to his own case was too difficult a question, one about which it was impossible to speak lightly, and this question Alexei Alexandrovich had long ago decided in the negative. Of all that had been said, the words that had sunk deepest into his imagination were those of the stupid, kindly Turovtsyn: ‘Acted like a real man; challenged him to a duel and killed him’. They all obviously sympathized with that, though out of politeness they did not say so.

‘Anyhow, the matter’s settled, there’s no point in thinking about it,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself. And, thinking only of his impending departure and the inspection business, he went into his room and asked the porter who had accompanied him where his valet was; the porter said that the valet had just left. Alexei Alexandrovich asked to have tea served, sat down at the table and, taking up Froom,¹⁶ began working out the itinerary of his trip.

‘Two telegrams,’ said the valet, coming back into the room. ‘Excuse me, your excellency, I just stepped out.’

Alexei Alexandrovich took the telegrams and opened them. The first was the news of Stremov’s appointment to the very post Karenin had desired. Alexei Alexandrovich threw down the dispatch and, turning red, got up and began to pace the room. ‘Quos vult perdere dementat,’^aj he said, meaning by quos those persons who had furthered this appointment. He was not vexed so much by the fact that it was not he who had obtained the post, that he had obviously been passed over; what he found incomprehensible and astonishing was how they could not see that the babbler, the phrase-monger Stremov was less fit for the job than anyone else. How could they not see that they were ruining themselves and their prestige by this appointment!

‘Something else of the same sort,’ he said biliously to himself, opening the second dispatch. The telegram was from his wife. Her signature in blue pencil - ‘Anna’ - was the first thing that struck his eyes. ‘Am dying, beg, implore you come. Will die more peacefully with forgiveness,’ he read. He smiled contemptuously and threw down the telegram. There could be no doubt, it seemed to him in that first moment, that this was a trick and a deception.

‘She wouldn’t stop at any deception. She’s due to give birth. Maybe the illness is childbirth. But what is their goal? To legitimize the child, to compromise me and prevent the divorce,’ he thought. ‘But there’s something it says there - “Am dying ...”’ He reread the telegram; and suddenly the direct meaning of what it said struck him. ‘And what if it’s true?’ he said to himself. ‘If it’s true that in the moment of suffering and near death she sincerely repents and I, taking it for deception, refuse to come? It would not only be cruel - and everybody would condemn me - but it would be stupid on my part.’

‘Pyotr, cancel the coach. I’m going to Petersburg,’ he said to the valet.

Alexei Alexandrovich decided that he would go to Petersburg and see his wife. If her illness was a deception, he would say nothing and go away. If she was really ill and dying, and wished to see him before she died, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and fulfil his final duty if he came too late.

For the whole way he gave no more thought to what he was to do.