Anna Karenina полностью

‘I believe it very, very much. I do feel that I would have been friends with him,’ she said, and became frightened at what she had said, turned to look at her husband, and tears came to her eyes.

‘Yes, would have been,’ he said sadly. ‘He’s precisely one of those people of whom they say that they’re not meant for this world.’

‘However, we’ve got many days ahead of us, it’s time for bed,’ said Kitty, looking at her tiny watch.

XX

DEATH

The next day the sick man took communion and was anointed. During the rite, Nikolai Levin prayed fervently. His big eyes, directed at an icon set on a card table covered with a flowery napkin, expressed such passionate entreaty and hope that Levin was terrified to look at them. Levin knew that this passionate entreaty and hope would make it still harder for him to part with life, which he loved so much. Levin knew his brother and the train of his thought; he knew that his unbelief had come not because it was easier for him to live without faith, but because his beliefs had been supplanted step by step by modern scientific explanations of the phenomena of the world, and therefore he knew that his present return was not legitimate, accomplished by way of the same thinking, but was only temporary, self-interested, done in the mad hope of recovery. Levin also knew that Kitty had strengthened that hope by accounts of extraordinary healings she had heard of. Levin knew all that, and it was tormentingly painful for him to look at those pleading eyes filled with hope, that emaciated hand rising with difficulty to make the sign of the cross on the taut skin of the forehead, at the protruding shoulders and the gurgling, empty chest that could no longer contain the life that the sick man was asking for. During the sacrament Levin also prayed and did what he, as an unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God: ‘If You exist, make it so that this man is healed (for that very thing has been repeated many times), and You will save him and me.’

After the anointing the sick man suddenly felt much better. He did not cough even once for a whole hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand, thanking her tearfully, saying that he was well, that there was no pain anywhere and that he felt appetite and strength. He even sat up by himself when soup was brought for him and also asked for a cutlet. Hopeless as he was, obvious as it was from one look at him that he could not recover, during this hour Levin and Kitty shared the same excitement, happy yet fearful of being mistaken.

‘He’s better.’ ‘Yes, much.’ ‘Amazing.’ ‘Not amazing at all.’ ‘He’s better, anyhow,’ they said in a whisper, smiling at each other.

This illusion did not last long. The sick man fell peacefully asleep, but half an hour later was awakened by coughing. And suddenly all hope vanished in those around him and in himself. The actuality of suffering destroyed it without question, along with all memory of former hopes, in Levin, in Kitty and in the sick man himself.

Not even mentioning what he had believed half an hour earlier, as if it were embarrassing even to remember it, he asked to be given iodine for inhalation in a vial covered with perforated paper. Levin handed him the jar, and the same look of passionate hope with which he had been anointed was now directed at his brother, demanding that he confirm the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked miracles.

‘Katia’s not here?’ he croaked, looking around, when Levin had reluctantly repeated the doctor’s words. ‘Well, then I can say it... I performed that comedy for her. She’s so sweet, but it’s impossible for you and me to deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,’ he said, and, clutching the vial with his bony hand, he began breathing over it.

Between seven and eight in the evening Levin and his wife were having tea in their room when Marya Nikolaevna, out of breath, came running to them. She was pale, her lips were trembling.

‘He’s dying!’ she whispered. ‘I’m afraid he’ll die any minute.’

They both ran to him. He had got up and was sitting on the bed, propped on his elbows, his long back bent and his head hanging low.

‘What do you feel?’ Levin asked in a whisper, after some silence.

‘I feel I’m going,’ Nikolai said with difficulty, but with extreme certainty, slowly squeezing the words out. He did not raise his head but only looked upwards, his gaze not reaching his brother’s face. ‘Katia, go away!’ he also said.

Levin jumped up and in a peremptory whisper made her leave.

‘I’m going,’ he said again.

‘Why do you think so?’ said Levin, just to say something.

‘Because I’m going,’ he repeated, as if he liked the expression. ‘It’s the end.’

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

‘Lie down, you’ll feel better,’ she said.

‘I’ll soon lie still,’ he said. ‘Dead,’ he added jeeringly and angrily. ‘Well, lay me down if you like.’