Anna Karenina полностью

‘Yes, very good,’ he said, and as he was totally indifferent to what they thought of him, he began to repeat what he had heard hundreds of times about the singer’s special talent. Countess Bohl pretended to listen. Then, when he had talked enough and fell silent, the colonel, silent up to then, began to speak. The colonel also talked about the opera and the lighting. Finally, having mentioned the planned folle journée^cy13 at Tiurin‘s, the colonel started laughing, got up noisily and left. Levin also got up, but noticed from the countess’s face that it was too early for him to leave. Another couple of minutes were called for. He sat down.

But as he kept thinking how stupid it was, he could find nothing to talk about and remained silent.

‘You’re not going to the public meeting? They say it’s very interesting,’ the countess began.

‘No, I promised my belle-sœur I’d come and fetch her,’ said Levin.

Silence ensued. Mother and daughter exchanged glances once more.

‘Well, I suppose now is the time,’ thought Levin, and he got up. The ladies shook hands with him and asked him to convey mille choses^cz to his wife.

As he held his coat for him, the porter asked:

‘Where are you staying, if you please?’ and wrote it down at once in a big, well-bound book.

‘Of course, it makes no difference to me, but still it’s embarrassing and terribly stupid,’ Levin reflected, comforting himself with the thought that everyone did it; and he drove to the public meeting of the Committee, where he was to find his sister-in-law and take her home with him.

There were many people, including almost the whole of society, at the public meeting of the Committee. Levin managed to catch the summary, which, as everyone said, was very interesting. When the reading of the summary was over, society got together, and Levin met Sviyazhsky, who insisted on inviting him that evening to the Agricultural Society, where a celebrated lecture would be read, and Stepan Arkadyich, who was just back from the races, and many other acquaintances, and Levin talked more and listened to various opinions about the meeting, about the new music, and about a certain trial. But, probably owing to the flagging attention he was beginning to experience, when he talked about the trial he made a blunder, and later he recalled that blunder several times with vexation. Speaking of the impending sentencing of a foreigner who was on trial in Russia, and about how wrong it would be to sentence him to exile abroad,¹⁴ Levin repeated what he had heard the day before from an acquaintance.

‘I think that exiling him abroad is the same as punishing a pike by throwing it into the water,’ Levin said. Only later did he remember that this thought, which he seemed to pass off as his own and had really heard from an acquaintance, came from one of Krylov’s fables,¹⁵ and his acquaintance had repeated it from a newspaper feuilleton.

After taking his sister-in-law home with him, and finding Kitty happy and well, Levin went to the club.

VII

Levin arrived at the club just in time. Guests and members were driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been to the club in a very long while, not since he had lived in Moscow and gone out in society after leaving the university. Though he remembered the club, the external details of its arrangement, he had completely forgotten the impression it used to make on him. But as soon as he drove into the wide, semi-circular courtyard and stepped out of the cab on to the porch, where a porter in a sash soundlessly opened the door for him and bowed; as soon as he saw in the porter’s lodge the galoshes and coats of the members who understood that it was less trouble to take off their galoshes downstairs than to go up in them; as soon as he heard the mysterious bell ringing to announce him, saw the statue on the landing as he went up the low carpeted steps of the stairway, and saw in the doorway above a third familiar though aged porter in club livery, promptly but unhurriedly opening the door while looking the visitor over, he was enveloped by the long-past impression of the club - an impression of restfulness, contentment and propriety.

‘Your hat, please,’ the porter said to Levin, who had forgotten the club rule about leaving hats in the porter’s lodge. ‘It’s a long time since you were here. The prince signed you in yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyich has not arrived yet.’

The porter knew not only Levin but all his connections and family and at once mentioned people close to him.

Going through the first big room with screens and another to the right where there was a fruit buffet, overtaking a slow-walking old man, Levin entered a dining room full of noisy people.