Anna Karenina полностью

‘Ah, please, let’s not talk about Nilsson! It’s impossible to say anything new about her,’ said a fat, red-faced, fair-haired woman with no eyebrows and no chignon, in an old silk dress. This was Princess Miagky, well known for her simplicity and rudeness of manner, and nicknamed the enfant terrible. Princess Miagky was sitting between the two circles, listening, and participating now in one, now in the other. ‘Today three people have said this same phrase to me about Kaulbach, as if they’d agreed on it. And the phrase - I don’t know why they like it so much.’

The conversation was interrupted by this remark, and they had to invent a new topic.

‘Tell us something amusing but not wicked,’ said the ambassador’s wife, a great expert at graceful conversation, called ‘small talk’ in English, turning to the diplomat, who also had no idea how to begin now.

‘They say that’s very difficult, that only wicked things are funny,’ he began with a smile. ‘But I’ll try. Give me a topic. The whole point lies in the topic. Once the topic is given, it’s easy to embroider on it. I often think that the famous talkers of the last century would now find it difficult to talk intelligently. Everything intelligent is so boring ...’

‘That was said long ago,’ the ambassador’s wife interrupted him, laughing.

The conversation had begun nicely, but precisely because it was much too nice, it stopped again. They had to resort to that sure, never failing remedy - malicious gossip.

‘Don’t you find something Louis Quinze in Tushkevich?’ he said, indicating with his eyes a handsome, fair-haired young man standing by the table.

‘Oh, yes! He’s in the same style as this drawing room, which is why he frequents it so much.’

This conversation sustained itself because they spoke in allusions precisely about something that could not be talked about in that drawing room - that is, the relations between Tushkevich and the hostess.

Meanwhile, by the samovar and the hostess, the conversation, after vacillating for some time among three inevitable topics: the latest social news, the theatre, and the judging of one’s neighbour, also settled as it struck on this last topic — that is, malicious gossip.

‘Have you heard, that Maltishchev woman, too - not the daughter, but the mother — is making herself a diable rose⁹ costume.’

‘It can’t be! No, that’s lovely!’

‘I’m amazed, with her intelligence - for she’s not stupid - how can she not see how ridiculous she is?’

Each had something demeaning and derisive to say about the unfortunate Mme Maltishchev, and the conversation began to crackle merrily, like a blazing bonfire.

The princess Betsy’s husband, a fat good-natured man, a passionate collector of etchings, learning that his wife had guests, stopped in the drawing room before going to his club. He approached Princess Miagky inaudibly over the soft carpet.

‘How did you like Nilsson?’ he said.

‘Ah, how can you sneak up like that! You frightened me so,’ she replied. ‘Please don’t talk to me about opera, you understand nothing about music. Better if I descend to your level and talk about your majolica and etchings. Well, what treasure have you bought recently at the flea market?’

‘Want me to show you? But you know nothing about it.’

‘Show me. I’ve learned from those — what’s their name ... the bankers ... they have excellent etchings. They showed them to us.’

‘So you visited the Schützburgs?’ the hostess asked from her samovar.

‘We did, ma chère. They invited my husband and me for dinner, and I was told that the sauce at that dinner cost a thousand roubles,’ Princess Miagky said loudly, sensing that everyone was listening to her, ‘and it was a most vile sauce - something green. I had to invite them back, and I made a sauce for eighty-five kopecks, and everybody liked it. I can’t make thousand-rouble sauces.’

‘She’s one of a kind!’ said the ambassador’s wife.

‘Amazing!’ someone said.

The effect produced by Princess Miagky’s talk was always the same, and the secret of it consisted in her saying simple things that made sense, even if, as now, they were not quite appropriate. In the society in which she lived, such words produced the impression of a most witty joke. Princess Miagky could not understand why it worked that way, but she knew that it did work, and she took advantage of it.

Since everyone listened to Princess Miagky while she talked and the conversation around the ambassador’s wife ceased, the hostess wanted to unite the company into one, and she addressed the ambassador’s wife:

‘You definitely don’t want tea? You should move over here with us.’

‘No, we are quite all right here,’ the ambassador’s wife replied with a smile and continued the conversation they had begun.

It was a very pleasant conversation. They were denouncing the Karenins, wife and husband.

‘Anna’s changed very much since her trip to Moscow. There’s something strange about her,’ said a friend of hers.