【有声英语文学名著】安娜卡列宁娜（56）

 FIFTY-SIX

 
‘I am very glad I have persuaded him to receive Extreme Unction to-morrow,’ she said as she sat in her dressing-jacket before her folding-glass and combed her soft fragrant 1 hair with a small comb. ‘I have never been present, but Mama told me that there are prayers for the restoration of health . . .’
 
‘Do you really think he can recover?’ he asked, looking at the back of her round little head, at the narrow parting which closed every time she drew the comb forward.
 
‘I asked the doctor. He says he can’t live more than three days. But how can they know? Still, I am very glad I persuaded him,’ she said, turning her eyes toward her husband from behind her hair. ‘Everything is possible,’ she added with the peculiar 2, and rather cunning expression which always appeared on her face when she spoke 3 of religious matters.
 
Since their talk about religion during their engagement neither he nor she had ever started a conversation on that subject; but she continued to observe the rites 4, went to church, and prayed, always with the same quiet conviction that it was necessary to do so. In spite of his assurances to the contrary she was persuaded that he was a Christian 5, like, and even better than, herself, and that all he said about it was one of his funny male whims 6, like his sayings about her embroidery 7: that good people darn holes, while she cut holes on purpose . . . and so on.
 
‘Yes, you see that woman Mary Nikolavna could not arrange all that,’ said Levin. ‘I . . . I must confess I am very glad you came. You are purity itself, and . . .’ He took her hand and did not kiss it (to do so with death so near seemed to him unbecoming), but only pressed it, looking guiltily into her brightening eyes.
 
‘It would have been so painful for you alone,’ she said, and raising her arms high so that they hid her cheeks, now flushed with pleasure, she twisted her braided hair and pinned it up at the back of her head.
 
‘No,’ she continued, ‘she did not know how to . . . Luckily I learnt a good deal in Soden.’
 
‘Can there have been such sick people there?’
 
‘Oh, worse.’
 
‘It is so terrible to me that I cannot help seeing him as he was when young. . . . You would not believe what a charming lad he was, and I did not understand him then.’
 
‘I quite believe it, quite. I feel that we should have been friends, he and I . . .’ she said, and, frightened at her own words, she glanced at her husband, and tears filled her eyes.
 
‘Yes, would have been,’ he said sadly. ‘He is really one of those of whom it is said, they are not for this world.’
 
‘However, we have hard days before us — let us go to bed,’ said Kitty with a glance at her tiny watch.
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter 20
 
 
 
—>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<—
 
 
 
DEATH
 
NEXT day the patient received Communion and Extreme Unction. During the ceremony he prayed fervently. In his large eyes, fixed upon an icon which had been placed on a little table covered with a coloured cloth, was a look of such passionate entreaty and hope that Levin was frightened at seeing it. He knew that this passionate entreaty and hope would only make the parting from the life he so loved more difficult. Levin knew his brother and the direction of his thoughts, knew that he had become a sceptic not because it was easier for him to live without faith, but because step by step modern scientific explanations of the phenomena of the universe had driven out his faith; he knew therefore that this return to the old faith was not legitimate, not a similar result of thought, but was only a temporary, selfish and irrational hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened that hope by tales of extraordinary recoveries of which she had heard. Knowing all this, Levin suffered much as he saw that look full of entreaty and hope, that emaciated hand lifted with effort, in making the sign of the cross, to touch the drawn skin of the forehead, the protruding shoulder-blades and the hollow hoarse chest which could no longer contain that life for which the invalid was praying. During the sacrament Levin did that which, agnostic though he was, he had done a thousand times before. He said, addressing himself to God, ‘If Thou dost exist, heal this man (such things have often happened), and Thou wilt save both him and me!’
 
After receiving Extreme Unction the invalid suddenly felt better. He did not cough once for a whole hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand, thanking her with tears in his eyes, and said he felt well, had no pain, but had an appetite and felt stronger. He even sat up when they brought him some soup, and asked for a cutlet too. Hopeless as his case was, obvious as it was that he could not recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of excitement, happy yet timid and fearful of being mistaken.
 
‘Better? — Yes, much better. — Wonderful! — It is not at all wonderful. — Still, he’s better!’ they said in whispers, smiling at one another. But this illusion did not last long. The invalid fell quietly asleep, but awoke half an hour later with a fit of coughing, and immediately every hope fled from those around him and from himself. The reality of his sufferings destroyed it, leaving no trace nor even any recollection of the former hopes, in Levin, Kitty, or the patient himself.
 
Not referring to what he had believed half an hour previously, as though he were ashamed to remember it, Nicholas told them to give him a bottle of iodine covered with perforated paper for inhaling. Levin handed it to him, and at once the look of passionate hope with which the invalid had received Extreme Unction was fixed on his brother, demanding from him a confirmation of the doctor’s words to the effect that inhaling iodine worked miracles.
 
‘Kitty is not here?’ he asked hoarsely, glancing round when Levin had reluctantly confirmed the doctor’s statement.
 
‘No? Then I can tell you . . . It’s for her sake I went through that comedy — she is such a dear! But you and I cannot deceive ourselves like that! Now, in this I do believe,’ he said, clutching the bottle with his bony hand and beginning to inhale from it.
 
Between seven and eight o’clock that evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in their room when Mary Nikolavna rushed in breathless. ‘He is dying!’ she whispered. ‘I’m afraid he’ll die immediately.’
 
Both ran to his room. He was sitting up with his long back bent, leaning his elbows on the bed and hanging his head.
 
‘What do you feel?’ asked Levin in a whisper, after a pause.
 
‘I feel I am departing,’ uttered Nicholas with an effort, but very distinctly, as if he were pressing the words out of his body. He did not lift his head but only turned up his eyes, failing to reach his brother’s face. ‘Kate, go away,’ he added.
 
Levin jumped up and in a commanding whisper told her to leave the room.
 
‘Departing!’ Nicholas repeated.
 
‘Why do you think that?’ asked Levin, in order to say something.
 
‘Because I am departing,’ he repeated, as if that word pleased him. ‘It’s the end.’
 
Mary Nikolavna approached.
 
‘You had better lie down, you would feel easier,’ she said.
 
‘I’ll soon be lying,’ he said softly. ‘Dead!’ he added cynically and angrily. ‘Well, lay me down if you like.’
 
Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and holding his breath gazed at his face. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but at intervals the muscles of his forehead worked as if he were thinking deeply and intently. Levin involuntarily meditated upon what was taking place within his brother at that moment, but, in spite of all the efforts of his mind to follow, he saw by the expression of that calm stern face and the play of the muscles above one eyebrow that something was becoming clear to the dying man which for Levin remained as dark as ever.
 
‘Yes, yes! That’s so!’ Slowly pausing between words, the dying man murmured, ‘Wait a bit.’ He was silent again. ‘That’s so!’ he drawled in a tone of relief as if he had found a solution. ‘Oh God!’ he muttered with a heavy sigh.
 
Mary Nikolavna felt his feet. ‘Growing cold,’ she whispered.
 
For a long, a very long, time as it seemed to Levin the invalid lay motionless, but he still lived and at long intervals sighed. Levin was already wearied by the mental strain. He felt that despite all his mental efforts he could not understand what was ‘so’ and was already lagging far behind his dying brother. He was no longer able to reflect on the actual problem of death, and could not hinder thoughts about what he would soon have to do: to close his brother’s eyes, dress him, order a coffin. And strange to say he felt quite cold, and experienced neither joy nor grief nor a sense of loss, still less of pity, for his brother. If he had any feeling left for him it was more like envy of that knowledge which the dying man now possessed and which he might not share.
 
For a long time he sat leaning over Nicholas, waiting for the end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin rose to stop her, but at that moment he heard the dying man move.
 
‘Don’t go,’ said Nicholas, and stretched out his hand. Levin gave him his hand, signing angrily with the other to his wife.
 
With his brother’s hand in his, Levin sat half an hour, then an hour, and yet another hour. He now no longer thought about death at all. He was wondering what Kitty was doing, who lived in the next room, and whether the doctor had a house of his own. He wished to eat and sleep. Carefully disengaging his hand he felt his brother’s feet. They were cold, but he was still breathing. Levin tried to go out on tiptoe, but the invalid moved again and said, ‘Don’t go. . . .’
 
Day began to dawn, but the sick man’s condition remained the same. Levin gently disengaged his hand, and without looking at his brother went to his own room and fell asleep. When he woke, instead of the news he expected, that his brother was dead, he heard that his former condition had returned. He again sat up, coughed, ate and talked, no longer of death, expressed hopes of recovery, and was even more irritable and depressed than before. No one, neither his brother nor Kitty, could comfort him. He was angry with every one, said disagreeable things, blamed everybody for his sufferings, and demanded that they should fetch a celebrated doctor from Moscow. To all questions of how he felt, he gave the same answer, with an angry and reproachful look: ‘I am suffering terribly, intolerably!’
 
The sick man suffered more and more, especially from bedsores which would no longer heal, and he grew more and more irritable with those about him, particularly because they did not bring the doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried to help him and comfort him in every possible way, but it was all in vain, and Levin saw that she herself was worn out physically and mentally, though she would not admit it. That consciousness of death which had been evoked in them all by his farewell to life on the night he had sent for his brother was destroyed. Every one knew he would soon and inevitably die, that he was already half dead. Every one wished that he would die quickly, and they all, concealing that feeling, brought him bottles of medicine, went to fetch medicines and doctors, and deceived him and themselves and one another. It was all a lie: a repulsive, insulting, blasphemous lie; and as a result of his character, and because he loved the dying man more than the others did, Levin felt that lie most painfully.
 
Levin, who had long wished to reconcile his brothers, even if only at the moment of death, had written to Sergius Ivanich, and having received his answer read it to Nicholas. Sergius Ivanich wrote that he could not come personally, but, in touching words, asked his brother’s pardon. The invalid made no comment.
 
‘What am I to write to him?’ asked Levin. ‘I hope you are not angry with him?’
 
‘No, not at all,’ answered Nicholas, vexed at the question. ‘Tell him to send me a doctor.’
 
Another three days of torture went by. The sick man was still in the same condition. Every one who saw him now desired his death: the waiters in the hotel, the proprietor, all the other visitors there, the doctor, Mary Nikolavna, Levin, and Kitty. Only the invalid himself did not show that desire, but on the contrary was angry because the doctor had not been fetched, and he continued taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when opium made him forget his incessant sufferings for a moment, did he sometimes when half asleep express what was stronger in his soul than in any of the others’: ‘Oh, if only it were over!’ or ‘When will this end!’
 
His sufferings, regularly increasing, did their work of preparing him for death. There was no position that did not cause him pain; no moments of forgetfulness; no part of his body that did not hurt and torment him. Even the memories, impressions, and thoughts within his body now aroused in him the same sort of repulsion as the body itself. The sight of other persons, their words, his own recollections, gave him nothing but pain. Those about him felt this, and unconsciously did not permit themselves either to move freely, talk, or express their own wishes in his presence. His life was quite swallowed up in a consciousness of suffering and a desire to be released from it.
 
It was clear the change was taking place within him which would bring him to regard death as a fulfilment of his desires, as happiness. Formerly every separate desire caused by suffering or privation, such as hunger or thirst, was relieved by some bodily action which brought enjoyment; but now privation and suffering were not followed by relief, but the attempt to obtain relief occasioned fresh suffering. Therefore all his desires were merged into one: a desire to be released from all this pain and from its source — his body. He had no words to express his desire for this liberation, and therefore did not speak of it; but went on from habit demanding satisfaction of those wishes that could be fulfilled. ‘Turn me on the other side,’ he said, and immediately afterwards asked to be put back as he had been. ‘Give me some beef tea . . . take it away. . . . Tell me something! Why don’t you speak?’ Then as soon as they began to talk he shut his eyes and expressed weariness, indifference, and disgust.
 
On the tenth day after their arrival in that town Kitty fell ill. She had a headache, was sick, and could not leave her bed all the morning.
 
The doctor explained her illness as the result of fatigue and agitation, and ordered mental tranquillity.
 
After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as usual to the sick man, taking her embroidery. Nicholas looked at her sternly when she entered, and smiled contemptuously when she said she had been ill. That day he continually blew his nose and moaned piteously.
 
‘How do you feel?’ she asked him.
 
‘Worse,’ he answered with an effort. ‘It hurts!’
 
‘Where does it hurt?’
 
‘Everywhere.’
 
‘To-day it will end, you’ll see,’ said Mary Nikolavna in a whisper, but so that the invalid, whose senses were very acute, was, as Levin saw, sure to hear her. Levin said ‘Hush!’ and turned to look at his brother. Nicholas had heard, but the words had no effect on him; his look remained reproachful and strained.
 
‘Why do you think so?’ Levin asked, when she had followed him into the corridor.
 
‘He has begun to clutch at himself,’ replied Mary Nikolavna.
 
‘Clutch? How?’
 
‘Like this,’ she said, pulling at the folds of her stuff dress. And Levin noticed that all day long the sick man really kept catching at himself as if wishing to pull something off.
 
Mary Nikolavna’s prophecy was fulfilled. Toward night the patient could no longer raise his hands, and only gazed straight before him without changing the attentive concentrated expression of his eyes. Even when his brother or Kitty bent over him so that he could see them, he did not look at them. Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayers for the dying. While the priest read, the dying man showed no sign of life: his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Mary Nikolavna stood by the bedside. The prayers were not yet ended when the dying man stretched himself, sighed and opened his eyes. Having finished the prayer, the priest touched the cold forehead with his cross which he then wrapped in his stole, and after standing in silence another two minutes, touched the enormous bloodless hand, which was growing cold.
 
‘He has passed away,’ said the priest and turned to go; but suddenly the clammy moustache of the dying man moved and from the depth of his chest through the stillness came his voice, sharp and distinct:
 
‘Not quite! . . . Soon.’
 
A moment later his face brightened, a smile appeared under the moustache, and the women who had gathered round him began zealously to lay out the body.
 
The sight of his brother and the proximity of death renewed in Levin’s soul that feeling of horror at the inscrutability, nearness, and inevitability of death which had seized him on that autumn evening when his brother had arrived in the country. That feeling was now stronger even than before; he felt even less able than before to understand the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared yet more terrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife’s presence, that feeling did not drive him to despair; in spite of death, he felt the necessity of living and loving. He felt that love had saved him from despair, and that love under the menace of despair grew still stronger and purer.
 
Scarcely had the unexplained mystery of death been enacted before his eyes when another mystery just as inexplicable presented itself, calling to love and life.
 
The doctor confirmed their supposition about Kitty. Her illness was pregnancy.