【有声英语文学名著】安娜卡列宁娜（90）

 NINETY

 
 
Chapter 16
 
 
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KOZNYSHEV, an experienced dialectician, did not rejoin but immediately turned the conversation into another region.
 
‘Well, if you want to gauge the national spirit arithmetically, of course that is very difficult to do! Voting has not been introduced in our country, and cannot be because it does not express the people’s will, but there are other means. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. Not to mention the undercurrents that have stirred in the motionless sea of the nation and which are evident to every unprejudiced person. Look at Society in the narrower sense! The most divergent parties in the intellectual world, previously so hostile to one another, have all merged into one. All differences are at an end, and all the social organs say one and the same thing, all have felt an elemental force that has seized them and carries them all in one direction.’
 
‘Yes, all the papers say the same thing,’ said the Prince, ‘that’s true. So much the same that they are just like frogs before a storm! They prevent our hearing anything else!’
 
‘Frogs or no frogs . . . I don’t publish a newspaper and don’t want to defend them, but I am speaking of the unanimity of the intelligent world,’ said Koznyshev, turning to his brother. Levin was going to reply, but the old Prince interrupted him.
 
‘About that unanimity, something else can be said,’ rejoined the Prince. ‘There’s my son-in-law, Stephen Arkadyevich, you know him. He has now got the post of Member of the Committee of a Commission of something or other — I don’t remember. Anyhow, there is nothing to do there. Well, Dolly, it’s no secret! and the salary is eight thousand. You just ask him if his work will be any use, and he will prove to you that it is most necessary! And he is a truthful man, but one can’t help believing in the usefulness of eight thousand roubles.’
 
‘Yes, he asked me to tell Darya Alexandrovna that he has got the post,’ said Koznyshev discontentedly, considering that what the Prince was saying was not to the point.
 
‘So it is with the unanimity of the Press. It has been explained to me: as soon as there is a war their revenue is doubled. How can they help considering that the fate of the people and the Slavs — and all the rest of it?’
 
‘There are many papers I don’t like, but that is unfair,’ said Koznyshev.
 
‘I would make only one stipulation,’ continued the Prince. ‘Alphonse Karr put it very well, before the war with Prussia. “You think war unavoidable? Very well! He who preaches war — off with him in a special legion to the assault, to the attack, in front of everybody else!” ’
 
‘The editors would be fine!’ remarked Katavasov, laughing loudly, and picturing to himself the editors of his acquaintance in that chosen legion.
 
‘Oh, but they’d run away,’ said Dolly, ‘and only be a hindrance.’
 
‘And if they run, put grapeshot behind them, or Cossacks with whips!’ said the Prince.
 
‘That is a joke, and excuse me, Prince, not a good joke,’ said Koznyshev.
 
‘I don’t see that it is a joke, that . . .’ began Levin, but Koznyshev interrupted him.
 
‘Every member of Society is called upon to do his proper task,’ he said. ‘And men of thought perform theirs by expressing public opinion. The unanimous and complete expression of public opinion is a service rendered by the Press, and is also a gratifying phenomenon. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we hear the voice of the Russian people, who are ready to arise as one man and to sacrifice themselves for their oppressed brethren. That is a great step and a sign of power!’
 
‘But it’s not a question of sacrificing themselves only, but of killing Turks,’ remarked Levin timidly. ‘The people sacrifice and are ready to sacrifice for the good of their souls, but not for murder,’ he added, involuntarily connecting the conversation with the thoughts that so engrossed him.
 
‘What is that: “for their souls”? You know that expression is a puzzling one for a naturalist. What is a soul?’ Katavasov inquired with a smile.
 
‘Oh, you know!’
 
‘No, I swear I have not the slightest idea!’ said Katavasov, laughing loudly.
 
‘ “I come not to bring peace, but a sword,” said Christ,’ rejoined Koznyshev, from his own standpoint, quoting quite simply, as if it were quite comprehensible, the very passage from the Gospels that always perplexed Levin more than any other.
 
‘That’s just so!’ repeated the old man, who was standing near by, answering a glance that was accidentally thrown at him.
 
‘No, my dear sir! You are beaten! Completely beaten!’ shouted Katavasov merrily.
 
Levin flushed with annoyance, not at being beaten, but because he had not refrained from the dispute.
 
‘No, I must not dispute with them,’ he thought. ‘They are clad in impenetrable armour, and I am naked.’
 
He saw that it was not possible to convince his brother and Katavasov, and still less did he see any possibility of himself agreeing with them. What they advocated was that same pride of intellect that had nearly ruined him. He could not agree that some dozen of men, among whom was his brother, had the right to assert, on the strength of what they were told by some hundreds of grandiloquent Volunteers who came to the city, that they and the newspapers expressed the will and the opinion of the people: an opinion, moreover, which found expression in vengeance and murder. He could not agree with this, because he neither saw the expression of those thoughts in the people among whom he lived, nor did he find any such thoughts in himself (and he could not consider himself as other than one of those who constituted the Russian people). Above all, he could not agree because he, together with the people, did not know and could not know wherein lay the general welfare, but knew definitely that the attainment of this welfare was only possible by a strict fulfilment of the law of goodness which is revealed to every man, and therefore could not desire or preach war for any kind of general aims. He said the same as Mikhaylich and the people who expressed their thought in the legend of the invitation to the Varyags [the Norse chiefs who, at the dawn of Russian history, were invited by the Slav tribes of Russia to come and rule over them and establish order]: ‘Come and rule over us! We joyfully promise complete obedience. All labours, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves; but we will not judge or decide!’ But the people now, according to his brother, were renouncing that exemption they had purchased at so high a price.
 
He wanted to ask why, if public opinion is an infallible judge, is a Revolution and a Commune not as lawful as the movement in favour of the Slavs? But all these were thoughts that could not decide anything. One thing could be seen indubitably, namely, that this dispute was irritating his brother at the moment, and that therefore it was wrong to continue it, so Levin ceased to argue, and drew his visitors’ attention to the clouds that were gathering and to the fact that they had better get home before the rain began.
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter 17
 
 
 
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THE Prince and Koznyshev got into the trap and drove off; the rest of the party, hastening their steps, went home on foot.
 
But the cloud, now whiter now blacker, approached so rapidly that it was necessary to hurry still more to reach home before the rain came. The fore part of the cloud, low and black like sooty smoke rushed with unusual swiftness across the sky. When they were still about two hundred paces from the house the wind had already risen, so that at any moment a downpour might be expected.
 
The children, with frightened and joyful yells, ran on in front. Dolly, struggling with difficulty with the skirts that clung to her legs, no longer walked but ran, her eyes fixed on the children. The men, holding their hats, went on with long strides. They were just reaching the porch when a large drop broke against the edge of the iron gutter. The children, followed by the grown-ups, ran, talking merrily, under the shelter of the roof.
 
‘And Catherine Alexandrovna [Kitty]?’ Levin asked Agatha Mikhaylovna, who, carrying shawls and plaids, met them in the hall.
 
‘We thought she was with you,’ she answered.
 
‘And Mitya?’
 
‘In Kolok, I expect, and Nurse is with them.’
 
Levin snatched up the plaids and rushed to the Kolok.
 
In that short time the centre of the cloud had already so moved over the sun that it was as dark as during an eclipse. The wind obstinately, as if insisting on having its way, pushed Levin back and, tearing the leaves and blossoms off the lime trees and rudely and strangely uncovering the white branches of birches, bent everything in one direction: the acacias, the flowers, the dock leaves, the grass, and the crests of the trees. The girls who had been working in the garden rushed screeching under the roof of the servants’ quarters. A white curtain of pouring rain was already descending over the distant wood and half the neighbouring field, and was advancing rapidly toward the Kolok. The moisture of the rain, shattered into minute drops, filled the air.
 
Lowering his head and fighting against the wind which was tearing the plaids out of his hands, Levin had almost reached the Kolok and could see something gleaming white behind an oak, when suddenly everything burst into flame, the earth seemed on fire, and just overhead the vault of heaven seemed to crack.
 
When he opened his dazzled eyes the first thing Levin saw with horror through the dense curtain of rain that now separated him from the Kolok was the strangely altered position of the green crown of a familiar oak in the middle of the wood. ‘Has it been struck?’ he had barely time to think when, with quicker and quicker motion, the crown of the oak disappeared behind the other trees, and he heard the crash of a big tree falling on to other trees.
 
The flash of lightning, the sound of thunder, and the sudden cold sensation of his body that was being drenched, merged for Levin into one feeling of horror.
 
‘Oh God! Oh God! only not on them!’ he said.
 
And though it occurred to him at once how senseless was his prayer that they should not be killed by the oak that had already fallen, he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing better than utter that senseless prayer.
 
Having run to the spot where they generally went, he did not find them there.
 
They were at the other end of the wood, under an old lime tree, and were calling him. Two figures in dark dresses (they had been light-coloured before) stood bending over something. They were Kitty and the nurse. The rain was already passing and it was growing lighter when Levin reached them. The bottom of the nurse’s dress was dry, but Kitty’s dress was wet through and clung close to her. Though the rain had stopped, they were still standing in the same postures that they had adopted when the storm began: they stood leaning over a perambulator with a green hood.
 
‘Alive? Safe? Thank God!’ he muttered, running up to them and splashing through the puddles with one shoe half off and full of water.
 
Kitty’s wet and rosy face was turned to him, timidly smiling beneath her bedraggled hat.
 
‘Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I don’t understand how one can be so imprudent!’ he reproached his wife in his vexation.
 
‘Really, it was not my fault. I was just wishing to go when he became restless. We had to change his things. We had hardly . . .’ Kitty began excusing herself.
 
Mitya was safe and dry and slept undisturbed.
 
‘Well, thank God! I don’t know what I am saying!’
 
They collected the wet baby-things, and the nurse took the baby in her arms and carried him. Levin walked beside his wife, feeling guilty at having been vexed, and stealthily, so that the nurse should not see, pressing Kitty’s hand.
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter 18
 
 
 
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THROUGHOUT the whole day, amid most varied conversations in which he took part only with what one may call the external side of his mind, Levin, despite his disillusionment with the change that should have taken place in him, did not cease to be joyfully aware of the fullness of his heart.
 
After the rain it was too wet to go out walking, besides which the thunder-clouds had not cleared from the horizon, and, now here now there, passed thundering and darkening along the borders of the sky. So the whole company spent the rest of the day at home.
 
No more disputes arose; on the contrary, after dinner every one was in the best of spirits.
 
First Katavasov amused the ladies with his original jokes, which on first acquaintance with him always pleased people, and afterwards, encouraged by Koznyshev, he recounted his very interesting observations on the differences in character, and even in physiognomy, between male and female house-flies and on their life. Koznyshev too was in good spirits and at tea, led on by his brother, expounded his views of the future of the Eastern question, and did it so simply and well that every one listened attentively.
 
Only Kitty could not hear him to the end, she was called away to bath Mitya.
 
A few minutes after she had gone, Levin too was called to her in the nursery.
 
Leaving his tea and regretting the interruption in the interesting conversation, yet uneasy as to why he was sent for, as this only happened on important occasions, Levin went to the nursery.
 
Though Koznyshev’s plan, which Levin had not heard to the end — of how a liberated Slavonic world, forty millions strong, should, together with Russia, commence a new epoch in history — interested him very much as something quite new to him, and though he was disturbed by curiosity and anxiety as to why he had been summoned, yet as soon as he had left the drawing-room and was alone, he immediately recollected his thoughts of the morning. And all these considerations of the importance of the Slavonic element in universal history seemed to him so insignificant in comparison with what was going on in his soul, that he immediately forgot them all and returned to the frame of mind he had been in that morning.
 
He did not now recall, as he had done before, the whole course of his thoughts (he did not now need to). He at once returned to the feeling that directed him, which was related to those thoughts, and he found that feeling in his soul yet more powerful and definite than before. Now it was not as it used to be with him when he had invented ways of tranquillizing himself and had been obliged to recapitulate the whole train of reflections in order to arrive at the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feelings of joy and tranquillity were more vivid than before and his thoughts could not keep pace with them.
 
He went through the verandah and looked at two stars that had appeared on the already darkening sky, and suddenly he remembered: ‘Yes, as I looked at the sky I thought that the vault I see is not a delusion, but then there was something I did not think out, something I hid from myself,’ he thought. ‘But whatever it was, it cannot have been a refutation. I need only think it over, and all will become clear.’
 
Just as he was entering the nursery he remembered what it was he had hidden from himself. It was that if the principal proof of the existence of a Deity is His revelation of what is good, why is that revelation confined to the Christian Church alone? What relation to that revelation had the Buddhist and the Mahomedan faiths, which also teach and do good?
 
It seemed to him that he had a reply to that question; but he had no time to express it to himself before he entered the nursery.
 
Kitty was standing, with her sleeves rolled up, beside the bath in which the baby was splashing about, and hearing her husband’s step she turned her face toward him, beckoning him with a smile. With one hand supporting the head of the plump kicking baby who floated on his back, with the other she squeezed the water from a sponge over him, regularly exerting the muscles of her arm.
 
‘There, come and look! Look!’ she said when her husband came up. ‘Agatha Mikhaylovna was right. He does recognize!’
 
The point was that Mitya had that day obviously and undoubtedly begun to recognize his own people.
 
Directly Levin approached the bath he was shown an experiment which succeeded perfectly. The cook, who had been called specially for the purpose, bent over him. He frowned and moved his head from side to side in a protesting way. Kitty bent over him, and his face lit up with a smile, he pressed his hand into the sponge and bubbled with his lips, producing such a contented and peculiar sound that not only Kitty and the nurse, but Levin too, went into unexpected raptures.
 
The nurse lifted the baby out of the bath with one hand and poured fresh water over him, then he was wrapped up and dried, and after a penetrating yell he was given to his mother.
 
‘Well, I am glad you are beginning to be fond of him,’ said Kitty to her husband, when with the child at her breast she had sat down in her usual place. ‘I am very glad, for I was beginning to be grieved about it. You said you felt nothing for him.’
 
‘No, did I say I felt nothing? I only said I was disillusioned.’
 
‘What! Disillusioned with him?’
 
‘Not so much with him as with my own feeling; I had expected more. I had expected that, like a surprise, a new, pleasant feeling would awaken in me. And then, instead of that, nothing but repulsion and pity . . .’
 
She listened attentively, replacing on her slender fingers, across the baby, the rings she had taken off to bath Mitya.
 
‘And above all, the anxiety and pity were far greater than the pleasure. But to-day, after that fright during the storm, I have realized how much I love him.’
 
Kitty brightened up with a smile.
 
‘Were you very frightened?’ she asked. ‘I was too, but to me it appears more dreadful now that it is past. I shall go and look at that oak. But how nice Katavasov is! And in general the whole day has been so pleasant! And you are so nice to your brother when you like. . . . Well, go to them. It is always hot and steamy here after the bath.’
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter 19
 
 
 
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WHEN on leaving the nursery Levin was alone, he at once remembered the thought that had not seemed quite clear.
 
Instead of going back to the drawing-room, whence came the sound of voices, he stopped on the verandah and leaning on the balustrade gazed at the sky.
 
It had grown quite dark, and to the south, where he was looking, the sky was clear. The clouds were in the opposite direction. There lightning flashed and distant thunder rolled. Levin listened to the rhythmical dripping of raindrops from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at a familiar triangular constellation and at the Milky Way which with its branches intersected it. At every flash of lightning not only the Milky Way but even the bright stars vanished; but immediately afterwards they reappeared in the same places, as if thrown there by some unerring hand.
 
‘Well, what is perplexing to me?’ Levin asked himself, feeling in advance that the solution of his doubts, though as yet unknown to him, was already in his soul.
 
‘Yes, the one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Deity is the law of goodness disclosed to men by revelation, which I feel within myself and in the confession of which I do not so much unite myself as I am united, whether I will or not, with other people in one community of believers which is called the Church. But the Jews, Mahomedans, Confucians, Buddhists — what of them?’ he questioned, putting to himself the query that seemed to him dangerous. ‘Is it possible that those hundreds of millions of people are deprived of that highest blessing, without which life has no meaning?’ he pondered, but he immediately corrected himself. ‘But what am I asking about?’ he said to himself. ‘I am asking about the relation to the Deity of all the different beliefs of mankind. I am asking about the general revelation of God to the whole universe with all those cloudy nebulae. What am I doing? To me personally, to my heart, has been indubitably revealed a knowledge unattainable by reasoning, and I obstinately wish to express that knowledge by reason and in words.
 
‘Do I not know that it is not the stars that are moving?’ he asked himself, looking at a bright planet that had already shifted its position by the top branch of a birch tree. ‘But I, watching the movement of the stars, cannot picture to myself the rotation of the earth and I am right in saying that the stars move.
 
‘And could the astronomers understand and calculate anything if they took into their calculation the whole of the complicated and varied motions of the earth? All their wonderful conclusions as to the distances, weights, movements, and disturbances of the heavenly bodies are based on their visible movement round a stationary earth — on this very movement that is now before me, and which has been the same to millions of people during the centuries, and that has been and will be the same and can always be verified. And just as astronomers’ conclusions would be idle and uncertain were they not based on observations of the visible sky in relation to one meridian and one horizon, so would my conclusions be idle and uncertain were they not founded on that understanding of goodness which was and will be the same always and for every one, and which has been revealed to me by Christianity and can always be verified in my soul. The question of other creeds and their relation to the Deity I have not the right or possibility of deciding.’
 
‘Oh, you’ve not gone?’ suddenly asked Kitty, who was passing that way to the drawing-room. ‘Nothing has upset you, has it?’ she inquired, peering attentively into his face by the starlight.
 
But she would not have been able to discern its expression had not a flash of lightning that effaced the stars lit it up. By the light of that flash she saw the whole of his face and, noticing that he was calm and happy, she smiled at him.
 
‘She understands,’ thought he, ‘she knows what I am thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I will . . .’ But just as he was going to speak, she began:
 
‘Oh, Kostya! Be good and go to the corner room and see how they have arranged things for Sergius Ivanich! I can’t very well do it myself. Have they put in the new washstand?’
 
‘Yes, certainly I will,’ said Levin, standing upright and kissing her.
 
‘No, I had better not tell her,’ he thought when she had passed out before him. ‘It is a secret, necessary and important for me alone, and inexpressible in words.
 
‘This new feeling has not changed me, has not rendered me happy, nor suddenly illuminated me as I dreamt it would, but is just like my feeling for my son. It has not been a surprise either. But be it faith or not — I do not know what it is — this feeling has also entered imperceptibly through suffering and is firmly rooted in my soul.
 
‘I shall still get angry with Ivan the coachman in the same way, shall dispute in the same way, shall inopportunely express my thoughts; there will still be a wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people; even my wife I shall still blame for my own fears and shall repent of it. My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.’
 
 
THE END