Anna Karenina
5 of 1759
beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his
feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for
his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him
by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he had
done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his
hand, without getting up, towards the place where his
dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And
thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not
sleeping in his wife’s room, but in his study, and why: the
smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.
‘Ah, ah, ah! Oo! ’ he muttered, recalling everything
that had happened. And again every detail of his quarrel
with his wife was present to his imagination, all the
hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his own fault.
‘Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me.
And the most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—
all my fault, though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of
the whole situation,’ he reflected. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ he kept
repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful
sensations caused him by this quarrel.
Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on
coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with
a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his
wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found
Anna Karenina
6 of 1759
her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom
with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her
hand.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over
household details, and limited in her ideas, as he
considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her
hand, looking at him with an expression of horror,
despair, and indignation.
‘What’s this? this?’ she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so
often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself
as at the way in which he had met his wife’s words.
There happened to him at that instant what does
happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in
something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in
adapting his face to the position in which he was placed
towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of
being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging
forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—
anything would have been better than what he did do—
his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—
utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored,
and therefore idiotic smile.
Anna Karenina
7 of 1759
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself.
Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at
physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a
flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since
then she had refused to see her husband.
‘It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,’ thought
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?’ he said to
himself in despair, and found no answer.
Anna Karenina
8 of 1759
Chapter 2
Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations
with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and
persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He
could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a
handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love
with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead
children, and only a year younger than himself. All he
repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding
it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position
and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself.
Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better
from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of
them would have had such an effect on her. He had never
clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely
conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him
of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact.
He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no
longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable
or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense
of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out
quite the other way.
Anna Karenina
9 of 1759
‘Oh, it’s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!’ Stepan
Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could
think of nothing to be done. ‘And how well things were
going up till now! how well we got on! She was
contented and happy in her children; I never interfered
with her in anything; I let her manage the children and
the house just as she liked. It’s true it’s bad HER having
been a governess in our house. That’s bad! There’s
something common, vulgar, in flirting with one’s
governess. But what a governess!’ (He vividly recalled the
roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) ‘But
after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand.
And the worst of it all is that she’s already it seems as if
ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be
done?’
There was no solution, but that universal solution
which life gives to all questions, even the most complex
and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs
of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in
sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could
not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-
women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily
life.
Anna Karenina
10 of 1759
‘Then we shall see,’ Stepan Arkadyevitch said to
himself, and getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown
lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing
a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he walked
to the window with his usual confident step, turning out
his feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up
the blind and rang the bell loudly. It was at once answered
by the appearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvey,
carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was
followed by the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.
‘Are there any papers form the office?’ asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at
the looking-glass.
‘On the table,’ replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring
sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added
with a sly smile, ‘They’ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.’
Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced
at Matvey in the looking-glass. In the glance, in which
their eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they
understood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes
asked: ‘Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?’
Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out
one leg, and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint
smile, at his master.
Anna Karenina
11 of 1759
‘I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to
trouble you or themselves for nothing,’ he said. He had
obviously prepared the sentence beforehand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a
joke and attract attention to himself. Tearing open the
telegram, he read it through, guessing at the words,
misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face
brightened.
‘Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here
tomorrow,’ he said, checking for a minute the sleek,
plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink path through his
long, curly whiskers.
‘Thank God!’ said Matvey, showing by this response
that he, like his master, realized the significance of this
arrival—that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister he was so
fond of, might bring about a reconciliation between
husband and wife.
‘Alone, or with her husband?’ inquired Matvey.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber
was at work on his upper lip, and he raised one finger.
Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.
‘Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?’
‘Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.’
Anna Karenina
12 of 1759
‘Darya Alexandrovna?’ Matvey repeated, as though in
doubt.
‘Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to
her, and then do what she tells you.’
‘You want to try it on,’ Matvey understood, but he
only said, ‘Yes sir.’
Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed
and ready to be dressed, when Matvey, stepping
deliberately in his creaky boots, came back into the room
with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.
‘Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is
going away. Let him do—that is you—as he likes,’ he said,
laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in his
pockets, he watched his master with his head on one side.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a good-
humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his
handsome face.
‘Eh, Matvey?’ he said, shaking his head.
‘It’s all right, sir; she will come round,’ said Matvey.
‘Come round?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you think so? Who’s there?’ asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch, hearing the rustle of a woman’s dress at the
door.
Anna Karenina
13 of 1759
‘It’s I,’ said a firm, pleasant, woman’s voice, and the
stern, pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the
nurse, was thrust in at the doorway.
‘Well, what is it, Matrona?’ queried Stepan
Arkadyevitch, going up to her at the door.
Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the
wrong as regards his wife, and was conscious of this
himself, almost every one in the house (even the nurse,
Darya Alexandrovna’s chief ally) was on his side.
‘Well, what now?’ he asked disconsolately.
‘Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will
aid you. She is suffering so, it’s sad to hee her; and besides,
everything in the house is topsy-turvy. You must have
pity, sir, on the children. Beg her forgiveness, sir. There’s
no help for it! One must take the consequences ’
‘But she won’t see me.’
‘You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir,
pray to God.’
‘Come, that’ll do, you can go,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, blushing suddenly. ‘Well now, do dress
me.’ He turned to Matvey and threw off his dressing-
gown decisively.
Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s
collar, and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it
Anna Karenina
14 of 1759
with obvious pleasure over the well-groomed body of his
master.
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