‘Office and warehouse. Dental surgeon. Yes, I’ll tell Dolly
all about it. She doesn’t like Vronsky. I shall be sick and
ashamed, but I’ll tell her. She loves me, and I’ll follow her
advice. I won’t give in to him; I won’t let him train me as he
pleases. Filippov, bun shop. They say they send their dough
1316
Anna Karenina
to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the
springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!’
And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was
a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa.
‘Riding, too. Was that really me, with red hands? How much
that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become
worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach
forever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to
such humiliation? How conceited and self-satisfied he will
be when he gets my note! But I will show him…. How horrid that paint smells! Why is it they’re always painting and
building? Modes et robes,’ she read. A man bowed to her. It
was Annushka’s husband. ‘Our parasites”; she remembered
how Vronsky had said that. ‘Our? Why our? What’s so awful is that one can’t tear up the past by its roots. One can’t
tear it out, but one can hide one’s memory of it. And I’ll hide
it.’ And then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the memory of it out of her
life. ‘Dolly will think I’m leaving my second husband, and
so I certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be right!
I can’t help it!’ she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once
she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling about. ‘Love, most likely. They don’t know how dreary
it is, how low…. The boulevard and the children. Three boys
running, playing at horses. Seryozha! And I’m losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I’m losing everything,
if he doesn’t return. Perhaps he was late for the train and
has come back by now. Longing for humiliation again!’ she
said to herself. ‘No, I’ll go to Dolly, and say straight out to
1317
her, I’m unhappy, I deserve this, I’m to blame, but still I’m
unhappy, help me. These horses, this carriage—how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage—all his; but I won’t see
them again.’
Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly, and mentally working her heart up to great bitterness,
Anna went upstairs.
‘Is there anyone with her?’ she asked in the hall.
‘Katerina Alexandrovna Levin,’ answered the footman.
‘Kitty! Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!’ thought
Anna, ‘the girl he thinks of with love. He’s sorry he didn’t
marry her. But me he thinks of with hatred, and is sorry he
had anything to do with me.’
The sisters were having a consultation about nursing
when Anna called. Dolly went down alone to see the visitor
who had interrupted their conversation.
‘Well, so you’ve not gone away yet? I meant to have come
to you,’ she said; ‘I had a letter from Stiva today.’
‘We had a telegram too,’ answered Anna, looking round
for Kitty.
‘He writes that he can’t make out quite what Alexey Alexandrovitch wants, but he won’t go away without a decisive
answer.’
‘I thought you had someone with you. Can I see the letter?’
‘Yes; Kitty,’ said Dolly, embarrassed. ‘She stayed in the
nursery. She has been very ill.’
‘So I heard. May I see the letter?’
‘I’ll get it directly. But he doesn’t refuse; on the contrary,
1318
Anna Karenina
Stiva has hopes,’ said Dolly, stopping in the doorway.
‘I haven’t, and indeed I don’t wish it,’ said Anna.
‘What’s this? Does Kitty consider it degrading to meet
me?’ thought Anna when she was alone. ‘Perhaps she’s
right, too. But it’s not for her, the girl who was in love with
Vronsky, it’s not for her to show me that, even if it is true.
I know that in my position I can’t be received by any decent woman. I knew that from the first moment I sacrificed
everything to him. And this is my reward! Oh, how I hate
him! And what did I come here for? I’m worse here, more
miserable.’ She heard from the next room the sisters’ voices
in consultation. ‘And what am I going to say to Dolly now?
Amuse Kitty by the sight of my wretchedness, submit to her
patronizing? No; and besides, Dolly wouldn’t understand.
And it would be no good my telling her. It would only be
interesting to see Kitty, to show her how I despise everyone
and everything, how nothing matters to me now.’
Dolly came in with the letter. Anna read it and handed
it back in silence.
‘I knew all that,’ she said, ‘and it doesn’t interest me in
the least.’
‘Oh, why so? On the contrary, I have hopes,’ said Dolly, looking inquisitively at Anna. She had never seen her in
such a strangely irritable condition. ‘When are you going
away?’ she asked.
Anna, half-closing her eyes, looked straight before her
and did not answer.
‘Why does Kitty shrink from me?’ she said, looking at
the door and flushing red.
1319
‘Oh, what nonsense! She’s nursing, and things aren’t
going right with her, and I’ve been advising her…. She’s delighted. She’ll be here in a minute,’ said Dolly awkwardly,
not clever at lying. ‘Yes, here she is.’
Hearing that Anna had called, Kitty had wanted not to
appear, but Dolly persuaded her. Rallying her forces, Kitty
went in, walked up to her, blushing, and shook hands.
‘I am so glad to see you,’ she said with a trembling voice.
Kitty had been thrown into confusion by the inward
conflict between her antagonism to this bad woman and her
desire to be nice to her. But as soon as she saw Anna’s lovely
and attractive face, all feeling of antagonism disappeared.
‘I should not have been surprised if you had not cared to
meet me. I’m used to everything. You have been ill? Yes, you
are changed,’ said Anna.
Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with hostile eyes.
She ascribed this hostility to the awkward position in which
Anna, who had once patronized her, must feel with her now,
and she felt sorry for her.
They talked of Kitty’s illness, of the baby, of Stiva, but it
was obvious that nothing interested Anna.
‘I came to say good-bye to you,’ she said, getting up.
‘Oh, when are you going?’
But again not answering, Anna turned to Kitty.
‘Yes, I am very glad to have seen you,’ she said with a
smile. ‘I have heard so much of you from everyone, even
from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him
exceedingly,’ she said, unmistakably with malicious intent.
‘Where is he?’
1320
Anna Karenina
‘He has gone back to the country,’ said Kitty, blushing.
‘Remember me to him, be sure you do.’
‘I’ll be sure to!’ Kitty said naively, looking compassionately into her eyes.
‘So good-bye, Dolly.’ And kissing Dolly and shaking
hands with Kitty, Anna went out hurriedly.
‘She’s just the same and just as charming! She’s very
lovely!’ said Kitty, when she was alone with her sister. ‘But
there’s something piteous about her. Awfully piteous!’
‘Yes, there’s something unusual about her today,’ said
Dolly. ‘When I went with her into the hall, I fancied she was
almost crying.’
1321
Chapter 29
Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse frame
of mind than when she set out from home. To her previous
tortures was added now that sense of mortification and of
being an outcast which she had felt so distinctly on meeting Kitty.
‘Where to? Home?’ asked Pyotr.
‘Yes, home,’ she said, not even thinking now where she
was going.
‘How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and curious! What can he be telling the other
with such warmth?’ she thought, staring at two men who
walked by. ‘Can one ever tell anyone what one is feeling? I
meant to tell Dolly, and it’s a good thing I didn’t tell her. How
pleased she would have been at my misery! She would have
concealed it, but her chief feeling would have been delight
at my being punished for the happiness she envied me for.
Kitty, she would have been even more pleased. How I can
see through her! She knows I was more than usually sweet
to her husband. And she’s jealous and hates me. And she
despises me. In her eyes I’m an immoral woman. If I were
an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in
love with me …if I’d cared to. And, indeed, I did care to.
There’s someone who’s pleased with himself,’ she thought,
as she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming towards her.
1322
Anna Karenina
He took her for an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat
above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived his mistake.
‘He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my
appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice cream,
that they do know for certain,’ she thought, looking at two
boys stopping an ice cream seller, who took a barrel off his
head and began wiping his perspiring face with a towel. ‘We
all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a
dirty ice. And Kitty’s the same—if not Vronsky, then Levin.
And she envies me, and hates me. And we all hate each
other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that’s the truth. ‘Tiutkin, coiffeur.’ Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin…. I’ll tell him that when
he comes,’ she thought and smiled. But the same instant
she remembered that she had no one now to tell anything
amusing to. ‘And there’s nothing amusing, nothing mirthful, really. It’s all hateful. They’re singing for vespers, and
how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if he were
afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this
singing and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate
each other like these cab drivers who are abusing each other
so angrily. Yashvin says, ‘He wants to strip me of my shirt,
and I him of his.’ Yes, that’s the truth!’
She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed
her that she left off
