her sufferings, and how she would go into the room, and
what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might
still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him,
and how fearfully her heart was beating.
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Anna Karenina
Chapter 31
A bell rang, some young men, ugly and impudent, and
at the same time careful of the impression they were making, hurried by. Pyotr, too, crossed the room in his livery
and top-boots, with his dull, animal face, and came up to
her to take her to the train. Some noisy men were quiet as
she passed them on the platform, and one whispered something about her to another— something vile, no doubt. She
stepped up on the high step, and sat down in a carriage by
herself on a dirty seat that had been white. Her bag lay beside her, shaken up and down by the springiness of the seat.
With a foolish smile Pyotr raised his hat, with its colored
band, at the window, in token of farewell; an impudent
conductor slammed the door and the latch. A grotesquelooking lady wearing a bustle (Anna mentally undressed
the woman, and was appalled at her hideousness), and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down the platform.
‘Katerina Andreevna, she’s got them all, ma tante!’ cried
the girl.
‘Even the child’s hideous and affected,’ thought Anna. To
avoid seeing anyone, she got up quickly and seated herself
at the opposite window of the empty carriage. A misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a cap from which
his tangled hair stuck out all round, passed by that window,
stooping down to the carriage wheels. ‘There’s something
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familiar about that hideous peasant,’ thought Anna. And
remembering her dream, she moved away to the opposite
door, shaking with terror. The conductor opened the door
and let in a man and his wife.
‘Do you wish to get out?’
Anna made no answer. The conductor and her two
fellow-passengers did not notice under her veil her panicstricken face. She went back to her corner and sat down. The
couple seated themselves on the opposite side, and intently
but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both husband
and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked,
would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with a view
to smoking but to getting into conversation with her. Receiving her assent, he said to his wife in French something
about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made inane
and affected remarks to one another, entirely for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and
hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such
miserable monstrosities.
A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving
of luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to
Anna that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that
this laughter irritated her agonizingly, and she would have
liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third bell
rang, there was a whistle and a hiss of steam, and a clank
of chains, and the man in her carriage crossed himself. ‘It
would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches
to that,’ thought Anna, looking angrily at him. She looked
past the lady out of the window at the people who seemed
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Anna Karenina
whirling by as they ran beside the train or stood on the
platform. The train, jerking at regular intervals at the junctions of the rails, rolled by the platform, past a stone wall,
a signal-box, past other trains; the wheels, moving more
smoothly and evenly, resounded with a slight clang on the
rails. The window was lighted up by the bright evening sun,
and a slight breeze fluttered the curtain. Anna forgot her
fellow passengers, and to the light swaying of the train she
fell to thinking again, as she breathed the fresh air.
‘Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn’t conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all
created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the
truth, what is one to do?’
‘That’s what reason is given man for, to escape from what
worries him,’ said the lady in French, lisping affectedly, and
obviously pleased with her phrase.
The words seemed an answer to Anna’s thoughts.
‘To escape from what worries him,’ repeated Anna. And
glancing at the red-cheeked husband and the thin wife, she
saw that the sickly wife considered herself misunderstood,
and the husband deceived her and encouraged her in that
idea of herself. Anna seemed to see all their history and all
the crannies of their souls, as it were turning a light upon
them. But there was nothing interesting in them, and she
pursued her thought.
‘Yes, I’m very much worried, and that’s what reason was
given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not
put out the light when there’s nothing more to look at, when
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it’s sickening to look at it all? But how? Why did the conductor run along the footboard, why are they shrieking, those
young men in that train? why are they talking, why are they
laughing? It’s all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!…’
When the train came into the station, Anna got out into
the crowd of passengers, and moving apart from them as if
they were lepers, she stood on the platform, trying to think
what she had come here for, and what she meant to do. Everything that had seemed to her possible before was now so
difficult to consider, especially in this noisy crowd of hideous people who would not leave her alone. One moment
porters ran up to her proffering their services, then young
men, clacking their heels on the planks of the platform and
talking loudly, stared at her; people meeting her dodged
past on the wrong side. Remembering that she had meant to
go on further if there were no answer, she stopped a porter
and asked if her coachman were not here with a note from
Count Vronsky.
‘Count Vronsky? They sent up here from the Vronskys
just this minute, to meet Princess Sorokina and her daughter. And what is the coachman like?’
Just as she was talking to the porter, the coachman Mihail, red and cheerful in his smart blue coat and chain,
evidently proud of having so successfully performed his
commission, came up to her and gave her a letter. She broke
it open, and her heart ached before she had read it.
‘I am very sorry your note did not reach me. I will be
home at ten,’ Vronsky had written carelessly….
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Anna Karenina
‘Yes, that’s what I expected!’ she said to herself with an
evil smile.
‘Very good, you can go home then,’ she said softly, addressing Mihail. She spoke softly because the rapidity of her
heart’s beating hindered her breathing. ‘No, I won’t let you
make me miserable,’ she thought menacingly, addressing
not him, not herself, but the power that made her suffer, and
she walked along the platform.
Two maidservants walking along the platform turned
their heads, staring at her and making some remarks about
her dress. ‘Real,’ they said of the lace she was wearing. The
young men would not leave her in peace. Again they passed
by, peering into her face, and with a laugh shouting something in an unnatural voice. The station-master coming up
asked her whether she was going by train. A boy selling kvas
never took his eyes off her. ‘My God! where am I to go?’
she thought, going farther and farther along the platform.
At the end she stopped. Some ladies and children, who had
come to meet a gentleman in spectacles, paused in their
loud laughter and talking, and stared at her as she reached
them. She quickened her pace and walked away from them
to the edge of the platform. A luggage train was coming in.
The platform began to sway, and she fancied she was in the
train again.
And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the
train the day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew what
she had to do. With a rapid, light step she went down the
steps that led from the tank to the rails and stopped quite
near the approaching train.
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She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the screws
and chains and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first carriage
slowly moving up, and trying to measure the middle between the front and back wheels, and the very minute when
that middle point would be opposite her.
‘There,’ she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the
carriage, at the sand and coal dust which covered the sleepers— ‘there, in the very middle, and I will punish him and
escape from everyone and from myself.’
She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first
carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried
to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late;
she missed the moment. She had to wait for the next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about to take
the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed
herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul
a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was
torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant with all
its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes from the
wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment
when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she
dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her
shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly,
as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her
knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at
what she was doing. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? What
for?’ She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something
huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her
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Anna Karenina
on her back. ‘Lord, forgive me all!’ she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something was
working at the iron
