LISA. No. No. It’s, only the same weakness and honesty fighting together in him. He doesn’t want to lie. However, I’m sorry you sent him money.
KARÉNIN. If I hadn’t, it might have delayed things. Lisa. I know, but money seems so ugly.
KARÉNIN (slightly ruffled). I hardly think it’s necessary to be so delicate with Fédya.
LISA. Perhaps, perhaps. (Smiling.) But don’t you think we are becoming very selfish?
KARÉNIN. Maybe. But it’s all your fault, dear. After all, this hopelessness and waiting, to think of being happy at last! I suppose happiness does make us selfish.
LISA. Don’t believe you’re alone in your happiness or selfishness. I am so filled with joy it makes me almost afraid. Misha’s all right, your mother loves me, and above all, you are here, close to me, loving me as I love you.
KARÉNIN (bending over her and searching her eyes). You’re sure you’ve no regret?
LISA. From the day I found out about that gypsy woman, my mind underwent a change that has set me free.
KARÉNIN. You’re sure?
Kissing her hands.
LISA (passionately). Darling, I’ve only one desire now, and that is to have you forget the past and love as I do.
Her little boy toddles in R., sees them and stops.
To the child.
Come here, my sweetheart.
He goes to her and she takes him on her knees.
KARÉNIN. What strange contradictory instincts and desires make up our beings!
LISA. Why?
KARÉNIN (slowly). I don’t know. When I came back from abroad, knew I’d lost you, I was unhappy, terribly. Yet, it was enough for me to learn that you at least remembered me. Afterward, when we became friends, and you were kind to me, and into our friendship wavered a spark of something more than friendship, ah, I was almost happy! Only one thing tormented me: fear that such a feeling wronged Fédya. Afterwards, when Fédya tortured you so, I saw I could help. Then a certain definite hope sprang up in me. And later, when he became impossible and you decided to leave him, and I showed you my heart for the first time, and you didn’t say no, but went away in tears–then I was happy through and through. Then came the possibility of joining our lives. Mamma loved you. You told me you loved me, that Fédya was gone out of your heart, out of your life forever, and there was only, only me…. Ah, Lisa, for what more could I ask! Yet the past tortured me. Awful fancies would flush up into my happiness, turning it all into hatred for your past.
LISA (interrupting reproachfully). Victor!
KARÉNIN. Forgive me, Lisa. I only tell you this because I don’t want to hide a single thought from you. I want you to know how bad I am, and what a weakness I’ve got to fight down. But don’t worry, I’ll get past it. It’s all right, dear. (He bends over, kissing the child on the head.) And I love him, too.
LISA. Dearest, I’m so happy. Everything has happened in my heart to make it as you’d wish.
KARÉNIN. All?
LISA. All, beloved, or I never could say so.
Enter the NURSE L. U.
NURSE. Your secretary has come back.
LISA and KARÉNIN exchange glances.
LISA. Show him in here, nurse, and take Misha, will you?
NURSE. Come along, my pet. It’s time for your rest.
Exit NURSE with the little boy, R.
KARÉNIN (gets up, walks to the door). This will be Fédya’s answer.
LISA (kissing Karénin). At last, at last we shall know when. (She kisses him.)
Enter VOZNESÉNSKY L. U.
KARÉNIN. Well?
SECRETARY. He’s not there, sir.
KARÉNIN. Not there? He’s not signed the petition, then?
SECRETARY. No. But here is a letter addressed to you and Elizaveta Protosova.
Takes letter from his pocket and gives it to KARÉNIN.
KARÉNIN (interrupting angrily). More excuses, more excuses. It’s perfectly outrageous. How without conscience he is. Really, he has lost every claim to—-
LISA. But read the letter, dear; see what he says.
KARÉNIN opens the letter.
SECRETARY. Shall you need me, sir?
Karénin. No. That’s all. Thank you.
Exit SECRETARY. KARÉNIN reads the letter growing astonishment and concern. LISA watches his face.
(Reading.)
“Lisa, Victor, I write you both without using terms of endearment, since I can’t feel them, nor can I conquer a sense of bitterness and reproach, self-reproach principally, when I think of you together in your love. I know, in spite of being the husband, I was also the barrier, preventing you from coming earlier to one another. C’est moi qui suis l’intrue. I stood in your way, I worried you to death. Yet I can’t help feeling bitterly, coldly, toward you. In one way I love both of you, especially Lisa Lizenska, but in reality I am more than cold toward you. Yes, it’s unjust, isn’t it, but to change is impossible.”
LISA. What’s all that for?
KARÉNIN (standing L. of table C., continuing).
“However, to the point. I am going to fulfill your wishes in perhaps a little different way from what you desire. To lie, to act a degrading comedy, to bribe women of the streets for evidence–the ugliness of it all disgusts me. I am a bad man, but this despicable thing I am utterly unable to do. My solution is after all the simplest. You must marry to be happy. I am the obstacle, consequently that obstacle must be removed.”
LISA (R. of table). Victor!
KARÉNIN (reading). Must be removed? “By the time this letter reaches you, I shall no longer exist. All I ask you is to be happy, and whenever you think of me, think tender thoughts. God bless you both. Good-bye. FÉDYA.”
LISA. He’s killed himself!
KARÉNIN (going hurriedly up stage L. and calls of). My secretary! Call back my secretary!
LISA. Fédya! Fédya, darling!
KARÉNIN. Lisa!
LISA. It’s not true! It’s not true that I’ve stopped loving him! He’s the only man in all the world I love! And now I’ve killed him! I’ve killed him as surely as if I’d murdered him with my own two hands!
KARÉNIN. Lisa, for God’s sake!
LISA. Stop it! Don’t come near me! Don’t be angry with me, Victor. You see I, too, cannot lie!
CURTAIN
ACT II
SCENE I
A dirty, ill-lighted underground dive; people are lying around drinking, sleeping, playing cards and making love. Near the front a small table at which FÉDYA sits; he is in rags and has fallen very low. By his side is PETUSHKÓV, a delicate spiritual man, with long yellow hair and beard. Both are rather drunk.
Candle light is the only lighting in this Scene.
PETUSHKÓV (R.C. of table C.). I know. I know. Well, that’s real love. So what happened then?
FÉDYA (L. C. of table C., pensively). You might perhaps expect a girl of our own class, tenderly brought up, to be capable of sacrificing for the man she loved, but this girl was a gypsy, reared in greed, yet she gave me the purest sort of self-sacrificing love. She’d have done anything for nothing. Such contrasts are amazing.
PETUSHKÓV. I see. In painting we call that value. Only to realize bright red fully when there is green around it. But that’s not the point. What happened?
FÉDYA. Oh, we parted. I felt it wasn’t right to go on taking, taking where I couldn’t give. So one night we were having dinner in a little restaurant, I told her we’d have to say good-bye. My heart was so wrung all the time I could hardly help crying.
PETUSHKÓV. And she?
FÉDYA. Oh, she was awfully unhappy, but she knew I was right. So we kissed each other a long while, and she went back to her gypsy troupe –(Slowly.) Maybe she was glad to go—-
A pause.
PETUSHKÓV. I wonder.
FÉDYA. Yes. The single good act of my soul was not ruining that girl.
PETUSHKÓV. Was it from pity?
FÉDYA. I sorry for her? Oh, never. Quite the contrary. I worshipped her unclouded sincerity, the energy of her clear, strong will, and God in Heaven, how she sang. And probably she is singing now, for some one else. Yes, I always looked up at her from beneath, as you do at some radiance in the sky. I loved her really. And now it’s a tender beautiful memory.
PETUSHKÓV. I understand. It was ideal, and you left it like that.
FÉDYA (ruminatingly). And I’ve been attracted often, you know. Once I was in love with a grande dame, bestially in love, dog-like. Well, she gave me a rendezvous, and I didn’t, couldn’t, keep it, because suddenly I thought of her husband, and it made me feel sick. And you know, it’s queer, that now, when I look back, instead of being glad that I was decent, I am as sorry as if I had sinned. But with Masha it’s so different; I’m filled with joy that I’ve never soiled the brightness of my feeling for her. (He points his finger at the floor.) I may go much further down.
PETUSHKÓV (interrupting). I know so well what you mean. But where is she now?
FÉDYA. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. All that belongs to another life, and I couldn’t bear to mix that life and this life.
A POLICE OFFICER enters from up R., kicks a man who is lying on the floor–walks down stage, looks at FÉDYA and PETUSHKÓV, then exits.
PETUSHKÓV. Your life’s wonderful. I believe you’re a real idealist.
FÉDYA. No. It’s awfully simple. You know among our class–I mean the class I was born in–there are only three courses: the first, to go into the civil service or join the army and make money to squander over your sensual appetites. And all that was appalling to me–perhaps because I couldn’t do it. The second thing is to live to clear
