Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 31

by Leo Tolstoy

CHAPTER XXXI

Before Levin got halfway down-stairs he heard in the vestibule the sound of a familiar cough; but the sound was covered by the noise of his own footsteps, and he hoped that he was mistaken. Then he saw the tall bony figure which he knew so well. But even now, when there seemed to be no possibility of deception, he still hoped that he was mistaken, and that this tall man who was divesting himself of his shuba, and coughing, was not his brother Nikolaï.

Levin loved his brother, but it was always extremely disagreeable to live with him. Now especially, when Levin was under the influence of the thoughts and suggestions awakened by Agafya Mikhaïlovna, and was in a dull and melancholy humor, the presence of his brother was indeed an affliction. Instead of a gay, healthy visitor,—some stranger, who, he hoped, would drive away his perplexities,—he was obliged to receive his brother, who knew him through and through, who could read his most secret thoughts, and who would oblige him to share them with him. And this he did not like to do.

Angry with himself for his unworthy sentiments, Levin ran down into the vestibule; and, as soon as he saw his brother close at hand, the feeling of personal discomfort instantly disappeared, and was succeeded by a feeling of pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolaï had been when he saw him before by reason of his emaciation and illness, he was now still more emaciated, still more feeble. He was like a skeleton covered with skin.

He was standing in the vestibule stretching out his long, thin neck and unwinding a scarf from it; and he smiled with a strange melancholy smile. When Levin saw his brother's humble and pitiful smile, he felt a choking sensation.

"Well! I have come to you," said Nikolaï, in a thick voice, and not for a second taking his eyes from his brother's face, "I have been wanting to come for a long time yes, I have, but I have been so ill. Now I am very much better," he added, rubbing his beard with his great bony hand.

"Yes, yes," replied Levin; and it was still more terrible to him when, as he touched his brother's shriveled cheeks with his lips, he felt his fever flush, and saw the gleam of his great, strangely brilliant eyes.

Some time before this, Konstantin Levin had written his brother that, having disposed of the small portion of their common inheritance, consisting of personal property, a sum of two thousand rubles was due as his share.

Nikolaï said that he had come to get this money, and especially to see the old nest; to put his foot on the natal soil, so as to get renewed strength, like the heroes of ancient times. Notwithstanding his tall stooping form, notwithstanding his frightful emaciation, his movements were, as they had always been, quick and impetuous. Levin took him to his room.

Nikolaï changed his dress, and took great pains with his toilet, which in former times he neglected. He brushed his thin shaven hair, and went up-stairs smiling.

He was in the gayest and happiest humor, just as Konstantin had seen him when he was a child. He even spoke of Sergyeï Ivanovitch without bitterness. When he saw Agafya Mikhaïlovna, he jested with her, and questioned her about the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisuitch made a deep impression on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he instantly recovered himself.

"He was very old, was he not?" he asked, and quickly changed the conversation. "Yes, I am going to stay a month or two with you, and then go back to Moscow. You see, Miagkof has promised me a place, and I shall enter the service. Now I have turned over a new leaf entirely," he added. "You see, I have sent away that woman."

"Marya Nikolayevna? How? What for?"

"Ah! she was a wretched woman! She caused a heap of tribulations."

But he did not tell what the tribulations were. He could not confess that he had sent Marya Nikolayevna away because she made his tea too weak, still less because she insisted on treating him as an invalid.

"Then, besides, I wanted to begin an entirely new kind of life. Of course, I, like everybody else, have committed follies; but the present,—I mean the last one,—I don't regret it, provided only I get better; and better, thank the Lord! I feel already."

Levin listened, and tried, but tried in vain, to find something to say. Apparently Nikolaï had somewhat the same feeling; he began to ask him about his affairs; and Konstantin was glad to speak about himself because he could speak without any pretense. He frankly related his plans and his experiments.

Nikolaï listened, but did not show the least interest.

These two men were so related to each other, and there was such a bond between them, that the slightest motion, the sound of their voices, spoke more clearly than all the words that they could say to each other.

At this moment both were thinking the same thought,—Nikolaï's illness and approaching death—dwarfing everything else into insignificance. Neither of them dared make the least allusion to it, and therefore all that either of them said failed to express what really occupied their minds—and was therefore false. Never before had Levin been so glad for an evening to end, for bedtime to come. Never, even when obliged to pay casual or official visits, had he felt so false and unnatural as that evening. And the consciousness of this unnaturalness, and his regret, made him more unnatural still. His heart was breaking to see his beloved dying brother; but he was obliged to dissemble, and to talk about various things as if his brother was going to live.

As at this time the house was damp and only his own room was warm, Levin offered to share it, with a partition between them, with his brother.

Nikolaï went to bed, and slept the uneasy sleep of an invalid, turning restlessly from side to side, and constantly coughing. Sometimes when he could not raise the phlegm, he would cry out, "Akh! Bozhe moï!" Sometimes, when the dampness choked him, he would grow angry, and cry out, "Ah, the devil!"

Levin could not sleep as he listened to him. His thoughts were varied, but they always returned to one theme,—death.

Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time appeared to him with irresistible force. And death was here, with this beloved brother, who groaned in his sleep, and called now upon God, now upon the devil. It was with him also: this he felt. If not to-day, then to-morrow; if not to-morrow, then in thirty years; was it not all the same? And what this inevitable death was,—not only did he not know, not only had he never before thought about it, but he had not wished, had not dared, to think about it.

"Here I am working, wanting to accomplish something, but I forgot that all must come to an end,—death."

He was lying in bed in the darkness, curled up, holding his knees, scarcely able to breathe, so great was the tension of his mind. The more he thought, the more clearly he saw that from his conception of life he had omitted nothing except this one little factor, death, which would come and end all, and that there was no help against it—not the least. Yes, this is terrible, but so it is!

"Yes, but I am still alive. Now, what can be done about it? what can be done?" he asked in despair. He lighted a candle, and softly arose, and went to the mirror, and began to look at his face and his hair. Yes! on the temples a few gray hairs were to be seen. He opened his mouth. His back teeth showed signs of decay. He doubled up his muscular arms. "Yes, there's much strength. But this poor Nikolenka, who is breathing so painfully with the little that is left of his lungs, also had at one time a healthy body." And suddenly he remembered how when they were children, and were put to bed, they would wait until Feodor Bogdanuitch got out of the door, and then begin a pillow fight, and laugh, laugh so unrestrainedly, that not even the fear of Feodor Bogdanuitch could quench this exuberant and intoxicating sense of the gayety of life. "But now there he lies in bed with his poor hollow chest—and I—ignorant why, and what will become of me." ....

"Kah! kah! ah! what the devil are you doing? Why don't you go to sleep?" demanded his brother's voice.

"I don't know; insomnia, I guess."

"But I have been sleeping beautifully. I have not had any sweat at all. Just feel—no sweat."

Levin felt of him, then he got into bed again, put out the candle, but it was long before he went to sleep. Still in his mind arose this new question, how to live so as to be ready for the inevitable death?

"There! he is dying! Yes! he will die in the spring. How can I aid him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I had even forgotten that there was such a thing."

Levin had long before made the observation that often people who surprise you by an abrupt transition grow unendurable by reason of their gentleness and excessive humility, unreasonableness, and peremptory ways. He foresaw that this would be the case with his brother; and, in fact, Nikolaï's sweet temper was not of long duration. On the very next morning he awoke in an extremely irritable temper, and immediately began to pick a quarrel with his brother by touching him on the most tender points.

Levin felt himself to blame, but he could not be frank. He felt that if they had not both dissimulated their thoughts, but had spoken from their very hearts, they would have looked into each other's eyes, and he would have said only this: "You are going to die, you are going to die;" and Nikolaï would have answered only this: "I know that I am dying, and I am afraid, afraid, afraid."

And they would have said nothing more if they had spoken honestly from their hearts. But as this sincerity was not possible, Konstantin tried to do what all his life long he had never succeeded in doing, though he had observed that many persons could do it and that without doing it life was almost impossible,—he tried to talk about something that was not in his mind, and he felt that his brother divined his insincerity, and was therefore irritated and angry, and found fault with all that he said.

On the third day Nikolaï began to discuss the question of his brother's reforms, and to criticize them, and in a spirit of contrariety to confound his scheme with communism.

"You have only taken your idea from some one else; and you distort it, and want to apply it to what is not suited to receive it."

"Yes, but I tell you that the two have nothing in common. I have no thought of copying communism, which denies the right of property, of capital, of inheritance; but I do not disregard these stimuli." It went against Levin's grain to use these terms, but since he had begun his treatise he found himself, in spite of him, compelled to use non-Russian words. "All I want is to regulate labor."

"In other words, you borrow a foreign idea; you take away from it all that gives it force, and you pretend to make it pass as new," said Nikolaï, angrily craning his neck in his cravat.

"Yes, but my idea has not the slightest resemblance-...."

"This idea," interrupted Nikolaï, smiling ironically, and with an angry light in his eyes,—"communism,—has at least one attractive feature,—and you might call it a geometrical one—it has clearness and logical certainty. Maybe it is Utopia. But let us agree that it can make a tabula rasa of the past, so that there shall be no property of family, but only freedom of labor. But you don't accept this ...."

"But why do you confound them? I never was a communist."

"But I have been; and I believe that if communism is premature, it is, at least, reasonable; and it is as sure to succeed as Christianity was in the early centuries."

"And I believe that labor must be regarded from the scientific standpoint; in other words, it must be studied. Its constitution must be known and ...."

"Now, that is absolutely idle. This force goes of itself, and takes different forms, according to the degrees of its development. Everywhere this order has been followed,—slaves, then metayers, free labor, and, here in Russia, we have the farm, the arrend or leasehold, our system of apprenticeship. What more do you want?"

Levin took fire at these last words, the more because he feared in his secret soul that his brother was right in blaming him for wanting to discover a balance between communism and the existing forms,—a thing which was scarcely possible.

"I am trying to find a form of labor which will be profitable for all,—for me and the laborer," he replied warmly.

"That is not what you wish to do; it is simply this: you have, all your life long, sought to be original; and you want to prove that you are not exploiting the muzhik, but are working for a principle."

"Well, since you think so let's end it," replied Konstantin, feeling the muscles of his right cheek twitch involuntarily.

"You never had, and you never will have, any convictions, and you only wanted to flatter your conceit."

"That is very well to say .... but let's end the matter."

"Certainly I will. It was time long ago. You go to the devil! and I am very sorry that I came."

Levin tried in vain to calm him. Nikolaï would not listen to a word, and persisted in saying that they had better separate; and Konstantin saw that it was not possible to live with him.

Nikolaï had already made his preparations to depart, when Konstantin came to him, and begged him, in a way that was not entirely natural, for forgiveness, if he had offended him.

"Ah, now! here 's magnanimity," said Nikolaï, smiling. "If you are very anxious to be in the right, then let us agree that this is sensible. You are right, but I am going all the same."

At the last moment, however, as Nikolaï kissed his brother, a strange look of seriousness came on him. "Kostia," he said, "don't harbor any animosity against me." And his voice trembled.

These were the only words which were spoken sincerely. Levin understood that they meant: "You see and know that I am miserable, and we may not meet again."

Levin understood this, and the tears came into his eyes. Once more he kissed his brother, but he could not find anything to say.

On the third day after his brother's departure. Levin went abroad. At the railway station he met Shcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, and astonished him greatly by his melancholy.

"What is the matter?" asked Shcherbatsky.

"Well, nothing, except that there is little happiness in this world."

"Little happiness? Just come with me to Paris instead of going to some place like Mulhouse. I'll show you how gay it is."

"No, I am done for. I am ready to die."

"What a joke!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing. "I am just learning how to begin."

"I felt the same a little while ago, but now I know that my life will be short."

Levin said what he honestly felt at this time. All that he saw before him was death or its approach. But still he was just as much interested as ever in his projects of reform. It was necessary to keep his life occupied till death should come. Darkness seemed to cover everything; but by reason of this darkness he felt that the only guiding thread through its labyrinth was to occupy himself with his labors of reform, and he clung to them with all the force of his character.