Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
The painter Mikhaïlof was at work as usual, when the cards of Count Vronsky and Golenishchef were brought him. He had been painting all the morning in his studio on his great picture, but, when he reached his house, he became enraged with his wife because of her failure to make terms with their landlady, who demanded money.
"I have told you twenty times not to go into explanations with her. You are a fool anyway; but when you try to argue in Italian, you are three times as much of a fool," said he, at the end of a long dispute.
"Why do you get behindhand so? It is not my fault. If I had any money...."
"For heaven's sake, give me some peace!" cried Mikhaïlof, his voice thick with tears; and, putting his hands over his ears, he hastily rushed to the workroom, separated from the sitting-room by a partition, and bolted the door. "She has n't any common sense," he said to himself, as he sat down at his table, and, opening a portfolio, addressed himself with feverish ardor to a sketch which he had already begun.
He never worked with such zeal and success as when his life went hard, and especially when he had been quarreling with his wife. "Akh! it must be somewhere!" he said to himself, as he went on with his work. He had begun a study of a man seized with a fit of anger. He had made the sketch some time before; but he was dissatisfied with it. "No," said he, "that one was better .... but where is it?".... He went back to his wife with an air of vexation, and, without looking at her, asked his eldest daughter for the piece of paper which he had given her. The paper with the sketch on it was found, but it was soiled and covered with drops of tallow. Nevertheless, he took it as it was, laid it on the table, examined it from a distance, squinting his eyes; then suddenly he smiled, with a satisfied gesture.
"So! so!" he cried, taking a pencil, and drawing some rapid lines. One of the tallow spots gave his sketch a new aspect.
He sketched in this new pose, and suddenly remembered the prominent chin and energetic face of the man of whom he bought his cigars, and instantly he gave his design the same kind of a face and prominent chin. He laughed with delight. The figure ceased to be something vague and dead, but became animated, and took a form which could not be bettered. This figure was alive, and was clearly and indubitably delineated. It was possible to correct the sketch in conformity with the demands of this figure; it was possible and even requisite to set the legs in a different way, to make an absolute change in the position of the left arm, to rearrange the hair; but after he had finished these corrections he made no changes in the figure but only cleared away what concealed it. He, as it were, took from it the veils behind which it was not wholly visible. Each new stroke only the more exposed the entire figure in all its energetic power, just as it had suddenly appeared to him in the spot made by the wax. He laughed with delight. He was carefully finishing his design when the two cards were brought him.
"I will come instantly," he replied.
He went to his wife.
"There, come, Sasha, don't be vexed," he said, with a smile tender and timid. "You were wrong; so was I. I will settle matters."
And, having made his peace with her, he put on an olive-green overcoat with velvet collar, took his hat, and went to his studio. His successfully completed sketch was already quite forgotten, now he was delighted and surprised by the visit of these stylish Russians who had come to see him in a carriage.
In the depth of his soul his opinion on the painting which was on his easel at that time was as follows:—
"No one has ever painted another like it." He did not believe that his painting was better than all the Raphaels; but he knew that no one had ever put into a picture what he had tried to put into this one. This he knew assuredly, and had known it ever since he had begun to paint it. Nevertheless, the criticisms of others, whatever they were, possessed for him an enormous weight and stirred him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, however insignificant, which showed that the critic saw even the smallest part of what he himself saw in this picture, stirred him to the depths of his soul. He felt that his critics had a depth of insight superior even to his own, and he expected to have them discover in his picture new features that had escaped his own observation.
And often in the judgments of visitors who came to look at it, it seemed to him, he discovered this. He hurried to the door of his studio, and, in spite of his emotion, was struck by the soft radiance of Anna, who was standing in the shadow of the portico and listening to something which Golenishchef was saying to her, and at the same time eagerly watching the artist's approach. The artist, without definite consciousness of it, instantly stowed away in the pigeonholes of his brain the impression she made on him, to make use of it some day, just as he had used the tobacconist's chin.
The visitors, whose ideas of Mikhaïlof had been greatly modified by Golenishchef's description of him, were still more disenchanted when they saw him. Mikhaïlof was a thick-set man, of medium height, and with a nimble gait, and in his cinnamon-colored hat, his olive-green coat, and his trousers worn tight when the style was to wear them loose, produced an unfavorable impression, increased by the vulgarity of his broad face and the mixture of timidity and pretentious dignity which it expressed.
"Do me the honor to enter," he said, trying to assume an air of indifference, and, going to the vestibule, he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.