Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX
Anna's chief desire on her return to Russia was to see her son. From the day she left Italy the thought of seeing him again kept her in a constant state of excitement; and in proportion as she drew near Petersburg the prospective delight and importance of this meeting kept growing greater and greater. She did not trouble herself with the question how she should manage it. It would be a simple and natural thing, she thought, to see her son once more, when she would be in the same town with him; but since her arrival she suddenly realized her present relation toward society, and found that the interview was not easy to obtain.
She had been two days now in Petersburg, and never for an instant had the thought of her son left her, but she had not seen him.
She felt that she had no right to go straight to her former home and risk coming face to face with Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. She might not be admitted; she might be insulted. To write to her husband and ask permission of him seemed to her painful even to think of. She could be calm only when she did not think of her husband. To see her son when he was out taking his walk, even if she could find where and when he went, was too little for her. She had counted so much on seeing him again! she had so much to say to him; she had such a desire to hug him, to kiss him.
Serozha's old nurse might have been an assistance to her, and shown her how to manage; but she was no longer living in Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's house.
On the third day, having learned of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's intimate relations with the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided to write her a letter, and this cost her the greatest pains to write. She told her frankly that permission to see her son depended on Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's magnanimity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he, in his part of magnanimous man, would not refuse her.
The messenger that carried the letter brought back the most cruel and unexpected reply, that there was no answer. She had never felt so wounded as at the moment when, summoning the messenger, she heard from him the circumstantial story of how he had waited, and how, after a time, he had been told that there would be no answer. Anna felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that, from her point of view, the countess was right. Her grief was all the keener because she had to bear it alone. She could not and did not wish to confide it to Vronsky. She knew that though he was the chief cause of her unhappiness, he would regard her meeting with her son as of little account; she knew that he would never be able to sound all the depths of her anguish; she knew that she should hate him for the unsympathetic tone in which he would speak of it. And she feared this more than anything else in the world, and so hid from him her action in regard to her son.
She stayed at home all day long and racked her brain to think of other ways of meeting her son, and finally she decided to write directly to her husband. She had already begun her letter, when Lidia Ivanovna's reply was brought to her. The countess's previous silence had humbled and affronted her, but the note and all that she read between the lines so exasperated her,—this bitterness against her seemed so shocking when contrasted with her passionate, legitimate affection for her son, that she grew indignant against the others, and ceased to blame herself.
"What cruelty! What hypocrisy!" she said to herself. "All they want is to insult me and torment the child. I will not let them do so. She is worse than I am; at least, I do not lie."
She immediately decided to go on the morrow, which was Serozha's birthday, directly to her husband's house; she would bribe the servants, and would make any kind of an excuse, if only she might once see her son and put an end to the ugly network of lies with which they were surrounding the innocent child.
She went to a toy shop and purchased some toys, and thus she formed her plan of action: she would start early in the morning, at eight o'clock, before Alekseï Aleksandrovitch would probably be up; she would have the money in her hand all ready to bribe the Swiss and the valet to let her go up-stairs without raising her veil, under the pretext of laying on Serozha's bed some presents sent by his godfather. As to what she should say to her son, she could not form the least idea; she could not make any preparation for that.
The next morning, at eight o'clock, Anna got out of her hired carriage and rang the door-bell of her former-home.
"Go and see what is wanted! It's some lady," said Kapitonuitch, in loose coat and galoshes, as he looked out of the window and saw a lady closely veiled standing on the porch. The Swiss's assistant, a young man whom Anna did not know, had scarcely opened the door before Anna pushed her way in, and, drawing a three-ruble note out of her muff, thrust it into his hand.
"Serozha .... Sergyeï Aleksievitch," she stammered, and started down the vestibule.
The Swiss's assistant examined the note, and stopped the visitor at the inner glass door.
"Whom do you wish to see?" he asked.
She did not hear his words, and made no reply.
Kapitonuitch, noticing the stranger's confusion, came out, let her into the entry, and asked her what she wanted.
"I come from Prince Skorodumof to see Sergyeï Aleksievitch."
"He is not up yet," replied the Swiss, looking sharply at her.
Anna had never dreamed that the absolutely unchanged appearance of the anteroom of the house which for nine years had been her home could have such a powerful effect on her.
One after another, sweet and painful memories arose in her mind, and for a moment she forgot why she was there.
"Will you wait?" asked the Swiss, helping her to remove her shubka. When he saw her face, he recognized her, and without a word bowed profoundly.
"Will your ladyship[1] be pleased to enter?" he said to her.
She tried to speak, but her voice refused to utter a sound. Giving the old servant an entreating look, with light, swift steps she went to the staircase. She flew up the stairs. Kapitonuitch tried to overtake her, and followed after her, catching his galoshes at every step.
"His tutor is there; perhaps he is not dressed yet; I will speak to him."
Anna kept on up the stairs which she knew so well, not heeding what the old man said.
"This way. To the left, if you please. Excuse it if all is in disorder. He sleeps in the front room now," said the Swiss, out of breath. "Will your ladyship be good enough to wait a moment? I will go and see." And, opening the high door, he disappeared.
Anna stopped and waited.
"He has just waked up," said the Swiss, coming back through the same door.
And, as he spoke, Anna heard the sound of a child yawning, and merely by the sound of the yawn she recognized her son and seemed to see him alive before her.
"Let me go in.... let me!" she cried, and hurriedly pushed through the door.
At the right of the door stood the bed, and on the bed a child was sitting up in his little open night-gown; his little body was leaning forward, and he was just finishing a yawn and stretching himself. His lips were just closing into a sleepy smile, and, with this smile, he slowly and gently fell back on his pillow.
"Serozha!" she whispered, as she went noiselessly toward him.
At the time of their separation and during that access of love which she had been recently experiencing for him, Anna had imagined him as still a boy of four, the age when he had been most charming. Now he no longer bore any resemblance to him whom she had left; he was still further removed from the four-year-old ideal; he had grown taller and thinner. How long his face seemed! How short his hair! What long arms! How he had changed since she had seen him last! But it was still Serozha—the shape of his head, his lips, his little slender neck, and his broad little shoulders.
"Serozha!" she whispered in the child's ear.
He raised himself on his elbow, turned his disheveled head first to this side, then to that, as if searching for something, and opened his eyes. For several seconds he looked with an inquiring face at his mother, who stood motionless before him. Then he suddenly smiled with joy, and again closing his sleepy eyes he threw himself, not back upon his pillow, but into his mother's arms.
"Serozha, my dear little boy!"[2] she cried, choking with tears, and throwing her arms around his plump body.
"Mamma!" he whispered, cuddling into his mother's arms so as to feel their encircling pressure.
Smiling sleepily, still with his eyes closed, he took his chubby little hands from the head of the bed and put them on his mother's shoulder and climbed into her lap, having that warm breath of sleep peculiar to children, and pressed his face to his mother's neck and shoulders.
"I knew," he said, opening his eyes; "today is my birthday; I knew that you would come. I am going to get up now."
And as he spoke he fell asleep again.
Anna devoured him with her eyes. She saw how he had grown and changed during her absence. She knew and yet she did not know his bare legs, so much longer now, coming below his nightgown; she recognized his cheeks grown thin; his short hair curled in the neck where she had so often kissed it. She could not keep her hands from him, and not a word was she able to say, and the tears choked her.
"What are you crying for, mamma?" he asked, now entirely awake. "What makes you cry?" he repeated, ready to weep himself.
"I will not cry any more .... I am crying for joy. It is so long since I have seen you. But I will not, I will not cry any more," said she, drying her tears and turning around. "Now go and get dressed," she added, after she had grown a little calmer, but still holding Serozha's hand. She sat down near the bed on a chair which held the child's clothing. "How do you dress without me? How ...." she wanted to speak simply and gayly, but she could not, and again she turned her head away.
"I don't wash in cold water any more, papa has forbidden it; but you have not seen Vasili Lukitch? Here he comes. But you are sitting on my things."
And Serozha laughed heartily. She looked at him and smiled.
"Mamma! dear heart, darling,"[3] he cried, again throwing himself into her arms, as if now for the first time, having seen her smile, he clearly understood what had happened.
"You don't need it on," said he, taking off her hat And as if again recognizing her with her head bare, he began to kiss her again.
"What did you think of me? Did you believe that I was dead?"
"I never believed it."
"You believed me alive, my precious?"
"I knew it! I knew it!" he replied, repeating his favorite phrase; and, seizing her hand which was smoothing his hair, he pressed the palm of it to his little mouth and began to kiss it.