Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [140]
‘Oh, how vile and stupid! There was no need at all ... It was all pretence! ...’ she said, opening and closing the parasol.
‘But for what purpose?’
‘So as to seem better to people, to myself, to God - to deceive everyone. No, I won’t fall into that any more! Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!’
‘But who is a deceiver?’ Varenka said reproachfully. ‘You talk as if...’
But Kitty was having her fit of temper. She did not let her finish.
‘I’m not talking about you, not about you at all. You are perfection. Yes, yes, I know you’re perfection; but what’s there to do if I’m bad? This wouldn’t have happened if I weren’t bad. So let me be as I am, but I won’t pretend. What do I care about Anna Pavlovna! Let them live as they please, and me as I please. I can’t be different ... And all this is not it, not it! ...’
‘What is not it?’ Varenka said in perplexity.
‘It’s all not it. I can only live by my heart, and you live by rules. I loved you simply, but you probably only so as to save me, to teach me!’
‘You’re unfair,’ said Varenka.
‘But I’m not talking about others, I’m talking about myself.’
‘Kitty!’ came her mother’s voice. ‘Come here, show Papa your corals.’
Kitty, with a proud look, not having made peace with her friend, took the little box of corals from the table and went to her mother.
‘What’s the matter? Why are you so red?’ her mother and father said in one voice.
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I’ll come straight back.’ And she ran inside again.
‘She’s still here!’ she thought. ‘What shall I tell her? My God, what have I done, what have I said! Why did I offend her? What am I to do? What shall I tell her?’ thought Kitty, and she stopped by the door.
Varenka, her hat on and the parasol in her hands, was sitting at the table, examining the spring that Kitty had broken. She raised her head.
‘Varenka, forgive me, forgive me!’ Kitty whispered, coming up to her. ‘I didn’t know what I was saying. I ...’
‘I really didn’t mean to upset you,’ Varenka said, smiling.
Peace was made. But with the arrival of her father that whole world in which Kitty had been living changed for her. She did not renounce all that she had learned, but she understood that she had deceived herself in thinking that she could be what she wished to be. It was as if she came to her senses; she felt all the difficulty of keeping herself, without pretence and boastfulness, on that level to which she had wished to rise; besides, she felt all the weight of that world of grief, sickness and dying people in which she had been living; the efforts she had made to force herself to love it seemed tormenting to her, and she wished all the sooner to go to the fresh air, to Russia, to Yergushovo, where, as she learned from a letter, her sister Dolly had already moved with the children.
But her love for Varenka did not weaken. As she was saying good-bye, Kitty begged her to come and see them in Russia.
‘I’ll come when you get married,’ said Varenka.
‘I’ll never get married.’
‘Well, then I’ll never come.’
‘Well, then I’ll get married only for that. Watch out, now, remember your promise!’ said Kitty.
The doctor’s predictions came true. Kitty returned home to Russia cured. She was not as carefree and gay as before, but she was at peace. Her Moscow griefs became memories.
Part Three
I
Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev wanted to rest from intellectual work and, instead of going abroad, as usual, went at the end of May to stay with his brother in the country. He was convinced that country life was the best life. He had now come to enjoy that life at his brother’s. Konstantin Levin was very glad, the more so as he no longer expected his brother Nikolai that summer. But, despite his love and respect for Sergei Ivanovich, Konstantin Levin felt awkward in the country with his brother. It was awkward and even unpleasant for him to see his brother’s attitude towards the country. For Konstantin Levin the country was the place of life, that is, of joy, suffering, labour; for Sergei Ivanovich the country was, on the one hand, a rest from work