Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [239]
XVII
Involuntarily going over in his memory the impressions of the conversations during and after dinner, Alexei Alexandrovich went back to his lonely hotel room. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about forgiveness produced nothing in him but vexation. The applicability or non-applicability of the Christian rule to his own case was too difficult a question, one about which it was impossible to speak lightly, and this question Alexei Alexandrovich had long ago decided in the negative. Of all that had been said, the words that had sunk deepest into his imagination were those of the stupid, kindly Turovtsyn: ‘Acted like a real man; challenged him to a duel and killed him’. They all obviously sympathized with that, though out of politeness they did not say so.
‘Anyhow, the matter’s settled, there’s no point in thinking about it,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself. And, thinking only of his impending departure and the inspection business, he went into his room and asked the porter who had accompanied him where his valet was; the porter said that the valet had just left. Alexei Alexandrovich asked to have tea served, sat down at the table and, taking up Froom,16 began working out the itinerary of his trip.
‘Two telegrams,’ said the valet, coming back into the room. ‘Excuse me, your excellency, I just stepped out.’
Alexei Alexandrovich took the telegrams and opened them. The first was the news of Stremov’s appointment to the very post Karenin had desired. Alexei Alexandrovich threw down the dispatch and, turning red, got up and began to pace the room. ‘Quos vult perdere dementat,’aj he said, meaning by quos those persons who had furthered this appointment. He was not vexed so much by the fact that it was not he who had obtained the post, that he had obviously been passed over; what he found incomprehensible and astonishing was how they could not see that the babbler, the phrase-monger Stremov was less fit for the job than anyone else. How could they not see that they were ruining themselves and their prestige by this appointment!
‘Something else of the same sort,’ he said biliously to himself, opening the second dispatch. The telegram was from his wife. Her signature in blue pencil - ‘Anna’ - was the first thing that struck his eyes. ‘Am dying, beg, implore you come. Will die more peacefully with forgiveness,’ he read. He smiled contemptuously and threw down the telegram. There could be no doubt, it seemed to him in that first moment, that this was a trick and a deception.
‘She wouldn’t stop at any deception. She’s due to give birth. Maybe the illness is childbirth. But what is their goal? To legitimize the child, to compromise me and prevent the divorce,’ he thought. ‘But there’s something it says there - “Am dying ...”’ He reread the telegram; and suddenly the direct meaning of what it said struck him. ‘And what if it’s true?’ he said to himself. ‘If it’s true that in the moment of suffering and near death she sincerely repents and I, taking it for deception, refuse to come? It would not only be cruel - and everybody would condemn me - but it would be stupid on my part.’
‘Pyotr, cancel the coach. I’m going to Petersburg,’ he said to the valet.
Alexei Alexandrovich decided that he would go to Petersburg and see his wife. If her illness was a deception, he would say nothing and go away. If she was really ill and dying, and wished to see him before she died, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and fulfil his final duty if he came too late.
For the whole way he gave no more thought to what he was to do.
With the feeling of fatigue and uncleanness that comes from a night on the train, in the early mist of Petersburg Alexei Alexandrovich drove down the deserted Nevsky and stared straight ahead, not thinking of what awaited him. He could not think of it because, when he imagined what was to be, he could not rid himself of the thought that death would resolve at a stroke all the difficulty of his situation. Bakers, locked-up shops, night cabs, caretakers sweeping the pavements,