Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [251]
‘That is what I wanted to tell her,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, looking away.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, unable to answer for the tears that choked him. ‘Yes, yes. I understand you,’ he finally got out.
‘I wish to know what she wants,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich.
‘I’m afraid she doesn’t understand her situation herself. She’s no judge,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, recovering. ‘She’s crushed, precisely crushed by your magnanimity. If she reads this letter, she’ll be unable to say anything, she’ll only hang her head lower.’
‘Yes, but in that case what? How to explain ... how to find out her wish?’
‘If you will allow me to express my opinion, I think it depends on you to point directly to the measures you find necessary in order to end this situation.’
‘So you find that it must be ended?’ Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted. ‘But how?’ he added, making an unaccustomed gesture with his hands in front of his eyes. ‘I don’t see any possible way out.’
‘There’s a way out of every situation,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, standing up and becoming animated. ‘There was a time when you wanted to break off ... If you’re now convinced that you can’t make each other happy...’
‘Happiness can be variously understood. But let’s suppose that I agree to everything, that I want nothing. What is the way out of our situation?’
‘If you want to know my opinion,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, with the same softening, almond-butter smile with which he had spoken to Anna. His kind smile was so convincing that Alexei Alexandrovich, sensing his own weakness and giving in to it, was involuntarily prepared to believe what Stepan Arkadyich would say. ‘She will never say it outright. But there is one possibility, there’s one thing she may wish for,’ Stepan Arkadyich went on, ‘that is - to end your relations and all memories connected with them. I think that in your situation it’s necessary to clarify your new mutual relations. And those relations can be established only with freedom on both sides.’
‘Divorce,’ Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted with repugnance.
‘Yes, I suppose it means divorce. Yes, divorce,’ Stepan Arkadyich repeated, blushing. ‘For a couple in such relations as yours, it’s the most intelligent way out in all respects. What’s to be done if they’ve discovered that life together is impossible for them? That can always happen.’ Alexei Alexandrovich sighed deeply and closed his eyes. ‘There’s only one consideration here: does either of them wish to enter into a new marriage? If not, it’s very simple,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, freeing himself more and more from his embarrassment.
Alexei Alexandrovich, pinched with agitation, murmured something to himself and made no reply. Everything that appeared so simple to Stepan Arkadyich, Alexei Alexandrovich had thought over thousands and thousands of times. And it all seemed to him not only not simple but utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he already knew, seemed impossible to him now because his sense of dignity and respect for religion would not permit him to take upon himself an accusation of fictitious adultery, still less to allow his wife, whom he had forgiven and loved, to be exposed and disgraced. Divorce seemed impossible for other, still more important reasons as well.
What would happen to his son in case of divorce? To leave him with his mother was impossible. The divorced mother would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position and upbringing as a stepson would in all likelihood be bad. To keep him with himself? He knew that this would be vengeance on his part, and he did not want that. But, apart from that, divorce seemed impossible to Alexei Alexandrovich, above all, because in consenting to a divorce he would be ruining Anna. What Darya Alexandrovna had said in Moscow - that in deciding on a divorce he was thinking only about himself and not thinking that by it he would be ruining her irretrievably - had