• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1422 0

shrug. He utterly failed to understand what Anna was doing. Why had she brought this old princess, why had she asked Tushkevich to stay for dinner, and, most surprising, why was she sending him to get a box? Was it thinkable in her situation to go to a subscription performance by Patti, when all her society acquaintances would be there? He gave her a serious look, but she answered with the same defiant look, something between cheerful and desperate, the meaning of which he could not fathom. During dinner Anna was aggressively cheerful: she seemed to flirt with both Tushkevich and Yashvin. When they got up from the table, Tushkevich went for the box, while Yashvin went to smoke. Vronsky accompanied him to his room. Having stayed for some time, he ran back upstairs. Anna was already dressed in a light-coloured gown of silk and velvet with a low-cut neck that had been made for her in Paris, and had costly white lace on her head, which framed her face and showed off her striking beauty to particular advantage.

‘Are you really going to the theatre?’ he said, trying not to look at her.

‘Why do you ask so fearfully?’ she said, again offended that he was not looking at her. ‘Why shouldn’t I go?’

It was as if she did not understand the meaning of his words.

‘Of course, there’s no reason at all,’ he said, frowning.

‘That’s just what I say,’ she said, deliberately not understanding the irony of his tone and calmly rolling up a long, perfumed glove.43 ‘Anna, for God’s sake, what’s the matter with you?’ he said, trying to wake her up, in the same way that her husband had once spoken to her.

‘I don’t understand what you’re asking.’

‘You know it’s impossible to go.’

‘Why? I’m not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to dress; she will go with me.’

He shrugged his shoulders with a look of bewilderment and despair.

‘But don’t you know ...’ he tried to begin.

‘I don’t even want to know!’ she almost shouted. ‘I don’t. Do I repent of what I’ve done? No, no, no! If it were all to be done over again, it would be the same. For us, for me and for you, only one thing matters: whether we love each other. There are no other considerations. Why do we live separately here and not see each other? Why can’t I go? I love you, and it makes no difference to me,’ she said in Russian, glancing at him with eyes that had a peculiar, incomprehensible gleam, ‘as long as you haven’t changed. Why don’t you look at me?’

He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and of her attire, which had always been so becoming to her. But now it was precisely her beauty and elegance that irritated him.

‘My feeling cannot change, you know that, but I ask you not to go, I implore you,’ he said again in French, with a tender plea in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.

She did not hear the words but saw the coldness of his eyes and answered with irritation:

‘And I ask you to tell me why I shouldn’t go.’

‘Because it may cause you to be ...’ he faltered.

‘I understand nothing. Yashvin n’est pas compromettant,as and Princess Varvara is no worse than others. And here she is.’

XXXIII

Vronsky experienced for the first time a feeling of vexation, almost of anger, with Anna for her deliberate refusal to understand her position. This feeling was intensified by his being unable to explain to her the cause of his vexation. If he had told her directly what he thought, he would have said: ‘To appear in the theatre in that attire and with that notorious princess is not only to acknowledge your position as a ruined woman but also to throw down a challenge to society - that is, to renounce it for ever.’

He could not say that to her. ‘But how can she not understand it, and what is going on inside her?’ he said to himself. He felt that his respect for her was decreasing at the same time as his consciousness of her beauty increased.

Frowning, he returned to his rooms and, sitting down by Yashvin, who had stretched his long legs out on a chair and was drinking cognac with seltzer water, ordered the same for himself.

‘You mentioned Lankovsky’s Powerful. A