Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [316]
‘I think I’ll take him,’ replied Vronsky.
The conversation about horses interested him, but he did not forget Anna for a moment, involuntarily listened for the sound of steps in the corridor and kept glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Anna Arkadyevna asked me to tell you, sir, that she has gone to the theatre.’
Yashvin, having poured another glass of cognac into the fizzy water, drank it and got up, buttoning his jacket.
‘Well, shall we go?’ he said, smiling slightly under his moustache, and showing by this smile that he understood the reason for Vronsky’s gloominess but attached no importance to it.
‘I’m not going,’ Vronsky said gloomily.
‘But I have to go, I promised. Well, good-bye. Or else come to the stalls, you can take Krasinsky’s seat,’ Yashvin added on his way out.
‘No, I’ve got things to do.’
‘A wife’s a worry, a non-wife’s even worse,’ thought Yashvin as he left the hotel.
Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing the room.
‘What’s today? The fourth subscription ... Yegor’s there with his wife, and probably my mother. That means all Petersburg is there. She’s gone in now, taken off her fur coat, come out to the light. Tushkevich, Yashvin, Princess Varvara ...’ he pictured it to himself. ‘What about me? Am I afraid, or did I pass it on to Tushkevich to chaperone her? However you look at it, it’s stupid, stupid ... And why does she put me in such a position?’ he said, waving his arm.
In that movement he brushed against the little table on which the seltzer water and decanter of cognac stood and almost knocked it over. He went to catch it, dropped it, kicked the table in vexation, and rang the bell.
‘If you want to work for me,’ he said to the valet as he came in, ‘then remember your duty. No more of this. You must clean it up.’
The valet, feeling that it was not his fault, was about to vindicate himself but, glancing at his master, realized from his look that he had better keep silent; squirming, he hastily got down on the rug and began sorting out the whole glasses and bottles from the broken.
‘That’s not for you to do. Send a lackey to clean up, and lay out a tailcoat for me.’
*
Vronsky entered the theatre at half-past eight. The performance was in full swing. An old usher helped Vronsky off with his fur coat and, recognizing him, called him ‘your highness’ and suggested that he not take a tag but simply ask for Fyodor. There was no one in the bright corridor except the usher and two lackeys with fur coats in their hands, listening by the door. From behind the closed door came the sounds of the orchestra’s careful staccato accompaniment and one female voice distinctly pronouncing a musical phrase. The door opened to allow the usher to slip in, and the concluding phrase clearly struck Vronsky’s ear. The door closed at once and he did not hear the end of the phrase or the cadenza, but he could tell by the thunder of applause behind the door that it was over. When he entered the hall, brightly lit by chandeliers and bronze gas brackets, the noise still continued. On stage the singer, her bare shoulders and diamonds gleaming, bent over and, with the help of the tenor who held her hand, smilingly picked up the bouquets that had been awkwardly thrown across the footlights, then went over to a gentleman with glistening, pomaded hair parted in the middle, who reached his long arms across the footlights, holding out something or other - and all the audience in the stalls as well as in the boxes stirred, stretched forward, shouted and applauded. The conductor on his podium helped to hand it on and straightened his white tie. Vronsky went into the middle of the stalls, stopped and began to look around. Tonight he paid less attention than ever to the habitual surroundings, to the stage, to the noise, to this whole familiar, uninteresting, motley flock of spectators in the tightly packed theatre.
As usual, there