Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [37]
Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston and smiled.
‘And do you live in the country all year round?’ he asked. ‘I suppose the winters are boring?’
‘No, not if you’re busy and are not bored with your own self,’ Levin replied curtly.
‘I like the country,’ said Vronsky, noticing Levin’s tone and pretending he had not noticed it.
‘But I do hope, Count, that you would not agree to live in the country all year round,’ said Countess Nordston.
‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried it. I once experienced a strange feeling,’ he went on. ‘Nowhere have I ever missed the country, the Russian country, with its bast shoes and muzhiks, so much as when I spent a winter with my mother in Nice. Nice is boring in itself, you know. Naples and Sorrento are also good only for a short time. And it is there that one remembers Russia especially vividly, and precisely the country. It’s as if they ...’
He spoke, addressing both Kitty and Levin and shifting his calm and amiable glance from one to the other - saying, evidently, whatever came into his head.
Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he stopped without finishing what he had begun and listened attentively to her.
The conversation never flagged for a minute, so that the old princess, who, in case a topic was lacking, always kept two heavy cannon in reserve - classical versus modern education, and general military conscription - did not have to move them up, and Countess Nordston had no chance to tease Levin.
Levin wanted but was unable to enter into the general conversation; saying ‘Go now’ to himself every minute, he did not leave, but kept waiting for something.
The conversation moved on to table-turning and spirits,27 and Countess Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began telling about the wonders she had seen.
‘Ah, Countess, you must take me, for God’s sake, take me to them! I’ve never seen anything extraordinary, though I keep looking everywhere,’ Vronsky said, smiling.
‘Very well, next Saturday,’ Countess Nordston replied. ‘But you, Konstantin Dmitrich, do you believe in it?’ she asked Levin.
‘Why do you ask me? You know what I’m going to say.’
‘But I want to hear your opinion.’
‘My opinion,’ answered Levin, ‘is simply that these turning tables prove that our so-called educated society is no higher than the muzhiks. They believe in the evil eye, and wicked spells, and love potions, while we ...’
‘So, then, you don’t believe in it?’
‘I cannot believe, Countess.’
‘But if I saw it myself?’
‘Peasant women also tell of seeing household goblins themselves.’
‘So you think I’m not telling the truth?’
And she laughed mirthlessly.
‘No, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrich says he cannot believe in it,’ said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin understood it and, still more annoyed, was about to reply, but Vronsky, with his frank, cheerful smile, at once came to the rescue of the conversation, which was threatening to turn unpleasant.
‘You don’t admit any possibility at all?’ he asked. ‘Why not? We admit the existence of electricity, which we know nothing about; why can’t there be a new force, still unknown to us, which ...’
‘When electricity was found,’ Levin quickly interrupted, ‘it was merely the discovery of a phenomenon, and it was not known where it came from or what it could do, and centuries passed before people thought of using it. The spiritualists, on the contrary, began by saying that tables write to them and spirits come to them, and only afterwards started saying it was an unknown force.’
Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always listened, evidently interested in his words.
‘Yes, but the spiritualists say: now we don’t know what this force is, but the force exists, and these are the conditions under which it acts. Let the scientists find out what constitutes this force. No, I don’t see why it can’t be a new force, if it ...’
‘Because,’ Levin interrupted again, ‘with electricity, each time you rub resin against wool, a certain phenomenon manifests itself, while here it’s not each time,