Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [406]
At the corner he met a speeding night cab. In the small sleigh sat Lizaveta Petrovna in a velvet cloak, with a kerchief wrapped round her head. ‘Thank God, thank God,’ he said, recognizing with delight her small blond face, which now wore an especially serious, even stern, expression. He ran back alongside her without telling the driver to stop.
‘So it’s been about two hours? Not more?’ she asked. ‘You’ll find Pyotr Dmitrich, only don’t rush him. And get some opium at the apothecary’s.’
‘So you think it may be all right? Lord have mercy and help us!’ said Levin, seeing his horse come through the gate. Jumping into the sleigh beside Kuzma, he told him to go to the doctor’s.
XIV
The doctor was not up yet, and the footman said he ‘went to bed late and was not to be awakened, but would be getting up soon’. The footman was cleaning the lamp-glasses and seemed to be very absorbed in it. His attention to the glasses and indifference to what was happening at home at first astounded Levin, but, thinking better, he realized at once that no one knew or was obliged to know his feelings, and that his actions had to be all the more calm, thoughtful and resolute, so as to break through this wall of indifference and achieve his goal. ‘Don’t rush and don’t overlook anything,’ Levin said to himself, feeling a greater and greater upsurge of physical strength and attentiveness to all he was going to do.
Having learned that the doctor was not up yet, Levin, out of all the plans he could think of, settled on the following: Kuzma would go with a note to another doctor; he himself would go to the pharmacy to get the opium, and if, when he came back, the doctor was still not up, he would bribe the footman or, if he refused, awaken the doctor by force at all costs.
At the apothecary’s a lean dispenser, with the same indifference with which the footman had cleaned the glasses, was compressing powders into pills for a waiting coachman and refused him the opium. Trying not to hurry or become angry, Levin began persuading him, giving him the names of the doctor and the midwife and explaining what the opium was needed for. The dispenser asked in German for advice about providing the medicine and, getting approval from behind a partition, took out a bottle and a funnel, slowly poured from the big bottle into a small one, stuck on a label, sealed it, despite Levin’s requests that he not do so, and also wanted to wrap it up. That was more than Levin could bear; he resolutely tore the bottle from his hands and ran out through the big glass door. The doctor was not up yet, and the footman, now occupied with spreading a carpet, refused to wake him. Levin unhurriedly took out a ten-rouble note and, articulating the words slowly, yet wasting no time, handed him the note and explained that Pyotr Dmitrich (how great and significant the previously unimportant Pyotr Dmitrich now seemed to Levin!) had promised to come at any time, that he would certainly not be angry, and therefore he must wake him at once.
The footman consented and went upstairs, inviting Levin into the consulting room.
Through the door Levin could hear the doctor coughing, walking about, washing and saying something. Some three minutes passed; to Levin they seemed more like an hour. He could not wait any longer.
‘Pyotr Dmitrich, Pyotr Dmitrich!’ he said in a pleading voice through the open door. ‘For God’s sake, forgive me. Receive me as you are. It’s already been more than two hours.’
‘Coming, coming!’ replied the voice, and Levin was amazed to hear the doctor chuckle as he said it.
‘For one little moment ...’
‘Coming!’
Two more minutes went by while the doctor put his boots on, and another two minutes while he put his clothes on and combed his hair.
‘Pyotr Dmitrich!’ Levin began again in a pitiful voice; but just then the doctor came out, dressed and combed. ‘These people have no shame,’ thought Levin, ‘combing his