Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [66]
‘Why am I going?’ he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. ‘You know I am going in order to be where you are,’ he said, ‘I cannot do otherwise.’
And just then, as if overcoming an obstacle, the wind dumped snow from the roof of the carriage, blew some torn-off sheet of iron about, and from ahead a low train whistle howled mournfully and drearily. All the terror of the blizzard seemed still more beautiful to her now. He had said the very thing that her soul desired but that her reason feared. She made no reply, and he saw a struggle in her face.
‘Forgive me if what I have said is unpleasant for you,’ he said submissively.
He spoke courteously, respectfully, but so firmly and stubbornly that for a long time she was unable to make any reply.
‘What you’re saying is bad, and I beg you, if you are a good man, to forget it, as I will forget it,’ she said at last.
‘Not one of your words, not one of your movements will I ever forget, and I cannot...’
‘Enough, enough!’ she cried out, trying in vain to give a stern expression to her face, into which he peered greedily. And, placing her hand on the cold post, she went up the steps and quickly entered the vestibule of the carriage. But in this little vestibule she stopped, pondering in her imagination what had just happened. Though she could remember neither his words nor her own, she sensed that this momentary conversation had brought them terribly close, and this made her both frightened and happy. She stood for a few seconds, went into the carriage, and took her seat. The magical, strained condition that had tormented her at the beginning not only renewed itself, but grew stronger and reached a point where she feared that something wound too tight in her might snap at any moment. She did not sleep all night. But in that strain and those reveries that filled her imagination there was nothing unpleasant or gloomy; on the contrary, there was something joyful, burning, and exciting. Towards morning Anna dozed off in her seat, and when she woke up it was already white, bright, and the train was pulling into Petersburg. At once thoughts of her home, her husband, her son, and the cares of the coming day and those to follow surrounded her.
In Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got off, the first face that caught her attention was that of her husband. ‘Ah, my God! what’s happened with his ears?’ she thought, looking at his cold and imposing figure and especially struck now by the cartilage of his ears propping up the brim of his round hat. Seeing her, he came to meet her, composing his lips into his habitual mocking smile and looking straight at her with his big weary eyes. Some unpleasant feeling gnawed at her heart as she met his unwavering and weary gaze, as if she had expected him to look different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. This was an old, familiar feeling, similar to that state of pretence she experienced in her relations with her husband; but previously she had not noticed it, while now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.
‘Yes, as you see, your tender husband, tender as in the second year of marriage, is burning with desire to see you,’ he said in his slow, high voice and in the tone he almost always used with her, a tone in mockery of someone who might actually mean what he said.
‘Is Seryozha well?’ she asked.
‘Is that all the reward I get for my ardour?’ he said. ‘He’s well, he’s well ...’
XXXI
Vronsky did not even try to fall asleep all that night. He sat in his seat, now staring straight ahead of him, now looking over the people going in and out, and if he had struck and troubled strangers before by his air of imperturbable calm, he now seemed still more proud and self-sufficient. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man across from him, who served on the circuit court, came to hate him for that look. The young man lit a cigarette