Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [68]
‘Count Vronsky,’ said Anna.
‘Ah! We’re acquainted, I believe,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said with indifference, offering his hand. ‘You went with the mother and came back with the son,’ he said, articulating distinctly, as if counting out each word. ‘You must be returning from leave?’ he said and, without waiting for an answer, addressed his wife in his bantering tone: ‘So, were there many tears shed in Moscow over the parting?’
By addressing his wife in this way, he made it clear to Vronsky that he wished to be left alone, and, turning to him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky addressed Anna Arkadyevna:
‘I hope to have the honour of calling on you,’ he said.
Alexei Alexandrovich looked at Vronsky with his weary eyes.
‘I’d be delighted,’ he said coldly, ‘we receive on Mondays.’ Then, having dismissed Vronsky altogether, he said to his wife: ‘And how good it is that I had precisely half an hour to meet you and that I have been able to show you my tenderness,’ continuing in the same bantering tone.
‘You emphasize your tenderness far too much for me to value it greatly,’ she said in the same bantering tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of Vronsky’s footsteps behind them. ‘But what do I care?’ she thought and began asking her husband how Seryozha had spent the time without her.
‘Oh, wonderfully! Mariette says he was very nice and ... I must upset you ... didn’t miss you, unlike your husband. But merci once again, my dear, for the gift of one day. Our dear samovar will be delighted.’ (He called the celebrated Countess Lydia Ivanovna ‘samovar’, because she was always getting excited and heated up about things.) ‘She’s been asking about you. And you know, if I may be so bold as to advise you, you might just go to see her today. She takes everything to heart so. Now, besides all her other troubles, she’s concerned with reconciling the Oblonskys.’
Countess Lydia Ivanovna was her husband’s friend and the centre of one of the circles of Petersburg society with which Anna was most closely connected through her husband.
‘I did write to her.’
‘But she needs everything in detail. Go, if you’re not tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, and I’m off to the committee. I won’t be alone at dinner any more,’ Alexei Alexandrovich went on, no longer in a bantering tone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how I’ve got used to ...’
And, pressing her hand for a long time, with a special smile, he helped her into the carriage.
XXXII
The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He came running down the stairs to her, despite the cries of the governess, and with desperate rapture shouted: ‘Mama, mama!’ Rushing to her, he hung on her neck.
‘I told you it was mama!’ he cried to the governess. ‘I knew it!’
And the son, just like the husband, produced in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to descend into reality to enjoy him as he was. But he was charming even as he was, with his blond curls, blue eyes and full, shapely legs in tight-fitting stockings. Anna experienced almost a physical pleasure in the feeling of his closeness and caress, and a moral ease when she met his simple-hearted, trusting and loving eyes and heard his naive questions. She took out the presents that Dolly’s children had sent and told her son about the girl Tanya in Moscow and how this Tanya knew how to read and even taught the other children.
‘And am I worse than she is?’ asked Seryozha.
‘For me you’re the best in the world.’
‘I know that,’ said Seryozha, smiling.
Before Anna had time to have coffee, Countess Lydia Ivanovna was announced. Countess Lydia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman with an unhealthy yellow complexion and beautiful, pensive dark eyes. Anna loved her, but today she saw her as if for the first time with all her shortcomings.
‘Well, my friend, did you bear the olive