The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [759]
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1. “Vera Tushkevitch! Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m here. No need to shout. You will deafen me, I’m sure!”
“I don’t trust these strange footnoterphone devices. I’m sure I’ll catch some nasty proletarian disease. Where did we last meet? At that party with the Schuetzburgs? The one where they served Apples Benedict?”
“No, Sofya, my husband and I were not invited. He voted against Count Schuetzburg at the last election.”
“Then it must have been at Bolshaia Marskaia with Princess Betsys. Whatever did happen to that Karenin girl, have you any idea?”
“Anna? Yes, indeed—but you must not tell a soul! Alexey Vronsky was smitten by her from the moment he saw her at the station.”
“The station? Which station?”
“St. Petersburg; you remember when a guard fell beneath the train and was crushed?”
“Anna and Vronsky met there? How terribly unsophisticated!”
“There is more, my dear Sofya. Wait—the doorbell! I must leave you; not a word to anyone and I will call again soon!”
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2. “Vera? Is that you? What a day! All noise and rain. Do please carry on about Anna!”
“Well, Anna danced with Vronsky at the ball that night; he became her shadow and very much more!”
“No! Alexey Vronsky and Anna—an affair! What about her husband? Surely he found out?”
“Eventually, yes. I think Anna told him, but not until she was with child, Vronsky’s child. There was to be no hiding that.”
“What did he say?”
“Believe it or not, he forgave them both! Insisted that they remain married and attempted to continue as if nothing had happened.”
“I always did think that man was a fool. What happened next?”
“Vronsky shot himself, claiming he could not bear to be apart. Melodramatic is not the word for it!”
“It reads like a cheap novelette! Did he die?”
“No; merely wounded. It gets worse. Karenin realized that to save Anna he himself must take the disgrace and admit that he had been unfaithful so that Anna was not ruined and could marry Vronsky.”
“So Karenin let them go? He didn’t ban her from ever seeing her lover again? Didn’t horsewhip either of them or sell his story to The Mole? It strikes me Karenin himself may have had some totty on the side, too. Wait! My husband calls me—stay tuned, farewell for now, my dear Vera!”
1. “Miss Next, are you there?”
2. “Good. Meet me at the Jurisfiction office as soon as possible. It’s about Perkins—the Minotaur has escaped.”
3. “Not really. You see, Perkins isn’t responding to footnoterphone communications—we think something might have happened to him.”
1. “Sofya! Where were you? I have been calling forever! Tell me, the Karenins—they divorced?”
“No! Maybe if they had been divorced, events would have been different. I remember her attending the theater in Petersburg. What a disaster!”
“Why? Whatever happened? Did she make a fool of herself?”
“Yes, by appearing in the first place! How could she? Madame Kartasova, who was in the adjacent box with that fat, bald husband of hers, made a scene.