Part Seven: Chapter 30

by Leo Tolstoy

　　"Here it is again! Again I understand it all!" Anna said toherself, as soon as the carriage had started and swaying lightly,rumbled over the tiny cobbles of the paved road, and again oneimpression followed rapidly upon another.

　　"Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?" she triedto recall it. "'Tiutkin, coiffeur?'--no, not that. Yes, of whatYashvin says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the onething that holds men together. No, it's a useless journey you'remaking," she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach andfour, evidently going for an excursion into the country. "Andthe dog you're taking with you will be no help to you. You can'tget away from yourselves." Turning her eyes in the directionPyotr had turned to look, she saw a factory hand almost deaddrunk, with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. "Come,he's found a quicker way," she thought. "Count Vronsky and I didnot find that happiness either, though we expected so much fromit." And now for the first time Anna turned that glaring lightin which she was seeing everything on to her relations with him,which she had hitherto avoided thinking about. "What was it hesought in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity."She remembered his words, the expression of his face, thatrecalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of theirconnection. And everything now confirmed this. "Yes, there wasthe triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, butthe chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me.Now that's over. There's nothing to be proud of. Not to beproud of, but to be ashamed of. He has taken from me all hecould, and now I am no use to him. He is weary of me and istrying not to be dishonorable in his behavior to me. He let thatout yesterday--he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn hisships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the Englishsay. That fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very muchpleased with himself," she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk,riding on a riding school horse. "Yes, there's not the sameflavor about me for him now. If I go away from him, at thebottom of his heart he will be glad."

　　This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in thepiercing light, which revealed to her now the meaning of life andhuman relations.

　　"My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his iswaning and waning, and that's why we're drifting apart." Shewent on musing. "And there's no help for it. He is everythingfor me, and I want him more and more to give himself up to meentirely. And he wants more and more to get away from me. Wewalked to meet each other up to the time of our love, and then wehave been irresistibly drifting in different directions. Andthere's no altering that. He tells me I'm insanely jealous, andI have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it's not true.I'm not jealous, but I'm unsatisfied. But..." she opened herlips, and shifted her place in the carriage in the excitement,aroused by the thought that suddenly struck her. "If I could beanything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but hiscaresses; but I can't and I don't care to be anything else. Andby that desire I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me,and it cannot be different. Don't I know that he wouldn'tdeceive me, that he has no schemes about Princess Sorokina, thathe's not in love with Kitty, that he won't desert me! I know allthat, but it makes it no better for me. If without loving me,from duty he'll be good and kind to me, without what I want,that's a thousand times worse than unkindness! That's--hell!And that's just how it is. For a long while now he hasn't lovedme. And where love ends, hate begins. I don't know thesestreets at all. Hills it seems, and still houses, and houses.... And in the houses always people and people.... How many ofthem, no end, and all hating each other! Come, let me try andthink what I want, to make me happy. Well? Suppose I amdivorced, and Alexey Alexandrovitch lets me have Seryozha, and Imarry Vronsky." Thinking of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she at oncepictured him with extraordinary vividness as though he were alivebefore her, with his mild, lifeless, dull eyes, the blue veins inhis white hands, his intonations and the cracking of his fingers,and remembering the feeling which had existed between them, andwhich was also called love, she shuddered with loathing. "Well,I'm divorced, and become Vronsky's wife. Well, will Kitty ceaselooking at me as she looked at me today? No. And will Seryozhaleave off asking and wondering about my two husbands? And isthere any new feeling I can awaken between Vronsky and me? Isthere possible, if not happiness, some sort of ease from misery?No, no!" she answered now without the slightest hesitation."Impossible! We are drawn apart by life, and I make hisunhappiness, and he mine, and there's no altering him or me.Every attempt has been made, the screw has come unscrewed. Oh, abeggar woman with a baby. She thinks I'm sorry for her. Aren'twe all flung into the world only to hate each other, and so totorture ourselves and each other? Schoolboys coming--laughingSeryozha?" she thought. "I thought, too, that I loved him, andused to be touched by my own tenderness. But I have livedwithout him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regretthe exchange till that love was satisfied." And with loathingshe thought of what she meant by that love. And the clearnesswith which she saw life now, her own and all men's, was apleasure to her. "It's so with me and Pyotr, and the coachman,Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the people living along theVolga, where those placards invite one to go, and everywhere andalways," she thought when she had driven under the low-pitchedroof of the Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran to meet her.

　　"A ticket to Obiralovka?" said Pyotr.

　　She had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and onlyby a great effort she understood the question.

　　"Yes," she said, handing him her purse, and taking a little redbag in her hand, she got out of the carriage.

　　Making her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room,she gradually recollected all the details of her position, andthe plans between which she was hesitating. And again at the oldsore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of hertortured, fearfully throbbing heart. As she sat on thestar-shaped sofa waiting for the train, she gazed with aversionat the people coming and going (they were all hateful to her),and thought how she would arrive at the station, would write hima note, and what she would write to him, and how he was at thismoment complaining to his mother of his position, notunderstanding her sufferings, and how she would go into the room,and what she would say to him. Then she thought that life mightstill be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, andhow fearfully her heart was beating.