Part Three: Chapter 16

by Leo Tolstoy

　　All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters,gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things.Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shopfor cord; pieces of newspaper were tossing about on the floor.Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs, had been carried downinto the hall. The carriage and two hired cabs were waiting atthe steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the work ofpacking, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing hertraveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattleof some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window andsaw Alexey Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at thefront door bell.

　　"Run and find out what it is," she said, and with a calm sense ofbeing prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, foldingher hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packetdirected in Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand.

　　"The courier had orders to wait for an answer," he said.

　　"Very well," she said, and as soon as he had left the room shetore open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfoldednotes done up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged theletter and began reading it at the end. "Preparations shall bemade for your arrival here...I attach particular significance tocompliance..." she read. She ran on, then back, read it allthrough, and once more read the letter all through again from thebeginning. When she had finished, she felt that she was cold allover, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected,had burst upon her.

　　In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to herhusband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words couldbe unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, andgave her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to hermore awful than anything she had been able to conceive.

　　"He's right!" she said; "of course, he's always right; he's aChristian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no oneunderstands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can'texplain it. They say he's so religious, so high-principled, soupright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. Theydon't know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushedeverything that was living in me--he has not once even thoughtthat I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how atevery step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased withhimself. Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, tofind something to give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggledto love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband?But the time came when I knew that I couldn't cheat myself anylonger, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God hasmade me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do?If he'd killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borneanything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he.... Howwas it I didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what'scharacteristic of his mean character. He'll keep himself in theright, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worseruin yet..."

　　She recalled the words from the letter. "You can conjecture whatawaits you and your son...." "That's a threat to take away mychild, and most likely by their stupid law he can. But I knowvery well why he says it. He doesn't believe even in my love formy child, or he despises it (just as he always used to ridiculeit). He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won'tabandon my child, that I can't abandon my child, that therecould be no life for me without my child, even with him whom Ilove; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, Ishould be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. Heknows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that."

　　She recalled another sentence in the letter. "Our life must goon as it has done in the past...." "That life was miserableenough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will itbe now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent thatI breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing butlying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I knowhim; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fishswimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness.I'll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants tocatch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying anddeceit.

　　"But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as Iam?..."

　　"No; I will break through it, I will break through it!" shecried, jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went tothe writing table to write him another letter. But at the bottomof her heart she felt that she was not strong enough to breakthrough anything, that she was not strong enough to get out ofher old position, however false and dishonorable it might be.

　　She sat down at the writing table, but instead of writing sheclasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them,burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a childcrying. She was weeping that her dream of her position beingmade clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knewbeforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and farworse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the positionin the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of solittle consequence in the morning, that this position wasprecious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchangeit for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husbandand child to join her lover; that however much she mightstruggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She wouldnever know freedom in love, but would remain forever a guiltywife, with the menace of detection hanging over her at everyinstant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shamefulconnection with a man living apart and away from her, whose lifeshe could never share. She knew that this was how it would be,and at the same time it was so awful that she could not evenconceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint,as children cry when they are punished.

　　The sound of the footman's steps forced her to rouse herself, andhiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

　　"The courier asks if there's an answer," the footman announced.

　　"An answer? Yes," said Anna. "Let him wait. I'll ring."

　　"What can I write?" she thought. "What can I decide uponalone? What do I know? What do I want? What is there I carefor?" Again she felt that her soul was beginning to be split intwo. She was terrified again at this feeling, and clutched atthe first pretext for doing something which might divert herthoughts from herself. "I ought to see Alexey" (so she calledVronsky in her thoughts); "no one but he can tell me what I oughtto do. I'll go to Betsy's, perhaps I shall see him there," shesaid to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told himthe day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya's, hehad said that in that case he should not go either. She went upto the table, wrote to her husband, "I have received your letter.--A."; and, ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.

　　"We are not going," she said to Annushka, as she came in.

　　"Not going at all?"

　　"No; don't unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I'mgoing to the princess's."

　　"Which dress am I to get ready?"