Anna Karenina

unning halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a
familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the
sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught
sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no
possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall
man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.

Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just
now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to
him, and Agafea Mihalovna’s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain
humor, the meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed
particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some
outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he
had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would
call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show
himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.

Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as
soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish
disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as
his brother Nikolay had been before in his emaciation and sickliness,
now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a
skeleton covered with skin.

He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf
off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile,
submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.

“You see, I’ve come to you,” said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for
one second taking his eyes off his brother’s face. “I’ve been meaning
to a long while, but I’ve been unwell all the time. Now I’m ever so
much better,” he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.

“Yes, yes!” answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when,
kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother’s skin
and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.

A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that
through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained
undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him
as his share.

Nikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what was more
important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the
earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work
that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the
emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as
rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.

His brother dressed with particular care—a thing he never used to
do—combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.

He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin
often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey
Ivanovitch without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes
with her and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of
Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression on him. A look of fear
crossed his face, but he regained his serenity immediately.

“Of course he was quite old,” he said, and changed the subject. “Well,
I’ll spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow. Do you
know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I’m going into the
service. Now I’m going to arrange my life quite differently,” he went
on. “You know I got rid of that woman.”

“Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?”

“Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.” But
he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had
cast off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all,
because she would look after him, as though he were an invalid.

“Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done
silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money’s the last
consideration; I don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my
health, thank God, is quite restored.”

Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to
say. Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother
about his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because
then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans
and his doings.

His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.

These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest
gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.

Both of them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay and the
nearness of his death—which stifled all else. But neither of them dared
to speak of it, and so whatever they said—not uttering the one thought
that filled their minds—was all falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad
when the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any
outside person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural
and false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this
unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even more
unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother, and
he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.

As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin
put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.

His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed
about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat
clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he
said, “Oh, my God!” Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily,
“Ah, the devil!” Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him.
His thoughts were of the most various, but the end of all his thoughts
was the same—death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first
time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which
was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit
calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as
it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If
not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all
the same! And what was this inevitable death—he did not know, had never
thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the
courage to think about it.

“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I
had forgotten—death.”

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and
holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the
more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was
indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten
one little fact—that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was
even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it
was awful, but it was so.

“But I am alive still. Now what’s to be done? what’s to be done?” he
said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the
looking-glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were
gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were
beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength
in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of
lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how
they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only waited
till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling pillows at each
other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fyodor
Bogdanitch could not check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life
and happiness. “And now that bent, hollow chest ... and I, not knowing
what will become of me, or wherefore....”

“K...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don’t you go
to sleep?” his brother’s voice called to him.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sleepy.”

“I have had a good sleep, I’m not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my
shirt; it’s not wet, is it?”

Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle, but for
a long while he could not sleep. The question how to live had hardly
begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question
presented itself—death.

“Why, he’s dying—yes, he’ll die in the spring, and how help him? What
can I say to him? What do I know about it? I’d even forgotten that it
was at all.”