Anna Karenina

he hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying ill was
one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest
model of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness,
comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the public that patronizes
them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with
a pretension of modern improvement that only makes them worse than the
old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached
that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry,
supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark,
and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy
frock coat, and the common dining-room with a dusty bouquet of wax
flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder everywhere,
and at the same time the sort of modern up-to-date self-complacent
railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in
Levin after their fresh young life, especially because the impression
of falsity made by the hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited
them.

As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they
wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them;
one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another
by a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Princess Astafieva from the
country. There remained only one filthy room, next to which they
promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry
with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass, which was
that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and
anxiety to know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be
seeing after her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin
conducted her to the room assigned them.

“Go, do go!” she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.

He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya
Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to
see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same
woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly
stupid, pockmarked face, only a little plumper.

“Well, how is he? how is he?”

“Very bad. He can’t get up. He has kept expecting you. He.... Are you
... with your wife?”

Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her,
but she immediately enlightened him.

“I’ll go away. I’ll go down to the kitchen,” she brought out. “Nikolay
Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady,
and remembers her abroad.”

Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to
make.

“Come along, come along to him!” he said.

But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped
out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had
put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Marya Nikolaevna
crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the
point of tears, and clutching the ends of her apron in both hands,
twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to
do.

For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the
eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so incomprehensible
to her; but it lasted only a single instant.

“Well! how is he?” she turned to her husband and then to her.

“But one can’t go on talking in the passage like this!” Levin said,
looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant
across the corridor, as though about his affairs.

“Well then, come in,” said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna, who had
recovered herself, but noticing her husband’s face of dismay, “or go
on; go, and then come for me,” she said, and went back into the room.

Levin went to his brother’s room. He had not in the least expected what
he saw and felt in his brother’s room. He had expected to find him in
the same state of self-deception which he had heard was so frequent
with the consumptive, and which had struck him so much during his
brother’s visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical
signs of the approach of death more marked—greater weakness, greater
emaciation, but still almost the same condition of things. He had
expected himself to feel the same distress at the loss of the brother
he loved and the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only
in a greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he found
something utterly different.

In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with
spittle, and conversation audible through the thin partition from the
next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a
bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay covered with a quilt, a
body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as
a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long
bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the middle. The head lay
sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the scanty locks wet with sweat
on the temples and tense, transparent-looking forehead.

“It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?” thought
Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became impossible.
In spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin had only to glance
at those eager eyes raised at his approach, only to catch the faint
movement of the mouth under the sticky mustache, to realize the
terrible truth that this death-like body was his living brother.

The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his brother as
he drew near. And immediately this glance established a living
relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt the reproach in
the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his own happiness.

When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile was
faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the stern
expression of the eyes was unchanged.

“You did not expect to find me like this,” he articulated with effort.

“Yes ... no,” said Levin, hesitating over his words. “How was it you
didn’t let me know before, that is, at the time of my wedding? I made
inquiries in all directions.”

He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what to say,
especially as his brother made no reply, and simply stared without
dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the inner meaning of
each word. Levin told his brother that his wife had come with him.
Nikolay expressed pleasure, but said he was afraid of frightening her
by his condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and
began to say something. Levin expected something of peculiar gravity
and importance from the expression of his face, but Nikolay began
speaking of his health. He found fault with the doctor, regretting he
had not a celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still hoped.

Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to escape,
if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and said that he
would go and fetch his wife.

“Very well, and I’ll tell her to tidy up here. It’s dirty and stinking
here, I expect. Marya! clear up the room,” the sick man said with
effort. “Oh, and when you’ve cleared up, go away yourself,” he added,
looking inquiringly at his brother.

Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped short. He
had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock of the emotion
he was feeling, he decided that he would try on the contrary to
persuade her not to go in to the sick man. “Why should she suffer as I
am suffering?” he thought.

“Well, how is he?” Kitty asked with a frightened face.

“Oh, it’s awful, it’s awful! What did you come for?” said Levin.

Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully at her
husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with both hands.

“Kostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it together.
You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away,” she said. “You
must understand that for me to see you, and not to see him, is far more
painful. There I might be a help to you and to him. Please, let me!”
she besought her husband, as though the happiness of her life depended
on it.

Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and completely
forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went again in to his
brother with Kitty.

Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him
a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, and,
turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible
steps she went quickly to the sick man’s bedside, and going up so that
he had not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young
hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with
that soft eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to
women.

“We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden,” she said. “You
never thought I was to be your sister?”

“You would not have recognized me?” he said, with a radiant smile at
her entrance.

“Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed
that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious.”

But the sick man’s interest did not last long.

Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the
stern, reproachful expression of the dying man’s envy of the living.

“I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here,” she said, turning
away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. “We must ask
about another room,” she said to her husband, “so that we might be
nearer.”