Anna Karenina

“hou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes.” So Levin thought about his wife as he talked
to her that evening.

Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself “wise and
prudent.” He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing
that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he
could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with
all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many
great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet
knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew
about it. Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and
Katya, as his brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly
liked to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew,
without a shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what was
death, and though neither of them could have answered, and would even
not have understood the questions that presented themselves to Levin,
both had no doubt of the significance of this event, and were precisely
alike in their way of looking at it, which they shared with millions of
people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the nature of death
lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to
deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and other
men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death,
obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were
absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Levin had
been alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him
with terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have
known what else to do.

More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move.
To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk
of death and depressing subjects—also impossible. To be silent, also
impossible. “If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am
afraid; if I don’t look at him, he’ll think I’m thinking of other
things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I’m
ashamed.” Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to
think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew
something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and about
her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and petted him, and
talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she must know.
The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna’s was not instinctive,
animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment, the
relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the
dying man something else more important than the physical treatment,
and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions.
Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: “Well, thank
God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one
of us such a death.” Katya in just the same way, besides all her care
about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade
the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving
absolution.

On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the
night, Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak
of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to
do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on
the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than
usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things,
and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to
sprinkle them with Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that
swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in
conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life—those moments
when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has
not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.

Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o’clock
all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such
a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made,
brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were
spread.

Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now,
and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She
arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing
shocking in it.

They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they
could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.

“I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow,”
she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding
looking-glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. “I
have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers
said for recovery.”

“Do you suppose he can possibly recover?” said Levin, watching a
slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually
hidden when she passed the comb through the front.

“I asked the doctor; he said he couldn’t live more than three days. But
can they be sure? I’m very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him,” she
said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. “Anything is
possible,” she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was
always in her face when she spoke of religion.

Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither
of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed
all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on,
always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite
of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was
as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that
he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as
he would say about her broderie anglaise that good people patch
holes, but that she cut them on purpose, and so on.

“Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to manage
all this,” said Levin. “And ... I must own I’m very, very glad you
came. You are such purity that....” He took her hand and did not kiss
it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him
improper); he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her
brightening eyes.

“It would have been miserable for you to be alone,” she said, and
lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted
her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. “No,” she
went on, “she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden.”

“Surely there are not people there so ill?”

“Worse.”

“What’s so awful to me is that I can’t see him as he was when he was
young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did
not understand him then.”

“I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been
friends!” she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked
round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.

“Yes, might have been,” he said mournfully. “He’s just one of those
people of whom they say they’re not for this world.”

“But we have many days before us; we must go to bed,” said Kitty,
glancing at her tiny watch.