Anna Karenina

he next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme unction.
During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently. His great eyes,
fastened on the holy image that was set out on a card-table covered
with a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that
it was awful to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this passionate prayer
and hope would only make him feel more bitterly parting from the life
he so loved. Levin knew his brother and the workings of his intellect:
he knew that his unbelief came not from life being easier for him
without faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary
scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the
possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a
legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of his
intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a
desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened
his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she had heard of.
Levin knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful to him to behold
the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with
difficulty, making the sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the
prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel
consistent with the life the sick man was praying for. During the
sacrament Levin did what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand times.
He said, addressing God, “If Thou dost exist, make this man to recover”
(of course this same thing has been repeated many times), “and Thou
wilt save him and me.”

After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did
not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand,
thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain,
and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself
when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly
ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not
recover, Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of
excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.

“Is he better?”

“Yes, much.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“There’s nothing wonderful in it.”

“Anyway, he’s better,” they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a
quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And
all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The
reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in
the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.

Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as
though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a
bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and
the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament
was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of
the doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.

“Is Katya not here?” he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly
assented to the doctor’s words. “No; so I can say it.... It was for her
sake I went through that farce. She’s so sweet; but you and I can’t
deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,” he said, and, squeezing
the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.

At eight o’clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in
their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was
pale, and her lips were quivering. “He is dying!” she whispered. “I’m
afraid will die this minute.”

Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the
bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.

“How do you feel?” Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.

“I feel I’m setting off,” Nikolay said with difficulty, but with
extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not
raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their
reaching his brother’s face. “Katya, go away!” he added.

Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.

“I’m setting off,” he said again.

“Why do you think so?” said Levin, so as to say something.

“Because I’m setting off,” he repeated, as though he had a liking for
the phrase. “It’s the end.”

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

“You had better lie down; you’d be easier,” she said.

“I shall lie down soon enough,” he pronounced slowly, “when I’m dead,”
he said sarcastically, wrathfully. “Well, you can lay me down if you
like.”

Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at
his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but
the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one
thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of
what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his
mental efforts to go along with him he saw by the expression of that
calm, stern face that for the dying man all was growing clearer and
clearer that was still as dark as ever for Levin.

“Yes, yes, so,” the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. “Wait a
little.” He was silent. “Right!” he pronounced all at once
reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. “O Lord!” he murmured,
and sighed deeply.

Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. “They’re getting cold,” she whispered.

For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick man
lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he
sighed. Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that,
with no mental effort, could he understand what it was that was
right. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but
with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to
do next; closing the dead man’s eyes, dressing him, ordering the
coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not
conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If
he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the
knowledge the dying man had now that he could not have.

A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But
the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up
to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound
of the dying man stirring.

“Don’t go away,” said Nikolay and held out his hand. Levin gave him
his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.

With the dying man’s hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an
hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered
what Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor
lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He
cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold,
but the sick man was still breathing. Levin tried again to move away on
tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said: “Don’t go.”

The dawn came; the sick man’s condition was unchanged. Levin stealthily
withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went off to
his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his
brother’s death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had
returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again,
coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased
to talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and
had become more irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither
his brother nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was angry with everyone,
and said nasty things to everyone, reproached everyone for his
sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a celebrated doctor
from Moscow. To all inquiries made him as to how he felt, he made the
same answer with an expression of vindictive reproachfulness, “I’m
suffering horribly, intolerably!”

The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores,
which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry
with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially
for not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in every
possible way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and
Levin saw that she herself was exhausted both physically and morally,
though she would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been
evoked in all by his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent
for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must inevitably
die soon, that he was half dead already. Everyone wished for nothing
but that he should die as soon as possible, and everyone, concealing
this, gave him medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors, and
deceived him and themselves and each other. All this was falsehood,
disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his character,
and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, Levin was
most painfully conscious of this deceit.

Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey
Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter
to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come
himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother’s forgiveness.

The sick man said nothing.

“What am I to write to him?” said Levin. “I hope you are not angry with
him?”

“No, not the least!” Nikolay answered, vexed at the question. “Tell him
to send me a doctor.”

Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the same
condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by everyone now
at the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the hotel-keeper and all
the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor and Marya Nikolaevna
and Levin and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling,
but on the contrary was furious at their not getting him doctors, and
went on taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when
the opium gave him an instant’s relief from the never-ceasing pain, he
would sometimes, half asleep, utter what was ever more intense in his
heart than in all the others: “Oh, if it were only the end!” or: “When
will it be over?”

His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and
prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in
pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a
limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony.
Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body awakened
in him now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of other
people, their remarks, his own reminiscences, everything was for him a
source of agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively did not
allow themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes
before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and
desire to be rid of it.

There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would make him
look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each
individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger,
fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving
pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received relief, and
the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all
desires were merged in one—the desire to be rid of all his sufferings
and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire
of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked for
the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied. “Turn me
over on the other side,” he would say, and immediately after he would
ask to be turned back again as before. “Give me some broth. Take away
the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?” And directly they
began to talk he would close his eyes, and would show weariness,
indifference, and loathing.

On the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Kitty was unwell. She
suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all the
morning.

The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and
excitement, and prescribed rest.

After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as usual with her work to
the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled
contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was
continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.

“How do you feel?” she asked him.

“Worse,” he articulated with difficulty. “In pain!”

“In pain, where?”

“Everywhere.”

“It will be over today, you will see,” said Marya Nikolaevna. Though it
was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had noticed
was very keen, must have heard. Levin said hush to her, and looked
round at the sick man. Nikolay had heard; but these words produced no
effect on him. His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look.

“Why do you think so?” Levin asked her, when she had followed him into
the corridor.

“He has begun picking at himself,” said Marya Nikolaevna.

“How do you mean?”

“Like this,” she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt. Levin
noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it
were, trying to snatch something away.

Marya Nikolaevna’s prediction came true. Towards night the sick man was
not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the
same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his
brother or Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked
just the same. Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for the
dying.

While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of
life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolaevna stood at
the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when
the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on
finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly
returned it to the stand, and after standing for two minutes more in
silence, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.

“He is gone,” said the priest, and would have moved away; but suddenly
there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man that seemed
glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the
bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:

“Not quite ... soon.”

And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the
mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying
out the corpse.

The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Levin
that sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma, together with the
nearness and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn
evening when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even
stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of
apprehending the meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before
him more terrible than ever. But now, thanks to his wife’s presence,
that feeling did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death, he felt
the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair,
and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still
stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had
scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as
insoluble, urging him to love and to life.

The doctor confirmed his suppositions in regard to Kitty. Her
indisposition was a symptom that she was with child.