Alexei Alexandrovich inquired into the activity of this new commission and fell to thinking. He was trying to make out whether there was anything in the activity of this commission that was contrary to his proposals. But since the activity of this new institution was extremely complex, and his proposals embraced an extremely vast area, he could not make it all out at once and, taking off his pince-nez, said:
'Doubtless I can speak to him. But why in fact do you want to get that post?'
'The salary's good, as much as nine thousand, and my means ...'
'Nine thousand,' Alexei Alexandrovich repeated and frowned. The high figure of the salary reminded him that this aspect of Stepan Arkadyich's intended activity was contrary to the main sense of his proposals, which always tended towards economy.
'I find, and I've written a memorandum about it, that in our time these huge salaries are signs of the false economic assiette* of our administration.'
'But what do you want?' said Stepan Arkadyich. 'Well, suppose a bank director gets ten thousand - but he deserves it. Or an engineer gets twenty thousand. It's a living matter, like it or not!'
'I think that a salary is payment for value received, and it should be subject to the law of supply and demand. And if the appointed salary departs from that law, as when I see two engineers graduate from an institute, both equally capable and knowledgeable, and one gets forty thousand and the other contents himself with two, or when lawyers or
* Policy.
hussars who have no special professional knowledge are made directors of banking companies, I conclude that salaries are appointed not by the law of supply and demand but directly by personal influence. And there is an abuse here, important in itself and with an adverse effect on government functions. I believe ...'
Stepan Arkadyich hastened to interrupt his brother-in-law.
'Yes, but you must agree that a new, unquestionably useful institution is being opened. Like it or not, it's a living matter! They especially value things being done honestly,' Stepan Arkadyich said with emphasis.
But the Moscow meaning of 'honesty' was incomprehensible to Alexei Alexandrovich.
'Honesty is merely a negative quality,' he said.
'But you'll do me a great favour in any case,' Stepan Arkadyich said, 'if you mention it to Pomorsky. Just in passing ...'
'Though it depends more on Bolgarinov, I think,' said Alexei Alexandrovich.
'Bolgarinov, for his part, is in complete agreement,' Stepan Arkadyich said, blushing.
Stepan Arkadyich blushed at the mention of Bolgarinov because he had called on the Jew Bolgarinov that same morning, and the visit had left him with an unpleasant memory. Stepan Arkadyich was firmly convinced that the business he wanted to serve was new, alive and honest; but that morning, when Bolgarinov, obviously on purpose, had made him wait for two hours with the other petitioners in the anteroom, he had suddenly felt awkward.
Whether it was that he, Prince Oblonsky, a descendant of Rurik,[20] had waited for two hours in a Jew's anteroom, or that for the first time in his life he was not following the example of his ancestors by serving the state but was setting out on a new path, in any case he had felt very awkward. During those two hours of waiting at Bolgarinov's, Stepan Arkadyich had pertly strutted about the anteroom, smoothing his side-whiskers, striking up conversations with the other petitioners, and devising a pun he intended to tell about how he had had much ajew with a Jew, at pains all the while to conceal his feelings from everyone else and even from himself.
But all that time he had felt vexed and awkward without knowing why: whether because nothing came of the pun, 'I had much a-jew with a Jew,' or for some other reason. When Bolgarinov had finally received him with the utmost courtesy, obviously triumphant at his humiliation, and all but refused him, Stepan Arkadyich had hastened to forget it as soon as he could. And remembering it only now, he blushed.
XVIII
'Now there's another matter, and you know which one. About Anna,' said Stepan Arkadyich, after pausing briefly to shake off the unpleasant impression.
The moment Oblonsky pronounced Anna's name, Alexei Alexandrovich's face changed completely: instead of the former animation, it expressed fatigue and deadness.
'What in fact do you want from me, sir?' he said, turning in his chair and snapping shut his pince-nez.
'A decision, some sort of decision, Alexei Alexandrovich. I am addressing you now' (Stepan Arkadyich was going to say 'not as an offended husband' but, for fear of thereby ruining everything, he replaced the phrase) 'not as a statesman' (which came out inappropriately) 'but simply as a man, a good man and a Christian. You must take pity on her,' he said.
'But for what, in fact?' Karenin said softly.
'Yes, take pity on her. If you had seen her as I have - I've spent the whole winter with her - you would take pity on her. Her situation is awful, simply awful.'
'It seems to me,' Alexei Alexandrovich replied in a higher, almost shrieking voice, 'that Anna Arkadyevna has everything she herself wanted.'
'Ah, Alexei Alexandrovich, for God's sake, let's not have any recriminations! What's past is past, and you know what she wishes and is waiting for - a divorce.'
'But I took it that Anna Arkadyevna renounced divorce in case I demanded a pledge that our son be left with me. I replied in that sense and thought the matter was ended. And I consider that it is ended,' Alexei Alexandrovich shrieked.
'For God's sake, don't get angry,' said Stepan Arkadyich, touching his brother-in-law's knee. 'The matter is not ended. If you will allow me to recapitulate, the matter stood like this: when you parted, you were great, you could not have been more magnanimous; you granted her everything - freedom, and even a divorce. She appreciated that. Don't think she didn't. She precisely appreciated it. So much so that in those first moments, feeling herself guilty before you, she did not and could not think it all over. She renounced everything. But reality and time have shown her that her situation is tormenting and impossible.'
'Anna Arkadyevna's life cannot interest me,' Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted, raising his eyebrows.
'Allow me not to believe that,' Stepan Arkadyich objected softly. 'Her situation is tormenting to her and that without the slightest profit to anyone. She has deserved it, you will say. She knows that and asks nothing of you; she says directly that she dares not ask anything. But I, and all the family, all those who love her, beseech you. Why must she suffer? Who is the better for it?'
'Excuse me, sir, but you seem to be putting me in the position of the accused,' said Alexei Alexandrovich.
'No, no, not at all. Do understand me,' said Stepan Arkadyich, touching his hand, as if he were sure that this touching would soften his brother-in-law. 'I'm saying only one thing: her situation is tormenting, and you can relieve it, and you won't lose anything. I'll arrange it all for you so that you won't even notice. You did promise.'
'The promise was given earlier. And I thought that the question of our son had settled the matter. Besides, I hoped that Anna Arkadyevna would be magnanimous enough...' Pale, his lips trembling, Alexei Alexandrovich barely got the words out.
'She leaves it all to your magnanimity. She begs, she beseeches you for one thing - to bring her out of the impossible situation in which she finds herself. She no longer asks to have the boy. Alexei Alexandrovich, you are a kind man. Put yourself in her situation for a moment. The question of divorce in her situation is for her a question of life and death. If you hadn't given your promise earlier, she would have reconciled herself to her situation, she would be living in the country. But you promised, she wrote to you and moved to Moscow. And now for six months she's been living in Moscow, where every meeting is like a stab in the heart, waiting each day for the decision to come. It's like keeping a man condemned to death for months with a noose around his neck, promising him maybe death, maybe mercy. Take pity on her, and then I undertake to arrange everything so that... Vos scrupules* ...'
* Your scruples.
'I'm not speaking of that, not o
f that...' Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted squeamishly. 'But I may have promised what I had no right to promise.'
'So you refuse what you promised?'
'I have never refused to do what was possible, but I would like to have time to consider how far what was promised is possible.'
'No, Alexei Alexandrovich!' Oblonsky said, jumping up. 'I won't believe it! She's as unhappy as a woman can be, and you can't deny her such a ...'
'How far what was promised is possible. Vous professez d'etre un libre penseur.* But I, as a believer, cannot act contrary to the Christian law in such an important matter.'
'But in Christian societies, and even in ours as far as I know, divorce is permitted,' said Stepan Arkadyich. 'Divorce is also permitted by our Church. And we see ...'
'Permitted, but not in this sense.'
'Alexei Alexandrovich, I don't recognize you,' Oblonsky said, after a silence. 'Wasn't it you (and didn't we all appreciate it?) who forgave everything and, moved precisely by Christian feeling, were ready to sacrifice everything? You yourself talked about "giving a caftan when your shirt was taken", and now ...'
'I beg you, sir,' Alexei Alexandrovich said, pale and with a trembling jaw, in a squeaky voice, suddenly getting to his feet, 'I beg you to stop, to stop ... this conversation.'
'Oh, no! Well, forgive me, forgive me if I've upset you,' Stepan Arkadyich said, smiling abashedly and holding out his hand, 'but in any case, as an ambassador, I have merely conveyed my message.'
Alexei Alexandrovich gave him his hand, reflected a little, and said:
'I must think it over and look for guidance. I'll give you a decisive answer the day after tomorrow,' he added, having thought of something.
* You profess to be a freethinker.
XIX
Stepan Arkadyich was about to leave when Kornei came in and announced:
'Sergei Alexeich!'
'Who is Sergei Alexeich?' Stepan Arkadyich was about to ask, but remembered at once.
'Ah, Seryozha!' he said. '"Sergei Alexeich" - I thought it was the director of some department.' And he remembered, 'Anna did ask me to see him.'
He recalled the timorous, pitiful expression with which Anna had said, as she let him go, 'Anyway, try to see him. Find out in detail where he is and who is with him. And, Stiva ... if it's possible! Could it be possible?' Stepan Arkadyich understood what this 'if it's possible' meant - if it was possible to arrange the divorce so that the son would go to her ... Now Stepan Arkadyich could see that there was no question of that, but anyway he was glad to see his nephew.
Alexei Alexandrovich reminded his brother-in-law that the boy never heard any mention of his mother and asked him not to say even one word about her.
'He was very ill after that meeting with his mother, which had not been an-ti-cipated,' said Alexei Alexandrovich. 'We even feared for his life. But sensible treatment and sea bathing in the summer restored him to health, and now, on the doctor's advice, I have sent him to school. Indeed, the influence of his comrades has had a beneficial effect on him, and he is now completely well and a good student.'
'What a fine fellow he's become! Indeed no Seryozha, but a full Sergei Alexeich!' Stepan Arkadyich said with a smile, looking at the handsome, broadly built boy in a dark-blue jacket and long trousers who briskly and casually strode into the room. The boy had a healthy and cheerful look. He bowed to his uncle as to a stranger, but, recognizing him, blushed and quickly turned away from him, as if offended or angered by something. The boy went up to his father and handed him a report of the marks he had received at school.
'Well, that's decent enough,' said his father. 'You may go.'
'He's grown thinner and taller and stopped looking like a child. He's become a real boy. I like that,' said Stepan Arkadyich. 'Do you remember me?' The boy glanced quickly at his father.
'Yes, mon oncle,' he said, looking at his uncle and then looking down again.
His uncle called the boy to him and took him by the hand.
'Well, so, how are things?' he said, wishing to start talking and not knowing what to say.
The boy blushed and did not answer, but kept pulling his hand cautiously from his uncle's. As soon as Stepan Arkadyich let go of his hand, the boy, like a released bird, shot a questioning glance at his father and with quick steps walked out of the room.
It was a year since Seryozha had last seen his mother. Since then he had never heard of her again. That same year he was sent to school and came to know and love his comrades. Those dreams and memories of his mother which, after meeting her, had made him ill, no longer interested him. When they came, he tried to drive them away, considering them shameful and fit only for girls, not for a boy and a comrade. He knew that there had been a quarrel between his father and mother that had separated them, knew that he was to stay with his father, and tried to get used to the thought.
Seeing his uncle, who looked like his mother, was unpleasant for him because it called up in him those very memories that he considered shameful. It was the more unpleasant since, from the few words he had heard while waiting by the door of the study, and especially from the expression on his father's and uncle's faces, he guessed that they must have been talking about his mother. And so as not to judge his father, with whom he lived and on whom he depended, and, above all, not to give in to his sentiments, which he considered so humiliating, Seryozha tried not to look at this uncle who had come to disrupt his tranquillity and not to think about what he reminded him of.
But when Stepan Arkadyich, who followed him out, saw him on the stairs, called him back, and asked him how he spent the time between classes at school, Seryozha, away from his father's presence, got to talking with him.
'We've got a railway going now,' he said, in answer to the question. 'It's like this: two of us sit on a bench. They're the passengers. And one stands up on the same bench. And everybody else gets in harness. You can do it with hands or with belts, and they start moving through all the rooms. The doors are opened ahead of them. And it's very hard to be the conductor!' 'That's the one who's standing up?' Stepan Arkadyich asked, smiling.
'Yes, he's got to be brave and agile, especially if they stop all of a sudden or somebody falls down.'
'Yes, that's no joke,' said Stepan Arkadyich, sadly studying those animated eyes, his mother's, no longer those of a child, no longer wholly innocent. And though he had promised Alexei Alexandrovich not to speak of Anna, he could not help himself.
'Do you remember your mother?' he asked suddenly.
'No, I don't,' Seryozha said quickly and, turning bright red, looked down. And the uncle could get nowhere with him anymore.
The Slav tutor found his charge on the stairway half an hour later and for a long time could not tell whether he was angry or crying.
'You must have fallen and hurt yourself?' said the tutor. 'I told you it's a dangerous game. The director must be informed.'
'Even if I did hurt myself, nobody would have noticed. That's for certain.'
'What's wrong, then?'
'Let me be! Remember, don't remember... What business is it of his? Why should I remember? Leave me alone!' he said, not to the tutor now, but to the whole world.
XX
Stepan Arkadyich, as always, did not idle away his time in Petersburg. In Petersburg, besides the business of his sister's divorce and the post, he had, as always, to refresh himself, as he put it, after the stuffiness of Moscow.
Moscow, in spite of its cafes chantants and omnibuses, was, after all, a stagnant swamp. That Stepan Arkadyich had always felt. Living in Moscow, especially around his family, he felt he was losing his spirits. When he lived in Moscow for a long time without leaving, he reached the point of worrying about his wife's bad moods and reproaches, his children's health and education, the petty concerns of his service; he even worried about having debts. But he needed only to go and stay for a while in Petersburg, in the circle to which he belonged, where people lived - precisely lived, and did not vegetate as in Moscow - and im
mediately all these thoughts vanished and melted away like wax before the face of fire.[21]
Wife?... Only that day he had been talking with Prince Chechensky. Prince Chechensky had a wife and family - grownup boys serving as pages - and there was another illegitimate family, in which there were also children. Though the first family was good as well, Prince Chechensky felt happier in the second family. And he had brought his eldest son into the second family, and kept telling Stepan Arkadyich that he found it useful for the boy's development. What would they have said to that in Moscow?
Children? In Petersburg children did not hinder their father's life. Children were brought up in institutions, and there existed nothing like that wild idea spreading about Moscow - as with Lvov, for instance -that children should get all the luxuries of life and parents nothing but toil and care. Here they understood that a man is obliged to live for himself, as an educated person ought to live.
Service? Here the service was also not that persistent, unrewarded drudgery that it was in Moscow; here there was interest in it. An encounter, a favour, an apt word, an ability to act out various jokes -and a man's career was suddenly made, as with Briantsev, whom Stepan Arkadyich had met yesterday and who was now a leading dignitary. Such service had some interest in it.