Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 4)

There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers of some sort in the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed women—God knows who—and uniforms and black coats; the same dirty crowd in the upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the boxes and in the front rows, were some forty of the real people. And to those oases Vronsky at once directed his attention, and with them he entered at once into relation.

The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight to his brother’s box, but going up to the first row of stalls stopped at the footlights with Serpuhovskoy, who, standing with one knee raised and his heel on the footlights, caught sight of him in the distance and beckoned to him, smiling.

Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in her direction. But he knew by the direction of people’s eyes where she was. He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting the worst, his eyes sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening.

“How little of the military man there is left in you!” Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. “A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one would say.”

“Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,” answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera glass.

“Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put on this,” he touched his epaulets, “I regret my freedom.”

Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s career, but he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

“What a pity you were not in time for the first act!”

Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass from the stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera glass, Vronsky suddenly caught sight of Anna’s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from him. She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying something to Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky felt that she had seen him already.

When Vronsky turned the opera glass again in that direction, he noticed that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept laughing unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna, folding her fan and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box. Yashvin’s face wore the expression which was common when he was losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache further and further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box.

In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky knew them, and knew that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasova, a thin little woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon Anna, she was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding for her. Her face was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly. Kartasov, a fat, bald man, was continually looking round at Anna, while he attempted to soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a long while, and tried to catch Anna’s eye, obviously anxious to bow to her. But Anna, with unmistakable intention, avoided noticing him, and talked to Yashvin, whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov went out without making his salutation, and the box was left empty.

Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for Anna had happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all from the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to carry through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this attitude of external composure she was completely successful. Anyone who did not know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with her lace and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness of this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing the sensations of a man in the stocks.

Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what, Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out something, he went towards his brother’s box. Purposely choosing the way round furthest from Anna’s box, he jostled as he came out against the colonel of his old regiment talking to two acquaintances. Vronsky heard the name of Madame Karenina, and noticed how the colonel hastened to address Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his companions.

“Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can’t let you off without a supper. You’re one of the old set,” said the colonel of his regiment.

“I can’t stop, awfully sorry, another time,” said Vronsky, and he ran upstairs towards his brother’s box.

The old countess, Vronsky’s mother, with her steel-gray curls, was in his brother’s box. Varya with the young Princess Sorokina met him in the corridor.

Leaving the Princess Sorokina with her mother, Varya held out her hand to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what interested him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her.

“I think it’s mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasova had no right to do it. Madame Karenina…” she began.

“But what is it? I don’t know.”

“What? you’ve not heard?”

“You know I should be the last person to hear of it.”

“There isn’t a more spiteful creature than that Madame

Kartasova!”

“But what did she do?”

“My husband told me…. She has insulted Madame Karenina. Her husband began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartasova made a scene. She said something aloud, he says, something insulting, and went away.”

“Count, your maman is asking for you,” said the young Princess

Sorokina, peeping out of the door of the box.

“I’ve been expecting you all the while,” said his mother, smiling sarcastically. “You were nowhere to be seen.”

Her son saw that she could not suppress a smile of delight.

“Good evening, maman. I have come to you,” he said coldly.

“Why aren’t you going to faire la cour à Madame Karenina ?” she went on, when Princess Sorokina had moved away. “ Elle fait sensation. On oublie la Patti pour elle .”

“Maman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of that,” he answered, scowling.

“I’m only saying what everyone’s saying.”

Vronsky made no reply, and saying a few words to Princess

Sorokina, he went away. At the door he met his brother.

“Ah, Alexey!” said his brother. “How disgusting! Idiot of a woman, nothing else…. I wanted to go straight to her. Let’s go together.”

Vronsky did not hear him. With rapid steps he went downstairs; he felt that he must do something, but he did not know what. Anger with her for having put herself and him in such a false position, together with pity for her suffering, filled his heart. He went down, and made straight for Anna’s box. At her box stood Stremov, talking to her.

“There are no more tenors. Le moule en est brisé! ”