Android Karenina (52 page)

That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyich to come down by Grav, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.

“Mark my words, Alexander will not come,” said the old princess. “And I know why: he says that young people ought to be left alone for a while at first.”

“But Papa has left us alone. We’ve never seen him,” said Kitty. “Besides, we’re not young people!—we’re old married people by now.”

“If he doesn’t come, I shall say good-bye to you children,” said the
princess, sighing mournfully.

“What nonsense, Mamma!” both the daughters fell upon her at once.

“How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now . . .”

And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess’s voice. Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another.
These days, Mamma always finds something to be miserable about
, they said in that glance. Ever since she had married off her last and favorite daughter, and her beloved-companion La Shcherbatskaya had been carted off, the old home had been left empty.

In the middle of the after-dinner conversation they heard the hum of an engine and the sound of wheels on the gravel. Dolly had not time to get up to go and meet her husband, when from the window of the room below, where Levin was helping Grisha with his Latin lesson, Levin leaped out and lifted Grisha out after him.

“It’s Stiva!” Levin shouted from under the balcony. “We’ve finished, Dolly, don’t worry!” he added, and started running like a boy to meet the carriage.

“
Is ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus!
” shouted Grisha, skipping along the avenue.

“And someone else too! Papa, of course!” cried Levin, stopping at the entrance of the avenue. “Kitty, don’t come down the steep staircase, go round.”

But Levin had been mistaken in taking the person sitting in the carriage for the old prince. As he got nearer to the carriage he saw beside Stepan Arkadyich not the prince but a handsome, stout young man in a Scotch cap, with long ends of ribbon behind.

This figure was introduced as Vassenka Veslovsky, a distant cousin of the Shcherbatskys, a brilliant young gentleman in Petersburg and Moscow society. “A capital fellow, and a keen sportsman,” as Stepan Arkadyich said, introducing him.

Not a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by his having come in place of the old prince, Veslovsky greeted Levin gaily, claiming acquaintance with him in the past, and snatching up Grisha into the
carriage, lifted him over the spaniel that Stepan Arkadyich had brought with him. (The pup was meant by Oblonsky to make an end to the sullen air of disappointment Grisha had maintained since being informed that, after a little lifetime of waiting, he would now never “come of age” and receive his own Class III.)

Levin did not get into the carriage, but walked behind. He was rather vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince, whom he liked more and more the more he saw of him, and also at the arrival of this Vassenka Veslovsky, a quite uncongenial and superfluous person. He seemed to him still more uncongenial and superfluous when, on approaching the steps where the whole party, children and grown-ups, were gathered together in much excitement, Levin saw Vassenka Veslovsky, with a particularly warm and gallant air, kissing Kitty’s hand.

“Well, and how is the Hunt-and-be-Hunted this season?” Stepan Arkadyich said to Levin, hardly leaving time for everyone to utter their greetings. “We’ve come with the most savage intentions. How pretty you’ve grown, Dolly,” he said to his wife, once more kissing her hand, holding it in one of his, and patting it with the other.

Levin, who a minute before had been in the happiest frame of mind, now looked darkly at everyone, and everything displeased him. He thought for a moment of Socrates, rusting away in some dank, provincial backwater.
How can it be that this crass arriviste should be here among us
, he thought, glaring at the preposterous Veslovsky,
while my beloved-companion molders, many versts from where I might enjoy his company?

And who was it he kissed yesterday with those lips?
he thought, looking at Stepan Arkadyich’s tender demonstrations to his wife. He looked at Dolly, and he did not like her either.
She doesn’t believe in his love. So what is she so pleased about? Revolting
! thought Levin. He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a minute before, and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vassenka, with his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house. And more hateful than anyone was Kitty for falling in with the tone of gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the
country, as though it were a holiday for himself and everyone else.

Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they were all seated, Levin turned and went out. Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from her, saying he was wanted at the pit, where the perimeter of the mine was being fortified by thick defensive battlements against the possibility of alien attack. It was long since his own work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that moment.
It’s all holiday for them
, he thought;
but these are no holiday matters, they won’t wait, and there’s no living without them.

I
T IS EXACTLY THAT MAN
most distracted by fear of death from above who is most vulnerable to death from below. Such it was with Konstantin Dmitrich Levin in his fit of pique, as he stomped along the familiar woodsy path to his groznium mine, his gaze fixed on the tree line, in case a pack of the hideous Honored Guests should come leaping over the aspens. For it was the ground beneath his feet that tore open and spewed forth the long, twisting body of a worm-beast. The segmented death machine writhed toward him, emitting as before the ominous
tikka tikka tikka.
Levin gasped and stumbled backwards into a crouch, trying to judge the size of the peril. He and Socrates had estimated that the last one was the size of a hippopotamus, but this one was long as an elephant, and nearly half as high.

With a quick, grunting roll of its powerful head, the thrashing metal-plated thing knocked Levin off his feet, even as more of its body poured up out of the ground like a Grav emerging from a tunnel. Levin, now flat on his back, swung determinedly with his sturdy oaken walking stick, making
satisfying contact with the eyeless face of the beast. The great worm drew back, its sucking mouth-hole dripping ochre fluid, the
tikka tikka tikka
loud as a drumroll, emanating from . . . from where? Some sort of Vox-Em, he imagined, somewhere from the midsection of the robotic beast. Konstantin Dmitrich, breathing heavily, feeling the thud of blood in his veins, scrabbled to his feet and circled backward, the walking stick raised and poised to strike. Curiously, however, the creature’s huge did not parry again—it paused and held steady with crooked neck, the featureless head twitching in the air above, twisting first this way and then that, as if searching for something. Levin thought he saw dim lights pulsing somewhere beneath the semi-opaque, grey outer covering of the monster—rapidly flickering greenish lights—the light of sensors searching the landscape?

By God, it’s looking for something,
thought Levin, stepping slightly forward and examining the underside of the thing. “What are you looking for?” he said aloud, as if the segmented, twelve-foot-long ticking mechanical worm could somehow summon human voice and answer. Instead, the thing stopped moving, its head cocked in a northerly direction, and the queer
tikka tikka tikka
noise abruptly grew drastically louder, so much so that Levin clasped his hands over his ears.
He’s got it,
Levin thought.
He’s got the scent.
And the great worm lunged up and over Levin, its whole writhing body traveling over his head in a fluid motion, like a long jet of water sprayed from a hose; and then plunging back into the ground on the opposite side of the clearing, disappearing into another wormhole in the soil. In a matter of seconds, the entire length of the worm-thing had disappeared into this fresh cavity.

*    *    *

Levin did not continue on to the pit, as he had planned, but instead settled his lank frame on a rock to contemplate the mystery of the worm-beast, with his walking stick at his side, scratching at his head and tugging at his beard in unconscious emulation of his absent beloved-companion.
Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna, examining the I/Humidor/19, consulting about wines for supper.

“But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.”

“No, Stiva doesn’t drink . . . Kostya, stop, what’s the matter?” Kitty began, hurrying after him, but all his irritation with her supposedly inappropriate carryingson came back to him in a flood, and he strode ruthlessly away to the dining room without waiting for her. There he joined in the lively general conversation which was being maintained by Vassenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyich.

“Well, what do you say, are we to Hunt-and-be-Hunted tomorrow?” said Stepan Arkadyich.

“Please, do let’s go,” said Veslovsky moving to another chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.

“I shall be delighted, we will go. I shall order the Huntbears warmed and baited,” said Levin to Veslovsky, speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so out of keeping with him. “I can’t answer for our finding grouse, especially as, with the Honored Guests about, we will need to stay within the perimeter fence, or find ourselves hunted a bit more realistically than is pleasant. Only we ought to start early. You’re not tired? Aren’t you tired, Stiva?”

“Me tired? I’ve never been tired yet.”

“Yes, really, let’s not go to bed at all! Capital!” Veslovsky chimed in. “I have little use for the interval of unconsciousness.”

It was a rather peculiar way of phrasing such a declaration, and Levin looked with renewed irritation at Veslovsky. He was eager to retire to his bedchamber, where he could compose a communiqué to Socrates, expressing his thoughts on the question of the worm-machines.

“Suppose we stay up all night. Let’s go for a walk!” agreed Stepan Arkadyich with radiant good humor.

“Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up too,” Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her
voice which she almost always had now with her husband.

“Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna’s, and he’s going to them again? He swears that their little hideaway is hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!”

Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.

“Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she?
Where
is she?” Darya Alexandrovna appealed to him.

“Ah, that I cannot tell you,” laughed Vassenka, “for in a blindfold was I led to the camp, and in a blindfold led away.”

Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in his conversation with the princess, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyich, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw on his wife’s face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.

“It’s exceedingly rugged, their place, some sort of old farm from the time of the Tsars, somewhat restored, but really barely livable” Veslovsky was telling them about Vronsky and Anna. “I can’t, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but I certainly would not want to live there.”

“What do they intend to do?”

Vassenka smiled enigmatically, trying of course to prolong the moment when everyone believed he knew the answer to that most intriguing of questions: what was intended by Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, who after the night at the Vox Fourteen had fled into hiding, along with their Class Ills, in willful and open defiance of the Ministry—and of Anna’s own husband.

“What they intend, alas, I cannot say, and I am not sure they can agree amongst themselves. They do seem well hidden though, and I imagine they can live in their secret paradise forever,” he said with a chuckle.

“How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! I think we might even convince them to rejoin polite society! When are
you going there again?” Stepan Arkadyich asked Vassenka.

“July.”

“Will you go?” Stepan Arkadyich said to his wife.

“I shall certainly go, if I am invited and told the location,” said Dolly. “I am sorry for her, and I know her. She’s a splendid woman. But I will go alone, when you go back to Moscow, and then I shall be in no one’s way. And it will be better indeed without you.”

“To be sure,” said Stepan Arkadyich. “And you, Kitty?”

“I? Why should I go?” Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her husband.

“Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?” Veslovsky asked her. “She’s a very fascinating woman.”

“Yes,” she answered Veslovsky crimsoning still more. She got up and walked across to her husband.

“Are you to be Hunting and Hunted, then, tomorrow?” she said to Levin. His jealousy had advanced far indeed in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterward to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going on the hunt, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.

“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.

“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of her husband, and will set off the day after,” said Kitty.

The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus:
Don’t separate me from him. I don’t care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.