Android Karenina (65 page)

“Thank you,” Anna said quietly. And then, unable to bear the sight, she rolled the noxious corpse across the room, kicked open the window, and pushed it out; turning her head away in disgust, she did not see the body fall, did not see the massive, faceless worm, large and long and gray-green, that caught the broken alien body on its segmented back and slithered quickly away down the Moscow street.

Vronsky went up to her, and, taking her by the hand, said softly: “Anna, we’ll go to the moon the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to everything.”

She did not speak.

“What is it?” he urged. “This . . .” He indicated the burst window, the steaming crater on the floorboards.

“No . . . no . . . you know,” she said, and at the same instant, unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst into tears.

“Cast me off!” she articulated between her sobs. “I’ll go away tomorrow . . . I’ll do more. What am I? An immoral woman! A stone round your neck. I don’t want to make you wretched, I don’t want to! I’ll set you free. You don’t love me; you have a role to play in the New Russia, and I have none! Go and play your role!”

Vronsky besought her to be calm, and declared that he had never ceased, and never would cease, to love her; that he loved her more than ever.

“Anna, why distress yourself and me so?” he said to her, kissing her hands. There was tenderness now in his face, and she fancied she caught the sound of tears in his voice, and she felt them wet on her hand. Anna’s despairing jealousy had changed to a despairing passion of tenderness. She put her arms round him, and covered with kisses his head, his neck, his hands.

F
EELING THAT THE
reconciliation was complete, Anna set eagerly to work in the morning preparing for their departure, not taking the time to repair the wrecked bedchamber. Though it was not settled how long they would stay on the moon, or how they would be served, as they had each given way to the other, Anna packed busily. She was standing in her room over an open box, taking things out of it, when he came in to see her earlier than usual, dressed to go out.

Pyotr came in to ask Vronsky to sign a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. Anna was curious, despite herself, regarding this clumsy technology that was supposedly to replace the simple elegance of monitor-to-monitor communication, but Vronsky jammed the paper hurriedly
into a pocket, as if anxious to conceal something from her.

“By tomorrow, without fail, we shall launch for the moon.”

“From whom is the telegram?” she asked, not hearing him.

“From Stiva,” he answered reluctantly.

“Why didn’t you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva and me?”

“I didn’t want to show it to you, because Stiva has such a passion for telegraphing: he seems to have discovered a particular enjoyment of this new mode of communication. But why telegraph when nothing is settled?”

“Did he speak to Karenin?

“Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.”

With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read something very different from what Vronsky had told her. “He has power and inclination to destroy you both completely STOP Has not yet decided when or how but will destroy you STOP I sorry STOP I so sorry END.”

“I said yesterday that I was quite certain he would refuse our request for amnesty,” Anna said, flushing crimson. “So why did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must even try to hide it?” she challenged him.

“Why do I suppose it? Because your husband, who has made himself the most powerful man in Russia, has sworn to destroy us!”

“Already we were preparing to go to the moon. So we shall go immediately, and plan our next move there. Maybe back to Vozdvizhenskoe, maybe—”

Vronsky interrupted her, scowling: “I want defmiteness!”

“Defmiteness is not in the form but in the love,” she said, more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke.

“I am certain that the greater part of your irritability since our return to Moscow comes from the indefmiteness of our position.”

Yes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is
apparent,
she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel judge who looked mockingly at her out of his eyes.

“Well, our position is quite definite now,” she said finally, holding the telegraph between two fingers. “The defmiteness of doom.”

As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening was told that Anna Arkadyevna was sore from fighting the alien and he was not to go in to her.

N
EVER BEFORE HAD A DAY
been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time. And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room? To look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved another woman—that was clear.

Remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, had their encounter unfolded just a bit differently.

“I won’t prevent you,” he might have said. “You can go where you like. You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to you. How many rubles do you want?”

All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, she watched
and heard him say as clearly as if he were projected before her on a monitor, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them.

But didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man? Haven’t I despaired for nothing many times already?
she thought immediately.

Anna left the house and wandered the streets of Moscow, surveying the New Russia with a cold and despairing eye. No II/Lamplighter/76s lit the lamps; no II/Porter/44s swung open doors. Everywhere she turned, she saw sullen peasants performing the menial tasks that for decades had been the province of the machines: cleaning gutters, pushing brooms, opening doors. She saw too, as grim reminders of her personal grief, countless iconographs of her husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, plastered with thick glue in the alleys and in the marketplace. Strangest and most galling of all was the text accompanying each poster, hailing him as “Tsar.” Anna Karenina felt herself a stranger in a queerly altered country.

She returned home in doubts whether everything were over with Vronsky or whether there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message with Pyotr that she still felt unwell, she said to herself,
If he comes to me, in spite of what Pyotr tells him, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I’m to do! . . .

In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps, and his conversation with the servant; he believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then everything was over.

And death again rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him. How she now regretted the surge of animal strength that had pushed her to fight back yesterday against the Honored
Guest—she looked with bitterness through the shattered windowpane and wished another alien would come.

Now nothing mattered: going or not going to the moon, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, marveling how this tiny thing of wax could give any light at all. She vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a Memory to him. “How could I say such cruel things to her?” he would say. “How could I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is . . .” Suddenly the flickering candlelight wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, and for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness.
Death!
she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. “No, anything—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will pass,” she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his room.

He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and gazed a long while at him, holding the light above his face with care, unused to the wobbly feeling of the lit candle in her hand. Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he woke up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her.

In the morning she was waked by that same horrible nightmare
which had recurred several times in her dreams, full of singing, sad singing, the voice of the voiceless Android Karenina, singing a dirge of betrayal. From this nightmare, Anna woke moaning.

She looked silently, intently at Vronsky, standing in the middle of the room. He glanced at her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a letter. She turned, and went deliberately out of the room. He still might have turned her back, but when she had reached the door, he was still silent, and the only sound audible was the rustling of the notepaper as he turned it.

“Oh, by the way,” he said at the very moment she was in the doorway, “the moon is now beyond our reach. It is reported to me that the Higher Branches have shut down all access to the launching station, that even now Toy Soldiers are manning gateposts on all the roads to the Cannon, turning away travelers. Our only option now, and I do not pretend the odds are in our favor, is to convince the full council of the Higher Branches to overrule Karenin. Anna, it is time to make peace with the world as it is.”

“You may, but not I,” she said, turning round to him.

“Anna, we can’t go on like this. . . .”

“You, but not I,” she repeated.

“This is getting unbearable!”

“You . . . you will be sorry for this,” she said, and went out.

Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second thought he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar—as he thought it—threat of something vague exasperated him.

“I’ve tried everything,” he thought, “the only thing left is not to pay attention,” and he began to get ready to drive into town, resolving to take his case to the Higher Branches, and beg forgiveness, not as one half of a couple, but as his own man.

H
E HAS GONE!
It is over!” Anna said to herself, standing at the window; and in answer to this statement the impression of the darkness when the candle had flickered out and of her fearful dream mingling into one filled her heart with cold terror.

“No, that cannot be!” she cried, and crossing the room she rang the bell. She was so afraid now of being alone that, without waiting for the servant to come in, she went out to meet him.

“Inquire where the count has gone,” she said.

Pyotr said, “What? Who?”

“The count! Count Vronsky! Oh, you fool!”

The servant stammered that the count had gone to the stable.

“His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would be back immediately.”

“Very good. Wait a minute. I’ll write a note at once. Run with the note to the stables. Make haste.”

She sat down and wrote, in an unsteady hand:

“I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God’s sake come! I’m afraid.”

She sealed it up and gave it to Pyotr, who looked at it, confused, for a moment. “It is a message!” shouted Anna. “Bring it to him. With your feet!”

Oh, how she missed robots!

And yet, once Pyotr had gone, she was afraid of being left alone; she followed the servant out of the room, and went to the nursery.

Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet, shy smile?
was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little girl with her
black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery, in the arms of the governess they had hired to replace the II/Governess/65. The little girl sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes. Anna sat down by the little girl and began spinning the cork to show her. But the child’s loud, ringing laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so vividly that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went away.
Can it be all over? No, it cannot be!
she thought.
He will come back. I will believe. If I don’t believe, there’s only one thing left for me, and I can’t.