Android Karenina Part 18

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexei Alexandrovich, on waking up, recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help smiling. Absorbed in this pleasure, Alexei Alexandrovich had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for the return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was surprised and received a shock of annoyance when a II/Footman/74 motored in to inform him of her arrival.

Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage had been sent to meet her in accordance with her communique, and so Alexei Alexandrovich might have known of her arrival. But when she arrived, he did not meet her. She sent word to her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour pa.s.sed; he did not come. She went into the dining room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study. She knew that he usually went out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that, so that their att.i.tude to one another might be defined.

She walked across the drawing room and went resolutely to him. When she went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that he was thinking of her.

On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his metal faceplate rapidly radiated through a sequence of colors, from cruel red to a harsh, gleaming gold-an affect Anna had never seen before, and she thought to herself: It is growing. All the time it is growing. It is growing. All the time it is growing.

Karenin got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked her to sit down.

"I am very glad you have come," he said, sitting down beside her, and obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he tried to begin to speak, but stopped.

SPEAK, MAN. SPEAK! SO STEELY IN THE HALLS OF POWER, SO WEAK IN HIS OWN PRIVATE CHAMBERS. . . .

The silence lasted for some time. "Is Seryozha quite well?" he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: "I shan't be dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly."

"I had thought of going to Moscow," she said.

"No, you did quite, quite right to come," he said, and was silent again.

Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began herself.

"Alexei Alexandrovich," she said, looking at him and not dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, "I'm a guilty woman, I'm a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing."

"I have asked you no question about that," he said, all at once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face, and the Face again pulsed and radiated wild colors, venom traveling along its veins. "That was as I had supposed." Under the influence of anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his ability to speak. "But as I told you then, and have written to you," he said in a thin, shrill voice, "I repeat now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their husbands." He laid special emphasis on the word "agreeable," and Anna thought she noticed that his voice changed as he said it, darkening dramatically in pitch and tone: AGREEABLE. AGREEABLE.

"I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my honor."

"But our relations cannot be the same as always," Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with dismay.

When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to make clear her position.

"I cannot be your wife while I . . . ," she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh, and she felt a jab of sharp pain inside her mind, as if a knitting needle had been thrust between the lobes of her brain. She gave out a choked sob of pain, and Android Karenina, obeying her programmed impulses, reached out to place a comforting arm across her mistress's shoulders.

Karenin then spoke: "The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both . . . I respect your past and despise your present . . . that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words."

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how-with the independence you show," he went on, getting hot, "announcing your infidelity to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently-you can see anything reprehensible in performing a wife's duties in relation to your husband."

"Alexei Alexandrovich! What is it you want of me?"

TO REPENT OF HER UNFAITHFULNESS.

TO GROVEL AT YOUR FEET.

TO SUBMIT TO YOUR WILL, OR PAY THE ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCE FOR HER REFUSAL!.

Alexei Alexandrovich screamed out loud, and the little drawing-room table flew up into the air and spiraled over their heads to smash against the opposite wall. Anna whirled round in fright as a vase of flowers on the other side of the room suddenly exploded, as if shot; the door, which she had left ajar, slammed violently closed and the mechanism of the lock noisily engaged.

Anna turned back and gaped at Alexei Alexandrovich, who took a deep, labored breath as if trying to overmaster himself. Finally the room was still, and while Anna trembled, her husband calmly and coldly expressed his wishes. "I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that no one in the world, not even a robot robot, can find fault with you. Not to see him: that's not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That's all I have to say to you. Tonight I am not dining at home." He folded his arms across his chest and turned away.

"Alexei?"

He looked back.

"Is it possible . . . for me to . . ." She looked with evident uncertainty to the heavy oaken door.

LEAVE IT.

LET HER STAY UNTIL SHE ROTS.

But Alexei Alexandrovich only shook his head slightly, and the lock disengaged, and the door swung open. Immediately, she got up, and signaled to Android Karenina that they would leave. Bowing in silence, Alexei Alexandrovich let them pa.s.s before him, visibly composed but inwardly as miserable and confused as she.

Only the Face was pleased, for in every such encounter it gained exponentially in power and control.

Over the man-over the woman-over them all. all.

CHAPTER 11.

ONE AFTERNOON, TOWARD THE END of the spring extraction season, Levin and Socrates were in the living room, engaged in an intense discussion about the giant koschei that plagued the countryside around Provokovskoe. More and more peasants had reported hearing the dreaded of the spring extraction season, Levin and Socrates were in the living room, engaged in an intense discussion about the giant koschei that plagued the countryside around Provokovskoe. More and more peasants had reported hearing the dreaded tikkatikkatikka tikkatikkatikka echoing through the woods at night; some spoke of friends who had gone out hunting and not returned; Levin spoke to one man who told personally of his battle with one of the robotic monsters, of how he narrowly escaped its tremendous gathering maw. Socrates had determined through rigorous a.n.a.lysis of recovered metallic shreds that the things were indeed of the same mechanical infrastructure as the small wormlike koschei that had plagued the countryside last season-but how they had grown so large, and so prevalent, especially after the Ministry had determined them exterminated, remained an open question. echoing through the woods at night; some spoke of friends who had gone out hunting and not returned; Levin spoke to one man who told personally of his battle with one of the robotic monsters, of how he narrowly escaped its tremendous gathering maw. Socrates had determined through rigorous a.n.a.lysis of recovered metallic shreds that the things were indeed of the same mechanical infrastructure as the small wormlike koschei that had plagued the countryside last season-but how they had grown so large, and so prevalent, especially after the Ministry had determined them exterminated, remained an open question.

While Socrates mulled this question yet one more time, charting out the various possibilities with branching mathematical precision in the chambers of his mind, Levin had a seemingly unrelated recollection that nevertheless chilled him to the bones: of Countess Nordston, Kitty's foolish friend, speaking of her belief in the Honored Guests-extraterrestrial beings who, supposedly, would one day come to redeem the human race.

"In three ways," she had said. "They will come for us in three ways." "They will come for us in three ways."

Turning over this gnomic phrase in his mind, wondering what connection it could have to the question of the wormlike koschei, Levin did not at first hear the sound of a long, wrenching cough coming from the front hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, followed by a squat, rattling metal shadow, and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother, Nikolai, accompanied by his woeful Cla.s.s III, Karnak.

Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Levin was confused and anxious about the koschei, and had not seen his beloved Kitty since the day he spotted her, waking gently in her carriage, and he was in a troubled and uncertain humor; meeting with his ailing brother in such a state seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.

Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as soon as he saw his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolai had been before in his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.

He stood in the hall, jerking his long, thin neck and pulling the scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile, submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.

"You see, I've come to you," said Nikolai in a thick voice, never for one second taking his eyes off his brother's face. As Levin regarded him, the skin of Nikolai's face, pulled so tightly across his skull, rippled grotesquely, like small waves moving across the surface of a fetid pond.

"I've been meaning to come a long while, but I've been unwell all the time," he said, rubbing his beard with his big, thin hands. "Now I'm ever so much better."

"Yes, yes!" answered Levin. He approached him to offer a kiss, but instantly drew back, horrified at the idea of his lips coming into contact with the pale, beleaguered flesh of his suffering brother. But even as he drew away, covering his mouth with his hand, he saw that Nikolai's big eyes were full of a strange light.

A few weeks before, Konstantin Dmitrich had written to his brother that through the sale of a small part of their property that had remained undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand rubles to come to him as his share.

Nikolai said now that he had come to take this money and, what was more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop and the emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.

His brother had dressed with particular care-a thing he never used to do-and he combed his scanty, lank hair, not noticing that as he did he tugged free several stray clumps.

"Well, I'll spend a month or two with you, and then I'm off to Moscow," Nikolai said. He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin often remembered him in childhood. And yet there was something in his brother's voice and manner, something that suggested to Levin some deep concern he needed to share, but did not know how to express.

Even as he spoke, Levin saw that the flesh-rippling was not confined to Nikolai's forehead; his stomach, his chest, even his eyes undulated nearly imperceptibly. Nikolai grimaced, evidently trying to hide his discomfort from his brother.

"Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I've done silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money's the last consideration; I don't regret it. So long as there's health, and my health, thank G.o.d, is quite restored."

As the brothers moved toward the bedrooms, Karnak wobbled along at their heels, his woefully maltuned navigation circuits occasionally driving him into the walls.

As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen. Socrates' Third Bay emitted a gentle perfume throughout the night, to minimize the combined stench of rust and dissolution emitting from Nikolai and Karnak.

His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, he tossed about, coughed, and when he could not get his throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he said, "Oh, my G.o.d!" Sometimes when he was choking, he muttered angrily, "Ah, the devil!" Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His thoughts were most various, but the end of all his thoughts was the same: death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this beloved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on G.o.d and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself, too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, in thirty years-wasn't it all the same! And what was this inevitable death; he did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it.

"I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten-death."

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and, holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact: that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.

"But I am alive still. Now what's to be done? What's to be done?" he said to Socrates in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously, stood before the monitor of his beloved-companion, and set it to show himself to himself. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolai, who lay there breathing with terrible difficulty had had a strong, healthy body too. "And now that bent, hollow chest . . . with that awful rippling below his skin . . . and I, not knowing what will become of me, or wherefore . . ."

"It is . . . it is inside . . . ," his brother's voice called elusively.

"What . . . what do you mean, inside?" Levin replied "What is inside?"

Nikolai thrashed in the sheets; he was not awake, but talking from the depths of some consuming nightmare.

"It is inside me . . . deep inside . . . get it out . . . please . . . please, brother . . ."

Levin shuddered, withdrew behind the screen, and huddled tremulously with Socrates. The question of how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself: death.

Through the night, Nikolai continued to moan and shudder and call out from the depths of his slumbering consciousness.

"Inside . . . it is inside me. . . ."

PART FOUR

A STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF A MAN.

CHAPTER 1.

THE KARENINS, HUSBAND AND WIFE, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexei Alexandrovich, though consumed with preparations for the next and most delicate phase of his cherished Project, made it a rule to see his wife every day so that the servants would have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexei Alexandrovich's house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.

The position was one of misery for all three, and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary, painful ordeal which would pa.s.s over. Alexei Alexandrovich hoped that this pa.s.sion would pa.s.s, as everything does pa.s.s, that everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed, as she repeatedly expressed to Android Karenina, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. Vronsky, against his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that something, apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.

Vronsky had that winter endured and survived a particularly brutal and long-lasting inter-regimental Cull, one intended to prepare the ranks for a new and quite serious threat to the Motherland, the details of which were murky, but for which the Ministry demanded all soldiers hone their readiness. Vronsky had advanced as his reward to the rank of colonel, and as part of his new responsibilities, he was dispatched by his superior officer to spend a week entertaining a foreign prince-an a.s.signment that promised at first some mild amus.e.m.e.nt, but ended up being the most tedious of ch.o.r.es. The prince's tastes ran to the most excessive and wearisome form of indulgence, and all week long Alexei Kirillovich was obliged to partake in flute after flute of champagne, to sit through long games of Flickerfly, and to attend the robot-human diversions known as metal-flesh, officially illegal but widely enjoyed during such "stag nights."

When the visitor had at last departed, and Vronsky's time was his own again, Vronsky arrived home to find a note from Anna. She wrote, "I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexei Alexandrovich goes to the Ministry at seven and will be there till ten." Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband's insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.

After having some lunch, he lay down on the sofa and cued Lupo's monitor to display a soothing Memory to aid him in falling off to sleep. He did not know how long he slept, but at some point he became aware that time had pa.s.sed, and that Lupo's monitor still glowed on-and as Vronsky gazed with heavy lids at the screen, he saw that the images had grown distorted and unsettling. Here was Anna being sucked again into that horrid G.o.dmouth; here she was in theVrede Garden, encased in the translucent sheath, drifting upward toward some uncertain doom. And here, at the Grav Station, the two of them together, watching the charred and battered body, curtained in burlap, lifted from the magnet bed. . . .

"Lupo!" Vronsky screamed, sitting up in a wild panic, and the Cla.s.s III looked chastened and confused, for apparently the strange images had played unbidden. He hurried to cue a new Memory, but it was too late;Vronsky's rest had become impossible.

"What queer maltuning is this!" muttered Vronsky darkly, rising from the sofa drenched in sweat, and glanced at his watch. He rang up his servant, dressed in haste, and went out onto the steps, trying to shake from his head the sequence of alarming Memories, worried too about being late.

As he drove up to the Karenins' entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He recognized Anna's carriage. "She is coming to me," muttered Vronsky, "and better she should. I don't like going into that house. But no matter; I can't hide myself," and with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge, his thumb tracing anxious circles on the hilt of his hot-whip, and went to the door. The door opened, and the II/Porter/7e62, a rug draped in the grip of its end-effector, called the carriage.

And then, suddenly, in the doorway, Vronsky almost ran up against Alexei Alexandrovich. The gas jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face, half-concealed beneath the gleaming alloy mask and the black hat, the white cravat brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin's fixed, dull eye was fastened upon Vronsky's face.

A long moment pa.s.sed, and Vronsky bowed-or rather, he began to bow, and stopped short, feeling himself unable to do so. Lupo swiveled his big silver head unit back and forth, now with trepidation at Alexei Karenin, now with fear and uncertainty at his master. Vronsky, thinking in one confused moment that it was fear, or even social awkwardness, that held him in his place, tried again to bow; it was then he realized that his body was held fast, seemingly wrapped in thick blankets of invisible force.

The telescopic eye starkly obtruded from Alexei Alexandrovich's face as the man stood chewing his lips, directed straight at him. The invisible grip tightened slowly, constricting about Vronsky's body like a snake . . . and then sliding him, slowly at first and then quickly, toward the heavy oaken front door. Lupo whimpered and huddled weakly in the opposite corner. Vronsky felt he was a piece of furniture set on rollers, only he moved not in the strong grips of II/Porter/7e62s, but was propelled instead by some invisible push radiating from Anna's queer husband. Karenin stood, calm and composed, staring at him through that lenticular eye like a jeweler examining a stone, as Vronsky smashed with terrible force into the door.

In the next moment, the force that had held him relaxed like an unclenching fist, and he lay on the ground in a numb heap, pain radiating from where his back had banged into the heavy wood of the door, drinking in great, heaving gasps of sweet air.

Without a word, Alexei Karenin stepped over him, lifted his hand to his hat, and went on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the carriage, pick up the rug and the opera gla.s.s at the window, and disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His brows were scowling, sweat was pouring off his body, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and angry light in them.

"What a position!" he said to Lupo, trotting at his heels. "If he would fight fair, would stand up for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or baseness . . . He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never meant and never mean to do. . . ."

He trailed off, then added darkly: "How in blazes did he do do that?" that?"

He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of Anna Karenina's retreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing room.

"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the tears came into her eyes. "No, if things are to go on like this, the end will come much, much too soon."

"What is it, dear one?"

"What? I've been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours. . . . You met him?" she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the lamplight. "You're punished, you see, for being late."

"Such punishment," he replied, rubbing at the small of his back, where he could feel the first tender blossom of the angry bruise to come. "seems rather excessive. Wasn't he to be at the Ministry?"

"He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again."

"Never mind, never mind," Vronsky said, and she looked a long while at him with a profound, pa.s.sionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.