Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
"He has hidden it from the wise, and revealed it unto children and fools;" thus thought Levin about his wife as he was talking with her a little while later.
He did not mean to compare himself to a wise man in thus quoting the Gospel. He did not call himself wise; but he could not help feeling that he was more intellectual than his wife and Agafya Mikhaïlovna, that he employed all the powers of his soul, when he thought about death. He knew also that many great and manly minds whose thoughts on this subject he had read had tried to fathom this mystery, but they had not seemed to know one hundredth part as much as his wife and his old nurse. Agafya Mikhaïlovna and Katya—as his brother called her, and he also now began to take pleasure in doing—had, in this respect, a perfect sympathy, though otherwise they were entirely opposite.
Both unquestionably knew what life meant and what death meant, and though they were of course incapable of answering or understanding the questions that presented themselves to Levin's mind, they not only had their own way of explaining these great facts of human existence, but they also shared their belief in this regard with millions of human beings. As a proof of their well-grounded knowledge of what death was, they without a second of doubt knew what to do for those who were dying, and felt no fear of them. While Levin and others, who could talk much about death, evidently knew nothing about it because they were afraid of it and actually had no notion what to do when men were dying. If Konstantin Levin had been alone now with his brother Nikolaï, he would have gazed with terror into his face, and with growing terror awaited his end with fear, and been able to think of nothing to do for him.
What was more, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to walk. To speak of indifferent things seemed unworthy, impossible; to speak of melancholy things, of death, was likewise impossible; to be silent was even worse.
"If I look at him, he will think that I am studying him, I fear; if I do not look at him, he will believe that my thoughts are elsewhere. To walk on tiptoe irritates him; to walk as usual seems brutal."
Kitty apparently did not think about herself, and she had not the time. Occupied only with the invalid, she seemed to have a clear idea of what to do; and she succeeded in her endeavor.
She related the circumstances of their marriage; she told about herself; she smiled on him; she caressed him; she cited cases of extraordinary cures; and it was all delightful: she understood how to do it. The proof that her activity—and Agafya Mikhaïlovna's—was not instinctive, was animal, was above reason, lay in the fact that neither of them was satisfied with offering physical solace or performing purely material acts; both of them demanded for the dying man something more important than physical care, and something above and beyond merely physical conditions.
Agafya Mikhaïlovna, speaking of the old servant who had lately passed away, said, "Thank God, he had confession and extreme unction; God grant us all to die likewise."
Katya, though she was busy with her care of the linen, the medicines, and the bed-sores, even on the first day succeeded in persuading her brother-in-law to receive the sacrament.
When Levin at the end of the day returned from the sick-room to their own two rooms, he sat down with bowed head, confused, not knowing what to do, unable to think of eating his supper, of arranging for the night, of doing anything at all; he could not even talk with his wife: he felt ashamed of himself.
But Kitty showed extraordinary activity. She had supper brought; she herself unpacked the trunks, helped arrange the beds, and even remembered to scatter Persian powder upon them. She felt the same excitement and quickness of thought which men of genius show on the eve of battle, or at those serious and critical moments in their lives, those moments when, if ever, a man shows his value, and all the preceding days of his life are only the preparation for these moments.
The whole work made such rapid progress that before twelve o'clock all their things were neatly and carefully arranged: their two hotel rooms presented a thoroughly homelike appearance; the beds were remade; the brushes, the combs, the hand-mirrors, were taken out; the towels were in order.
Levin found it unpardonable in himself to eat, to sleep, even to speak; and he felt that every motion he made was inappropriate. But she took out her toilet articles and did everything in such a way that there was nothing in the least disturbing or unsuitable in it.
Neither of them could eat, however, and they sat long before they could make up their minds to go to bed.
"I am very glad that I persuaded him to receive extreme unction to-morrow," said Kitty, as she combed her soft perfumed hair, before her mirror, sitting in her dressing-sack. "I never saw it given; but mamma told me that they repeat prayers for restoration to health."
"Do you believe that he can get well?" asked Levin, as he watched the narrow parting at the back of her little round head disappear as she moved she comb forward.
"I asked the doctor; he says that he cannot live more than three days. But what does he know about it? I am glad that I persuaded him," she said, looking at her husband from behind her hair. "All things are possible," she added, with that peculiar, almost crafty, expression which came over her face when she spoke about religion.
Never, since the conversation that they had while they were engaged, had they spoken about religion; but Kitty still continued to go to church and to say her prayers with the calm conviction that she was fulfilling a duty. Notwithstanding the confession, which her husband had felt impelled to make, she firmly believed that he was a good Christian, perhaps better even than herself, and that all he had said about it was only one of his absurd masculine freaks such as he liked to indulge in, just as he did when he jested about her broderie anglaise—as if good people mended holes, but she purposely created them.
"There! This woman, Marya Nikolayevna, would never have been able to persuade him," said Levin; and.... I must confess that I am very, very glad that you came. You made everything look so neat and comfortable!" ....
He took her hand, but did not kiss it; it seemed to him a profanation even to kiss her hand in the presence ot death, but he pressed it, as he looked with contrition into her shining eyes.
"You would have suffered too terribly all alone," she said, as she raised her arms, which covered the glow of satisfaction that made her cheeks red, and began to coil up her hair and fasten it to the top of her head. "No, she would not have known how .... but fortunately I learned many things at Soden."
"Were there people there as ill as he is?"
"Yes, more so."
"It is terrible to me not to see him as he used to be when he was young. .... You can't imagine what a handsome fellow he was; but I did not understand him then."
"Indeed, indeed, I believe you. I feel that we should have been friends," said she, and she turned toward her husband, frightened at what she had said, and the tears shone in her eyes.
"Yes, would have been," he said mournfully. "He is one of those men of whom one can say with reason that he was not meant for this world."
"Meanwhile, we must not forget that we have many days ahead of us; it is time to go to bed," said Kitty, consulting her tiny watch.