his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness,
sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to women.
“We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden,” she said. “You
never thought I was to be your sister?”
“You would not have recognized me?” he said, with a radiant smile at her
entrance.
“Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed
that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious.”
But the sick man’s interest did not last long.
Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the
stern, reproachful expression of the dying man’s envy of the living.
“I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here,” she said, turning away
from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. “We must ask about
another room,” she said to her husband, “so that we might be nearer.”
Chapter 18
Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself be
natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick man, his eyes
and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he did not see and did
not distinguish the details of his brother’s position. He smelt the awful odor,
saw the dirt, disorder, and miserable condition, and heard the groans, and
felt that nothing could be done to help. It never entered his head to analyze
the details of the sick man’s situation, to consider how that body was lying
under the quilt, how those emaciated legs and thighs and spine were lying
huddled up, and whether they could not be made more comfortable,
whether anything could not be done to make things, if not better, at least
less bad. It made his blood run cold when he began to think of all these
details. He was absolutely convinced that nothing could be done to prolong
his brother’s life or to relieve his suffering. But a sense of his regarding all
aid as out of the question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him.
And this made it still more painful for Levin. To be in the sick-room was
agony to him, not to be there still worse. And he was continually, on various
pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was
unable to remain alone.
But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the sick
man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse at all that
feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her husband, but a desire to
act, to find out all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she
had not the slightest doubt that it was her duty to help him, she had no
doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to work. The very
details, the mere thought of which reduced her husband to terror,
immediately engaged her attention. She sent for the doctor, sent to the
chemist’s, set the maid who had come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to
sweep and dust and scrub; she herself washed up something, washed out
something else, laid something under the quilt. Something was by her
directions brought into the sick-room, something else was carried out. She
herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the
corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillow cases, towels, and shirts.
The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining
hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her
summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them
with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did not
approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to the patient.
Above all, he feared the patient would be angry at it. But the sick man,
though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not angry, but only
abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what she was doing with
him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had sent him, Levin, on
opening the door, came upon the sick man at the instant when, by Kitty’s
directions, they were changing his linen. The long white ridge of his spine,
with the huge, prominent shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae,
was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with the
sleeve of the night shirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty,
hurriedly closing the door after Levin, was not looking that way; but the
sick man groaned, and she moved rapidly towards him.
“Make haste,” she said.
“Oh, don’t you come,” said the sick man angrily. “I’ll do it my myself….”
“What say?” queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw he was
ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.
“I’m not looking, I’m not looking!” she said, putting the arm in. “Marya
Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it,” she added.
“Please go for me, there’s a little bottle in my small bag,” she said,
turning to her husband, “you know, in the side pocket; bring it, please, and
meanwhile they’ll finish clearing up here.”
Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled comfortably
and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was
replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with pouting lips
and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little pipe. There was
no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bedside. On the table stood
medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the linen needed was
folded up there, and Kitty’s broderie anglaise. On the other table by the
patient’s bed there were candles and drink and powders. The sick man
himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets on high raised pillows, in a
clean night-shirt with a white collar about his astoundingly thin neck, and
with a new expression of hope looked fixedly at Kitty.
The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was not the
one who had been attending Nikolay Levin, as the patient was dissatisfied
with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and sounded the patient,
shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with extreme minuteness
explained first how to take the medicine and then what diet was to be kept
to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked, and seltzer water, with warm
milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor had gone away the sick man
said something to his brother, of which Levin could distinguish only the last
words: “Your Katya.” By the expression with which he gazed at her, Levin
saw that he was praising her. He called indeed to Katya, as he called her.
“I’m much better already,” he said. “Why, with you I should have got
well long ago. How nice it is!” he took her hand and drew it towards his
lips, but as though afraid she would dislike it he changed his mind, let it go,
and only stroked it. Kitty took his hand in both hers and pressed it.
“Now turn me over on the left side and go to bed,” he said.
No one could make out what he said but Kitty; she alone understood. She
understood because she was all the while mentally keeping watch on what
he needed.
“On the other side,” she said to her husband, “he always sleeps on that
side. Turn him over, it’s so disagreeable calling the servants. I’m not strong
