enough. Can you?” she said to Marya Nikolaevna.
“I’m afraid not,” answered Marya Nikolaevna.
Terrible as it was to Levin to put his arms round that terrible body, to take
hold of that under the quilt, of which he preferred to know nothing, under
his wife’s influence he made his resolute face that she knew so well, and
putting his arms into the bed took hold of the body, but in spite of his own
strength he was struck by the strange heaviness of those powerless limbs.
While he was turning him over, conscious of the huge emaciated arm about
his neck, Kitty swiftly and noiselessly turned the pillow, beat it up and
settled in it the sick man’s head, smoothing back his hair, which was
sticking again to his moist brow.
The sick man kept his brother’s hand in his own. Levin felt that he meant
to do something with his hand and was pulling it somewhere. Levin yielded
with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed it. Levin,
shaking with sobs and unable to articulate a word, went out of the room.
Chapter 19
“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes.” So Levin thought about his wife as he talked to her that
evening.
Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself “wise and
prudent.” He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing
that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he
could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all
the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many great men,
whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a
hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it.
Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and Katya, as his
brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly liked to call her
now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew, without a shade of doubt,
what sort of thing life was and what was death, and though neither of them
could have answered, and would even not have understood the questions
that presented themselves to Levin, both had no doubt of the significance of
this event, and were precisely alike in their way of looking at it, which they
shared with millions of people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the
nature of death lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation
how to deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and
other men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death,
obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were
absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Levin had been
alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him with
terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have known what
else to do.
More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move.
To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk of
death and depressing subjects—also impossible. To be silent, also
impossible. “If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am afraid; if
I don’t look at him, he’ll think I’m thinking of other things. If I walk on
tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I’m ashamed.” Kitty evidently did
not think of herself, and had no time to think about herself: she was
thinking about him because she knew something, and all went well. She
told him about herself even and about her wedding, and smiled and
sympathized with him and petted him, and talked of cases of recovery and
all went well; so then she must know. The proof that her behavior and
Agafea Mihalovna’s was not instinctive, animal, irrational, was that apart
from the physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna
and Kitty required for the dying man something else more important than
the physical treatment, and something which had nothing in common with
physical conditions. Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had
said: “Well, thank God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God
grant each one of us such a death.” Katya in just the same way, besides all
her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to
persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and
receiving absolution.
On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the night,
Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak of
supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do, he
could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary,
was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual. She ordered
supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to
make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian
powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection which comes
out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive
moments of life—those moments when a man shows once and for all his
value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation
for these moments.
Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o’clock
all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such a way
that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made, brushes,
combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were spread.
Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now, and
it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She arranged
the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing shocking in it.
They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they could
not sleep, and did not even go to bed.
“I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow,”
she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding looking-glass,
combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. “I have never seen it, but I
know, mamma has told me, there are prayers said for recovery.”
“Do you suppose he can possibly recover?” said Levin, watching a
slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually hidden
when she passed the comb through the front.
“I asked the doctor; he said he couldn’t live more than three days. But
can they be sure? I’m very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him,” she said,
looking askance at her husband through her hair. “Anything is possible,”
she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was always in her
face when she spoke of religion.
Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither
of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed all
the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on, always
with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite of his
assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a
Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it
was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say about
her broderie anglaise that good people patch holes, but that she cut them on
purpose, and so on.
