“We have a railway now,” he said in answer to his uncle’s question. “It’s
like this, do you see: two sit on a bench—they’re the passengers; and one
stands up straight on the bench. And all are harnessed to it by their arms or
by their belts, and they run through all the rooms—the doors are left open
beforehand. Well, and it’s pretty hard work being the conductor!”
“That’s the one that stands?” Stepan Arkadyevitch inquired, smiling.
“Yes, you want pluck for it, and cleverness too, especially when they stop
all of a sudden, or someone falls down.”
“Yes, that must be a serious matter,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, watching
with mournful interest the eager eyes, like his mother’s; not childish now—
no longer fully innocent. And though he had promised Alexey
Alexandrovitch not to speak of Anna, he could not restrain himself.
“Do you remember your mother?” he asked suddenly.
“No, I don’t,” Seryozha said quickly. He blushed crimson, and his face
clouded over. And his uncle could get nothing more out of him. His tutor
found his pupil on the staircase half an hour later, and for a long while he
could not make out whether he was ill-tempered or crying.
“What is it? I expect you hurt yourself when you fell down?” said the
tutor. “I told you it was a dangerous game. And we shall have to speak to
the director.”
“If I had hurt myself, nobody should have found it out, that’s certain.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Leave me alone! If I remember, or if I don’t remember?… what business
is it of his? Why should I remember? Leave me in peace!” he said,
addressing not his tutor, but the whole world.
Chapter 20
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as usual, did not waste his time in Petersburg. In
Petersburg, besides business, his sister’s divorce, and his coveted
appointment, he wanted, as he always did, to freshen himself up, as he said,
after the mustiness of Moscow.
In spite of its cafés chantants and its omnibuses, Moscow was yet a
stagnant bog. Stepan Arkadyevitch always felt it. After living for some time
in Moscow, especially in close relations with his family, he was conscious
of a depression of spirits. After being a long time in Moscow without a
change, he reached a point when he positively began to be worrying himself
over his wife’s ill-humor and reproaches, over his children’s health and
education, and the petty details of his official work; even the fact of being
in debt worried him. But he had only to go and stay a little while in
Petersburg, in the circle there in which he moved, where people lived—
really lived—instead of vegetating as in Moscow, and all such ideas
vanished and melted away at once, like wax before the fire. His wife?…
Only that day he had been talking to Prince Tchetchensky. Prince
Tchetchensky had a wife and family, grown-up pages in the corps, … and he
had another illegitimate family of children also. Though the first family was
very nice too, Prince Tchetchensky felt happier in his second family; and he
used to take his eldest son with him to his second family, and told Stepan
Arkadyevitch that he thought it good for his son, enlarging his ideas. What
would have been said to that in Moscow?
His children? In Petersburg children did not prevent their parents from
enjoying life. The children were brought up in schools, and there was no
trace of the wild idea that prevailed in Moscow, in Lvov’s household, for
instance, that all the luxuries of life were for the children, while the parents
have nothing but work and anxiety. Here people understood that a man is in
duty bound to live for himself, as every man of culture should live.
His official duties? Official work here was not the stiff, hopeless
drudgery that it was in Moscow. Here there was some interest in official
life. A chance meeting, a service rendered, a happy phrase, a knack of
facetious mimicry, and a man’s career might be made in a trice. So it had
been with Bryantsev, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had met the previous day,
and who was one of the highest functionaries in government now. There
was some interest in official work like that.
The Petersburg attitude on pecuniary matters had an especially soothing
effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. Bartnyansky, who must spend at least fifty
thousand to judge by the style he lived in, had made an interesting comment
the day before on that subject.
As they were talking before dinner, Stepan Arkadyevitch said to
Bartnyansky:
“You’re friendly, I fancy, with Mordvinsky; you might do me a favor: say
a word to him, please, for me. There’s an appointment I should like to get—
secretary of the agency….”
“Oh, I shan’t remember all that, if you tell it to me…. But what possesses
you to have to do with railways and Jews?… Take it as you will, it’s a low
business.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch did not say to Bartnyansky that it was a “growing
thing”—Bartnyansky would not have understood that.
“I want the money, I’ve nothing to live on.”
“You’re living, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but in debt.”
“Are you, though? Heavily?” said Bartnyansky sympathetically.
“Very heavily: twenty thousand.”
Bartnyansky broke into good-humored laughter.
“Oh, lucky fellow!” said he. “My debts mount up to a million and a half,
and I’ve nothing, and still I can live, as you see!”
And Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the correctness of this view not in words
only but in actual fact. Zhivahov owed three hundred thousand, and hadn’t a
farthing to bless himself with, and he lived, and in style too! Count Krivtsov
was considered a hopeless case by everyone, and yet he kept two
mistresses. Petrovsky had run through five millions, and still lived in just
the same style, and was even a manager in the financial department with a
salary of twenty thousand. But besides this, Petersburg had physically an
agreeable effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. It made him younger. In Moscow
he sometimes found a gray hair in his head, dropped asleep after dinner,
stretched, walked slowly upstairs, breathing heavily, was bored by the
society of young women, and did not dance at balls. In Petersburg he
always felt ten years younger.
His experience in Petersburg was exactly what had been described to him
on the previous day by Prince Pyotr Oblonsky, a man of sixty, who had just
come back from abroad:
“We don’t know the way to live here,” said Pyotr Oblonsky. “I spent the
summer in Baden, and you wouldn’t believe it, I felt quite a young man. At
a glimpse of a pretty woman, my thoughts…. One dines and drinks a glass
of wine, and feels strong and ready for anything. I came home to Russia—
had to see my wife, and, what’s more, go to my country place; and there,
you’d hardly believe it, in a fortnight I’d got into a dressing gown and given
up dressing for dinner. Needn’t say I had no thoughts left for pretty women.
I became quite an old gentleman. There was nothing left for me but to think
of my eternal salvation. I went off to Paris—I was as right as could be at
once.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch felt exactly the difference that Pyotr Oblonsky
described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there
for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his
salvation; in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the world again.
Between Princess Betsy Tverskaya and Stepan Arkadyevitch there had
long existed rather curious relations. Stepan Arkadyevitch always flirted
with her in jest, and used to say to her, also in jest, the most unseemly
things, knowing that nothing delighted her so much. The day after his
conversation with Karenin, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to see her, and felt so
youthful that in this jesting flirtation and nonsense he recklessly went so far
that he did not know how to extricate himself, as unluckily he was so far
from being attracted by her that he thought her positively disagreeable.
What made it hard to change the conversation was the fact that he was very
attractive to her. So that he was considerably relieved at the arrival of
Princess Myakaya, which cut short their tête-à-tête.
“Ah, so you’re here!” said she when she saw him. “Well, and what news
of your poor sister? You needn’t look at me like that,” she added. “Ever
since they’ve all turned against her, all those who’re a thousand times worse
than she, I’ve thought she did a very fine thing. I can’t forgive Vronsky for
not letting me know when she was in Petersburg. I’d have gone to see her
and gone about with her everywhere. Please give her my love. Come, tell
me about her.”
“Yes, her position is very difficult; she….” began Stepan Arkadyevitch, in
the simplicity of his heart accepting as sterling coin Princess Myakaya’s
words “tell me about her.” Princess Myakaya interrupted him immediately,
as she always did, and began talking herself.
“She’s done what they all do, except me—only they hide it. But she
wouldn’t be deceitful, and she did a fine thing. And she did better still in
throwing up that crazy brother-in-law of yours. You must excuse me.
Everybody used to say he was so clever, so very clever; I was the only one
that said he was a fool. Now that he’s so thick with Lidia Ivanovna and
Landau, they all say he’s crazy, and I should prefer not to agree with
everybody, but this time I can’t help it.”
“Oh, do please explain,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch; “what does it mean?
Yesterday I was seeing him on my sister’s behalf, and I asked him to give
me a final answer. He gave me no answer, and said he would think it over.
But this morning, instead of an answer, I received an invitation from
Countess Lidia Ivanovna for this evening.”
“Ah, so that’s it, that’s it!” said Princess Myakaya gleefully, “they’re
going to ask Landau what he’s to say.”
“Ask Landau? What for? Who or what’s Landau?”
“What! you don’t know Jules Landau, le fameux Jules Landau, le
clairvoyant? He’s crazy too, but on him your sister’s fate depends. See what
comes of living in the provinces—you know nothing about anything.
Landau, do you see, was a commis in a shop in Paris, and he went to a
doctor’s; and in the doctor’s waiting room he fell asleep, and in his sleep he
began giving advice to all the patients. And wonderful advice it was! Then
the wife of Yury Meledinsky—you know, the invalid?—heard of this
Landau, and had him to see her husband. And he cured her husband, though
I can’t say that I see he did him much good, for he’s just as feeble a creature
as ever he was, but they believed in him, and took him along with them and
brought him to Russia. Here there’s been a general rush to him, and he’s
begun doctoring everyone. He cured Countess Bezzubova, and she took
such a fancy to him that she adopted him.”
“Adopted him?”
“Yes, as her son. He’s not Landau any more now, but Count Bezzubov.
That’s neither here nor there, though; but Lidia—I’m very fond of her, but
she has a screw loose somewhere—has lost her heart to this Landau now,
and nothing is settled now in her house or Alexey Alexandrovitch’s without
him, and so your sister’s fate is now in the hands of Landau, alias Count
Bezzubov.”
