Android Karenina - By Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy & Ben H. Winters & Leo Tolstoy Page 0,100

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 God, 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 God!” 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 God 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,