Android Karenina - By Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy & Ben H. Winters & Leo Tolstoy Page 0,104

now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this, he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.

She turned away from him, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff. The soft machine hum of the yarn’s rapid unspooling filled the silence.

“I don’t understand your husband in the least,” said Vronsky. “He toys with us, literally toys; if he has the power to destroy me with a glance, why not employ that power? How can he put up with our unsettled position? He feels it, that’s evident.”

“He?” she said sneeringly. “He’s perfectly satisfied.”

“What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?”

“Only he is not happy. Don’t I know him, the falsity in which he’s utterly steeped? He’s not a man, not a human being—he’s a machine. At least, and you must understand me, Alexei, because I mean it sincerely: There is some struggle within him between the man and the machine. For now at least the human part of him still lives and thrives, and it is that and nothing else that prevents him from destroying you and me together. Oh, if I’d been in his place, I’d long ago have killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. He doesn’t understand that I’m your wife, that he’s outside, that he’s superfluous. . . . Don’t let’s talk of him!”

“You’re unfair, very unfair, dearest,” said Vronsky, trying to soothe her. “But never mind, don’t let’s talk of him. Tell me what you’ve been doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong with you, and what did the doctor say?”

She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on other absurd and grotesque aspects of her husband and was awaiting the moment to give expression to them.

But he went on:

“I imagine that it’s not illness, but your condition. When will it be?”

The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet melancholy, came over her face. Android Karenina buzzed swiftly and silently to a side table and poured her a glass of cool water.

“You say that our position is miserable,” Anna said, “That we must put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I should not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy. . . . And it will come soon, but not as we expect.”

And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She laid her hand on his sleeve.

“It won’t come as we suppose. I didn’t mean to say this to you, but you’ve made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be at peace, and suffer no more.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, understanding her.

“You asked when? Soon. And I shan’t live through it. Don’t interrupt me!” and she made haste to speak. “I know it; I know for certain. I shall die; and I’m very glad I shall die, and release myself and you.”

Tears dropped from her eyes; Vronsky bent down over her hand and began kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of grounds, though he could not control it.

“Yes, it’s better so,” she said, tightly gripping his hand. “That’s the only way, the only way left to us.”

In the melancholy stillness that followed, Lupo suddenly jumped to his feet, his hyper-attuned sensors mistaking some distant twig crack or carriage rumble for the sound of Karenin’s returning footfalls.

Vronsky recovered himself, and lifted his head. “How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are