Chapter 13
FEELING THAT THE reconciliation was complete, Anna set eagerly to work in the morning preparing for their departure, not taking the time to repair the wrecked bedchamber. Though it was not settled how long they would stay on the moon, or how they would be served, as they had each given way to the other, Anna packed busily. She was standing in her room over an open box, taking things out of it, when he came in to see her earlier than usual, dressed to go out.
Pyotr came in to ask Vronsky to sign a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. Anna was curious, despite herself, regarding this clumsy technology that was supposedly to replace the simple elegance of monitor-to-monitor communication, but Vronsky jammed the paper hurriedly into a pocket, as if anxious to conceal something from her.
“By tomorrow, without fail, we shall launch for the moon.”
“From whom is the telegram?” she asked, not hearing him.
“From Stiva,” he answered reluctantly.
“Why didn’t you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva and me?”
“I didn’t want to show it to you, because Stiva has such a passion for telegraphing: he seems to have discovered a particular enjoyment of this new mode of communication. But why telegraph when nothing is settled?”
“Did he speak to Karenin?
“Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.”
With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read something very different from what Vronsky had told her. “He has power and inclination to destroy you both completely STOP Has not yet decided when or how but will destroy you STOP I sorry STOP I so sorry END.”
“I said yesterday that I was quite certain he would refuse our request for amnesty,” Anna said, flushing crimson. “So why did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must even try to hide it?” she challenged him.
“Why do I suppose it? Because your husband, who has made himself the most powerful man in Russia, has sworn to destroy us!”
“Already we were preparing to go to the moon. So we shall go immediately, and plan our next move there. Maybe back to Vozdvizhenskoe, maybe—”
Vronsky interrupted her, scowling: “I want defmiteness!”
“Defmiteness is not in the form but in the love,” she said, more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke.
“I am certain that the greater part of your irritability since our return to Moscow comes from the indefmiteness of our position.”
Yes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is apparent, she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel judge who looked mockingly at her out of his eyes.
“Well, our position is quite definite now,” she said finally, holding the telegraph between two fingers. “The defmiteness of doom.”
As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening was told that Anna Arkadyevna was sore from fighting the alien and he was not to go in to her.