Chapter 23
AFTER THE MAYHEM with the koschei, Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. Rather, as Lupo lay curled in Surcease at his feet, he sat in his Grav carriage, looking straight before him or examining the people who got in and out. If he had indeed on previous occasions struck and impressed people who did not know him by his air of unhesitating composure, he seemed now more haughty and self-possessed than ever. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting opposite him, hated him for that look. The young man asked him for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he would a Class I device, and the young man made a wry face, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the oppression of this refusal to recognize him as a person.
Vronsky saw nothing and no one. Occasionally, he passed his eye over the revivified carriage to ensure no more of the vicious skittering koschei were aboard, even while he was certain in his heart that none remained: not when he, Alexei Kirillovich, with all his battlefield acuity and self-assurance, had junkered the lot.
He felt himself a king, not because he believed that he had made an impression on Anna—he did not yet believe that—but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride. His hot-whip crackled pleasantly along his thigh, an old fellow soldier whose very presence reminded him of past successes.
What would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on one thing, and bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he was happy at it. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he had come where she was, that all the happiness of his life, the only meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing and hearing her. When he had climbed out on the platform and seen her, in the adrenalin-charged moments after the koschei were destroyed, involuntarily his first word had told her just what he thought. And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was back in the carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in which he had seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy, making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a possible future.
When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his compartment, waiting for her to get out. “Once more,” he said quietly to Lupo, who growled happily, “once more I shall see her walk, her face, her striking beloved-companion; she will say something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.” But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the Stationmaster was deferentially escorting through the crowd. “Ah, yes! The husband.” Only now for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him, with his head and shoulders, his cold, mechanical faceplate, his legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a sense of property.
Seeing Alexei Alexandrovich with his severely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig who has drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexei Alexandrovich’s outsize automated eye, now slowly scanning Anna from within its prominent metal socket, particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way, physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with rapture.
He saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a lover’s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her husband. Lupo, at his feet, bristled and arched his back. “Yes, Lupo, I notice it too,” Vronsky said in a low voice to the beast. “She does not love him and cannot love him.”
He strode toward the pair, and at the moment before approaching them, he noticed too with joy that Anna Arkadyevna was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and seeing him, turned again to her husband.
“The koschei certainly provided us with a restless evening,” Vronsky greeted her. “Are you feeling well this morning?” he asked, bowing to her and her husband together, and leaving it up to Alexei Alexandrovich to accept the bow on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.
“Thank you, yes,” she answered.
Lupo’s narrow canine eyes looked into the single robotic oculus of Alexei Alexandrovich, and the theriomorphic Class III let out a loud, gear-grinding bark. Vronsky silenced him with one raised finger.
Anna’s face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she glanced at Vronsky, there was a flash of something in her eyes, and although the flash died away at once, he was happy for that moment. She glanced at her husband to find out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexei Alexandrovich looked over Vronsky’s silver uniform with displeasure, vaguely recalling who this was. Vronsky’s composure and self-confidence here struck, like a scythe against a stone, upon the cold imperturbability of Alexei Alexandrovich.
“Count Vronsky,” said Anna.
“Ah! We are acquainted, I believe,” said Alexei Alexandrovich indifferently, giving his hand. To Anna he said, “You set off with the mother and you return with the son,” articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was bestowing.
Lupo barked a second time, sharp and clear, raising his back and baring his teeth at Alexei Alexandrovich, who regarded the beast with weary irritation before addressing his wife in a jesting tone: “Well, were a great many tears shed in Moscow at parting?”
By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand that he wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly toward him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.
“I hope I may have the honor of calling on you,” he said.
Lupo, his circuits for some reason keenly activated, now emitted from his Vox-Em a piercing, willful aroof. Before Vronsky could chastise the dog-robot, Alexei Alexandrovich cocked his head and stared straight at the Class III with his dark metallic eye for a long moment. Lupo yelped feebly, shuddered, and fell to the ground like a broken Class I plaything. Alexei Alexandrovich then glanced with his biological eye at Vronsky, who was staring with open-mouthed shock at his beloved-companion.
“On Mondays we’re at home,” Alexei Alexandrovich said blandly. Vronsky crouched on the spotless floor of the Grav station cradling Lupo’s great, bristly head in his lap. Lupo stirred feebly, issuing hollow little whimpers and moans.
“How fortunate,” Alexei Alexandrovich said to his wife in the same jesting tone, dismissing Vronsky altogether, “that I should just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my devotion.”
“You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,” she responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily glancing backward at the stricken Vronsky. “But what has it to do with me?” she murmured to Android Karenina. She began asking her husband how Seryozha had got on without her.
“Oh, capitally! The II/Governess says he has been very good. And . . . I must disappoint you . . . but he has not missed you as your husband has. Well, I must go to my committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again,” Alexei Alexandrovich went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. “You wouldn’t believe how I’ve missed . . . “And with a long pressure of her hand and a meaningful smile, he put her in her carriage.
Vronsky remained on the silver floor of the Petersburg Grav station, watching with relief as signs of full functioning returned one by one to his Class III. He shook his head, contemplating the beauty of Anna Karenina, the austere elegance of Android Karenina—and wondering, of her strange, metal-faced husband: What in God’s name is he?