Chapter 6
ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH’S singular beloved-companion, his dread Face, had been biding its time. Ever since its machine consciousness had first flickered into existence, it had lurked, a creature of the shadows, flitting in the recesses of Karenin’s mind, growing, evolving, gaining strength, gaining power.
Now its moment had come.
When, returning from the Cull, Anna had informed him of her relations with Vronsky, and immediately afterward—when, as their carriage weathered the emotion bombs, she had burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands—Alexei Alexandrovich was aware immediately of a crying out in his breast of pure human emotion, of the abiding empathy he still harbored for this woman he had loved for so long; it brought to him a rush of that emotional disturbance always produced in him by tears. But in the next instant, that burst of humane feeling in his breast was countered by a searing stream of invective from the Face, which demanded in a cold, vicious voice, speaking out in his mind, that he silence his tears and summon his manful qualities.
BE MORE OF METAL THAN OF FLESH, ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH, the Face had exhorted him, and so he had, stiffening his spine and keeping his emotions carefully controlled. He tried to suppress every manifestation of life in himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at her. This was what had caused that strange expression of deathlike rigidity in his face, which had so impressed Anna.
When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the carriage, and making an effort to master himself, took leave of her with his usual urbanity; he said that tomorrow he would let her know his decision.
His wife’s words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a cruel pang to the heart of Alexei Alexandrovich. That pang was intensified by the strange feeling of physical pity triggered by her tears, and intensified all the more by the harsh, mocking laughter of the Face, laughter directed as much at his pity as at her tears.
But later, when he was all alone, Alexei Alexandrovich, to his surprise and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from the doubts and agonies of jealousy. He felt strong and powerful, and the Face was determined to feed those feelings, just as a master throws scraps of bloody meat to his dog.
NO HONOR. NO HEART. NO RELIGION, spat the Face, and Karemn bitterly agreed.
“A corrupt woman,” he concluded aloud, sitting in his study, alone but not alone, in the darkest hours of that night.
YOU ALWAYS KNEW IT AND ALWAYS SAW IT.
“I tried to deceive myself to spare her.”
SPARE HER? FOR WHAT REASON? TO WHAT PURPOSE?
Alexei Alexandrovich had never been so glad for the presence of his metal-thinking attachment, his secret beloved-companion—for it could bluntly address those things he could think but never express. Its mechanical eye showed him dark mysteries, and its voice demanded he acknowledge life’s darker truths.
“I made a mistake in linking my life to hers, but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy.”
BUT SHE . . . SHE MUST BE MADE UNHAPPY.
Everything relating to her and her son, toward whom his sentiments were as much changed as toward her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and useful existence.
Even as he processed these perfectly rational thoughts, even congratulating himself on his ability to remain logical in the grip of emotional distress, his body, guided by the vicious impulses of the Face, obeyed a different course. Alexei Alexandrovich strode briskly into the bedroom while siding onto his ring finger, just above his wedding ring, a small silver burn-circle—an ingenious groznium-based device of his own invention—and set about incinerating his wife’s possessions with cruel efficiency.
“I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has committed a crime,” he said, and, leveling his hand carefully, blasted Anna Karenina’s ancient and stately armoire to splinters with the burn-circle.
“I have only to find the best way out of the difficult position in which she has placed me.”
He aimed at and destroyed her birch-wood dressing table.
“And I shall find it.”
YOU SHALL FIND IT INDEED.
Moving rapidly, deeply inhaling the sharp, pleasing scent of burnt furniture mixed with perfumes and bedside lotions, he felt that he could think clearly for the first time in a long time. In his study Alexei Alexandrovich walked up and down twice, then stopped at the household’s expensive and stately freestanding monitor. He bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to dictate a communiqué, without pausing for a second.
“At our last conversation,” he began, “I notified you of my intention to communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am contacting you now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power, and the beneficence of the Ministry. The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son. I trust that you understand.”
“Yes, time will pass—time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be re-established,” Alexei Alexandrovich announced to the Face, which fairly cackled its pleasure at the implied threat Alexei had leveled at his wife: to be subject to his will, or be destroyed. “So far reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.”
Having completed and transmitted his communiqué, he returned to the bedchamber, slipping back on his burn-circle as he went. With calm deliberateness Alexei Alexandrovich destroyed the four-post bed in which he and his wife had lain together so many times. The sheets of silk and linen easily took to flame, and Alexei Alexandrovich, tucking his fleshy hand comfortably into the crook of his arm, watched the fire grow—the Face whispering GOOD GOOD GOOD as the bed was consumed into ash.