Chapter 6
WHEN OBLONSKY HAD ASKED Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer, “I have come to make your sister-in-law an offer,” though that was precisely what he had come for.
As he reflected on this lack of will, he and Socrates sat down across from one another at a small café along the banks of the Moskva. Together they had wandered some miles from the Tower, but could still see its tall spire in the distance, slowly rotating, scanning, keeping watch, ensuring the safety of the city and her people.
“Our tireless protectors,” Levin said absently, and then activated Socrates’ monitor. Sipping his tea, he viewed the Memories he had already viewed so many times, over and over in the carriage, all the way from his country estate.
The families of the Levins and the Shcherbatskys were old, noble Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms. This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin’s student days. He had trained in mine management with the young Prince Shcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered Moscow Groznium Institute at the same time with him. In those days Levin used often to be in the Shcherbatskys’ house, and he was in love with the Shcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was in love, especially with the feminine half of the household. Why it was the three young ladies had one day to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the sounds of which were audible in their brother’s room above, where the students used to work; why they were visited by those professors of French literature, of music, of drawing, of dancing; it was the first time he had heard French spoken in a household.
A ragged, high-pitched scream interrupted Levin’s enjoyment of these reveries. He looked up from his Memories, and saw the source of the screaming: a dusty-faced woman in a tattered apron stood on the stoop of her home, yelling the words, “No, it cannot be!” in a high-pitched, desperate voice. An equally disheveled-looking man, evidently her husband, was being hoisted and his arms pinned behind his body by the strong metallic arms of a 77. More 77s stood on either side of the doorway, their onion-bulb-shaped heads revolving slowly, visual sensors glowing from within, constantly taking in and analyzing the surroundings. One of them, with his thick pipe-like arms, was restraining the woman; meanwhile, a tall, handsome Caretaker, his gold uniform glittering in the midday sun, directed the 77s with sharp commands to secure the block and search the house.
“Ah! They have captured a Janus,” said Levin admiringly.
“This close to the market, it is likely a black marketeer,” suggested Socrates, “or a groznium hoarder.”
“Yes, or even an agent of UnConSciya,” Levin agreed, becoming excited despite himself at this close-up look at the function of the state apparatus. He marveled at the brisk efficiency of the Caretaker and his cadre of 77s as they went about the business of interrogating the Janus. It had been some months since his last visit to Moscow, and in the countryside one rarely got to see the assured work of the majestic bulb-headed 77s in action.
At last Levin tore himself away and turned back to Socrates’ monitor, and his precious Memories. He watched how the three young Shcherbatsky sisters drove along the Tversky Boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks: Dolly in a long one, Natalia in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short that her shapely legs in tightly drawn red stockings were visible to all beholders; how they had to walk about the Tversky Boulevard escorted by their parents, their parents’ stately Class IIIs, and a II/Gendarme/439 with a copper-plated smoker, drawn and engaged—all this and much more that was done in their mysterious world he did not understand, but he was sure that everything that was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with the mystery of the proceedings.
When he looked up from this pleasing Memory stream, Levin saw that a crowd had grown at either end of the cordoned block. The Caretaker had dispatched a 77 to keep the onlookers from becoming too curious, while the massive 77 holding the Janus lifted him high into the air, clutching the man’s arms with his fat, gloved end-effectors, and shook him roughly back and forth. Now Levin heard the tromp of metal boots close at hand, and saw that 77s were fanning through the crowd at the café. Levin, accurately judged a nobleman by the presence of his Class III robot, was left alone, even as the 77s began briskly running their physiometers over the other diners.
He and Socrates watched as the Caretaker loudly demanded answers of his prisoner, answers which evidently did not come quickly enough: the 77 restraining the Janus snaked a gold-tipped cord from a compartment in his upper torso and attached it roughly to the man’s left temple. A blast of voltage traveled from the 77’s core into the man’s forehead, and the Janus gibbered and shook, his body rattling from the pain.
The Janus’s wife, still standing in the doorway, shrieked and fainted dead away on her stoop.
“Swift justice,” said Socrates, but at this bit of violence Levin grimaced and turned away. Noting his master’s pained expression, Socrates echoed back what he himself had said a moment ago: “Probably he is an agent of UnConSciya. Almost certainly, now that I have had a chance to reflect. “But Socrates had not run an analysis on the question, could not really know, and Levin said nothing. This time it was Socrates who re-engaged his own monitor, drawing his master back into the soothing consolations of the past.
In his student days Levin had all but been in love with the eldest daughter of the Shcherbatsky family, Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being in love with the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be in love with one of the sisters, only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too, had hardly made her appearance in the world when she was married to the mathementalics engineer Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university. Young Shcherbatsky began in the mines, was crushed in a cave-in, and Levin’s relations with the Shcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship with Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the winter of this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and saw the Shcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he was indeed destined to love.
But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything terrestrial; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her. Levin’s conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him.
In her family’s eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and position in society; yes, he had his patch of rough land in the country, but like all pit-operators he was ultimately a functionary, proudly mining his soil on behalf of the Ministry, which owned all the Russian groznium beds; while his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two, were already one a colonel, and another a robotics professor, another director of a bank, or Vice President of a Division, like Oblonsky. But he (he knew very well how he must appear to others) was a country gentleman, occupied only in extraction and excavation and smelting; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world, is done by people fit for nothing else.
The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary, in no way striking person. He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.
After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went so as to meet her, his circuits (to employ the crass expression) went haywire: he abruptly decided that it could not be, and went back to the country. But after several months . . .
“No! No, please—”
This was the voice of the Janus’s wife.
“We confess. We have done it. My husband and I. We released the koschei at St. Catherine Square . . . Thursday last. It was us! Please—”
“This, madame, we were already aware,” said the Caretaker in command of the troop of state robots, casually brushing a speck of dirt from his gleaming golden uniform. Meanwhile a second cord had writhed forward from a second compartment in the 77’s bulky torso, and attached itself to the other side of the man’s temples. Again electricity flowed from within the 77, along the deadly conduits of the cords, and into the Janus’s skull. His body lifted off the ground, his feet rattled like empty cans, and then he went slack.
As Levin and Socrates looked on, the gold-uniformed Caretaker shouted an order at the 77, and the old man was lifted by the massive man-machine like a sack of potatoes, and tossed bodily into the river, while the crowd of peasants cheered lustily.
“Master?” came the cautious inquiry from Socrates’ Vox-Em, when all was concluded and the troop of 77s had disappeared.
“Never fear, old friend. My stomach is strong enough to bear witness to the cost of safety for Mother Russia. Still . . . rather an ill omen for my undertaking in the city.”
Levin sighed as he rose from the café table, and bid Socrates to rise with him. He could not leave without completing his quest. After spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced that his feeling for Kitty was not one of those passions of which he had had experience in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant’s rest; that he could not live without deciding the question, would she or would she not be married to him, and that his despair had arisen only from his own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would be rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a firm determination to make an offer, and get married if he were accepted. Or . . . he could not conceive what would become of him if he were rejected.
The body of the Janus bobbed past them, floated down the river, and away.