Chapter 2
THE GEARS OF LIFE turned and turned again, ever forward, and in time the anxious confusion surrounding the departure of Small Stiva and Dolichka was replaced in the household of Oblonsky by joyful anticipation, as preparations began for the wedding of Dolly’s sister, Kitty Shcherbatskaya, to Stepan’s oldest friend, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin.
When they arrived at the church, a crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.
More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the street by the Class II police robots, their bronze weather-protected outercoating primed against the rusting frost. More carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking into the church. The church windows, programmed for the occasion by a highly sought-after display gadgeteer, glowed brightly with the life of the Savior, one luminously delineated scene shifting seamlessly into the next. This ornate display, along with the gilt on the red background of the holy picture-stand, the silver of the lusters, and the stones of the floor, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, the steps of the altar, the cassocks and surplices—all were flooded with light.
The only thing missing was the loving couple. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door, the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a spectator, who had eluded the II/Policeman/56s, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. The Galena Box sent its waves of oscillation through the room, but was proving insufficient to dampen the mood of confused anxiety; both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation. The long delay began to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.
At last one of the ladies, glancing at her I/Hourprotector/8, said, “It really is strange, though!” and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction.
Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing room of the Shcherbatskys’ house. Beside her was her pink-flushed Class III, Tatiana, one of the last beloved-companions left in Moscow. Kitty had been allowed to forestall her Class III’s collection for “adjustment” until after the wedding, thanks to the intercession of her father, Prince Shcherbatsky with a childhood friend who sat on the Higher Branches. (“A girl cannot be wed without the soothful presence of her Class III,” the prince had pleaded; meanwhile, all across Russia, less well-connected brides were somehow making do.) Tatiana was looking out of the window, and had been for more than half an hour piping a soft and calming lullaby from her Third Bay, to keep her mistress from becoming too anxious that her bridegroom was not yet at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, with Socrates pacing directly behind him, his beard clanking. (He, too, had been granted a reprieve, exhausting the favors due to the old prince). Man and machine took turns poking their heads out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the Class II who had been dispatched to bring Levin his shirtfront, which had been forgotten. The shirtfront had been left at home by Levin’s best man, Stepan Arkadyich, who placed the blame on Small Stiva—or rather, the absence of Small Stiva. Oblonsky had assumed that his beloved-companion, ever mindful of such details, would bring the necessary accoutrements, and it slipped his mind entirely that his dear friend was by now at a Robot Processing Facility in Vladivostok, in deep Surcease with his mechanical guts splayed out on a workbench.
While Socrates frantically paced, Levin addressed Stepan Arkadyich, who was smoking serenely.
“Was ever a man in such a fearful fool’s position?” he said.
“Yes, it is stupid, and I feel awful,” Stepan Arkadyich assented, smiling soothingly. “I’m a simple block of wood without my Little Samovar. But don’t worry, it’ll be brought directly.”
“No, what is to be done!” said Levin, with smothered fury. “What if it’s been lost?”
“It’s not been lost,” reassured Stepan Arkadyich.
“It may have been lost. Yes, probably it’s lost,” intoned Socrates.
“That is not helpful,” said Stepan Arkadyich with a glare suggesting a wish that Socrates, too, were in a Vladivostok R.P.F. Addressing himself to Levin, he said: “Just wait a bit! It will come round.”
And so while the bridegroom was expected at the church, he was pacing about his room like a caged Huntbear, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the II/Runner/470 zipped into the room with the shirt held aloft from a pincer, like a dog with a bagged quail. Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor not looking at his I/Hourprotector/8 for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
“It’s eleven thirty. . . ,” moaned Socrates, motoring quickly behind him. “eleven thirty-one! We are very late, very late indeed!”
“Not helpful,” sighed Stepan Arkadyich as he tossed his cigarette into an ashtray, where it sputtered, hissed, and disappeared. “Not helpful at all.”