Chapter 3
IT IS EXACTLY THAT MAN most distracted by fear of death from above who is most vulnerable to death from below. Such it was with Konstantin Dmitrich Levin in his fit of pique, as he stomped along the familiar woodsy path to his groznium mine, his gaze fixed on the tree line, in case a pack of the hideous Honored Guests should come leaping over the aspens. For it was the ground beneath his feet that tore open and spewed forth the long, twisting body of a worm-beast. The segmented death machine writhed toward him, emitting as before the ominous tikka tikka tikka. Levin gasped and stumbled backwards into a crouch, trying to judge the size of the peril. He and Socrates had estimated that the last one was the size of a hippopotamus, but this one was long as an elephant, and nearly half as high.
With a quick, grunting roll of its powerful head, the thrashing metal-plated thing knocked Levin off his feet, even as more of its body poured up out of the ground like a Grav emerging from a tunnel. Levin, now flat on his back, swung determinedly with his sturdy oaken walking stick, making satisfying contact with the eyeless face of the beast. The great worm drew back, its sucking mouth-hole dripping ochre fluid, the tikka tikka tikka loud as a drumroll, emanating from . . . from where? Some sort of Vox-Em, he imagined, somewhere from the midsection of the robotic beast. Konstantin Dmitrich, breathing heavily, feeling the thud of blood in his veins, scrabbled to his feet and circled backward, the walking stick raised and poised to strike. Curiously, however, the creature’s huge did not parry again—it paused and held steady with crooked neck, the featureless head twitching in the air above, twisting first this way and then that, as if searching for something. Levin thought he saw dim lights pulsing somewhere beneath the semi-opaque, grey outer covering of the monster—rapidly flickering greenish lights—the light of sensors searching the landscape?
By God, it’s looking for something, thought Levin, stepping slightly forward and examining the underside of the thing. “What are you looking for?” he said aloud, as if the segmented, twelve-foot-long ticking mechanical worm could somehow summon human voice and answer. Instead, the thing stopped moving, its head cocked in a northerly direction, and the queer tikka tikka tikka noise abruptly grew drastically louder, so much so that Levin clasped his hands over his ears. He’s got it, Levin thought. He’s got the scent. And the great worm lunged up and over Levin, its whole writhing body traveling over his head in a fluid motion, like a long jet of water sprayed from a hose; and then plunging back into the ground on the opposite side of the clearing, disappearing into another wormhole in the soil. In a matter of seconds, the entire length of the worm-thing had disappeared into this fresh cavity.
* * *
Levin did not continue on to the pit, as he had planned, but instead settled his lank frame on a rock to contemplate the mystery of the worm-beast, with his walking stick at his side, scratching at his head and tugging at his beard in unconscious emulation of his absent beloved-companion. Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna, examining the I/Humidor/19, consulting about wines for supper.
“But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.”
“No, Stiva doesn’t drink . . . Kostya, stop, what’s the matter?” Kitty began, hurrying after him, but all his irritation with her supposedly inappropriate carryingson came back to him in a flood, and he strode ruthlessly away to the dining room without waiting for her. There he joined in the lively general conversation which was being maintained by Vassenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyich.
“Well, what do you say, are we to Hunt-and-be-Hunted tomorrow?” said Stepan Arkadyich.
“Please, do let’s go,” said Veslovsky moving to another chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.
“I shall be delighted, we will go. I shall order the Huntbears warmed and baited,” said Levin to Veslovsky, speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so out of keeping with him. “I can’t answer for our finding grouse, especially as, with the Honored Guests about, we will need to stay within the perimeter fence, or find ourselves hunted a bit more realistically than is pleasant. Only we ought to start early. You’re not tired? Aren’t you tired, Stiva?”
“Me tired? I’ve never been tired yet.”
“Yes, really, let’s not go to bed at all! Capital!” Veslovsky chimed in. “I have little use for the interval of unconsciousness.”
It was a rather peculiar way of phrasing such a declaration, and Levin looked with renewed irritation at Veslovsky. He was eager to retire to his bedchamber, where he could compose a communiqué to Socrates, expressing his thoughts on the question of the worm-machines.
“Suppose we stay up all night. Let’s go for a walk!” agreed Stepan Arkadyich with radiant good humor.
“Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up too,” Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her voice which she almost always had now with her husband.
“Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna’s, and he’s going to them again? He swears that their little hideaway is hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!”
Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.
“Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she? Where is she?” Darya Alexandrovna appealed to him.
“Ah, that I cannot tell you,” laughed Vassenka, “for in a blindfold was I led to the camp, and in a blindfold led away.”
Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in his conversation with the princess, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyich, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw on his wife’s face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.
“It’s exceedingly rugged, their place, some sort of old farm from the time of the Tsars, somewhat restored, but really barely livable” Veslovsky was telling them about Vronsky and Anna. “I can’t, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but I certainly would not want to live there.”
“What do they intend to do?”
Vassenka smiled enigmatically, trying of course to prolong the moment when everyone believed he knew the answer to that most intriguing of questions: what was intended by Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, who after the night at the Vox Fourteen had fled into hiding, along with their Class Ills, in willful and open defiance of the Ministry—and of Anna’s own husband.
“What they intend, alas, I cannot say, and I am not sure they can agree amongst themselves. They do seem well hidden though, and I imagine they can live in their secret paradise forever,” he said with a chuckle.
“How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! I think we might even convince them to rejoin polite society! When are you going there again?” Stepan Arkadyich asked Vassenka.
“July.”
“Will you go?” Stepan Arkadyich said to his wife.
“I shall certainly go, if I am invited and told the location,” said Dolly. “I am sorry for her, and I know her. She’s a splendid woman. But I will go alone, when you go back to Moscow, and then I shall be in no one’s way. And it will be better indeed without you.”
“To be sure,” said Stepan Arkadyich. “And you, Kitty?”
“I? Why should I go?” Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her husband.
“Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?” Veslovsky asked her. “She’s a very fascinating woman.”
“Yes,” she answered Veslovsky crimsoning still more. She got up and walked across to her husband.
“Are you to be Hunting and Hunted, then, tomorrow?” she said to Levin. His jealousy had advanced far indeed in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterward to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going on the hunt, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.
“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.
“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of her husband, and will set off the day after,” said Kitty.
The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus: Don’t separate me from him. I don’t care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.
“Oh, if you wish, we’ll stay here tomorrow,” Levin answered, with peculiar amiability.
Vassenka, meanwhile, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe. How dare he look at my wife like that! was the feeling that boiled within him.
“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,” said Veslovsky, sitting down on a chair, and again crossing his leg as was his habit.
Levin’s jealousy went further still, growing from moment to moment, evolving as it were from I/Jealousy/4 to I/Jealousy/5 to I/Jealousy/6. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life. . . . But in spite of that, he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go hunting the next day.
Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin could not escape another agony. As he said goodnight to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand and said with a naive bluntness, for which the old princess scolded her afterward:
“We don’t like that fashion.”
In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like them.
Levin scowled and stalked up the stairs to compose a communiqué to Socrates about the terrible worms.