Chapter 15
BEFORE VRONSKY’S DEPARTURE for the tête-à-tête, Anna had reflected that the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left their fortifications might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had looked at her when he came to tell her he was departing for the meeting had wounded her, and before he had started, her peace of mind was already destroyed.
In solitude afterward, thinking over that glance which had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same point—the sense of her own humiliation. “He has the right to go away when and where he chooses,” she complained to Android Karenina. “Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do it.” Together they had fled Petersburg, together they had built Vozdvizhenskoe on the old abandoned patch of farmland. But now while he was out playing the role of dashing rebel leader, she waited for him alone in the autumn cold.
“What has he done, though? . . . He looked at me with a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,” she concluded, as Android Karenina softly stroked her flowing hair. “That glance shows the beginning of indifference.”
And though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep him. And so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by Galena Box at night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if he ceased to love her. There was still one means, she finally admitted to herself, not to keep him—for she wanted nothing more than his love—but to be nearer to him, to be in such a position that he would not leave her.
That meant a divorce from Karenin; worse, it meant dispatching an emissary to the Higher Branches, revealing their location; it meant giving up their arms, begging forgiveness of the Ministry. And, of course, it would mean giving up their Class III robots, though this possibility Anna was not ready even to consider.
Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five days that he was to be at the mysterious tête-à-tête in the woods. When the sixth day ended without his return, she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of him and of what he was doing there, just when her little girl was taken ill. Anna began to look after her, but even that did not distract her mind, especially as the illness was not serious. However hard she tried, she could not love this little child, and to feign love was beyond her powers. Toward the evening of that day, still alone, Anna was in such a panic about him that she decided to start for the town, but on second thought recorded the contradictory communiqué that Vronsky received, and without watching it through, beamed it off to Lupo. The next morning she received his reply and regretted her communiqué. She dreaded a repetition of the severe look he had flung at her at parting, especially when he knew that the baby was not dangerously ill.
But still she was glad she had sent the communiqué. At this moment Anna was positively admitting to herself that she was a burden to him, that he would relinquish his freedom regretfully to return to her, and in spite of that she was glad he was coming. Let him weary of her, but he would be here with her, so that she would see him, would know of every action he took.
She was sitting in the drawing room, and as she read she listened to the sound of the wind outside, every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. The farm was silent, with the cold and complete silence of an estate populated only by robots, who in their nightly Surcease made not even the smallest sound. Only one companion robot at Vozdvizhenskoe still had its human, and that was Android Karenina; now she brought tea, warmed on her own groznium core.
At last Anna heard the unmistakable whomp of Frou-Frou Deux’s big paws kicking up dirt in the covered entry. Android Karenina looked up, her eyebank flickered; Anna, flushing hotly, got up; but instead of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how he might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was only afraid of the expression of his displeasure.
She remembered that her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her communiqué was dispatched. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.
“Well, how is Annie?” he said timidly from below, looking up to Anna as she ran down to him.
He was sitting on a chair pulling off his warm overboots.
“Oh, she is better.”
“And you?” he said, shaking himself.
She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never taking her eyes off him.
“Well, I’m glad,” he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress, which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so dreaded settled upon his face.
“Well, I’m glad. And are you well?” he said, wiping his damp beard with his handkerchief and kissing her hand.
“Never mind,” she thought, “only let him be here, and so long as he’s here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.”
The evening was spent happily and gaily; he told her about the tête-à-tête, about meeting Federov, about Konstantin Dmitrich, and the hope-bomb. Anna knew how by adroit questions to bring him to what gave him most pleasure—his own success. She told him of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told him was of the most cheerful description. But late in the evening, Anna, seeing that she had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful impression of the glance he had given her for her communiqué.
She said: “Tell me frankly, you were vexed upon viewing my communiqué, and you didn’t believe me?”
As soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his feelings were toward her, he had not forgiven her for that.
“Yes,” he said, “the communiqué was so strange. First, Annie ill, and then you thought of coming yourself.”
“It was all the truth.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it.”
“Yes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see.”
“Not for one moment. I’m only vexed, that’s true, that you seem somehow unwilling to admit that there are duties . . .”
“The duty of traipsing about, of drinking and smoking cigars with Levin in a Huntshed!”
“But we won’t talk about it,” he said.
“Why not talk about it?” she said.
“I only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up. Tomorrow, for instance, I shall have to make a tour of our far perimeters, make sure the fencing is secure.”
“Another reason to abandon me.”
“Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable? If we are going to maintain a fortified rebel camp in defiance of the Ministry, in the heart of an alien-beset wilderness, there will always be challenges and responsibilities that take me outside the doors of this house. But don’t you know that I can’t live without you?”
“If so,” said Anna, her voice suddenly changing, “it means that you are sick of this life. . . . Yes, you will come for a day and go away, as men do. . . .”
“Anna, that’s cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life. . . .”
But she did not hear him.
“If you have more such invitations, I will go with you. If you travel to inspect fortifications, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we must separate or else live together.”
Vronsky saw the opening he had been looking for, saw a route to the life he had imagined. “Then perhaps, perhaps, Anna, this world we have created is not, after all, a permanently sustainable one.”
Somehow, Android Karenina knew the direction this conversation would take even before her mistress did. Placing the tea things gently on an end table, Android Karenina opened her arms and patted her lap for Lupo; his silvery hide blackened here and there from the hope-bomb fire, the proud wolf padded over and climbed into the robot’s embrace.
“If we only applied for amnesty—begged the Ministry for forgiveness, asked your husband for a divorce. You and I can be together . . . forever. Be a part of the future of our nation. Be married, and be together, not crouched in the dirt outside society, but within it.“
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KNOWING THE DIRECTION THIS CONVERSATION WOULD TAKE, ANDROID KARENINA OPENED HER ARMS AND PATTED HER LAP FOR LUPO
“Together,” Anna said slowly. Her mind was spinning; suddenly, she desired only to have these questions decided.
“You know, that’s my one desire. But for that . . .”
“We must get a divorce. I will. . . “Anna lowered her head and sighed. “I will send him a communiqué tonight. I see I cannot go on like this . . . but tomorrow I will ride out with you to inspect the fortifications.”
“You talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so much as never to be parted from you,” said Vronsky, smiling.
But as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a cold look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.
She saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.
If so, it’s a calamity! that glance told her. It was a moment’s impression, but she never forgot it.
That night, Anna dictated a communiqué to her husband asking him about a divorce, and begging amnesty for herself and for Count Vronsky. A reply came almost immediately, granting only that their petition would be considered, and that only on one condition.
When the moment came, Lupo sat perfectly upright, looking straight ahead like a soldier, while Android Karenina lowered her head unit slightly, not wanting to make a difficult moment more difficult for her beloved mistress. Vronsky and Anna looked at each other, and then at Lupo and Android Karenina, and then reached forward. . . .
* * *
Anna went with Vronsky to Moscow. Expecting every day an answer from Alexei Alexandrovich, and after that the divorce, they now established themselves together like married people.