Android Karenina Part 16

She interrupted him.

"But she, poor girl . . . I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all."

"Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me," he said, getting up and signaling to Socrates his readiness to depart.

"No, wait a minute," she said, clutching him by the sleeve, as tears came into her eyes. "Wait a minute, sit down. If I did not like you, and if I did not know you, as I do know you . . ."

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took possession of Levin's heart.

"Yes, I understand it all now," Dolly said. "You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust-a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say."

"Yes, if the heart does not speak . . ."

"No, but I mean even when the heart does does speak! speak! You You mean, you make an offer when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer 'yes' or 'no.'" mean, you make an offer when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer 'yes' or 'no.'"

Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky, thought Levin, and the dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and weighed on his heart and set it aching. Socrates, with an uncharacteristic gesture of physical tenderness, placed a comforting arm across his master's hunched and agitated shoulders as Levin recalled Kitty's words. She had said: "No, that cannot be. . . . "No, that cannot be. . . ."

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said dryly, "I appreciate your confidence in me, but I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me, you understand, utterly out of the question."

"I will only say one thing more," Dolly said. "You know that I am speaking of my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don't say she cared for you; all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing."

"I don't know!" said Levin, jumping up. "If you only knew how you are hurting me. It's just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were to say to you: He might have been like this, or like that, and if you could travel back in time . . . but man cannot travel in time! The experiment has been attempted and abandoned, so what is the use of imagining!"

"How absurd you are!" said Dolly, looking with mournful tenderness at Levin's excitement. "Yes, I see it all more and more clearly," she went on musingly. "So you won't come to see us, then, when Kitty's here?"

"No, I shan't come. Of course I won't avoid meeting Katerina Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance of my presence."

"You are very, very absurd," Dolly repeated, looking with tenderness into his face.

Levin and Socrates said good-bye and drove away while Dolly and her beloved-companion bade them farewell from the front yard of the house at Ergushovo. Before she turned back into the house Dolly paused, her hands frozen at her hips, as she listened to a faint but distinct noise from the middle distance: Tikka tikka tikka.

Tikka tikka tikka. Tikkatikkatikkatikka . . .

"Oh dear oh dear," said Dolichka, and Dolly murmured her agreement. "Oh dear, indeed." said Dolichka, and Dolly murmured her agreement. "Oh dear, indeed."

CHAPTER 5.

WELL, WHAT AM I GOING to do with my life?" said Levin to Socrates the next morning, as they joined a team of peasants, delivering a freshly excavated batch of ore to the smeltworks. "How am I to set about it?" to do with my life?" said Levin to Socrates the next morning, as they joined a team of peasants, delivering a freshly excavated batch of ore to the smeltworks. "How am I to set about it?"

He was trying to express to his Cla.s.s III the range of ideas and emotions he had pa.s.sed through since their visit to Dolly and her family. Socrates, employing his advanced circuits for logic, sorted all his master's thoughts and feelings into a thought matrix for him. Thought Category A was the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave Levin satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Thought Category B was a series of mental images related to the life he longed to live now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content, the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably conscious.

But Thought Category C turned upon the question of how to effect this transition from the old life to the new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. Socrates, in his efficient and meticulous way, rapidly divided and subdivided the possibilities: POSSIBILITY 1. Have a wife?

POSSIBILITY 2. Have work and the necessity of work?

POSSIBILITY 3. Leave Provokovskoe?

POSSIBILITY 4. Buy land?

POSSIBILITY 5. Become a member of a peasant community?

POSSIBILITY 6. Marry a peasant girl?

"But how am I to set about such things?" Levin said confusedly in reply, and Socrates' logistical circuits set busily back to work.

"Never mind, never mind," Levin said then. "I'll work it out later. One thing's certain, this night has decided my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd."

"Absurd," Socrates seconded reluctantly, not wis.h.i.+ng to confirm such a dismal verdict, but unwilling also to contradict his master in such a mood. Socrates seconded reluctantly, not wis.h.i.+ng to confirm such a dismal verdict, but unwilling also to contradict his master in such a mood.

"It's all ever so much simpler and better to . . . to . . ."

"Master?"

"How beautiful!" Levin exclaimed, and Socrates tilted back his head unit to take in the sight: a daylight meteor shower, with dozens of golden-red stars dancing in their turns across the clear blue sky. "How exquisite a sight on this exquisite morning! And when and how do such things come to be! Just now I looked at the sky, and there was nothing in it--just the clouds and the gentle glow of the sun. And now, this display of stunning beauty! Yes, and so imperceptibly too my views of life changed!"

Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the ground. "What's that? Someone's coming," he said suddenly, catching the tinkle of bells, and lifting his head.

"At forty paces, master . . . there . . ."

Indeed, at forty paces, a carriage harnessed to a four-treaded Puller was driving toward him along the gra.s.sy road on which he was walking. The treads were shallow, designed primarily for city travel rather than the countryside, but the dexterous Cla.s.s II driver held a careful hand on the shaft, so that the treads stayed on the smooth part of the road.

This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could be, he gazed absently at the coach.

In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window, evidently only just awake, sat, perfectly still, a young girl holding in both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face entirely absent of thought or attention she stared out the window of the carriage. Levin realized that this girl was hibernating, in the state of chemically induced suspended animation into which ill people are commonly placed to better bear the rigors of the journey to and from an orbital.

At the moment Levin realized upon whom he was gazing, her subdermal anesthesia wore off, and slowly she began to wake. Her eyes blinked once, and then again, and then fell shut-but her face was alive again, full of light and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life that was remote from Levin.

He watched, wonderingly, as the eyes-such familiar eyes-slowly opened again, like flowers newly budding. And then she recognized him, and her face, in the hazy glow of gradually returning consciousness, lighted up with wondering delight.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the Grav station. And everything that had been stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all the branching algorithmic calculations that Socrates had produced, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. Only there, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was rapidly disappearing, only there could he find the solution to the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him of late.

She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-treads faded; the drone of the II/Driver could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was the empty fields all around, the village in front, and he and Socrates wandering lonely along the deserted high road.

He glanced at the sky, expecting again to see the meteor shower, that miracle of blazing torches pirouetting though the daylight. But there was nothing in the sky; there, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished. The sky was empty of falling stars; it had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

"No," he said to Socrates, "however good that life of simplicity and toil may be . . ."

"You cannot go back to it."

"No, dear friend, I cannot. I love her. her."

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. 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 sc.r.a.ps of b.l.o.o.d.y 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 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. 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 communique, without pausing for a second.

"At our last conversation," he began, 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." "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 pa.s.s-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 communique, 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 GOOD GOOD GOOD as the bed was consumed into ash. as the bed was consumed into ash.

CHAPTER 7.

THOUGH ANNA HAD OBSTINATELY and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it. and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it.

On the way home from the Cull she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony of the moment, she was glad of it. After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had pa.s.sed between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him.

When she woke up the next morning, Android Karenina was seated with perfect poise at her bedside, having completed her morning routines, and gazing down with calm beneficence upon her mistress; as Anna opened her eyes she saw the Cla.s.s III there, silhouetted against the day's first light-they stared at one another, eyes into faceplate, sharing one brief intense moment before Android Karenina rose to fetch her mistress's dressing gown.

In the perfect serenity of the new day, the words she had spoken to her husband seemed to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter those strange, coa.r.s.e words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexei Alexandrovich had gone away without saying anything. "I saw Vronsky and did not tell him," she said to Android Karenina, as the Cla.s.s III slipped her gown over her porcelain shoulders.

"At the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?" In answer to this question Android Karenina issued a light, empathetic whistle and tidied the bedclothes.

Anna's position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. When she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer.

When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her II/Maid/76, and still less go downstairs and see her son and his II/Governess/D145.

As she fretted and paced about her room, her anxiety deepened into a distinct feeling of dread, reminding her powerfully and unpleasantly of her feeling at the Moscow Grav station, watching the body of the man lifted from the tracks. Android Karenina then beeped gently, signaling receipt of a communique, and Anna, trembling, bid her play it. Just moments before, she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken. And here this communique regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had wanted. But the communique seemed to her more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.

"He's right!" she said to Android Karenina, when the communique had played through and dimmed away. "Of course, he's always right; he's a Christian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one understands it except me, except us us, and no one ever will; and I can't explain it. They say he's so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. They don't know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me-he has not once even thought that I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how at every step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased with himself."

Android Karenina took on a crimson glow, moving to darker and darker shades of crimson, her coloring embodying her mistress's wild flush of emotion.

"Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggled to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time came when I knew that I couldn't cheat myself any longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that G.o.d has built me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do? If he'd killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he . . . How was it I didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what's characteristic of his mean character. He'll keep himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse ruin yet. . . ."

She recalled the words from the communique: You can conjecture what awaits you and your son. . . . You can conjecture what awaits you and your son. . . . "That's a threat to take away my child, or worse, and Heaven knows he, he who sits in the Higher Branches, may do as he wishes! And he has been . . . has been . . ." "That's a threat to take away my child, or worse, and Heaven knows he, he who sits in the Higher Branches, may do as he wishes! And he has been . . . has been . . ."

Android Karenina nodded, and Anna knew that her beloved-companion understood: Karenin had been changing, in ways as impossible to describe as they were to ignore.

"He doesn't believe even in my love for my child," Anna continued bitterly, "Or he despises it, just as he always used to ridicule it. He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won't abandon my child, that I can't abandon my child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that."

She recalled another sentence in the communique: Our life must go on as it has done in the past. . . . Our life must go on as it has done in the past. . . . "That life was miserable enough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness. I'll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to catch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and deceit. "That life was miserable enough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness. I'll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to catch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and deceit.

"But how? My G.o.d! My G.o.d! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am . . .?"

Anna collapsed in tears, and Android Karenina gathered her up and held her close, and Anna's tears poured into the metal lap of her only friend.