Android Karenina (47 page)

*   *   *

As he and Kitty bid a tearful farewell to their brave beloved-companions, and began along the road home to Pokrovskoe, Dmitrich Levin was left to contend with twin mysteries: the grisly death of his brother, apparently as the result of having somehow become a sort of human hatching ground for an abominable alien creature; and the revelation that the Ministry’s new elite cadre, the very persons charged with collecting the nation’s Class Ills for adjustment, were not persons at all but perfectly humanoid robots. These mysteries revived in Levin that sense of horror in the face of the insoluble enigma that had come upon him that autumn evening when his brother had slept beside him. This feeling was now even stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of apprehending the meaning of life and death, and its inevitability rose up
before him more terrible than ever.

But now, thanks to his wife’s presence, that feeling did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death and fear, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him toward love and toward life.

When they arrived home, the provincial doctor confirmed his earlier suppositions in regard to Kitty’s health: her indisposition was a symptom indicating that she was with child.

F
ROM THE MOMENT
when Alexei Alexandrovich understood that all that was expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt the madness that simmered like a kind of fever in the back of his brain begin to burn hotter and hotter—exactly what the Face had hoped for. Let Alexei be weak . . . let him grant forgiveness . . . let the woman and her mustachioed brigand live and go free. . . . In time, the Face knew, their continuing existence would be a sharp nettle to torture Alexei’s already anguished mind past the point of no return.

Alexei did not know himself what he wanted now. It was only when Anna had left his house, and the II/Porter/7e62 asked whether he desired the full table setting, though he would be dining alone, that for the first time he clearly comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition
from that past to a knowledge of his wife’s unfaithfulness he had lived through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could understand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the hopeless position—incomprehensible to himself—in which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man’s child with what was now the case; for in return for all this he now found himself alone.

PUT TO SHAME. A LAUGHINGSTOCK. NEEDED BY NO ONE. DESPISED BY ALL.

“Yes,” responded Karenin, pacing the empty rooms of his home.

NOT I THOUGH.

I SHALL NEVER ABANDON YOU.

His confidence buttressed by the supportive exhortations of the Face, Alexei was able to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna’s rooms and belongings, he exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred was neither unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of despair.

On the second day after her departure, Alexei Alexandrovich was paid a visit by a shop clerk, to whom he had previously sent word that his wife’s outstanding bills should be sent to her directly.

“Excuse me, your Excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But she is on the moon, where collections efforts are exceedingly difficult.”

Alexei began in his cold and formal way to explain that whatever planet or planetoid his wife cared to live upon was not his concern. But he trailed off, midway through his sentence, his head cocked slightly to the side, listening to an unheard admonition.

HOW DARE HE?

Yes
, thought Alexei Karenin.
Yes
.

“You come to me today in search of money, the money owed to
you by Anna Arkadyevna. You come and speak as if you do not know of our situation.”

“Of course, that is, I do know,” the shopkeeper stammered. “I do know of the situation to which you refer.”

“Yes,” Alexei began, and the human portion of his face twisted into a sneer, while his voice changed, emerging unnaturally with the timbre of nails rattling in an empty can:
“BUT DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

“I . . . I—yes, your Excellency,” the man stammered helplessly, stepping backward slowly as he spoke. “And normally of course before troubling you I would send my Class III. Funny little robot called Wholesale. But, sir, of course he’s been sent for adjustment.”

Alexei Alexandrovich threw his head back and pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at once, turning round, he sat down calmly at the table.

“I am sorry for bothering you. Perhaps it is best that I go. Sir? Sir?”

Letting his head sink into his hands, Karenin sat for a long while in that position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short. Then, at last, he looked up, stared directly at the man, and his ocular device clicked slowly forward.

*   *   *

When it was done—when the shopkeeper’s windpipe had been shattered like the neck of a wine bottle, when his eyes popped out of his head like overripe fruit, when what had been the man’s body lay in a ragged mass on the floor, one hand still clutching Anna’s overdue bill—Alexei Alexandrovich allowed a small smile to creep into the corner of his mouth.

“You may consider it paid, sir,” he said to the corpse as he stepped over it and returned to his bedchamber.

But, alone again, Alexei Alexandrovich recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.

He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain—if he did not crush them first. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.

SHE MADE YOU THE FOOL, ALEXEI.

Tomorrow he would appear before his colleagues in the Ministry; accompanied by a regiment of Toy Soldiers, loyal to him and him alone, he would appear before them to deliver a decisive announcement.

SHE ABANDONED YOU, AND THE WORLD HOWLED WITH LAUGHTER.

He would announce to them his new thinking on the topic of the grand Project, of which he was the supervisor; for his plans on that topic had somewhat . . . evolved.

NOW SHE MUST SUFFER.

AND THE WORLD ALONG WITH HER.

He threw back his head and emitted a long, horrid noise, beginning as a laugh that was a cold parody of laughter, and trailing off into a hideous, sobbing moan of despair. His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.

THE WORLD MUST SUFFER ALONG WITH HER.

The so-called beloved-companions, now that they had all been gathered up, would not have their circuits adjusted and then be returned to their owners.

They would never be returned at all.

ONLY ONE FRIEND, ALEXEI
.

ONLY ME.

W
HEN THEY HAD ALIT
upon terra firma, after the journey back from the moon, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of Petersburg’s finest hotels: he in a lower story, she in a suite of rooms with her child, a II/Governess/D145 to attend to the baby, and Android Karenina.

On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother’s. There he found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay on the moon, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop a single word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother came the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him about her, and Alexei Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon his connection with Madame Karenina as a marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother and his wife so.

“If the world disapproves, I don’t care,” said Vronsky, “but if my relations want to be on family terms with me, they will have to be on the same terms with my wife.”

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother’s judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not till the world had decided the question; for his part he had nothing against it, and with Alexei he went up to see Anna.

Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna
with a certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend, but it was understood that his brother knew their real relations.

In spite of all his social experience, Vronsky was, in consequence of the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood that society was closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in old-fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the views of society had changed, and that the question of whether they would be received in society was not a foregone conclusion.
Of course
, he thought,
intimate friends can and must look at it in the proper light.

One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw was his cousin Betsy.

“At last!” she said, greeting him joyfully. “And Anna? How glad I am! I can fancy after your delightful travels you must find our poor Petersburg horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in the Mare Tranquillitatis! And your charming Lupo has yet to be gathered up! How marvelous for you!”

And thus did Betsy jump from subject to subject, clearly ill at ease with her old friends. She rambled about the rumors of alien monsters at large in the countryside—“Our Honored Guests, at last arrived!”—and spoke of how she eagerly awaited the return of the Class Ills. “Not that I miss Darling Girl one bit, of course. I’m doing just fine without her.” Vronsky nodded, noting with stifled amusement that Betsy’s hair sat in a sloppy bun atop her head, and her dress front was abominably wrinkled.

“How about the divorce,” Betsy prattled on. “Is that all over?”

“No, not yet—but what is the meaning of—”

Vronsky noticed that Betsy’s enthusiasm waned when she learned that no divorce had as yet taken place.

“People will throw stones at me, I know,” she said, “but I shall come and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You won’t be in Petersburg long, I suppose?”

And she did certainly come to see Anna and Android Karenina the same day, but her tone was not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably prided herself on her courage, and wished Anna to appreciate the fidelity of her friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking of society gossip and speculating about the Honored Guests: Were they from Venus? This new planet, Neptune, that had only just been discovered? Regardless, the Ministry was offering every assurance that the threat could be easily countered, and who would be such a fool as to doubt it?

On leaving she said:

“You’ve never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I’m ready to fling my cap over the mill, to show my friendship—other starchy people will give you the cold shoulder until you’re married. And that’s so simple nowadays. Although your husband, or so I understand, is exceptionally busy these days, overseeing the adjustment of the beloved-companions.

“If only your husband were someone else entirely. I do hear that of late he has become somewhat . . .”

She trailed off, raising one hand to her unkempt mess of hair.

“Somewhat
strange!”

From Betsy’s tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to expect from the world; but he made another effort in his own family. The day after his arrival Vronsky went to Varya, his brother’s wife, and finding her alone, expressed his wishes directly: that she would not throw stones, and would go simply and directly to see Anna, and would receive her in her own house.

“You know, Alexei,” she said after hearing him, “how fond I am of you, and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna,” she said, articulating the name
Anna Arkadyevna
with particular care. “Don’t suppose, please, that I judge her. Never; perhaps in her place I should have done the same. I don’t and can’t enter into that,” she said, glancing
timidly at his gloomy face. “But one must call things by their names. You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I
cannot
do so. I have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband’s sake.”