第 二十四 章 · 第24章

“Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive,” thought Levin, as

he came away from the Shtcherbatskys’, and walked in the direction of

his brother’s lodgings. “And I don’t get on with other people. Pride,

they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have

put myself in such a position.” And he pictured to himself Vronsky,

happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed

in the awful position in which he had been that evening. “Yes, she was

bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone

or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she

would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody,

not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody.” And he recalled his

brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. “Isn’t

he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we

fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of

view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he’s a

despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his soul, and

know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out,

went out to dinner, and came here.” Levin walked up to a lamppost, read

his brother’s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a

sledge. All the long way to his brother’s, Levin vividly recalled all

the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay’s life. He remembered

how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards,

had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk,

strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and

avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterwards, how

he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most horrible

people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered

later the scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to

bring up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that

proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding. Then he

recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost money, and

given a promissory note, and against whom he had himself lodged a

complaint, asserting that he had cheated him. (This was the money

Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he remembered how he had spent a

night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered

the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against his brother

Sergey Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share of his

mother’s fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western

province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for

assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly disgusting, yet to

Levin it appeared not at all in the same disgusting light as it

inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolay, did not know all

his story, did not know his heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the

period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking in

religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament, everyone,

far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he, too, with the

others. They had teased him, called him Noah, and monk; and, when he

had broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone had turned away

from him with horror and disgust.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother

Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in

the wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for

having been born with his unbridled temperament and his somehow limited

intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. “I will tell him

everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve,

too, and I’ll show him that I love him, and so understand him,” Levin

resolved to himself, as, towards eleven o’clock, he reached the hotel

of which he had the address.

“At the top, 12 and 13,” the porter answered Levin’s inquiry.

“At home?”

“Sure to be at home.”

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of

light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice,

unknown to Levin; but he knew at once that his brother was there; he

heard his cough.

As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:

“It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing’s done.”

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a

young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and

that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was

sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen. Konstantin felt a

sharp pang at his heart at the thought of the strange company in which

his brother spent his life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin,

taking off his galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin

was saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

“Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes,” his brother’s

voice responded, with a cough. “Masha! get us some supper and some wine

if there’s any left; or else go and get some.”

The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Konstantin.

“There’s some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” she said.

“Whom do you want?” said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

“It’s I,” answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.

“Who’s _I_?” Nikolay’s voice said again, still more angrily. He could

be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Levin

saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge,

thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing

in its weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had

seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones

seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight

mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naïvely at

his visitor.

“Ah, Kostya!” he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his

eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young

man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin

knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different

expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.

“I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don’t know you and

don’t want to know you. What is it you want?”

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The

worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations

with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he

thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that

nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.

“I didn’t want to see you for anything,” he answered timidly. “I’ve

simply come to see you.”

His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.

“Oh, so that’s it?” he said. “Well, come in; sit down. Like some

supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know

who this is?” he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the

gentleman in the jerkin: “This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a

very remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the police, of course, because

he’s not a scoundrel.”

And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room.

Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he

shouted to her, “Wait a minute, I said.” And with the inability to

express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he

began, with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother

Kritsky’s story: how he had been expelled from the university for

starting a benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools;

and how he had afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how

he had been driven out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned

for something.

“You’re of the Kiev university?” said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to

break the awkward silence that followed.

“Yes, I was of Kiev,” Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

“And this woman,” Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, “is

the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad

house,” and he jerked his neck saying this; “but I love her and respect

her, and anyone who wants to know me,” he added, raising his voice and

knitting his brows, “I beg to love her and respect her. She’s just the

same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you’ve to do with.

And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor,

there’s the door.”

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

“Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.”

“Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and

wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it doesn’t matter.... Go along.”