Anna Karenina

Chapter 19
"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes." So Levin thought about his wife as he talked to her that
evening.
Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself "wise and
prudent." He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing
that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he
could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all
the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many great men,
whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a
hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it.
Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and Katya, as his
brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly liked to call her
now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew, without a shade of doubt,
what sort of thing life was and what was death, and though neither of them
could have answered, and would even not have understood the questions
that presented themselves to Levin, both had no doubt of the significance of
this event, and were precisely alike in their way of looking at it, which they
shared with millions of people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the
nature of death lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation
how to deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and
other men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death,
obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were
absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Levin had been
alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him with
terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have known what
else to do.
More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move. To
talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk of death
and depressing subjects--also impossible. To be silent, also impossible. "If I
look at him he will think I am studying him, I am afraid; if I don't look at
him, he'll think I'm thinking of other things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be
vexed; to tread firmly, I'm ashamed." Kitty evidently did not think of
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herself, and had no time to think about herself: she was thinking about him
because she knew something, and all went well. She told him about herself
even and about her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and
petted him, and talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she
must know. The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna's was not
instinctive, animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment,
the relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the
dying man something else more important than the physical treatment, and
something which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafea
Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: "Well, thank God, he
took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one of us such
a death." Katya in just the same way, besides all her care about linen,
bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the sick man of
the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving absolution.
On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the night,
Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak of
supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do, he
could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the contrary,
was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual. She ordered
supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to
make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian
powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection comes out in
men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of
life--those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that
all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these
moments.
Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o'clock all
their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such a way
that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made, brushes,
combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were spread.
Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now, and it
seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She arranged
the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing shocking in it.
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They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they could
not sleep, and did not even go to bed.
"I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow," she
said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding looking glass, combing
her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. "I have never seen it, but I know,
mamma has told me, there are prayers said for recovery."
"Do you suppose he can possibly recover?" said Levin, watching a slender
tress at the back of her round little head that was continually hidden when
she passed the comb through the front.
"I asked the doctor; he said he couldn't live more than three days. But can
they be sure? I'm very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him," she said,
looking askance at her husband through her hair. "Anything is possible,"
she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was always in her
face when she spoke of religion.
Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither of
them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed all the
ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on, always with
the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite of his assertion to
the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as
she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it was simply one
of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say about her broderie
anglaise that good people patch holes, but that she cut them on purpose, and
so on.
"Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to
manage all this," said Levin. "And...I must own I'm very, very glad you
came. You are such purity that...." He took her hand and did not kiss it (to
kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper); he
merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.
"It would have been miserable for you to be alone," she said, and lifting her
hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted her coil of hair
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on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. "No," she went on, "she did not
know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden."
"Surely there are not people there so ill?"
"Worse."
"What's so awful to me is that I can't see him as he was when he was
young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did
not understand him then."
"I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been friends!"
she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked round at her
husband, and tears came into her eyes.
"Yes, MIGHT HAVE BEEN," he said mournfully. "He's just one of those
people of whom they say they're not for this world."
"But we have many days before us; we must go to bed," said Kitty,
glancing at her tiny watch.
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