Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FIVE CHAPTER 19
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 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
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