Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 22
Chapter 22
STEPAN Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange talk which he was
hearing for the first time. The complexity of Petersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating
effect on him, rousing him out of his Moscow stagnation. But he liked these
complications, and understood them only in the circles he knew and was at home in.
In these unfamiliar surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted, and could not
get his bearings. As he listened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful,
artless–or perhaps artful, he could not decide which–eyes of Landau fixed upon him,
Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious of a peculiar heaviness in his head.
The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. “Marie Sanina is glad
her child’s dead.... How good a smoke would be now!... To be saved, one need only
believe, and the monks don’t know how the thing’s to be done, but Countess Lidia
Ivanovna does know.... And why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this
being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I’ve done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway,
it won’t do to ask her now. They say they make one say one’s prayers. I only hope
they won’t make me! That’ll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she’s reading! but
she has a good accent. Landau–Bezzubov– what’s he Bezzubov for?” All at once
Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming
a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himself together.
But soon after he became aware that he was dropping asleep and on the very point
of snoring. He recovered himself at the very moment when the voice of Countess
Lidia Ivanovna was saying “he’s asleep.” Stepan Arkadyevitch started with dismay,
feeling guilty and caught. But he was reassured at once by seeing that the words
“he’s asleep” referred not to him, but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as
well as Stepan Arkadyevitch. But Stepan Arkadyevitch’s being asleep would have
offended them, as he thought (though even this, he thought, might not be so, as
everything seemed so queer), while Landau’s being asleep delighted them extremely,
especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
“Mon ami,” said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the folds of her silk gown so
as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Karenin not Alexey Alexandrovitch,
but “mon ami,” “donnez-lui la main. Vous voyez? Sh!” she hissed at the footman as he
came in again. “Not at home.”
The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his head on the back
of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee, made faint movements, as
though trying to catch something. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move
carefully, but stumbled against the table, went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman’s
hand. Stepan Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide, trying to
wake himself up if he were asleep, he looked first at one and then at the other. It was
all real. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting worse and worse.
“Que la personne qui est arrivee la derniere, celle qui demande, qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle
sorte!” articulated the Frenchman, without opening his eyes.
“Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain.“
“Qu’elle sorte!” repeated the Frenchman impatiently.
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