Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 24
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 naively 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.
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