136 137
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 gentle-
man 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 it
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
fact.
“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 rela-
tions 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