552 553
“Of course he was quite old,” he said, and changed the subject.
“Well, I’ll spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow.
Do you know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I’m going
into the service. Now I’m going to arrange my life quite differently,” he
went on. “You know I got rid of that woman.”
“Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?”
“Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.”
But he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that
he had cast off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and,
above all, because she would look after him, as though he were an
invalid.
“Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done
silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money’s the last consider-
ation; I don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my health, thank
God, is quite restored.”
Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to
say. Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother
about his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because
then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans
and his doings.
His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.
These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest
gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.
Both of them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay
and the nearness of his death—which stifled all else. But neither of
them dared to speak of it, and so whatever they said— not uttering the
one thought that filled their minds—was all falsehood. Never had
Levin been so glad when the evening was over and it was time to go to
bed. Never with any outside person, never on any official visit had he
been so unnatural and false as he was that evening. And the con-
sciousness of this unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made
him even more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly
loved brother, and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he
meant to live.
As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept
heated, Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a
screen.
His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep,
tossed about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his
throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was
painful, he said, “Oh, my God!” Sometimes when he was choking he
muttered angrily, “Ah, the devil!” Levin could not sleep for a long
while, hearing him. His thoughts were of the most various, but the end
of all his thoughts was the same— death. Death, the inevitable end of
all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And
death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and
from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so
remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt
that. If not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn’t it all
the same! And what was this inevitable death—he did not know, had
never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not
the courage to think about it.
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end;
I had forgotten—death.”
He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees,
and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But
the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was
indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one