Anna Karenina - Part 5

Page 3

During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying

to attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views;

then feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them,

he tried not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts,

observations, and memories which floated through his brain with

extreme vividness during this idle time of standing in church.

He had stood through the litany, the evening service and the

midnight service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual,

and without having tea went at eight o'clock in the morning to

the church for the morning service and the confession.

There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old

women, and the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back

showed in two distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met

him, and at once going to a little table at the wall read the

exhortation. During the reading, especially at the frequent and

rapid repetition of the same words, "Lord, have mercy on us!"

which resounded with an echo, Levin felt that thought was shut

and sealed up, and that it must not be touched or stirred now or

confusion would be the result; and so standing behind the deacon

he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither listening nor

examining what was said. "It's wonderful what expression there

is in her hand," he thought, remembering how they had been

sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to

talk about, as was almost always the case at this time, and

laying her hand on the table she kept opening and shutting it,

and laughed herself as she watched her action. He remembered how

he had kissed it and then had examined the lines on the pink

palm. "Have mercy on us again!" thought Levin, crossing himself,

bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the deacon's back

bowing before him. "She took my hand then and examined the lines

'You've got a splendid hand,' she said." And he looked at his own

hand and the short hand of the deacon. "Yes, now it will soon be

over," he thought. "No, it seems to be beginning again," he

thought, listening to the prayers. "No, it's just ending: there

he is bowing down to the ground. That's always at the end."

The deacon's hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note

unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the

of the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he

peeped out thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then

locked up, began to stir in Levin's head, but he made haste to

drive it away. "It will come right somehow," he thought, and

went towards the altar-rails. He went up the steps, and turning

to the right saw the priest. The priest, a little old man with a

scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing

at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a

slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers in the

official voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the

ground and turned, facing Levin.