Anna Karenina - Part 5

The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying

ill was one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on

the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions

of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the

public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity

transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern

improvement that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned,

honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that

stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry,

supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery,

dark, and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in

a filthy frock coat, and the common dining room with a dusty

bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and

disorder everywhere, and at the same time the sort of modern

up-to-date self-complacent railway uneasiness of this hotel,

aroused a most painful feeling in Levin after their fresh young

life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the

hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.

As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what

price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one

decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the

inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third

by Princess Astafieva from the country. There remained only one

filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be

empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what

he had expected had come to pass, which was that at the moment of

arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know

how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after

her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted

her to the room assigned them.

"Go, do go!" she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.

He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over

Marya Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared

to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in

Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the

same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little

plumper.

"Well, how is he? how is he?"

"Very bad. He can't get up. He has kept expecting you. He....

Are you...with your wife?"

Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was

confused her, but she immediately enlightened him.