Anna Karenina - Part 5

Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself

be natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick

man, his eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he

did not see and did not distinguish the details of his brother's

position. He smelt the awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and

miserable condition, and heard the groans, and felt that nothing

could be done to help. It never entered his head to analyze the

details of the sick man's situation, to consider how that body

was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated legs and thighs

and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could not be

made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to make

things, if not better, at least less bad. It made his blood run

cold when he began to think of all these details. He was

absolutely convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his

brother's life or to relieve his suffering. But a sense of his

regarding all aid as out of the question was felt by the sick

man, and exasperated him. And this made it still more painful

for Levin. To be in the sick-room was agony to him, not to be

there still worse. And he was continually, on various pretexts,

going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was unable

to remain alone.

But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On

seeing the sick man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly

heart did not arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing

that it aroused in her husband, but a desire to act, to find out

all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she

had not the slightest doubt that it was her duty to help him, she

had no doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to

work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her

husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She sent

for the doctor, sent to the chemist's, set the maid who had come

with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she

herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid

something under the quilt. Something was by her directions

brought into the sick-room, something else was carried out. She

herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she

met in the corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillow cases,

towels, and shirts.

The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the

dining hall, came several times with an irate countenance in

answer to her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her

orders, as she gave them with such gracious insistence that there

was no evading her. Levin did not approve of all this; he did

not believe it would be of any good to the patient. Above all,

he feared the patient would be angry at it. But the sick man,

though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not angry, but

only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what she

was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty

had sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man

at the instant when, by Kitty's directions, they were changing

his linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge,

prominent shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was

bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the waiter were struggling with

the sleeve of the night shirt, and could not get the long, limp

arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after Levin, was

not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and she moved

rapidly towards him.