Chapter 20
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as usual, did not waste his time in Petersburg. In Petersburg, besides business, his sister’s divorce, and his coveted appointment, he wanted, as he always did, to freshen himself up, as he said, after the mustiness of Moscow.
In spite of its cafés chantants and its omnibuses, Moscow was yet a stagnant bog. Stepan Arkadyevitch always felt it. After living for some time in Moscow, especially in close relations with his family, he was conscious of a depression of spirits. After being a long time in Moscow without a change, he reached a point when he positively began to be worrying himself over his wife’s ill-humor and reproaches, over his children’s health and education, and the petty details of his official work; even the fact of being in debt worried him. But he had only to go and stay a little while in Petersburg, in the circle there in which he moved, where people lived really lived instead of vegetating as in Moscow, and all such ideas vanished and melted away at once, like wax before the fire. His wife?... Only that day he had been talking to Prince Tchetchensky. Prince Tchetchensky had a wife and family, grown-up pages in the corps, ... and he had another illegitimate family of children also. Though the first family was very nice too, Prince Tchetchensky felt happier in his second family; and he used to take his eldest son with him to his second family, and told Stepan Arkadyevitch that he thought it good for his son, enlarging his ideas. What would have been said to that in Moscow?
His children? In Petersburg children did not prevent their parents from enjoying life. The children were brought up in schools, and there was no trace of the wild idea that prevailed in Moscow, in Lvov’s household, for instance, that all the luxuries of life were for the children, while the parents have nothing but work and anxiety. Here people understood that a man is in duty bound to live for himself, as every man of culture should live.
His official duties? Official work here was not the stiff, hopeless drudgery that it was in Moscow. Here there was some interest in official life. A chance meeting, a service rendered, a happy phrase, a knack of facetious mimicry, and a man’s career might be made in a trice. So it had been with Bryantsev, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had met the previous day, and who was one of the highest functionaries in government now. There was some interest in official work like that.
The Petersburg attitude on pecuniary matters had an especially soothing effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. Bartnyansky, who must spend at least fifty thousand to judge by the style he lived in, had made an interesting comment the day before on that subject.
As they were talking before dinner, Stepan Arkadyevitch said to Bartnyansky:
“You’re friendly, I fancy, with Mordvinsky; you might do me a favor: say a word to him, please, for me. There’s an appointment I should like to get secretary of the agency....”
“Oh, I shan’t remember all that, if you tell it to me.... But what possesses you to have to do with railways and Jews?... Take it as you will, it’s a low business.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch did not say to Bartnyansky that it was a “growing thing” Bartnyansky would not have understood that.
“I want the money, I’ve nothing to live on.”
“You’re living, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but in debt.”
“Are you, though? Heavily?” said Bartnyansky sympathetically.
“Very heavily: twenty thousand.”
Bartnyansky broke into good-humored laughter.
“Oh, lucky fellow!” said he. “My debts mount up to a million and a half, and I’ve nothing, and still I can live, as you see!”
And Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the correctness of this view not in words only but in actual fact. Zhivahov owed three hundred thousand, and hadn’t a farthing to bless himself with, and he lived, and in style too! Count Krivtsov was considered a hopeless case by everyone, and yet he kept two mistresses. Petrovsky had run through five millions, and still lived in just the same style, and was even a manager in the financial department with a salary of twenty thousand. But besides this, Petersburg had physically an agreeable effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. It made him younger. In Moscow he sometimes found a gray hair in his head, dropped asleep after dinner, stretched, walked slowly upstairs, breathing heavily, was bored by the society of young women, and did not dance at balls. In Petersburg he always felt ten years younger.
His experience in Petersburg was exactly what had been described to him on the previous day by Prince Pyotr Oblonsky, a man of sixty, who had just come back from abroad:
“We don’t know the way to live here,” said Pyotr Oblonsky. “I spent the summer in Baden, and you wouldn’t believe it, I felt quite a young man. At a glimpse of a pretty woman, my thoughts.... One dines and drinks a glass of wine, and feels strong and ready for anything. I came home to Russia had to see my wife, and, what’s more, go to my country place; and there, you’d hardly believe it, in a fortnight I’d got into a dressing gown and given up dressing for dinner. Needn’t say I had no thoughts left for pretty women. I became quite an old gentleman. There was nothing left for me but to think of my eternal salvation. I went off to Paris I was as right as could be at once.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch felt exactly the difference that Pyotr Oblonsky described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his salvation; in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the world again.
Between Princess Betsy Tverskaya and Stepan Arkadyevitch there had long existed rather curious relations. Stepan Arkadyevitch always flirted with her in jest, and used to say to her, also in jest, the most unseemly things, knowing that nothing delighted her so much. The day after his conversation with Karenin, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to see her, and felt so youthful that in this jesting flirtation and nonsense he recklessly went so far that he did not know how to extricate himself, as unluckily he was so far from being attracted by her that he thought her positively disagreeable. What made it hard to change the conversation was the fact that he was very attractive to her. So that he was considerably relieved at the arrival of Princess Myakaya, which cut short their tête-à-tête.
“Ah, so you’re here!” said she when she saw him. “Well, and what news of your poor sister? You needn’t look at me like that,” she added. “Ever since they’ve all turned against her, all those who’re a thousand times worse than she, I’ve thought she did a very fine thing. I can’t forgive Vronsky for not letting me know when she was in Petersburg. I’d have gone to see her and gone about with her everywhere. Please give her my love. Come, tell me about her.”
“Yes, her position is very difficult; she....” began Stepan Arkadyevitch, in the simplicity of his heart accepting as sterling coin Princess Myakaya’s words “tell me about her.” Princess Myakaya interrupted him immediately, as she always did, and began talking herself.
“She’s done what they all do, except me only they hide it. But she wouldn’t be deceitful, and she did a fine thing. And she did better still in throwing up that crazy brother-in-law of yours. You must excuse me. Everybody used to say he was so clever, so very clever; I was the only one that said he was a fool. Now that he’s so thick with Lidia Ivanovna and Landau, they all say he’s crazy, and I should prefer not to agree with everybody, but this time I can’t help it.”
“Oh, do please explain,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch; “what does it mean? Yesterday I was seeing him on my sister’s behalf, and I asked him to give me a final answer. He gave me no answer, and said he would think it over. But this morning, instead of an answer, I received an invitation from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for this evening.”
“Ah, so that’s it, that’s it!” said Princess Myakaya gleefully, “they’re going to ask Landau what he’s to say.”
“Ask Landau? What for? Who or what’s Landau?”
“What! you don’t know Jules Landau, le fameux Jules Landau, le clairvoyant? He’s crazy too, but on him your sister’s fate depends. See what comes of living in the provinces you know nothing about anything. Landau, do you see, was a commis in a shop in Paris, and he went to a doctor’s; and in the doctor’s waiting room he fell asleep, and in his sleep he began giving advice to all the patients. And wonderful advice it was! Then the wife of Yury Meledinsky you know, the invalid? heard of this Landau, and had him to see her husband. And he cured her husband, though I can’t say that I see he did him much good, for he’s just as feeble a creature as ever he was, but they believed in him, and took him along with them and brought him to Russia. Here there’s been a general rush to him, and he’s begun doctoring everyone. He cured Countess Bezzubova, and she took such a fancy to him that she adopted him.”
“Adopted him?”
“Yes, as her son. He’s not Landau any more now, but Count Bezzubov. That’s neither here nor there, though; but Lidia I’m very fond of her, but she has a screw loose somewhere has lost her heart to this Landau now, and nothing is settled now in her house or Alexey Alexandrovitch’s without him, and so your sister’s fate is now in the hands of Landau, alias Count Bezzubov.”