Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
|
sees the body he has robbed of life.
That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage
of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the
memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame.
Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him.
But in spite of all the murderers horror before the body of his
victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what
he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the
body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and
shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir.
"Yes, these kisses--that is what has been bought by this shame.
Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine--the hand of my
accomplice." She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on
his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said
nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she
got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but
it was only the more pitiful for that.
"All is over," she said; "I have nothing but you. Remember
that."
"I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of
this happiness..."
"Happiness!" she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. "For pitys sake, not a word, not a
word more."
She rose quickly and moved away from him.
"Not a word more," she repeated, and with a look of chill
despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt
that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of
shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new
life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this
feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day
and the third day, she still found no words in which she could
express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not
even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that
was in her soul.
She said to herself: "No, just now I cant think of it, later on,
when I am calmer." But this calm for thought never came; every
time the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen
to her, and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she
drove those thoughts away.
"Later, later," she said--"when I am calmer."
But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her
position presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness.
One dream haunted her almost every night. She dreamed that both
were her husbands at once, that both were lavishing caresses on
her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her hands, and
saying, "How happy we are now!" And Alexey Vronsky was there
too, and he too was her husband. And she was marveling that it
had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to them,
laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both
of them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her
like a nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.
Chapter 12
In the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin
shuddered and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his
rejection, he said to himself: "This was just how I used to
shudder and blush, thinking myself utterly lost, when I was
plucked in physics and did not get my remove; and how I thought
myself utterly ruined after I had mismanaged that affair of my
sisters that was entrusted to me. And yet, now that years have
passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so
much. It will be the same thing too with this trouble. Time
will go by and I shall not mind about this either."
But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about
it; and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been
those first days. He could not be at peace because after
dreaming so long of family life, and feeling himself so ripe for
it, he was still not married, and was further than ever from
marriage. He was painfully conscious himself, as were
Anna Karenina page 84 Anna Karenina page 86
|