Degrading Emotions

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Anna Karenina

Copyright: Leo Tolstoy's estate

Alexey Karenin has always been reserved, and Anna has always accepted it. Not only because she had no choice, but because (most of the time, at least) she honestly admires him for his self-control. Right now, though, her own self-control is wearing dangerously thin. He is talking about the state of their marriage as if it were a political treaty, worried about nothing but its public reception. It's enough to make her want to run to Vronsky's hotel room – where she has never been yet – if only to escape.

"I consider jealousy to be insulting to you and degrading to me," says Alexey, with maddening calm. "I have no right to inquire into your feelings. They concern only your conscience … but it is my duty to remind you that we are bound together by God, and that union can only be severed by a crime against God."

She pulls out her earrings, drops them on the vanity table with a clatter, and whirls around.

"Is that really all you care about?" she snaps. "Your duty?"

Alexey's spectacles flash in the shadows as he takes a step back. "What else?"

"Nothing for you, I suppose."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

It's his turn to be confused, which she finds oddly satisfying. "It means," she retorts, "That if you truly cared for me, it would never be degrading to admit it. If you had any feeling in that bureaucratic heart of yours, you would have noticed something long before others did."

Another flash; this time he moves forward, closing in on her across the room, his hands locked tightly behind his back even as his voice begins to tremble. She has struck a nerve, and it's only fair. After all, why should she be the only one off-balance tonight?

"Is this what you think, Anna?" he asks. "Is this really what you think of me?"

"Prove me wrong, Alexey." Her red skirt rustles as she moves to face him, tilting her head up, brown eyes smoldering into blue. "Tell me how these rumors make you feel."

He grasps her forearms, pinning her in place. He has never held her so tightly, not even in the first months of their marriage, and it makes her dizzy – whether with fear or excitement, she can hardly tell.

"What do you want me to say?" he rumbles, quiet and fierce, close enough for his breath to touch her face. "That the thought of you sharing anything of yourself with another man – your body, your mind, God forbid, your heart – is abhorrent to me? That I am a homely, awkward, middle-aged man who needs you so much more than you ever needed him, and if I ever lost you, I should go mad? Is that the truth you want to hear?"

He sounds tormented, as if the words were being forced from him against his will. So this is what he meant by degradation; he couldn't have made himself more vulnerable if he had opened his shirt and handed her a loaded gun.

Instead of answering, she rises up on tiptoe and kisses him hard.

There is anger in it, the taste of tears, the rasp of his short beard against her chin and his hands tangling in her hair. There is a heat she has never felt before, as if a small sun were trapped between them. She wonders, briefly, if this is what it would feel like to kiss Vronsky. But in a moment, she is no longer able to wonder anything at all.

When her knees turn to jelly, Alexey holds her up to keep her from falling.

"I swear to you, nothing has happened between me and Count Vronsky," she manages to say, once she has her breath back. "But not for lack of his trying. He follows me everywhere. I don't know how to be rid of him."

"Then I shall take you abroad." Alexey holds her face between his hands, smiling like a shy schoolboy, and it's so endearing she cannot help smiling back. "You and Seryozha both, what do you think?"

"I think," she says, gently straightening his collar, as she has done every day of their life together and always will, "It's a wonderful idea."