“My child,” he said suddenly. “Can we raise her here, in such a situation? And what of the future? My daughter will be hunted for all her life, bearing the mark of the rebel, whether she would choose to or not, for she will never be given the choice. We have made it for her, by our actions. Can I will her such an existence!” he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry toward Darya Alexandrovna.
She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on: “One day a son may be born, my son, and he too will have the results of this choice, he too will have the consequences thrust upon him. He will be an outcast, an escapee from society, and worse-if this redoubt of ours should be found and our defenses destroyed, my child would in the course of events be killed, or worse, raised by him: as a Karenin! You can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She is happy now, she has taken what she sees as her principled position on the Robot Question. She enjoys the thrill of this wilderness existence we now lead. She cannot look far enough down the road to contemplate the kind of future we are engendering. She does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of all this…”
He paused, evidently much moved.
“Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?” queried Darya Alexandrovna.
“Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,” he said, calming himself with an effort. “It is my great hope that I might give up this life and marry Anna properly, within the bounds of society.”
“I am surprised to hear you say so,” replied Dolly. She looked about her, her gesture taking in the whole of Vozdvizhenskoe. “I would have said you were so happy here, at the head of your robot regiment…”
“But they could be brought into service! With me at their head! Can you imagine…”
“Into service?”
“Of the state, of the Ministry,” Vronsky turned his gaze back toward the farmhouse, as if ensuring Anna did not overhear. “I am prepared to play what part it is thought I would play best in the New Russia being created by our leaders.” Dolly raised a hand to her mouth, but said nothing.
“I have built this world in the woods because I have stood for the honor of Anna Karenina. But in truth I have no problem, no practical problem that is to say, with the direction of the Higher Branches, with the changes they seek to implement. My differences with Alexei Alexandrovich are personal, not political.”
“But after your departure… your disappearance… how can the Higher Branches allow your return? How could Karenin?”
“If Anna asked he would allow it: I’m sure of it. Her husband agreed to a divorce-at that time your husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse it. He would grant her a divorce, and forgiveness for both of us. It is only a matter of sending him a communiqué. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of course,” he said gloomily, “it is one of those pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a communiqué,” he said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for its being hard for him. “And so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him and ask for a divorce and for amnesty.”
This last word he spoke with emphasis, though quietly. But Lupo, who had padded up to them midway through their conversation and had been sitting contentedly as usual at his master’s feet, heard-with his extraordinary, lupine aural circuitry, he heard, and with his survival instincts he understood. For Vronsky and Anna to be given amnesty, they would surely have to comply with the “adjustment protocol.”
The wolf-machine let loose a long, low growl, which Vronsky did not, or affected not, to hear.
“Use your influence with her, make her record a communiqué. I don’t like-I’m almost unable to speak about this to her.”
“Very well, I will talk to her,” said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some reason she suddenly at that point recalled Anna’s strange new habit of half-closing her eyes. And she remembered that Anna dropped her eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon. Just as though she were half-shutting her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything, thought Dolly. “Yes, indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her,” Dolly said in reply to his look of gratitude. They got up and walked to the farmhouse.
They passed Lupo, prowling in and out of the old henhouse, sniffing at Tortoiseshell’s stubby groznium tail. It was as if he were already more at home in this company than at the side of his master. Vronsky did not call out to him.
CHAPTER 11
WHEN ANNA FOUND DOLLY at home before her, she looked intently in her eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with Vronsky, but she made no inquiry in words.
“I believe it’s dinnertime,” she said. “We’ve not seen each other at all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I expect you do too; we have all been splattered with mud, and with the spilt, stinking yellow gore of our attacker.” Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. She brushed it off as best she could, wringing out some of the more gore-soaked patches of fabric; then, in order to signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her head.
“This is all I can do,” she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to escort her to the ramshackle little tent where the sarcastic mécanicien served as camp cook as well.
“Yes, we are too formal here,” Anna said, as it were apologizing for the unceremoniousness of the dining. “Alexei is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at anything. He has completely lost his heart to you,” she added. “You’re not tired?”
There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all of a compelling simplicity; flasks open on the long wooden table; candlelight serving for lumières, in the old way.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play a quaint, old manual game called lawn tennis that Anna and Vronsky had come to enjoy in the absence of Flickerfly and other grozniumage amusements. The players, divided into two parties-humans against robots-stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquet ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Witch Hazel, gave up playing too and sat beside her; and after asking permission, began braiding her hair, an intimate kind of Class III action that brought tears to Dolly’s eyes.
The others kept the game up for a long time. Vronsky and Anna played very well and seriously: they kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without haste or getting in each other’s way, they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused. With the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirtsleeves, with his red, perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.