On the sixth day of the sitting Golenishtchev entered with his usual bluster. As he pulled off his thick, dust-caked moon boots, he reported on a communiqué he had just received from a friend in Petersburg, who spoke of a rather bizarre new dictate emerging from the Ministry: all Class III robots, it seemed, were being gathered up by the government for some sort of mandatory circuitry adjustment.
Golenishtchev passed easily on to other subjects, nattering next about a funny little Moonie he had lost in the pit earlier today, and the various difficulties attending to Extractor maintenance in low gravity. But Mihailov and Anna Karenina-that is, the painter and the painted-seemed deeply struck by the pitman’s information. Mihailov laid down his brush and looked off through the big bay window of the module.
As for Anna, she instantly knew who was behind this enigmatic new Ministry program. “Might it be,” she murmured to Android Karenina, rising from her model’s stool, stretching, and walking arm and arm with her beloved-companion through the atelier, “that in my absence, whatever strange force lives inside my husband has gathered strength? Has my departure, my immersion in the freedom that the moon has given me, doomed my fellow Russians, and their beloved-companions, to suffer in my stead?”
And her heart was rent by feelings of guilt and frustration.
Vronsky did not share these concerns; he was instead agonized by his dawning understanding of his own failure to master the technique of groznium-pigment painting, and his realization that he never would. “I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,” he said of his own portrait of her, “and he just looked and painted it. That’s where technique comes in.”
“That will come,” was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent and what was most important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev’s faith in Vronsky’s talent was propped up by his need of Vronsky’s sympathy and approval for his own hope of finding groznium on the moon, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual. “Isn’t that correct, M. Mihailov?”
But Mihailov remained silent. He walked, slowly, still clutching his brush, away from that big bay window and toward the airlock. “Tell me, sir,” he said to Golenishtchev, propping himself up against the reinforced steel of the door. “This Project; they intend to ‘gather up’ all Class Ills for what purpose?”
“It is not said-only that we must put our trust in the Ministry.”
“Ah,” he said. “I suppose we must do that. That I suppose we must do.”
A long stillness then filled the atelier: Golenishtchev looked toward Vronsky and Anna with raised eyebrows and a wry expression, impressing upon them his enjoyment of the idiosyncratic behavior of the great artiste. Vronsky continued his contemplation of the master’s portrait of Anna, while Anna herself stood with her hand in the gentle end-effector of Android Karenina, gazing down thoughtfully toward that big blue-green Class I toy, the Earth.
The airlock had already swung closed behind Mihailov, decisively clanking shut before anyone realized that he had exited-and had not taken with him his oxygen tank, nor even his helmet.
They watched with eyes wide with amazement, as the old painter tromped in his moon boots across the dusty lunar landscape and, showing no sign of the desperate constriction of his lungs that was surely taking place, blew a single, sad kiss in the direction of Earth; and then lay down heavily on the lunar dust, and ran out of breath.
After the strange death of Mihailov, Anna and Vronsky’s rented module suddenly seemed so obtrusively old and dirty: the periodic small malfunctioning of their Class I door locks, the streaks in the glass, the dried-out putty on the seals became so disagreeably obvious, as did the everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, forever talking of the great day when he would strike his long-dreamed-of lunar ore. They had to make some change, and they resolved to return to Russia. In Petersburg Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of land with his brother, while Anna intended, somehow, to see her son.
Vronsky and Anna soon were climbing inside the ballistic canister and hurtling back toward the planet from whence they had come.
CHAPTER 8
LEVIN HAD BEEN MARRIED three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a meteor around a planetoid, should be given an opportunity to climb aboard that meteor. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant forgetting where one was floating; and that there was atmospheric pressure around one, and that one must endeavor somehow to steer one’s meteor; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult, and very likely fatal.
As a bachelor, when he had watched other people’s married life, seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that could not be denied. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life as the happiest enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty, could not merely busy herself about the Class Is and the furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about a tray, about the II/Cook/6 and the dinner, and so on.
Now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their room; placed the Galena Box carefully on a certain shelf, then the next day reconsidered and moved it to another shelf; saw after a Surcease nook for the new II/Maid/467, a wedding gift from Levin’s parents; ordered dinner of the old II/Cook/6; came into collision with his ancient mécanicienne, Agafea Mihalovna, taking from her the charge of the Is and IIs.
He did not know the great sense of change Kitty was experiencing; she, who at home had sometimes wanted some favorite dish, or sweets, without the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, riding on a tandem I/Bicycle/44 with her darling Tatiana to the store to buy pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any puddings she pleased.
This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin’s ideal of exalted happiness, was at first one of the disappointments; and this sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand, but could not help loving, was one of the new happy surprises.