There was something in the immediate way she obeyed his order…
“Spin in a circle,” Kapitonitch ordered, squinting with suspicion as the woman did so immediately. “Put your hands in the air. Wiggle your fingers.” At each command, the woman demonstrated automatic-that is, robotic-obedience.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Android Karenina?”
“Turn around. Slowly” said the real Anna, from where she now stood, directly behind Kapitonitch, the smoker still drawn and leveled shakily at his head. But as he turned, Kapitonitch drew a weapon of his own: a small, metallic hand cannon, as long again as the length of his arm, and aimed directly at her head.
Of course the mécanicien of this household is armed, thought Anna. Of course.
“Oh, Madame Karenina,” said Kapitonitch sadly, and unlike Anna’s, his hand did not shake.
For a long moment they stared at each other, weapons drawn. On the stoop Android Karenina, her veil now drawn back, regarded the scene in terrified silence, her eyebank fluttering double-time as she calculated her odds of disarming Kapitonitch without harm to her mistress. Anna offered a silent prayer that, if she were fated to die here, Providence would allow her to see her dear son once more before it was all over.
But it was not Providence that saved her, it was human kindness; so often, one comes dressed in the clothing of the other. “I cannot shoot you, Madame Karenina. Please come in, your Excellency,” he said to her.
She tried to say something, but her voice refused to utter any sound; with a guilty and imploring glance at the old man she went with light, swift steps up the stairs. Bent over, and his galoshes catching on the steps, Kapitonitch ran after her, imploring in an urgent whisper that she not tarry.
Anna mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what the old man was saying.
“This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not being tidy. Your husband’s in the old parlor now,” the mécanicien said, panting. “Excuse me, wait a little, your Excellency; I’ll just see,” he said, and overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared behind it. Anna stood still, waiting. “He’s only just awake,” Kapitonitch reported, coming out.
“Do be quick, madame,” he said again. “Please. He will not be happy to find you here. Most unhappy indeed.”
And at the very instant the mécanicien said this, Anna caught the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes.
“Let me in; go away!” she said, and went in through the high doorway, Android Karenina heeling her closely. On the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the boy. His little body bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and deliciously rolled back again.
“Seryozha!” she whispered, going noiselessly up to him. Android Karenina glowed warmly, suffusing the scene with delicate pinks of joy.
When Anna was parted from her Sergey, and all this latter time when she had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from the four-year-old tot, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she left him! But it was he, with his head, his lips, his soft neck and broad little shoulders.
“Seryozha!” she repeated just in the child’s ear.
He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled head from side to side as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Slowly and inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother standing motionless before him, and just behind her the comforting familiar figure of her beloved-companion.
All at once he smiled a blissful smile, and shutting his eyes, rolled not backward but toward her into her arms.
“Seryozha! My darling boy!” she said, breathing hard and putting her arms round his plump little body.
“Mother!” he said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch her hands with different parts of him. “I know,” he said, opening his eyes; “it’s my birthday today. I knew you’d come. I’ll get up right now.”
And saying that he fell back asleep.
Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in her absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs, so long now, that were thrust out below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his neck, which she had so often kissed. She touched all this and could say nothing; tears choked her.
“What are you crying for, mother?” Seryozha said, waking completely up. “Mother, what are you crying for?” he cried in a tearful voice.
“I won’t cry… I’m crying for joy. It’s so long since I’ve seen you. I won’t, I won’t,” she said, gulping down her tears and turning away. “Come, it’s time for you to dress now,” she added after a pause, and, never letting go his hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair, where his clothes were ready for him.
“How do you dress without me? How…” she tried to begin talking simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.
“I don’t have a cold bath, Papa didn’t order it. Why, you’re sitting on my clothes!”
And Seryozha went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and smiled.
“Mother, darling, sweet one!” he shouted, flinging himself on her again and hugging her. It was as though only now, on seeing her smile, he fully grasped what had happened.
“I don’t want that on,” he said, taking off her hat. And as it were, seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to kissing her again. “Why do you carry a smoker? Mother!”
“But what did you think about me?You didn’t think I was dead?”
“They said you were killed! By a koschei that came upon you in the marketplace, while you shopped for apples.”
“Not so!”
“They said it attached itself at the base of your spine, and then burrowed all the way up to your brain.”
“No, indeed, my darling!”
“They said when you were found, your face was so mutilated, it was almost impossible to recognize it.”
Anna’s eyelashes fluttered furiously, as she attempted to conceal her dismay at the wishful thinking that had clearly gone into that particular detail of the story Karenin had concocted for Seryozha.
“I never believed it,” the boy said.
“You didn’t believe it, my sweet?”
“I knew, I knew!” he repeated his favorite phrase, and snatching the hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth and kissed it. He afforded a sweet glance, too, to Android Karenina, who issued a small hum of pleasure and tried in vain to straighten his mess of childish curls with her slender phalangeals.
“You must go,” said Kapitonitch from the door, a note of desperation in his voice. “He must not discover you here. I should not have permitted it. Please, madame.” But neither mother nor son would permit their reunion to be interrupted.
The old mécanicien shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door. “I’ll wait another ten minutes,” he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away tears. “I have made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”
Anna could not say good-bye to her boy, but the expression on her face said it, and he understood. “Darling, darling Kootik!” she used the name by which she had called him when he was little, “you won’t forget me? You…,” but she could not say more.
“Of course not, mother,” he responded simply. And then, seeming to think of something suddenly, he said, “She has not been collected for circuitry adjustment?”