‘Where is he?’
‘He must have gone into the lobby, but he was walking up and down here just now. That’s him,’ said the custodian, pointing to a well-built, broad-shouldered man with a curly beard running quickly and lightly up the worn steps of the stone staircase with his sheepskin hat still on. A lanky official with a portfolio who was amongst those coming downstairs paused and looked disapprovingly at the feet of the person running past, and then glanced quizzically at Oblonsky.
Stepan Arkadyich stood on the stairs. His face, which was beaming good-naturedly from behind the embroidered collar of his uniform, beamed even more when he recognized who it was running up.
‘So it is you! Levin, at last!’ he said, looking Levin over with a friendly, wry smile as he approached. ‘How is it you weren’t too squeamish about coming to find me in this notorious den?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, not content with a shaking of hands and kissing his friend. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘I’ve just arrived, and I really wanted to see you,’ replied Levin, looking round shyly, but at the same time crossly and anxiously.
‘Well, let’s go into my office,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, knowing his friend’s prickly and petulant diffidence; and taking hold of his arm, he ushered him along, as if steering him between dangers.
Stepan Arkadyich was on intimate terms with nearly all of his acquaintances: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that a great many of those who were intimate with him were at opposite ends of the social ladder, and would have been extremely surprised to discover they had something in common through Oblonsky. He was intimate with everyone with whom he drank champagne, and he drank champagne with everyone, so for that reason, whenever he met any of his ‘disreputable chums’, as he jokingly called many of his friends, in the presence of his subordinates, he was able to diminish the unpleasantness of this impression for his subordinates with his inborn tact. Levin was not a ‘disreputable chum’, but Oblonsky sensed with his tact that Levin thought he would not want to display his closeness with him in front of his subordinates, and therefore was in a hurry to whisk him away to his office.
Levin was almost the same age as Oblonsky and was not intimate with him just because of the champagne. Levin had been his comrade and friend from early youth. Despite their different characters and tastes, they were very fond of each other, as people who have been friends since childhood tend to be. But despite that, as often happens with people who choose different kinds of occupations, while each could rationally justify the other’s occupation, deep down they despised it. Each felt that the life he was leading was the only real life, while the one his friend was leading was just an illusion. Oblonsky could not suppress a slightly sardonic smile whenever he saw Levin. He had seen him umpteen times arrive in Moscow from the country, where he did something, but what exactly Stepan Arkadyich could never quite figure out, nor was he interested. Levin always arrived in Moscow agitated, frantic, slightly awkward, and annoyed by this awkwardness, and, more often than not, with some completely new and unexpected approach to things. Stepan Arkadyich laughed at this and loved it. Similarly, Levin inwardly despised the urban lifestyle of his friend, and his office job, which he considered trivial, and laughed at that. The difference was that Oblonsky, doing what everyone else did, laughed in a confident and good-natured way, while Levin did so unconfidently and sometimes angrily.
‘We’ve been expecting you for a long time,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, going into his office and letting go of Levin’s arm, as if to show that they were out of danger now. ‘I’m very, very glad to see you,’ he continued. ‘Well, what’s new? How are things? When did you arrive?’
Levin remained silent, looking at the unfamiliar faces of Oblonsky’s two colleagues, and in particular at the hand of the elegant Grinevich, who had such slender white fingers, such long yellow nails curling at the ends, and such huge shiny cuff-links on his shirt, that his hands clearly consumed all his attention and allowed him no freedom of thought. Oblonsky immediately noticed this and smiled.
‘Ah yes, allow me to introduce you,’ he said. ‘My colleagues: Filipp Ivanich Nikitin, Mikhail Stanislavich Grinevich,’ and turning to Levin: ‘zemstvo* activist, new generation zemstvo man, gymnast, lifts a hundred and fifty pounds with one hand, cattle-breeder, hunter, and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, brother of Sergey Ivanich Koznyshev.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the old man.
‘I have the honour of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanich,’ said Grinevich, holding out his slender hand with the long nails.
Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and immediately turned to Oblonsky. Although he had great respect for his maternal half-brother, a writer known throughout Russia, he could not stand it when people addressed him not as Konstantin Levin but as the brother of the famous Koznyshev.
‘No, I’m no longer a zemstvo activist. I fell out with them all and don’t go to meetings any more,’ he said, turning to Oblonsky.
‘That was quick work!’ said Oblonsky with a smile. ‘But how come? What happened?’
‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you some time,’ said Levin, but he started telling it straight away. ‘Well, to put it bluntly, I became convinced that there is no zemstvo activity, nor can there be,’ he began, speaking as if someone had just offended him; ‘on the one hand, it’s a plaything, people playing at parliament, and I am neither sufficiently young nor sufficiently old to amuse myself with playthings; but,’ he stammered, ‘on the other hand, it is a way for the local coterie to make a bit of money. It used to be trustees and courts, and now we have the zemstvo … not in the form of bribes, but unearned salaries,’ he said, speaking as vehemently as if one of those present had challenged his point of view.
‘Aha! I see you are in a new phase again, a conservative one,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘Anyway, we’ll talk about that later.’
‘Yes, later. But I had to see you,’ said Levin, looking with loathing at Grinevich’s hand.
Stepan Arkadyich smiled almost imperceptibly.
‘What was it you used to say about never wearing European clothes again?’ he said, looking over his new clothes, clearly from a French tailor. ‘So! I see: it’s a new phase.’
Levin suddenly blushed, but not in the way that grown-up people blush—faintly, without noticing it themselves—but in the way that boys who feel their shyness is ridiculous are prone to blush, and as a result become embarrassed and blush even more profusely, almost to the point of tears. And it was so strange to see this clever, manly face in such a childish state that Oblonsky stopped looking at him.
‘Yes, but where shall we meet? You know, I do really need to talk to you,’ said Levin.
Oblonsky seemed to be deliberating.
‘I tell you what: let’s go to Gurin’s for lunch, and talk there. I am free until three.’
‘No,’ replied Levin, after pondering this, ‘there’s somewhere else I have to go.’
‘Well, all right, let’s have dinner together.’
‘Dinner? But it’s nothing special, just a couple of words I want to say and ask you about, and we could have a talk later.’
‘Well, say your couple of words now, and we can chat over dinner.’
‘The couple of words are these,’ said Levin; ‘actually, it’s nothing important.’
His face suddenly acquired a surly expression which came from his efforts to overcome his shyness.
‘What are the Shcherbatskys up to? Same as usual?’ he asked.
Stepan Arkadyich, who had known for a long time that Levin was in love with his sister-in-law Kitty, smiled almost imperceptibly and his eyes began to twinkle merrily.