he had given two hundred rubles for the man's family. (Mark the muffled-up man being crushed. Mark that his death establishes a kind of connection between Anna and Vronski. We shall need all these ingredients when we discuss the twin dream they have.)
'People coming and going were still talking of what had happened. 'What a horrible death,' said a man who was passing by.
'They say he was cut in two pieces.' 'On the contrary, I think it is the easiest, the quickest,' said another [and Anna marks this]. 'How is it no safety measures are taken?' said a third.
'Anna seated herself in the carriage and Steve saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and she had difficulty restraining her tears. 'What is it, Anna?' he asked. 'It's an omen of evil.' 'Nonsense,' said Steve.' And he goes on to say how glad he is that she has come.
The remaining important formative impressions for the dream come later. Anna has met Vronski again at the ball and danced with him—but that is all for the moment. Now she is on her way back to St. Petersburg, having reconciled Dolly and her brother Steve.
''Come, it's all over [her interest in Vronski], and thank God!' was the first thought that came to Anna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the car till the third bell rang. She sat down in her plush seat beside Annushka [her maid], and looked about her in the twilight of the [so-called] sleeping-car.
'Thank God! Tomorrow I shall see Sergey and Aleks, and my life will go on in the old way, all nice and as usual.'
'Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day, Anna took pleasure in preparing herself for the journey with great care. With her small deft hands she opened and shut her red handbag, took out a little pillow, laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her legs, made herself comfortable. An invalid lady was already settling down to sleep in her seat. Two other ladies began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady who was in the act of wrapping up her legs snugly made observations about the heating of the train [a crucial problem with that stove in the middle and all those icy drafts]. Anna said a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get out the small traveling lantern, hooked it onto the arm of her fauteuil, and took out from her bag a paper-knife and an English novel [of which the pages were uncut]. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss and bustle were disturbing
[people walking down the passage along the doorless sections of that night coach]; then when the train had started, she could not help listening to the sound of the wheels; then her attention was distracted by the snow beating on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled conductor passing by [an artistic touch this, the blizzard was blowing from the west; but it also goes well with Anna's onesided mood, a moral loss of balance], and the conversations about the terrific blizzard raging outside. And so it went on and on: the same shaking and knocking, the same snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses of the same figures [conductors, stove-tenders] in the shifting dusk, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Her maid was already dozing, with her mistress's red bag in her lap, clutching it with her broad hands, in woolen gloves, of which one was torn at a finger tip [one of these little flaws that correspond to a flaw in Anna's own mood]. Anna read but she found it distasteful to follow the shadows of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move herself with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech herself; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden to the hounds, and had teased her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her pluck, Anna too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and she toyed 101
with the smooth ivory knife in her small hands, and forced
herself to go on reading. [Was she a good reader from our
point of view? Does her emotional participation in the life
of the book remind one of another little lady? Of Emma?].
'The hero of the novel was about to reach his English
happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, when she suddenly
felt that he ought to feel somehow ashamed, and that she
was ashamed, too [she identifies the man in the book with
Vronski]. But what had he to be ashamed of? 'What have/
to be ashamed of?' she asked herself in injured surprise.
She laid down the book and sank against the back of her
fauteuil, tightly gripping the knife in both hands. There was
nothing. She went over all her Moscow impressions. All
was good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered
Vronski's face of slavish adoration, remembered all her
conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all
that, at this point in her memories, the feeling of shame
was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at that
point when she thought of Vronski, were saying to her,
'Warm, very warm, hot.' [In a game where you hide an
object and hint at the right direction by these thermal
exclamations — and mark that the warm and the cold are
alternating in the night-coach too.] 'What is it?' she asked
herself, shifting her position in the fauteuil. 'What does it
mean? Can it be that between me and that officer boy
there exist, or can exist, any other relations than those of
ordinary acquaintance?' She gave a little snort of contempt
and took up her book again; but now she was definitely
unable to follow the story. She passed the ivory paper-knife
over the window-pane, then laid its smooth, cool surface
[contrast again of warm and cold] to her cheek, and almost
laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once
without cause came over her [her sensuous nature takes
over]. She felt as though her nerves were violin strings
being strained tighter and tighter on their pegs. She felt
her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes
twitched, something within her oppressed her, while all
shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to
strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt
were continuously coming upon her, when she was
uncertain whether the train was going forwards or
backwards [compare this to an important metaphor in
'Ivan Ilyich'], or was standing still altogether; whether it
was Annushka at her side or a stranger. 'What's that on the
arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some big furry beast? And
what am I myself? Myself or somebody else?' She was
afraid of giving way to this state of oblivion. But something
drew her towards it. She sat up to rouse herself, removed
her lap robe and took off the cape of her woolen dress. For
