I.
“My dear Kostya, you’ve finally returned to me!”
Kitty comes trotting down the steps of the train station, rushing into Levin’s waiting arms.
“It’s been but four days, my dear.”
Levin’s wraps his arms around her slim waist with a passion that belies his nonchalance. Gently resting in each others’ embrace, Levin’s half-open eyes lazily trace the lines of the orange lace ribbon snaking through Kitty’s braids.
“But four days! A whole lifetime without my Kostya.”
Tears glint in the corner of her eyes.
“Let me look at you, let me see you.”
Kitty cranes her head to see him, with a slight furrow in her brow.
“Did they mistreat you in Moscow?”
“Not at all, love. Everyone was wonderful in Moscow.”
Kitty prattles on, deaf to his reassurances. She stands up on tip-toe to caress the new felt hat he’s wearing.
“The hat’s new! The color suits you—you look dashing in it. But there’s something else, something different! Kostya, what have they done to you? Is it that awful man Koznyshev?”
“Nothing’s changed, my love, I’m that same Kostya you fell in love with.”
The furrow over Kitty’s eyes grows deeper, and she pushes him away with trembling hands.
“Oh no no no no no. Not you too, Kostya! It’s that damned Russian cynicism, isn’t it? Don’t let those awful men take my Kostya away.”
At that, the lines around Levin’s smile stiffen and droop, dragging his face into an unseemly frown. Kitty presses her pale hands against his cheeks plaintively.
“Look at me, Kostya! It was an error, a mistake, an awful awful awful mistake to go to Moscow! Forget it all. Return to me my dear Kostya, my pure farmer boy. Let’s go back to the farm at once. At once! Petra is dying to see you.”
Kitty yanks Levin’s arm to leave, as if to drag him as far away from the bustling apathy of the Matushka station crowds as possible, clinging to him with the ferocity of a mother grizzly trying to save her drowning cub, as if the fresh country air and the grinding of barrow wheels through muddy footpaths and the chubby little cheeks of their freshly fed six year old son might restore to her the youthful heart of this man she once knew. Levin stands as still and unmoving as a cast-iron furnace.
“What I saw in Moscow, I can never forget. I’m sorry, Kitty, I can’t go back to the farm. The revolution is coming, and not a moment too soon.”
Kitty stares into her lover’s eyes, but she recognizes only the cold, blue fire of Russian cynicism. Slowly, her own expression shifts and her arms fall slack to her side. Levin sees twin blue flames reflected back at him in the windows to her soul.
Kitty turns to leave, but stops in her tracks as if having just remembered something.
“That hat is much too big for you, Kostya. You look like a positive clown in it.”
II.
Train 19 grinds and heaves to a halt in Matushka station with a sort of mechanical reluctance. Inside, a pair of bloodshot eyes stare into the distance unseeingly. Discolored semicircles of skin hang loosely under these sunken eyes the way provocative nightgowns hang off the bare shoulders of crossdressing frenchmen.
The eyes scan the bustling, apathetic crowd and lock with a glimmer of resigned recognition to the tiny auburn-haired woman on the steps. Deboarding the train draws out like a welcome eternity.
“My dear Kostya, you’ve finally returned to me.”
Kitty stands placidly on the steps, face empty of feeling.
“It’s been but four days, my dear.”
Levin mounts the stairs laboriously, the bags under his eyes sashaying seductively. He wraps an arm gently around his wife in a perfunctory greeting. She does not move.
“But four days! A whole lifetime without my Kostya.”
Her eyes are diamond-hard with sarcasm.
“Let me look at you, let me see you.”
Kitty shoves him brusquely, spinning him around to inspect his travelling clothes.
“Did they mistreat you in Moscow?”
“Not at all, love. Everyone was wonderful in Moscow.”
“The hat’s new. The color suits you … You look dashing in it. But there’s something else, something different. Kostya, what have they done to you? Is it that awful man Koznyshev?”
Levin chews down on his lip, staring at the orange lace ribbon snaking through Kitty’s hair. Every time Kitty mentions Levin’s half-brother Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev, that empty-headed buffoon of a writer, Levin’s imagination is filled with images of grabbing onto the end of her orange ribbon with both hands and yanking with all his might. Her pretty little head would come cleanly off with it, and roll down these icy steps. Plop plop plop.
“Nothing’s changed, my love, I’m that same Kostya you fell in love with.”
Levin tries to walk past Kitty into the carriage, but she grabs his arm.
“Oh no no no no no. Not you too, Kostya. It’s that damned Russian cynicism, isn’t it? Don’t let those awful men take my Kostya away.”
Kitty makes a plaintive look, dancing her eyebrows mockingly, as if to say—you’re just another babbling cynic, another Moscovite intellectual, one more Sergei. Levin shuts his eyes violently, drawing the dangling eye-bags closed like window shutters. He tries desperately, but unsuccessfully, to cleanse his mind of the image of the orange ribbon attached to Kitty’s rolling head. Plop plop plop.
“Look at me, Kostya. It was an error, a mistake, an awful awful awful mistake to go to Moscow. Forget it all. Return to me my dear Kostya, my pure farmer boy. Let’s go back to the farm at once. At once! Petra is dying to see you.”
It was all too much—this woman who had never forgiven him for that one night so many years ago with Anna, before whom he had once sobbed and begged forgiveness, who had promised forgiveness but lorded his mistake over him in every way, who had poisoned his family from his grandfather down to his beloved son against him, who now had the audacity to spit his son’s name at his face like an insult.
In that moment Konstantin Levin knew he had to escape. Suddenly, his hand was on the back of Kitty’s head, holding her ribbon vice-like. Snarling into her face, he knew not the words coming out of his mouth, words Sergei had planted in his memory.
“What I saw in Moscow, I can never forget! I’m sorry, Kitty, I can’t go back to the farm. The revolution is coming, and not a moment too soon.”
Levin turns and runs back down the steps, slapping away the thinning crowd to get back onto the train. He yearns to be elsewhere—anywhere but here.
Kitty’s maniacal shrieks reach him faintly as he jumps onto the train.
“That hat is much too big for you, Kostya! You look like a positive clown in it!”
III.
“My dear Kostya, you’ve finally returned to me.”
Arms crossed stubbornly, Kitty stands on the steps of the station wearing a loose-fitting dress that entirely fails to disguise the pounds she’d gained after childbirth.
“It’s been but four days, my dear.”
Levin wraps his arms around her plump waist despite her gentle protests. Kitty still hadn’t forgiven him for taking the sudden trip to Moscow.
“But four days! A whole lifetime without my Kostya.”
She turns her head away, furtively brushing away tears of indignation. Even so, she is gratified by the attention apparent in his hug.
They stand in silence for a long moment.
“Let me look at you, let me see you.”
“Something’s different, Kostya. Did they mistreat you in Moscow?”
“Not at all, love. Everyone was wonderful in Moscow.”
Levin regrets the words even before they leave his mouth. Kitty’s petite nostrils flare and her plump lips pout in indignation, as if readying to blow him back to Moscow where everyone was wonderful. Her voice takes on a renewed sarcasm.
“The hat’s new. The color suits you—you look dashing in it. But there’s something else, something different! Kostya, what have they done to you? Is it that awful man Koznyshev?”
When she feels particularly petty, Kitty is prone to teasing Levin about his airhead half-brother Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev and his delusions of revolution and utopia.
“Nothing’s changed, my love, I’m that same Kostya you fell in love with.”
Fatigued by the long train ride, Levin gently strokes Kitty’s auburn braids, running his fingers underneath the orange lace ribbon to pacify her. She bristles at this patronizing gesture.
“Oh no no no no no. Not you too, Kostya! It’s that damned Russian cynicism, isn’t it? Don’t let those awful men take my Kostya away.”
She struggles unsuccessfully to escape his hug. Her impish slaps draw a few raised eyebrows and chuckles from the bustling crowd. Finally, she surrenders and unloads the grudge she’d been tending these four days in a barrage of matronly fury.
“Look at me, Kostya! It was an error, a mistake, an awful awful awful mistake to go to Moscow! Forget it all! Return to me my dear Kostya, my pure farmer boy! Let’s go back to the farm at once. At once! Petra is dying to see you.”
Constantin Levin’s haggard face draws into a wide, wholesome grin. Ten years seem to fall off his chest as he heaves a sigh of relief. Taking Kitty up the stairs, he draws her into a twirl, teasing her about the trip all the while.
Theatrically, he flares his arms into the air and imitates Sergei high-pitched speech-making in the throes of one of his utopian epiphanies.
“What I saw in Moscow, I can never forget! I’m sorry, Kitty, I can’t go back to the farm. The revolution is coming! And not a moment too soon!”
Kitty swats her lover playfully, all the tension emptying from her body.
“That hat is much too big for you, Kostya. You look like a positive clown in it.”
Levin and Kitty jostle each other into the carriage. The shadow of Moscow is banished from their minds by the alluring melody of the fresh country air and the grinding of barrow wheels through muddy footpaths and the chubby little cheeks of their freshly fed six year old son.
It would be great to have some sort of introduction that speaks about the intent of the post.
I mostly subscribe to the school of writing that says the intent is the scaffolding for the story and one should let it speak for itself. Nevertheless, perhaps a good middle ground is to give a sketch here in the comments since you ask:
This post is inspired by three things: first, a fascination with the Oulipian school of writing, whereby extraordinary (and often mathematical) constraints are imposed to produce extraordinary creativity. Second, a meditation on the illusion of transparency, and how much can be said between the lines or lost in translation. Finally, a long-term effort (of which this is a sliver) to restore to myself a naive aesthetics (see also this post), to the tune of My Favorite Things.