A third of the way through Anna Karenina -- the finest novel in this or any other universe -- Anna's deceived husband Karenin reluctantly brings himself to consult with a famous divorce lawyer.
The lawyer was short, stocky, and bald, with a dark, reddish beard, long light eyebrows, and a bulging forehead. He was dressed like a bridegroom, from his cravat and double watch chain to his patent leather boots. He had a clever, rustic face, but his clothes were dandified and in poor taste.... Won't you sit down?" He indicated an armchair beside a writing desk covered with papers, and sat down himself behind the desk, rubbing together his little hands with their short fingers overgrown with fair hairs, and leaning his head over to one side.
The lawyer's "clever rustic face" is the tipoff that he's of peasant origin and probably only a generation or two away from scythe and flail. With his pretentious get-up and his bulging forehead and his stubby hirsute fingers, he is repulsive, even brutish. O, the indignity of it all -- an aristocrat like Karenin having to seek help from such a pretentious upstart!
And there's worse. The lawyer is not only a social-climber; he's also a ruthless opportunist.
He had just settled into this pose when a moth flew over the table: with a rapidity it would have been impossible to expect, the lawyer unlocked his hands, caught the moth, and again assumed his previous posture.
I would not want to assert that Karenin is precisely a moth. Nevertheless, Tolstoi certainly suggests that, given half a chance, the lawyer would not hesitate to strip his client's wings. It's clear that the awkward relations between the lawyer (whom Tolstoi never even bothers to name) and Karenin are governed by centuries of master-serf antagonism and by the prospect of revenge.
Tolstoi quickly brings this episode to a close and never brings the lawyer back on stage. But he lets him exit exultantly.
He bowed deferentially, showing his client out the door. But once he was alone, he abandoned himself to his glee.
Our lawyer now decides that it is time to give up moth-catching. Instead,
he had definitely made up his mind to have his furniture reupholstered in plush the following winter, like Sigonin's.
The dog-eat-dog lawyer is convinced that he can transform Karenin's distress into hard cash. The fees, which he savors prematurely, will allow him to catch up with his rival.
The world of Anna Karenina is both tough and unsentimental -- and revealed with great economy by its accomplished creator. It's a long novel, but packed with significance, every rift loaded with rich shining ore. olstoi takes on all the great perennial and nineteenth-century issues -- class, wealth, family, labor, spirituality, city and country, science, women's rights, royalty and democracy, agricultural reform, bureaucracy, sexuality, etc. -- but he still manages to extract significance even from the lowly, Czarist moth.
It had been thirty years since I re-read Anna Karenina. Now I've resolved to make it at least a biennial event. It's too astonishing a novel to let lie fallow.
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