martinsmithstories

Image credit: Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

As a snow flurry danced in the dank Moscow air that hung about the train station, the hiss of a boiler and a heavy rumbling in the distance signalled the impending arrival of a train. Upon the shrill of the train’s whistle, the people on the station platform bustled into activity. Passengers gathered their hand luggage as porters scurried amongst the crowd whilst pushing carts. Police officers moved about with measured surveillance, and the relatives and acquaintances of the arriving passengers stirred with restless anticipation.

Through the frosty vapour a swarthy man—squarely built, though not very tall, and resplendent in his grey military coat and black boots—emerged and stood under the golden glow of a station light. Below the black peak of his white hat and its blue band rested a good-humoured, handsome and exceedingly calm and resolute face. As he scanned the platform, his beautiful eyes shone with a tender light, and when he spied an elegant woman standing in modest grace near the edge of the platform—a woman whose exquisite scarlet coat collared in ruffling furs left no doubt she belonged to the best society—his face released a faint, happy and modestly triumphal smile.

Anna! he rejoiced. He was not too late. Only the length of a platform separated him from his true love. Oh, to breathe her perfume, to taste her lips, to caress her cheeks, to see her smile and, yes, to hear her laugh!

Anna took a step towards the platform edge.

Fool! he cursed himself. Wasting time fantasising about the future when here, in the now and present, his sweet Anna was about to perish.

‘Anna!’ he shouted across the crowded platform as he broke into a run. All heads but Anna’s turned towards him.

Anna took another step.

‘Anna! Anna Arkadyevna Karenina!’ He weaved amongst the crowd, pushing and elbowing and apologising in his haste to reach the other end of the platform.

Still the woman in red remained focused on the tracks before her. The distant whistling, hissing and chuff-chuffing grew louder. She took a last step, a step that would have seen her fall upon the tracks and perish had not a steely hand reached out and grasped her delicate arm.

‘Anna, wait! Don’t do it!’ the officer said. ‘It is I.’

Anna turned, and with her shining grey eyes darkened by her thick lashes, she said to the officer, ‘I?’

‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronski.’ He removed his hat, clicked his heels and bowed his head.

‘Wonsky?’ And she extended a delicate, pale but chilled hand.

Following another click of his heels and courteous bow, he took Anna’s hand and gently kissed it. He straightened and said, ‘No, not Wonsky, my dearest Anna, but Vronski. With an “i”. Not a “y” like that salacious scoundrel who abandoned you for the arms of another. I, Vronski, am here to save you and offer you a better life.’

‘Save me? Save me from what?’

‘Why, my dearest Anna, I can save you from everything. From all your insecurities, from your being shunned by the Moscovian elite, from the inherent stress of having to conform to Russian societal norms, from the moral laws of the Russian Orthodox Church. I even know a brilliant lawyer so you won’t lose your son and an excellent doctor who can help you overcome your substance abuse. Best of all, I can whisk you away to warmer, sunnier climes to boost your serotonin levels and rid yourself of your profound desolation.’

‘Oh, Wonski, not even Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy could offer such benevolence.’ Anna glanced up at Vronski, and in that brief moment, he had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over her face, flitting between her brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved her red lips.

‘It’s Vronski, my dearest Anna.’ Vronski cursed the incessant hissing and chugging of the approaching train. ‘Oh, Anna, I would do anything and everything just to hold you in my arms and hear you laugh. I, your Vronski, am here at your service.’ And he opened his arms to her.

She allowed him to wrap his arms around her frail body. She snuggled up and rested a delicate hand on his broad chest.

‘My Alexei, so handsome.’

‘Nothing compared to your beauty, my dearest Anna.’

‘My Alexei, so dashing.’

‘It pales when compared to your elegance, my dearest Anna.’

She placed a pale hand upon his arm and squeezed. ‘My Alexei, so buff.’

‘I work out between chapters, my dearest Anna.’

Anna released a glorious laugh, and his heart soared. That laugh. So whimsical, so joyous, so genuine. To rise from so magnificent a chest, to pass through so exquisite a neck, to effuse from so delicate a pair of lips. It was all he’d ever dreamed of, and more.

‘My Alexei, so humowous.’

Humowous? Vronski thought. Good God, who’d ever have thought Anna Karenina had a speech impediment. Old Leo had certainly kept that hidden from his readership. Then again, he, Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronski (with an i), was the first person to have actually heard Anna Karenina speak.

‘Anna, dearest, I never knew you had a speech impediment.’

‘My Wonski, only when I’m twanscwiped in English. My waaz get lost in twanslation.’

‘Your waaz?’

‘Yes. You know. My waaz. As in “Awound the wugged wock the wagged wascal wan”.’

‘Ah, I see. Your r’s.’

‘That’s wight. Now kiss me or else I shall fling myself beneath that twain.’

Vronski took Anna’s face in his hands and looked deeply and meaningfully into her grey eyes and saw bliss. Not even the Bear himself could place into words the beauty before him: the softness of her skin, the delicacy of her perfume, the depth of her eyes, the hue of her lips and the sensuality of her excited breath.

He parted his lips and leant forward, and she wet her lips with a sweep of her tongue and raised her head. The lovers’ faces eased towards each other.

‘Anna,’ Vronski whispered.

‘Felix.’

‘It’s Alexei, my dearest Anna.’

‘Felix.’

‘Alexei, dearest.’

‘Felix!’ a voice roared from the other side of the study door. ‘Who are you talking to?’

Good God! Felix thought. It’s Mrs Feinman! Awake! And about!

Vronski’s face paled, and he released his embrace of Anna.

‘Felix! Who have you got in there? What’s that hissing and chugging and whistling I can hear? What’s that sooty smell? And why is there steam coming from under the door? You open this door. Now!’

‘Coming, my dear.’

‘Who is that woman?’ Anna said.

‘It’s no one, my dearest Anna.’

‘Felix! I’m going to count to three.’

‘Who is Felix?’

‘Ignore her. Come, my dearest Anna, there is still time to kiss.’

‘One.’

‘What does she want?’

‘I’ve no idea. Come, my dearest Anna, there is still time to hear you laugh.’

‘Two.’

‘She seems very detewmined.’

‘Three!’

A booming thud came from the other side of the door, and the hinges squeaked and weakened.

‘Oh God! I’m caught! I’m caught! I need to hide you!’

‘Hide me from whom, Alexei?’

‘From my wife. Oh God! One more thrust, and she’ll be in.’

Another booming thud came from the other side of the door. The top hinge popped, and the door teetered forward.

‘Your wife? Oh, it’s just as I suspected. All faithful men waa alike; each unfaithful man is faithless in his own way. None of you can be twusted. You bawstawd!’

Anna slapped Vronski upon his cheek with a brutal blow.

‘No time to explain.’

And Vronski grabbed Anna by her arms and turned her and pushed her with all his might into the oncoming train. With a harrowing scream Anna perished under the screeching wheels, and she and the crowd and the platform and the steam disappeared from Felix’s study.

Felix stared at the teetering door in disbelief. Good God, he thought, he’d murdered Anna Karenina. The translators had it wrong. For a hundred and forty years, devotees of Tolstoy had gasped in disbelief as Anna stepped off the platform and into the path of an incoming train, not knowing her death was not suicide but murder at the hands of a guilt-ridden, cowardly hack of a short story writer.

Felix looked at the sheets of paper in his hands and then at the door. “Destroy the evidence!” his scrambled mind pleaded to him. He crumpled the sheets into a ball and shoved it into his mouth and chewed ferociously, all the while staring at the door with wide white eyes.

With a final boom, the study door crashed to the ground, and Mrs Feinman burst into the room.

‘Where is she?!’

Felix swallowed part of his manuscript and manipulated the rest with his tongue so it lodged in his cheeks. ‘Who, my dear?’

‘That woman I heard. The one with the sultry laugh and speech impediment!’

‘No woman here, my dear. Just me, my books and my objets d’art.’ Felix raised his hand, coughed and swallowed the pulped contents lodged in his left cheek.

‘What’s in your cheeks?! What are you eating?!’

‘Nothing, my dear.’

Again he raised his hand, coughed and swallowed.

‘Open your mouth!’

Felix opened his mouth wide and turned his face from side to side. ‘See, my dear, I’ve nothing to hide.’

‘Then why is your tongue all black?!’ Mrs Feinman’s fists clenched. ‘Explain yourself!’

Felix’s face flushed, and for the first time that evening he was lost for words.

Mrs Feinman’s cheeks puffed. ‘Felix!’

His eyes watered.

Mrs Feinman’s face blued. ‘Felix!’

His eyes shot about the room, avoiding his wife’s glower.

And Mrs Feinman’s eyes bulged. ‘FELIX FEINMAN! WHO WAS THAT WOMAN?!’

‘She … she … she is Anna,’ Felix said, and he raised his hands above his head and cowered to protect himself from an imminent bollocking from his wife.

‘Who?!’

‘Anna … Anna Arkadyevna Karenina.’

‘What?! The book character?!’

‘Yes … we … me … us … she … she …she is my lover.’

‘Anna Karenina?! Your lover?! With you?!’

Mrs Feinman unclenched her fists, deflated her cheeks, pinked her face, contracted her eyes, placed her hands upon her hips and released a raucous, jowl-wobbling, belly-jiggling, side-stitching laugh that filled the apartment. And Felix’s heart soared, for Mrs Feinman’s sense of humour, thought forever lost, had been found.