(More about them later, but what about Vronsky, isn’t there anything more to be said about him? He enlisted in the Serbian conflict, commanding an unattached platoon that he organized and financed himself—he was one of many Russians who sympathized with the Slavic cause and wanted to help their “Slavic [Orthodox] brothers” by freeing them from the “tyrannical oppression of the Turks.” When Koznyshev [a faddish writer, the kind that come and go like most do, and a recent convert to the Serbian cause] went to the train station to find Vronsky before he set off on his trip to Serbia, he noticed that Vronsky’s face had changed from a blank expression to one of pain [and not just because of the toothache that was tormenting him]. Vronsky hadn’t spoken a word in the six weeks since Anna’s death, had shut himself away and refused to see anyone, pondering his life—something he had never done—and flirting with death. “It’s a sign you’re starting a new life,” Koznyshev said to Vronsky, more just to fill the silence than to cheer him up. It wasn’t sincere; it was just a verbal pat on his shoulder, a gesture. Vronsky understood clearly that what he really wanted was to die, with dignity. That’s why he was going to war. He was going to fight because he wanted to restore his honor out of vanity, and because he didn’t want to live with the guilt. He wanted to prove he was a brave man, not the protagonist of some famous affair. He was killed by a bullet from a Krnk which was accidentally fired by a man from his own platoon just as Vronsky was bending over to pick up his hat, which had fallen off. A stupid, good-for-nothing bullet, which required the cooperation of its victim…. [The last thing Vronsky saw, clear as day, before he lost consciousness was the look of hate Anna had cast him years earlier, through her gauzy purple veil, in Countess Vrede’s garden. That look of Anna’s had been born for Vronsky; she never looked that way at anyone else, not before or after….] But no one talks about that stray bullet. The version that became history was penned by a Russian journalist in the trenches, in lively language that disguised the inaccuracy of his facts: Vronsky, dressed in white astride his white horse, shaking his long hair and shouting, “Long live Serbia and Montenegro! Death to the Turks! Down with Mehemet and Osman Nuri!” [the names of the Ottoman generals who were stationed on the frontier] as he charged toward the enemy army [composed of Arabs, Dervishes, Egyptians, and the well-trained Ottoman troops] and broke their ranks…. Approaching General Mehemet, he aimed his Krnk rifle and prepared to fire when one of the soldiers protecting the Turkish leader hit him with a shot between the eyes. And so, according to the story, Vronsky died, his thick hair [in fact he was going bald] uncovered, dressed in white [despite the fact that he was wearing an officer’s uniform, which was a different color], a courageous man of action [although his toothache had weakened him significantly, and he was still suffering from Anna’s death], aiming his Krnk [though in truth he was killed by his own men while reaching for his hat]. If the journalist’s version had been true, Vronsky’s expression would have changed the second the bullet hit him between the eyes, from pained to twisted, like a howl of laughter or a fit of delirium. But no such thing ever happened…. Every era has its own Vronskys, revising their own histories to be courageous and heroic, mediocre actors in their own destinies, obscuring the truth with smoke and mirrors, gilding their own stories, and making little difference.)