Chapter 11
The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe was one of Levin'smost painful days. It was the very busiest working time, when all thepeasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor,such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and would behighly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thoughthighly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if theresults of this intense labor were not so simple.
To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow the meadows,turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow the winter corn--all thisseems so simple and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it alleveryone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toilincessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual,living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying thesheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in thetwenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia.
Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and in theclosest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt in this busy timethat he was infected by this general quickening of energy in the people.
In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye, and tothe oats, which were being carried to the stacks, and returning home atthe time his wife and sister-in-law were getting up, he drank coffeewith them and walked to the farm, where a new thrashing machine was tobe set working to get ready the seed-corn.
He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with the leaves ofthe hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeled aspen beams of thenew thatch roof. He gazed through the open door in which the dry bitterdust of the thrashing whirled and played, at the grass of the thrashingfloor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been brought in fromthe barn, then at the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flewchirping in under the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in thecrevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark,dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.
"Why is it all being done?" he thought. "Why am I standing here, makingthem work? What are they all so busy for, trying to show their zealbefore me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (Idoctored her, when the beam fell on her in the fire)" he thought,looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain, movingpainfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven, roughfloor. "Then she recovered, but today or tomorrow or in ten years shewon't; they'll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or ofthat smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skillful, soft actionshakes the ears out of their husks. They'll bury her and this piebaldhorse, and very soon too," he thought, gazing at the heavily moving,panting horse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. "Andthey will bury her and Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beard full ofchaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders--they will bury him.He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and shouting to the women,and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving wheel. And what'smore, it's not them alone--me they'll bury too, and nothing will beleft. What for?"
He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch to reckon howmuch they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to know this so as to judge byit the task to set for the day.
"It'll soon be one, and they're only beginning the third sheaf," thoughtLevin. He went up to the man that was feeding the machine, and shoutingover the roar of the machine he told him to put it in more slowly. "Youput in too much at a time, Fyodor. Do you see--it gets choked, that'swhy it isn't getting on. Do it evenly."
Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shoutedsomething in response, but still went on doing it as Levin did not wanthim to.
Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began feedingthe corn in himself. Working on till the peasants' dinner hour, whichwas not long in coming, he went out of the barn with Fyodor and fellinto talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid onthe thrashing floor for seed.
Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in which Levinhad once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now it had beenlet to a former house porter.
Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon, awell-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village,would not take the land for the coming year.
"It's a high rent; it wouldn't pay Platon, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,"answered the peasant, picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt.
"But how does Kirillov make it pay?"
"Mituh!" (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone ofcontempt), "you may be sure he'll make it pay, Konstantin Dmitrievitch!He'll get his share, however he has to squeeze to get it! He's no mercyon a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch" (so he called the old peasantPlaton), "do you suppose he'd flay the skin off a man? Where there'sdebt, he'll let anyone off. And he'll not wring the last penny out. He'sa man too."
"But why will he let anyone off?"
"Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his ownwants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly,but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does notforget God."
"How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?" Levin almostshouted.
"Why, to be sure, in truth, in God's way. Folks are different. Take younow, you wouldn't wrong a man...."
"Yes, yes, good-bye!" said Levin, breathless with excitement, andturning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. Atthe peasant's words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, inGod's way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as thoughthey had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, theythronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.
Anna Karenina Page 231