by Leo Tolstoy
XXX
At the end of September lumber was delivered for the building of the cattle-yard on the land allotted to the association, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits distributed. The practical side of the farming was going excellently, or at least it seemed so to Levin. Now, to explain the whole thing theoretically and to finish his book, which, according to Levin's dreams, was not only to bring about a revolution in political economy but was to abolish that science altogether and initiate a new science - of the relation of the peasantry to the land - the only thing necessary was to go abroad and study on site everything that had been done there in that direction and to find convincing proofs that everything done there was not what was needed. Levin was waiting only for the delivery of the wheat, so as to get the money and go abroad. But rain set in, which prevented the harvesting of the remaining grain and potatoes and put a stop to all work, even the delivery of the wheat. Mud made the roads impassable; two mills were washed away by floods, and the weather was getting worse and worse.
On September 30th, the sun came out in the morning and, hoping for good weather, Levin resolutely began to prepare for departure. He ordered the wheat to be measured out, sent the steward to the merchant to get the money and went round the estate himself to give final orders before his departure.
Having done everything, wet from the streams that poured from his leather jacket either down his neck or into his boots, but in a most cheerful and excited mood, Levin returned home towards evening. The weather grew still worse towards evening, hail beat so painfully on his drenched horse that he walked sideways, twitching his ears and head; but Levin felt fine under his hood, and he glanced cheerfully around him, now at the turbid streams running down the ruts, now at the drops hanging on every bare twig, now at the white spots of unmelted hail on the planks of the bridge, now at the succulent, still-fleshy elm leaves that lay in a thick layer around the naked tree. Despite the gloom of the surrounding nature, he felt himself especially excited. Talks with the peasants in the distant village had shown that they were beginning to get used to their relations. The old innkeeper at whose place he stopped in order to dry off apparently approved of Levin's plan and himself offered to join the partnership to buy cattle.
'I need only persist in going towards my goal and I'll achieve what I want,' thought Levin, 'and so work and effort have their wherefore. This is not my personal affair, it is a question here of the common good. Agriculture as a whole, above all the position of the entire peasantry, must change completely. Instead of poverty - universal wealth, prosperity; instead of hostility - concord and the joining of interests. In short, a revolution, a bloodless but great revolution, first in the small circle of our own region, then the province, Russia, the whole world. Because a correct thought cannot fail to bear fruit. Yes, that is a goal worth working for. And the fact that it is I, Kostya Levin, the same one who came to the ball in a black tie and was rejected by Miss Shcherbatsky and is so pathetic and worthless in his own eyes - proves nothing. I'm sure that Franklin[32] felt as worthless and distrusted himself in the same way, looking back at his whole self. That means nothing. And he, too, surely had his Agafya Mikhailovna to whom he confided his projects.'
In such thoughts Levin rode up to the house when it was already dark.
The steward, who had gone to the merchant, came and brought part of the money for the wheat. The arrangement with the innkeeper was made, and the steward had found out on the way that wheat had been left standing in the fields everywhere, so that his own hundred and sixty stacks were nothing in comparison with what others had lost.
After dinner Levin sat down in his easy-chair with a book, as usual, and while reading continued to think about his forthcoming trip in connection with his book. Today the significance of what he was doing presented itself to him with particular clarity, and whole paragraphs took shape of themselves in his mind, expressing the essence of his thinking. 'This must be written down,' he thought. 'This should constitute the brief introduction that I considered unnecessary before.' He got up to go to his desk, and Laska, who lay at his feet, also got up, stretching herself, and looked back at him as if asking where to go. But there was no time to write it down, because the foremen of the work details came, and Levin went out to them in the front hall.
Having done the detailing - that is, given orders for the next day's work - and received all the muzhiks who had business with him, Levin went to his study and sat down to work. Laska lay under the desk; Agafya Mikhailovna settled in her place with a stocking.
Levin had been writing for some time when suddenly, with extraordinary vividness, he remembered Kitty, her refusal and their last encounter. He got up and began to pace the room.
'No point being bored,' Agafya Mikhailovna said to him. 'Well, why do you sit at home? Go to the hot springs, since you're all ready.'
'I'll go the day after tomorrow, Agafya Mikhailovna. I have business to finish.'
'Well, what's this business of yours? As if you haven't given the muzhiks enough already! They say, "Your master'll win favour with the tsar for that." It's even strange: why should you concern yourself with muzhiks?'
'I'm not concerned with them, I'm doing it for myself.'
Agafya Mikhailovna knew all the details of Levin's plans for the estate. Levin often told her his thoughts in fine detail and not infrequently argued with her and disagreed with her explanations. But this time she completely misunderstood what he said to her.
'It's a known fact, a man had best think of his own soul,' she said with a sigh. 'There's Parfen Denisych, illiterate as they come, but God grant everybody such a death,' she said of a recently deceased house servant. 'Took communion, got anointed.'[33]
'I'm not talking about that,' he said. 'I mean that I'm doing it for my own profit. The better the muzhiks work, the more profitable it is for me.'
'Whatever you do, if he's a lazybones, everything will come out slapdash. If he's got a conscience, he'll work, if not, there's no help for it.'
'Yes, but you say yourself that Ivan takes better care of the cattle now.'
'I say one thing,' Agafya Mikhailovna answered, evidently not at random but with a strictly consistent train of thought, 'you've got to get married, that's what!'
Agafya Mikhailovna's mention of the very thing he had just been thinking about upset and offended him. Levin frowned and, without answering her, sat down to his work, repeating to himself everything he thought about the significance of that work. Only occasionally he listened in the silence to the sound of Agafya Mikhailovna's needles and, recalling what he did not want to recall, winced again.
At nine o'clock they heard a bell and the dull heaving of a carriage through the mud.
'Well, here's guests coming to see you, so you won't be bored,' said Agafya Mikhailovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin went ahead of her. His work was not going well now, and he was glad of a guest, whoever it might be.
XXXI
Having run half-way down the stairs, Levin heard the familiar sound of a little cough in the front hall; but he did not hear it clearly because of the noise of his footsteps and hoped that he was mistaken. Then he saw the whole long, bony, familiar figure, and it seemed no longer possible to deceive himself, yet he still hoped that he was mistaken and that this tall man taking off his fur coat and coughing was not his brother Nikolai.
Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torment. Now, under the influence of the thought that had come to him and of Agafya Mikhailovna's reminder, he was in a vague, confused state, and the imminent meeting with his brother seemed especially difficult. Instead of a cheerful, healthy stranger for a guest, who he hoped would divert him in his state of uncertainty, he had to confront his brother, who understood him thoroughly, who would call up all his innermost thoughts, would make him speak his whole mind. And that he did not want.
Angry with himself for this nasty feeling, Levin ran down to the front hall. As soon as he saw his brother up close
, this feeling of personal disappointment vanished at once and was replaced by pity. Frightening as his brother Nikolai's thinness and sickliness had been before, he was now still thinner, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.
He stood in the front hall, twitching his long, thin neck and tearing his scarf from it, and smiled with a strange pitifulness. Seeing this smile, humble and obedient, Levin felt his throat contract spasmodically.
'You see, I've come to visit you,' Nikolai said in a dull voice, not taking his eyes off his brother's face for a second. 'I've long been wanting to, but I wasn't feeling well. Now I'm much better,' he said, wiping his beard with big, thin palms.
'Yes, yes!' Levin replied. And he felt still more frightened when, as he kissed him, his lips felt the dryness of his brother's body and he saw his big, strangely glinting eyes up close.
A few weeks earlier Levin had written to his brother that, following the sale of a small, as yet undivided portion of their inheritance, he was now to receive his share, about two thousand roubles.
Nikolai said that he had come to receive the money and, above all, to visit his own nest, to touch the soil, in order to gather strength, as mighty heroes do, for future action. Despite his increasing stoop, despite his striking thinness in view of his height, his movements were, as usual, quick and impetuous. Levin led him to his study.
His brother changed with particular care, something he had never done before, combed his sparse, straight hair and, smiling, went upstairs.
He was in a most gentle and cheerful mood, as Levin had often remembered him in childhood. He even mentioned Sergei Ivanovich without anger. Seeing Agafya Mikhailovna, he joked with her and asked about the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisych had an unpleasant affect on him. Fear showed in his face, but he recovered at once.
'Well, he was old,' he said and changed the subject. 'So, I'll live with you for a month or two, and then - to Moscow. You know, Miagkov has promised me a post, and I'll be going into the service. Now I'll arrange my life quite differently,' he went on. 'You know, I sent that woman away.'
'Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?'
'Ah, she's a nasty woman! She caused me a heap of troubles.' But he did not say what those troubles were. He could not say that he had chased Marya Nikolaevna out because the tea was weak, and above all because she looked after him as if he were an invalid. 'And then in general I want to change my life completely now. I've certainly committed some follies, like everybody else, but money is the least thing, I'm not sorry about it. As long as there's health - and my health, thank God, has improved.'
Levin listened and thought and could not think of anything to say. Nikolai probably felt the same. He began asking his brother about his affairs, and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because he could talk without pretending. He told his brother his plans and activities.
His brother listened but obviously was not interested.
These two men were so dear and close to each other that the slightest movement, the tone of the voice, told them both more than it was possible to say in words.
Now they both had one thought - Nikolai's illness and closeness to death - which stifled all the rest. But neither of them dared to speak of it, and therefore everything else they said, without expressing the one thing that preoccupied them, was a lie. Never had Levin been so glad when an evening ended and it was time to go to bed. Never with any stranger, on any official visit, had he been so unnatural and false as he had been that day. And his awareness of and remorse for this unnaturalness made him more unnatural still. He wanted to weep over his beloved dying brother, and he had to listen and keep up a conversation about how he was going to live.
As the house was damp and only one room was heated, Levin had his brother sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.
His brother lay down and may or may not have slept, but, being a sick man, tossed, coughed and grumbled something when he was unable to clear his throat. Sometimes, when his breathing was difficult, he said, 'Ah, my God!' Sometimes, when phlegm choked him, he said vexedly, 'Ah! the devil!' Levin lay awake for a long time, listening to him. His thoughts were most varied, but the end of all his thoughts was one: death.
Death, the inevitable end of everything, presented itself to him for the first time with irresistible force. And this death, which here, in his beloved brother, moaning in his sleep and calling by habit, without distinction, now on God, now on the devil, was not at all as far off as it had seemed to him before. It was in him, too - he felt it. If not now, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then in thirty years - did it make any difference? And what this inevitable death was, he not only did not know, he not only had never thought of it, but he could not and dared not think of it.
'I work, I want to do something, and I've forgotten that everything will end, that there is - death.'
He was sitting on his bed in the dark, crouching, hugging his knees and thinking, holding his breath from the strain of it. But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance - that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so.
'Yet I am still alive. And what am I to do now, what am I to do?' he said in despair. He lit the candle, got up carefully, went over to the mirror and began to examine his face and hair. Yes, there were grey hairs on his temples. He opened his mouth. The back teeth were beginning to go bad. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, good and strong. But Nikolenka, who was lying there breathing with the remains of his lungs, had also had a healthy body once. And he suddenly remembered how as children they had gone to bed at the same time and had only waited for Fyodor Bogdanych to leave before they started throwing pillows at each other and laughing, laughing irrepressibly, so that even the fear of Fyodor Bogdanych could not stop this overflowing and effervescent consciousness of life's happiness. 'And now this crooked and empty chest... and I, not knowing what will become of me or why ...'
'Kha! Kha! Ah, the devil! What's this pottering about, why aren't you asleep?' his brother's voice called to him.
'I don't know, just insomnia.'
'And I slept well, I don't sweat now. Look, feel the shirt. No sweat?'
Levin felt it, went behind the partition, put out the candle, but did not sleep for a long time. He had just partly clarified the question of how to live, when he was presented with a new, insoluble problem - death.
'So he's dying, so he'll die towards spring, so how can I help him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I even forgot there was such a thing.'
XXXII
Levin had long ago observed that when things are made awkward by people's excessive compliance and submission, they are soon made unbearable by their excessive demandingness and fault-finding. He felt that this was going to happen with his brother. And indeed, brother Nikolai's meekness did not last long. The very next morning he became irritable and diligently applied himself to finding fault with his brother, touching the most sensitive spots.
Levin felt himself guilty and could do nothing about it. He felt that if they both had not pretended but had spoken, as the phrase goes, from the heart - that is, only what they both actually thought and felt - they would have looked into each other's eyes, and Konstantin would have said only, 'You're going to die, to die, to die!' and Nikolai would have answered only, 'I know I'm going to die, but I'm afraid, afraid, afraid!' And they would have said nothing else, if they had spoken from the heart. But it was impossible to live that way, and therefore Konstantin tried to do what he had tried to do all his life without succeeding, and what, in his observation, many could do so well, and without which it was impossible to live: he tried to say what he did not think, and kept feeling that it came out false, that his brother noticed it and was annoyed by it.
On the third day, Nikolai provoked his brother to tell h
im his plans again and began not only to condemn them, but deliberately to confuse them with communism.
'You've just taken other people's thought and distorted it, and you want to apply it where it's inapplicable.'
'But I'm telling you, the two have nothing in common. They deny the justice of property, capital, inheritance, while I, without denying this main stimulus' (Levin was disgusted with himself for using such words, but, ever since he had become involved in his work, he had inadvertently begun to use non-Russian words more and more often), 'only want to regulate labour.'
'That's the point, that you've taken other people's thought, lopped off everything that gives it force, and want to insist that it's something new,' said Nikolai, angrily twitching in his necktie.
'But my thought has nothing in common ...'
'There,' said Nikolai Levin, with a malicious gleam in his eyes and an ironic smile, 'there at least there's a geometrical charm, so to speak - of clarity, of certainty. Maybe it's a Utopia. But let's suppose it's possible to make a tabula rasa of the whole past: there's no property, no family, and so labour gets set up. While you have nothing ...'