Leo Tolstoy

by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)

  ‘My God! Forgive me!’ she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her breast.

  She felt herself so criminal and guilty that the only thing left for her was to humble herself and beg forgiveness; but as she had no one else in her life now except him, it was also to him that she addressed her plea for forgiveness. Looking at him, she physically felt her humiliation and could say nothing more. And he felt what a murderer must feel when he looks at the body he has deprived of life. This body deprived of life was their love, the first period of their love. There was something horrible and loathsome in his recollections of what had been paid for with this terrible price of shame. Shame at her spiritual nakedness weighed on her and communicated itself to him. But, despite all the murderer’s horror before the murdered body, he had to cut this body into pieces and hide it, he had to make use of what the murderer had gained by his murder.

  And as the murderer falls upon this body with animosity, as if with passion, drags it off and cuts it up, so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand and did not move. Yes, these kisses were what had been bought by this shame. Yes, and this one hand, which will always be mine, is the hand of my accomplice. She raised this hand and kissed it. He knelt down and tried to look at her face; but she hid it and said nothing. Finally, as if forcing herself, she sat up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but the more pitiful for that.

  ‘Everything is finished,’ she said. ‘I have nothing but you. Remember that.’

  ‘How can I not remember what is my very life? For one minute of this happiness …’

  ‘What happiness?’ she said with loathing and horror, and her horror involuntarily communicated itself to him. ‘For God’s sake, not a word, not a word more.’

  She quickly stood up and moved away from him.

  ‘Not a word more,’ she repeated, and with an expression of cold despair on her face, which he found strange, she left him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into words her feeling of shame, joy, and horror before this entry into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to trivialize this feeling with imprecise words. But later, too, the next day and the day after that, she not only found no words in which she could express all the complexity of these feelings, but was unable even to find thoughts in which she could reflect with herself on all that was in her soul.

  She kept telling herself: ‘No, I can’t think about it now; later, when I’m more calm.’ But this calm for reflection never came; each time the thought occurred to her of what she had done, of what would become of her and what she ought to do, horror came over her, and she drove these thoughts away.

  ‘Later, later,’ she kept saying, ‘when I’m more calm.’

  But in sleep, when she had no power over her thoughts, her situation presented itself to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream visited her almost every night. She dreamed that they were both her husbands, that they both lavished their caresses on her. Alexei Alexandrovich wept, kissing her hands and saying: ‘It’s so good now!’ And Alexei Vronsky was right there, and he, too, was her husband. And, marvelling that it had once seemed impossible to her, she laughingly explained to them that this was much simpler and that now they were both content and happy. But this dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she would wake up in horror.

  XII

  In the first period after his return from Moscow, when he still gave a start and blushed each time he remembered the disgrace of the refusal, Levin said to himself: ‘I blushed and shuddered in the same way, thinking all was lost, when I got the lowest grade in physics and had to repeat my second year; I thought myself lost in the same way after I bungled my sister’s affair, which had been entrusted to me. And what happened? Now that years have passed, I remember it and wonder how it could have upset me. It will be the same with this grief. Time will pass, and I’ll grow indifferent to it.’

  But three months passed and he did not grow indifferent to it, and it was as painful for him to remember it as in the first days. He could not be at peace, because he, who had dreamed of family life for so long, who felt himself so ripe for it, was still not married and was further than ever from marriage. He himself felt painfully, as all those around him also felt, that at his age it was not good for a man to be alone. He remembered how, before his departure for Moscow, he had said once to his cow–man Nikolai, a naive muzhik with whom he liked to talk: ‘Well, Nikolai, I mean to get married!’ – and Nikolai had quickly replied, as if to something of which there could be no doubt: ‘It’s high time you did, Konstantin Dmitrich.’ But marriage was now further from him than ever. The place was taken, and when in imagination he put some of the girls he knew into that place, he felt it was completely impossible. Besides, the memory of the refusal and of the role he had played then tormented him with shame. However often he said to himself that he was in no way to blame, this memory, on a par with other shameful memories of the same sort, made him start and blush. In his past, as in any man’s past, there were actions he recognized as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; yet the memory of the bad actions tormented him far less than these insignificant but shameful memories. These wounds never healed. And alongside these memories there now stood the refusal and the pitiful position in which he must have appeared to others that evening. But time and Work did their part. Painful memories were screened from him more and more by the inconspicuous but significant events of country life. With every week he remembered Kitty less often. He impatiently awaited the news that she was already married or would be married any day, hoping that this news, like the pulling of a tooth, would cure him completely.

  Meanwhile spring had come, beautiful, harmonious, without spring’s anticipations and deceptions, one of those rare springs that bring joy to plants, animals and people alike. This beautiful spring aroused Levin still more and strengthened him in the intention to renounce all former things, in order to arrange his solitary life firmly and independently. Though many of those plans with which he had returned to the country had not been carried out, he had observed the main thing – purity of life. He did not experience the shame that usually tormented him after a fall and was able to look people boldly in the eye. Already in February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna saying that his brother Nikolai’s health had worsened but that he did not want to be treated, and as a result of this letter Levin had gone to see his brother in Moscow and had succeeded in persuading him to consult a doctor and go to a watering–place abroad. He had succeeded so well in persuading his brother and in lending him money for the trip without vexing him, that in this respect he was pleased with himself. Apart from managing the estate, which required special attention in the spring, apart from reading, Levin had also begun that winter to write a work on farming, the basis of which was that the character of the worker had to be taken as an absolute given in farming, like climate and soil, and that, consequently, all propositions in the science of farming ought to be deduced not from the givens of soil and climate alone, but also from the known, immutable character of the worker. So that, in spite of his solitude, or else owing to it, his life was extremely full, and only once in a while did he feel an unsatisfied desire to tell the thoughts that wandered through his head to someone besides Agafya Mikhailovna, though with her, too, he often happened to discuss physics, the theory of farming, and especially philosophy. Philosophy was Agafya Mikhailovna’s favourite subject.

  Spring was a long time unfolding. During the last weeks of Lent the weather was clear and frosty. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night it went down to seven below;[15] there was such a crust that carts could go over it where there was no road. There was still snow at Easter. Then suddenly, on Easter Monday, a warm wind began to blow, dark clouds gathered, and for three days and three nights warm, heavy rain poured down. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick grey mist gathered, as if concealing the mysteries of the changes taking place in nature. Under the mist waters flowed, ice blocks c
racked and moved off, the muddy, foaming streams ran quicker, and on the eve of Krasnaya Gorka[16] the mist scattered, the dark clouds broke up into fleecy white ones, the sky cleared, and real spring unfolded. In the morning the bright sun rose and quickly ate up the thin ice covering the water, and the warm air was all atremble, filled with the vapours of the reviving earth. The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder–rose, the currants and the sticky, spiritous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed. Invisible larks poured trills over the velvety green fields and the ice–covered stubble, the peewit wept over the hollows and marshes still filled with brown water; high up the cranes and geese flew with their spring honking. Cattle, patchy, moulted in all but a few places, lowed in the meadows, bow–legged lambs played around their bleating, shedding mothers, fleet–footed children ran over the drying paths covered with the prints of bare feet, the merry voices of women with their linen chattered by the pond, and from the yards came the knock of the peasants’ axes, repairing ploughs and harrows.[17] The real spring had come.

  XIII

  Levin put on big boots and, for the first time, a cloth jacket instead of his fur coat, and went about the farm, striding across streams that dazzled the eyes with their shining in the sun, stepping now on ice, now in sticky mud.

  Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, going out to the yard, Levin, like a tree in spring, not yet knowing where and how its young shoots and branches, still confined in swollen buds, will grow, did not himself know very well which parts of his beloved estate he would occupy himself with now, but felt that he was filled with the very best plans and projects. First of all he went to see the cattle. The cows had been let out into the pen and, their new coats shining, warmed by the sun, they lowed, asking to go to pasture. Having admired the cows, familiar to him down to the smallest details, Levin ordered them driven to pasture and the calves let out into the pen. The cowherd ran merrily to get ready for the pasture. The dairymaids, hitching up their skirts, their bare, white, as yet untanned legs splashing in the mud, ran with switches after the calves and drove them, lowing and crazed with spring joy, into the yard.

  After admiring that year’s young, which were exceptionally good –the early calves were as big as a peasant’s cow, Pava’s three–month–old daughter was the size of a yearling – Levin gave orders for a trough to be brought out and hay to be put in the racks. But it turned out that the racks, made in the autumn and left for winter in the unused pen, were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who by his order ought to have been working on the thresher. But it turned out that the carpenter was repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent.[18] That was extremely vexing to Levin. What vexed him was the repetition of this eternal slovenliness of farm work, which he had fought against with all his strength for so many years. The racks, as he learned, not needed in winter, had been taken to the work horses’ stable and there had got broken, since they had been lightly made, for calves. Besides that, it also turned out that the harrows and all the agricultural tools, which he had ordered to be looked over and repaired back in the winter, and for which purpose three carpenters had been hired, were still not repaired, and the harrows were being repaired when it was already time for the harrowing. Levin sent for the steward, but at once went himself to look for him. The steward, radiant as everything else that day, was coming from the threshing floor in his fleece–trimmed coat, snapping a straw in his hands.

  ‘Why is the carpenter not at the thresher?’

  ‘I meant to tell you yesterday: the harrows need repair. It’s time for ploughing.’

  ‘And what about last winter?’

  ‘And what do you want with the carpenter, sir?’

  ‘Where are the racks for the calves’ yard?’

  ‘I ordered them to be put in place. What can you do with these folk?’ said the steward, waving his arm.

  ‘Not with these people, but with this steward!’ said Levin, flaring up. ‘What on earth do I keep you for!’ he shouted. But remembering that this was not going to help, he stopped in mid–speech and merely sighed. ‘Well, can we start sowing?’ he asked after a pause.

  ‘Beyond Turkino we can, tomorrow or the day after.’

  ‘And the clover?’

  ‘I sent Vassily and Mishka, they’re sowing it. Only I don’t know if they’ll get through: it’s soggy.’

  ‘How many acres?’

  ‘Sixteen.’ ‘Why not the whole of it?’ shouted Levin.

  That clover was being sown on only sixteen and not fifty acres was still more vexing. Planting clover, both in theory and in his own experience, was only successful if it was done as early as possible, almost over the snow. And Levin could never get that done.

  ‘No people. What can you do with these folk? Three didn’t show up. And now Semyon …’

  ‘Well, you could have let the straw wait.’

  ‘That’s what I did.’

  ‘Where are the people?’

  ‘Five are making compote’ (he meant compost). ‘Four are shovelling oats – lest they go bad, Konstantin Dmitrich.’

  Levin knew very well that ‘lest they go bad’ meant that the English seed oats were already spoiled – again what he had ordered had not been done.

  ‘But I told you back in Lent – the vent pipes!’ he shouted.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get everything done on time.’

  Levin waved his hand angrily, went to the barns to have a look at the oats, and returned to the stables. The oats were not spoiled yet. But the workers were transferring them with shovels, whereas they should simply have been dumped directly on the barn floor, and, after giving orders about that and taking two workers from there to plant clover, Levin’s vexation with the steward subsided. Besides, the day was so fine that it was impossible to be angry.

  ‘Ignat!’ he cried to the coachman, who had rolled up his sleeves and was washing the carriage by the well. ‘Saddle me up …’

  ‘Which do you want, sir?’

  ‘Well, take Kolpik.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  While the horse was being saddled, Levin again called over the steward, who was hanging around in view, to make it up with him, and began telling him about the impending spring work and his plans for the estate.

  The carting of manure had to begin earlier, so that everything would be finished before the early mowing. The far field had to be ploughed continually, so as to keep it fallow. The hay was to be got in not on half shares with the peasants but by hired workers.

  The steward listened attentively and obviously made an effort to approve of the master’s suggestions; but all the same he had that hopeless and glum look, so familiar to Levin and always so irritating to him. This look said: ‘That’s all very well, but it’s as God grants.’

  Nothing so upset Levin as this tone. But it was a tone common to all stewards, as many of them as he had employed. They all had the same attitude towards his proposals, and therefore he now no longer got angry, but became upset and felt himself still more roused to fight this somehow elemental force for which he could find no other name than ‘as God grants’, and which was constantly opposed to him.

  ‘If we manage, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ said the steward.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘We need to hire more workers, another fifteen men or so. But they don’t come. There were some today, but they asked seventy roubles each for the summer.’

  Levin kept silent. Again this force opposed him. He knew that, hard as they tried, they had never been able to hire more than forty workers, thirty–seven, thirty–eight, at the real price; they might get forty, but not more. Yet he could not help fighting even so.

  ‘Send to Sury, to Chefirovka, if they don’t come. We must look.’

  ‘So I will,’ Vassily Fyodorovich said glumly. ‘And the horses have also gone weak.’

  ‘We’ll buy more. Oh, I know
,’ he added, laughing, ‘you’d have it all smaller and poorer, but this year I won’t let you do it your way. I’ll do everything myself.’