Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Imagine! a cuckoo already!’ said Stepan Arkadyich, coming out from behind a bush.

  ‘Yes, I can hear,’ Levin replied, reluctantly breaking the silence of the forest with his voice, which he found disagreeable. ‘It won’t be long now.’

  Stepan Arkadych’s figure stepped back behind the bush, and Levin saw only the bright flame of a match, replaced at once by the red glow of a cigarette and blue smoke.

  ‘Chik! chik!’ clicked the hammers of Stepan Arkadyich’s gun.

  ‘And what’s that cry?’ asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin’s attention to a drawn–out yelping, as of a frolicking colt whinnying in a high voice.

  ‘Ah, don’t you know? It’s a male hare. Enough talk! Listen, they’re coming!’ Levin almost cried out, cocking his gun.

  They heard a high, distant whistling, and two seconds later, in the usual rhythm so well known to hunters, a second, a third, and after the third whistle came a chirring.

  Levin cast a glance right, left, and there before him in the dull blue sky, over the merging, tender sprouts of the aspen tops, a flying bird appeared. It flew straight towards him: the close, chirring sounds, like the measured ripping of taut fabric, were just above his ears; the bird’s long beak and neck could already be seen, and just as Levin aimed, red lightning flashed from behind the bush where Oblonsky stood; the bird dropped like an arrow and again soared up. Lightning flashed again and a clap was heard; fluttering its wings as if trying to stay in the air, the bird paused, hung there for a moment, then plopped heavily to the marshy ground.

  ‘Could we have missed?’ cried Stepan Arkadyich, who was unable to see on account of the smoke.

  ‘Here it is!’ said Levin, pointing at Laska, who, with one ear raised and the tip of her fluffy tail wagging on high, stepping slowly as if she wished to prolong the pleasure, and almost smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. ‘Well, I’m glad you got it,’ said Levin, at the same time already feeling envious that it was not he who had succeeded in shooting this woodcock.

  ‘A rotten miss with the right barrel,’ Stepan Arkadyich replied, loading the gun. ‘Shh … here they come.’

  Indeed, they heard a quick succession of piercing whistles. Two woodcock, playing and chasing each other and only whistling, not chirring, came flying right over the hunters’ heads. Four shots rang out and, like swallows, the woodcock made a quick swerve and vanished from sight.

  The fowling was splendid. Stepan Arkadyich shot another two birds, and Levin two, one of which could not be found. It was getting dark. Bright, silvery Venus, low in the west, was already shining with her tender gleam behind the birches, and high in the east the sombre Arcturus already played its red fires. Overhead Levin kept finding and losing the stars of the Great Bear. The woodcock had stopped flying; but Levin decided to wait longer, until Venus, which he could see under a birch branch, rose above it and the stars of the Great Bear showed clearly. Venus had already risen above the branch, the chariot of the Great Bear with its shaft was already quite visible in the dark blue sky, but he still waited.

  ‘Isn’t it time?’ said Stepan Arkadyich.

  It was quiet in the forest and not a single bird moved.

  ‘Let’s stay longer.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  They were now standing about fifteen paces apart.

  ‘Stiva!’ Levin said suddenly and unexpectedly. ‘Why don’t you tell me whether your sister–in–law got married or when she’s going to?’

  Levin felt himself so firm and calm that he thought no answer could stir him. But he never expected what Stepan Arkadyich replied.

  ‘She wasn’t and isn’t thinking of getting married, but she’s very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They even fear for her life.’

  ‘What’s that!’ cried Levin. ‘Very ill? What’s wrong with her? How did she …’

  While they were saying this, Laska, her ears pricked up, kept glancing at the sky and then reproachfully at them.

  ‘Found a fine time to talk!’ she thought. ‘And there’s one coming … There it is, all right. They’ll miss it…’ thought Laska.

  But just then both men heard the piercing whistle, which seemed to lash at their ears, and they suddenly seized their guns and lightning flashed twice and two claps rang out simultaneously. The high–flying woodcock instantly folded its wings and fell into the thicket, bending the slender shoots.

  ‘That’s excellent! We shared one!’ Levin cried out and ran into the thicket with Laska to look for the woodcock. ‘Ah, yes, what was that unpleasant thing?’ he recollected. ‘Yes, Kitty’s sick … Nothing to be done, very sorry,’ he thought.

  ‘Ah, she’s found it! Good girl,’ he said, taking the warm bird out of Laska’s mouth and putting it into the nearly full game bag. ‘I’ve found it, Stiva!’ he cried.

  XVI

  On the way home, Levin asked for all the details of Kitty’s illness and the Shcherbatskys’ plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit it, what he learned was pleasing to him. Pleasing because there was still hope, and all the more pleasing because she, who had made him suffer so much, was suffering herself. But when Stepan Arkadyich began to speak of the causes of Kitty’s illness and mentioned Vronsky’s name, Levin interrupted him:

  ‘I have no right to know family details and, to tell the truth, I’m also not interested.’

  Stepan Arkadyich smiled barely perceptibly, catching one of those instantaneous changes so familiar to him in Levin’s face, which became as gloomy as it had been cheerful a moment before.

  ‘You’ve already quite settled with Ryabinin about the wood?’ asked Levin.

  ‘Yes, I have. An excellent price, thirty–eight thousand. Eight down and the rest over six years. I was busy with it for a long time. No one offered more.’

  ‘That means you gave your wood away,’ Levin said gloomily.

  ‘Why is that?’ Stepan Arkadyich asked with a good–natured smile, knowing that Levin would now find everything bad.

  ‘Because that wood is worth at least two hundred roubles an acre,’ Levin replied.

  ‘Ah, these country squires!’ Stepan Arkadyich said jokingly. ‘This tone of scorn for us city people! … Yet when it comes to business, we always do better. Believe me, I worked it all out,’ he said, ‘and the wood has been sold very profitably – I’m even afraid he’ll go back on it. You see, it’s mostly second growth,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, wishing with the words ‘second growth’ to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts, ‘fit only for stove wood. It won’t stand you more than ten cord per acre, and he’s giving me seventy–five roubles.’

  Levin smiled scornfully. ‘I know that manner,’ he thought, ‘not just his but all city people’s, who come to the country twice in ten years, pick up two or three country words and use them rightly or wrongly, in the firm conviction that they know everything. "Second growth, stand you ten cord". He says the words but doesn’t understand a thing himself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t teach you about what you write there in your office,’ he said, ‘and if necessary, I’d ask you. But you are so certain you understand this whole business of selling the wood. It’s hard. Did you count the trees?’

  ‘How can I count the trees?’ Stepan Arkadyich said with a laugh, still wishing to get his friend out of his bad mood.’ "To count the sands, the planets’ rays, a lofty mind well may …" ‘[22]

  ‘Well, yes, and Ryabinin’s lofty mind can. And no merchant will buy without counting, unless it’s given away to him, as you’re doing. I know your wood. I go hunting there every year, and your wood is worth two hundred roubles an acre outright, and he’s giving you seventy–five in instalments. That means you’ve made him a gift of thirty thousand.’

  ‘Come, don’t get so carried away,’ Stepan Arkadyich said pitifully. ‘Why didn’t anyone make an offer?’

  ‘Because he’s in with the other merchants; he paid them off. I’ve dealt with them all, I know them. They’re not merchants, they’re specul
ators. He wouldn’t touch a deal where he’d make ten or fifteen per cent, he waits till he gets a rouble for twenty kopecks.’

  ‘Come, now! You’re out of sorts.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Levin said gloomily, as they drove up to the house.

  A little gig was already standing by the porch, tightly bound in iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed in broad tugs. In the little gig, tightly filled with blood and tightly girdled, sat Ryabinin’s clerk, who was also his driver. Ryabinin himself was in the house and met the friends in the front room. He was a tall, lean, middle–aged man, with a moustache, a jutting, clean–shaven chin and protruding, dull eyes. He was dressed in a long–skirted dark–blue frock coat with buttons below his rear and high boots wrinkled at the ankles and straight on the calves, over which he wore big galoshes. He wiped his face in a circular motion with a handkerchief and, straightening his frock coat, which sat well enough to begin with, greeted the entering men with a smile, holding his hand out to Stepan Arkadyich, as if trying to catch something.

  ‘So you’ve come.’ Stepan Arkadyich gave him his hand. ‘Splendid.’

  ‘I dared not disobey your highness’s commands, though the road’s much too bad. I positively walked all the way, but I got here in time. My respects, Konstantin Dmitrich.’ He turned to Levin, trying to catch his hand as well. But Levin, frowning, pretended not to notice and began taking out the woodcock. ‘Had a good time hunting? What bird might that be?’ Ryabinin added, looking with scorn at the woodcock. ‘Must have taste to it.’ And he shook his head disapprovingly, as if doubting very much that the hide was worth the tanning.

  ‘Want to go to my study?’ Levin, frowning gloomily, said to Stepan Arkadyich in French. ‘Go to my study, you can talk there.’

  ‘That we can, or wherever you like, sir,’ Ryabinin said with scornful dignity, as if wishing to make it felt that others might have difficulties in dealing with people, but for him there could never be any difficulties in anything.

  Going into the study, Ryabinin looked around by habit, as if searching for an icon,[23] but when he found one, he did not cross himself. He looked over the bookcases and shelves and, with the same doubt as about the woodcock, smiled scornfully and shook his head disapprovingly, refusing to admit that this hide could be worth the tanning.

  ‘Well, have you brought the money?’ Oblonsky asked. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘The money won’t hold us up. I’ve come to see you, to have a talk.’

  ‘A talk about what? Do sit down.’

  ‘That I will,’ said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning his elbow on the back of the chair in a most painful way for himself. ‘You must come down a little, Prince. It’s sinful otherwise. And the money’s all ready, to the last kopeck. Money won’t ever hold things up.’

  Levin, who meanwhile had put his gun away in a cupboard, was going out of the door, but hearing the merchant’s words, he stopped.

  ‘You got the wood for nothing as it is,’ he said. ‘He was too late coming here, otherwise I’d have set the price.’

  Ryabinin rose and with a smile silently looked up at Levin from below.

  ‘Konstantin Dmitrich is ver–ry stingy,’ he said with a smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyich, ‘there’s finally no dealing with him. I wanted to buy wheat, offered good money.’

  ‘Why should I give you what’s mine for nothing? I didn’t steal it or find it lying around.’

  ‘Good gracious, nowadays stealing’s positively impossible. Everything nowadays is finally in the open courts, everything’s noble today; there’s no more of that stealing. We talked honest. He asked too much for the wood, it doesn’t tally. I beg you to come down at least a little.’

  ‘But have you concluded the deal or not? If you have, there’s no point in bargaining. If you haven’t,’ said Levin, ‘I’ll buy the wood myself.’

  The smile suddenly vanished from Ryabinin’s face. A hawk–like, predatory and hard expression settled on it. With quick, bony fingers he undid his frock coat, revealing a shirt not tucked in, a brass–buttoned waistcoat and a watch chain, and quickly took out a fat old pocket–book.

  ‘If you please, the wood is mine,’ he said, quickly crossing himself and holding out his hand. ‘Take the money, the wood is mine. That’s how Ryabinin buys, without counting pennies,’ he went on, frowning and brandishing the pocket–book.

  ‘I wouldn’t be in a hurry if I were you,’ said Levin.

  ‘Gracious,’ Oblonsky said in surprise, ‘I’ve given him my word.’

  Levin left the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin, looking at the door, shook his head with a smile.

  ‘It’s all on account of youth, nothing but childishness finally. I’m buying it, trust my honour, just for the glory alone, meaning that it was Ryabinin and nobody else who bought a grove from Oblonsky. And God grant it tallies up. Trust in God. If you please, sir. Write me out a receipt…’

  An hour later the merchant, neatly closing his robe and fastening the hooks of his frock coat, the receipt in his pocket, got into his tightly bound little gig and drove home.

  ‘Ah, these gentlemen!’ he said to his clerk, ‘all the same subject.’

  ‘That’s so,’ the clerk replied, handing him the reins and fastening the leather apron. ‘So it’s congratulations, Mikhail Ignatyich?’

  ‘Well, well…’

  XVII

  Stepan Arkadyich came upstairs, his pocket bulging with the bank notes that the merchant had given him for three months ahead. The business with the wood was concluded, the money was in his pocket, the fowling had been splendid, and Stepan Arkadyich was in the merriest spirits, and therefore he especially wanted to dispel the bad mood that had come over Levin. He wanted to end the day over supper as pleasantly as it had begun.

  Indeed, Levin was out of sorts and, in spite of all his desire to be gentle and amiable with his dear guest, he could not master himself. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had begun to affect him.

  Kitty was unmarried and ill, ill from love for a man who had scorned her. This insult seemed to fall upon him. Vronsky had scorned her, and she had scorned him, Levin. Consequently, Vronsky had the right to despise Levin and was therefore his enemy. But Levin did not think all that. He vaguely felt that there was something insulting to him in it, and now was not angry at what had upset him but was finding fault with everything he came across. The stupid sale of the wood, the swindle Oblonsky had fallen for, which had taken place in his house, annoyed him.

  ‘Well, so it’s concluded?’ he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyich upstairs. ‘Want to have supper?’

  ‘Yes, I won’t refuse. What an appetite I have in the country, it’s a wonder! Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin a bite to eat?’

  ‘Ah, devil take him!’

  ‘How you treat him, though!’ said Oblonsky. ‘You didn’t shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?’

  ‘Because I don’t shake hands with my footman, and my footman is a hundred times better.’

  ‘What a reactionary you are, though! What about the merging of the classes?’ said Oblonsky.