Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, blushing to the roots of his hair, ‘I’m even astonished that you, with all your kindness, don’t feel it. Aren’t you simply sorry for me, since you know …’

  ‘What do I know?’

  ‘You know that I proposed and was refused,’ said Levin, and all the tenderness he had felt for Kitty a moment before was replaced in his soul by a feeling of anger at the insult.

  ‘Why do you think I know?’

  ‘Because everybody knows.’

  ‘There you’re mistaken; I didn’t know, though I guessed.’

  ‘Ah! Well, now you know.’

  ‘I knew only that there was something, but Kitty never told me what it was. I could see that there was something that tormented her terribly, and she asked me never to speak of it. And if she didn’t tell me, she didn’t tell anybody. But what happened between you? Tell me.’

  ‘I’ve told you what happened.’

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘When I last visited you.’

  ‘And, you know, I shall tell you,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, ‘that I’m terribly, terribly sorry for her. You only suffer from pride …’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Levin, ‘but…’

  She interrupted him:

  ‘But for her, poor thing, I’m terribly, terribly sorry. Now I understand everything.’

  ‘Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you will excuse me,’ he said, getting up. ‘Goodbye! Goodbye, Darya Alexandrovna.’

  ‘No, wait,’ she said, holding him by the sleeve. ‘Wait, sit down.’

  ‘Please, please, let’s not talk about it,’ he said, sitting down and at the same time feeling a hope he had thought buried rising and stirring in his heart.

  ‘If I didn’t love you,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, and tears welled up in her eyes, ‘if I didn’t know you as I do …’ The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rising and taking possession of Levin’s heart.

  ‘Yes, I understand everything now,’ Darya Alexandrovna went on. ‘You can’t understand it. For you men, who are free and can choose, it’s always clear whom you love. But a young girl in a state of expectation, with that feminine, maidenly modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust – a girl may and does sometimes feel that she doesn’t know who she loves or what to say.’

  ‘Yes, if her heart doesn’t speak …’

  ‘No, her heart speaks, but consider: you men have your eye on a girl, you visit the house, you make friends, you watch, you wait to see if you’re going to find what you love, and then, once you’re convinced of your love, you propose …’

  ‘Well, it’s not quite like that.’

  ‘Never mind, you propose when your love has ripened or when the scale tips towards one of your two choices. But a girl isn’t asked. She’s expected to choose for herself, but she can’t choose and only answers yes or no.’

  ‘Yes,’ thought Levin, ‘a choice between me and Vronsky,’ and the dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully.

  ‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, ‘one chooses a dress that way, or I don’t know what purchase, but not love. The choice has been made and so much the better … And there can be no repetition.’

  ‘Ah, pride, pride!’ said Darya Alexandrovna, as if despising him for the meanness of this feeling compared with that other feeling which only women know. ‘At the time you proposed to Kitty, she was precisely in a position where she could not give an answer. She hesitated. Hesitated between you and Vronsky. Him she saw every day, you she had not seen for a long time. Suppose she had been older – for me, for example, there could have been no hesitation in her place. I always found him disgusting, and so he was in the end.’

  Levin remembered Kitty’s answer. She had said: ‘No, it cannot be .. .’

  ‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said drily, ‘I appreciate your confidence in me, but I think you’re mistaken. I may be right or wrong, but this pride that you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna impossible for me – you understand, completely impossible.’

  ‘I’ll say only one more thing. You understand that I’m speaking of a sister whom I love like my own children. I’m not saying that she loves you, but I only want to say that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.’

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Levin, jumping up. ‘If you realized what pain you’re causing me! It’s the same as if your child were dead, and you were told he would have been like this and that, and he might have lived, and you would have rejoiced over him. And he’s dead, dead, dead …’

  ‘How funny you are,’ Darya Alexandrovna said with a sad smile, despite Levin’s agitation. ‘Yes, I understand it all now,’ she went on pensively. ‘So, you won’t come to see us when Kitty’s here?’

  ‘No, I won’t. Naturally, I’m not going to avoid Katerina Alexandrovna but, wherever possible, I’ll try to spare her the unpleasantness of my presence.’

  ‘You’re very, very funny,’ Darya Alexandrovna repeated, studying his face tenderly. ‘Well, all right, it will be as if we never spoke of it. What is it, Tanya?’ she said in French to the girl who had just come in.

  ‘Where’s my shovel, mama?’

  ‘I am speaking French, and you should do the same.’

  The girl wanted to do the same, but forgot what a shovel is called in French; her mother told her and then proceeded to tell her in French where to find the shovel. And Levin found this disagreeable.

  Now everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s house and in her children seemed less nice to him than before.

  ‘And why does she speak French with the children?’ he thought. ‘How unnatural and false it is! And the children can feel it. Teaching French and unteaching sincerity,’ he thought to himself, not knowing that Darya Alexandrovna had already thought it all over twenty times and, to the detriment of sincerity, had found it necessary to teach her children in this way.

  ‘But where are you going? Stay a little.’

  Levin stayed till tea, but all his merriment had vanished and he felt awkward.

  After tea he went to the front hall to order the horses to be readied and, on returning, found Darya Alexandrovna looking agitated and upset, with tears in her eyes. While Levin was out of the room, an event had occurred which had suddenly destroyed for Darya Alexandrovna all that day’s happiness and pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had fought over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing shouts in the nursery, had run there and found a terrible sight. Tanya was holding Grisha by the hair, while he, his face disfigured by anger, was hitting her with his fists wherever he could reach. Something snapped in Darya Alexan–drovna’s heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness came over her life: she understood that her children, of whom she was so proud, were not only most ordinary, but even bad, poorly brought up children, wicked children, with coarse, beastly inclinations.

  She could neither speak nor think of anything else and could not help telling Levin of her unhappiness.

  Levin saw that she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that this did not prove anything bad, that all children fought; but, as he said it, Levin thought in his heart: ‘No, I will not be affected and speak French with my children, but my children will not be like that: one need only not harm, not disfigure children, and they will be lovely. Yes, my children will not be like that.’

  He said goodbye and left, and she did not try to keep him.

  XI

  In the middle of July the headman of his sister’s village, fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin with a report on the course of affairs and the mowing. The main income from his sister’s estate came from the water meadows. In former years the hay had been taken by the muzhiks at eight roubles per acre. When Levin took over the management, he examined the meadows, discovered that they were worth more, and set a price of ten roubles per acre. The muzhiks would not pay that price and, as Levin suspected, drove away other buyers. Then Levin went there in person and arranged fo
r the meadows to be reaped partly by hired help, partly on shares. His muzhiks resisted this innovation in every possible way, but the thing went ahead, and in the first year the income from the meadows nearly doubled. Two years ago and last year the muzhiks had kept up the same resistance, and the reaping had been done in the same way. This year the muzhiks had cut all the hay for a share of one–third, and now the headman had come to announce that the mowing was done and that, fearing rain, he had sent for the clerk and in his presence had already divided the hay, piling up eleven stacks as the master’s share. From his vague answers to the question of how much hay there had been in the main meadow, from the headman’s haste in dividing the hay without asking permission, from the muzhik’s whole tone, Levin realized that there was something shady in this distribution of the hay and decided to go himself to verify the matter.

  Arriving at the village at dinner–time and leaving his horse with an old friend, the husband of his brother’s wet nurse, Levin went to see the old man in the apiary, wishing to learn the details of the hay harvest. A garrulous, fine–looking old man, Parmenych received Levin joyfully, showed him what he was doing, told him all the details about his bees and about that year’s hiving; but to Levin’s questions about the mowing he spoke uncertainly and unwillingly. That further confirmed Levin in his surmises. He went to the field and examined the stacks. The stacks could not have contained fifty cartloads each, and, to catch the muzhiks, Levin at once gave orders to send for the carts used in transporting hay, to load one stack and transport it to the barn. There turned out to be only thirty–two cartloads in the stack. Despite the headman’s assurances about the fluffiness of the hay and its settling in the stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in an honest–to–God way, Levin insisted on his point that the hay had been divided without his order, and that he therefore did not accept this hay as fifty cartloads to a stack. After lengthy arguments, the decision was that the muzhiks would take those eleven stacks, counting them as fifty cartloads each, towards their share, and apportion the master’s share again. These negotiations and the distribution of the stacks went on till the afternoon break. When the last of the hay had been distributed, Levin, entrusting the clerk with supervising the rest, seated himself on a haystack marked with a willow branch and admired the meadow teeming with peasants.

  In front of him, where the river bent around a little bog, a motley line of women moved with a merry chatter of ringing voices, and the scattered hay quickly stretched out in grey, meandering ridges over the pale green new growth. Behind the women came muzhiks with forks, and the ridges grew into broad, tall, fluffy haystacks. To the left, carts rattled over the already reaped meadow, and the haystacks, lifted in huge forkfuls, vanished one after another, replaced by heavy cartloads of fragrant hay overhanging the horses’ croups.

  ‘Fine weather for it! What hay we’ll have!’ said the old man, sitting down beside Levin. ‘It’s tea, not hay! They pick it up like ducklings after grain!’ he added, pointing to the stacks being forked. ‘A good half’s been carted off since dinner.’ ‘The last one, is it?’ he shouted to a young fellow who was driving by, standing in front of the cart–box and waving the ends of the hempen reins.

  ‘The last one, pa!’ the young fellow shouted, holding the horse back, and, smiling, he turned round to the gay, red–cheeked woman, also smiling, who was sitting in the cart–box, and drove on.

  ‘Who’s that? Your son?’ asked Levin.

  ‘My youngest,’ said the old man with a tender smile.

  ‘A fine young fellow!’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Already married?’

  ‘Yes, two years ago St Philip’s.’[11]

  ‘And what about children?’

  ‘Children, hah! For a whole year he understood nothing, and was bashful besides,’ the old man replied. ‘Ah, what hay! Just like tea!’ he repeated, wishing to change the subject.

  Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They were loading a haystack not far from him. Ivan Parmenov stood on the cart, receiving, spreading and stamping down the enormous loads of hay that his young beauty of a wife deftly heaved up to him, first in armfuls and then on the fork. The young woman worked easily, cheerfully and skilfully. The thick, packed–down hay would not go right on the fork. She first loosened it up, stuck the fork in, then leaned the whole weight of her body on it with a supple and quick movement and, straightening up at once, curving her back tightly girded with a red sash, her full breasts showing under the white smock, deftly shifted her grip on the fork and heaved the load high up on to the cart. Ivan, obviously trying to spare her every moment of extra work, hastily picked up the load pitched to him in his wide–open arms and spread it on the cart. After pitching him the last of the hay on a rake, the woman shook off the hay dust that had got on her neck, straightened the red kerchief that had gone askew on her white, untanned forehead, and went under the cart to tie down the load. Ivan showed her how to loop it under the axle–tree and burst into loud laughter at something she said. Strong, young, recently awakened love showed in the expression on both their faces.

  XII

  The load was tied down. Ivan jumped off and led the fine, well–fed horse by the bridle. The woman threw the rake up on to the load and went with brisk steps, swinging her arms, to join the women gathered in a circle. Ivan drove out to the road and joined the line of other carts. The women, with rakes on their shoulders, bright colours flashing, chattering in ringing, merry voices, walked behind the carts. One coarse, wild female voice struck up a song and sang till the refrain, and then, all at once, with one accord, the same song was taken up from the beginning by some fifty different coarse, high, healthy voices.

  The singing women approached Levin, and it seemed to him that a thundercloud of merriment was coming upon him. The cloud came over him and enveloped him; and the haystack on which he lay, and all the other haystacks and carts, and the whole meadow with the distant fields all started moving and heaving to the rhythm of this wild, rollicking song with its shouts, whistles and whoops. Levin was envious of this healthy merriment; he would have liked to take part in expressing this joy of life. But he could do nothing and had to lie there and look and listen. When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him.

  Some of those same muzhiks who had argued most of all with him over the hay, whom he had offended or who had wanted to cheat him, those same muzhiks greeted him cheerfully and obviously did not and could not have any malice towards him, nor any repentance or even memory of having wanted to cheat him. It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labour. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward. And whom was this labour for? What would its fruits be? These considerations were irrelevant and insignificant.

  Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time, especially under the impression of what he had seen in the relations of Ivan Parmenov and his young wife, the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life.

  The old man who had been sitting with him had long since gone home; the peasants had all dispersed. Those who lived nearby had gone home, those from far away had gathered to have supper and spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unnoticed by the peasants, went on lying on the haystack, watching, listening and thinking. The peasants who were staying overnight in the meadow spent almost the whole short summer night without sleeping. First there was general, merry talk and loud laughter over supper, then again songs and laughter.

  The long, laborious day had left no other trace in them than merriment. Before dawn everything quieted down. Only the night sounds of the never silent frogs in the
swamp and the horses snorting in the morning mist rising over the meadow could be heard. Coming to his senses, Levin got down off the haystack, looked at the stars and realized that night was over.