Leo Tolstoy

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

  ‘I’m very glad you’ve come,’ he said, sitting down next to her, and, obviously wishing to say something, he faltered. Several times he tried to begin speaking, but stopped. Although, while preparing herself for this meeting, she had taught herself to despise and accuse him, she did not know what to say and felt sorry for him. And the silence went on like that for quite some time. ‘Is Seryozha well?’ he said and, without waiting for an answer, added: ‘I won’t dine at home today, and I must leave at once.’

  ‘I wanted to go to Moscow,’ she said.

  ‘No, you did very, very well to come,’ he said, and again fell silent.

  Seeing that he was unable to begin talking, she began herself.

  ‘Alexei Alexandrovich,’ she said, looking up at him and not lowering her eyes under his gaze, directed at her hair, ‘I am a criminal woman, I am a bad woman, but I am the same as I said I was then, and I’ve come to tell you that I cannot change anything.’

  ‘I did not ask you about that,’ he said suddenly, looking straight into her eyes, resolutely and with hatred, ‘I had supposed as much.’ Under the influence of anger, he apparently regained complete command of all his abilities. ‘But, as I then said and wrote to you,’ he went on in a sharp, thin voice, ‘I now repeat that I am not obliged to know it. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you are, to hasten to tell their husbands such pleasant news.’ He especially emphasized the word ‘pleasant’. ‘I ignore it as long as it is not known to society, as long as my name is not disgraced. And therefore I only warn you that our relations must be such as they have always been and that only in the case of your compromising yourself would I have to take measures to protect my honour.’

  ‘But our relations cannot be as they have always been,’ Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him in fear.

  When she saw again those calm gestures, heard that piercing, childlike and mocking voice, her loathing for him annihilated the earlier pity, and she was merely frightened, but wished at all costs to understand her situation.

  ‘I cannot be your wife when I…’ she began.

  He laughed a spiteful, cold laugh.

  ‘It must be that the sort of life you’ve chosen has affected your notions. I respect or despise the one and the other so much … I respect your past and despise the present … that I was far from the interpretation you have given to my words.’

  Anna sighed and lowered her head.

  ‘However, I do not understand, having as much independence as you do,’ he went on, becoming excited, ‘telling your husband straight out about your infidelity and finding nothing reprehensible in it, as it seems, how you find it reprehensible to fulfil the duties of a wife towards your husband.’ ‘Alexei Alexandrovich! What do you want from me?’

  ‘I want that I not meet that man here, and that you behave in such a way that neither society nor the servants can possibly accuse you… that you not see him. It doesn’t seem too much. And for that you will enjoy the rights of an honest wife, without fulfilling her duties. That is all I have to say to you. Now it is time for me to go. I will not dine at home.’

  He got up and went to the door. Anna also got up. With a silent bow, he let her pass.

  XXIV

  The night Levin spent on the haystack was not wasted on him: the farming he had been engaged in he now came to loathe, and it lost all interest for him. Despite excellent crops, there had never been, or at least it seemed to him that there had never been, so many failures and so much animosity between him and the muzhiks as that year, and the cause of the failures and the animosity was now clear to him. The delight he had experienced in the work itself, the closeness with the muzhiks that had come from it, the envy of them and of their life that he had experienced, the wish to go over to that life, which that night had no longer been a dream for him but an intention, the fulfilment of which he had been thinking over in detail – all this had so changed his view of farming that he could no longer find any of his former interest in it and could not help seeing his own unpleasant attitude towards his workers, which was at the bottom of the whole thing. The herds of improved cows, the same as Pava, the earth all ploughed and fertilized, the nine equal fields planted round with willows, the three hundred acres of deeply ploughed–under dung, the seed drills and so on – all that would have been wonderful if it had been done by him alone, or with friends, people sympathetic to him. But he now saw clearly (his work on the book about agriculture, in which the fundamental element had to be the worker, had helped him greatly in this) – he saw clearly now that the farming he was engaged in was merely a cruel and persistent struggle between him and his workers, in which on the one side, his own, there was a constant, intense striving to remake everything after the best–considered fashion, and on the other there was the natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with the greatest straining of forces on his part and with no effort or even intention on the other, all that was achieved was that the farming did not go in any direction and that beautiful machines, beautiful cattle and soil were ruined for nothing. And above all – not only was the energy directed towards it completely wasted, but he could not help feeling, now that the meaning of this work had been laid bare for him, that the goal of his energy was a most unworthy one. What essentially did the struggle consist in? He stood for every penny he had (and could not do otherwise, because as soon as he slackened his energy, he would not have enough money to pay the workers), and they stood only for working quietly and pleasantly, that is, as they were accustomed to do. It was in his interest that each worker should do as much as possible, that he should keep his wits about him at the same time, that he should try not to break the winnowing machine, the horse–rake, the thresher, that he should try to think about whatever he was doing. The worker, however, wanted to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all–carelessly, obliviously, thoughtlessly. That summer Levin saw it at every step. He sent people to mow clover for hay, choosing the worst acres, overgrown with grass and wormwood, unfit for seed – they went and mowed down his best seeding acres, justifying themselves by shifting it on to the steward and comforting him with the excellence of the hay; but he knew the reason was that those acres were easier to mow. He sent out the hay–maker – it broke down in the first row, because the muzhik got bored sitting on the box under the turning blades. And they told him: ‘Never fear, sir, the women will do it in a trice.’ The ploughs were no good, because it did not occur to the worker to lower the raised shear and, resorting to force, he wore out the horses and ruined the soil; and they asked him not to worry. Horses were let into the wheat fields, because not one worker wanted to be night–watchman, and, despite orders to the contrary, the workers took turns looking after the horses at night, and some Vanka, after working all day, would fall asleep and then confess his sin, saying: ‘Do as you like, sir.’ The three best calves died from overfeeding, having been let out into a regrown clover field without being watered, and in no way would they believe that they became bloated by the clover, but told him in consolation how a neighbour had lost a hundred and twelve head in three days. All this was done not because anyone wished evil to Levin or his farming; on the contrary, he knew he was loved and considered a simple master (which was the highest praise); it was done only because of the wish to work merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only foreign and incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their own most just interests. For a long time Levin had felt displeased with his attitude towards farming. He had seen that his boat was leaking, but he could not find and did not look for the leak, perhaps deceiving himself on purpose. But now he could no longer deceive himself. The farming he had been engaged in not only ceased to interest him but disgusted him, and he could no longer be occupied with it.

  To that was added the presence some twenty miles away of Kitty Shcherbatsky, whom he wanted to see and could not. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonsky, when he had visited her, had invited him to come: to come in order to renew his proposal to her si
ster, who, as she let him feel, would now accept him. Levin himself, when he saw Kitty Shcherbatsky, realized that he had never ceased to love her; but he could not go to the Oblonskys knowing that she was there. The fact that he had proposed and she had refused him put an insuperable obstacle between them. ‘I can’t ask her to be my wife only because she couldn’t be the wife of the one she wanted,’ he said to himself. The thought of it turned him cold and hostile towards her. ‘I’d be unable to speak to her without a feeling of reproach, to look at her without anger, and she’ll hate me still more, as she ought to. And then, too, how can I go to them now, after what Darya Alexandrovna told me? How can I not show that I know what she told me? And I’ll come with magnanimity – to forgive, to show mercy to her. Me in the role of a man forgiving her and deigning to offer her his love!… Why did Darya Alexandrovna say that? I might have seen her accidentally, and then everything would have happened by itself, but now it’s impossible, impossible!’

  Darya Alexandrovna sent him a note, asking him for a side–saddle for Kitty. ‘I’ve been told you have a side–saddle,’ she wrote to him. ‘I hope you’ll bring it yourself.’

  That he simply could not bear. How could an intelligent, delicate woman so humiliate her sister! He wrote ten notes, tore them all up, and sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would come was impossible, because he could not come; to write that he could not come because something prevented him or he was leaving, was still worse. He sent the saddle without a reply and, with the awareness of doing something shameful, handed over his detested farming to the steward the very next day and left for a far–off district to visit his friend Sviyazhsky, who had excellent snipe marshes nearby and who had written recently asking him to fulfil his long–standing intention of visiting him.

  The snipe marshes in the Surov district had long tempted Levin, but he kept putting off the trip on account of farming matters. Now, though, he was glad to get away both from the Shcherbatskys’ neighbourhood and, above all, from farming, precisely in order to hunt, which in all troubles served him as the best consolation.

  XXV

  There was no railway or post road to the Surov district, and Levin drove there with his own horses in the tarantass.

  Half–way there he stopped for feeding at a wealthy muzhik’s. A fresh, bald old man with a broad red beard, grey at the cheeks, opened the gates, pressing himself to the post to let the troika pass. Directing the coachman to a place under a shed in the big, clean and tidy new yard with fire–hardened wooden ploughs in it, the old man invited Levin in. A cleanly dressed young woman, galoshes on her bare feet, was bending over, wiping the floor in the new front hall. Frightened of the dog that came running in with Levin, she cried out, but immediately laughed at her fright, learning that the dog would not touch her. Pointing Levin to the inner door with her bared arm, she bent again, hiding her handsome face, and went on washing.

  ‘The samovar, maybe?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  The room was big, with a Dutch stove and a partition. Under the icons stood a table with painted decorations, a bench and two chairs. By the entrance was a small cupboard. The shutters were closed, the flies were few, and it was so clean that Levin took care that Laska, who had been running in the road and bathing in puddles, should not dirty the floor, pointing her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking round the room, Levin went out to the back yard. The comely young woman in galoshes, empty buckets swinging on the yoke, ran ahead of him to fetch water from the well.

  ‘Look lively!’ the old man shouted merrily after her and came up to Levin. ‘Well, sir, are you on your way to see Nikolai Ivanovich Sviyazhsky? He stops here, too,’ he began garrulously, leaning on the porch rail.

  In the middle of the old man’s story of his acquaintance with Sviyazhsky, the gates creaked again and the field workers drove into the yard with ploughs and harrows. The horses hitched to the ploughs and harrows were well fed and large. Two of the workers were apparently family members, young men in cotton shirts and peaked caps; the other two were hired men in hempen shirts – one an old man and the other a young lad. Leaving the porch, the old man went to the horses and began to unhitch them.

  ‘What have you been ploughing?’ asked Levin.

  ‘Earthing up the potatoes. We’ve also got a bit of land. You, Fedot, don’t turn the gelding loose, put him to the trough, we’ll hitch up another one.’

  ‘Say, father, what about those ploughshares I asked you to get, have you brought them?’ asked a tall, strapping fellow, apparently the old man’s son.

  ‘There … in the sledge,’ replied the old man, coiling the unhitched reins and throwing them on the ground. ‘Set them up while we’re having dinner.’

  The comely young woman, with full buckets weighing down her shoulders, went into the front hall. Other women appeared from somewhere – young, beautiful, middle–aged, and old ugly ones, with and without children.

  The samovar chimney hummed; the workers and family members, finished with the horses, went to have dinner. Levin got his own provisions from the carriage and invited the old man to have tea with him.

  ‘Why, we’ve already had tea today,’ said the old man, accepting the invitation with obvious pleasure. ‘Or just for company.’

  Over tea Levin learned the whole story of the old man’s farming. Ten years ago the old man had rented three hundred and twenty acres from a lady landowner, and last year he had bought them and rented eight hundred more from a local landowner. A small portion of the land, the worst, he rented out, and he himself ploughed some hundred acres with his family and two hired men. The old man complained that things were going poorly. But Levin understood that he was complaining only for propriety’s sake, and that his farm was flourishing. If it had been going poorly, he would not have bought land at forty roubles an acre, would not have got three sons and a nephew married, would not have rebuilt twice after fires, each time better than before. Despite the old man’s complaints, it was clear that he was justifiably proud of his prosperity, proud of his sons, nephew, daughters–in–law, horses, cows, and especially that the whole farm held together. From talking with the old man, Levin learned that he was also not against innovations. He had planted a lot of potatoes, and his potatoes, which Levin had noticed driving up, had already flowered and were beginning to set, while Levin’s were just beginning to flower. He had ploughed for the potatoes with an iron plough, which he called a ‘plougher’, borrowed from the landowner. He sowed wheat. A small detail especially struck Levin, that as he thinned his rye he gave the thinned stalks to the horses. So many times, seeing this excellent feed go to waste, Levin had wanted to gather it; but it had always proved impossible. Yet with the muzhik it got done, and he could not praise this feed enough.

  ‘Don’t the womenfolk need work? They carry the piles to the road, and the cart drives up.’

  ‘And for us landowners things go badly with our hired men,’ said Levin, handing him a glass of tea.

  ‘Thank you,’ the old man replied, took the glass, but refused sugar, pointing to the nibbled lump he had left. ‘Where are you going to get with hired men?’ he said. ‘It’s sheer ruin. Take the Sviyazhskys even. We know their land – black as poppyseed, but they can’t boast of their crops either. There’s always some oversight!’

  ‘But you do your farming with hired men?’

  ‘That’s between muzhiks. We can make do on our own. Bad work –out you go! We’ll manage.’

  ‘Father, Finogen says to fetch some tar,’ the woman in galoshes said, coming in.

  ‘So there, sir!’ said the old man, getting up, and, crossing himself lengthily, he thanked Levin and left.

  When Levin went into the kitchen side of the cottage to call his coachman, he saw all the men of the family at the table. The women served standing. The strapping young son, with his mouth full of kasha, was telling some funny story, and they were all laughing, and the woman in galoshes laughed especially gaily as she added
more shchi to the bowl.

  It might very well be that the comely face of the woman in galoshes contributed greatly to the impression of well–being that this peasant home made on Levin, but the impression was so strong that he could not get rid of it. And all the way from the old man to Sviyazhsky, he kept recalling this household, as if something in this impression called for his special attention.

  XXVI

  Sviyazhsky was the marshal of nobility in his district. He was five years older than Levin and long married. His young sister–in–law, a girl Levin found very sympathetic, lived in his house. And Levin knew that Sviyazhsky and his wife wished very much to marry this girl to him. He knew it indubitably, as these things are always known to young men, so–called suitors, though he would never have dared say it to anyone, and he also knew that even though he wanted to get married, even though by all tokens this quite attractive girl would make a wonderful wife, he was as little capable of marrying her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shcherbatsky, as of flying into the sky. And this knowledge poisoned for him the pleasure he hoped to have in visiting Sviyazhsky.