Leo Tolstoy
Page 85
‘Qu’est–ce qu’ils disent?’* asked Veslovsky.
‘They’re inviting us to drink vodka. They’ve probably been dividing up the meadows. I’d go and have a drink,’ said Levin, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka and go to them.
‘Why do they want to treat us?’
‘Just for fun. You really ought to join them. You’d be interested.’
‘Allons, c’est curieux.’*
‘Go on, go on, you’ll find the way to the mill!’ Levin shouted and, looking back, was pleased to see Veslovsky, hunched over, his weary legs stumbling, his gun in his outstretched hand, making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
‘You come, too!’ the muzhik cried to Levin. ‘Why not? Have a bit of pie! Eh!’
Levin badly wanted a drink of vodka and a piece of bread. He felt weak, so that it was hard for him to pull his faltering legs from the mire, and for a moment he hesitated. But the dog pointed. And at once all fatigue vanished, and he stepped lightly over the mire towards the dog. A snipe flew up at his feet; he shot and hit it – the dog went on pointing. ‘Fetch!’ Another rose just in front of the dog. Levin fired. But it was an unlucky day; he missed, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find it either. He searched everywhere in the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to search, she did not really search but only pretended.
Even without Vasenka, whom Levin blamed for his failure, things did not improve. There were many snipe here, too, but Levin missed time after time.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes were soaked
* What are they saying?
* Let’s go, it’s curious.
through with sweat and clung to his body; his left boot, filled with water, was heavy and sloshy; drops of sweat rolled down his face, grimy with the soot of gunpowder; there was a bitter taste in his mouth, the smell of powder and rust in his nose, and in his ears the ceaseless screeching of the snipe; the gun barrels were too hot to touch; his heart pounded in short, quick beats; his hands shook from agitation, and his weary legs stumbled and tripped over the hummocks and bog; but he went on and kept shooting. Finally, after a shameful miss, he threw down his gun and hat.
‘No, I must come to my senses!’ he said to himself. He picked up the gun and hat, called Laska to heel and left the marsh. Coming to a dry spot, he sat down on a hummock, took off his boot, poured the water out of it, then went back to the marsh, drank some rusty–tasting water, wetted the burning gun barrels and rinsed his face and hands. Having refreshed himself, he moved back to the spot where the snipe had landed, with the firm intention of not getting agitated.
He wanted to keep calm, but it was the same thing all over again. His finger pulled the trigger before the bird was in his sights. It all went worse and worse.
There were only five birds in his game bag when he came out of the marsh to the alder grove where he was to meet Stepan Arkadyich.
Before he saw Stepan Arkadyich, he saw his dog. Krak leaped from behind the upturned roots of an alder, all black with the stinking slime of the marsh, and with a victorious look began sniffing Laska. Behind Krak the stately figure of Stepan Arkadyich appeared in the shade of the alders. He came towards Levin, red, sweaty, his collar open, still limping in the same way.
‘Well, so? You did a lot of shooting!’ he said, smiling gaily.
‘And you?’ asked Levin. But there was no need to ask, because he already saw the full game bag.
‘Not too bad.’
He had fourteen birds.
‘A fine marsh! Veslovsky must have hampered you. It’s inconvenient for two with one dog,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, softening his triumph.
XI
When Levin and Stepan Arkadyich came to the cottage of the muzhik with whom Levin always stayed, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting in the middle of the cottage, holding on with both hands to a bench from which a soldier, the brother of the mistress of the house, was pulling him by the slime–covered boots, and laughing his infectiously gay laugh.
‘I’ve just come. Ils ont été charmants.* Imagine, they wined me and dined me. Such bread, a wonder! Délicieux! And the vodka – I never drank anything tastier! And they absolutely refused to take money. And they kept saying "No offence", or something.’
‘Why take money? They were treating you. As if they’d sell their vodka!’ said the soldier, finally pulling off the wet boot and the blackened stocking along with it.
Despite the filth in the cottage, muddied by the hunters’ boots and the dirty dogs licking themselves, the smell of marsh and powder that filled it, and the absence of knives and forks, the hunters drank their tea and ate dinner with a relish that only comes from hunting. Washed and clean, they went to the swept–out hay barn where the coachmen had prepared beds for the masters.
Though it was already dark, none of the hunters wanted to sleep.
After wavering between reminiscences and stories about shooting, about dogs, about previous hunts, the conversation hit upon a subject that interested them all. Prompted by Vasenka’s repeated expressions of delight at the charm of the night and the smell of the hay, at the charm of the broken cart (it seemed broken to him because its front end had been detached), the affability of the muzhiks who had given him vodka, the dogs who lay each at its master’s feet, Oblonsky told about the charm of the hunting at Malthus’s place, which he had taken part in during the past summer. Malthus was a well–known railway magnate. Stepan Arkadyich told about the marshlands this Malthus had bought up in Tver province, and how he kept them as a reserve, and what carriages – dog–carts – the hunters drove in, and the tent they set up for lunch by the marsh.
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Levin, sitting up on his hay. ‘How is it
* They were charming.
you’re not disgusted by those people? I understand that Lafite with lunch is very agreeable, but aren’t you disgusted precisely by that luxury? All those people make their money, as our old tax farmers[3] used to, in a way that earns them people’s contempt. They ignore it and then use their dishonestly earned money to buy off the former contempt.’
‘Absolutely right!’ responded Vasenka Veslovsky. ‘Absolutely! Of course, Oblonsky does it out of bonhomie, and the others say, "Well, if Oblonsky goes there …"‘
‘Not a bit of it,’ Levin sensed Oblonsky’s smile as he said it. ‘I simply don’t consider him more dishonest than any other wealthy merchant or nobleman. He and they both make money by the same hard work and intelligence.’
‘Yes, but where’s the hard work? Is it work to get a concession and resell it?’
‘Of course it’s work. It’s work in this sense, that if it weren’t for him and others like him, there wouldn’t be any railways.’
‘But it’s not the same as the work of a muzhik or a scholar.’
‘Granted, but it is work in the sense that it produces a result – railways. But then you think railways are useless.’
‘No, that’s another question. I’m prepared to admit they’re useful. But any acquisition that doesn’t correspond to the labour expended is dishonest.’
‘But who defines the correspondence?’
‘Acquisition by dishonest means, by cunning,’ said Levin, feeling that he was unable to draw a clear line between honest and dishonest, ‘like the acquisitions of banks,’ he went on. ‘This evil, the acquisition of huge fortunes without work, as it used to be with tax farming, has merely changed its form. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!* Tax farming was no sooner abolished than railways and banks appeared: the same gain without work.’
‘Yes, all that may be true and clever … Lie down, Krak!’ Stepan Arkadyich called to the dog, who was scratching and churning up all the hay. He was obviously convinced of the justice of his theme, and therefore spoke calmly and unhurriedly. ‘But you haven’t drawn the line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a higher salary than my chief clerk, though he knows the
business better than I do – is that dishonest?’
* The king is dead, long live the king.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, then I’ll tell you: that you get, say, a surplus of five thousand for your farm work, while the muzhik here, our host, however hard he works, will get no more than fifty roubles, is as dishonest as my getting more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting more than a railway engineer. On the other hand, I see some hostile, absolutely unfounded attitude of society towards those people, and it seems to me there’s envy here …’
‘No, that’s unjust,’ said Veslovsky. ‘There can be no envy, and there’s something unclean in this whole business.’
‘No, excuse me,’ Levin went on. ‘You say it’s unjust that I get five thousand and a muzhik gets fifty roubles. That’s true, it is unjust, and I feel it, but…’
‘Indeed it is. Why do we eat, drink, hunt, do nothing, while he’s eternally, eternally working?’ said Vasenka, apparently thinking about it clearly for the first time in his life, and therefore quite sincerely.
‘Yes, you feel it, and yet you don’t give him your property,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, as if deliberately provoking Levin.
Lately some sort of secret antagonism had been established between the two brothers–in–law: as if a rivalry had arisen between them, since they had married two sisters, as to whose life was set up better, and that antagonism now showed itself in the conversation, which was beginning to acquire a personal nuance.
‘I don’t give it to him because no one demands it of me, and I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ replied Levin, ‘and there’s nobody to give it to.’
‘Give it to this muzhik; he won’t refuse.’
‘Yes, but how am I going to give it to him? Shall I go and draw up a deed of purchase with him?’
‘I don’t know, but if you’re convinced that you have no right…’
‘I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel that I don’t have the right to give it up, that I have responsibilities to the land and to my family.’
‘No, excuse me, but if you think this inequality is unjust, why don’t you act that way?…’
‘I do act, only negatively, in the sense that I’m not going to try to increase the difference of situation that exists between him and me.’
‘No, excuse me now: that is a paradox.’
‘Yes, it’s a somewhat sophistic explanation,’ Veslovsky confirmed.
‘Ah, it’s our host!’ he said to the muzhik, who opened the creaking barn door and came in. ‘You’re not asleep yet?’
‘No, what sleep! I thought you gentlemen were asleep, but then I heard you talking. I need to get a hook here. He won’t bite?’ he added, stepping cautiously with bare feet.
‘And where are you going to sleep?’
‘We’re going to night pasture.’
‘Ah, what a night!’ said Veslovsky, looking at the end of the cottage and the unharnessed cart, visible in the faint light of the afterglow, through the big frame of the now open door. ‘Listen, those are women’s voices singing, and not badly at that. Who’s singing, my good man?’
‘Those are farm girls not far from here.’
‘Let’s take a stroll! We’re not going to fall asleep anyway. Come on, Oblonsky!’
‘If only it was possible to stay lying down and still go,’ Oblonsky answered, stretching. ‘It’s wonderful to be lying down.’
‘Then I’ll go by myself,’ said Veslovsky, getting up quickly and putting his boots on. ‘Goodbye, gentlemen. If it’s fun, I’ll call you. You treated me to game, and I won’t forget you.’
‘Isn’t he a nice fellow?’ said Oblonsky, when Veslovsky was gone and the muzhik had closed the door behind him.
‘Yes, nice,’ said Levin, still thinking about the subject of their conversation. It seemed to him that he had expressed his thoughts and feelings as clearly as he could, and yet the two of them, sincere and not stupid people, had told him in one voice that he was comforting himself with sophisms. That puzzled him.
‘There it is, my friend. It has to be one or the other: either admit that the present social arrangement is just and then defend your own rights, or admit that you enjoy certain unjust advantages, as I do, and enjoy them with pleasure.’
‘No, if it was unjust, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy those benefits with pleasure, at least I wouldn’t be able to. For me the main thing is to feel that I’m not at fault.’
‘But why not go, in fact?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, obviously weary from the strain of thinking. ‘We won’t sleep anyway. Really, let’s go!’
Levin did not reply. The remark he had made in their conversation, about acting justly only in the negative sense, preoccupied him. ‘Can one be just only negatively?’ he asked himself.
‘How strong the fresh hay smells, though!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, getting up. ‘I wouldn’t sleep for anything. Vasenka’s on to something there. Can you hear him laughing and talking? Why not go? Come on!’
‘No, I won’t go,’ replied Levin.
‘Can that also be on principle?’ Stepan Arkadyich said with a smile, searching for his cap in the dark.
‘Not on principle, but why should I go?’
‘You know, you’re going to make trouble for yourself,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, finding his cap and standing up.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t I see how you’ve set things up with your wife? I heard how it’s a question of the first importance with you whether or not you go hunting for two days. That’s all well and good as an idyll, but it’s not enough for a whole lifetime. A man must be independent, he has his manly interests. A man must be masculine,’ Oblonsky said, opening the door.
‘Meaning what? To go courting farm girls?’ asked Levin.
‘Why not, if it’s fun? Ça ne tire pas à conséquence.* My wife will be none the worse for it, and I’ll have fun. The main thing is to preserve the sanctity of the home. Nothing like that in the home. But don’t tie your own hands.’
‘Maybe,’ Levin said drily and turned over on his side. ‘Tomorrow we must get an early start, and I’m not going to wake anybody up, I’ll just set out at dawn.’
‘Messieurs, venez vite!’* said Veslovsky, coming in again. ‘Charmante! I discovered her. Charmante, a perfect Gretchen,[4] and we’ve already become acquainted. The prettiest little thing, really!’ he went on with an approving look, as if she had been made pretty especially for him and he was pleased with the one who had done it for him.
Levin pretended to be asleep, but Oblonsky, having put on his shoes and lit a cigar, left the barn, and their voices soon died away.
Levin could not fall asleep for a long time. He heard his horses munching hay, then the host and his older son getting ready and going out to the night pasture; then he heard the soldier settling down to sleep at the other end of the barn with his nephew, the host’s smaller son; he
* It won’t lead to anything.
* Gentlemen, come quickly.
heard the boy telling his uncle in a thin little voice his impression of the dogs, who seemed huge and fearsome to him; then the boy asking him what the dogs would catch, and the soldier telling him in a hoarse and sleepy voice that the hunters would go to the marsh tomorrow and shoot off their guns, and after that, to have done with the boy’s questions, he said: ‘Sleep, Vaska, sleep or else!’ and soon he was snoring, and everything quieted down; the only sounds were the neighing of horses and the croaking of snipe. ‘Can it be only negative?’ he repeated to himself. ‘Well, and what then? It’s not my fault.’ And he started thinking about the next day.