Leo Tolstoy
Page 116
‘But I wouldn’t kill him,’ said Levin.
‘Yes, you would.’
‘I don’t know. If I saw it, I would yield to my immediate feeling, but I can’t say beforehand. And there is not and cannot be such an immediate feeling about the oppression of the Slavs.’
‘Maybe not for you. But for others there is,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, with a frown of displeasure. ‘There are stories alive among the people about Orthodox Christians suffering under the yoke of the "infidel Hagarenes".[9] The people heard about their brothers’ suffering and spoke out.’
‘Maybe so,’ Levin said evasively, ‘but I don’t see it. I’m the people myself, and I don’t feel it.’
‘Neither do I,’ said the prince. ‘I was living abroad and reading the newspapers, and I confess, before the Bulgarian atrocities I simply couldn’t understand why the Russians all suddenly loved their brother Slavs so much, while I felt no love for them. I was very upset, thought I was a monster, or that Karlsbad affected me that way. But I came here and was reassured – I see there are people interested just in Russia and not in our brother Slavs. Konstantin for one.’
‘Personal opinions mean nothing here,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘It’s no matter of personal opinions when all Russia – the people – has expressed its will.’
‘Forgive me. I just don’t see that. The people know nothing about it,’ said the prince.
‘No, papa … how could they not? What about Sunday in church?’ said Dolly, who was listening to the conversation. ‘Give me a napkin, please,’ she said to the old man, who was looking at the children with a smile. ‘It can’t be that everybody …’
‘And what about Sunday in church? The priest was told to read it. He read it. They understood nothing, sighed, as they do at every sermon,’ the prince went on. ‘Then they were told the church would take up a collection for a charitable cause, and so they each got out a kopeck and gave. But for what, they themselves didn’t know.’
‘The people cannot help knowing. A consciousness of their destiny always exists among the people, and in such moments as the present it becomes clear to them,’ Sergei Ivanovich said, glancing at the old beekeeper.
The handsome old man with streaks of grey in his black beard and thick silver hair stood motionless, holding a bowl of honey, looking down gently and calmly from his height upon the masters, obviously neither understanding nor wishing to understand anything.
‘That’s quite so,’ he said to Sergei Ivanovich’s words, shaking his head significantly.
‘There, just ask him. He doesn’t know or think anything,’ said Levin. ‘Have you heard about the war, Mikhailych?’ He turned to him. ‘What they read about in church? What do you think? Should we go to war for the Christians?’
‘What’s there for us to think? Alesander Nikolaich, the emperor, has thought on us, and he’ll think on us in everything. He knows better … Shall I bring more bread? For the lad?’ he asked Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to Grisha, who was finishing the crust.
‘I have no need to ask,’ said Sergei Ivanovich. ‘We have seen and still see how hundreds and hundreds of people, abandoning everything to serve a just cause, come from all ends of Russia and directly and clearly state their thought and aim. They bring their kopecks or go themselves and directly say why. What does that mean?’
‘In my opinion,’ said Levin, beginning to get excited, ‘it means that, among eighty million people, there are always to be found, not hundreds like now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost their social position, reckless people, who are always ready – to join Pugachev’s band, to go to Khiva, to Serbia .. .’[10]
‘I tell you, they are not hundreds and not reckless people, but the best representatives of the nation!’ said Sergei Ivanovich, with such irritation as if he were defending his last possession. ‘And the donations? Here the whole people directly expresses its will.’
‘This word "people" is so vague,’ said Levin. ‘District clerks, teachers, and maybe one muzhik in a thousand know what it’s about. And the remaining eighty million, like Mikhailych, not only don’t express their will, but don’t have the slightest notion what they should express their will about. What right then do we have to say it’s the will of the people?’
XVI
Experienced in dialectics, Sergei Ivanovich, without objecting, at once shifted the conversation to a different area.
‘Yes, if you want to learn the spirit of the people in an arithmetical way, that is certainly very difficult to achieve. Voting has not been introduced among us, and it cannot be introduced, because it does not express the will of the people. But there are other ways of doing it. It is felt in the air, it is felt in the heart. Not to mention those undercurrents that have stirred up the stagnant sea of the people and are clear to any unprejudiced person. Look at society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse parties in the world of the intelligentsia, so hostile before, have merged into one. All discord has ended, all social organs are saying one and the same thing, everyone has felt the elemental power that has caught them up and is carrying them in one direction.’
‘It’s the newspapers that all say the same thing,’ said the prince. ‘That’s true. And it’s so much the same that it’s like frogs before a thunderstorm. You can’t hear anything on account of them.’
‘Frogs or no frogs, I don’t publish the newspapers and don’t want to defend them. I’m talking about the one–mindedness of the world of the intelligentsia,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, turning to his brother.
Levin was about to reply, but the old prince interrupted him.
‘Well, about this one–mindedness something else might be said,’ he observed. ‘There’s this dear son–in–law of mine, Stepan Arkadyich, you know him. He’s now getting a post as member of the committee of the commission and whatever else, I don’t remember. Only there’s nothing to do there – what, Dolly, it’s not a secret! – and the salary’s eight thousand. Try asking him whether his work is useful and he’ll prove to you that it’s very much needed. And he’s a truthful man. But then it’s impossible not to believe in the usefulness of eight thousand.’
‘Yes, he asked me to tell Darya Alexandrovna that he got the post,’ Sergei Ivanovich said with displeasure, thinking that the prince had spoken beside the point.
‘And it’s the same with the one–mindedness of the newspapers. It’s been explained to me: as soon as there’s a war, their income doubles. How can they not think that the destiny of the people and the Slavs … and all the rest of it?’
‘There are many newspapers I don’t like, but that is unfair,’ said Sergei Ivanovich.
‘I would make just one condition,’ the prince went on.’ Alphonse Karr put it splendidly before the war with Prussia.[11] "You think war is necessary? Fine. Send anyone who preaches war to a special front–line legion – into the assault, into the attack, ahead of everyone!"‘
‘The editors would be a fine sight,’ Katavasov said with a loud laugh, picturing to himself the editors he knew in this select legion.
‘Why, they’d run away,’ said Dolly, ‘they’d just be a hindrance.’
‘If they run, get them from behind with canister–shot or Cossacks with whips,’ said the prince.
‘That’s a joke, and not a very nice joke, if you’ll forgive me, Prince,’ said Sergei Ivanovich.
‘I don’t see it as a joke, it’s…’ Levin began, but Sergei Ivanovich interrupted him.
‘Each member of society is called upon to do what is proper to him,’ he said. ‘Thinking people do their work by expressing public opinion. And the unanimity and full expression of public opinion is the merit of the press, and at the same time a joyous fact. Twenty years ago we would have been silent, but now we hear the voice of the Russian people, ready to rise as one man and sacrifice themselves for their oppressed brothers. That is a great step and a pledge of strength.’
‘But it’s not just to sacrifice themselves, it’s also to kill Turks,’ Levin said timi
dly. ‘The people sacrifice and are always prepared to sacrifice themselves for their soul, not for murder,’ he added, involuntarily connecting the conversation with the thoughts that occupied him so much.
‘How, for the soul? You understand that for a natural scientist that is a troublesome expression. What is this soul?’ Katavasov said, smiling.
‘Ah, you know!’
‘By God, I haven’t the slightest idea!’ Katavasov said with a loud laugh.
‘ "I have brought not peace but a sword," says Christ,’[12] Sergei Ivanovich objected on his side, simply quoting, as if it were the most understandable thing, the very passage of the Gospel that had always disturbed Levin most of all.
‘That’s quite so,’ the old man, who was standing near them, again repeated, responding to the accidental glance cast at him.
‘No, my dear, you’re demolished, demolished, completely demolished!’ Katavasov cried merrily.
Levin flushed with vexation, not because he was demolished, but because he had not restrained himself and had begun to argue.
‘No, I can’t argue with them,’ he thought, ‘they’re wearing impenetrable armour, and I am naked.’
He saw that his brother and Katavasov were not to be persuaded, and still less did he find it possible for himself to agree with them. What they preached was that very pride of reason which had nearly ruined him. He could not agree with the idea that dozens of people, his brother among them, had the right, on the basis of what was told them by some hundreds of fine–talking volunteers coming to the capitals, to say that they and the newspapers expressed the will and thought of the people, a thought that expressed itself in revenge and murder. He could not agree with it, because he did not see the expression of these thoughts in the people among whom he lived, nor did he find these thoughts in himself (and he could not consider himself anything else but one of those persons who made up the Russian people), and above all because, while neither he nor the people knew or could know what the common good consisted in, he knew firmly that it was only possible to attain that common good by strictly fulfilling the law of the good that was open to every man, and therefore he could not desire war and preach it for any common purposes whatsoever. He said, together with Mikhailych and the people, who expressed their thought in the legend about the calling of the Varangians:[13] ‘Be our princes and rule over us. We joyfully promise full obedience. All labours, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves, but we will not judge or decide.’ And now, according to Sergei Ivanovich’s words, the people had renounced this right purchased at so dear a cost.
He also wanted to say that if public opinion is an infallible judge, then why was a revolution or a commune not as legitimate as the movement in defence of the Slavs? But these were all thoughts that could not decide anything. Only one thing could unquestionably be seen – that in that present moment the argument irritated Sergei Ivanovich and therefore it was bad to argue; and Levin fell silent and drew his visitors’ attention to the fact that clouds were gathering and that they had better go home before it rained.
XVII
The prince and Sergei Ivanovich got into the gig and drove; the rest of the company, quickening their pace, went home on foot.
But the storm clouds, now white, now black, came on so quickly that they had to walk still faster to get home ahead of the rain. The advancing clouds, low and dark as sooty smoke, raced across the sky with extraordinary speed. They were still about two hundred paces from the house, but the wind had already risen, and a downpour could be expected at any moment.
The children ran ahead with frightened, joyful shrieks. Darya Alexandrovna, struggling hard with the skirts that clung to her legs, no longer walked but ran, not taking her eyes off the children. The men, holding on to their hats, walked with long strides. They were just at the porch when a big drop struck and broke up on the edge of the iron gutter. The children, and the grown–ups after them, ran under the cover of the roof with merry chatter.
‘Katerina Alexandrovna?’ Levin asked Agafya Mikhailovna, who met them in the front hall with cloaks and wraps.
‘We thought she was with you.’
‘And Mitya?’
‘They must be in Kolok, and the nanny’s with them.’
Levin seized the wraps and ran to Kolok.
During that short period of time the centre of the cloud had covered the sun so that it became as dark as during a solar eclipse. The stubborn wind, as if insisting on its own, kept stopping Levin and, tearing off leaves and linden blossoms and baring the white birch boughs in an ugly and strange way, bent everything in one direction: acacias, flowers, burdock, grass and treetops. Farm girls who had been working in the garden ran squealing under the roof of the servants’ quarters. The white curtain of pouring rain had already invaded all the distant forest and half the nearby field and was moving quickly towards Kolok. The dampness of rain breaking up into fine drops filled the air.
Lowering his head and struggling against the wind, which tore the shawls from his arms, Levin was already running up to Kolok and could see something white showing beyond an oak, when suddenly everything blazed, the whole earth caught fire and the vault of the sky seemed to crack overhead. Opening his dazzled eyes and peering through the thick curtain of rain that now separated him from Kolok, Levin first saw with horror the strangely altered position of the familiar oak’s green crown in the middle of the wood. ‘Can it have snapped off?’ Levin barely managed to think, when, moving more and more quickly, the oak’s crown disappeared behind the other trees, and he heard the crash of a big tree falling.
The flash of the lightning, the sound of the thunder, and the feeling of his body being instantly doused with cold, merged in Levin into one impression of horror.
‘My God! My God, not on them!’ he said.
And though he immediately thought how senseless his request was that they should not be killed by an oak that had already fallen, he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing better than this senseless prayer.
He ran to the spot where they usually went, but did not find them there.
They were at the other end of the wood, under an old linden, and calling to him. Two figures in dark dresses (they were actually light) stood bending over something. They were Kitty and the nanny. The rain was already letting up and it was growing lighter as Levin raced towards them. The lower part of the nanny’s dress was dry, but Kitty’s dress was soaked through and clung to her body all over. Though it was no longer raining, they went on standing in the same position they had assumed when the storm broke, bent over the carriage, holding a green umbrella.
‘Alive? Safe? Thank God!’ he said, splashing through the puddles in his flopping, water–filled shoes, and running up to them.
Kitty’s rosy and wet face was turned to him and smiled timidly from under her now shapeless hat.
‘Well, aren’t you ashamed? I don’t understand how you can be so imprudent!’ He fell upon his wife in vexation.
‘I swear it’s not my fault. I was just going to leave when he began acting up. We had to change him. We just…’ Kitty began excusing herself.
Mitya was safe, dry, and had slept through it all.
‘Well, thank God! I don’t know what I’m saying!’
They gathered up the wet napkins; the nanny took the baby out and carried him. Levin walked beside his wife and, guilty on account of his vexation, squeezed her hand in secret from the nanny.
XVIII
Throughout the day, during the most varied conversations, in which he took part as if only with the external part of his mind, Levin, despite his disappointment in the change that was supposed to take place in him, never ceased joyfully sensing the fullness of his heart.