THIRTY-ONE

 

 

Levin arrived at his sister’s village at noon and left his horse with a friendly old peasant, the husband of his brother’s nurse. Wishing to hear particulars of the hay-harvest from this old man, Levin went to speak to him in his apiary. Parmenich, a loquacious, handsome old man, welcomed Levin joyfully, showed him over his homestead, and told him all about the swarming of his bees that year; but to Levin’s questions about the hay-harvest he gave vague and reluctant answers. This still further confirmed Levin’s suspicions. He went to inspect the hay, examined the stacks, and saw that there could not be fifty cartloads in each. To put the peasant to the proof Levin ordered the carts on which the hay was being moved to be fetched, and one of the stacks to be carried to the barn. There were only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the Elder’s explanations that the hay had been loose, but had settled down in the stacks, and his swearing that all had been done in a ‘godly way’, Levin insisted that the hay had been apportioned without his order and that he would not accept the stacks as containing fifty loads each. After lengthy disputes it was settled that the peasants themselves should take those eleven stacks, counting them as fifty loads each, and that the owner’s share should be measured afresh. These disputes and the apportioning of the haycocks went on till it was time for the evening meal. When the last of the hay had been apportioned, Levin entrusted the rest of the supervision to the steward and seated himself on a haycock marked with a willow branch, looking with enjoyment at the meadow teeming with busy people.

 

Before him, within the bend of the river, beyond a marsh, moved a line of gaily-clad women, merrily chattering in their ringing voices, while the scattered hay was quickly forming into grey waving ridges on the light-green meadow. Men with hayforks followed the women, and the ridges grew into tall, wide and light haycocks. To the left, carts rattled along the bare meadow, and one after another the haycocks vanished, picked up in enormous forkfuls, and their places were taken by heavy carts with their huge loads of scented hay overhanging the horses’ backs.

 

‘Make hay while the sun shines, and you’ll have plenty,’ remarked the old beekeeper, sitting down beside Levin. ‘It’s more like tea than hay! See them picking it up, like ducklings picking up the food you’ve thrown to them!’ he added, pointing to where the hay was being loaded on the carts. ‘They’ve carted a good half since dinner-time. . . . Is that the last?’ he shouted to a lad who was driving past, standing on the front of a cart and flicking the ends of his hempen reins.

 

‘The last one, father,’ shouted the lad, reining in the horse and smilingly turning to a rosy young woman who, also smiling, sat inside the cart; then he drove on again.

 

‘Who is that? Your son?’ asked Levin.

 

‘My youngest,’ replied the old man with a smile of affection.

 

‘A fine fellow!’

 

‘Not a bad lad.’

 

‘And already married?’

 

‘Yes, just over two years.’

 

‘Have they any children?’

 

‘Children! All the first year he didn’t understand anything; and we chaffed him,’ answered the old man. ‘Well, this is hay! Regular tea!’ said he again, in order to change the subject.

 

Levin looked more attentively at Vanka Parmenich and his wife. They were loading their cart not far away. Vanka stood inside the cart patting and stamping down evenly in the cart the enormous bales of hay which his young wife first passed to him in armfuls and then pitched up on the fork. The young woman was working with ease, cheerfulness and skill. The fork could not at once penetrate the broad-bladed compressed hay, so she first loosened it with the prongs, then with a quick and springy movement, putting all the weight of her body on the fork, quickly straightened her red-girdled figure and stood erect, her full bosom thrown forward beneath the pinafore, and turning the fork dexterously, she pitched the hay high up into the cart. Vanka, with evident desire to save her every moment of unnecessary exertion, hurriedly caught the hay in his outspread arms and smoothed it evenly in the cart. When she had lifted the remaining hay to him with a rake, she shook the chaff from her neck, straightened the kerchief that had slipped from her forehead, which showed white where the sun had not reached it, and crawled under the cart to help rope up. Vanka showed her how to do this, and burst out laughing at something she said. Strong, young, newly-awakened love shone in both their faces.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 12

 

 

 

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THE hay was roped. Vanka jumped down and taking the bridle led away the good, well-fed horse. His wife threw her rake on top of the load, and swinging her arms went with vigorous steps to join the other women who had gathered in a circle. Having come out upon the road, Vanka took his place in the line of carts. The women, carrying their rakes over their shoulders, followed the carts, their coloured dresses gleaming brightly and their chatter ringing merrily. One of the women with a strange gruff voice started a song and sang it to the end, when fifty powerful voices, some gruff and others shrill, all at once took it up with a will.

 

The singing women were drawing nearer to Levin and he felt as if a thundercloud of merriment were approaching. The cloud moved past, enveloping him and the haycock upon which he sat, and the other haycocks, the carts, the whole of the meadow, and the distant fields. They all seemed to vibrate and heave with the strains of that wild, madly-merry song, interspersed with screams and whistling. Levin envied them their healthy gaiety and felt a wish to take part in that expression of the joy of living; but he could do nothing except lie and look and listen. When the company and their songs vanished out of sight and hearing, an oppressive feeling of discontent with his own lonely lot, his physical idleness and his hostility to the world overcame Levin. Some of those very peasants who had disputed with him about the hay — whom either he had wronged or who had tried to cheat him — those very peasants had bowed pleasantly to him, evidently not harbouring, and unable to harbour, any ill-will toward him, being not only unrepentant but even forgetful that they had been trying to cheat him. All had been drowned in the sea of their joyful common toil. God had given them the day and the strength, and both the day and the strength had been devoted to labour which had brought its own reward. For whom they had laboured and what the fruits of their labour would be was an extraneous and unimportant affair.

 

Levin had often admired that kind of life, had often envied the folk who lived it; but that day, especially after what he had seen for the first time of the relations between Vanka Parmenich and his young wife, it struck him that it depended on himself to change his wearisome, idle, and artificial personal life for that pure, delightful life of common toil.

 

The old man who had been sitting beside him had long since gone home. The peasants who lived near by had also gone home, and those from a distance had gathered together to have supper and spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unnoticed by them, still lay on the haycock, looking, listening, and thinking. The peasants who were staying in the meadow kept awake almost all the short summer night. At first the sounds of merry general talk and shouts of laughter over their supper could be heard, then songs and more laughter. The whole long day of toil had left upon them no trace of anything but merriment.

 

Just before dawn all became silent. The sounds of night — the ceaseless croaking of frogs, the snorting of horses through the morning mist over the meadow — could alone be heard. Awaking to reality Levin rose from his haycock, and glancing up at the stars realized that the night was nearly over.

 

‘Well, then, what shall I do? How shall I do it?’ he asked himself, trying to find expression for what he had been thinking and the feelings he had lived through in that short night. All his ideas and feelings separated themselves into three different lines of thought. The first was how to renounce his old life and discard his quite useless education. This renunciation would afford him pleasure and was quite easy and simple. The second was concerned with his notion of the life he now wished to lead. He was distinctly conscious of the simplicity, purity, and rightness of that life, and was convinced that in it he would find satisfaction, peace, and dignity, the absence of which was so painful to him. But the third thought was the question of how to make the change from his present life to that other one. And here no clear idea presented itself to his mind. Should he have a wife? Should he have work and the necessity to work? Should he leave Pokrovsk, buy land, join a peasant commune, marry a peasant girl? ‘How am I to do it?’ he again asked himself and could find no reply. ‘However, I have not slept all night and can’t render a clear account of myself now,’ he thought, ‘but I’ll clear it up later. One thing is certain: this night has decided my fate. All my former dreams of a family life were nonsense — not the right thing. Everything is much simpler and better than that. . . .’

 

‘How beautiful!’ he thought, looking up at a strange mother-of-pearl-coloured shell formed of fleecy clouds, in the centre of the sky just over his head. ‘How lovely everything is, this lovely night! And how did this shell get formed so quickly? A little while ago when I looked at the sky all was clear, but for two white strips. My views of life have changed in just the same unnoticeable way.’

 

Leaving the meadow, he went down the high road toward the village. A slight breeze was blowing and all looked grey and dull. There is generally a period of gloom just before daybreak and the complete triumph of light over darkness. Shivering with cold Levin walked rapidly with his eyes fixed on the ground.

 

‘What’s that? Who can it be coming?’ thought he, hearing the tinkling of bells and raising his head. At a distance of forty paces along the road on which he was walking he saw a coach with four horses abreast and luggage on top approaching him. The horses were pressing close together away from the ruts, but the skilful driver, sitting sideways on the box, guided them so that the coach wheels ran smoothly in the ruts.

 

That was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who might be inside he glanced in at the window absent-mindedly.

 

In one corner an elderly woman was dozing; and close to the window sat a young girl who had just wakened and was holding the ribbons of her white nightcap with both hands. Bright and thoughtful, full of that complicated refinement of a life to which Levin was a stranger, she looked across him at the glow of dawn.

 

At the very moment when this vision was about to disappear, her candid eyes fell on him. She recognized him and joyful surprise lit up her face. He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes in the world like them. In the whole world there was only one being able to unite in itself the universe and the meaning of life for him. It was Kitty. He guessed that she was on her way from the station to her sister’s house at Ergushovo. All that had so disturbed Levin during the sleepless night and all his resolutions vanished suddenly. He recalled with disgust his thoughts of marrying a peasant girl. There alone, inside that coach on the other side of the road, so rapidly receding from him, was the one possible solution of that riddle which had been weighing on him so painfully of late.

 

She did not look out again. The sound of the wheels could no longer be heard; the tinkling of the bells grew fainter. The barking of dogs proved that the coach was passing through the village, and only the empty fields, the village before him, and he himself walking solitary on the deserted road, were left.

 

He looked up at the sky, hoping to find there the shell he had been admiring, which had typified for him the reflections and feelings of the night. There in the unfathomable height a mystic change was going on and he could see no sign of anything like a shell; but a large cover of gradually diminishing fleecy cloudlets was spreading over half the sky, which had turned blue and grown brighter. It answered his questioning look with the same tenderness and the same remoteness.

 

‘No,’ said he to himself. ‘Beautiful as is that life of simplicity and toil, I cannot turn to it. I love her!’

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 13

 

 

 

—>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<—

 

 

 

NONE but those who knew Karenin most intimately knew that this apparently cold and sober-minded man had one weakness, quite inconsistent with the general trend of his character. Karenin could not with equanimity hear or see a child or a woman weeping. The sight of tears upset him and made him quite incapable of reasoning. The chief of his staff and his secretary knew this and warned women who came with petitions that they should on no account give way to tears if they did not want to spoil their case. ‘He will get angry and won’t listen to you,’ they said; and in such cases the mental perturbation which tears produced in Karenin really found expression in hurried bursts of anger. ‘I can do nothing for you. Kindly go away!’ he would shout on these occasions.

 

When Anna on their way home from the races announced to him what her relations with Vronsky were and immediately hid her face in her hands and began crying, Karenin, despite his indignation with her, was as usual overcome by that mental perturbation. Being aware of this and of the fact that any expression he could at that moment find for his feelings would be incompatible with the situation, he tried to conceal all signs of life within himself and neither moved nor looked at her. That was the cause of the strange deathlike look on his face which had so struck Anna. When they reached home he helped her out of the carriage and took leave of her with his usual courtesy, uttering non-committal words; he said he would let her know his decision next day.

 

His wife’s words, confirming as they did his worst suspicions, had given Karenin a cruel pain in his heart. This pain was rendered more acute by physical pity for her, evoked by her tears. But when alone in the carriage, to his surprise and joy he felt completely relieved of that pity and of the suspicions and jealousy that had lately so tormented him.

 

He felt like a man who has just had a tooth drawn which has been hurting him a long time. After terrible pain and a sensation as if something enormous, bigger than his whole head, were being pulled out of his jaw, he feels, scarcely believing in his happiness, that the thing which has so long been poisoning his life and engrossing his attention no longer exists, and that it is possible again to live, think, and be interested in other things. What Karenin experienced was a feeling of this kind: it had been a strange and terrible pain, but it was past, and he felt he could again live, and think of other things besides his wife.

 

‘Without honour, without heart, without religion; a depraved woman! I knew it and could see it all along, though I tried out of pity for her to deceive myself,’ thought he. And it really seemed to him that he had always seen it. He recalled all the details of their past life, and details which he had not previously considered wrong now proved to him clearly that she had always been depraved.

 

‘I made a mistake when I bound up my life with hers, but in my mistake there was nothing blameworthy, therefore I ought not to be unhappy. It is not I who am guilty,’ he said to himself, ‘but it is she. She does not concern me. She does not exist for me.’

 

What would happen to her and to her son, toward whom his feelings had changed as they had toward her, no longer occupied his mind. The one thing that preoccupied him was the question of how he could best divest himself of the mud with which she in her fall had bespattered him: of how to do it in the way which would be most decent, most convenient for him, and consequently fairest, and how he should continue his active, honest, and useful career. ‘I ought not to be unhappy because a despicable woman has committed a crime, but I must find the best way out of this painful situation in which she has placed me. And find it I will,’ said he to himself frowning more and more. ‘I’m not the first and shall not be the last’; and without taking into account the historical instances of wives’ unfaithfulness, beginning with Menelaus [mythical husband of Helen] and La Belle Hélène [a comic opera by Offenbach], whose memory had just recently been fresh in everybody’s mind, quite a number of cases of infidelity, the infidelity of modern wives, occurred to Karenin.

 

‘Daryalov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram . . . Yes, even Dram — that honest, business-like fellow . . . Semenov, Chagin, Sigonin . . .’ he passed them in review. ‘It’s true a kind of unreasonable ridicule falls on these men, but I never could see it in any other light than as a misfortune, and felt nothing but sympathy,’ Karenin reflected, though it was not true: he had never felt any sympathy of the kind, and the more cases he had come across of husbands being betrayed by their wives the better the opinion he had had of himself. ‘It is a misfortune that may befall anyone and it has befallen me. The only question is, how best to face the situation.’ And he began mentally reviewing the courses pursued by other men in similar positions.

 

‘Daryalov fought a duel. . . .’

 

In his youth Karenin had been particularly attracted by the idea of duelling, just because he was physically a timid man and was quite aware of it. He could not think without horror of a pistol being levelled at him, and had never used any kind of weapon. This horror had in his youth often induced him to take mental measure of his strength, in case he should ever be confronted by a situation in which it would be necessary to face danger. Since, however, he had achieved success and gained a firm position in the world he had long forgotten that feeling; but the old habit now revived and claimed its own, and the fear of being a coward was again so strong that he considered this point a long time and flattered his vanity with the idea of a duel, though he knew beforehand that he would on no account fight one.

 

‘Of course our Society is still so uncivilized — not as in England — that very many’ (among the many were those whose opinion Karenin particularly valued) ‘would regard a duel as the right thing; but what object would be gained? Supposing I challenged him . . .’ continued Karenin; and vividly picturing to himself the night he would spend after the challenge, and the sensation of having a pistol pointed at him, he shuddered and realized that he would never do it.

 

‘Supposing,’ he went on, ‘they showed me how to do it, placed me, and I pulled the trigger . . .’ He closed his eyes . . . ‘and it turned out that I had killed him . . .’ and he shook his head to drive away the stupid thought. ‘What sense is there in killing a man in order to define one’s relations with a guilty wife and a son? Nevertheless, I shall have to decide what to do with her.

 

‘But what is even more likely and sure to happen — is that I should be killed or wounded. Then I, an innocent man, should be the victim. That would be still more senseless. And this is not all. A challenge from me would not be an honest action. Do I not know beforehand that my friends would never allow me to go so far as to fight a duel, would not allow a statesman whom Russia needs to expose himself to danger? What, then, would happen?