Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy

breed like Pava, the tilled land ploughed with good ploughs, the nine fields surrounded with willows, the hundreds of acres of deeply manured land, the seed drills and all such things, were splendid if they could be worked by himself alone or with the help of friends and people in sympathy with him. But now he clearly saw (the book on agriculture which he was writing, in which the labourer was the chief factor in farming, helped much in this direction) that the agricultural work he was carrying on was founded on a bitter and obstinate struggle between himself and his labourers, in which on the one side — his — there was a continual and strenuous attempt to bring everything into accord with what were considered the best models, while on the other side there was the natural order of things. And he saw that in his struggle, in spite of extreme efforts on his part, and without any effort or even intention on the part of others, the only results achieved were that neither side was the winner, and that fine tools and splendid cattle and soil were quite uselessly damaged. But the chief point was that not only was the energy expended on the work wasted, but he could not help feeling now, when he saw the meaning of his pursuit laid bare before him, that the aim of his efforts was a most unworthy one. What was the essential cause of that hostility? He struggled to get every penny he could, and had to do so or he would not have been able to pay his labourers their wages, and they struggled to be allowed to work quietly, pleasantly, and just as they were used to work. It was to his interest that every labourer should get through as much work as possible and at the same time give his mind to it, not injuring the winnowing machine, the horse-rake, or the threshing machine, but working intelligently. The labourer wished to work in the pleasantest way possible, with intervals of rest, and especially to think unconcernedly about other things without having to reason. During that summer Levin noticed this continually.

      He gave orders to mow the clover for hay, choosing the inferior fields overgrown with grass and hemlock and not fit for seed; and they cut down all the best seed clover, defended themselves by saying that the foreman ordered them to do it, and comforted him with the assurance that he would get splendid hay; while he knew that they had done it simply because that clover was easiest to mow. He sent out the horse-rake to turn the hay and it got broken while tossing the first few rows, because the peasant found it dull to sit in the seat under the rotating wings; and Levin was told: ‘Don’t worry, sir! The women will toss it all in no time!’

      The English ploughs turned out useless, because it never entered the peasant’s head to lower the upturned ploughshare, and as he forced it through at the turning he spoiled the ground and strained the horses; and Levin was told not to worry! The horses were allowed to stray into the wheat-field because not one of the peasants wanted to be watchman, and in spite of its having been forbidden the labourers took turns to watch the horses at night; so Vanka, who had been at work all day, fell asleep, and confessed his guilt, saying, ‘I am in your hands, sir!’

      Three of the best calves had been overfed by being turned into the meadow where the clover had been cut, without any water to drink, and the peasants would on no account admit that the clover had injured them. To comfort Levin he was told that his neighbour had lost a hundred head of cattle in three days. All this happened not because anyone wished to harm Levin or his farming; on the contrary he well knew that they liked him and considered him a homely gentleman — high praise from a peasant. It was done simply because the labourers wished to work merrily and without care, while his interests were not only foreign and incomprehensible to them but flatly opposed to their own just interests. Levin had long felt dissatisfied with his relation to the work on his estate. He had seen that the boat was leaking but had not found or looked for the leak, and perhaps had purposely deceived himself, for had he been disillusioned in that work, he would have had nothing left. But now he could deceive himself no longer.

      His agricultural pursuits had not only ceased to interest him but had become repulsive, and he could no longer give his mind to them.

      Added to this there was Kitty Shcherbatskaya not more than twenty miles away, and he wanted to meet her, yet could not. When he called on Dolly, she had asked him to come again and come with the object of once more proposing to her sister, letting him feel that her sister would now accept him. Levin himself having seen Kitty Shcherbatskaya knew that he had not ceased to love her, yet he could not go to the Oblonskys’ house while she was there. That he had proposed and she had refused him had put an impossible barrier between them.

      ‘I cannot ask her to be my wife just because she cannot be the wife of the man she wanted,’ he said to himself, and this thought rendered him cold and hostile toward her.

      ‘I shall not have the strength to speak to her without reproach or to look at her without ill-will, and she will only hate me all the more — as it is only right she should! Besides, how can I go there now after what Darya Alexandrovna told me? Can I help betraying what she told me? And I should come magnanimously to forgive her, to show mercy to her! I — stand before her in the rôle of one who forgives her and honours her with his love! Why did Darya Alexandrovna tell me this? I might have met her accidentally and then all would have come naturally, but now it is impossible!’

      Dolly sent to him to ask for a side-saddle for Kitty.

      ‘I have been told,’ she wrote, ‘that you have a side-saddle. I hope you will bring it yourself.’

      That was more than he could stand. ‘How can an intelligent woman with any delicacy so humiliate a sister? He wrote ten notes and tore them all up, sending the saddle at last without any reply. To say that he would come was impossible, because he could not come; to say that something prevented him from coming, or that he was leaving home, was still worse. He sent the saddle without an answer, conscious of doing something shameful; and next day, putting the disagreeable management of the estate into the hands of the steward, he went away to a distant district to visit his friend Sviyazhsky, who had splendid shooting and had long been asking him to come and stay with him.

      The snipe marshes in the Surovsky district had for a long time appeared tempting to Levin, but he had put off his visit because of his farm-work. But now he was glad to go away from the proximity of Kitty and from his farm, and especially to go shooting, an occupation which served him as the best solace in all his troubles.

      Chapter 25

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      THERE was no railway or stage-coach to the Surovsky district, and Levin went in his own tarantas [a four-wheeled Russian carriage without springs on a long flexible wooden chassis, suitable for bad roads].

      Halfway he stopped to feed his horses at a well-to-do peasant’s house. The baldheaded, fresh-faced old man, with a red beard which was growing grey round the cheeks, opened the gates and pressed close to the post to let the three-horsed vehicle enter. After showing the coachman to a place in a lean-to, in a large, clean, tidy, newly-constructed yard where stood some charred wooden ploughs, the old man invited Levin to enter the house. A cleanly-dressed young woman with goloshes on her stockingless feet was washing the floor in the passage. The dog that followed Levin frightened her, but when she was told that it would not hurt her she at once began to laugh at her own alarm. After pointing to the door with her bare arm she again stooped, hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.

      ‘Want a samovar?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes, please.’

      The room Levin entered was a large one with a tiled stove and a partition. Under the shelf with the icons stood a table decorated with a painted pattern, a bench, and two chairs. By the door stood a little cupboard with crockery. The shutters were closed and there were not many flies in the room, which was so clean that Levin took care to keep Laska (who had been bathing in the puddles on the way) from trampling on the floor, telling her to lie down in a corner by the door. Having looked round the room, he went out into the backyard. The good-looking woman in goloshes, with two empty pails swinging from a wooden yoke, ran down before him to fetch water from the well.

      ‘Look alive!’ the old man called merrily after, and approached Levin. ‘Is it to Nicholas Ivanich Sviyazhsky you are going, sir? He too stops at our place,’ he began garrulously, leaning on the banisters