III

1

Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev had wished to rest from his intellectual labor, but instead of recuperating abroad, as was his habit, he went at the end of May to see his brother in the country. According to his convictions, the very best life was the country life. He had come to see his brother now to enjoy this life. Konstantin Levin was very glad, especially since he was no longer expecting his brother Nikolai that summer. For all his love and respect for Sergei Ivanovich, though, Konstantin Levin felt awkward in the country with his brother. It was awkward, even unpleasant, for him to see his brother’s attitude toward the countryside. For Konstantin Levin, the country was the place of life, that is, joys, sufferings, and labor; for Sergei Ivanovich, the country was, on one hand, rest from labor, and on the other, a useful antidote to corrupt influences, which he took with satisfaction and an awareness of its benefit. For Konstantin Levin, the country was good because it offered an arena for labor that was undoubtedly useful; for Sergei Ivanovich, the country was especially good because one could and should do nothing there. Moreover, even Sergei Ivanovich’s attitude toward the common people dismayed Konstantin somewhat. Sergei Ivanovich said that he loved and knew the people and often conversed with peasants, that he knew how to do that well, without pretense or condescension, and out of each such conversation he would deduce general facts in the people’s favor and as proof that he knew the people. Konstantin Levin did not care for this attitude toward the people. For Konstantin, the people were merely the main participant in the common labor, and in spite of all his respect and vital love for the peasant, which he had probably imbibed, as he himself used to say, with his peasant wet nurse’s milk, he, as a participant with the peasant in a common good who was sometimes enraptured by the power, humility, and righteousness of these men, very often, when their common good demanded other qualities, became embittered at the people for their fecklessness, slovenliness, drunkenness, and lying. Had he been asked whether he liked the people, Konstantin Levin would decidedly not have known how to reply. He did and didn’t like the people, just as he did and didn’t like men in general. Naturally, being a good man, he loved men more than not, and so too he did the common people. But like or not like the people as something distinct he could not because not only did he live with the people, not only were all his interests tied to the people, but he considered himself to be a part of the people, did not see between himself and the people any distinctive qualities or shortcomings, and could not contrast himself to the people. Moreover, although he had lived for a long time in the closest of relations with the peasants as employer and arbitrator and, most of all, adviser (the peasants trusted him and would come from as far as forty versts for advice), he did not have any definitive opinion of the people, and he would have been as hard put to answer the question of whether he knew the people as the question of whether he liked the people. For him to say that he knew the people would have been the same as saying that he knew men. He was continually observing and learning about all kinds of men, including peasants, whom he considered fine and interesting men, and he was constantly noticing in them new traits, adjusting his former opinions about them, and formulating new ones. Sergei Ivanovich was just the opposite. Exactly as he loved and praised country life in contrast to the life he did not like, so too he loved the people in contrast to the class of men whom he did not like and so too he knew the people as something opposite to men in general. In his methodical mind, distinct forms of popular life took shape clearly, deduced in part from popular life itself but primarily from its opposite. He never altered his opinion about the people or his sympathetic attitude toward them.

In the disagreements that arose between the brothers in their opinion of the people, Sergei Ivanovich always defeated his brother precisely because Sergei Ivanovich did have definite ideas about the people, their nature, characteristics, and tastes; Konstantin Levin had no definite and unwavering idea, so that in their disputes Konstantin was always caught contradicting himself.

For Sergei Ivanovich, his younger brother was a fine fellow, with a heart that was in the right place (as he expressed himself in French) but with a mind that, while fairly quick, nonetheless was subject to the impressions of the moment and so filled with contradictions. With the condescension of an older brother he sometimes explained to him the meaning of things, but he could find no pleasure in arguing with him because he was too easily defeated.

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of tremendous intellect and culture, noble in the highest sense of the word, and endowed with an ability to work for the common good. But in the depths of his soul, the older he became and the better he came to know his brother, the more and more often it occurred to him that his capacity for working for the common good, of which he felt himself utterly lacking, might not be a quality but, on the contrary, a lack of something—not a lack of good, honest, and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of life force, of what is called heart, of that striving which drives a man, of all the innumerable life paths offered, to select and desire that one alone. The better he came to know his brother, the more he remarked that Sergei Ivanovich as well as many other figures acting for the common good had not been led by the heart to this love for the common good but had reasoned with their mind that engaging in this was right and for this reason only engaged in it. Levin was confirmed in this assumption as well by the observation that his brother did not take the common welfare and the immortal soul any more to heart than he did a game of chess or the clever design of a new machine.

Besides this, it was awkward for Konstantin Levin with his brother in the country also because in the country, especially in the summer, Levin was constantly busy with the farm and there was not enough of the long summer day to get done everything that needed doing, whereas Sergei Ivanovich was relaxing. But although he was relaxing now, that is, not working on his writing, he was so accustomed to mental activity that he loved expressing in elegant, concise form the thoughts that did occur to him, and he loved to have someone listen. His most usual and natural listener was his brother, and so, in spite of the amiable simplicity of their relations, Konstantin felt awkward leaving him alone. Sergei Ivanovich loved to lie down in the grass in the sun and rest that way, basking, and jabbering lazily.

“You wouldn’t believe what a pleasure this backwoods idleness is for me,” he told his brother. “Not a thought in my head. You could roll a ball around in there.”

But Konstantin Levin found it boring to sit and listen to him, especially because he knew that without him they were carting manure to an as yet un-plowed field and would dump it God only knew how if he wasn’t there to watch; and they wouldn’t screw the shares onto the plows but would take them off and then say that the plows were a useless invention, nothing like the old wooden plow, and so on.

“Enough of you pacing in the heat,” Sergei Ivanovich was telling him.

“No, I must run to my office for a minute,” said Levin, and he dashed off to the fields.

2

In the first few days of June, the old nurse and housekeeper, Agafya Mikhailovna, while taking a jar of mushrooms she had just salted to the cellar, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The young, talkative district doctor, who had just completed his studies, arrived. He examined the wrist, said that it was not dislocated, applied compresses, and, staying for dinner, evidently enjoyed his conversation with the renowned Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev and told him, in order to display his own enlightened view of things, all the district gossip, complaining of the bad situation with the district council. Sergei Ivanovich listened closely, questioned him, and aroused by a new listener, got to talking and expressed several pointed and weighty comments, which were respectfully appreciated by the young doctor, and arrived at that lively state of mind, familiar to his brother, at which he usually arrived after a brilliant and lively discussion. After the doctor’s departure, Sergei Ivanovich expressed a desire to take his fishing rod to the river. He liked to fish and seemed to take pride in the fact that he could enjoy such a foolish occupation.

Konstantin Levin, who needed to get to the plowing and the meadow, offered to take his brother in the cabriolet.

It was that time, the turning point of summer, when this year’s crop is already assured, when concerns arise about the next year’s sowing, and the reaping approaches, when the rye is formed but grayish-green, not yet full, and still waves its light spike in the wind, when the green oats, clumps of yellow grass scattered among them, droop unevenly due to the late sowings, when the early buckwheat is already bursting, covering the ground, when the fallow lands trampled to stone by cattle that have left paths too hard for the wooden plow have been half-plowed over, when the loads of manure carted in have dried and the smell mingles with the honey grasses at dawn and in the lowlands awaiting the scythe is a solid sea of preserved meadows and blackening piles of weeded sorrel stalks.

It was that time when there is a brief lull in the farmwork before the start of the harvest, which is repeated every year and every year calls for all the people’s strength. The harvest was marvelous, and there were clear hot summer days and short, dewy nights.

The brothers had to cross a wood in order to reach the meadows. Sergei Ivanovich spent the entire time admiring the beauty of the woods choked with leaves, pointing out to his brother on the dark and shady side an old linden tree with gaudy yellow stipules about to bloom, and then to the young shoots, gleaming like emeralds, of this year’s trees. Konstantin Levin did not like to talk or hear about the beauty of nature. Words robbed him of the beauty of what he saw. He nodded to his brother but unconsciously began thinking about something else. When they had passed through the wood, his entire attention was swallowed up by the view of the fallow field on the slope—where it was yellow from the grass, where it had been knocked down and cut up in patches, where it was dotted with piles, and where it was plowed. A string of carts was crossing the field. Levin counted the wagons and was satisfied that everything would be carted out that needed to be, and his thoughts shifted at the sight of the meadows to the matter of the mowing. He always experienced something that especially touched him to the quick in the harvesting of the hay. Riding up to the meadow, Levin brought his horse to a halt.

There was still morning dew left on the thick undergrowth of the grass, and Sergei Ivanovich, so his feet would not get wet, asked to be driven across the meadow in the cabriolet to the brittle willow bushes where they caught perch. As much as Konstantin Levin regretted crushing his grass, he drove into the meadow. The tall grass softly wound itself around the wheels and the horse’s legs, leaving its seed on the wet spokes and hubs.

His brother sat down under a bush after he had sorted out his fishing rods, and Levin led the horse away, tied it up, and stepped into the vast gray-green sea of the meadow, which was unstirred by the wind. The silky grass with its ripening seeds came up nearly to his waist where the ground had been flooded.

Cutting across the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out on the road and met an old man with a swollen eye carrying a beehive.

“What’s this? Did you catch that, Fomich?” he asked.

“What do you mean catch it, Konstantin Mitrich! I wish I could just hold on to our own. This here’s the second time one’s gone. … Thanks be, the boys ran ’em down. They’re plowing at your place. Unhitched the horse and ran ’em down.”

“Well, what do you say, Fomich, mow or wait a while?”

“Well there! Our way’s to wait ’til St. Peter’s Day. But you always mow before. Oh well, please God, we’ve got good grass. Plenty of room for the cattle.”

“And the weather, what do you think?”

“That’s God’s doing. Maybe the weather’ll hold.”

Levin walked up to his brother. Sergei Ivanovich wasn’t catching anything, but he wasn’t bored and seemed in the most cheerful of spirits. Levin saw that, stirred up by his conversation with the doctor, he was in a mood to talk. Levin, on the contrary, wanted to get home as quickly as possible to give orders about summoning the mowers for tomorrow and to resolve his doubts about the mowing, which had him seriously concerned.

“How about it, shall we go?” he said.

“What’s the rush? Let’s sit. But you’re soaked through! They may not be biting, but it’s fine here. Any expedition is fine because you’re in touch with nature. How splendid this steel-gray water is!” he said. “These meadow banks,” he continued, “have always reminded me of a riddle. Do you know it? The grass says to the water: but we sway and sway.”

“I don’t know that riddle,” Levin responded dolefully.

3

“You know, I’ve been thinking about you,” said Sergei Ivanovich. “It’s like nothing on earth what’s going on here in the district, as the doctor was telling me; he’s a far from stupid young man. I’ve always told you, it’s not good that you don’t go to the assemblies and that you distance yourself from district affairs in general. If decent men are going to distance themselves, of course it’s all going to go God only knows how. We pay money, and it goes for salaries but not for schools, medics, midwives, pharmacies, none of that.”

“I did make an effort, though,” replied Levin quietly and reluctantly. “I just can’t! What am I to do?”

“What do you mean you can’t? I confess, I don’t understand. I don’t admit your indifference or inability. It couldn’t be simple laziness, could it?”

“Neither the one nor the other nor the third. I made an effort and I see that I can accomplish nothing,” said Levin.

He was not listening very closely to what his brother was saying. Gazing across the river at the plowed field, he distinguished something black but couldn’t tell whether it was a horse or his steward on horseback.

“Why can’t you accomplish anything? You made an attempt and it didn’t succeed, in your opinion, so you’ve resigned yourself. Where is your self-respect?”

“Self-respect,” said Levin, cut to the quick by his brother’s words, “I don’t understand. If they told me at the university that others understood integral calculus but I didn’t, that’s self-respect. But here one must first be convinced that one must have certain abilities for these matters and, mainly, that all these matters are very important.”

“What? This isn’t important?” said Sergei Ivanovich, cut to the quick that his brother found what interested him unimportant, and in particular that he was obviously barely listening to him.

“I don’t find it important, it just doesn’t interest me, what do you want?” replied Levin, having figured out that what he had seen was the steward and that the steward had probably released the peasants from plowing. They were turning their plows over. “Could they really be through plowing?” he thought.

“Listen to me, though,” said his older brother, his handsome, clever face frowning, “there are limits to everything. It’s all well and good to be an eccentric and a sincere man and to dislike hypocrisy, I know all that; but you know, what you’re saying either makes no sense or makes very bad sense. How can you find it unimportant that the common people you love, as you assure me …”

“I never assured him that,” thought Konstantin Levin.

“… are dying without aid? That ignorant peasant women are letting their children starve to death, and the people are stagnating in ignorance and held in thrall by the village scribe, while you have been handed the means to remedy this, and you aren’t helping because in your opinion it’s not important.”

Thus Sergei Ivanovich posed a dilemma for him: either you are so undeveloped that you can’t see all you might do, or else you don’t want to forgo your tranquility, your vanity, your I don’t know what, in order to do this.

Konstantin Levin sensed that he was left with no choice but to surrender or admit an insufficiency of love for the common good, and this both insulted and upset him.

“It’s both,” he said decisively. “I don’t see how I could have—”

“Why not? Couldn’t you put up the money and provide medical assistance?”

“That’s impossible, it seems to me. For the four thousand square versts of our district, with our spring thaws, our storms, our working season, I don’t see the possibility of offering medical assistance everywhere. And I don’t really believe in medicine anyway.”

“Excuse me, that’s unfair. I can cite thousands of examples. Well, what about schools?”

“What good are schools?”

“What do you mean? Can there be any doubt of the benefit of an education? If it’s good for you, then it’s good for anyone.”

Konstantin Levin felt himself backed up against the wall morally and so became worked up and involuntarily expressed the main reason for his indifference to the common good.

“Maybe it’s good, but why should I bother about instituting dispensaries that I shall never use, or schools where I shall never send my children, where the peasants don’t want to send their children, and I also don’t know for a certainty that they should be sent?” he said.

Sergei Ivanovich was momentarily stunned by this unexpected insight into the matter, but he immediately formulated a new plan of attack.

He said nothing for a moment, pulled out a fishing rod, cast it, and smiling, turned to his brother.

“Well, excuse me. In the first place, dispensaries are needed. We ourselves just sent for the district doctor for Agafya Mikhailovna.”

“Well, I think the wrist will stay crooked.”

“That’s an open question. And then you need and value a literate peasant as a worker more.”

“No, I don’t care who you ask,” Konstantin Levin replied firmly, “as a worker, a literate man is much worse. He can’t repair the roads; and as soon as bridges go up, they’re stolen.”

“Actually,” said a frowning Sergei Ivanovich, who did not like contradictions and in particular the kind that were constantly jumping from one thing to another and raising new arguments that lacked any connections, so that you couldn’t know what to respond to, “actually, that’s not the point. Excuse me, do you admit that education is a good for the people?”

“I do,” said Levin in despair, and immediately thought he had not said what he actually thought. He sensed that if he admitted this he would have it proved to him that he was speaking inanities that made no sense. How this would be proved to him he did not know, but he did know without a doubt that this would be proved to him logically, and he awaited this proof.

The argument ended much more simply than Konstantin Levin had anticipated.

“If you admit it’s a good,” said Sergei Ivanovich, “then you, as an honest man, cannot fail to love and sympathize with this cause and so desire to work for it.”

“But I still don’t admit this cause is good,” said Konstantin Levin, turning red.

“What? But you just said—”

“That is, I don’t admit it’s either good or possible.”

“You can’t know that without making an effort.”

“Well, let’s just suppose,” said Levin, although he did not think this at all, “let’s just suppose that it’s so. I still don’t see the point in me concerning myself with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“No, now that we’ve started this conversation, then explain it to me from the philosophical standpoint,” said Levin.

“I don’t understand what philosophy has to do with it,” said Sergei Ivanovich in a tone, Levin thought, that made it seem as if he did not recognize his brother’s right to discuss philosophy. This irritated Levin.

“Here’s what!” he began, fuming. “I think that the engine of all our actions is, after all, personal happiness. Now, in the district institutions, I as a noblemen see nothing that might add to my well-being. The roads are no better and can be no better; and my horses take me over bad roads. I don’t need doctors or dispensaries, and I don’t need a justice of the peace—I have never appealed to him and never will. Schools are not only unnecessary for me, they are even harmful, as I have told you. For me, the district institutions mean simply the obligation to pay eighteen kopeks on the desyatina, travel to town, sleep with bedbugs, and listen to all kinds of nonsense and vile things, and it does not arouse my personal interest.”

“Excuse me,” Sergei Ivanovich interrupted with a smile, “but personal interest did not arouse us to work for the peasants’ emancipation, yet we did.”

“No!” interrupted Konstantin, fuming even more. “The peasants’ emancipation was a different matter. Here there was personal interest. We wanted to cast off this yoke which was crushing us, all good men. But to be a town councilor, to discuss how many valves are needed and how to install drains in a town where I don’t live; to be a juror and judge a peasant who stole a ham, and spend six hours listening to the defense and prosecution go on and on inanely and as the presiding officer ask my old Alyoshka the Fool, ‘Do you admit, Mr. Defendant, the fact of the ham’s abduction?’ ‘How’s that?’”

Konstantin Levin was now quite carried away and began imagining the presiding officer and Alyoshka the Fool; to him this all seemed very much to the point.

But Sergei Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders.

“So what are you trying to say?”

“I’m merely trying to say that those rights which I … which affect my interest I will always defend with all my powers; that when they conducted a search among us students and the gendarmes read our letters, I’m ready to defend these rights with all my powers, to defend my rights to an education and freedom. I understand the military obligation that affects the fate of my children, my brothers, and myself; I’m prepared to discuss what concerns me; but to judge where to distribute the forty thousand of the district’s money, or pass judgment on Alyoshka the Fool—that I don’t and cannot understand.”

Konstantin Levin spoke as if the dam holding back his words had burst. Sergei Ivanovich smiled.

“But say you’re to be tried tomorrow. Would you prefer to be judged in the old criminal chamber?”

“I’m not going to be tried. I’m not going to knife anyone, and I don’t need this. Really now!” he continued, again leaping over to something completely irrelevant, “our institutions and all this—they’re like the birch trees we used to stick in the ground on Trinity Sunday, so that it would look like a forest that grew by itself in Europe, and in my heart of hearts I can’t believe in these birches!”¹

Sergei Ivanovich merely shrugged his shoulders, with this gesture expressing his amazement at where these birches had come from that had now popped up in their debate, although he immediately understood what his brother was trying to say.

“Forgive me, but one cannot reason that way,” he commented.

But Konstantin Levin felt like justifying this shortcoming he knew in himself, his indifference toward the common welfare, and so he continued.

“I think,” said Konstantin, “that no activity can be lasting unless it has a basis in personal interest. This is a general truth, a philosophical truth,” he said, repeating with decisiveness the word “philosophical,” as if wishing to show that he too had the right, like anyone else, to speak of philosophy.

Sergei Ivanovich smiled again. “He has some philosophy of his own there, too, in the service of his own inclinations,” he thought.

“Oh, stop going on about philosophy,” he said. “Philosophy’s main task throughout the ages has consisted specifically in finding the essential connection that exists between the individual and the common interest. But that’s beside the point, and what is to the point is that I just need to correct your comparison. The birches aren’t stuck in, rather some are planted and some are sown, and you must treat these more carefully. Only those nations have a future, only those peoples can be called historical that have an instinct for what is important and significant in their institutions and treasure them.”

Sergei Ivanovich had shifted the issue to a historical-philosophical sphere that was beyond Konstantin Levin’s reach and showed him just how incorrect his view was.

“As for the fact that you don’t like it, that, excuse me, is our Russian laziness and arrogance, and I’m certain that this is a temporary delusion in you and will pass.”

Konstantin did not reply. He felt beset on all sides, yet at the same time he felt that his brother had not understood what he had wanted to say. He just didn’t know why he hadn’t. Was it because he was unable to state clearly what he meant, or was it because his brother didn’t want to understand him—or couldn’t? He did not dwell on these thoughts, however, and raising no objections to his brother, became lost in thought about an entirely different, personal matter of his own.

Sergei Ivanovich reeled in his last line, Konstantin unhitched the horse, and they drove off.

4

The personal matter that had occupied Levin during his conversation with his brother was the following. The previous year, after arriving at the mowing one day and becoming very angry with the steward, Levin had employed his own personal means for calming himself—he had taken a scythe from a peasant and begun mowing.

He had liked this work so much that he had taken up mowing several times; he had mown the entire meadow in front of his house and this year had been devising a plan for himself since spring—to spend entire days mowing with the peasants. Since his brother’s arrival he had been contemplating whether or not he should mow. He felt guilty about leaving his brother alone for an entire day at a time, and he was afraid that his brother might ridicule him for this. As he was crossing the meadow, though, he had recalled his impressions from mowing and he had nearly decided that he would. After the irritating conversation with his brother, he recalled this intention once again.

“I need physical movement or else my temper is definitely spoiled,” he thought, and he decided to mow, regardless of how awkward this might be in the eyes of his brother and the people.

Before evening fell, Konstantin Levin went to his office to give instructions about work and to send to the villages for mowers tomorrow to mow Kalinov meadow, his biggest and best.

“And send my scythe to Titus, please, and have him sharpen it and bring it around tomorrow; I may do some mowing myself as well,” he said, trying not to get embarrassed.

The steward smiled and said, “Yes, sir.”

That evening at tea Levin told his brother, too.

“The weather seems to have settled in,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll be starting to mow.”

“I like that work very much,” said Sergei Ivanovich.

“I like that work awfully well. I’ve mown myself occasionally with the peasants and I mean to spend all day tomorrow mowing.”

Sergei Ivanovich raised his head and looked at his brother with curiosity.

“How’s that? On an equal footing with the peasants, all day?”

“Yes, it’s very pleasant,” said Levin.

“It’s marvelous as physical exercise, but you’re scarcely going to be able to stand it,” said Sergei Ivanovich without the slightest ridicule.

“I’ve tried it. At first it’s hard, but then you get drawn in. I don’t think I’ll lag behind.”

“Fancy that! But tell me, how do the peasants regard this? They must have a good laugh about the master being a crackpot.”

“No, I don’t think so. Anyway it’s such delightful and yet hard work that there’s no time to think.”

“But how are you going to have your dinner with them? It would be a little awkward for you to have a Lafite and roast turkey sent there.”²

“No, at the same time as their rest I’ll just come home.”

The next morning Konstantin Levin arose earlier than usual, but the instructions for the farm detained him, and when he arrived at the mowing the mowers were already moving down the second row.

As he came down the hill a view opened up of the shaded, already mown portion of the meadow with graying rows and black piles of the caftans the mowers had removed at the spot where they had started the first row.

Due to the way he was approaching, the view that opened up to him was of peasants following one after the other, strung out in a line and differently swinging their scythes, some wearing their caftans, some in shirts alone. He counted forty-two men.

They were moving slowly across the meadow’s uneven bottomland, where there was an old weir. Levin recognized several of his men. Here was Ermil wearing a very long white shirt, bent forward swinging his scythe; here was the young fellow Vaska, who had been a driver for Levin, taking in each row with a single sweep. Here too was Titus, Levin’s teacher in mowing, a skinny little peasant. He walked in the lead without bending, as if he were playing with the scythe, cutting down his own broad row.

Levin dismounted, tied his horse up by the road, and fell in step with Titus, who had retrieved a second scythe from the bushes and handed it to him.

“It’s ready, master. It shaves, mows all by itself,” said Titus, removing his cap with a smile as he handed him the scythe.

Levin took the scythe and began trying to get the feel of it. The sweating and cheerful mowers who had finished their rows came out on the road one after the other and, laughing, greeted the master. They all watched him, but no one said anything until a tall old man with a wrinkled and beardless face and wearing a sheepskin jacket came out on the road and addressed him.

“Look out, master, now you’ve started, there’s no laggin’!” he said, and Levin heard the stifled laughter among the mowers.

“I’ll try not to,” he said, standing behind Titus and waiting for the time to begin.

“Look out,” the old man repeated.

Titus made room, and Levin started off behind him. The grass was low along the shoulders, and Levin, who had not mown in a long time and was embarrassed by the glances cast at him, for the first few minutes mowed badly, although he had a powerful swing. He could hear voices behind him:

“Not hafted right, handle’s too tall, see, he’s got to bend,” said one.

“Press more on your heel,” said another.

“All right, that’s enough. He’ll get the feel,” the old man went on. “See, he’s off. Take a row too wide and you tire yourself out. The master, he doesn’t have to, he’s trying for himself! But see, the missed edge! One of us’d catch it good for that.”

The grass got softer, and Levin, listening but not responding and trying to mow as well as possible, followed Titus. They went about a hundred paces. Titus was still going, not stopping or showing the slightest weariness; Levin, however, was already afraid he wouldn’t make it: he was that tired.

He felt he’d been swinging for all he was worth and decided to ask Titus to stop. But right then Titus himself stopped, bent over, picked up some grass, wiped his scythe, and began to sharpen it. Levin straightened up and with a deep sigh looked around. Coming along behind him was a peasant and he too was obviously tired because right then, before he reached Levin, he came to a halt and started sharpening. Titus sharpened his own scythe and Levin’s and they continued.

On the second pass it was the same. Titus moved swing after swing, without stopping or tiring. Levin moved along behind him, trying not to lag, and it kept getting harder and harder: the moment would come when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Titus would stop and sharpen.

And so they finished the first row. And this long row seemed especially hard to Levin, but then, when the row was over, Titus, tossing his scythe over his shoulder, taking slow steps, went back to retrace the prints his heels had left through the mowing, and Levin started down his own mowing in exactly the same way. Although the sweat was pouring off his face and dripping from his nose and his entire back was as wet as if he had been doused with water, he felt very good. In particular, he was pleased by the fact that he now knew he would last.

His satisfaction was poisoned only by the knowledge that his row was not good. “I’ll swing my arm less and my whole torso more,” he thought, comparing the row Titus had cut, straight as a line, with his own scattered row lying unevenly.

The first row, as Levin had noticed, Titus had walked especially quickly, probably wishing to test the master, and the row had been a long one. The next rows were easier, but Levin still had to exert all his strength so as not to fall behind the peasants.

He thought nothing and desired nothing other than not to lag behind the peasants and do the best work he could. He heard only the clanging of the scythes and in front of himself saw the erect figure of Titus pulling ahead, the semicircular mown swath, the grass and the blossoms near the blade of his scythe bending in slow waves, and ahead of himself the end, the road, where his rest would come.

Without understanding what it was or where it had come from, in the middle of working he suddenly experienced a pleasant sensation of cold across his hot, sweaty shoulders. He glanced at the sky while they were sharpening the scythes. A low, lumbering cloud ran up and rain came pouring down. Some of the peasants went for their caftans and put them on; others like Levin merely shrugged their shoulders in delight under the pleasant refreshment.

They did another row and another. They did long rows and short, with good grass and bad. Levin lost all awareness of time and could not have said whether it was late or early now. A change was beginning to come about in his work now that afforded him tremendous pleasure. In the middle of his work moments came over him when he forgot what he was doing and it became easy for him, and during those very minutes his row came out almost as evenly and well as Titus’s. However, as soon as he remembered what he was doing and started trying to do better, he immediately felt just how difficult his labor was and the row came out badly.

Finishing up yet another row, he was about to start another, but Titus stopped, walked up to the old man, and said something to him quietly. They both looked at the sun. “What are they talking about and why aren’t they starting the row?” thought Levin, not guessing that the peasants had been mowing without letup for at least four hours and it was time for their lunch.

“Lunch, master,” said the old man.

“You mean it’s time? Well then, lunch it is.”

Levin gave Titus back the scythe and along with the peasants, who had headed off toward their caftans for their bread across the lightly rain-spattered rows of the long, mown expanse, went to his horse. Only here did he realize that he had misjudged the weather and that the rain was wetting his hay.

“It will spoil the hay,” he said.

“It’s all right, master, mow in the rain, rake when it’s fine,” said the old man.

Levin unhitched his horse and went home to drink his coffee.

Sergei Ivanovich had only just arisen. After drinking his coffee, Levin left to return to the mowing before Sergei Ivanovich could dress and come out into the dining room.

5

After lunch Levin ended up in a row not where he had been before but between an old joker who invited him to be neighbors and a young peasant who had just married in the autumn and who had gone to mow his first summer.

The old man, holding himself erect, walked ahead, moving his outturned feet evenly and widely, and with a precise and even movement that did not seem to cost him more effort than swinging his arms as he walked, as if he were playing, turned down a tall, identical row. It was not exactly he but rather his sharp scythe itself that cut a swath through the succulent grass.

Behind Levin came young Mishka. His sweet young face circled by a braid of fresh grass wound over his hair strained from his effort; but whenever anyone glanced at him, he smiled. Clearly he would have died rather than admit that it was hard for him.

Levin went between them. In the worst heat the mowing was not so very hard for him. The sweat pouring down cooled him off, and the sun, which burned his back, head, and arm bared to the elbow, lent fortitude and resolution to his work; and more and more often he experienced those moments of that unconscious state when you don’t have to think about what you’re doing. The scythe cut by itself. These were happy moments. Even more joyous were the moments when, as they neared the stream where the rows ended, the old man wiped his scythe with thick wet grass, rinsed its steel in fresh stream water, dipped his tin cup, and offered some to Levin.

“Here you go. My kvass!³ Not bad, eh?” he said, winking.

Indeed, Levin had never drunk a beverage like this warm water with the floating bits of greenery and the rusty taste from the tin cup. Immediately after this there was a slow, blissful walk with his hand on his scythe when he could wipe away the streaming sweat, fill his lungs with air, and look around at the whole extended string of mowers and at what was happening around him, in the woods and in the field.

The longer Levin mowed, the more often he felt these moments of oblivion when it wasn’t his arms swinging the scythe but the scythe itself bringing along his body, which was fully aware of itself and full of life, and as if by magic, without him thinking about it, correct and precise work performed itself. These were the most blissful moments of all.

It was only hard when he had to halt this now unconscious movement and think about how he should mow around a hummock or unweeded sorrel. The old man did this easily. As a hummock approached, he would alter his motion and using either his heel or the end of his scythe crop the hummock on either side with short strokes. As he did this, he was constantly examining and observing what was coming up ahead; or else he was picking a stalk of sorrel, eating it or offering it to Levin, or else he was flinging a twig aside with the tip of his scythe, or examining a quail’s nest after the hen had flown out right from under the scythe, or catching a viper that had landed in his path, and lifting it with his scythe as if on a fork, he would show Levin and toss it aside.

Both Levin and the young fellow behind him found these changes in their movement difficult. After settling into one strenuous movement, they both got caught up in the work and were unable to change their motion and at the same time observe what was in front of them.

Levin did not notice the time pass. Had he been asked how long he had been mowing, he would have said half an hour—though it was approaching dinnertime. As he started down a row, the old man drew Levin’s attention to the little girls and boys, barely visible, coming toward the mowers from different directions through the tall grass and along the road, carrying bundles of bread that dragged down their little arms and pitchers of kvass stoppered with rags.

“See the little bugs a-crawlin’!” he said, pointing to them and shielding his eyes with his hand as he looked at the sun.

They did two more rows and the old man stopped.

“Well, master, dinner!” he said decisively. Walking to the stream, the mowers headed across the rows toward their caftans, where, awaiting them, sat the children, who had brought their dinners. The peasants gathered—the distant ones under a cart, the close ones under a willow bush where they had tossed grass.

Levin sat down with them; he didn’t feel like leaving.

Any embarrassment in front of the master had evaporated long before. The peasants were getting ready for dinner. Some were washing; the young men were bathing in the stream; others were setting up a place to rest, untying their bundles of bread and unstoppering their pitchers of kvass. The old man crumbled some bread in his mug, crushed it with the handle of his spoon, added water from the dipper, broke up some more bread, and after sprinkling it with salt, said a prayer facing east.

“Here you go, master, some of my tyurka,” he said, leaning on his knees in front of his mug.

The tyurka was so tasty that Levin changed his mind about going home for dinner. He ate with the old man and got to talking with him about his domestic affairs, taking the liveliest interest in them, and informed him about all his affairs and all the circumstances that might interest the old man. He felt closer to him than to his brother and couldn’t help but smile at the affection he felt for this man. When the old man stood up again, said a prayer, and lay down right there under the bush, putting some grass down for a headrest, Levin did the same, and in spite of the sticky flies so obstinate in the sun, and the bugs tickling his sweaty face and body, he fell asleep instantly and did not wake up until the sun had crossed to the other side of the bush and reached him. The old man had been awake for a long time and was sitting sharpening the young boys’ scythes.

Levin looked around and did not recognize the place, so much had everything changed. The huge expanse of the meadow had been mown and gleamed with a special, new gleam, its rows now fragrant, in the slanted evening rays of the sun. The bushes cut down by the river, and the river itself, which had not been visible before but now gleamed like steel in its bends, and the moving and rising people, the steep wall of grass where the meadow had not been mown, and the hawks circling over the bared meadow—all this was completely new. When he was fully awake, Levin began calculating how much had been mown and how much could yet be done that day.

A tremendous amount had been completed for forty-two men. The entire large meadow, which had taken thirty scythes two days to mow under the corvée, had already been mown.⁴ Yet to be mown were the corners with short rows. But Levin wanted to mow as much as possible this day and was irritated at the sun for setting so soon. He felt no weariness, he only wanted to finish as much and as quickly as possible.

“How about it, could we mow the Mashkin Upland? What do you think?” he said to the old man.

“God willing, the sun’s not high. Some vodka maybe for the boys?”

At midday, when they had sat down again and the smokers had started smoking, the old man had promised the boys, “Mow the Mashkin Upland, and there’ll be vodka.”

“Why not now! Come on, Titus! Let’s swing lively! Eat your fill tonight. Come on!” Voices rang out, and the mowers finished their bread and got started.

“Hey, boys, steady!” said Titus, and he nearly galloped off in front.

“Go on, go on!” said the old man, keeping up with and easily overtaking him. “I’ll slice you! Look out!”

Young and old tried to outdo each other mowing. But no matter how they hurried, they didn’t spoil the grass, and the rows were laid down just as neatly and precisely. The little corner remaining was knocked down in five minutes. The last mowers were coming to the end of their rows as the lead mowers were slinging their caftans over their shoulders and crossing the road toward the Mashkin Upland.

The sun was already setting toward the trees when, clattering their whetstone boxes, they entered the small wooded ravine of the Mashkin Upland. The grass was waist high in the middle of the low area, and wild pansies dotted the burdock, both tender and soft, here and there through the woods.

After a quick consultation—whether to go the long way or across—Prokhor Ermilin, another famous mower, a swarthy giant of a peasant, started in the lead. He went down the row, turned back, and pushed off, and everyone started drawing even behind him, going downhill across the low area and uphill to the very edge of the woods. The sun set behind the woods. The dew was already falling, and only on the knoll were the mowers in the sun, while in the bottomland, where mist was rising, and on the other side, they walked in fresh, dewy shade. The work was in full swing.

The grass, cut down with a juicy sound and a spicy scent, lay in tall rows. The mowers were hemmed in on all sides on the short rows, clattering their boxes and making noise with the clashing of scythes or the whistle of the whetstone on a scythe as it was sharpened, or chasing each other with cheerful shouts.

Levin kept moving between the young fellow and the old man. The old man had put on his sheepskin jacket and was just as cheerful, jocular, and free in his movements. In the woods, they were constantly coming across brown mushrooms, which had swelled in the succulent grass and which they cut with their scythes. But when the old man came across a mushroom, each time he bent over, picked it, and put it in his shirt. “Another treat for my old woman,” he would say.

As easy as it was to mow wet, weak grass, it was hard going up and down the steep slopes of the ravine. This did not trouble the old man, though. Swinging his scythe just the same, with the small but firm step of feet shod in large bast shoes, he climbed slowly to the top, and though his entire body and trousers below his shirt were shaking, he did not miss a single blade in his path or a single mushroom and kept up his joking with the peasants and Levin. Levin followed behind him and often thought he would surely fall as he ascended with his scythe up a knoll so steep it would be hard to climb even without a scythe; but he made the climb and did what was needed. He felt some external force moving him.

6

They mowed the Mashkin Upland, finished the last rows, put on their coats, and cheerfully headed home. Levin mounted his horse and, parting regretfully with the peasants, went home. From the hill he looked back; he could not see them for the fog rising from the bottomland; he could only hear their cheerful, coarse voices, their laughter, and the sound of their clanking scythes.

Sergei Ivanovich had had his supper long before and was drinking water with lemon and ice in his room and looking through the newspapers and journals that had just been received in the post when Levin, his hair messy and stuck to his forehead with sweat, his back and chest wet and dark, burst into his room with cheerful talk.

“We finished the whole meadow! Oh, it was fine, amazing! How have you been?” said Levin, completely forgetting their unpleasant conversation of the day before.

“Gracious! What you look like!” said a disgruntled Sergei Ivanovich surveying his brother in that first moment. “And the door, shut the door!” he exclaimed. “You must have let in a full dozen.”

Sergei Ivanovich could not stand flies and in his room opened the windows only at night and painstakingly kept the doors closed.

“Really and truly, not a one, and if I did, I’ll catch them. You won’t believe what a pleasure it was! How did you spend the day?”

“Very well. But did you really mow all day? You must be as hungry as a wolf. Kuzma has everything prepared for you.”

“No, I don’t feel like eating. I ate there. But I will go wash up.”

“Run along, then, run along, and I’ll come to your room shortly,” said Sergei Ivanovich, shaking his head and looking at his brother. “Run along, run along quickly,” he added with a smile, and gathering up his books, he prepared to go out. He himself suddenly felt cheerful and did not want to be parted from his brother. “Well, and during the rain, where were you then?”

“What rain? It barely drizzled. I’ll be right back. So you spent the day well? That’s excellent, then.” And Levin went to dress.

Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining room. Although Levin had thought he wasn’t hungry, he did sit down to dinner so as not to offend Kuzma, and when he started to eat, the dinner seemed exceptionally delicious to him. Sergei Ivanovich, smiling, watched him.

“Oh yes, there’s a letter for you,” he said. “Kuzma, bring it downstairs, please. But mind you shut the door.”

The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it out loud. Oblonsky was writing from Petersburg, “I have a letter from Dolly. She is at Ergushovo and she is having trouble. Go see her, please, and help with advice. You know everything. She will be so happy to see you. She is quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law is still abroad with everyone.”

“This is excellent! I will certainly pay them a visit,” said Levin. “Why don’t we go together? She is a marvelous woman. Isn’t she?”

“Are they very far?”

“Thirty versts or so. It may actually be forty. But it’s an excellent road. We’ll have an excellent trip.”

“I’d be very happy to,” said Sergei Ivanovich, still smiling.

The sight of his younger brother directly disposed him to good cheer.

“That’s quite an appetite you have!” he said, looking at his ruddy, sunburnt face and neck bent over his plate.

“It’s excellent! You can’t believe how beneficial this regime is for any kind of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new term: Arbeitscur.”⁵

“Well, it doesn’t look like you need it.”

“Yes, but for all sorts of nervous patients.”

“Yes, that must be tested. You know, I wanted to come to the mowing to watch you, but the heat was so unbearable I got no farther than the wood. I sat there a while and passed through the wood to the village, met your old nurse there, and sounded her out about the peasants’ view of you. As I understand it, they don’t approve of this. She said, ‘It’s not a gentleman’s business.’ All in all, I think that in the popular idea the requirements for ‘gentlemanly’ activities, as they put it, are very firmly defined, and they do not allow for gentlemen stepping out of the framework defined by their idea.”

“Perhaps, but it is a satisfaction the likes of which I have never experienced in all my life. And there isn’t anything bad in this, after all. Is there?” responded Levin. “What can I do if they don’t like it? Anyway, I think it’s all right. Eh?”

“All in all,” Sergei Ivanovich continued, “I can see you are content with your day.”

“Quite content. We mowed the whole meadow. And what an old man I befriended there! You can’t imagine how splendid it was!”

“So you are content with your day. As am I. First of all, I solved two chess problems, and one is very sweet—it opens with a pawn. I’ll show you. Then I thought about yesterday’s conversation.”

“What? Yesterday’s conversation?” said Levin, blissfully blinking and breathing heavily after his dinner was finished and definitely in no condition to recall what yesterday’s conversation had been.

“I will admit that you are in part correct. Our disagreement consists in the fact that you make personal interest the engine, whereas I think that each man standing at a certain degree of education must have an interest in the common welfare. You may be correct that materially interested activity would be more desirable. All in all, you are too prime-sautière a nature, as the French say.⁶ You want passionate, energetic activity or none at all.”

Levin listened to his brother and understood absolutely none of it, nor did he care to. He was only afraid that his brother might ask him a question that would make it obvious that he had heard nothing.

“So, my friend,” said Sergei Ivanovich, touching him on the shoulder.

“Yes, of course. Naturally! I’m not insisting,” replied Levin with a guilty, childish smile. “What was I supposed to be arguing about now?” he thought. “Of course, I’m right and he’s right, too, and everything is marvelous. Only I need to go to the office to give orders.” He stood up, stretching and smiling.

Sergei Ivanovich smiled, too.

“If you want to take a walk, we can go together,” he said, not wanting to part from his brother, who positively exuded freshness and vigor. “Let’s go, we’ll stop by your office, too, if you need.”

“Good gracious!” Levin exclaimed so loudly that he frightened Sergei Ivanovich.

“What, what’s wrong?”

“What about Agafya Mikhailovna’s hand?” said Levin, striking himself on the head. “I forgot all about her.”

“It’s much better.”

“Still, I’m going to drop by to see her. I’ll be back before you can put on your hat.”

And he ran down the stairs, his heels clacking like a rattle.

7

While Stepan Arkadyevich had come to Petersburg to perform the most natural and necessary of duties known to all public servants, incomprehensible though they may be to those who are not, duties without which there is no possibility of serving the public—to remind the ministry of his existence—and having performed this duty and having taken nearly all the money from the house, was spending his time cheerfully and pleasantly at the races and at various dachas, Dolly and the children moved to the country in order to reduce expenses to the bare minimum. She moved to her dowry village of Ergushovo, the very one where the wood had been sold in the spring, which was fifty versts from Levin’s Pokrovskoye.

The big old house at Ergushovo had fallen into disrepair long ago, and the prince had had the annex refurbished and enlarged. Twenty years before, when Dolly was a child, the annex had been spacious and comfortable, although, like all annexes, it stood sideways to the drive and faced south. Now, though, this annex was old and rotting. Back when Stepan Arkadyevich had made the trip to sell the wood in the spring, Dolly had asked him to look over the house and order any necessary repairs. Stepan Arkadyevich, like all guilty husbands, was very solicitous about his wife’s comfort, and he had looked over the house personally and given orders about everything that was to his lights necessary. To his lights, all the furniture needed to be upholstered in cretonne, curtains hung, the garden weeded, a footbridge made for the pond, and flowers planted; he forgot many other essential things, however, whose lack later tormented Darya Alexandrovna.

No matter how hard Stepan Arkadyevich tried to be a concerned father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, which were his only guide in considering anything. When he returned to Moscow, he proudly announced to his wife that all had been readied, that the house would be a plaything, and that he strongly advised her to go. Stepan Arkadyevich found his wife’s departure for the country quite agreeable in all respects: it was healthy for the children, expenses were reduced, and he had more freedom. Darya Alexandrovna considered the move to the country for the summer essential for the children, especially for the little girl, who had never fully recovered from her bout of scarlet fever, and finally, in order to be rid of the petty humiliations and petty debts to the firewood, fish, and shoe merchants who wearied her. On top of this, she found the departure pleasant also because she dreamed of luring her sister Kitty, who was supposed to return from abroad midsummer and who had been prescribed bathing, to the country. Kitty wrote from the springs that nothing made her smile so much as the thought of spending the summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, which was filled with childhood memories for them both.

At first, country life was very hard on Dolly. She had lived in the country in her childhood, and she retained the impression that the country meant salvation from all the cares of the city, that life there might not be handsome (Dolly made her peace with this easily), but it was inexpensive and convenient: she had everything, everything was cheap, she could get anything, and the children were happy. Now, though, having come to the country as mistress of the house, she saw that it was not all quite as she had thought.

The day after their arrival, there was a torrential rain, and in the night there were leaks in the hallway and nursery, so the little beds were moved into the drawing room. There was no scullery maid; of the nine cows that remained, according to the dairymaid, some were about to calve, others had just calved, still others were old, and the rest had hard teats; even for the children there was no butter or milk. There were no eggs. They could not get a hen; they roasted and stewed old, purplish, stringy roosters. They could not get women to wash the floors; everyone was at the potato fields. They could not go for rides because one horse had a tendency to stumble and bolt in the shaft. There was nowhere to go bathing because the entire riverbank had been trampled by cattle and was open to the road; there wasn’t even anywhere to go for walks because the cattle got into the garden through a broken fence, and there was one terrifying bull that bellowed and so probably butted. There were no cupboards for clothes. Those there were would not stay shut and opened up when anyone walked by. There were no iron or earthenware pots; nor was there a kettle for the laundry or even an ironing board for the maid’s room.

At first, instead of peace and rest, Darya Alexandrovna, having fallen upon what from her point of view were terrible calamities, was in despair: she made tremendous efforts, felt the desperation of her situation, and every minute held back the tears that welled up in her eyes. The steward, a former cavalry sergeant major whom Stepan Arkadyevich had taken a liking to and appointed from the porters for his handsome and respectful appearance, took no part whatsoever in Darya Alexandrovna’s calamities, and said respectfully, “Quite impossible; the common people are so vile,” and did nothing to help.

The situation seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonsky household, as in all families, there was one inconspicuous but very important and useful individual—Matryona Filimonovna. She calmed her mistress, assured her that everything would shapify (this was her word; Matvei had taken it over from her), and on her own, without hurry or fuss, set to work.

She immediately made friends with the steward’s wife and the very first day had tea with her and the steward under the acacias and discussed all their problems. Soon Matryona Filimonovna’s club had been instituted under the acacias, and here, through this club, which consisted of the steward’s wife, the village elder, and the office clerk, they began, little by little, sorting out the difficulties of life, and a week later everything had indeed shapified. The roof had been repaired, a cook, the elder’s chum, had been hired and chickens purchased, the cows began giving milk, the garden had been fenced with stakes, the carpenter had made a mangle and attached hooks to the cupboards, so they no longer opened arbitrarily, and an ironing board, covered in army cloth, lay between the arm of a chair and the dresser, and the maid’s room smelled of a hot iron.

“There now! And you were so worried,” said Matryona Filimonovna, pointing to the board.

They even rigged a bathing area using straw mats. Lily began bathing, and for Darya Alexandrovna her expectations were being fulfilled of a comfortable, if not peaceful, country life. Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could never be. One might fall ill, another might be about to fall ill, a third needed something, a fourth exhibited signs of bad character, and so on and so forth. Rarely, rarely, were there brief periods of peace. But these troubles and worries were for Darya Alexandrovna the sole possible happiness. Were it not for them, she would have been left alone with her thoughts of her husband, who did not love her. But in addition, however hard it might be for a mother to bear the fear of illnesses, the illnesses themselves, and the grief at the sight of signs of bad tendencies in her children, the children themselves were even now repaying her sorrows with small joys. These joys were so small they passed unnoticed like gold in sand, and in bad moments she saw only the sorrows, only the sand; but there were good moments, too, when she saw only the joys, only the gold.

Now, in the seclusion of the countryside, she began more and more often to be aware of these joys. Often, looking at them, she made every possible effort to convince herself that she was mistaken, that she, as a mother, was biased in favor of her children; all the same, she could not help but tell herself that she had splendid children, all six of them, all of different sorts, but such as one rarely comes across—and she was content with and proud of them.

8

In late May, when everything was more or less in order, she received a reply from her husband to her complaints about her rural discomforts. He wrote her, begging forgiveness for not thinking of everything, and promising to come at the first opportunity. This opportunity had not presented itself, and Darya Alexandrovna lived alone in the country until early June.

On St. Peter’s, a Sunday, Darya Alexandrovna went to Mass so that all her children could take communion. In her intimate philosophical discussions with her sister, mother, and friends, Darya Alexandrovna very often amazed them with her freethinking with regard to religion. She had her own strange religion of metempsychosis, in which she firmly believed, little concerned about the dogmas of the church.⁷ In her family, however, she—and not only to set an example but with all her heart—strictly carried out all the church’s demands, and the fact that her children had not been to communion for nearly a year disturbed her very much, and with Matryona Filimonovna’s full approval and sympathy, she decided to accomplish this now, this summer.

A few days beforehand, Darya Alexandrovna thought out how to dress all the children. Dresses were stitched, made over, and laundered, seams and flounces let out, buttons sewn on, and ribbons readied. One dress for Tanya which the English governess had agreed to make over caused Darya Alexandrovna no end of heartache. In resewing it, the governess put the seams in the wrong place, took the sleeves up too far, and utterly ruined the dress. Tanya’s shoulders were so constricted, it was a painful sight. But Matryona Filimonovna figured out how to insert gussets and make a little cape. The matter was set right, but there was nearly a quarrel with the governess. By morning, however, everything had sorted itself out and by nine o’clock—they had asked the priest to wait until then with his Mass—beaming with joy, the well–turned out children were standing on the steps by the carriage waiting for their mother.

Harnessed to the carriage, due to Matryona Filimonovna’s intercession, instead of the stumbling Raven, was the steward’s Brownie, and Darya Alexandrovna, detained by concerns over her own attire, wearing a white muslin dress, came out to take her seat.

In her excitement, Darya Alexandrovna took great pains with her hair and dress. Previously she had dressed for herself, in order to look handsome and please others; later, the older she became, the more she disliked dressing; she could see how her looks had faded. But now she again dressed with pleasure and excitement. Now she was dressing not for herself, not for her own beauty, but so that she, as the mother of these splendid children, would not spoil the overall impression, and, taking one last look in the mirror, she was pleased with herself. She was pretty. Not as pretty as she had once wanted to be at a ball, but pretty for the purpose which she now had in mind.

There was no one in the church except peasants, servants, and their women. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or imagined she saw, the admiration she and her children inspired. The children were not only handsome in their elegant outfits but also sweet because they behaved so well. Alyosha, true, did not stand entirely well; he kept turning around trying to see the back of his jacket; still, he was unusually sweet. Tanya stood like the big sister she was and watched over the little ones. But the youngest, Lily, was enchanting with her naïve amazement at everything, and it was hard not to smile when, after communion, she said, “Please, some more.”⁸

Returning home, the children could sense that something solemn had taken place, and they were very quiet.

All went well at home, too, but at lunch Grisha began whistling, and what was worse, he would not obey the English governess and was sent away without his dessert pie. Had she been there, Darya Alexandrovna would not have gone as far as punishment on such a day; however, she had to support the English-woman’s authority, and she upheld her decision that Grisha was to have no dessert pie. This put something of a damper on the general delight.

Grisha cried, saying that Nikolenka had whistled, too, but he had not been punished, and that he wasn’t crying over the pie—he didn’t care—but because they had been unfair. This was just too sad, and Darya Alexandrovna decided, after talking it over with the governess, to forgive Grisha and so went to see him. But there, as she was passing through the drawing room, she saw a scene that filled her heart with such joy that tears came to her eyes, and she herself forgave the culprit.

The punished boy was sitting in the drawing room at a corner window; and next to him stood Tanya with a plate. Under the pretext of wishing to feed her dolls, she had asked the governess for permission to bring her portion of pie to the nursery and instead had brought it to her brother. While continuing to cry over the unfairness of the punishment he had suffered, he ate the pie brought to him and through his sobs kept saying, “You eat some, let’s eat it together … together.”

Tanya had been moved at first by pity for Grisha, then by an awareness of her own good deed, and she too had tears in her eyes; but she did not refuse and ate her share.

When they saw their mother they became frightened, but when they looked at her face they realized that they were doing a good thing, and they began laughing and with mouths full of pie started wiping their smiling lips and smearing their beaming faces with tears and jam.

“My goodness! Your new white dress! Tanya! Grisha!” said their mother, trying to rescue the dress, but she had tears in her eyes and was smiling a blissful, ecstatic smile.

The new outfits were taken off, and instructions were given to put blouses on the girls and old jackets on the boys and to harness the trap again, to the steward’s grief, with Brownie—in order to go mushroom hunting and bathing. A clamor of ecstatic whoops went up in the nursery and did not subside until they had left to go bathing.

They picked an entire basket of mushrooms; even Lily found a birch mushroom. Before, Miss Hull would find one and show it to her, but now she found the big brown cap herself, and there was a general ecstatic cry, “Lily found a mushroom!”

Then they rode down to the river, left the horses under the birches, and went to their bathing spot. Terenty the driver, after hitching the horses to a tree, where they flicked away the gadflies, lay down in the shade of a birch, flattening the grass, and smoked his shag, and from the bathing spot came the children’s incessant and cheerful shrieks.

Although it was a lot of trouble to watch after all the children and put a stop to their pranks, and although it was hard to remember and not mix up all the little stockings, breeches, and shoes from the different feet and to untie, unfasten, and then refasten the laces and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who herself had always loved bathing and considered it beneficial for the children, took no greater pleasure in anything than in this bathing with all her children. To run her fingers over all these plump little legs while pulling on their stockings, to gather up in her arms and dip these little naked bodies and hear their delighted or terrified squeals, to see the gasping faces and frightened and cheerful, wide-open eyes of these splashing cherubs of hers was a great pleasure for her.

When half the children were already dressed, several peasant women in their holiday best who were out gathering angelica and milkwort walked over to the bathing area and stopped shyly. Matryona Filimonovna called out to one to pass her a sheet and shirt that had dropped in the water to dry them out, and Darya Alexandrovna struck up a conversation with the women. The women, who at first giggled into their hands and did not understand her question, soon gathered their nerve and began talking, immediately winning Darya Alexandrovna over with the sincere admiration they showed for her children.

“Oh, what a beauty, so white, like sugar,” one said, admiring Tanechka and shaking her head. “But so skinny.”

“Yes, she’s been ill.”

“Look at you, goodness knows they’ve been bathing you, too,” said another about the infant.

“No, he’s only three months old,” replied Darya Alexandrovna with pride.

“You don’t say!”

“And do you have any children?”

“I had four, two are left: a boy and a girl. I weaned her last Shrovetide.”

“And how old is she?”

“Oh, going on two.”

“But why did you nurse her for so long?”

“It’s our custom: three fasts.”⁹

The conversation became the most interesting possible for Darya Alexandrovna. How had she given birth? What was the matter with the boy? Where was her husband? Does that happen often?

Darya Alexandrovna could not tear herself away from the women, so interesting was her conversation with them and so utterly identical their interests. Nicest of all for Darya Alexandrovna was the fact that she could clearly see how all these women admired most of all how many children she had and how fine they were. The women made Darya Alexandrovna laugh and offended the English governess for being the cause of this laughter she could not understand. One of the young women took a good close look at the governess, who was dressing after everyone else, and when she had put on a third skirt, the woman could not keep from commenting, “Look at that, she keeps wrapping and wrapping. She’ll never wrap it all!” she said, and everyone roared with laughter.

9

Surrounded by all her bathed children and their wet heads, Darya Alexandrovna, a kerchief on her own head, was already riding up to the house when the driver said, “There’s some gentleman coming, from Pokrovskoye, I think.”

Darya Alexandrovna glanced ahead and rejoiced at the sight of the familiar figure of Levin, who was wearing a gray hat and gray coat and who was walking toward them. She was always glad to see him, but now she was especially glad that he would see her in all her glory. No one could understand her grandeur and what it consisted of better than Levin.

When he saw her, he found himself looking at one of the pictures of the family life he imagined for himself in the future.

“You are the perfect brood hen, Darya Alexandrovna.”

“Oh, how glad I am to see you!” she said, holding her hand out to him.

“You’re glad, but you didn’t let me know. My brother has been staying with me, and now I receive a note from Stiva that you’re here.”

“From Stiva?” Darya Alexandrovna asked in surprise.

“Yes, he writes that you’ve moved here and thinks that you will permit me to assist you in some way,” said Levin, and having said this, he was suddenly embarrassed, and breaking off, he continued walking silently alongside the trap, tearing off linden shoots and chewing on them. He was embarrassed based on his assumption that it would be unpleasant for Darya Alexandrovna to find help coming from an outsider in a matter that ought to have been taken care of by her husband. Indeed, Darya Alexandrovna did not like this manner of Stepan Arkadyevich’s of foisting his family affairs on others, and she immediately realized that Levin understood this. Darya Alexandrovna loved Levin for this subtlety of understanding, this delicacy.

“I realize, of course,” said Levin, “that this only means that you want to see me, and I’m very glad. Of course, I can imagine that you, a city matron, find it quite wild here, and if you need anything, I am entirely at your service.”

“Oh no!” said Dolly. “At first it was uncomfortable, but now everything is wonderfully arranged thanks to my old nurse,” she said, indicating Matryona Filimonovna, who understood that they were talking about her and smiled cheerfully and cordially at Levin. She knew him and knew that this was a good suitor for the young lady, and she wished the matter settled.

“Please, sit down. We shall make room,” she told him.

“No, I’ll walk. Children, who will race the horses with me?”

The children did not know Levin at all well, they didn’t remember ever having seen him, but they didn’t manifest toward him that odd reticence and revulsion that children so often do toward adults who pretend, often causing them pain. Pretense may fool the most clever and perceptive adult, but even the most limited child will recognize it and turn away, however artfully it is concealed. Whatever Levin’s shortcomings, there was not the slightest sign of pretense in him, and so the children showed him the same amiability that they found on their mother’s face. At his invitation the two eldest immediately hopped down and ran off with him as simply as if they had run off with their nurse, Miss Hull, or their mother. Lily, too, began asking to go to him, and her mother handed her to him; he put her on his shoulder and ran with her.

“Never fear, never fear, Darya Alexandrovna!” he said, smiling cheerfully at the mother. “I could not possibly hurt or drop her.”

Watching his deft, strong, cautiously solicitous and overly tense movements, the mother was reassured and smiled gaily and approvingly, watching him.

Here, in the country, with the children and with Darya Alexandrovna, whom he found so amiable, Levin felt those childish good spirits that often descended upon him and which Darya Alexandrovna especially liked in him. While running with the children, he taught them gymnastics, made Miss Hull laugh with his bad English, and recounted to Darya Alexandrovna his occupations in the country.

After dinner, sitting alone with him on the balcony, Darya Alexandrovna broached the subject of Kitty.

“Did you know? Kitty is coming here to spend the summer with me.”

“Really?” he said, flustered, and immediately, in order to change the subject, said, “So, shall I send you two cows? If you want, you may pay me five rubles a month, if you aren’t ashamed.”

“No, thank you, you’re very kind. We’re all set.”

“Well then, I’ll take a look at your cows and, if you will permit me, give instructions on how to feed them. It’s all a matter of their feed.”

Levin, in order to keep the conversation diverted, expounded for Darya Alexandrovna his theory of dairy farming, which consisted of the fact that a cow is simply a machine for processing feed into milk, and so forth.

He was saying this while passionately wishing to hear details about Kitty and at the same time fearing exactly that. He was terrified that the peace he had won at such pains would be disrupted.

“Yes, but who is going to look after all this?” Darya Alexandrovna replied reluctantly.

She now arranged her household through Matryona Filimonovna, and she had no wish to change anything about it; and she did not really trust Levin’s knowledge of agriculture. His arguments that a cow is a machine for making milk seemed to her dubious. It seemed to her that arguments like these could only hinder farming. To her, it was all much simpler. All she needed, as Matryona Filimonovna explained, was to give Spotty and Whiteside more feed and mash and to keep the cook from taking the slops from the kitchen for the laundress’s cow. That was clear. But arguments about meal and grass feed were dubious and vague. Most of all, she wanted to talk about Kitty.

10

“Kitty writes me that she wants nothing so much as seclusion and peace,” said Dolly after silence ensued.

“What, has her health improved?” Levin asked, agitatedly.

“Thank goodness, she is quite recovered. I never believed she had anything wrong with her chest.”

“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly thought she saw something touching and helpless in his face as he said this and looked at her in silence.

“Listen, Konstantin Dmitrievich,” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling her good and somewhat amused smile. “Why are you angry at Kitty?”

“Me? I’m not angry,” said Levin.

“Yes, you are. Why didn’t you stop by to see us, or them, when you were in Moscow?”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing to the roots of his hair, “I am even astonished that you, with your goodness, do not feel this. Why you simply don’t pity me when you know.”

“What do I know?”

“You know that I proposed and was refused,” Levin continued, and all the tenderness he had felt for Kitty a moment before was replaced inside him by a feeling of anger over this insult.

“Why do you think I know that?”

“Because everyone knows it.”

“In that you are mistaken. I did not know that, although I did guess.”

“Ah! Well, now you do.”

“I only knew that something had happened, but what it was, I could never learn from Kitty. I could see only that something had happened, that she suffered terribly, and that she asked me never to speak of it. And if she did not tell me, then she did not tell anyone. But what did happen between you? Tell me.”

“I told you what happened.”

“When?”

“The last time I visited you.”

“And you know what I would tell you?” said Darya Alexandrovna. “I feel terribly, terribly sorry for her. It is only your pride that has suffered …”

“Perhaps,” said Levin, “but—”

She interrupted him:

“But she, poor darling, I’m so terribly, terribly sorry for her. Now I understand everything.”

“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must forgive me,” he said, rising. “Farewell! Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna.”

“No, wait,” she said, catching him by the sleeve. “Wait, sit down.”

“Please, please, let us not speak of this,” he said, sitting down and at the same time sensing that what had seemed to him a buried hope was rising and stirring in his heart.

“If I did not love you,” said Darya Alexandrovna, and tears came to her eyes, “if I did not know you as I do …”

The feeling he had thought dead was now reviving more and more, rising and capturing Levin’s heart.

“Yes, now I understand everything,” continued Darya Alexandrovna. “You could not understand this. It’s always so clear to you men, free as you are and used to choosing whom you love. But a young girl in a state of anticipation, with this feminine, maidenly shame, a young girl who sees you men from afar and takes everyone at their word—a young girl might well feel that she does not know whom she loves and does not know what to say.”

“Yes, if her heart does not speak—”

“No, her heart does speak, but just think: you men get to view the girl, you visit her home, you get closer, you take a good look, you bide your time, and should you find that you love her, then, when you are certain that you do love her, you propose.”

“Well, that’s not quite how it is.”

“That doesn’t matter. You propose when your love has matured or when the odds shift in favor of one of the two you have selected. But the girl does not get to ask. They want her to do the choosing, but she cannot choose. She can only answer yes or no.”

“Yes, the choice between me and Vronsky,” thought Levin, and the corpse that had come back to life inside him died again and merely weighed agonizingly on his heart.

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “that is how one chooses a dress or I don’t know what purchase, but not love. The choice has been made, and so much the better. … There can be no second time.”

“Oh, pride and more pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as if despising him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling which women alone know. “While you were proposing to Kitty, she was in precisely that position when she could not answer. There was a hesitation in her. A hesitation: you or Vronsky? She saw him every day, she had not seen you for a long time. Had she been older, let’s say—for me, for example, in her place there could have been no hesitation. I always found him offensive, and there it would have ended.”

Levin remembered Kitty’s reply. She had said, “No, it cannot be.”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I value your confidence in me, but I think you are mistaken. Whether I am right or wrong, though, this pride, which you so despise, makes it such that for me any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna is impossible—you understand, utterly impossible.”

“I will say just one thing more. You realize I am speaking about my sister, whom I love like my own children. I am not saying she should love you, I merely mean to say that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.”

“I don’t know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you knew how badly you’re hurting me! It’s exactly as if you had had a baby die and people said to you, Oh, he might have been such and such, and he might have lived, and you would have taken such delight in him. But he’s dead, dead, dead.”

“How funny you are,” said Darya Alexandrovna with sad amusement, in spite of Levin’s agitation. “Yes, now I understand more and more,” she continued thoughtfully. “Won’t you come see us when Kitty is here?”

“No, I won’t. Of course, I am not going to avoid Katerina Alexandrovna, but when I can, I will try to relieve her of the burden of my presence.”

“You are very, very funny,” repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking tenderly into his face. “All right, fine, let’s pretend we said nothing of this. Why have you come, Tanya?” said Darya Alexandrovna in French to the girl who had walked in.

“Where is my shovel, Mama?”

“I’m speaking French, so you should do the same.”

The girl had wanted to, but she had forgotten the French for shovel; her mother prompted her and then told her in French where to look for the shovel, and Levin found this unpleasant.

Now everything in Darya Alexandrovna’s home and in her children seemed much less sweet than before.

“What does she speak French with her children for?” he thought. “How unnatural and false it is! And the children sense that. Learn French and unlearn sincerity,” he thought privately, unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had turned all this over in her mind twenty times and still, even at the expense of sincerity, found it essential to teach her children by this means.

“But must you go? Sit a little longer.”

Levin stayed until tea, but his good cheer had vanished completely, and he felt awkward.

After tea he went into the front hall to order his horses brought around, and when he returned he found a distraught Darya Alexandrovna with a distraught face and tears in her eyes. While Levin was out, an incident had occurred for Darya Alexandrovna that suddenly destroyed all her day’s happiness and pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Hearing a cry in the nursery, Darya Alexandrovna ran out to find them in a terrible state. Tanya was holding Grisha by the hair, and he, his face contorted with anger, was beating her with his fists wherever he could. Something in Darya Alexandrovna’s heart broke when she saw this. It was as if a pall had descended upon her life. She realized that these children of hers, in whom she took such pride, were not only the most ordinary but even the worst, most ill-bred children, malicious children with crude, bestial tendencies.

She could neither speak nor think of anything else, nor could she relate to Levin her unhappiness.

Levin saw that she was unhappy and tried to console her, saying that this did not prove anything bad, that all children fight; but as he said this, deep down Levin thought, “No, I am not going to put on airs and speak French with my children, but I will not have children like this. One must simply not spoil, not distort children, and they will be splendid. No, I will not have children like this.”

He said good-bye and left, and she did not try to detain him.

11

In mid-July, the elder from Levin’s sister’s village, which was located twenty versts from Pokrovskoye, came to report on their progress and on the haymaking. The principal income from his sister’s estate came from the water meadows. In years past, the peasants’ mowing had brought in twenty rubles per desyatina. When Levin took the estate under his management, he surveyed the haymaking and found that it was worth more and set a price per desyatina of twenty-five rubles. The peasants would not pay that price and, as Levin suspected, discouraged other buyers. Then Levin went there himself and ordered the meadow cleared in part for wages, in part for shares. His peasants resorted to every means to hamper this innovation, but the business got under way, and in the very first year the meadow earned nearly twice as much. In the third and previous year, the peasants had kept up the same resistance, and the clearing had proceeded in the same way. This year the peasants took all the hay for a third of the crop, and now the village elder had come to announce that the hay had been gathered and that he, fearing rain, had called in the estate clerk and, in his presence, divided the hay up and raked eleven stacks for the master. From the vague answers to his question about how much hay there had been in the main meadow, from the elder’s haste in dividing up the hay without asking, indeed, from the peasant’s whole tone, Levin realized there was something wrong about this division and decided to go there himself to check into the matter.

Arriving in the village at dinnertime and leaving his horse with an old man he knew, the husband of his brother’s wet nurse, Levin went to see the old man at his apiary, wishing to learn from him the details of the haymaking. A loquacious, fine-looking old man, Parmenych greeted Levin with delight, showed him his entire operation, and recounted all the details about his bees and this year’s swarming, but to Levin’s questions about the mowing he spoke vaguely and reluctantly. This confirmed Levin even more in his surmises. He went to the mowing and surveyed the stacks. There could not have been fifty loads in each stack, so in order to establish the peasants’ guilt, Levin ordered the carts that carried the hay summoned and one stack lifted and moved to the barn. The stack yielded only thirty-two loads. Despite the elder’s assurances as to the hay’s fluffiness and about how it settled in the stacks, and despite his swearing that everything had been on the up and up, Levin insisted that they had been divided without his orders and because of that he did not accept this hay at fifty loads a stack. After long argument the matter was decided with the peasants taking those eleven stacks, counted at fifty loads apiece, for their share, and the master’s share being apportioned anew. These negotiations and the division of haystacks went on until midafternoon. When the last hay had been apportioned, Levin, assigning the remaining oversight to the clerk, sat down on a haystack marked by a stamen of willow and admired the meadow, which was teeming with people.

In front of him, at a bend in the river beyond a small marsh, their clear voices ringing gaily, moved a colorful line of peasant women, and winding gray mounds of strewn hay quickly stretched out over the bright green stubble field. In the women’s wake came the peasants with their pitchforks, and from the mounds grew wide, tall, fluffy haystacks. From the left, across the already cleared meadow, clattered the wagons, and one after another the haystacks disappeared, served up in huge pitchforksful, and in their place heavy loads of fragrant hay hung over the horses’ hindquarters.

“What weather for a harvest! There’ll sure be hay!” said the old man as he sat down beside Levin. “Tea, not hay! Like throwing grain to ducks, the way they pick it up!” he added, pointing to the rising haystacks. “Taken away a good half since dinner. Last one, is it?” he shouted to a boy who, standing at the front of his wagon and waving the ends of the hemp reins, was riding by.

“Last one, Father!” shouted the boy, holding back the horse, and smiling, he looked around at a cheerful, also smiling, rosy woman sitting in the cart, and he drove them on.

“Who is that? Your son?” asked Levin.

“My littlest,” said the old man with a gentle smile.

“What a fine lad.”

“Not a bad boy.”

“Married already?”

“Yes, it’ll be three years at St. Filipp’s.”¹⁰

“What, does he have children?”

“What children! For a whole year he didn’t understand a thing, and he was shy,” answered the old man. “Oh, what hay! Real tea!” he repeated, wishing to change the subject.

Levin took a close look at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They were stacking hay not far from him. Vanka was standing on the load, receiving, spreading out, and stamping down the huge piles of hay his young beauty, his wife, was deftly passing to him, first in armfuls, then in forkfuls.¹¹ The young woman was working easily, cheerfully, and deftly. Getting the coarse, packed hay on the pitchfork took some doing. First she gathered it up and stuck the pitchfork in, and then with a quick, lithe movement she brought the full weight of her body to bear on it and quickly, bending her back wound round with a red girdle, she straightened, and thrusting out her full breast under her white smock, with a deft grasp, took hold of the fork and tossed her bundle high on the load. Hurriedly, obviously trying to relieve her of even a moment’s extra exertion, Ivan caught hold of her armful, opening his arms wide, and spread it out on the load. After she had passed the last hay with a rake, the woman shook out the hay dust on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief that had slipped down her white, untanned brow, crawled under the wagon to secure the load. Ivan was teaching her how to fasten it to the crosspiece, and he began laughing loudly at something she said to him. On their faces was an expression of powerful, young, newly awakened love.

12

The load was tied down. Ivan jumped off and led the good, well-fed horse by the bridle. The woman tossed the rakes onto the load and with a bold step, swinging her arms, went to join the circle of women dancing. Riding out onto the road, Ivan joined the line of other loads. The women, rakes on their shoulders, sparkling with vivid colors and chattering in cheerful, ringing voices, were walking along behind the loads. One rough, wild woman’s voice began a song and sang it to the repeat, and then amiably, all together, half a hundred different hearty voices, rough and delicate both, joined in on the same song from the beginning.

The peasant women and their song were coming closer to Levin, and it seemed to him that a cloud with the thunder of good cheer was advancing on him. The cloud drew near and grabbed him, and the haystack he was lying on, and the other haystacks, and the cartloads, and the entire meadow and the distant field—everything began moving and swaying to the measures of this wild, abandoned song with its yelps, whistles, and claps. Levin became envious of this hearty good cheer and wished he could take part in expressing this joy of life. There was nothing he could do but lie there, though, and watch and listen. When the people and their song had dropped out of sight and hearing, a heavy melancholy at his own loneliness, his own bodily idleness, and his own animosity toward this world gripped Levin.

Some of those very peasants who had argued the most with him over the hay, those whom he had offended, or those who had tried to deceive him, those very peasants bowed to him cheerfully and obviously did not and could not bear any ill will toward him, let alone any repentance or even memory of the fact that they had hoped to deceive him. All this had drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God gave them the day, and God gave them the strength, and the day and the strength had been consecrated to labor, which was its own reward. And who was the labor for? What would be the fruits of this labor? These were irrelevant and insignificant considerations.

Levin had often admired this life and had often felt envious toward the people living this life, but now for the first time, especially under the impression of what he had seen in the relations between Ivan Parmenov and his young wife, the thought occurred to Levin clearly for the first time that it was up to him to exchange the very burdensome, idle, artificial, and private life he lived for this pure and shared, splendid life of labor.

The old man who had been sitting with him had gone home long since and the people had all dispersed. Those who lived nearby had gone home, and those who lived farther away had gathered for supper and a night’s sleep in the meadow. Unremarked by the people, Levin continued to lie on the haystack and watch, listen, and think. The people who had stayed to spend the night in the meadow barely slept the whole brief summer night. First he could hear general cheerful talk and laughter at supper, then more songs and laughter.

The entire long day of work had left in them no trace but good cheer. Just before dawn, all fell quiet. All you could hear were the nighttime sounds of the frogs croaking without cease in the marsh and of the horses snorting in the meadow in the mist that rose before morning. Opening his eyes, Levin rose from his haystack and, surveying the stars, realized that the night had passed.

“So what am I going to do? How am I going to do it?” he asked himself, trying to express for himself all that he had thought and felt on this brief night. All that he had thought and felt could be divided into three separate lines of thought. One was his renunciation of his old life, his useless knowledge, and his education, which did no one any good. This renunciation afforded him pleasure and was easy and simple for him. His other thoughts and notions concerned the life he wished to live now. He clearly felt the simplicity, purity, and legitimacy of this life and was convinced that in it he would find the satisfaction, reassurance, and dignity whose absence he so painfully felt. But the third line of thought turned on the question of how to make this transition from the old life to the new, and here he could picture nothing clear. “Have a wife? Have a job or a need to work? Leave Pokrovskoye? Buy land? Join a commune? Marry a peasant girl? But how would I do that?” he asked himself again and found no answer. “Actually, I haven’t slept all night, and I can’t give myself a clear accounting,” he told himself. “I’ll clear this up afterward. One thing is for certain, this night has decided my fate. All my former dreams of family life are rubbish, wrong,” he told himself. “All this is much simpler and better. …”

“How handsome!” he thought, looking at the strange mother-of-pearl shell of fleecy white clouds that had come to a halt directly overhead, in the middle of the sky. “How splendid it all is on this splendid night! And when did this shell form? I was just looking at the sky, and there wasn’t anything in it—only two white bands. Yes, and just as imperceptibly my views on life have changed!”

He walked out of the meadow and started down the highway toward the village. A light breeze had come up, and it was now gray and gloomy. A moment of gloom had come, such as usually precedes a dawn full of the victory of light over darkness.

Huddling against the cold, Levin walked quickly, looking at the ground. “What’s this? Someone’s coming,” he thought when he heard bells, and he lifted his head. Forty paces off, coming toward him, down the same grassy sward as he, was a carriage harnessed to a team of four. The horses were pressing close to the shaft to avoid the ruts, but the deft driver, sitting sideways on the box, was keeping the shaft aligned with the rut, so that the wheels ran over the smooth.

This was all Levin noticed, and not thinking about who this might be traveling, absentmindedly glanced at the carriage.

Dozing in the corner of the carriage was an old woman, but by the window, evidently having only just awakened, sat a young girl holding the ribbons of her white cap with both hands. Fair and pensive, filled with an elegant and complex inner life alien to Levin, she was looking past him at the sunrise.

The very instant this vision was disappearing, her truthful eyes looked at him. She recognized him, and astonished delight lit up her face.

He could not be mistaken. There was only one pair of eyes in the world like that. There was only one being in the world capable of concentrating for him the entire light and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. He realized that she was on her way to Ergushovo from the railway station, and all that had made Levin so restless that sleepless night, all the decisions he had made, all of that suddenly vanished. He recalled with disgust his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. Only there, in that quickly receding carriage, now crossing to the other side of the road, only there was the possibility of solving the puzzle of his life, which had weighed on him so agonizingly of late.

She did not look out again. The springs could no longer be heard, and the little bells heard only faintly. The barking of dogs indicated that the carriage had gone past the village as well—and there remained around him the empty fields, the village up ahead, and he himself, lonely and estranged from everything, a lonely man walking down a deserted highway.

He glanced at the sky, hoping to find there the shell he had been admiring, which embodied for him the entire course of his past night’s thoughts and feelings. There was nothing more resembling a shell in the sky. There, in the remote heights, a mysterious change had come about. There was no trace of the shell, and there was an even carpet of tinier and tinier fleecy clouds spread across an entire half of the sky. The sky had turned blue and shone, and with the same tenderness, but also the same remoteness, it responded to his inquiring gaze.

“No,” he told himself, “I don’t care how fine this life is, simple and hardworking, I cannot return to it. I love her.”

13

None but those closest to Alexei Alexandrovich knew that this to all appearances supremely cold and sensible man had one weakness that contradicted his general cast of character. Alexei Alexandrovich could not bear to hear or see the tears of a child or a woman. The sight of tears put him in a state of great distress, and he lost the ability to think. His head clerk and secretary knew this and forewarned lady petitioners that they were by no means to cry if they did not want to spoil their case. “He will get angry and will not listen to you,” they would say. Indeed, in those instances, the emotional distress produced in Alexei Alexandrovich by tears was expressed in impatient fury. “There is nothing I can do, nothing. Would you kindly get out!” he usually shouted in those instances.

When, after returning from the races, Anna informed him of her relationship with Vronsky and immediately afterward covered her face with her hands and began to cry, Alexei Alexandrovich, despite the anger provoked in him, at the same time felt a surge of that emotional distress which tears always produced in him. Knowing this, and knowing that an expression of his feelings at this moment would be inappropriate to the situation, he tried to refrain from any show of life and so did not stir or look at her. It is this that brought about the strange, deathlike expression on his face that had so struck Anna.

When they rode up to the house, he helped her out of the carriage and, making a great effort, said good-bye to her with his usual civility and pronounced those words which did not obligate him to anything: he said that he would inform her of his decision tomorrow.

His wife’s words, which had confirmed his worst suspicions, produced a cruel ache in Alexei Alexandrovich’s heart. This pain was made even worse by that strange physical pity for her which her tears had produced in him. Once he was alone in the carriage, though, Alexei Alexandrovich, to his own amazement and delight, felt perfect liberation both from his pity and from the suspicions and pangs of jealousy that had tormented him of late.

He experienced what a man feels who has had a tooth pulled that has been aching for a long time. After the terrible pain and the sensation of something huge, large, bigger than his own head, being pulled from his jaw, the patient suddenly, not believing his own good fortune, feels that what had poisoned his life for so long, what had riveted all his attention to itself, no longer existed and that once again he might live, think, and take an interest in something other than his tooth. This is the feeling Alexei Alexandrovich experienced. The pain had been strange and terrible, but now it had passed; he felt he could live again and think about something other than his wife.

“Without honor, heart, or religion. A corrupt woman! I always knew it and always saw it, though I tried, taking pity on her, to deceive myself,” he told himself. It truly did seem to him that he had always seen this; he dredged up details of their past life which previously had not struck him as bad in any way—and now these details clearly showed him that she had always been corrupt. “I made a mistake in linking my life with her; however, there is nothing bad in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy. It’s not I who am to blame,” he told himself, “it’s she. But she’s no business of mine. For me, she doesn’t exist.”

Everything that would affect her and their son, toward whom his feelings had changed, just as they had for her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the matter of the very best, most decent, most convenient for himself, and so most just manner of shaking off the mud she had spattered on him in her fall and continuing to follow his path of an active, honest, and useful life.

“I cannot be unhappy because a despicable woman has committed a crime; I merely must find the best solution to the difficult situation in which she has placed me, and find it I shall,” he told himself, frowning more and more. “I am neither the first nor the last.” And to say nothing of historical examples, beginning with Menelaus, kept freshest of all in his memory by La Belle Hélène, a whole series of modern infidelities committed by high-society wives against their husbands arose in Alexei Alexandrovich’s imagination.¹² “Daryalov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram … Yes, even Dram … such an honest and practical man … Semyonov, Chagin, Sigonin,” Alexei Alexandrovich recalled. “Admittedly, some unreasonable ridicule falls upon these men, but I have never seen in this anything but misfortune and have always sympathized with it,” Alexei Alexandrovich told himself, although this was untrue, and he had never sympathized with misfortunes of this sort, but rather had valued himself even more highly the more often he encountered examples of wives betraying their husbands. “This is a misfortune that might befall anyone. And this misfortune has befallen me. It is merely a matter of how best to suffer through the situation.” And he began sorting through the details of how men who found themselves in this same situation as he had acted.

“Daryalov fought a duel. …”

When he was young, duels had especially attracted Alexei Alexandrovich’s thoughts precisely because he was a physically timid man and knew it well. Alexei Alexandrovich could not without horror think of a pistol being pointed at him and had never in his life wielded any kind of weapon. From his youth this horror had compelled him to think about duels and to try to imagine himself in the position of having to expose his own life to danger. Having achieved success and a firm position in life, he had long forgotten this feeling; however, the habit of the emotion took over, and fear of his own cowardice even now proved so strong that for a long time Alexei Alexandrovich considered it from every angle and consoled himself with the matter of a duel, even though he knew in advance that in no case would he fight.

“Without a doubt, our society is still so savage (not like England) that there are quite a few”—and these few included some whose opinion Alexei Alexandrovich particularly valued—“who would look on the duel from the positive side; but what result would be attained? Let’s say I challenge him to a duel,” Alexei Alexandrovich continued to himself, and vividly imagining the night he would spend after the challenge and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered and realized he would never do it. “Let’s say I challenged him to a duel. Let’s say I am taught how to shoot,” he went on thinking, “and I squeezed the trigger,” he was talking to himself with his eyes shut, “and it turned out I’d killed him,” Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself and shook his head to drive out these foolish thoughts. “What sense does it make to murder a man in order to define one’s relations to a culpable wife and her son? I would still have to decide in precisely the same way what I should do with her. No, what is much more likely and certainly will happen is I would be killed or wounded. I, a blameless man, a victim—killed or wounded. Which makes even less sense. But not only that; a challenge to a duel on my part would be a dishonest deed. Don’t I know in advance that my friends would not permit me to go as far as a duel—would not permit the life of a man of state, whom Russia needs, to be exposed to danger? What would happen? What would happen is that, knowing in advance that the matter would never reach the point of danger, I would be hoping to use this challenge merely to lend myself a certain false glamour. This is dishonest, this is false, this is a deception of others and myself. A duel is unthinkable and no one expects it of me. My goal lies in securing my reputation, which I require for the unhampered pursuit of my activities.” His official activities, which previously in Alexei Alexandrovich’s eyes had held great significance, now seemed to him particularly significant.

Having thoroughly considered and rejected a duel, Alexei Alexandrovich turned to divorce—another solution chosen by some of the men he recalled. Sorting through in his memory all the known instances of divorce (they were quite numerous in the very highest society he knew so well), Alexei Alexandrovich did not find one where the purpose of the divorce was that which he had in mind. In all these instances the man had ceded or sold an unfaithful wife, and that very party which, because of her guilt, did not have the right to enter into a new marriage, entered into a counterfeit, hastily legitimized relationship with a new spouse. In his case, Alexei Alexandrovich saw that the achievement of a legitimate divorce, that is, the kind where only the guilty wife is repudiated, was impossible. He saw that the complicated conditions of the life in which he now found himself did not allow for the possibility of those crude proofs which the law demanded for the exposure of the wife’s culpability; he saw that a certain refinement of this life did not allow for the application of these proofs, were there any, and that the application of these proofs would reduce him even more than her in public opinion.

To attempt a divorce could only lead to a scandalous trial, which would be a boon for his enemies, for gossip, and for lowering his high position in the world. His main purpose—to define his position with the least distress—could not be attained through divorce. Moreover, in a divorce, even the attempt to divorce, it was obvious that the wife had broken off relations with the husband and had united with her lover. But in Alexei Alexandrovich’s soul, in spite of his now utter, as he thought, and contemptuous indifference toward his wife, there remained in his attitude toward her a single emotion—an unwillingness to let her be united unimpeded with Vronsky, for her crime to be so much to her advantage. This one thought so irritated Alexei Alexandrovich that merely imagining this made him groan from his inward pain, rise slightly, and shift his position in the carriage, and after this, scowling, he spent a long time tucking the fluffy lap robe around his chilled and bony legs.

“Other than formal divorce, one could also act as Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good Dram did, that is, separate from one’s wife,” he continued thinking after he had calmed down; even this measure, though, presented the same inconveniences of disgrace as in divorce, and most important—precisely like a formal divorce—it threw his wife into Vronsky’s arms. “No, this is impossible, impossible!” he began loudly, again setting about tucking in his lap robe. “I cannot be unhappy, but neither should she nor he be happy.”

The jealousy that had tormented him during the period of uncertainty had passed the moment the tooth was pulled so painfully by his wife’s words. But this feeling had been replaced by another: the desire for her not only not to triumph but also to suffer revenge for her crime. He would not admit to this feeling, but in his heart of hearts he wished her to suffer for violating his peace of mind and his honor. After going through once again the conditions of a duel, divorce, and separation, and after rejecting them once again, Alexei Alexandrovich was convinced there could be only one solution—to keep her with him, concealing what had happened from the world and employing all necessary measures to put an end to the liaison and, most important—something he was not admitting even to himself—to punish her. “I must announce my decision that, having thought through the difficult position in which she has placed the family, all other solutions would be worse for both parties than an outward status quo, and such I agree to observe, but on strict condition that she for her part obey my will, that is, put an end to her relationship with her lover.” In confirmation of this decision, when it had finally been made, Alexei Alexandrovich had one more important thought. “Only by this solution am I acting in accordance with religion,” he told himself, “only by this solution am I not rejecting a culpable wife but rather giving her an opportunity of amendment and even—however hard this will be for me—I will devote a portion of my powers to improving and saving her.” Even though Alexei Alexandrovich knew full well that he could not bring any moral influence to bear on his wife, that nothing but hypocrisy would ever come of this whole attempt at amendment, and even though while living through these difficult moments he had not given a single thought to seeking guidance in religion, now that his decision coincided with what seemed to him the requirements of religion, this religious sanction for his decision gave him full satisfaction and, in part, consolation. He was glad to think that in such an important life matter no one could say that he had not acted in accordance with the rules of that religion whose banner he had always held high amid the general coolness and indifference. As he thought through all the further details, Alexei Alexandrovich did not even see why his relations with his wife could not remain exactly as they had been formerly. Without a doubt, he would never be able to return her his respect, but there was not, nor could there be, any reason for him to upset his life and suffer as a consequence of the fact that she was a bad and unfaithful wife. “Yes, time will pass, all-healing time, and our former relations will be restored,” Alexei Alexandrovich told himself, “that is, restored to the extent that I shall not feel any disturbance in the course of my own life. She must needs be unhappy, but I am not to blame and so cannot be unhappy.”

14

As he approached Petersburg, Alexei Alexandrovich not only adhered to his resolve but also composed in his head the letter he would write his wife. Entering the porter’s room, Alexei Alexandrovich looked through the letters and papers that had been delivered from the ministry and ordered them brought to him in his study.

“Unharness the horses and receive no one,” he said to the porter’s inquiry with a certain satisfaction, which served as a mark of his good spirits, stressing the words “receive no one.”

Alexei Alexandrovich walked up and down his office twice and stopped at his enormous desk, where his valet had already lit six candles in advance. He cracked his knuckles and sat down, rearranging his writing implements. Resting his elbows on the table, he cocked his head to one side, thought for a moment, and began to write, not stopping for one second. He wrote without a greeting and in French, using the formal “you,” which did not have the same coldness it did in Russian.

At our last conversation I expressed to you my intention to inform you of my decision with regard to the topic of this conversation. Having given everything careful thought, I am writing now for the purpose of keeping this promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your actions were, I do not feel I have the right to sunder those ties with which we have been bound by a higher authority. A family cannot be destroyed by the whim, the will, or even the crime of one of the spouses, and our life must continue as before. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully confident that you have repented of serving as the occasion for the present letter and that you will assist me in eradicating the cause of our dissension and in forgetting the past. Otherwise you yourself can guess what awaits you and your son. All this I hope to speak of in detail at a private audience. Since the dacha season is coming to a close, I would ask you to move to Petersburg as soon as possible, no later than Tuesday. All the necessary instructions will be given for your move. I ask you to note that I ascribe particular significance to the fulfillment of this request of mine.

A. Karenin

p.s. Enclosed with this letter is money, of which you may have need for your expenses.

He read the letter through and was satisfied with it, especially with the fact that he had remembered to enclose money. There was no harsh word, no reproach, but there was also no indulgence. Most of all, there was a golden bridge for return. After folding the letter, smoothing it with his massive ivory paper knife, and putting it into an envelope with the money, he, with the satisfaction that his well-made writing implements always afforded in him, rang the bell.

“Give this to the courier and tell him to take it to Anna Arkadyevna at the dacha tomorrow,” he said, and he stood up.

“As you wish, Your Excellency. Would you have me bring your tea to the study?”

Alexei Alexandrovich instructed that his tea be served in his study, and playing with the massive knife, he walked toward his armchair, beside which a lamp and the French book he had begun about the Eugubine Tables had been readied.¹³ Above the chair hung an oval portrait of Anna, in a gilt frame, beautifully executed by a famous artist. Alexei Alexandrovich glanced at it. Impenetrable eyes regarded him with derision and impudence, as on that last evening of their interview. The sight of the black lace on her head, her black hair, and her beautiful white hand with a middle finger covered with rings, all done so excellently by the artist, had an unbearably impudent and provocative effect on Alexei Alexandrovich. After studying the portrait for a minute, Alexei Alexandrovich shuddered so that his lips trembled and made a brr-ing sound, and he turned away. Hurriedly sitting down in the armchair, he opened his book. He made an attempt at reading but could not seem to restore his once quite lively interest in the Eugubine Tables. He looked at the book and thought of something else. He thought not of his wife but of a complication that had arisen recently in his affairs of state, which at that time constituted the chief interest of his service. He felt that he had penetrated more deeply than ever now into this complication and that in his mind there had formed a capital idea—he could say this without boasting—that should untangle the entire matter, elevate him in his official career, damage his enemies, and so bring the greatest benefit to the state. As soon as the footman had laid out his tea and left the room, Alexei Alexandrovich rose and walked to his desk. Moving the portfolio with his current files to the middle, he took a pencil out of the stand with a barely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction and plunged into reading the complex file he had requested concerning the impending complication. The complication was this. What made Alexei Alexandrovich so special as a statesman, the feature characteristic of him alone, which every rising functionary possesses and which combined with his dogged ambition, restraint, honesty, and self-assurance had made his career, was his disdain for official paper, his abbreviated correspondence, his direct treatment of the actual matter, insofar as was possible, and his economy. It had happened that at the famous Commission of June 2nd a case had been brought up concerning irrigation of the Zaraisk Province fields, which fell under Alexei Alexandrovich’s ministry and presented a drastic example of the futility of the expenditures and red tape spent on the case. Alexei Alexandrovich knew that this was fair. The matter of irrigating the fields of Zaraisk Province had been initiated by the predecessor of Alexei Alexandrovich’s predecessor. Indeed, a great deal of money had been and was being spent on the matter and all to absolutely no avail, and this entire matter would obviously lead nowhere. When Alexei Alexandrovich accepted his position, he immediately realized this and would have liked to get his hands on this case; but in the beginning, when he did not yet feel secure, he knew that this impinged upon too many interests and was imprudent; later, busy with other cases, he simply forgot about the case. Like all cases, it had a life of its own, by force of inertia. (Many people were fed on this case, especially one very moral and musical family in which all the daughters played string instruments. Alexei Alexandrovich knew this family and had been the sponsor when one of the older daughters wed.) The raising of this case by a hostile ministry was dishonest, in Alexei Alexandrovich’s opinion, because each ministry had its own cases like this which no one would raise, due to well-known official etiquette. Now that the gauntlet had been thrown down to him, however, he picked it up boldly and demanded the appointment of a special commission to study and verify the labors of the commission on the irrigation of the Zaraisk Province fields; but on the other hand he had given those gentlemen no quarter. He had demanded the appointment of a special commission on the treatment of native populations.¹⁴ The matter of the treatment of native populations happened to have been raised in the Commission of June 2nd and actively supported by Alexei Alexandrovich as admitting of no delay due to the lamentable status of the native populations. In the committee, this case had served as occasion for dispute with several ministries. A ministry hostile to Alexei Alexandrovich had tried to prove that the status of the native populations was highly flourishing and that the proposed rearrangement might wreck their future flourishing, and if there was something bad, then that stemmed only from the failure of Alexei Alexandrovich’s ministry to implement the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexei Alexandrovich was determined to demand, first of all, that a new commission be constituted and instructed to investigate the status of the native populations in situ; second, if it turned out that the status of the native populations was indeed such as it was based on the official information in the committee’s hands, then another, new, scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the causes for this blighted status of the native populations from the a) political, b) administrative, c) economic, d) ethnographic, e) material, and f) religious standpoints; third, that information be demanded from the hostile ministry about those measures taken in the past decade by that ministry to avert these untoward conditions in which the native populations now found themselves; and fourth, finally, that an explanation be demanded from the ministry as to why, as was evident from reports nos. 17015 and 18308 supplied to the committee and dated December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, respectively, the ministry had acted directly contrary to the sense of the fundamental and organic law, vol. …, art. 18, and the footnote to article 36. High color spread across Alexei Alexandrovich’s face as he jotted down a summary of these thoughts for himself. After covering the piece of paper, he stood up, rang, and sent a note to his chief secretary about obtaining the necessary reports for him. Standing up and pacing around the room, he again glanced at the portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously. He read a little more of the book on the Eugubine Tables, and his interest in them having revived, Alexei Alexandrovich at eleven o’clock went to bed, and when, as he lay in bed, he recalled the incident with his wife, he no longer saw it in quite so gloomy a light.

15

Although Anna contradicted Vronsky with persistence and exasperation when he told her that her position was untenable and tried to convince her to tell her husband everything, in her heart of hearts she did feel that her situation was false and dishonest and with all her heart wished to change it. When she returned from the races with her husband, in a moment of agitation, she had told him everything; despite the pain she had experienced at doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband left her, she told herself she was glad that now everything would be settled, and at least there would be no lie or deceit. She thought beyond a doubt that now her situation would be settled for good. It might be bad, this new situation, but it would be settled, and there would be no obscurity or lie in it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband when she spoke those words would be rewarded now by everything being settled, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him what had transpired between her and her husband, although, in order for her situation to be resolved, she would have to tell him.

When she awoke the next morning, the first thing she conjured were the words she had spoken to her husband, and these words seemed to her so horrible that she could not now understand where she had found the nerve to utter those strange, crude words and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words had been spoken, and Alexei Alexandrovich had left without saying anything. “I saw Vronsky and didn’t tell him. Just as he was leaving I was about to bring him back and tell him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange why I hadn’t told him the first moment. Why on earth didn’t I tell him, though I wanted to?” In answer to this question the hot color of shame covered her face. She understood what had held her back; she understood that she was ashamed. Her situation, which had seemed clarified yesterday evening, suddenly seemed to her not only not clarified but hopeless. She became terrified of the disgrace, to which she had before not given a thought. The mere thought of what her husband would do to her gave rise to the most terrifying thoughts. It occurred to her that the steward might arrive at any moment and drive her out of the house, that her disgrace would be announced to the whole world. She asked herself where she would go when she was driven out of the house, and she found no answer.

When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to weary of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt hostility toward him as a result. It seemed to her that the words which she had spoken to her husband and had repeated in her mind over and over, she had said to everyone and everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look the people she lived with in the eye. She could not bring herself to call the maid, let alone go downstairs and see her son and his governess.

The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long time, took it upon herself to go into her room. Anna looked her into her eyes inquiringly and blushed from fright. The maid apologized for coming in, saying that she thought she had rung. She brought her dress and a note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy was reminding her that this morning Liza Merkalova and Baroness Stolz were to come to her house with their admirers, Kaluzhsky and the old man Stremov, for a game of croquet. “Come if only to watch, as a study in manners. I am expecting you,” she finished.

Anna read the note and sighed deeply.

“I need nothing, nothing,” she told Annushka, rearranging the scent bottles and brushes on her vanity. “Wait a moment. I’ll dress right away and come out. I need nothing, nothing.”

Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing; rather, she sat in the same position, her head and arms dropped, and from time to time her entire body shuddered, as if wishing to make some gesture, to say something, and again subsiding. She kept repeating, “My God! My God!” But neither “God” nor “my” had any meaning for her. The idea of seeking assistance for her situation in religion, even though she had never had any doubts about the religion in which she had been raised, was for her as alien as seeking assistance from Alexei Alexandrovich himself. She knew in advance that religion’s assistance was possible only on condition that she renounce what for her constituted the entire meaning of life. Not only was this hard for her, but she was beginning to fear her new emotional state, something she had never before experienced. She felt everything inside her begin to double, the way objects sometimes double in weary eyes. Sometimes she didn’t know what she feared or what she desired. Whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and what precisely she did desire, she didn’t know.

“Oh, what am I doing!” she told herself, suddenly feeling pain on both sides of her head. When her head cleared, she saw that she was clutching her hair at the temples with both hands. She jumped up and started pacing.

“The coffee is ready, and Mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,” said Annushka when she came back and again found Anna in the same position.

“Seryozha? What about Seryozha?” asked Anna, suddenly coming to life, recalling for the first time all morning her son’s existence.

“He’s been naughty, I think,” Annushka replied, smiling.

“Naughty how?”

“You had peaches lying in the corner cupboard. I think he snuck one and ate it.”

The mention of her son suddenly roused Anna from the hopeless situation in which she found herself. She remembered that partially sincere, although in many ways exaggerated, role of mother living for her son which she had taken upon herself in the past few years and felt with joy that in the condition in which she found herself she did have support independent of her position with respect to both her husband and Vronsky. This support was her son. In whatever position she might be, she could not abandon her son. Let her husband disgrace her, drive her out, let Vronsky grow cold toward her and continue to lead his independent life (she thought of him again, with bile and reproach), she could not abandon her son. She had a purpose in life, and she needed to act, to act to secure her position with her son, so that he could not be taken away from her. Soon, as soon as possible, she had to act, before they took him away from her. She had to take her son and leave. That was the one thing she needed to do now. She needed to calm down and solve this agonizing situation. The thought of immediate action binding her to her son, and of going away with him right away, calmed her.

She dressed quickly, went downstairs, and walked with a firm step into the drawing room, where, as usual, she was awaited by coffee and Seryozha and his governess. Seryozha, dressed all in white, was standing by the table under the mirror and, his back and head bent over, with an expression of intense attention she well knew in him and in which he resembled his father, was doing something with the flowers he had brought in.

The governess wore an especially stern look. As often happened with him, Seryozha exclaimed piercingly, “Ah, Mama!” and he hesitated. Should he go up to his mother and say hello and abandon the flowers, or should he finish the wreath and bring her the flowers?

The governess greeted her and began delivering a long and detailed account of Seryozha’s misdeed, but Anna was not listening to her; she was thinking about whether she would take her along. “No, I won’t,” she decided. “I’ll leave alone, with my son.”

“Yes, that is very bad,” said Anna, and taking her son by the shoulder, and with a shy rather than stern expression that confused and delighted the boy, looked at him and kissed him. “Leave him with me,” she told the surprised governess, and without letting go of her son’s arm, she sat down at the table laid for coffee.

“Mama! I … I … didn’t …” he said, trying to understand from her expression what awaited him for the peach.

“Seryozha,” she said as soon as the governess had left the room. “This is bad, but you won’t do it again, will you? Do you love me?”

She felt tears coming to her eyes. “How could I not love him?” she told herself, peering into his frightened and at the same time delighted gaze. “Could he really join with his father in order to punish me? Would he really not take pity on me?” Tears were already running down her face, and in order to hide them, she jumped to her feet and nearly ran out onto the terrace.

After the stormy rains of the past few days, the weather had turned cold and clear. Even with the bright sun slicing through the washed leaves, it was cold outside.

She shuddered from the cold and from the inner horror that had seized her with new force in the clean air.

“Run along, run along to Mariette,” she told Seryozha, who was about to follow her, and she began pacing up and down the terrace’s straw matting. “Will people really fail to forgive me, fail to understand how all this could not have been different?” she told herself.

Halting and glancing at the tops of the aspens waving in the wind, their washed leaves gleaming vividly in the cold sun, she realized that people would not forgive her, that everything and everyone would now be as pitiless toward her as this sky and this greenery. Once again she felt the doubling begin inside her. “I mustn’t think, I mustn’t,” she told herself. “I must get ready to go. Where? When? Whom should I take along? Yes, to Moscow, on the night train. Annushka and Seryozha, and only the most essential items. But first I must write them both.” She quickly went into the house, to her sitting room, sat down at her desk, and wrote her husband:

“After what has happened, I can no longer remain in your house. I am leaving and taking my son with me. I do not know the laws and so do not know with which of his parents our son is supposed to be; however, I am taking him with me because I cannot live without him. Be magnanimous, leave him to me.”

So far she had been writing quickly and naturally, but the appeal to his magnanimity, which she did not admit in him, and the need to close the letter with something touching brought her up short.

“Of my guilt or my repentance I cannot speak because …”

Again she was brought up short, not finding the connection in her thoughts. “No,” she told herself, “I need nothing,” and tearing up the letter, she rewrote it, excluding the mention of magnanimity, and sealed it.

The other letter she had to write to Vronsky. “I have told my husband,” she wrote and sat for a long time, incapable of writing further. It was so crude, so unfeminine. “And then, what can I write him?” she told herself. Again the color of shame covered her face, she recalled his equanimity, and a feeling of annoyance at him made her tear the page with the phrase written on it into small bits. “I need nothing,” she told herself, and folding her blotting pad, she went upstairs, told the governess and servants she was going to Moscow today, and immediately set to packing her things.

16

Porters, gardeners, and footmen were walking in and out of all the rooms of the dacha, carrying things out. The cupboards and dressers had been opened wide; twice they had run to the store for string; there was newspaper strewn about on the floor. Two trunks, satchels, and bundled lap robes had been brought down to the front hall. The carriage and two cabs were standing by the front steps. Anna, having forgotten her inner alarm during her work packing, was packing her traveling bag, standing in front of the desk in her sitting room, when Annushka drew her attention to the rattle of an approaching carriage. Anna looked out the window and saw Alexei Alexandrovich’s courier standing on the front steps, ringing at the front door.

“Go find out what it is,” she said, and with calm readiness for anything, folding her hands in her lap, she sat down in an armchair. A footman brought a thick packet inscribed in Alexei Alexandrovich’s hand.

“The courier was instructed to bring back a reply,” he said.

“Fine,” she said, and as soon as the man left, with trembling fingers, she tore open the letter. A bundle of unfolded notes in a glued wrapper fell out. She freed the letter and began reading it from the end. “I have made preparations for your move, and I ascribe particular significance to the fulfillment of this request of mine,” she read. She ran ahead, and back, read it all, and again read the entire letter from beginning to end. When she had finished, she felt cold and that a terrible misfortune such as she had not anticipated had come crashing down on her.

She had repented that morning of what she had told her husband and wished only one thing, that these words had somehow not been said, and here this letter deemed the words unsaid and gave her precisely what she had wished for. But now this letter seemed more horrible to her than anything she might have imagined.

“He’s right! He’s right!” she kept repeating. “Naturally, he’s always right, he’s a Christian, he’s magnanimous! Yes, a base and vile man! And no one but I can or could understand this, and I cannot explain it. They say he’s a religious, moral, honest, clever man; but they don’t see what I have seen. They don’t know how he has been smothering my life for eight years, smothering everything alive in me, that he never once gave a thought to the fact that I’m a living woman who needs love. They don’t know how he has insulted me at every step and how pleased with himself he has been. Didn’t I try, didn’t I make every effort, to find a justification for my life? Didn’t I attempt to love him and to love my son when I could no longer love my husband? The time came, though, when I realized I could no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, that I am not to blame, that God made me so that I need to love and live. And now what? If he had killed me, if he had killed him, I would have endured anything, I would have forgiven anything, but no, he …

“How was it I never guessed what he would do? He is going to do what is characteristic of his base nature. He is going to remain in the right and ruin me, though I am already dead, will ruin me more, even worse. … ‘You yourself can guess what awaits you and your son,’” she recalled the words from his letter. “That’s a threat to take away my son, and according to their stupid law he probably can. But don’t I know why he is saying this? He doesn’t believe in my love for my son or else despises it (as he always used to ridicule it), despises this feeling of mine, yet he knows I will not abandon my son, I cannot abandon my son, that without my son there can be no life for me even with the one I love, but that by abandoning my son and running away from him I would be acting as the most disgraceful, the vilest of women—he knows this and knows that I will not be capable of this.

“‘Our life must continue as before,’” she recalled another phrase from the letter. “This life was a torture even before, and it has been terrible of late. What will it be now? And he knows all this, knows that I cannot repent for the fact that I breathe, that I love; he knows that nothing but lies and deceit will come of this, but he must continue torturing me. I know him! I know that he swims like a fish in water and takes pleasure in lies. But no, I will not afford him that pleasure. I will tear asunder this web of lies in which he hopes to entangle me. What will be will be. Anything is better than lies and deceit!

“But how? My God! My God! Was there ever a woman so unhappy as I am?

“No, I’ll tear it asunder, asunder!” she exclaimed, jumping up and holding back her tears. She went to her desk to write him another letter. But in the depths of her soul she already felt that she would not be strong enough to break anything asunder or to extract herself from this former position of hers, however false and dishonest it might be.

She sat down at her desk, but instead of writing, she folded her hands on the desk, lay her head on them, and began to weep, sobbing, her entire chest heaving, the way children weep. She wept over the fact that her dream of clarifying and defining her position had been destroyed for good. She knew beforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and even much worse than the old way. She felt that the position she enjoyed in society, which in the morning had seemed so insignificant, that this position was precious to her, that she would not be strong enough to exchange it for the disgraced position of a woman who has abandoned her husband and son and joined her lover, that however much she tried, she would not be stronger than herself. She would never experience freedom in love but would remain forever a culpable wife, under threat of exposure at any moment, who had deceived her husband for a disgraceful liaison with a man apart and independent, with whom she could not live one life. She knew this was how it would be, and at the same time this was so horrible that she could not imagine even how it would end, and she wept, holding nothing back, the way punished children weep.

The footman’s steps she heard forced her to collect herself, and hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

“The courier is asking for your reply,” the footman reported.

“My reply? Yes,” said Anna. “Let him wait a bit longer. I’ll ring.”

“What can I write?” she thought. “What can I decide on my own? What do I know? What do I want? What do I love?” Again she felt the doubling begin inside of her. She was frightened again by this feeling and snatched at the first pretext of doing something that presented itself to her and that might distract her from thoughts of herself. “I must see Alexei”—that’s what she called Vronsky in her thoughts—“he alone can tell me what I should do. I’ll go to Betsy’s, and perhaps I shall see him there,” she told herself, utterly forgetting that yesterday, when she told him she was not going to Princess Tverskaya’s, he had said that, in that case, he would not go either. She went to her desk and wrote to her husband. “I have received your letter. A.” She rang and gave it to the footman.

“We are not going,” she told Annushka when she entered.

“Not going at all?”

“No, don’t unpack until tomorrow, and keep the carriage. I’m going to see the princess.”

“Which dress shall I prepare?”