Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

  'Self-esteem,' said Levin, cut to the quick by his brother's words, 'is something I do not understand. If I had been told at the university that others understood integral calculus and I did not - there you have self-esteem. But here one should first be convinced that one needs to have a certain ability in these matters and, chiefly, that they are all very important.'

  'And what, then? Aren't they important?' said Sergei Ivanovich, also cut to the quick that his brother should find what interested him unimportant, and especially that he was obviously hardly listening to him.

  'It doesn't seem important to me, I'm not taken with it, what do you want?...' answered Levin, having made out that what he saw was the steward, and that the steward had probably allowed the muzhiks to quit ploughing. They were turning their ploughs over. 'Can it be they're already done ploughing?' he thought.

  'But listen,' the elder brother said, his handsome, intelligent face scowling, 'there are limits to everything. It's all very well to be an eccentric and to be sincere and to dislike falseness -I know all that; but what you're saying either has no meaning or has a very bad meaning. When you find it unimportant that the peasantry, whom you love, as you assure me . ..'

  'I never assured him,' thought Konstantin Levin.

  '... dies without help? Crude midwives kill off babies, and the peasantry rot in ignorance and remain in the power of every scrivener, and you are given the means to help them, but you don't help them, because in your opinion it's not important.'

  And Sergei Ivanovich confronted him with a dilemma:

  'Either you're so undeveloped that you cannot see all that you could do, or you cannot give up your peace, your vanity, whatever, in order to do it.'

  Konstantin Levin felt that it only remained for him to submit or to confess to a lack of love for the common cause. And this offended and upset him.

  'Both the one and the other,' he said resolutely. 'I don't see how it's possible...' 'What? Impossible to give medical help, if money is placed in the right way?'

  'Impossible, it seems to me ... In our district, with its three thousand square miles, with our slush, blizzards, seasonal field work, I see no possibility of providing medical help everywhere. Besides, I generally don't believe in medicine.'

  'Well, excuse me, but that's not fair ... I can give you a thousand examples ... Well, and schools?'

  'Why schools?'

  'What are you saying? Can there be any doubt of the usefulness of education? If it's good for you, it's good for everyone.'

  Konstantin Levin felt himself morally driven into a corner and therefore got excited and involuntarily let out the main reason for his indifference to the common cause.

  'Maybe all that is good, but why should I worry about setting up medical centres that I'll never use and schools that I won't send my children to, that the peasants don't want to send their children to either, and that I have no firm belief that they ought to send them to?' he said.

  Sergei Ivanovich was momentarily surprised by this unexpected view of things, but he at once devised a new plan of attack.

  He paused, raised one rod, dropped the line in again, and turned to his brother with a smile.

  'Well, excuse me ... First, there's a need for medical centres. Here we just summoned the district doctor for Agafya Mikhailovna.'

  'Well, I think her arm will stay crooked.'

  'That's still a question ... And then, a literate muzhik or worker is more needful and valuable to you.'

  'No, ask anybody you like,' Konstantin Levin replied resolutely, 'a literate peasant is much worse as a worker. And the roads can't be repaired, and bridges are no sooner put up than they steal them.'

  'However,' said the frowning Sergei Ivanovich, who did not like contradictions, especially the sort that kept jumping from one thing to another and introduced new arguments without any connection, so that it was impossible to know which to answer, 'however, that's not the point. Excuse me. Do you acknowledge that education is good for the peasantry?'

  'I do,' Levin said inadvertently, and immediately thought that he had not said what he thought. He sensed that, once he acknowledged that, it would be proved to him that he was speaking rubbish that did not make any sense. How it would be proved to him he did not know, but he knew that it would doubtless be proved to him logically, and he waited for this proof.

  The argument turned out to be much simpler than he expected.

  'If you acknowledge it as a good,' said Sergei Ivanovich, 'then, being an honest man, you can't help liking and sympathizing with such a cause and therefore working for it.'

  'But I have not yet acknowledged it as a good,' said Konstantin Levin, blushing.

  'How's that? You just said ...'

  'That is, I do not acknowledge it either as good or as possible.'

  'You can't know that without having tried.'

  'Well, suppose,' said Levin, though he did not suppose it at all, 'suppose it's so; but all the same I don't see why I should worry about it.'

  'How do you mean?'

  'No, since we're talking, explain it to me from a philosophical point of view,' said Levin.

  'I don't understand what philosophy has got to do with it,' said Sergei Ivanovich, in such a tone, it seemed to Levin, as if he did not recognize his brother's right to discuss philosophy. And that vexed Levin.

  'It's got this to do with it!' he began hotly. 'I think that the motive force of all our actions is, after all, personal happiness. In our present-day zemstvo institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that contributes to my well-being. The roads are no better and cannot be better; my horses carry me over the bad ones as well. I have no need of doctors and centres, I have no need of any justice of the peace - I've never turned to one and never will. Schools I not only do not need but also find harmful, as I told you. For me the zemstvo institutions are simply an obligation to pay six kopecks an acre, go to town, sleep with bedbugs, and listen to all sorts of nonsense and vileness, and personal interest does not move me to do that.'

  'Excuse me,' Sergei Ivanovich interrupted with a smile, 'but personal interest did not move us to work for the emancipation of the serfs, and yet we did.'

  'No!' Konstantin interrupted, growing more heated. 'The emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There was a personal interest. We wanted to throw off the yoke that oppressed us and all good people. But to be a council member,[2] arguing about how many privy cleaners are needed and how the sewer pipes should be installed in a town I don't live in; to be a juror and judge a muzhik who has stolen a ham, and listen for six hours to defence lawyers and prosecutors pouring out all sorts of drivel, and hear the foreman of the jury ask my old Alyoshka-the-fool: "Mister defendant, do you acknowledge the fact of the stolen ham?""Wha?"'

  Konstantin Levin was already side-tracked, impersonating the foreman of the jury and Alyoshka-the-fool; it seemed to him that it was all to the point.

  But Sergei Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders.

  'Well, what do you mean to say?'

  'I only mean to say that I will always defend with all my might those rights that I. .. that touch on my interests. When the gendarmes searched us as students and read our letters, I was ready to defend those rights with all my might, to defend my rights to education, to freedom. I understand military service, which touches the future of my children, my brothers and myself. I'm ready to discuss anything that concerns me. But to decide how to dispose of forty thousand in zemstvo funds, or to judge Alyoshka-the-fool - that I do not understand and cannot do.'

  Konstantin Levin spoke as if his words had burst their dam. Sergei Ivanovich smiled.

  'And if you were brought to trial tomorrow, do you mean you'd rather be tried by the old criminal courts?'[3]

  'I won't be brought to trial. I'm not going to kill anybody, and I have no need of all that. Really!' he went on, again skipping to something completely inappropriate, 'our zemstvo institutions and all that - it's like the birches we stick up on the day of the Trinity,[4] so that it looks
like the forest that grew up by itself in Europe, and I can't put my heart into watering and believing in those birches!'

  Sergei Ivanovich merely shrugged his shoulders, expressing by this gesture his surprise at the appearance out of nowhere of these birches in their discussion, though he immediately understood what his brother meant to say by it.

  'Excuse me, but one cannot argue that way,' he observed.

  But Konstantin Levin wanted to vindicate himself in this shortcoming which he knew he had, in his indifference to the common good, and he went on.

  'I think,' said Konstantin, 'that no activity can be solid unless it's based on personal interest. That is a general truth, a philosophical one,' he said, resolutely repeating the word 'philosophical', as if wishing to show that he, too, had the right, like anyone else, to speak of philosophy.

  Sergei Ivanovich smiled once more. 'And he, too, has some sort of philosophy of his own to serve his inclinations,' he thought.

  'Well, you should leave philosophy alone,' he said. 'The chief task of philosophy in all ages has consisted precisely in finding the connection that necessarily exists between personal and common interests. But that is not the point, the point is that I must correct your comparison. The birches are not stuck in, they are planted or seeded, and they ought to be carefully tended. Only those nations have a future, only those nations can be called historical, that have a sense of what is important and significant in their institutions, and value them.'

  And Sergei Ivanovich transferred the question to the philosophical-historical realm, inaccessible to Konstantin Levin, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.

  'As regards your not liking it, forgive me, but that is our Russian laziness and grand manner, and I'm sure that with you it's a temporary error and will pass.'

  Konstantin was silent. He felt himself roundly beaten, but together with that he felt that his brother had not understood what he had wanted to say. Only he did not know why he had not understood: whether it was because he had not been able to say clearly what he meant, or because his brother had been unwilling or unable to understand him. But he did not go deeper into these thoughts and, without objecting to his brother, began thinking about a completely different matter, a personal one for him.

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

  IV

  The personal matter that had occupied Levin during his conversation with his brother was the following: once last year, coming to the mowing and getting angry with the steward, Levin had used his remedy for calming down - he had taken a scythe from a muzhik and begun mowing. He had liked the work so much that he had taken to mowing several more times; he had mowed the whole meadow in front of the house, and since the spring of that year he had made a plan for himself - to spend whole days mowing with the muzhiks. Since his brother's arrival, he had been pondering: to mow or not? He was ashamed to leave his brother alone for whole days, and he feared that his brother would laugh at him for it. But having walked through the meadow, recalling his impressions of mowing, he was now almost decided that he would mow. And after the vexing conversation with his brother, he again recalled this intention.

  'I need physical movement, otherwise my character definitely deteriorates,' he thought, and he decided to mow no matter how awkward it was in front of his brother and the peasants.

  In the evening Konstantin Levin went to the office, gave orders about the work, and sent to the villages to summon mowers for tomorrow to mow the Viburnum Meadow, the biggest and best.

  'And please send my scythe to Titus to be sharpened and brought along tomorrow - perhaps I'll do some mowing myself,' he said, trying not to be embarrassed.

  The steward smiled and said:

  'Yes, sir.'

  That evening over tea Levin told his brother as well.

  'The weather seems to have settled,' he said. 'Tomorrow I'll start mowing.'

  'I like that work very much,' said Sergei Ivanovich.

  'I like it terribly. I've mowed with the muzhiks occasionally, and tomorrow I intend to mow the whole day.'

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

  'How do you mean? On a par with the muzhiks, the whole day?'

  'Yes, it's very satisfying,' said Levin.

  'It's wonderful as physical exercise, only you'll hardly be able to hold out,' Sergei Ivanovich said without any mockery.

  'I've tried it. It's hard at first, but then you get into the rhythm. I don't think I'll lag behind ...'

  'Really! But tell me, how do the muzhiks look at it? They must be chuckling over the master's whimsies.'

  'No, I don't think so; but it's such cheerful and at the same time such hard work, that one has no time to think.'

  'But how are you going to have dinner with them? It's a bit awkward to send Lafite[5] and roast turkey to you out there.' 'No, I'll just come home when they take their break.'

  The next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but tasks on the estate detained him and when he came to the mowing, the mowers had already started the second swath.

  From the top of the hill there opened out before him, at its foot, the shady, already mowed part of the meadow, with greying rows and black heaps of caftans, which the mowers had taken off where they started their first swath.

  As he rode nearer, the muzhiks came into his view, following each other in a strung out line and swinging their scythes variedly, some in caftans, some just in shirts. He counted forty-two men.

  They moved slowly along the uneven lower edge of the meadow, where the old dam was. Levin recognized some of his people. There was old Yermil in a very long white shirt, bent over and swinging his scythe; there was the young lad Vaska, Levin's former coachman, taking each swath at one swing. There was also Titus, Levin's tutor in mowing, a small, skinny muzhik. He walked straight ahead without bending, as if playing with his scythe, cutting down his wide swath.

  Levin got off his horse, tethered it by the road, and met Titus, who took a second scythe from a bush and handed it over.

  'It's ready, master; like a razor, mows by itself,' said Titus, doffing his hat with a smile and handing him the scythe.

  Levin took the scythe and began to get the feel of it. Their swaths finished, the sweaty and cheerful mowers came out on the road one after another, chuckling and greeting the master. They all gazed at him, but nobody said anything until a tall old man with a wrinkled, beardless face, in a sheepskin coat, came out on the road and addressed him.

  'Watch out, master, once you start there's no stopping!' he said, and Levin heard repressed laughter among the mowers.

  'I'll try to keep up,' he said, taking a stand behind Titus and waiting for the moment to start.

  'Watch out now,' the old man repeated.

  Titus cleared his place and Levin followed him. The grass near the road was low, and Levin, who had done no mowing for a long time and was embarrassed by the looks directed at him, mowed poorly for the first few minutes, though he swung strongly. Voices were heard behind him:

  'It's not hafted right, the handle's too long, see how he has to bend,' one voice said.

  'Bear down on the heel,' said another.

  'Never mind, he'll get himself set right,' the old man went on. 'See, there he goes ... The swath's too wide, you'll get tired ... He's the owner, never fear, he's doing his best! And look at the hired men! Our kind would get it in the neck for that.'

  The grass became softer, and Levin, listening but not answering, and trying to mow the best he could, followed after Titus. They went some hundred steps. Titus kept on without stopping, without showing the slightest fatigue, but Levin was already beginning to fear that he would not hold out, he was so tired.

  He felt he was swinging with his last strength and decided to ask Titus to stop. But just then Titus himself stopped and, bending down, took some grass, wiped the blade and began to whet it. Levin straightened up and, taking a deep breath, looke
d back. Behind him came a muzhik, and evidently he was also tired because he stopped at once, before reaching Levin, and began to whet. Titus whetted his and Levin's scythes, and they went on.

  The second time it was all the same. Titus moved on swing after swing, without pausing and without tiring. Levin followed him, trying not to lag behind, and finding it harder and harder: there came a moment when he felt he had no strength left, but just then Titus stopped and whetted his scythe.

  So they finished the first swath. And this long swath seemed especially hard to Levin; but then, when the swath was finished and Titus, shouldering his scythe, went back with slow steps over his own heel-prints in the mowing, and Levin went back the same way over his own mowing, though sweat streamed down his face and dripped from his nose, and his back was all wet as if soaked with water, he felt very good. He rejoiced especially knowing now that he would hold out.

  His satisfaction was poisoned only by the fact that his swath did not look good. 'I'll swing less with my arm, more with my whole body,' he thought, comparing Titus's swath, straight as an arrow, with his own rambling and unevenly laid swath.