by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
‘Tomorrow I’ll go early in the morning and make it a point not to get excited. There’s no end of snipe. And great snipe, too. I’ll come back and there’ll be a note from Kitty. Yes, maybe Stiva’s right: I’m not manly enough with her, I’ve gone soft … But what’s to be done! Negative again!’
Through sleep he heard Veslovsky’s and Stepan Arkadyich’s laughter and merry talk. He opened his eyes for an instant: the moon had risen, and in the open doorway, in the bright light of the moon, they stood talking. Stepan Arkadyich was saying something about the girl’s freshness, comparing it to a fresh, just–shelled nut, and Veslovsky, laughing his infectious laugh, repeated something, probably what the muzhik had said to him: ‘You get yourself one of your own!’ Levin murmured drowsily:
‘Tomorrow at daybreak, gentlemen!’ and fell asleep.
XII
Waking up in the early dawn, Levin tried to rouse his comrades. Vasenka, lying on his stomach, one stockinged foot thrust out, was so fast asleep that he could get no response from him. Oblonsky refused through his sleep to go so early. Even Laska, who slept curled up at the edge of the hay, got up reluctantly, lazily straightening and stretching her hind legs, first one and then the other. Levin put on his boots, took his gun and, carefully opening the creaking barn door, went out. The coachmen were sleeping by their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating oats, scattering them all over the trough with its muzzle. It was still grey outside.
‘What are you doing up so early, dearie?’ the muzhik’s old woman, stepping out of the cottage, addressed him amicably as a good old acquaintance.
‘Going hunting, auntie. Is this the way to the marsh?’
‘Straight through the back yards, past our threshing floor, my dear man, and then the hemp field – there’s a footpath.’
Stepping carefully with her tanned bare feet, the old woman showed him to the fence of the threshing floor and opened it for him.
‘Straight on and you’ll hit the marsh. Our boys took the horses there last night.’
Laska gaily ran ahead on the path; Levin followed her with a quick, light step, constantly glancing at the sky. He did not want the sun to come up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not tarry. The moon, which was still shining when he set out, now merely gleamed like a bit of quicksilver; the morning star, which could not be missed earlier, now had to be looked for; the spots on the distant field, indistinct before, were now clearly visible. They were shocks of rye. Still invisible without the sun’s light, the dew on the tall, fragrant hemp, from which the heads had already been plucked, wetted Levin’s legs and his blouse above the waist. In the transparent stillness of morning the slightest sounds could be heard. A bee whizzed past Levin’s ear like a bullet. He looked closer and saw another, then a third. They all flew out from behind the wattle fence of the apiary and disappeared in the direction of the marsh. The path led him straight to the marsh. It could be recognized by the steam rising from it, thicker in some places, thinner in others, so that the sedge and some small willow bushes, like islands, wavered in this steam. At the edge of the marsh and the road, the boys and muzhiks who had spent the night with the horses all lay, having fallen asleep under their caftans before dawn. Not far from them, three hobbled horses moved about. One of them clanked its chains. Laska walked beside her master, looking about and asking to run ahead. As he walked past the sleeping muzhiks and came up to the first marshy patch, Levin checked his caps and let the dog go. One of the horses, a sleek chestnut two–year–old, saw the dog, shied, tossed its tail and snorted. The others also became frightened and, splashing their hobbled legs in the water, their hoofs making a sound like clapping as they pulled them from the thick clay, began leaping their way out of the marsh. Laska stopped, looking mockingly at the horses and questioningly at Levin. Levin patted her and whistled the signal for her to start.
Laska ran with a gay and preoccupied air over the bog that yielded under her.
Running into the marsh, Laska at once picked up, amidst the familiar smells of roots, marsh grass, rust, and the alien smell of horse dung, the bird smell spread all through the place, that same strong–smelling bird that excited her more than anything else. Here and there over the moss and marsh burdock this smell was very strong, but it was impossible to tell in which direction it grew stronger or weaker. To find the direction she had to go further downwind. Not feeling her legs under her, moving at a tense gallop so that she could stop at each leap if necessary, Laska ran to the right, away from the morning breeze blowing from the east, and then turned upwind. Breathing in the air with flared nostrils, she sensed at once that there were not only tracks but they themselves were there, and not one but many. She slowed the speed of her run. They were there, but precisely where she was still unable to tell. She had already begun a circle to find the place when her master’s voice suddenly distracted her. ‘Here, Laska!’ he said, pointing in a different direction. She paused briefly, as if to ask if it would not be better to finish what she had begun. But he repeated the order in an angry voice, pointing to a water–flooded hummocky spot where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending to search in order to give him pleasure, ran all over the hummocks and then went back to the former place, and immediately sensed them again. Now, when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and, not looking where she put her feet, stumbling in vexation over high hummocks and getting into the water, but managing with her strong, supple legs, she began the circle that would make everything clear to her. Their smell struck her more and more strongly, more and more distinctly, and suddenly it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was there, behind that hummock, five steps away from her. She stopped and her whole body froze. On her short legs she could see nothing ahead of her, but she knew from the smell that it was sitting no more than five steps away. She stood, sensing it more and more and delighting in the anticipation. Her tense tail was extended and only its very tip twitched. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears pricked up a little. One ear had got folded back as she ran, and she was breathing heavily but cautiously, and still more cautiously she turned more with her eyes than her head to look at her master. He, with his usual face but with his ever terrible eyes, was coming, stumbling over hummocks, and extremely slowly as it seemed to her. It seemed to her that he was moving slowly, yet he was running.
Noticing the special way Laska was searching, pressed flat to the ground, as if raking it with her hind legs in big strides, and with her mouth slightly open, Levin understood that she was after great snipe, and, praying to God in his heart that he would be successful, especially with the first bird, he ran to her. Coming right up to her, he began looking in front of him from his height and saw with his eyes what she had seen with her nose. In a space between two hummocks, close to one of them, he made out a great snipe. It was listening, its head turned. Then, fluffing its wings slightly and folding them again, it wagged its behind clumsily and disappeared round the corner.
‘Flush it, flush it,’ cried Levin, nudging Laska from behind.
‘But I can’t flush anything,’ thought Laska. ‘Where will I flush it from? I can sense them from here, but if I move forward, I won’t be able to tell where they are or what they are.’ Yet here he was nudging her with his knee and saying in an excited whisper: ‘Flush it, Lasochka, flush it!’
‘Well, if that’s what he wants, I’ll do it, but I can’t answer for myself anymore,’ she thought and tore forward at full speed between the hummocks. She no longer smelled anything, but only saw and heard, without understanding anything.
Ten steps from the former place, with a thick screech and the swelling noise of wings peculiar to its kind, a single great snipe flew up. And following a shot it plopped down heavily, its white breast against the wet bog. Another did not wait but flew up behind Levin without the dog.
When Levin turned to it, it was already far away. But the shot reached it. Having flown some twenty yards, the second snipe suddenly jerked upward
s and, tumbling like a thrown ball, fell heavily on to a dry patch.
‘That’ll do nicely!’ thought Levin, putting the two plump, warm birds into his game bag. ‘Eh, Lasochka, won’t it do nicely?’
By the time Levin reloaded his gun and started off again, the sun, though still invisible behind the clouds, was already up. The crescent moon, having lost all its brilliance, showed white like a cloud in the sky; there was no longer a single star to be seen. The marshy patches, silvery with dew earlier, now became golden. The rustiness turned to amber. The blue of the grass changed to yellowish green. Little marsh birds pottered by the brook, in bushes glistening with dew and casting long shadows. A hawk woke up and sat on a haystack, turning its head from side to side, looking with displeasure at the marsh. Jackdaws flew into the fields, and a barefoot boy was already driving the horses towards an old man, who had got up from under his caftan and was scratching himself. Smoke from the shooting, like milk, spread white over the green grass.
One of the boys came running to Levin.
‘Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!’ he cried to him and followed him at a distance.
And in the sight of this boy, who expressed his approval, Levin took a double pleasure in straight away killing three more snipe, one after the other.
XIII
The hunters’ omen proved true, that if the first beast or bird was taken the field would be lucky.
Tired, hungry, happy, Levin returned towards ten o’clock, having walked some twenty miles on foot, with nineteen pieces of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt because there was no room for it in his game bag. His comrades had long been awake and had had time to get hungry and have breakfast.
‘Wait, wait, I know it’s nineteen,’ said Levin, counting for a second time the snipe and great snipe, doubled up and dry, caked with blood, their heads twisted to the side, no longer looking as impressive as when they flew.
The count was correct, and Levin was pleased at Stepan Arkadyich’s envy. He was also pleased to find on his return that the messenger had already arrived with a note from Kitty.
‘I am quite well and cheerful. If you are afraid for me, you may be more at ease than ever. I have a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna’ (this was the midwife, a new, important person in Levin’s family life). ‘She came to see how I am. She found me perfectly well, and we are having her stay until you come. Everyone is cheerful and well, so please don’t you be in a hurry, and if the hunting is good, stay another day.’
These two joys, the lucky hunting and the note from his wife, were so great that the two minor unpleasantnesses that occurred afterwards passed easily for him. One was that the chestnut outrunner, evidently overworked the day before, was off her feed and looked dull. The coachman said she had been strained.
‘She was overdriven yesterday, Konstantin Dmitrich,’ he said. ‘Of course, she was pushed hard those seven miles!’
The other unpleasantness that upset his good mood at first, but at which he later laughed a great deal, was that of all the provisions, which Kitty had sent with them in such abundance that it seemed they could not have been eaten in a week, nothing remained. Coming back from the hunt tired and hungry, Levin had been dreaming so specifically of pirozhki that, as he approached their quarters, he could already feel their smell and taste in his mouth, the way Laska could sense game, and he at once ordered Filipp to serve them. It turned out that there were not only no pirozhki but no chicken either.
‘Quite an appetite!’ said Stepan Arkadyich, laughing and pointing at Vasenka Veslovsky. ‘I don’t suffer from lack of appetite myself, but this is astonishing …’
‘Mais c’était délicieux.’* Veslovsky praised the beef he had just eaten.
‘Well, nothing to be done!’ said Levin, giving Veslovsky a dark look. ‘Serve some beef, then, Filipp.’
‘The beef got eaten. I gave the bone to the dogs,’ Filipp replied.
Levin was so upset that he said vexedly:
‘You might have left me at least something!’ and nearly wept.
‘Clean the game,’ he said to Filipp in a trembling voice, trying not to look at Vasenka, ‘and layer it with nettles. And fetch me some milk at least.’
Later on, when he had drunk his fill of milk, he felt ashamed at having shown vexation to a stranger, and he started laughing at his hungry anger.
That evening they hunted in yet another field, where Veslovsky also shot several birds, and at night they returned home.
The way back was as merry as the way there. Veslovsky sang, then recalled with pleasure his exploits with the muzhiks who had treated him to vodka and said ‘No offence’, then his night’s exploits with the nuts and the farm girl, and the muzhik who had asked him whether he was married or not and, on learning that he was not, had told him: ‘Don’t you go looking at other men’s wives; you’d best get one of your own.’ These words especially made Veslovsky laugh.
‘All in all I’m terribly pleased with our trip. And you, Levin?’
‘I’m very pleased,’ Levin said sincerely, especially glad not only that
* But it was delicious.
he did not feel the hostility he had felt towards Vasenka Veslovsky at home, but that, on the contrary, he felt the most friendly disposition towards him.
XIV
The next day at ten o’clock, having already made the round of the farm, Levin knocked at the door of Vasenka’s bedroom.
‘Entrez,’ Veslovsky called to him. ‘Excuse me, I’ve just finished my ablutions,’ he said, smiling, standing before him in nothing but his underwear.
‘Please don’t be embarrassed.’ Levin sat down by the window. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Like a log. What a good day for hunting!’
‘Yes. Will you take tea or coffee?’
‘Neither one. I’ll wait for lunch. I’m ashamed, really. The ladies must be up already? It would be splendid to take a stroll around. You can show me your horses.’
After strolling in the garden, visiting the stables, and even doing some exercises together on the bars, Levin and his guest returned to the house and went into the drawing room.
‘We had excellent hunting and so many impressions!’ Veslovsky said, going up to Kitty, who was sitting by the samovar. ‘It’s a pity ladies are deprived of such pleasures!’
‘Well, so what? He has to find something to talk about with his hostess,’ Levin said to himself. Again it seemed to him there was something in the smile and the victorious expression with which his guest had addressed Kitty . ..
The princess, who was sitting at the other end of the table with Marya Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyich, called Levin over and started a conversation with him about moving to Moscow for Kitty’s confinement and getting an apartment ready. As Levin had found all the preparations for the wedding unpleasant, insulting in their insignificance to the grandeur of what was taking place, so he found still more insulting the preparations for the future confinement, the date of which was somehow being counted out on their fingers. He tried all the time not to hear those conversations about the ways of swaddling the future baby, tried to turn away and not see some sort of mysterious, endless knitted strips, some sort of linen triangles, to which Dolly attached some special significance, and so on. The event of his son’s birth (he was sure it would be a son), which he had been promised but in which he still could not believe – so extraordinary did it seem to him – appeared on the one hand as such an enormous and therefore impossible happiness, and on the other as such a mysterious event, that this imaginary knowledge of what was going to be and, consequently, the preparation for it as for something ordinary, done by these same people, seemed to him outrageous and humiliating.
But the princess did not understand his feelings and explained his unwillingness to think and talk about it as light–mindedness and indifference, and therefore would not leave him in peace. She had charged Stepan Arkadyich with seeing about the apartment, and now she called Levin over.
�
�I don’t know a thing, Princess. Do as you like,’ he said.
‘You must decide when you’ll move.’
