Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy
from the beauty of what he was looking at. He assented to what his brother said but could not help thinking of other things. When they emerged from the forest his attention was arrested at the sight of a fallow field and a hillock, here and there yellow with grass or broken up and cut into squares, in some parts speckled with heaps of manure, or even ploughed. A string of carts was moving over the field.
Levin counted the carts, and was pleased to see that sufficient manure was being brought. At the sight of the meadows his thoughts turned to the hay harvest. The thought of the hay harvest always touched him to the quick. When they reached the meadow Levin stopped. At the roots of the thick grass the morning dew still lingered, and Koznyshev, afraid of wetting his feet, asked his brother to drive him across the meadow to the willow clump near which perch could be caught. Though Constantine was loth to crush his grass, he drove across the meadow. The tall grass twined softly about the wheels and the horse’s legs, leaving seeds on the wet spokes and hubs.
Koznyshev sat down by the willows, while Levin led away his horse, and having tethered it, stepped into the immense grey-green sea of grass, so dense that the wind could not ruffle it. In the meadow, which was flooded every spring, the silky grass, now scattering seeds, reached almost to his waist. When Constantine Levin had passed right across the meadow and reached the road, he met an old man with a swollen eye carrying a swarm of bees in a skep.
‘Have you found it, Fomich?’ he asked.
‘Found it, indeed, Constantine Dmitrich! I only hope not to lose my own. This is the second time a swarm has got away, and it’s only thanks to those lads there that I’ve got this one back. They were ploughing for you, and unharnessed a horse and galloped after it… .’
‘Well, Fomich, what do you think? Shall we begin mowing, or wait a little?’
‘Oh, well, our custom is to wait till St. Peter’s Day, but you always mow earlier. Why not, God willing? The grass is fine; there will be more room for the cattle.’
‘And what do you think of the weather?’
‘That’s God’s business — perhaps the weather will keep fine too.’
Levin went back to his brother.
Though he had caught nothing, Koznyshev did not feel bored and seemed in the best of spirits. Levin saw that he had been roused by his conversation with the doctor and wanted to have a talk. Levin, on the contrary, was impatient to get home in order to give orders about hiring the mowers on the morrow, and to decide about the hay harvest, which greatly occupied his mind.
‘Well, let’s go,’ said he.
‘Where’s the hurry? Let’s sit here a little. How wet you are! Though nothing bites, it’s pleasant; hunting and similar sports are good because they bring one in touch with nature… . How lovely this steel-coloured water is!’ said he. ‘And these grassy banks always remind me of that riddle — you know — “The grass says to the water, We will shake, we will shake… .” ’
‘I don’t know that riddle,’ replied Levin in a dull tone.
Chapter 3
‘DO you know, I’ve been thinking about you,’ said Koznyshev. ‘From what the doctor told me — and he is by no means a stupid young fellow — the things going on in your district are simply disgraceful. I have already told you, and I say it again, it is not right to stop away from the Zemstvo meetings, and in general to take no part in its activities! If all the better sort stand aside, of course heaven only knows what will happen. We expend money for salaries, but there are no schools, no medical assistance, no midwives, no chemists, no anything!’
‘You know I have tried,’ Levin replied slowly and reluctantly, ‘but I can’t! So what am I to do?’
‘Why can’t you? I confess I don’t understand. I can’t admit it to be indifference or inaptitude; is it possible that it is mere laziness?’
‘Neither the one nor the other — nor the last. I have tried and seen that I can do nothing,’ said Levin.
He did not pay much attention to what his brother was saying. Peering into the distance across the river, he made out something black in the cornfield, and could not see whether it was only a horse or the steward on horseback.
‘Why can you do nothing? You have made an attempt, and because according to your judgment it was a failure, you gave it up. Fancy having so little ambition!’
‘Ambition?’ reiterated Levin, stung by his brother’s words. ‘I do not understand it. If at college they had told me that others understood the integral calculus and I did not, that would have been a case for ambition; but in these matters the first requisite is a conviction that one has the necessary ability, and above all that it is all very important.’
‘Well, and is it not very important?’ said Koznyshev, stirred by the perception that his occupations were regarded as unimportant and especially by his brother’s evident inattention to what he was saying.
‘They don’t appear important to me. Do what you will, they don’t grip me,’ replied Levin, having made out that what he saw was the steward, who was probably dismissing the peasants from their ploughing too soon, for they were turning the ploughs over. ‘Is it possible they have finished ploughing?’ thought he.
‘Come now! After all,’ continued the elder brother with a frown on his handsome, intelligent face, ‘there are limits to everything! It is all very well to be a crank, to be sincere and dislike hypocrisy — I know that very well — but what you are saying has either no meaning at all or a very bad meaning. How can you consider it unimportant that the people, whom you love, as you maintain …’
‘I never maintained it,’ thought Levin… .
‘… are dying without help? Ignorant midwives murder the babies, and the people remain steeped in ignorance, at the mercy of every village clerk; while you have in your power the means of helping them, and yet are not helping because you do not consider it important!’
And Koznyshev confronted his brother with this dilemma: ‘Either you are so undeveloped that you don’t see all that you might do, or you don’t want to sacrifice your peace of mind or your vanity — I don’t know which — in order to do it.’ Constantine felt that there was nothing for him but to submit or else to own to a lack of love for the common cause, and he felt wounded and grieved.
‘Both the one and the other,’ said he resolutely. ‘I can’t see how it is to be done …’
‘What? Don’t see how medical help can be given, by distributing the money in a proper way …’
‘Well, it seems impossible to me… . To give medical help over the whole three thousand square miles of our district, with our deep snow, impassable when it begins melting, our snowdrifts, and the pressure of work at harvest time, is impossible. Besides, I have no faith in medicine generally …’
‘Come now! That is unjust… . I could cite thousands of cases to you… . And how about schools?’
‘Schools? What for?’
‘What do you mean? Is it possible to doubt the utility of education? If it is good for you, why not for everybody?’
Constantine felt himself morally cornered, and in consequence became excited and involuntarily betrayed the chief cause of his indifference to social questions.
‘All this may be very good, but why should I trouble about medical centres which I should never use or schools to which I should never send my children, and to which the peasants would not wish to send theirs either? — and to which I am not fully convinced they ought to send them?’ said he.
This unexpected view of the question took Koznyshev by surprise, but he immediately formed a new plan of attack.
He