ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 12

      THE hay was roped. Vanka jumped down and taking the bridle led away the good, well-fed horse. His wife threw her rake on top of the load, and swinging her arms went with vigorous steps to join the other women who had gathered in a circle. Having come out upon the road, Vanka took his place in the line of carts. The women, carrying their rakes over their shoulders, followed the carts, their coloured dresses gleaming brightly and their chatter ringing merrily. One of the women with a strange gruff voice started a song and sang it to the end, when fifty powerful voices, some gruff and others shrill, all at once took it up with a will.

      The singing women were drawing nearer to Levin and he felt as if a thundercloud of merriment were approaching. The cloud moved past, enveloping him and the haycock upon which he sat, and the other haycocks, the carts, the whole of the meadow, and the distant fields. They all seemed to vibrate and heave with the strains of that wild, madly-merry song, interspersed with screams and whistling. Levin envied them their healthy gaiety and felt a wish to take part in that expression of the joy of living; but he could do nothing except lie and look and listen. When the company and their songs vanished out of sight and hearing, an oppressive feeling of discontent with his own lonely lot, his physical idleness and his hostility to the world overcame Levin. Some of those very peasants who had disputed with him about the hay — whom either he had wronged or who had tried to cheat him — those very peasants had bowed pleasantly to him, evidently not harbouring, and unable to harbour, any ill-will toward him, being not only unrepentant but even forgetful that they had been trying to cheat him. All had been drowned in the sea of their joyful common toil. God had given them the day and the strength, and both the day and the strength had been devoted to labour which had brought its own reward. For whom they had laboured and what the fruits of their labour would be was an extraneous and unimportant affair.

      Levin had often admired that kind of life, had often envied the folk who lived it; but that day, especially after what he had seen for the first time of the relations between Vanka Parmenich and his young wife, it struck him that it depended on himself to change his wearisome, idle, and artificial personal life for that pure, delightful life of common toil.

      The old man who had been sitting beside him had long since gone home. The peasants who lived near by had also gone home, and those from a distance had gathered together to have supper and spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unnoticed by them, still lay on the haycock, looking, listening, and thinking. The peasants who were staying in the meadow kept awake almost all the short summer night. At first the sounds of merry general talk and shouts of laughter over their supper could be heard, then songs and more laughter. The whole long day of toil had left upon them no trace of anything but merriment.

      Just before dawn all became silent. The sounds of night — the ceaseless croaking of frogs, the snorting of horses through the morning mist over the meadow — could alone be heard. Awaking to reality Levin rose from his haycock, and glancing up at the stars realized that the night was nearly over.

      ‘Well, then, what shall I do? How shall I do it?’ he asked himself, trying to find expression for what he had been thinking and the feelings he had lived through in that short night. All his ideas and feelings separated themselves into three different lines of thought. The first was how to renounce his old life and discard his quite useless education. This renunciation would afford him pleasure and was quite easy and simple. The second was concerned with his notion of the life he now wished to lead. He was distinctly conscious of the simplicity, purity, and rightness of that life, and was convinced that in it he would find satisfaction, peace, and dignity, the absence of which was so painful to him. But the third thought was the question of how to make the change from his present life to that other one. And here no clear idea presented itself to his mind. Should he have a wife? Should he have work and the necessity to work? Should he leave Pokrovsk, buy land, join a peasant commune, marry a peasant girl? ‘How am I to do it?’ he again asked himself and could find no reply. ‘However, I have not slept all night and can’t render a clear account of myself now,’ he thought, ‘but I’ll clear it up later. One thing is certain: this night has decided my fate. All my former dreams of a family life were nonsense — not the right thing. Everything is much simpler and better than that… .’

      ‘How СКАЧАТЬ