‘That’s enough, Nikolay Dmitrich!’ said Marya Nikolayevna, stretching her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.
‘Leave it! Don’t nag me! I’ll hit you!’ he said.
Marya Nikolayevna’s meek and kind smile transferred to Nikolay, and she took the vodka.
‘Do you think she doesn’t understand?’ he said. ‘She understands all this better than any of us. There is something kind and good about her, don’t you think?’
‘You haven’t been to Moscow before?’ Konstantin asked her in order to say something, using the polite form of address.
‘Don’t address her formally. She’s scared of that. No one has addressed her formally except the magistrate when she was taken to court for wanting to leave the house of sin. Good gracious, there is so much nonsense in the world!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘All these new institutions, the magistrates, the zemstvo, it’s all appalling!’
And he started to talk about his altercations with the new institutions.
Konstantin Levin listened to him, and the denial of sense in all the public institutions, a view he shared and often articulated, now sounded unpleasant coming from his brother’s mouth.
‘We’ll understand it all in the next world,’ he said jokingly.
‘In the next world? Oh, I’m not fond of the next world! Not fond at all,’ he said, fastening his frightened eyes on to his brother’s face. ‘You’d think it would be good to leave behind all this mess and misunderstanding, both other people’s and your own, but I am afraid of death, I’m very afraid of death.’ He shuddered. ‘Come on, you must drink something. Do you want some champagne? Or maybe we should go somewhere. Let’s go to the gypsies! You know, I’ve taken a great liking to gypsies and Russian songs.’
His speech was becoming slurred, and he started jumping from one subject to another. With Masha’s assistance, Konstantin persuaded him not to go out anywhere, and put him to bed, completely drunk.
Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to try and persuade Nikolay Levin to go and live with his brother.
26
IN the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and by evening he had arrived home. During the journey he talked to the other passengers in his compartment about politics, about the new railways, and just as in Moscow, he was overwhelmed by a confusion of concepts, dissatisfaction with himself, and shame about something; but when he got out at his station and recognized his one-eyed coachman Ignat with the collar of his kaftan turned up, when he saw his upholstered sleigh in the dim light cast by the station windows, his horses with braided tails, and the rings and tassels on their harness, and when Ignat the coachman started telling him the village news while they were loading up, about the contractor arriving and Pava calving, he felt the confusion slowly unravelling, and the shame and dissatisfaction with himself beginning to recede. He felt that at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he put on the sheepskin coat brought for him, sat down in the sleigh, all bundled up, and set off, mulling over the instructions that needed to be given once he was home, and keeping an eye on the outrunner, a broken-winded but still lively former saddle-horse from the Don, he began to understand what had happened to him in a completely different way. He felt himself again, and did not want to be different. He now just wanted to be better than he was before. Firstly, he decided from that day on that he would no longer pin his hopes on the exceptional happiness which marriage was supposed to bring him, and as a result of that would not be so dismissive of the present. Secondly, he would never again allow himself to be carried away by vile passion, memory of which had so tormented him when he was about to propose. Next, remembering his brother Nikolay, he made a pact with himself that he would never again allow himself to forget him, but would keep track of him and not let him out of his sight, so he would be ready to help out when things became difficult for him. And that would be soon, he could feel that. Then what his brother had said about communism, which he had been so flippant about, was also now causing him to reflect. He thought the idea of altering economic conditions was nonsense, but he had always been conscious of his wealth in comparison to the poverty of the people, and he now resolved that in order to feel he was being completely just, although he had worked hard before and did not live extravagantly, he would now work even harder, and would allow himself even fewer luxuries. And all this seemed so easy to take on that he spent the entire journey lost in the most pleasant daydreams. He arrived home some time after eight in the evening with a buoyant feeling of hope for a new and better life.
Light from the windows of the room of his old nanny, Agafya Mikhailovna, who acted as his housekeeper, was falling on to the snow in the courtyard in front of the house. She was not yet asleep. After being woken by her, Kuzma ran barefoot and sleepy out on to the porch. Laska, his setter bitch, almost knocked Kuzma down as she raced out too, yelping; she rubbed herself against his knees, and jumped up, wanting but not daring to put her front paws on his chest.
‘You’ve come back quickly, sir,’ said Agafya Mikhailovna.
‘Got homesick, Agafya Mikhailovna. Nice to be away, but it’s nicer at home,’ he replied and went into his study.
The study was slowly lit up by the candle that was brought in. Familiar details emerged: deer antlers, bookshelves, the shiny stove with the vent that had long been in need of repair, his father’s sofa, the big desk, an open book on the desk, a broken ashtray, a notebook with his handwriting. When he saw all this, he surrendered to a moment of doubt about whether he could create that new life he had been dreaming about during his journey home. It was as if all these traces of his life had grabbed hold of him and were saying: ‘No, you’ll never get away from us or be any different, but you’ll be just the same as you have always been: with your doubts and eternal dissatisfaction with yourself, your vain attempts to improve and your failures, and your eternal expectation of a happiness which can never possibly be granted to you.’
But that was just his possessions talking, while another voice in his heart was saying that he should not give in to the past, and could make whatever he wished of himself. And heeding this voice, he went over to the corner where he had two heavy dumb-bells, and started doing lifting exercises, trying to instil some vigour into himself. Footsteps creaked outside the door. He hurriedly put down the dumb-bells.
The steward came in and said that everything, thank goodness, was fine, but reported that the buckwheat had got slightly burnt in the new kiln. This news annoyed Levin. The new dryer had been built and partly invented by Levin. The steward had always been against this kiln, and was now announcing with hidden triumph that the buckwheat had burned. Levin was firmly convinced that if it had burned, it was only because the instructions he had given a hundred times had not been carried out. He became cross, and he reprimanded the steward. But there had been one important and joyous event: Pava, his best and most valuable cow, who had been bought at a show, had calved.
‘Kuzma, hand me my sheepskin. And get them to bring a lantern, I’m going to take a look,’ he said to the steward.
The cattle-shed for the most valuable cows was right behind the house. Going across the yard past the snowdrift by the lilac, he walked up to the shed. When the frozen door was opened there was a warm, steamy smell of manure, and the cows, startled by the unfamiliar light from the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. There was a brief glimpse of the smooth, broad, black-and-white back of a Friesian. Berkut, the bull, was lying with his ring in his nose and seemed to want to get up, but had second thoughts, and only snorted a couple of times as they walked past. Pava, the red beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, her back turned, was protecting her calf from the intruders and nuzzling it.