Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
The load was complete, and Ivan, jumping down, took his gentle fat horse by the bridle, and joined the file of telyegas going to the village. The young woman threw her rake on top of the load, and, swinging her arms, joined the other women, who had collected in a group to sing. These women, with rakes on their shoulders and dressed in bright colors, suddenly burst forth into song with loud happy voices as they followed the carts. One wild untrained voice would sing a verse of the Pyesna, or folk-song, and when she had reached the refrain, fifty other young, fresh, and powerful voices would take it up simultaneously and repeat it to the end.
The peasant women, singing their folk-song, came toward Levin; and it seemed to him that a cloud, freighted with the thunder of gayety, was moving down upon him. The thunder-cloud drew nearer, it took possession of him,—and the haycock on which he was reclining and the other haycocks and the carts and the whole meadow and the far-off field moved and swayed to the rhythm of this wild song, with its accompaniment of whistles and shrill cries and clapping of hands. This wholesome gayety filled him with envy; he would have liked to take part in this expression of joyous life; but nothing of the sort could he do, and he was obliged to lie still and look and listen. When the throng with their song had passed out of sight and hearing, an oppressive feeling of melancholy came over him at the thought of his loneliness, of his physical indolence, of the hostility which existed between him and this alien world.
Some of these very muzhiks, even those who had quarreled with him about the hay, or those whom he had injured, or those who had intended to cheat him, saluted him gayly as they passed, and evidently did not and could not bear him any malice, or feel any remorse, or even remembrance that they had tried to defraud him. All was swallowed up and forgotten in this sea of joyous, universal labor. God gave the day, God gave the strength; and the day and the strength consecrated the labor, and yielded their own reward. For whom was the work? What would be the fruits of the work? These were secondary, unimportant considerations.
Levin had often looked with interest at this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy of the people that lived this life; but to-day, for the first time, especially under the impression of what he had seen in the bearing of Ivan Parmenof toward his young wife, he had clearly realized that it depended on himself whether he would exchange the burdensome, idle, artificial, selfish existence which he led, for the laborious, simple, pure, and delightful life of the peasantry.
The elder who had been sitting with him had already gone home; the people were scattered; the neighboring villagers had already reached their houses, but those who lived at a distance were preparing to spend the night in the meadow, and were getting ready for supper.
Levin, without being noticed by the people, still reclined on the haycock, looking, listening, and thinking. The peasantry gathered in the meadow scarcely slept throughout the short summer night. At first gay gossip and laughter were heard while they were eating; then followed songs and jests again.
No trace of all the long, laborious day was left upon them, except of its happiness. Just before the dawn there was silence everywhere. Nothing could be heard but the nocturnal sounds of the frogs ceaselessly croaking in the marsh, and the horses whinnying as they waited in the mist that rose before the dawn. Coming to himself. Levin got up from the haycock, and, looking at the stars, saw that the night had gone.
"Well! what am I going to do? How am I going to do this?" he asked himself, trying to give a shape to the thoughts and feelings that had occupied him during this short night. All that he had thought and felt had taken three separate directions. First, it seemed to him that he must renounce his former mode of life, which was useful neither to himself nor to any one else. This renunciation seemed to him very attractive and was easy and simple.
The second direction that his thoughts and feelings took referred especially to the new life which he longed to lead. He clearly realized the simplicity, purity, and regularity of this new life, and he was convinced that he should find in it that satisfaction, that calmness and mental freedom, which he now felt the lack of so painfully. The third line of thought brought him to the question how he should effect the transition from the old life to the new, and in this regard nothing clear presented itself to his mind.
"I must have a wife. I must engage in work, and have the absolute necessity of work. Shall I abandon Pokrovskoye? buy land? join the commune? marry a peasant woman? How can I do all this?" he again asked himself, and no answer came. "However," he went on, in his self-communings, "I have not slept all night, and my ideas are not very clear. I shall reduce them to order by and by. One thing is certain; this night has settled my fate. All my former dreams of family existence were rubbish, but this—all this is vastly simpler and better." ....
"How lovely!" he thought, as he gazed at the delicate white curly clouds, colored like mother-of-pearl, which floated in the sky above him. "How charming everything has been this lovely night! And when did that shell have time to form? I have been looking this long time at the sky, and nothing was to be seen—only two white streaks. Yes! thus, without my knowing it, my views about life have been changed."
He left the meadow, and walked along the highway that led to the village. A cool breeze began to blow, and it became gray and melancholy. The somber moment was at hand which generally precedes the dawn, the perfect triumph of light over the darkness.
Shivering with the chill, Levin walked fast, looking at the ground.
"What is that? Who is coming?" he asked himself, hearing the sound of bells. He raised his head. About forty paces from him he saw, coming toward him on the highway, on the grassy edge where he himself was walking, a traveling carriage, drawn by four horses. The pole-horses, to avoid the ruts, pressed close against the pole; but the skilful postilion, seated on one side of the box, kept the pole directly over the rut, so that the wheels kept only on the smooth surface of the road.
Levin was so interested in this that, without thinking who might be coming, he only glanced heedlessly at the carriage.
In one corner of the carriage an elderly lady was asleep; and by the window sat a young girl, evidently only just awake, holding with both hands the ribbons of her white bonnet. Serene and thoughtful, filled with a lofty, complex life which Levin could not understand, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of the morning sky.
At the very instant that this vision flashed by him he caught a glimpse of her frank eyes. She recognized him, and a gleam of joy, mingled with wonder, lighted up her face.
He could not be mistaken. Only she in all the world had such eyes. In all the world there was but one being who could concentrate for him all the light and meaning of life. It was she; it was Kitty. He judged that she was on her way from the railway station to Yergushovo.
And all the thoughts that had occupied Levin through his sleepless night, all the resolutions that he had made, vanished in a twinkling. Horror seized him as he remembered his dream of marrying a krestyanka—a peasant wife! In that carriage which flashed by him on the other side of the road, and disappeared, was the only possible answer to his life's enigma which had tormented and puzzled him so long.
She was now out of sight; the rumble of the wheels had ceased, and scarcely could he hear the bells. The barking of the dogs told him that the carriage was passing through the village. And now there remained only the empty fields, the distant village, and himself, an alien and a stranger to everything, walking solitary on the deserted highway.
He looked at the sky, hoping to find there still the sea-shell cloud which he had admired, and which personified for him the movement of his thoughts and feelings during the night. But in the sky there was nothing that resembled the shell. There, at immeasurable heights, that mysterious change had already taken place. There was no trace of the shell, but in its place there extended over a good half of the heavens a carpet of cirrus clouds sweeping on and sweeping on. The sky was growing blue and luminous, and with the same tenderness and also with the same unsatisfactoriness it answered his questioning look.
"No," he said to himself, "however good this simple and laborious life may be, I cannot bring myself to it. I love her."