Part Eight: Chapter 11

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe was one ofLevin's most painful days. It was the very busiest working time,when all the peasantry show an extraordinary intensity ofself-sacrifice in labor, such as is never shown in any otherconditions of life, and would be highly esteemed if the men whoshowed these qualities themselves thought highly of them, and ifit were not repeated every year, and if the results of thisintense labor were not so simple.

　　To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow themeadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow thewinter corn--all this seems so simple and ordinary; but tosucceed in getting through it all everyone in the village, fromthe old man to the young child, must toil incessantly for threeor four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living on rye-beer,onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying the sheaves atnight, and not giving more than two or three hours in thetwenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all overRussia.

　　Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and inthe closest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt inthis busy time that he was infected by this general quickening ofenergy in the people.

　　In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye,and to the oats, which were being carried to the stacks, andreturning home at the time his wife and sister-in-law weregetting up, he drank coffee with them and walked to the farm,where a new thrashing machine was to be set working to get readythe seed-corn.

　　He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with theleaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeledaspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed through the opendoor in which the dry bitter dust of the thrashing whirled andplayed, at the grass of the thrashing floor in the sunlight andthe fresh straw that had been brought in from the barn, then atthe speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew chirping inunder the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in thecrevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in thedark, dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.

　　"Why is it all being done?" he thought. "Why am I standing here,making them work? What are they all so busy for, trying to showtheir zeal before me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend,toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam fell on her in thefire)" he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking upthe grain, moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feetover the uneven, rough floor. "Then she recovered, but today ortomorrow or in ten years she won't; they'll bury her, andnothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl in thered jacket, who with that skillful, soft action shakes the earsout of their husks. They'll bury her and this piebald horse, andvery soon too," he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, pantinghorse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. "Andthey will bury her and Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beardfull of chaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders--theywill bury him. He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, andshouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the strap onthe moving wheel. And what's more, it's not them alone--methey'll bury too, and nothing will be left. What for?"

　　He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch toreckon how much they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to know thisso as to judge by it the task to set for the day.

　　"It'll soon be one, and they're only beginning the third sheaf,"thought Levin. He went up to the man that was feeding themachine, and shouting over the roar of the machine he told him toput it in more slowly. "You put in too much at a time, Fyodor.Do you see--it gets choked, that's why it isn't getting on. Doit evenly."

　　Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shoutedsomething in response, but still went on doing it as Levin didnot want him to.

　　Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and beganfeeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants'dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he went out of thebarn with Fyodor and fell into talk with him, stopping beside aneat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the thrashing floor for seed.

　　Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in whichLevin had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Nowit had been let to a former house porter.

　　Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon,a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the samevillage, would not take the land for the coming year.

　　"It's a high rent; it wouldn't pay Platon, KonstantinDmitrievitch," answered the peasant, picking the ears off hissweat-drenched shirt.

　　"But how does Kirillov make it pay?"

　　"Mituh!" (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone ofcontempt), "you may be sure he'll make it pay, KonstantinDmitrievitch! He'll get his share, however he has to squeeze toget it! He's no mercy on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch" (sohe called the old peasant Platon), "do you suppose he'd flay theskin off a man? Where there's debt, he'll let anyone off. Andhe'll not wring the last penny out. He's a man too."

　　"But why will he let anyone off?"

　　"Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for hisown wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of fillinghis belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for hissoul. He does not forget God."

　　"How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?" Levin almostshouted.

　　"Why, to be sure, in truth, in God's way. Folks are different.Take you now, you wouldn't wrong a man...."

　　"Yes, yes, good-bye!" said Levin, breathless with excitement, andturning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towardshome. At the peasant's words that Fokanitch lived for his soul,in truth, in God's way, undefined but significant ideas seemed toburst out as though they had been locked up, and all strivingtowards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head,blinding him with their light.