Anna Karenina
Next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was
detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached the mowing
grass the mowers were already at their second row.
From the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of the
meadow below, with its grayish ridges of cut grass, and the black heaps
of coats, taken off by the mowers at the place from which they had
started cutting.
Gradually, as he rode towards the meadow, the peasants came into sight,
some in coats, some in their shirts mowing, one behind another in a
long string, swinging their scythes differently. He counted forty-two
of them.
They were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the meadow,
where there had been an old dam. Levin recognized some of his own men.
Here was old Yermil in a very long white smock, bending forward to
swing a scythe; there was a young fellow, Vaska, who had been a
coachman of Levin’s, taking every row with a wide sweep. Here, too, was
Tit, Levin’s preceptor in the art of mowing, a thin little peasant. He
was in front of all, and cut his wide row without bending, as though
playing with the scythe.
Levin got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went to
meet Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it to him.
“It’s ready, sir; it’s like a razor, cuts of itself,” said Tit, taking
off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe.
Levin took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished their
rows, the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the road one
after another, and, laughing a little, greeted the master. They all
stared at him, but no one made any remark, till a tall old man, with a
wrinkled, beardless face, wearing a short sheepskin jacket, came out
into the road and accosted him.
“Look’ee now, master, once take hold of the rope there’s no letting it
go!” he said, and Levin heard smothered laughter among the mowers.
“I’ll try not to let it go,” he said, taking his stand behind Tit, and
waiting for the time to begin.
“Mind’ee,” repeated the old man.
Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short close
to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long while,
and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the
first moments, though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he
heard voices:
“It’s not set right; handle’s too high; see how he has to stoop to it,”
said one.
“Press more on the heel,” said another.
“Never mind, he’ll get on all right,” the old man resumed.
“He’s made a start.... You swing it too wide, you’ll tire yourself
out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass
missed out! For such work us fellows would catch it!”
The grass became softer, and Levin, listening without answering,
followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred
paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing the slightest
weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be afraid he would not be
able to keep it up: he was so tired.
He felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his
strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that
very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and stooping down picked up
some grass, rubbed his scythe, and began whetting it. Levin
straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked round. Behind
him came a peasant, and he too was evidently tired, for he stopped at
once without waiting to mow up to Levin, and began whetting his scythe.
Tit sharpened his scythe and Levin’s, and they went on. The next time
it was just the same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his
scythe, not stopping nor showing signs of weariness. Levin followed
him, trying not to get left behind, and he found it harder and harder:
the moment came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very
moment Tit stopped and whetted the scythes.
So they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed particularly hard
work to Levin; but when the end was reached and Tit, shouldering his
scythe, began with deliberate stride returning on the tracks left by
his heels in the cut grass, and Levin walked back in the same way over
the space he had cut, in spite of the sweat that ran in streams over
his face and fell in drops down his nose, and drenched his back as
though he had been soaked in water, he felt very happy. What delighted
him particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out.
His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut. “I will
swing less with my arm and more with my whole body,” he thought,
comparing Tit’s row, which looked as if it had been cut with a line,
with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.
The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly,
probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row happened to
be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still Levin had to strain
every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.
He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind
the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing
but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit’s upright figure
mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and
flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his
scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest.
Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was
or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot,
moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the
scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops
were falling. Some of the peasants went to their coats and put them on;
others—just like Levin himself—merely shrugged their shoulders,
enjoying the pleasant coolness of it.
Another row, and yet another row, followed—long rows and short rows,
with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and
could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to
come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst
of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was
doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row
was almost as smooth and well cut as Tit’s. But so soon as he
recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at
once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly
mown.
On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top of the
meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going up to the
old man said something in a low voice to him. They both looked at the
sun. “What are they talking about, and why doesn’t he go back?” thought
Levin, not guessing that the peasants had been mowing no less than four
hours without stopping, and it was time for their lunch.
“Lunch, sir,” said the old man.
“Is it really time? That’s right; lunch, then.”
Levin gave his scythe to Tit, and together with the peasants, who were
crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled with rain,
to get their bread from the heap of coats, he went towards his house.
Only then he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had been wrong about
the weather and the rain was drenching his hay.
“The hay will be spoiled,” he said.
“Not a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you’ll rake in fine
weather!” said the old man.
Levin untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. Sergey Ivanovitch
was only just getting up. When he had drunk his coffee, Levin rode back
again to the mowing before Sergey Ivanovitch had had time to dress and
come down to the dining-room.
Chapter 5
After lunch Levin was not in the same place in the string of mowers as
before, but stood between the old man who had accosted him jocosely,
and now invited him to be his neighbor, and a young peasant, who had
only been married in the autumn, and who was mowing this summer for the
first time.
The old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet
turned out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and
regular action which seemed to cost him no more effort than swinging
one’s arms in walking, as though it were in play, he laid down the
high, even row of grass. It was as though it were not he but the sharp
scythe of itself swishing through the juicy grass.
Behind Levin came the lad Mishka. His pretty, boyish face, with a twist
of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with effort; but
whenever anyone looked at him he smiled. He would clearly have died
sooner than own it was hard work for him.
Levin kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing did not
seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched
cooled him, while the sun, that burned his back, his head, and his
arms, bare to the elbow, gave a vigor and dogged energy to his labor;
and more and more often now came those moments of unconsciousness, when
it was possible not to think what one was doing. The scythe cut of
itself. These were happy moments. Still more delightful were the
moments when they reached the stream where the rows ended, and the old
man rubbed his scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in
the fresh water of the stream, ladled out a little in a tin dipper, and
offered Levin a drink.
“What do you say to my home-brew, eh? Good, eh?” said he, winking.
And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this warm water
with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin
dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter,
with his hand on the scythe, during which he could wipe away the
streaming sweat, take deep breaths of air, and look about at the long
string of mowers and at what was happening around in the forest and the
country.
The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of
unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe,
but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness
of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work
turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most
blissful moments.
It was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which had
become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a hillock or
a tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When a hillock came he
changed his action, and at one time with the heel, and at another with
the tip of his scythe, clipped the hillock round both sides with short
strokes. And while he did this he kept looking about and watching what
came into his view: at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or
offered it to Levin, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the
scythe, then he looked at a quail’s nest, from which the bird flew just
under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and lifting
it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Levin and threw it
away.
For both Levin and the young peasant behind him, such changes of
position were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over again
the same strained movement, were in a perfect frenzy of toil, and were
incapable of shifting their position and at the same time watching what
was before them.
Levin did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked how
long he had been working he would have said half an hour—and it was
getting on for dinner time. As they were walking back over the cut
grass, the old man called Levin’s attention to the little girls and
boys who were coming from different directions, hardly visible through
the long grass, and along the road towards the mowers, carrying sacks
of bread dragging at their little hands and pitchers of the sour