Anna Karenina

arly in June it happened that Agafea Mihalovna, the old nurse and
housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she had just
pickled, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The district doctor, a
talkative young medical student, who had just finished his studies,
came to see her. He examined the wrist, said it was not broken, was
delighted at a chance of talking to the celebrated Sergey Ivanovitch
Koznishev, and to show his advanced views of things told him all the
scandal of the district, complaining of the poor state into which the
district council had fallen. Sergey Ivanovitch listened attentively,
asked him questions, and, roused by a new listener, he talked fluently,
uttered a few keen and weighty observations, respectfully appreciated
by the young doctor, and was soon in that eager frame of mind his
brother knew so well, which always, with him, followed a brilliant and
eager conversation. After the departure of the doctor, he wanted to go
with a fishing rod to the river. Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling,
and was, it seemed, proud of being able to care for such a stupid
occupation.

Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plough land and
meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.

It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when the
crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of
the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is
all in ear, though its ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves
in gray-green billows in the wind; when the green oats, with tufts of
yellow grass scattered here and there among it, droop irregularly over
the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat is already out and
hiding the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the
cattle, are half ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the
plough; when from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes
at sunset a smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the
low-lying lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting
for the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of sorrel among it.

It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the
fields before the beginning of the labors of harvest—every year
recurring, every year straining every nerve of the peasants. The crop
was a splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in with short,
dewy nights.

The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows.
Sergey Ivanovitch was all the while admiring the beauty of the woods,
which were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his brother now an
old lime tree on the point of flowering, dark on the shady side, and
brightly spotted with yellow stipules, now the young shoots of this
year’s saplings brilliant with emerald. Konstantin Levin did not like
talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away
the beauty of what he saw. He assented to what his brother said, but he
could not help beginning to think of other things. When they came out
of the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow
land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and
checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of dung, and in
parts even ploughed. A string of carts was moving across it. Levin
counted the carts, and was pleased that all that were wanted had been
brought, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts passed to the
mowing. He always felt something special moving him to the quick at the
hay-making. On reaching the meadow Levin stopped the horse.

The morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the grass,
and that he might not get his feet wet, Sergey Ivanovitch asked his
brother to drive him in the trap up to the willow tree from which the
carp was caught. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to crush down his mowing
grass, he drove him into the meadow. The high grass softly turned about
the wheels and the horse’s legs, leaving its seeds clinging to the wet
axles and spokes of the wheels. His brother seated himself under a
bush, arranging his tackle, while Levin led the horse away, fastened
him up, and walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by
the wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his waist
in the dampest spots.

Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out onto the road, and met
an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a skep on his shoulder.

“What? taken a stray swarm, Fomitch?” he asked.

“No, indeed, Konstantin Dmitrich! All we can do to keep our own! This
is the second swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads caught
them. They were ploughing your field. They unyoked the horses and
galloped after them.”

“Well, what do you say, Fomitch—start mowing or wait a bit?”

“Eh, well. Our way’s to wait till St. Peter’s Day. But you always mow
sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay’s good. There’ll be
plenty for the beasts.”

“What do you think about the weather?”

“That’s in God’s hands. Maybe it will be fine.”

Levin went up to his brother.

Sergey Ivanovitch had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and seemed
in the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that, stimulated by his
conversation with the doctor, he wanted to talk. Levin, on the other
hand, would have liked to get home as soon as possible to give orders
about getting together the mowers for next day, and to set at rest his
doubts about the mowing, which greatly absorbed him.

“Well, let’s be going,” he said.

“Why be in such a hurry? Let’s stay a little. But how wet you are! Even
though one catches nothing, it’s nice. That’s the best thing about
every part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this
steely water is!” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “These riverside banks always
remind me of the riddle—do you know it? ‘The grass says to the water:
we quiver and we quiver.’”

“I don’t know the riddle,” answered Levin wearily.