Anna Karenina

the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of post
horses, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his big,
old-fashioned carriage.

He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant’s to feed his horses. A
bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on his
cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the
three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in
the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it,
the old man asked Levin to come into the parlor. A cleanly dressed
young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in
the new outer room. She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after
Levin, and uttered a shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at
once when she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin with
her bare arm to the door into the parlor, she bent down again, hiding
her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.

“Would you like the samovar?” she asked.

“Yes, please.”

The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen dividing it
into two. Under the holy pictures stood a table painted in patterns, a
bench, and two chairs. Near the entrance was a dresser full of
crockery. The shutters were closed, there were few flies, and it was so
clean that Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been running along the
road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered
her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking round the
parlor, Levin went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman
in clogs, swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to
the well for water.

“Look sharp, my girl!” the old man shouted after her, good-humoredly,
and he went up to Levin. “Well, sir, are you going to Nikolay
Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His honor comes to us too,” he began, chatting,
leaning his elbows on the railing of the steps. In the middle of the
old man’s account of his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates creaked
again, and laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden
ploughs and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows
were sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two
were young men in cotton shirts and caps, the two others were hired
laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the other a young fellow.
Moving off from the steps, the old man went up to the horses and began
unharnessing them.

“What have they been ploughing?” asked Levin.

“Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don’t let
out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we’ll put the other in
harness.”

“Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them along?”
asked the big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old man’s son.

“There ... in the outer room,” answered the old man, bundling together
the harness he had taken off, and flinging it on the ground. “You can
put them on, while they have dinner.”

The good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the full
pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from
somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children
and without children.

The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family, having
disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting his
provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with
him.

“Well, I have had some today already,” said the old man, obviously
accepting the invitation with pleasure. “But just a glass for company.”

Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man’s farming. Ten years
before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the lady who
owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented another three
hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of the land—the
worst part—he let out for rent, while a hundred acres of arable land he
cultivated himself with his family and two hired laborers. The old man
complained that things were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply
did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a
flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have
bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not have married
his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after
fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man’s
complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his
prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons’ wives, his horses
and his cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this
farming going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin thought he
was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great many
potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past, were
already past flowering and beginning to die down, while Levin’s were
only just coming into flower. He earthed up his potatoes with a modern
plough borrowed from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The
trifling fact that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he
thinned out for his horses, specially struck Levin. How many times had
Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but
always it had turned out to be impossible. The peasant got this done,
and he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.

“What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the
roadside, and the cart brings it away.”

“Well, we landowners can’t manage well with our laborers,” said Levin,
handing him a glass of tea.

“Thank you,” said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused
sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. “They’re simple destruction,”
said he. “Look at Sviazhsky’s, for instance. We know what the land’s
like—first-rate, yet there’s not much of a crop to boast of. It’s not
looked after enough—that’s all it is!”

“But you work your land with hired laborers?”

“We’re all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If a
man’s no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves.”

“Father, Finogen wants some tar,” said the young woman in the clogs,
coming in.

“Yes, yes, that’s how it is, sir!” said the old man, getting up, and
crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Levin and went out.

When Levin went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole
family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them. The
young, sturdy-looking son was telling something funny with his mouth
full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the woman in the clogs,
who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all.

Very probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the clogs had
a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant
household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin
could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant’s to
Sviazhsky’s he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there were
something in this impression that demanded his special attention.