“All I say is,” answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at
random, but in strict sequence of idea, “that you ought to get married, that’s
what I say.”
Agafea Mihalovna’s allusion to the very subject he had only just been
thinking about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and without answering
her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been
thinking of the real significance of that work. Only at intervals he listened
in the stillness to the click of Agafea Mihalovna’s needles, and recollecting
what he did not want to remember, he frowned again.
At nine o’clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a carriage
over the mud.
“Well, here’s visitors come to us, and you won’t be dull,” said Agafea
Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin overtook her. His
work was not going well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it
might be.
Chapter 31
Running halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a
familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of
his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a
long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no possibility of
mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur
cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.
Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just
now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to him,
and Agafea Mihalovna’s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain humor, the
meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed particularly difficult.
Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped,
cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he had to see his brother, who knew
him through and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his
heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed
to do.
Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as soon
as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment
vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolay
had been before in his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more
emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.
He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf off
it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile,
submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.
“You see, I’ve come to you,” said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for one
second taking his eyes off his brother’s face. “I’ve been meaning to a long
while, but I’ve been unwell all the time. Now I’m ever so much better,” he
said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.
“Yes, yes!” answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when,
kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother’s skin and saw
close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.
A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that
through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained
undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him
as his share.
Nikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what was
more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the
earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay
before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the emaciation that was
so striking from his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever.
Levin led him into his study.
His brother dressed with particular care—a thing he never used to do—
combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.
He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin
often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey Ivanovitch
without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes with her
and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisitch
made a painful impression on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he
regained his serenity immediately.
“Of course he was quite old,” he said, and changed the subject. “Well, I’ll
spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow. Do you know,
Myakov has promised me a place there, and I’m going into the service.
Now I’m going to arrange my life quite differently,” he went on. “You
know I got rid of that woman.”
“Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?”
“Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.” But
he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had cast
off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all, because
she would look after him, as though he were an invalid.
“Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done silly
things, of course, like everyone else, but money’s the last consideration; I
don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my health, thank God, is quite
restored.”
Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to say.
Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother about his
affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because then he could
speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans and his doings.
His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.
These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest
gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.
Both of them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay and the
nearness of his death—which stifled all else. But neither of them dared to
speak of it, and so whatever they said—not uttering the one thought that
filled their minds—was all falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad when
the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any outside
person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural and false as he
was that evening. And the consciousness of this unnaturalness, and the
remorse he felt at it, made him even more unnatural. He wanted to weep
over his dying, dearly loved brother, and he had to listen and keep on
talking of how he meant to live.
As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated,
Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.
His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed
about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat clear,
mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he said,
“Oh, my God!” Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily, “Ah,
the devil!” Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His
thoughts were of the most various, but the end of all his thoughts was the
same—death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented
itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved
brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on
God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It
was in himself too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in
thirty years, wasn’t it all the same! And what was this inevitable death—he
did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the
power, had not the courage to think about it.
“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had
forgotten—death.”
He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and
holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more
intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so,
that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact—that death
will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that
there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.
“But I am alive still. Now what’s to be done? what’s to be done?” he said
in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the looking-
glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were gray hairs
about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to
decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But
Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of lungs, had had a
strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how they used to go to
bed together as children, and how they only waited till Fyodor Bogdanitch
was out of the room to fling pillows at each other and laugh, laugh
irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fyodor Bogdanitch could not check
the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and happiness. “And now that
bent, hollow chest … and I, not knowing what will become of me, or
wherefore….”
“K…ha! K…ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don’t you
go to sleep?” his brother’s voice called to him.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sleepy.”
“I have had a good sleep, I’m not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my shirt;
it’s not wet, is it?”
