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 rye-beer, with cloths wrapped
round them.
“Look’ee, the little emmets crawling!” he said, pointing to them, and he
shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. They mowed two more
rows; the old man stopped.
“Come, master, dinner time!” he said briskly. And on reaching the stream
the mowers moved off across the lines of cut grass towards their pile of
coats, where the children who had brought their dinners were sitting waiting
for them. The peasants gathered into groups—those further away under a
cart, those nearer under a willow bush.
Levin sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away.
All constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The peasants got
ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads bathed in the stream, others
made a place comfortable for a rest, untied their sacks of bread, and
uncovered the pitchers of rye-beer. The old man crumbled up some bread in
a cup, stirred it with the handle of a spoon, poured water on it from the
dipper, broke up some more bread, and having seasoned it with salt, he
turned to the east to say his prayer.
“Come, master, taste my sop,” said he, kneeling down before the cup.
The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home. He
dined with the old man, and talked to him about his family affairs, taking
the keenest interest in them, and told him about his own affairs and all the
circumstances that could be of interest to the old man. He felt much nearer
to him than to his brother, and could not help smiling at the affection he felt
for this man. When the old man got up again, said his prayer, and lay down
under a bush, putting some grass under his head for a pillow, Levin did the
same, and in spite of the clinging flies that were so persistent in the
sunshine, and the midges that tickled his hot face and body, he fell asleep at
once and only waked when the sun had passed to the other side of the bush
and reached him. The old man had been awake a long while, and was sitting
up whetting the scythes of the younger lads.
Levin looked about him and hardly recognized the place, everything was
so changed. The immense stretch of meadow had been mown and was
sparkling with a peculiar fresh brilliance, with its lines of already sweet-
smelling grass in the slanting rays of the evening sun. And the bushes about
the river had been cut down, and the river itself, not visible before, now
gleaming like steel in its bends, and the moving, ascending, peasants, and
the sharp wall of grass of the unmown part of the meadow, and the hawks
hovering over the stripped meadow—all was perfectly new. Raising
himself, Levin began considering how much had been cut and how much
more could still be done that day.
The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two men. They had cut
the whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of serf labor, taken
thirty scythes two days to mow. Only the corners remained to do, where the
rows were short. But Levin felt a longing to get as much mowing done that
day as possible, and was vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky.
He felt no weariness; all he wanted was to get his work done more and
more quickly and as much done as possible.
“Could you cut Mashkin Upland too?—what do you think?” he said to
the old man.
“As God wills, the sun’s not high. A little vodka for the lads?”
At the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, and those who
smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the men that “Mashkin
Upland’s to be cut—there’ll be some vodka.”
“Why not cut it? Come on, Tit! We’ll look sharp! We can eat at night.
Come on!” cried voices, and eating up their bread, the mowers went back to
work.
“Come, lads, keep it up!” said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a trot.
“Get along, get along!” said the old man, hurrying after him and easily
overtaking him, “I’ll mow you down, look out!”
And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one
another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the grass, and the
rows were laid just as neatly and exactly. The little piece left uncut in the
corner was mown in five minutes. The last of the mowers were just ending
their rows while the foremost snatched up their coats onto their shoulders,
and crossed the road towards Mashkin Upland.
The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with their
jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland. The grass was
up to their waists in the middle of the hollow, soft, tender, and feathery,
spotted here and there among the trees with wild heart’s-ease.
After a brief consultation—whether to take the rows lengthwise or
diagonally—Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge, black-haired
peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top, turned back again and
started mowing, and they all proceeded to form in line behind him, going
downhill through the hollow and uphill right up to the edge of the forest.
The sun sank behind the forest. The dew was falling by now; the mowers
were in the sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and
on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade. The work
went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at once laid in high,
fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides, brought closer together in the
short row, kept urging one another on to the sound of jingling dippers and
clanging scythes, and the hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and good-
humored shouts.
Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The old
man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as good-humored,
