LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 5

      AFTER breakfast Levin got placed between a humorous old man who invited him to be his neighbour and a young peasant who had only got married last autumn and was now out for his first summer’s mowing.

      The old man went along holding himself erect, moving with regular, long steps, turning out his toes, and with a precise and even motion that seemed to cost him no more effort than swinging his arms when walking, he laid the grass in a level high ridge, as if in play or as if the sharp scythe of its own accord whizzed through the juicy grass.

      Young Mishka went behind Levin. His pleasant young face, with a wisp of grass tied round the forehead over his hair, worked all over with the effort; but whenever anyone glanced at him he smiled. Evidently he would have died rather than confess that the work was trying.

      Between these two went Levin. Now, in the hottest part of the day, the work did not seem so hard to him. The perspiration in which he was bathed was cooling, and the sun which burnt his back, his head and his arm — bare to the elbow — added to his strength and perseverance in his task, and those unconscious intervals when it became possible not to think of what he was doing recurred more and more often. The scythe seemed to mow of itself. Those were happy moments. Yet more joyous were the moments when, reaching the river at the lower end of the swaths, the old man would wipe his scythe with the wet grass, rinse its blade in the clear water, and dipping his whetstone-box in the stream, would offer it to Levin.

      ‘A little of my kvas? It’s good!’ said he, with a wink.

      And really Levin thought he had never tasted any nicer drink than this lukewarm water with green stuff floating in it and a flavour of the rusty tin box. And then came the ecstasy of a slow walk, one hand resting on the scythe, when there was leisure to wipe away the streams of perspiration, to breathe deep, to watch the line of mowers, and to see what was going on around in forest and field.

      The longer Levin went on mowing, the oftener he experienced those moments of oblivion when his arms no longer seemed to swing the scythe, but the scythe itself his whole body, so conscious and full of life; and as if by magic, regularly and definitely without a thought being given to it, the work accomplished itself of its own accord. These were blessed moments.

      It was trying only when thought became necessary in order to mow around a molehill or a space where the hard sorrel stalks had not been weeded out. The old man accomplished this with ease. When he came to a molehill he would change his action, and with a short jerk of the point and then of the heel of his scythe he would mow in round the molehill. And while doing this he noted everything he came to: now he plucked a sorrel stalk and ate it, or offered it to Levin; now he threw aside a branch with the point of his scythe, or examined a quail’s nest from which the hen bird had flown up, almost under the scythe; or he caught a beetle, lifting it with the scythe-point as with a fork, and after showing it to Levin, threw it away.

      Levin and the young fellow on the other side of him found such changes of action difficult. Both of them, having got into one strained kind of movement, were in the grip of feverish labour and had not the power to change the motion of their bodies and at the same time to observe what lay before them.

      Levin did not notice how time passed. Had he been asked how long he had been mowing, he would have answered ‘half an hour’, although it was nearly noon. As they were about to begin another swath the old man drew Levin’s attention to the little boys and girls approaching from all sides along the road and through the long grass, hardly visible above it, carrying jugs of kvas stoppered with rags, and bundles of bread which strained their little arms.

      ‘Look at the midges crawling along!’ he said, pointing to the children and glancing at the sun from under his lifted hand. They completed two more swaths and then the old man stopped.

      ‘Come, master! It’s dinnertime,’ said he with decision. All the mowers on reaching the river went across the swaths to where their coats lay, and where the children who had brought their dinners sat waiting for them. The men who had driven from a distance gathered in the shadow of their carts; those who lived nearer sheltered under the willow growth, on which they hung grass.

      Levin sat down beside them; he did not want to go away.

      All the peasants’ restraint in the presence of the master had vanished. The men began preparing for dinner. Some had a wash. The young lads bathed in the river; others arranged places for their after-dinner rest, unfastened their bags of bread and unstoppered their jugs of kvas. The old man broke some rye bread into a bowl, mashed it with a spoon handle, poured over it some water from his tin, broke more bread into it and salted it, and then, turning to the East, said grace.

      ‘Come, master, have some of my dinner,’ said he, kneeling in front of his bowl.

      The bread and water was so nice that Levin gave up all intention of going home to lunch. He shared the old man’s meal and got into conversation with him about his domestic affairs, taking a lively interest in them and telling him about his own, giving him all the particulars which would interest the old peasant. When the old man got up and, having said grace, lay down beneath the willows with an armful of grass under his head, Levin did the same, regardless of the flies, importunate and persistent in the sunshine, and of the crawling insects that tickled his perspiring face and body. He at once fell asleep, waking only when the sun touched the opposite side of the willows and reached him. The old man had already been long awake and sat setting the scythes for the young men.

      Levin looked round and hardly recognized the place, everything was so altered. A wide expanse of the meadow was already mown, and with its swaths of grass already giving off perfume, shone with a peculiar fresh brilliance in the oblique rays of the descending sun. The bushes by the river where the grass had been cut and the river itself with its curves, previously invisible, were now glittering like steel; and the people getting up and moving about, the steep wall of yet uncut grass, and the hawks soaring over the bare meadow, struck him as something quite new. When he was fully awake Levin began to calculate how much had been done and how much could still be done that day.

      An extraordinary amount had been done by the forty-two men. The larger meadow, which in the days of serfdom had taken thirty men two days to mow, was all finished except some short patches at the corners. But Levin wanted to get as much as possible done that day, and it was vexatious to see the sun already declining. He was not feeling at all tired and was only longing to work again and to accomplish as much as he could.

      ‘What do you think — could we manage to get Mashkin Heights mown to-day?’ he asked the old man.

      ‘Well, God willing, we might! The sun is not very high though. Perhaps — if

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