第69章
`No, we'd better drive,' said Stepan Arkadyevich, getting into the droshky. He sat down, tucked the tiger-striped rug round him, and lighted a cigar. `How is it you don't smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come, this is life!
How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!'
`Why, who prevents you?' said Levin, smiling.
`No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like horses - and you have them; dogs - you have them; shooting - you have it;farming - you have it.'
`Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't,' said Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Stepan Arkadyevich comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky, for noticing, with his never-failing tact, that he dreaded conversation about the Shcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about them. But now Levin was longing to find out about that which was tormenting him so, yet had not the courage to begin.
`Come, tell me how things are going with you,' said Levin, bethinking himself that it was not good of him to think only of himself.
Stepan Arkadyevich's eyes sparkled merrily.
`You don't admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has had one's ration of bread - to your mind it's a crime; but I don't count life as life without love,' he said, taking Levin's question in his own way. `What am I to do? I'm made that way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much pleasure...'
`What! is there something new, then?' queried Levin.
`Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian's women... women, such as one sees in dreams... Well, these women are sometimes to be met with in reality.... And these women are terrible.
Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that no matter how much you study it, it's always perfectly new.'
`Well, then, it would be better not to study it.'
`No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding of it.'
Levin listened in silence, and, in spite of all the efforts he made, he could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and understand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 2, Chapter 15[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 15 The place fixed on for the stand shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the droshky and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and, leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were free.
Gray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen almost to bursting.
From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained, came the faint sound of narrow winding streamlets of water running away.
Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to tree.
In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year's leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of grasses.
`Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!' Levin said to himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a blade of young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed sometimes down at the wet mossy ground, sometimes at Laska listening all alert, sometimes at the sea of bare treetops that stretched on the slope below him, sometimes at the darkening sky, covered with white streaks of cloud. A hawk flew high over a forest far away with a slow sweep of its wings; another flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and vanished. The birds twittered more and more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far off, and Laska, starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and, putting her head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual call, and then became hoarse, hurried, and broke down.
`Imagine! The cuckoo already!' said Stepan Arkadyevich, coming out from behind a bush.
`Yes, I hear it,' answered Levin, reluctantly breaking the stillness with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself. `Now it's coming!'
Stepan Arkadyevich's figure again went behind the bush, and Levin saw nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red glow and blue smoke of a cigarette.
Tchk! Tchk! came the snapping sound of Stepan Arkadyevich cocking his gun.
`What's that cry?' asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin's attention to a prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice, in play.
`Oh, don't you know it? That's a buck hare. But enough talking!
Listen - here it comes!' almost shrieked Levin, cocking his gun.
They heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact time, so well known to the sportsman, two seconds later - another, a third, and, after the third whistle, the hoarse, guttural cry could be heard.
Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying straight toward him;the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upward again. Again came the red flash and the sound of a blow, and, fluttering its wings as though trying to keep up in the air, the bird paused, stopped still an instant, and fell with a heavy splash to the slushy ground.