(^12501251)
He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch to reckon
how much they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to know this so as to
judge by it the task to set for the day.
“It’ll soon be one, and they’re only beginning the third sheaf,”
thought Levin. He went up to the man that was feeding the machine,
and shouting over the roar of the machine he told him to put it in more
slowly. “You put in too much at a time, Fyodor. Do you see—it gets
choked, that’s why it isn’t getting on. Do it evenly.”
Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shouted
something in response, but still went on doing it as Levin did not want
him to.
Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began
feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants’ dinner hour,
which was not long in coming, he went out of the barn with Fyodor and
fell into talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on
the thrashing floor for seed.
Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in which
Levin had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now it had
been let to a former house porter.
Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon,
a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village,
would not take the land for the coming year.
“It’s a high rent; it wouldn’t pay Platon, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,”
answered the peasant, picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt.
“But how does Kirillov make it pay?”
“Mituh!” (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone of con-
tempt), “you may be sure he’ll make it pay, Konstantin Dmitrievitch!
He’ll get his share, however he has to squeeze to get it! He’s no mercy
on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch” (so he called the old peasant
Platon), “do you suppose he’d flay the skin off a man? Where there’s
debt, he’ll let anyone off. And he’ll not wring the last penny out. He’s
a man too.”
“But why will he let anyone off?”
“Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own
wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly,
but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not
forget God.”
“How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?” Levin almost
shouted.
“Why, to be sure, in truth, in God’s way. Folks are different. Take
you now, you wouldn’t wrong a man....”
“Yes, yes, good-bye!” said Levin, breathless with excitement, and
turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home.
At the peasant’s words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in
God’s way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as
though they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they
thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.
barré
(Barré)
#1