Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [101]
‘You’ve already quite settled with Ryabinin about the wood?’ asked Levin.
‘Yes, I have. An excellent price, thirty-eight thousand. Eight down and the rest over six years. I was busy with it for a long time. No one offered more.’
‘That means you gave your wood away,’ Levin said gloomily.
‘Why is that?’ Stepan Arkadyich asked with a good-natured smile, knowing that Levin would now find everything bad.
‘Because that wood is worth at least two hundred roubles an acre,’ Levin replied.
‘Ah, these country squires!’ Stepan Arkadyich said jokingly. ‘This tone of scorn for us city people! ... Yet when it comes to business, we always do better. Believe me, I worked it all out,’ he said, ‘and the wood has been sold very profitably - I’m even afraid he’ll go back on it. You see, it’s mostly second growth,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, wishing with the words ‘second growth’ to convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts, ‘fit only for stove wood. It won’t stand you more than ten cord per acre, and he’s giving me seventy-five roubles.’
Levin smiled scornfully. ‘I know that manner,’ he thought, ‘not just his but all city people’s, who come to the country twice in ten years, pick up two or three country words and use them rightly or wrongly, in the firm conviction that they know everything. “Second growth, stand you ten cord”. He says the words but doesn’t understand a thing himself.’
‘I wouldn’t teach you about what you write there in your office,’ he said, ‘and if necessary, I’d ask you. But you are so certain you understand this whole business of selling the wood. It’s hard. Did you count the trees?’
‘How can I count the trees?’ Stepan Arkadyich said with a laugh, still wishing to get his friend out of his bad mood. ‘ “To count the sands, the planets’ rays, a lofty mind well may ...” ’22
‘Well, yes, and Ryabinin’s lofty mind can. And no merchant will buy without counting, unless it’s given away to him, as you’re doing. I know your wood. I go hunting there every year, and your wood is worth two hundred roubles an acre outright, and he’s giving you seventy-five in instalments. That means you’ve made him a gift of thirty thousand.’
‘Come, don’t get so carried away,’ Stepan Arkadyich said pitifully. ‘Why didn’t anyone make an offer?’
‘Because he’s in with the other merchants; he paid them off. I’ve dealt with them all, I know them. They’re not merchants, they’re speculators. He wouldn’t touch a deal where he’d make ten or fifteen per cent, he waits till he gets a rouble for twenty kopecks.’
‘Come, now! You’re out of sorts.’
‘Not in the least,’ Levin said gloomily, as they drove up to the house.
A little gig was already standing by the porch, tightly bound in iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed in broad tugs. In the little gig, tightly filled with blood and tightly girdled, sat Ryabinin’s clerk, who was also his driver. Ryabinin himself was in the house and met the friends in the front room. He was a tall, lean, middle-aged man, with a moustache, a jutting, clean-shaven chin and protruding, dull eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted dark-blue frock coat with buttons below his rear and high boots wrinkled at the ankles and straight on the calves, over which he wore big galoshes. He wiped his face in a circular motion with a handkerchief and, straightening his frock coat, which sat well enough to begin with, greeted the entering men with a smile, holding his hand out to Stepan Arkadyich, as if trying to catch something.
‘So you’ve come.’ Stepan Arkadyich gave him his hand. ‘Splendid.’
‘I dared not disobey your highness’s commands, though the road’s much too bad. I positively walked all the way, but I got here in time. My respects, Konstantin Dmitrich.’ He turned to Levin, trying to catch his hand as well. But Levin, frowning, pretended not to notice and began taking out the woodcock. ‘Had a good time hunting? What bird might that be?’ Ryabinin