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‘Not bad,’ he said, peeling the sloshy oysters from their pearly shells with a little silver fork and swallowing them one after another. ‘Not bad,’ he repeated, raising his moist and shining eyes now to Levin, now to the Tartar.

Levin ate the oysters, though white bread and cheese would have been more to his liking. But he admired Oblonsky. Even the Tartar, drawing the cork and pouring the sparkling wine into shallow thin glasses, then straightening his white tie, kept glancing with a noticeable smile of pleasure at Stepan Arkadyich.

‘You don’t care much for oysters?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, drinking off his glass. ‘Or else you’re preoccupied? Eh?’

He wanted Levin to be cheerful. Yet it was not that Levin was not cheerful: he felt constrained. With what he had in his soul, it was eerie and awkward for him to be in a tavern, next to private rooms where one dined in the company of ladies, amidst this hustle and bustle. These surroundings of bronze, mirrors, gas-lights, Tartars - it was all offensive to him. He was afraid to soil what was overflowing in his soul.

‘Me? Yes, I’m preoccupied. But, besides, I feel constrained by all this,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine how wild all this is for a countryman like me - or take the nails of that gentleman I saw in your office ...’

‘Yes, I could see poor Grinevich’s nails interested you greatly,’ Stepan Arkadyich said, laughing.

‘I can’t help it,’ replied Levin. ‘Try getting inside me, look at it from a countryman’s point of view. In the country we try to keep our hands in a condition that makes them convenient to work with; for that we cut our nails and sometimes roll up our sleeves. While here people purposely let their nails grow as long as they can, and stick on saucers instead of cuff-links, so that it would be impossible for them to do anything with their hands.’

Stepan Arkadyich smiled gaily.

‘Yes, it’s a sign that he has no need of crude labour. His mind works ...’

‘Maybe. But all the same it seems wild to me, just as it seems wild to me that while we countrymen try to eat our fill quickly, so that we can get on with what we have to do, you and I are trying our best not to get full for as long as possible, and for that we eat oysters ...’

‘Well, of course,’ Stepan Arkadyich picked up. ‘But that’s the aim of civilization: to make everything an enjoyment.’

‘Well, if that’s its aim, I’d rather be wild.’

‘You’re wild as it is. All you Levins are wild.’18

Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolai, and felt ashamed and pained. He frowned, but Oblonsky began talking about a subject that distracted him at once.

‘So you’re going to see our people tonight - the Shcherbatskys, I mean?’ he said, pushing aside the empty scabrous shells and drawing the cheese towards him, his eyes shining significantly.

‘Yes, I’ll certainly go,’ replied Levin. ‘Though it seemed to me the princess invited me reluctantly.’

‘Come, now! What nonsense! That’s her manner ... Well, my good man, serve the soup! ... That’s her manner, the grande dame,’ said Stepan Arkadyich. ‘I’ll come, too, only I have to go to a choir rehearsal at Countess Banin’s first. Well, what are you if not wild? How else explain the way you suddenly disappeared from Moscow? The Shcherbatskys kept asking me about you, as if I should know. I know only one thing: you always do what nobody else does.’

‘Yes,’ Levin said slowly and with agitation. ‘You’re right, I am wild. Only my wildness isn’t in my leaving, but in my coming now. I’ve come now...’

‘Oh, what a lucky man you are!’ Stepan Arkadyich picked up, looking into Levin’s eyes.

‘Why?’

‘Bold steeds I can tell by their something-or-other thighs, and young men in love by the look in their eyes,’19 declaimed Stepan Arkadyich. ‘You’ve got everything before you.’

‘And with you it’s already behind?’

‘No, not behind, but you have the future and I the present - a bit of this, a bit of that.’

‘And?’

‘Not so good. Well, but I don’t want to talk about myself, and besides it’s impossible to explain everything,