Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [337]
This upset Levin still more. Snipe kept circling in the air over the sedge. Creeching close to the ground and croaking higher up came ceaselessly from all sides; snipe flushed out earlier raced through the air and alighted just in front of the hunters. Not two but dozens of hawks, whimpering, circled over the marsh.
Having gone through the greater part of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky reached a place where the muzhiks’ meadow was divided into long strips running down to the sedge, marked out here by trampled strips, there by thin rows of cut grass. Half of these strips had already been mowed.
Though there was little hope of finding as many in the unmowed grass as in the mowed, Levin had promised to meet Stepan Arkadyich and went further on down the mowed and unmowed strips with his companion.
‘Hey, hunters!’ one of the muzhiks, sitting by an unhitched cart, shouted to them. ‘Come and have a bite with us! Drink a glass!’
Levin turned.
‘Come on, it’s all right!’ a merry, bearded muzhik with a red face shouted, baring his white teeth and raising a glittering green bottle in the sun.
‘Qu‘est-ce qu’ils disent?“bb asked Veslovsky.
‘They’re inviting us to drink vodka. They’ve probably been dividing up the meadows. I’d go and have a drink,’ said Levin, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka and go to them.
‘Why do they want to treat us?’
‘Just for fun. You really ought to join them. You’d be interested.’
‘Allons, c’est curieux’bc
‘Go on, go on, you’ll find the way to the mill!’ Levin shouted and, looking back, was pleased to see Veslovsky, hunched over, his weary legs stumbling, his gun in his outstretched hand, making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
‘You come, too!’ the muzhik cried to Levin. ‘Why not? Have a bit of pie! Eh!’
Levin badly wanted a drink of vodka and a piece of bread. He felt weak, so that it was hard for him to pull his faltering legs from the mire, and for a moment he hesitated. But the dog pointed. And at once all fatigue vanished, and he stepped lightly over the mire towards the dog. A snipe flew up at his feet; he shot and hit it - the dog went on pointing. ‘Fetch!’ Another rose just in front of the dog. Levin fired. But it was an unlucky day; he missed, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find it either. He searched everywhere in the sedge, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to search, she did not really search but only pretended.
Even without Vasenka, whom Levin blamed for his failure, things did not improve. There were many snipe here, too, but Levin missed time after time.
The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes were soaked through with sweat and clung to his body; his left boot, filled with water, was heavy and sloshy; drops of sweat rolled down his face, grimy with the soot of gunpowder; there was a bitter taste in his mouth, the smell of powder and rust in his nose, and in his ears the ceaseless creeching of the snipe; the gun barrels were too hot to touch; his heart pounded in short, quick beats; his hands shook from agitation, and his weary legs stumbled and tripped over the hummocks and bog; but he went on and kept shooting. Finally, after a shameful miss, he threw down his gun and hat.
‘No, I must come to my senses!’ he said to himself. He picked up the gun and hat, called Laska to heel and left the marsh. Coming to a dry spot, he sat down on a hummock, took off his boot, poured the water out of it, then went back to the marsh, drank some rusty-tasting water, wetted the burning gun