Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [340]
‘Those are farm girls not far from here.’
‘Let’s take a stroll! We’re not going to fall asleep anyway. Come on, Oblonsky!’
‘If only it was possible to stay lying down and still go,’ Oblonsky answered, stretching. ‘It’s wonderful to be lying down.’
‘Then I’ll go by myself,’ said Veslovsky, getting up quickly and putting his boots on. ‘Goodbye, gentlemen. If it’s fun, I’ll call you. You treated me to game, and I won’t forget you.’
‘Isn’t he a nice fellow?’ said Oblonsky, when Veslovsky was gone and the muzhik had closed the door behind him.
‘Yes, nice,’ said Levin, still thinking about the subject of their conversation. It seemed to him that he had expressed his thoughts and feelings as clearly as he could, and yet the two of them, sincere and not stupid people, had told him in one voice that he was comforting himself with sophisms. That puzzled him.
‘There it is, my friend. It has to be one or the other: either admit that the present social arrangement is just and then defend your own rights, or admit that you enjoy certain unjust advantages, as I do, and enjoy them with pleasure.’
‘No, if it was unjust, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy those benefits with pleasure, at least I wouldn’t be able to. For me the main thing is to feel that I’m not at fault.’
‘But why not go, in fact?’ said Stepan Arkadyich, obviously weary from the strain of thinking. ‘We won’t sleep anyway. Really, let’s go!’
Levin did not reply. The remark he had made in their conversation, about acting justly only in the negative sense, preoccupied him. ‘Can one be just only negatively?’ he asked himself.
‘How strong the fresh hay smells, though!’ Stepan Arkadyich said, getting up. ‘I wouldn’t sleep for anything. Vasenka’s on to something there. Can you hear him laughing and talking? Why not go? Come on!’
‘No, I won’t go,’ replied Levin.
‘Can that also be on principle?’ Stepan Arkadyich said with a smile, searching for his cap in the dark.
‘Not on principle, but why should I go?’
‘You know, you’re going to make trouble for yourself,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, finding his cap and standing up.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t I see how you’ve set things up with your wife? I heard how it’s a question of the first importance with you whether or not you go hunting for two days. That’s all well and good as an idyll, but it’s not enough for a whole lifetime. A man must be independent, he has his manly interests. A man must be masculine,’ Oblonsky said, opening the door.
‘Meaning what? To go courting farm girls?’ asked Levin.
‘Why not, if it’s fun? Ça ne tire pas à conséquence.bf My wife will be none the worse for it, and I’ll have fun. The main thing is to preserve the sanctity of the home. Nothing like that in the home. But don’t tie your own hands.’
‘Maybe,’ Levin said drily and turned over on his side. ‘Tomorrow we must get an early start, and I’m not going to wake anybody up, I’ll just set out at dawn.’
‘Messieurs, venez vite!’bg said Veslovsky, coming in again. ‘Charmante! I discovered her. Charmante, a perfect Gretchen,4 and we’ve already become acquainted. The prettiest little thing, really!’ he went on with an approving look, as if she had been made pretty especially for him and he was pleased with the one who had done it for him.
Levin pretended to be asleep, but Oblonsky, having put on his shoes and lit a cigar, left the barn, and their voices soon died away.
Levin could not fall asleep for a long time. He heard his horses munching hay, then the host and his older son getting ready and going out to the night pasture; then he heard the soldier settling down to sleep at the other end of the barn with his nephew, the host’s smaller son; he heard the boy telling his uncle in a thin little voice his impression of the dogs, who seemed huge and fearsome to him; then the boy asking him what the dogs would catch, and the soldier telling him in a hoarse and sleepy voice that the