Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [457]
In place of each of the Church’s beliefs there could be put the belief in serving the good instead of one’s needs. And each of them not only did not violate it but was indispensable for the accomplishment of that chief miracle, constantly manifested on earth, which consists in it being possible for each person, along with millions of the most diverse people, sages and holy fools, children and old men - along with everyone, with some peasant, with Lvov, with Kitty, with beggars and kings - to understand one and the same thing with certainty and to compose that life of the soul which alone makes life worth living and alone is what we value.
Lying on his back, he was now looking at the high, cloudless sky. ‘Don’t I know that it is infinite space and not a round vault? But no matter how I squint and strain my sight, I cannot help seeing it as round and limited, and despite my knowledge of infinite space, I am undoubtedly right when I see a firm blue vault, more right than when I strain to see beyond it.’
Levin had stopped thinking and was as if only listening to the mysterious voices that spoke joyfully and anxiously about something among themselves.
‘Can this be faith?’ he wondered, afraid to believe his happiness. ‘My God, thank you!’ he said, choking back the rising sobs and with both hands wiping away the tears that filled his eyes.
XIV
Levin looked before him and saw the herd, then he saw his own little gig with Raven harnessed to it, and the coachman, who drove up to the herd and said something to the herdsman; then, already close to him, he heard the sound of wheels and the snorting of the sleek horse; but he was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not even think why the coachman was coming to him.
He remembered it only when the coachman, having driven up quite close to him, called out.
‘The mistress sent me. Your brother has come and some other gentleman with him.’
Levin got into the gig and took the reins.
As if roused from sleep, Levin took a long time coming to his senses. He looked at the sleek horse, lathered between the thighs and on the neck where a strap rubbed it, looked at the coachman, Ivan, who was sitting beside him, and remembered that he had been expecting his brother, that his wife was probably worried by his long absence, and tried to guess who the visitor was who had come with his brother. He now pictured his brother, and his wife, and the unknown visitor differently than before. It seemed to him that his relations with all people would now be different.
‘With my brother now there won’t be that estrangement there has always been between us, there won’t be any arguments; with Kitty there will be no more quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he is, I’ll be gentle and kind; and with the servants, with Ivan, everything will be different.’
Keeping a tight rein on the good horse, who was snorting with impatience and begging to run free, Levin kept looking at Ivan, who sat beside him not knowing what to do with his idle hands and constantly smoothing down his shirt, and sought a pretext for starting a conversation with him. He wanted to say that Ivan should not have tightened the girth so much, but that seemed like a reproach and he wanted to have a loving conversation. Yet nothing else came to his mind.
‘Please bear to the right, sir, there’s a stump,’ said the coachman, guiding Levin by the reins.
‘Kindly do not touch me and do not instruct me!’ said Levin, vexed by this interference from the coachman. This interference vexed him just as it always had, and at once he sadly felt how mistaken he had been in supposing that his inner state could instantly change him in his contacts with reality.
About a quarter of a mile from home, Levin saw Grisha and Tanya running to meet him.
‘Uncle Kostya! Mama’s coming, and grandpapa, and Sergei Ivanych, and somebody else,’ they said, climbing into the gig.
‘Who is it?’
‘He’s terribly scary! And he goes like this with his arms,’ said Tanya, standing up