第37章

Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was starting to go, he shouted to her. `Wait a minute, I said.' And with that inability to express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he began, with another look round at everyone, to tell Kritsky's story to his brother: how he had been expelled from the university for starting a benevolent society for the poor students, and classes on Sunday, and how he had afterward been a teacher in a rural school, and had been driven out of that, too; and had afterward been on trial for something or other.

`You're of the Kiev University?' said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.

`Yes - I was in Kiev,' Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

`And this woman,' Nikolai Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, `is my lifemate, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a dive, and he jerked his neck as he said it. `But I love her and respect her, and anyone who wants to know me,' he added, raising his voice and knitting his brows, `is requested to love her and respect her. She's precisely the same as a wife to me - precisely. So now you know whom you've got to do with. And if you think you're lowering yourself - well, there's the door, and God speed thee!'

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

`But how will I lower myself? I don't understand.'

`Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, and vodka and wine... No, wait a minute... No, it doesn't matter... Go ahead.'

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents] TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 1, Chapter 25[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 25 `So you see,' pursued Nikolai Levin, painfully wrinkling his forehead and twitching.

It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.

`Here, do you see?... He pointed to some sort of short iron bars, fastened together with twine, lying in a corner of the room. `Do you see that? That's the beginning of a new enterprise we're going into. This enterprise will be an industrial association....'

Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly, consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force himself to listen to what his brother was telling him about the association. He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him from self-contempt.

Nikolai Levin went on talking:

`You know that capital oppresses the worker. Our workers, the mouzhiks, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that, no matter how much they work, they can't escape from their position of beasts of burden. All the profits of labor, on which they might improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education - all the surplus values, are taken from them by the capitalists. And society is so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end. And that state of things must be changed,' he finished up, and looked questioningly at his brother.

`Yes, of course,' said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red that had come out on his brother's projecting cheekbones.

`And so we're founding a locksmith's association, where all the production and profit, and the chief instruments of production - everything - will be in common.'

`Where is the association to be?' asked Konstantin Levin.

`In the village of Vozdrem, government of Kazan.'

`But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work as it is. Why a locksmith's association in a village?'

`Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were, and that's why you and Sergei Ivanovich don't like people to try and get them out of their slavery,' said Nikolai Levin, exasperated by the objection.

Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolai still more.

`I know Sergei Ivanovich's, and your, aristocratic views. I know that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils.'

`I say, why do you talk of Sergei Ivanovich?' Levin let drop, smiling.

`Sergei Ivanovich? I'll tell you why!' Nikolai Levin shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergei Ivanovich. `I'll tell you why... But what's the use of talking? There's only one thing... What did you come to me for?

You look down on all this; very well, then; but go away, in God's name - go away!' he shrieked, getting up from his chair. `Go away - go away!'

`I don't look down on it at all,' said Konstantin Levin timidly.

`I don't even dispute it.'

At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolai Levin looked round angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.

`I'm not well; I've grown irritable,' said Nikolai Levin, getting calmer and breathing painfully; `and then you talk to me of Sergei Ivanovich and his essay. It's such rubbish, such lying, such self-deception! What can a man write about justice who knows nothing of it? Have you read his essay?' he turned to Kritsky, sitting down again at the table, and clearing a space for himself by pushing back some half-made cigarettes.

`I haven't,' Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring to enter into the conversation.

`Why not?' said Nikolai Levin, now turning with exasperation upon Kritsky.

`Because I didn't see the use of wasting my time over it.'

`Oh, if you please - how did you know it would be wasting your time? That essay's too deep for many people - that is to say, it's over their heads. But it's different with me, I see through his ideas, and Iknow wherein the essay's weakness lies.'

They all fell silent. Kritsky got up sluggishly and reached for his cap.

`Won't you have supper? All right, good-by! Come round tomorrow with the locksmith.'

Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolai Levin smiled and winked.

`He, too, is poor stuff,' he said. `For I can see...'

But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him.

`What do you want now?' he said, and went out to him in the passage.