Chapter 24

‘Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive,’ thought Levin, as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys’, and walked in the direction of his brother’s lodgings. ‘And I don’t get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.’ And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening. ‘Yes, she was bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody.’ And he recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. ‘Isn’t he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he’s a despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and came here.’ Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his brother’s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a sledge. All the long way to his brother’s, Levin vividly recalled all the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay’s life. He remembered how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding. Then he recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost money, and given a promissory note, and against whom he had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him. (This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he remembered how he had spent a night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against his brother Sergey Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share of his mother’s fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for assaulting a village elder…. It was all horribly disgusting, yet to Levin it appeared not at all in the same disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolay, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking in religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament, everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him, called him Noah and Monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone had turned away from him with horror and disgust.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for having been born with his unbridled temperament and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. ‘I will tell him everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve, too, and I’ll show him that I love him, and so understand him,’ Levin resolved to himself, as, towards eleven o’clock, he reached the hotel of which he had the address.

‘At the top, 12 and 13,’ the porter answered Levin’s inquiry.

‘At home?’

‘Sure to be at home.’

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice, unknown to Levin; but he knew at once that his brother was there; he heard his cough.

As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:

‘It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing’s done.’

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen. Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the thought of the strange company in which his brother spent his life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

‘Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes,’ his brother’s voice responded, with a cough. ‘Masha! get us some supper and some wine if there’s any left; or else go and get some.’

The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Konstantin.

‘There’s some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,’ she said.

‘Whom do you want?’ said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

‘It’s I,’ answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.

‘Who’s I?’ Nikolay’s voice said again, still more angrily. He could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing in its weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naively at his visitor.

‘Ah, Kostya!’ he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.

‘I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don’t know you and don’t want to know you. What is it you want?’

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.

‘I didn’t want to see you for anything,’ he answered timidly. ‘I’ve simply come to see you.’

His brother’s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.

‘Oh, so that’s it?’ he said. ‘Well, come in; sit down. Like some supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know who this is?’ he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the gentleman in the jerkin: ‘This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a very remarkable man. He’s persecuted by the police, of course, because he’s not a scoundrel.’

And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room. Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he shouted to her, ‘Wait a minute, I said.’ And with the inability to express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he began, with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother Kritsky’s story: how he had been expelled from the university for starting a benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools; and how he had afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been driven out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned for something.

‘You’re of the Kiev university?’ said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.

‘Yes, I was of Kiev,’ Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

‘And this woman,’ Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, ‘is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad house,’ and he jerked his neck saying this; ‘but I love her and respect her, and any one who wants to know me,’ he added, raising his voice and knitting his brows, ‘I beg to love her and respect her. She’s just the same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you’ve to do with. And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor, there’s the door.’

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

‘Why I should be lowering myself, I don’t understand.’

‘Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and wine…. No, wait a minute…. No, it doesn’t matter…. Go along.’

Chapter 25

‘So you see,’ pursued Nikolay 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 iron bars, fastened together with strings, lying in a corner of the room. ‘Do you see that? That’s the beginning of a new thing we’re going into. It’s a productive 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. Nikolay Levin went on talking:

‘You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however 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’s 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 he 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 cheek bones.

‘And so we’re founding a locksmiths’ association, where all the production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be in common.’

‘Where is the association to be?’ asked Konstantin Levin.

‘In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.’

‘But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work as it is. Why a locksmiths’ association in a village?’

‘Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were, and that’s why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don’t like people to try and get them out of their slavery,’ said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the objection.

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

‘I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch’s aristocratic views. I know that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils.’

‘No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?’ said Levin, smiling.

‘Sergey Ivanovitch? I’ll tell you what for!’ Nikolay Levin shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. ‘I’ll tell you what for…. But what’s the use of talking? There’s only one thing…. What did you come to me for? You look down on this, and you’re welcome to,—and go away, in God’s name go away!’ he shrieked, getting up from his chair. ‘And go away, and 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. Nikolay Levin looked round angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.

‘I’m not well; I’ve grown irritable,’ said Nikolay Levin, getting calmer and breathing painfully; ‘and then you talk to me of Sergey Ivanovitch and his article. It’s such rubbish, such lying, such self-deception. What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of it? Have you read his article?’ he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at the table, and moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so as to clear a space.

‘I’ve not read it,’ Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring to enter into the conversation.

‘Why not?’ said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon Kritsky.

‘Because I didn’t see the use of wasting my time over it.’

‘Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time? That article’s too deep for many people—that’s to say it’s over their heads. But with me, it’s another thing; I see through his ideas, and I know where its weakness lies.’

Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap.

‘Won’t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow with the locksmith.’

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

‘He’s no good either,’ he said. ‘I see, of course…’

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. Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.

‘Have you been long with my brother?’ he said to her.

‘Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch’s health has become very poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal,’ she said.

‘That is…how does he drink?’

‘Drinks vodka, and it’s bad for him.’

‘And a great deal?’ whispered Levin.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay Levin had reappeared.

‘What were you talking about?’ he said, knitting his brows, and turning his scared eyes from one to the other. ‘What was it?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Konstantin answered in confusion.

‘Oh, if you don’t want to say, don’t. Only it’s no good your talking to her. She’s a wench, and you’re a gentleman,’ he said with a jerk of the neck. ‘You understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of everything, and look with commiseration on my shortcomings,’ he began again, raising his voice.

‘Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,’ whispered Marya Nikolaevna, again going up to him.

‘Oh, very well, very well!… But where’s the supper? Ah, here it is,’ he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. ‘Here, set it here,’ he added angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a glassful and drank it greedily. ‘Like a drink?’ he turned to his brother, and at once became better humored.

‘Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I’m glad to see you, anyway. After all’s said and done, we’re not strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me what you’re doing,’ he went on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and pouring out another glassful. ‘How are you living?’

‘I live alone in the country, as I used to. I’m busy looking after the land,’ answered Konstantin, watching with horror the greediness with which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed it.

‘Why don’t you get married?’

‘It hasn’t happened so,’ Konstantin answered, reddening a little.

‘Why not? For me now…everything’s at an end! I’ve made a mess of my life. But this I’ve said, and I say still, that if my share had been given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different.’

Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.

‘Do you know your little Vanya’s with me, a clerk in the countinghouse at Pokrovskoe.’

Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.

‘Yes, tell me what’s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the gardener, is he living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind and don’t alter anything in the house, but make haste and get married, and make everything as it used to be again. Then I’ll come and see you, if your wife is nice.’

‘But come to me now,’ said Levin. ‘How nicely we would arrange it!’

‘I’d come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey Ivanovitch.’

‘You wouldn’t find him there. I live quite independently of him.’

‘Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and him,’ he said, looking timidly into his brother’s face.

This timidity touched Konstantin.

‘If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell you that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take neither side. You’re both wrong. You’re more wrong externally, and he inwardly.’

‘Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!’ Nikolay shouted joyfully.

‘But I personally value friendly relations with you more because…’

‘Why, why?’

Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay was unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this was just what he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka again.

‘Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!’ said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching out her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.

‘Let it be! Don’t insist! I’ll beat you!’ he shouted.

Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at once reflected on Nikolay’s face, and she took the bottle.

‘And do you suppose she understands nothing?’ said Nikolay. ‘She understands it all better than any of us. Isn’t it true there’s something good and sweet in her?’

‘Were you never before in Moscow?’ Konstantin said to her, for the sake of saying something.

‘Only you mustn’t be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her. No one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who tried her for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the senselessness in the world!’ he cried suddenly. ‘These new institutions, these justices of the peace, rural councils, what hideousness it all is!’

And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.

Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all public institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was distasteful to him now from his brother’s lips.

‘In another world we shall understand it all,’ he said lightly.

‘In another world! Ah, I don’t like that other world! I don’t like it,’ he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother’s eyes. ‘Here one would think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one’s own and other people’s, would be a good thing, and yet I’m afraid of death, awfully afraid of death.’ He shuddered. ‘But do drink something. Would you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let’s go to the Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs.’

His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to persuade Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.