Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 29
but he was very soon convinced that this was impossible, and determined to divide
it up. The cattle-yard, the garden, hay fields, and arable land, divided into several
parts, had to be made into separate lots. The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who,
Levin fancied, understood the matter better than any of them, collecting together a
gang of workers to help him, principally of his own family, became a partner in the
cattle-yard. A distant part of the estate, a tract of waste land that had lain fallow for
eight years, was with the help of the clever carpenter, Fyodor Ryezunov, taken by six
families of peasants on new conditions of partnership, and the peasant Shuraev took
the management of all the vegetable gardens on the same terms. The remainder of
the land was still worked on the old system, but these three associated partnerships
were the first step to a new organization of the whole, and they completely took up
Levin’s time.
It is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better than before, and Ivan strenuously
opposed warm housing for the cows and butter made of fresh cream, affirming
that cows require less food if kept cold, and that butter is more profitable made from
sour cream, and he asked for wages just as under the old system, and took not the
slightest interest in the fact that the money he received was not wages but an advance
out of his future share in the profits.
It is true that Fyodor Ryezunov’s company did not plough over the ground twice
before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves on the plea that the time
was too short. It is true that the peasants of the same company, though they had
agreed to work the land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held
in partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and more than once the peasants and
Ryezunov himself said to Levin, “If you would take a rent for the land, it would save
you trouble, and we should be more free.” Moreover the same peasants kept putting
off, on various excuses, the building of a cattleyard and barn on the land as agreed
upon, and delayed doing it till the winter.
It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen gardens he had
undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He evidently quite misunderstood, and
apparently intentionally misunderstood, the conditions upon which the land had
been given to him.
Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the advantages of the
plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but the sound of his voice, and were
firmly resolved, whatever he might say, not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this
especially when he talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Ryezunov, and detected
the gleam in Ryezunov’s eyes which showed so plainly both ironical amusement at
Levin, and the firm conviction that, if any one were to be taken in, it would not be
he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Levin thought the system worked, and that
by keeping accounts strictly and insisting on his own way, he would prove to them
in the future the advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would go of
itself.
These matters, together with the management of the land still left on his hands,
and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Levin the whole summer that he
scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end of August he heard that the Oblonskys
had gone away to Moscow, from their servant who brought back the side-saddle.
He felt that in not answering Darya Alexandrovna’s letter he had by his rudeness,
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