Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 26
ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father’s sofa, a large table, on the
table an open book, a broken ash tray, a manuscript book with his handwriting.
As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of
arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces
of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: “No, you’re not going to get
away from us, and you’re not going to be different, but you’re going to be the same
as you’ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain
efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you
won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.”
This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he
must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself.
And hearing that voice, he went into the corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells,
and began brandishing them like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident
temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.
The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well; but informed
him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been a little scorched. This
piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying machine had been constructed and
partly invented by Levin. The bailiff had always been against the drying machine,
and now it was with suppressed triumph that he announced that the buckwheat had
been scorched. Levin was firmly convinced that if the buckwheat had been scorched,
it was only because the precautions had not been taken, for which he had hundreds
of times given orders. He was annoyed, and reprimanded the bailiff. But there had
been an important and joyful event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought
at a show, had calved.
“Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern. I’ll come
and look at her,” he said to the bailiff.
The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house. Walking
across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went into the cowhouse.
There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the frozen door was opened, and
the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw.
He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka.
Berkoot, the bull, was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get
up, but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him. Pava,
a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, prevented
their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all over.
Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and spotted calf onto
her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing, but when Levin put the calf
close to her she was soothed, and, sighing heavily, began licking her with her rough
tongue. The calf, fumbling, poked her nose under her mother’s udder, and stiffened
her tail out straight.
“Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,” said Levin, examining the calf. “Like the
mother! though the color takes after the father; but that’s nothing. Very good. Long
and broad in the haunch. Vassily Fedorovitch, isn’t she splendid?” he said to the
bailiff, quite forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in
the calf.
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