The snow was so packed and frozen that loads could be carried along anywhere, regardless of roads. Easter came in snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm, tempestuous rain fell in torrents. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land, as though screening the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had come. In the morning the sun arose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth.
The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades;the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant, and the sticky birch buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble land; pewits wailed over the lowlands and marshes, flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating dams, who were shedding their fleece; nimble-footed children ran along the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet;there was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing plows and harrows. The real spring had come.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 2, Chapter 13[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 13 Levin put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a cloth overcoat instead of his fur cloak, and went out to look after his farm, stepping over streams of water that flashed in the sunshine and dazzled his eyes, and stepping one minute on ice and the next into sticky mud.
Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not what form will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds, hardly knew what undertakings he was going to launch upon now in the farmwork that was so dear to him. But he felt that he was full of the most splendid plans and projects. First of all he went to the cattle. The cows had been let out into their paddock, and their smooth sides were already glossy with their new, sleek, spring coats; they basked in the sunshine and lowed to go to the meadow. Levin gazed admiringly at the cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of their condition, and gave orders for them to be driven out into the meadow, and the calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran gaily to get ready for the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up their petticoats, ran splashing through the mud with bare legs, still white, not yet brown from the sun, waving brushwood in their hands, chasing the calves that frolicked in the mirth of spring.
After admiring the increase of that year, which were particularly fine - the early calves were the size of a peasant's cow, and Pava's daughter, at three months old, was as big as a yearling - Levin gave orders for a trough to be brought out and hay to be put in the racks. But it appeared that, since the paddock had not been used during the winter, the racks made in the autumn were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who, according to his orders, ought to have been at work at the threshing machine. But it appeared that the carpenter was repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent. This was very annoying to Levin. It was annoying to come upon that everlasting slovenliness in the farmwork against which he had been striving with all his might for so many years. The racks, as he ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been carried to the cart horses' stable, and there broken, as they were of light construction, only meant for foddering calves. Moreover, it was apparent also that the harrows and all the agricultural implements, which he had directed to be looked over and repaired in the winter, for which very purpose he had hired three carpenters, had not been put into repair, and the harrows were being repaired when they ought to have been harrowing the field. Levin sent for his bailiff, but immediately went off himself to look for him. The bailiff, beaming all over, like everything that day, in a sheepskin bordered with astrakhan, came out of the barn, twisting a bit of straw in his hands.
`Why isn't the carpenter at the threshing machine?'
`Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want repairing.
Here it's time they got to work in the fields.'
`But what were they doing in the winter, then?'
`But what did you want the carpenter for?'
`Where are the racks for the calves' paddock?'
`I ordered them to be got ready. What would you have with those people!' said the bailiff, with a wave of his hand.
`It's not those people but this bailiff!' said Levin, getting angry. `Why, what do I keep you for?' he cried. But, bethinking himself that this would not help matters, he stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and merely sighed. `Well, what do you say? Can sowing begin?' he asked, after a pause.
`Behind Turkino, tomorrow or next day, they might begin.'
`And the clover?'
`I've sent Vassilii and Mishka; they're sowing it. Only I don't know if they'll manage to get through; it's so slushy.'
`How many dessiatinas?
`Six.'
`Why not sow all?' cried Levin.
