The next day Lavretsky got up rather early, had a talk with the village
bailiff, visited the threshing-floor, ordered the chain to be taken off
the yard dog, who only barked a little but did not even come out of his
kennel, and, returning home, sank into a kind of peaceful torpor, which
he did not shake off the whole day.
“Here I am at the very bottom of the river,” he said to himself more
than once. He sat at the window without stirring, and, as it were,
listened to the current of the quiet life surrounding him, to the few
sounds of the country solitude. Something from behind the nettles chirps
with a shrill, shrill little note; a gnat seems to answer it. Now it
has ceased, but still the gnat keeps up its sharp whirr; across the
pleasant, persistent, fretful buzz of the flies sounds the hum of a big
bee, constantly knocking its head against the ceiling; a cock crows in
the street, hoarsely prolonging the last note; there is the rattle of
a cart; in the village a gate is creaking. Then the jarring voice of a
peasant woman, “What?” “Hey, you are my little sweetheart,” cries Anton
to the little two-year-old girl he is dandling in his arms. “Fetch the
kvas,” repeats the same woman’s voice, and all at once there follows
a deathly silence; nothing rattles, nothing is moving; the wind is not
stirring a leaf; without a sound the swallows fly one after another over
the earth, and sadness weighs on the heart from their noiseless flight.
“Here I am at the very bottom of the river,” thought Lavretsky again.
“And always, at all times life here is quiet, unhasting,” he thought;
“whoever comes within its circle must submit; here there is nothing to
agitate, nothing to harass; one can only get on here by making one’s
way slowly, as the ploughman cuts the furrow with his plough. And what
vigour, what health abound in this inactive place! Here under the window
the sturdy burdock creeps out of the thick grass; above it the lovage
trails its juicy stalks and the Virgin’s tears fling still higher their
pink tendrils; and yonder further in the fields is the silky rye, and
the oats are already in ear, and every leaf on every tree, every grass
on its stalk is spread to its fullest width. In the love of a woman my
best years have gone by,” Lavretsky went on thinking, “let me be sobered
by the sameness of life here, let me be soothed and made ready, so that
I may learn to do my duty without haste.” And again he fell to listening
to the silence, expecting nothing--and at the same time constantly
expecting something; the silence enfolded him on all sides, the sun
moved calmly in the peaceful blue sky, and the clouds sailed calmly
across it; they seemed to know why and whither they were sailing. At
this same time in other places on the earth there is the seething, the
bustle, the clash of life; life here slipped by noiseless, as water over
marshy grass; and even till evening Lavretsky could not tear himself
from the contemplation of this life as it passed and glided by; sorrow
for the past was melting in his soul like snow in spring, and strange to
say, never had the feeling of home been so deep and strong within him.