Any constraint before the master had long since vanished. The muzhiks were preparing to have dinner. Some were washing, the young fellows were bathing in the river, others were preparing a place to rest, untying sacks of bread and unstopping jugs of kvass. The old man crumbled some bread into a bowl, kneaded it with a spoon handle, poured in some water from his whetstone box, cut more bread, sprinkled it with salt, and turned eastward to pray.
‘Here, master, try a bit of my mash,’ he said, squatting down in front of the bowl.
The mash tasted so good that Levin changed his mind about going home for dinner. He ate with the old man and got to talking with him about his domestic affairs, taking a lively interest in them, and told him about all his own affairs and all circumstances that might interest the old man. He felt closer to him than to his brother, and involuntarily smiled from the tenderness that he felt for this man. When the old man stood up again, prayed, and lay down right there under the bush, putting some grass under his head, Levin did the same and, despite the flies and bugs, clinging, persistent in the sunlight, tickling his sweaty face and body, he fell asleep at once and awoke only when the sun had passed over to the other side of the bush and begun to reach him. The old man had long been awake and sat whetting the young fellows’ scythes.
Levin looked around him and did not recognize the place, everything was so changed. An enormous expanse of the meadow had been mowed, and its already fragrant swaths shone with a special new shine in the slanting rays of the evening sun. The mowed-around bushes by the river, the river itself, invisible before but now shining like steel in its curves, the peasants stirring and getting up, the steep wall of grass at the unmowed side of the meadow, and the hawks wheeling above the bared meadow - all this was completely new. Coming to his senses, Levin began to calculate how much had been mowed and how much more could be done that day.
They had done an extraordinary amount of work for forty-two men. The whole of the big meadow, which in the time of the corvée7 used to be mowed in two days by thirty scythes, was already mowed. Only some corners with short swaths remained unmowed. But Levin wanted to get as much mowed as possible that day and was vexed with the sun for going down so quickly. He felt no fatigue at all; he only wanted to work more and more quickly and get as much done as possible.
‘What do you think, can we still mow Mashka’s Knoll?’ he said to the old man.
‘As God wills, the sun’s not high. Or might there be some vodka for the lads?’
At break time, when they sat down again and the smokers lit up, the old man announced to the lads that if they ‘mow Mashka’s Knoll - there’ ll be vodka in it’.
‘See if we can’t! Go to it, Titus! We’ll clear it in a wink! You can eat tonight. Go to it!’ came the cries, and, finishing their bread, the mowers went to it.
‘Well, lads, keep the pace!’ said Titus, and he went ahead almost at a trot.
‘Get a move on!’ said the old man, hustling after him and catching up easily. ‘I’ll cut you down! Watch out!’
And it was as if young and old vied with each other in the mowing. But no matter how they hurried, they did not ruin the grass, and the swaths were laid as cleanly and neatly. A little patch left in a corner was cleared in five minutes. The last mowers were coming to the end of their rows when the ones in front threw their caftans over their shoulders and went across the road to Mashka’s Knoll.
The sun was already low over the trees when, with whetstone boxes clanking, they entered the wooded gully of Mashka’s Knoll. The grass was waist-high in the middle of the hollow, tender and soft, broad-bladed, speckled with cow-wheat here and there under the trees.
After a brief discussion - to move lengthwise or crosswise - Prokhor Yermilin, also a famous mower, a huge, swarthy man, went to the front. He finished the first swath, went back and moved over, and everybody started falling into line after him, going downhill through the hollow and up to the very edge of the wood. The sun sank behind the wood. The dew was already falling, and only those mowing on the hill were in the sun, while below, where mist was rising, and on the other side, they walked in the fresh, dewy shade. The work was in full swing.
Sliced down with a succulent sound and smelling of spice, the grass lay in high swaths. Crowding on all sides in the short swaths, their whetstone boxes clanking, to the noise of scythes clashing, of a whetstone swishing along a sharpening blade, and of merry shouts, the mowers urged each other on.
