He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch to
reckon how much they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to know this
so as to judge by it the task to set for the day.
"It'll soon be one, and they're only beginning the third sheaf,"
thought Levin. He went up to the man that was feeding the
machine, and shouting over the roar of the machine he told him to
put it in more slowly. "You put in too much at a time, Fyodor.
Do you see--it gets choked, that's why it isn't getting on. Do
it evenly."
Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shouted
something in response, but still went on doing it as Levin did
not want him to.
Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began
feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants'
dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he went out of the
barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with him, stopping beside a
neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the thrashing floor for seed.
Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in which
Levin had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now
it had been let to a former house porter.
Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon,
a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same
village, would not take the land for the coming year.
"It's a high rent; it wouldn't pay Platon, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch," answered the peasant, picking the ears off his
sweat-drenched shirt.
"But how does Kirillov make it pay?"
"Mituh!" (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone of
contempt), "you may be sure he'll make it pay, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch! He'll get his share, however he has to squeeze to
get it! He's no mercy on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch" (so
he called the old peasant Platon), "do you suppose he'd flay the
skin off a man? Where there's debt, he'll let anyone off. And
he'll not wring the last penny out. He's a man too."
"But why will he let anyone off?"
"Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his
own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling
his belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his
soul. He does not forget God."
"How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?" Levin almost
shouted.