Chapter 32

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart - that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling - they would simply have looked into each other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said: `You're dying, you're dying,' and Nikolai could only have answered: `I know I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!' And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.

The third day Nikolai induced his brother to explain his plan to him again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding it with communism.

`You've simply borrowed an idea that's not your own, but you've distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it's not applicable.'

`But I tell you there's nothing in common. They deny the justice of property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief stimulus.' (Levin felt disgusted himself at using such expressions, but ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come more and more frequently to use non-Russian words.) `All I want is to regulate labor.'

`Which means, you've borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it its force, and want to make believe that it's something new,' said Nikolai, angrily tugging at his necktie.

`But my idea has nothing in common...'

`The other, at any rate,' said Nikolai Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes flashing malignantly, `has the charm of - what's one to call it? - geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a Utopia. If one once allows the possibility of making all the past a tabula rasa - no property, no family - then labor would organize itself. But you have nothing...'

`Why do you mix things up? I've never been a communist.'

`But I have, and I consider it's premature, but rational, and it has a future, just like Christianity in its first ages.'

`All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be investigated from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained...'

`But that's an utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There have been slaves first, everywhere; then metayers; and we have the metayage system, rent, and day laborers. What are you trying to find?'

Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of his heart he was afraid that it was true - true that he was trying to hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and that this was hardly possible.