Odintsova sat leaning against the back of her armchair and listened to Bazarov, one arm resting on the other. Unusually for him he talked quite a lot and was clearly making an effort to impress Anna Sergeyevna: this again surprised Arkady. He couldn’t decide if Bazarov was achieving his aim. It was difficult to read Anna Sergeyevna’s thoughts from her face: she kept the same expression, amiable and refined. Her lovely eyes were luminous with attention, but their depths were not stirred. Bazarov’s posing in the first moments of the visit made an unpleasant impression on her, like a bad smell or a grating noise, but she immediately understood that he was embarrassed, and that even flattered her. Only vulgarity repelled her, and no one could have accused Bazarov of vulgarity. That day there were continual surprises for Arkady. He expected Bazarov to talk to Odintsova, as an intelligent woman, about his convictions and opinions: she herself had expressed her wish to listen to a man ‘who is bold enough to believe in nothing’. But instead Bazarov talked of medicine and homoeopathy and botany. It was apparent that Odintsova hadn’t wasted her time in her solitude: she had read a number of good books and she spoke good Russian.1 She began talking about music but, seeing that Bazarov had no time for art, she quietly returned the conversation to botany, although Arkady was on the point of holding forth on the meaning of folk tunes. Odintsova continued to treat him like a younger brother: she seemed to appreciate in him the good heart and ingenuousness of youth – and nothing more. The conversation – measured, wide-ranging and lively – went on for over three hours.
At last the two friends got up and began to take their leave. Anna Sergeyevna looked at them warmly, gave each of them her beautiful white hand and, after a moment’s thought, said with a wavering but positive smile:
‘Gentlemen, if you’re not afraid of being bored, come and see me in Nikolskoye.’
‘Anna Sergeyevna, what are you saying?’ exclaimed Arkady. ‘I’d be particularly happy to…’
‘What about you, Monsieur Bazarov?’
Bazarov just bowed – and Arkady had a final surprise: he noticed his friend was blushing.
‘Well?’ he said to Bazarov in the street. ‘Do you still think she’s a bit of oh-ho-ho?’
‘God knows! She really has frozen herself up!’ Bazarov responded, and added after a moment’s silence, ‘A duchess, a sovereign lady. She just needs to have a train behind her and a crown on her head.’
‘Our duchesses don’t speak Russian like that.’
‘She’s had some difficult times, my friend. She’s eaten the same bread as we have.’
‘But still she’s a delight,’ said Arkady.
‘And what a splendid body!’ Bazarov went on. ‘I’d like to see it now on the dissecting table.’
‘For God’s sake, Yevgeny, stop it! That’s disgusting.’
‘Calm down, don’t be so dainty. I said – she’s first class. We must go and see her.’
‘When?’
‘Why not the day after tomorrow? What is there for us to do here? Drink champagne with Kukshina? Listen to your cousin, the liberal statesman?… Let’s get on the road the day after tomorrow. Also my father’s little property is not far from there. Isn’t Nikolskoye on the *** road?’
‘Yes.’
‘Optime.2 Let’s not waste time. Only fools waste time – and know-alls. I say to you, a splendid body!’
Two days later the two friends were on the road to Nikolskoye. It was a bright day, not too hot, and the well-fed little post-horses trotted smoothly along, their braided and plaited tails swinging gently. Arkady looked at the road and smiled, without knowing why.
‘You must congratulate me,’ Bazarov exclaimed suddenly. ‘Today is the 22nd of June, my saint’s day. Let’s see how he looks after me. They’re expecting me at home today,’ he added, lowering his voice… ‘Well, they’ll have to wait, it doesn’t matter!’
XVI
The mansion where Anna Sergeyevna lived stood on the slope of an open hill a short distance from a yellow-painted church with a green roof, white columns and above the main entrance a fresco in the ‘Italian’ style representing the Resurrection of Christ. The eye was particularly caught by the muscular contours of a swarthy warrior in a spiked helmet reclining in the foreground. Beyond the church stretched two long rows of village houses, their chimneys sticking up here and there above the thatched roofs. The manor house was built in the same style as the church, the style we call Alexandrine.1 The house too was painted yellow, and had a green roof, white columns and a pediment with a coat of arms. The province architect had been responsible for both buildings, much to the taste of the late Odintsov, who couldn’t stand ‘pointless and whimsical innovations’, as he called them. The house was flanked on both sides by the dark trees of an old garden, and an avenue of clipped firs led to the entrance.
Two strapping liveried footmen met our friends in the hall, and one of them at once ran off to fetch the butler. The butler, a portly man in a black frock coat, soon appeared and directed the guests up a carpeted staircase to their particular room, where there were already two beds and everything necessary for their toilet. It was clear that order reigned in the house: everything was clean, everything had an official smell, like in a minister’s reception room.
‘Anna Sergeyevna asks you to come down to her in half an hour,’ said the butler. ‘Meanwhile do you need anything?’
‘Nothing, my good sir,’ said Bazarov, ‘but would you be very kind and bring me a glass of vodka.’
‘Of course, sir,’ the butler replied, not without some surprise, and went off, his boots squeaking as he went.
‘What style, what grand genre!’ said Bazarov. ‘I think that’s what you call it. A duchess, that’s what she is.’
‘A fine duchess,’ retorted Arkady, ‘who right away offers an invitation to such mighty aristocrats as you and me.’
‘Me especially, doctor to be, son of a doctor, grandson of a sexton… You knew my grandfather was a sexton?… Like Speransky,’2 Bazarov added with a grimace, after a short silence. ‘Still, the lady really does know how to indulge herself! Shouldn’t we put on tails?’
Arkady just shrugged his shoulders… but he too felt a bit awkward.
Half an hour later Bazarov and Arkady went down to the drawing room. It was a large and lofty room, furnished with some luxury but without much taste. The usual formal row of furniture stood along the walls. The wallpaper, gold-patterned on a brown background, had been ordered by the late Odintsov from Moscow, from his friend and commission agent, a wine merchant. Above the central sofa hung the portrait of a flabby, fair-haired man – who seemed to look at the guests with unfriendly eyes. ‘That must be himself,’ Bazarov whispered to Arkady and added, wrinkling his nose, ‘Why don’t we run away?’ But at that moment the hostess came in. She wore a light wool dress, and, with her hair smoothly combed back behind her ears, her fresh, clean face had a girlish look.
‘Thank you for keeping your promise,’ she began. ‘Now be my guests for a while. It’s really quite nice here. I’ll introduce you to my sister, she plays the piano rather well. Monsieur Bazarov, you don’t care but, Monsieur Kirsanov, I think you like music. Apart from my sister my old aunt lives with me. And there’s a neighbour who sometimes comes to play cards. That’s all of our society. And now let’s sit down.’
Odintsova pronounced the whole of this little speech with particular clarity as if she had learnt it off by heart. Then she turned to Arkady. It turned out her mother had known Arkady’s and had even been a confidante when she had been in love with Nikolay Petrovich. Arkady spoke with warmth about his dead mother. Meanwhile Bazarov began to look through some picture albums. ‘I’ve become so tame,’ he thought to himself.
A beautiful borzoi bitch with a sky-blue collar ran into the drawing room, her feet clacking over the parquet, and she was followed by a girl of about eighteen, dark-complexioned and black-haired, with a slightly rounded but attractive face and small dark eyes. In her hands she held a basket of flowers.
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‘Here is my Katya,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, indicating her with a movement of her head.
Katya gave them a small curtsey, sat down by her sister and began to sort the flowers. The borzoi, which was called Fifi, came up to each of the guests, wagging her tail, and thrust her cold muzzle into their hand.
‘Did you pick all these yourself?’ Anna Sergeyevna asked.
‘I did,’ answered Katya.
‘And is Aunt coming to tea?’
‘Yes.’
When Katya spoke she had a very attractive smile, shy and open, accompanied by a curiously stern upward look. Everything in her spoke of the springtime of youth – her voice, the down on her face, her rosy hands with white circular marks on the palms, her slightly narrow shoulders… She kept on blushing and taking quick breaths.
Anna Sergeyevna turned to Bazarov. ‘Yevgeny Vasilyevich,’ she began, ‘you’re looking at pictures out of politeness. It doesn’t interest you. Better come over here and let us have a good talk about something or other.’
Bazarov came over.
‘What would you like to talk about?’ he said.
‘Whatever you choose. I warn you, I’m terribly argumentative.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes. That seems to surprise you. Why is that?’
‘Because, in so far as I can judge, your temperament is calm and cold, but argument needs passion.’
‘How have you got to know me so soon? First, I am impatient and persistent – you should ask Katya – and, second, I’m very easily carried away by passion.’
Bazarov looked at Anna Sergeyevna.
‘Maybe. You know best. And so, you want an argument. Let’s begin. I was looking at the views of Saxon Switzerland3 in your album, and you said to me that that can’t interest me. You said that because you assume I have no artistic sense – and indeed I have none. But those views could interest me from a geological point of view, for example in connection with the formation of mountains.’
‘Excuse me, as a geologist you should be consulting a book, a specialist work, rather than a picture.’
‘A drawing can present to me visually what a book needs ten whole pages to explain.’
Anna Sergeyevna didn’t reply.
‘And so do you really not have a drop of artistic sense?’ she said, putting her elbows on the table and with this movement bringing her face nearer to Bazarov. ‘How can you do without it?’
‘But may I ask why it’s needed?’
‘If only to be able to get to know people and to study them.’
Bazarov smiled.
‘First, for that we have life experience. And second I tell you it’s a waste of effort studying separate individuals. All human beings are like one another, in their souls as much as their bodies. Each of us has an identically constructed brain, spleen, heart, lungs. And the so-called moral qualities are the same in us all; small variations have no significance. A single human specimen is enough to judge them all. People are like trees in a forest. No botanist is going to study each individual birch tree.’
Katya, who was unhurriedly arranging the flowers, looked up at Bazarov in bewilderment – and meeting his bold, roving gaze, she flushed red to her ears. Anna Sergeyevna shook her head.
‘Trees in a forest,’ she repeated. ‘So, in your opinion, there is no difference between a stupid man and an intelligent one, between a good man and a bad one?’
‘No, there is. As there is between a sick man and a healthy one. The lungs of a consumptive aren’t in the same condition as yours or mine, although they are identically made. We know approximately the causes of bodily ailments, and moral diseases come from bad education, from all kinds of rubbish people’s heads have been crammed with since childhood – in a word, from the shameful state of society. Reform society, and you’ll have no more diseases.’
Bazarov said all this looking as if he was thinking to himself, ‘I really don’t care whether you believe me or not!’ He slowly stroked his side whiskers with long fingers and let his eyes roam the corners of the room.
‘And do you suppose,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, ‘that, when society is reformed, there’ll be no stupid or bad people?’
‘At least in a properly ordered society it won’t matter if a man is stupid or intelligent, bad or good.’
‘Yes, I understand. They’ll have an identical spleen.’
‘Quite so, madame.’
Anna Sergeyevna turned to Arkady.
‘And what do you think, Arkady Nikolayevich?’
‘I agree with Yevgeny,’ he answered.
‘Gentlemen, you astonish me,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, ‘but we’ll talk more about this. Now I can hear my aunt coming to have tea. We must spare her ears.’
Anna Sergeyevna’s aunt, Princess Kh–ya, a thin little woman with a face pinched in like someone making a fist, staring malevolent eyes and a grey wig, came in and, barely greeting the guests, sank into a velvet easy chair on which no one except for her had the right to sit. Katya put a footstool under her feet. The old woman didn’t thank her, didn’t even look at her, but moved her hands about under the yellow shawl which enveloped most of her puny body. The princess liked the colour yellow: her cap had bright-yellow ribbons.
‘Did you sleep well, Auntie?’ Anna Sergeyevna asked, raising her voice.
‘That dog’s in here again,’ was the old woman’s grumbling reply, and, seeing that Fifi had made two tentative steps in her direction, she cried, ‘Shoo, shoo!’
Katya called Fifi and opened the door for her. Fifi happily rushed out, hoping that someone would take her for a walk, but, left alone outside the door, she began to scratch and whine. The princess frowned and Katya was about to go out…
‘I think tea must be ready,’ said Anna Sergeyevna. ‘Gentlemen, come. Auntie, would you like to have tea?’
The princess got up from her chair without a word and left the drawing room first. Everyone followed her into the dining room. A page in Cossack livery noisily pulled back from the table another favourite cushioned chair, into which the princess sank. Katya, who was pouring the tea, served her first in a cup with a painted coat of arms. The old woman put honey in her cup (she thought that to take tea with sugar was both sinful4 and expensive, although she herself didn’t spend a penny on anything) and suddenly asked in a croaking voice:
‘What does Prince Ivan say in his letter?’
No one answered her. Bazarov and Arkady soon made out that no one paid her any attention for all their politeness to her. ‘They keep her for show – spawn of princes,’ thought Bazarov. After tea Anna Sergeyevna suggested going for a walk. But it began to drizzle, and the whole company, with the exception of the princess, returned to the drawing room. The neighbour who liked playing cards arrived. His name was Porfiry Platonych; he was a plump gentleman, very polite and full of smiles, with grey hair and short, well-turned little legs. Anna Sergeyevna, who more and more was talking to Bazarov, asked him if he would like to play with them an old-fashioned round of préférence.5 Bazarov agreed, saying he had to become prepared for the duties of a country doctor that lay ahead for him.
‘Be careful,’ said Anna Sergeyevna. ‘Porfiry Platonych and I will destroy you. And, Katya,’ she added, ‘you play something for Arkady Nikolayevich. He loves music and we too can listen.’
Katya unwillingly went to the piano; and Arkady, although he did indeed love music, unwillingly followed her. He thought Anna Sergeyevna was dismissing him and, like every young man of his age, he felt stirring in his heart a confused and painful feeling like some foretaste of love. Katya raised the lid of the piano and, without looking at Arkady, asked in a low voice:
‘What would you like me to play you?’
‘Whatever you like,’ Arkady answered indifferently.
‘What kind of music do you like best?’ Katya said again without moving.
‘Classical music,’ Arkady answered in the same tone of voice.
‘Do you like Mozart?’
‘
Yes, I do.’
Katya got out Mozart’s Fantasy in C-Minor.6 She played very well, although a little severely and drily. She sat firm and upright, not taking her eyes off the music and with her lips pressed firmly together, and it was only at the end of the sonata that her cheeks began to glow and a little lock of loosened hair fell over her dark eyebrows.
The last part of the sonata made a particular impression on Arkady, the part where, amidst the enchanting gaiety of the light-hearted melody, there is a surge of such anguished, almost tragic grief… But his thoughts occasioned by the sounds of Mozart were not of Katya. Looking at her, he only thought, ‘This girl really plays quite well, and she’s not bad-looking either.’
Having finished the sonata, Katya asked, without taking her hands from the keys, ‘Have you had enough?’ Arkady stated that he wouldn’t presume to impose on her any more and began talking to her about Mozart. He asked her if she had chosen this sonata herself, or had somebody recommended it to her. But Katya gave him monosyllabic answers: she just hid, she went into herself. When that happened to her, it took a long time before she came out. Her actual face took on then an obstinate, almost obtuse expression. She was not exactly shy but mistrustful and a bit scared of the sister who brought her up – something of course which the latter did not suspect. To keep face Arkady was reduced to calling to Fifi, who had come back, and stroking her head with an amiable smile. Katya went back to doing her flowers.
Meanwhile Bazarov paid fine after fine. Anna Sergeyevna played a masterly game of cards; Porfiry Platonych too could hold his own. Bazarov was the loser; although his loss was insignificant, it still wasn’t very pleasant for him. At supper Anna Sergeyevna again brought up the subject of botany.
‘Let’s go for a walk tomorrow morning,’ she said to him. ‘I want to learn from you the Latin names of wild plants and their properties.’