Fathers and Sons (13 page)

‘But they absolutely don’t have to understand our conversation,’ said Bazarov.

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Yevdoksiya.

‘Attractive women.’

‘What! That means you share Proudhon’s
⁹
view.’

Bazarov proudly drew himself up.

‘I don’t share anybody’s views. I have my own.’

‘Down with authority!’ shouted Sitnikov, delighted at the
opportunity of expressing himself forcibly in front of a man he idolized.

‘But Macaulay
¹⁰
himself…’ Kukshina began.

‘Down with Macaulay!’ Sitnikov thundered. ‘Are you standing up for those pathetic women?’

‘No, I’m not standing up for them, but for the rights of women, which I’ve sworn to defend to the last drop of my blood.’

‘Down with…’ Here Sitnikov stopped. ‘But I don’t deny them,’ he added.

‘No, I can see you’re a Slavophile!’
¹¹

‘No, I’m not a Slavophile, although of course…’

‘You are, you are! You are a Slavophile. You’re a disciple of the
Domostroy
.
¹²
You only need a whip in your hand!’

‘A whip’s a good thing,’ commented Bazarov, ‘only we’ve just come to the last drop…’

‘Of what?’ Yevdoksiya interrupted.

‘Of champagne, dear Avdotya Nikitishna – not of your blood.’

‘I can’t listen calmly when people attack women,’ Yevdoksiya continued. ‘It’s terrible, terrible. Instead of attacking them
you’d do better to read Michelet’s
De l’Amour
.
¹³
It’s a wonder. Gentlemen, let’s talk of love,’ Yevdoksiya went on, languidly letting her arm fall on to a squashed sofa cushion.

A sudden silence fell.

‘No, why talk about love?’ said Bazarov. ‘But you just mentioned Odintsova… I think that was the name? Who is this lady?’

‘An absolute charmer!’ chirped Sitnikov. ‘I’ll introduce you. Clever, rich and a widow. Sadly she’s not yet very progressive.
She ought to get to know our Yevdoksiya better. Eudoxie, I drink your health! Chin-chin! “
Et toc, et toc, et tin-tin-tin! Et toc, et toc, et tin-tin-tin!
”’
¹⁴

‘Victor, you’re a naughty boy.’

Lunch went on for a long time. The first bottle of champagne was followed by a second, a third and even a fourth… Yevdoksiya
spouted without drawing breath. Sitnikov kept up with her. They talked a lot: is marriage a prejudice or a crime;
are all people born the same, or not; what exactly is personality. It all ended with Yevdoksiya, red in the face from the
wine she had drunk, striking the keys of an out-of-tune piano with her stumpy nails. She started singing in a hoarse voice,
first gipsy songs, then Seymour Schiff’s romance ‘Drowsy Granada slumbers’.
¹⁵
And Sitnikov wrapped a scarf round his head and acted the dumbstruck lover as she sang:

‘And join my lips to thine

With burning kisses.’

Eventually Arkady could stand no more. ‘Gentlemen, this has become some kind of Bedlam,’ he said aloud.

Bazarov, who had only occasionally contributed a sarcastic remark to the conversation – he was more interested in the champagne
– yawned loudly, got up and went out with Arkady without saying goodbye to the hostess. Sitnikov rushed after them.

‘Well, well, what do you think?’ he asked them, darting obsequiously from one to the other. ‘I told you, she’s a remarkable
personality! That’s the kind of woman we need more of! In her own way she’s a phenomenon of high morality.’

‘And is that establishment of your pa’s another phenomenon of high morality?’ said Bazarov, calling Sitnikov ‘thou’ for the
first time and pointing at a tavern they passed at that moment.

Sitnikov again gave his shrill laugh. He was very ashamed of his background and didn’t know whether to feel flattered or offended
by Bazarov’s unexpected mode of address.

The governor’s ball took place some days later. Matvey Ilyich was indeed the ‘hero of the feast’. The marshal of the nobility
told all and sundry that he had come especially out of respect for him. As for the governor, even at the ball and even standing
still, he nonetheless continued to be ‘in charge of things’. Matvey Ilyich’s affability was only matched by the stateliness
of his manners. He flattered everyone – some with a hint of
superciliousness, others with a hint of deference. He showered compliments on the ladies ‘
en vrai chevalier français
’
¹
and kept repeating a powerful, booming laugh – as befits a great man. He patted Arkady on the back and loudly addressed him
as ‘dear nephew’, and bestowed on Bazarov, dressed up in a rather old tail coat, a distracted but well-meaning sideways look
and a vague but friendly roar, in which one could only make out ‘I’ and ‘-stremely’. He gave Sitnikov a finger and smiled
at him, although he was already turning away his head. He even gave Kukshina an ‘
Enchanté!
’
²
– she had appeared at the ball without a crinoline
³
and wearing dirty gloves, but with a bird of paradise in her hair. There were masses of people and no lack of partners for
the ladies. The civilians tended to crowd along the walls, but the officers were keen dancers, especially one of them who
had spent some six months in Paris and there had learnt various exciting exclamations like ‘
Zut
’, ‘
Ah fichtrrre
’, ‘
Pst, pst, mon bibi
’ and so forth. He pronounced them perfectly, with true Parisian chic, and at the same time said ‘
si j’aurais
’ instead of ‘
si j’avais
’ and ‘
absolument
’ in the sense of ‘certainly’
⁴
– in a word he expressed himself in that Russo-French dialect which the French laugh at so when they don’t feel the need
to reassure our fellow countrymen that we speak their language like angels, ‘
comme des anges
’.

As we know Arkady danced badly and Bazarov didn’t dance at all. They both installed themselves in a corner, where they were
joined by Sitnikov. He looked around him insolently with a scornful smile, making malicious comments. Suddenly his expression
changed and, turning to Arkady, he said with a kind of embarrassment, ‘Odintsova is here.’

Arkady looked round and saw a tall woman in a black dress standing in the door of the ballroom. He was struck by the dignity
of her bearing. Graceful was the way she held her bare arms beside her slender figure, and graceful the light sprays of fuchsia
that drooped from her lustrous curls on to the slope of her shoulders. The brilliant eyes below a white and slightly prominent
forehead were serene and intelligent, serene but not pensive, and a barely perceptible smile played around her lips.

‘Do you know her?’ Arkady asked Sitnikov.

‘Intimately. Do you want me to introduce you?’

‘Please… after this quadrille.’

Bazarov too noticed Odintsova. ‘Who is that person?’ he said. ‘She doesn’t look like the other women.’

When the quadrille was over, Sitnikov took Arkady up to Odintsova. But he couldn’t have known her that intimately. He stumbled
over his words, and she looked at him with some amazement. However, her expression became welcoming when she heard Arkady’s
surname. She asked him if he was the son of Nikolay Petrovich.

‘I am indeed.’

‘I’ve seen your father a couple of times and have heard a great deal about him,’ she went on. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’

At that moment an aide-de-camp rushed up to her and invited her to dance a quadrille. She accepted.

‘Do you dance?’ Arkady asked her politely.

‘I do. And why do you think I don’t? Or do you think I’m too old?’

‘I’m sorry, how could you imagine… In that case may I book you for the mazurka?’

Odintsova gave him an indulgent smile.

‘Certainly,’ she said and looked at Arkady, without condescension but as married sisters look at their very young brothers.

Odintsova was only slightly older than Arkady. She was twenty-eight, but in front of her he felt himself a schoolboy, a student,
as if the difference in years between them was much greater. Matvey Ilyich came majestically towards her and made a speech
of compliments. Arkady withdrew but continued to watch her. He didn’t take his eyes off her during the quadrille. She talked
just as easily with her partner as with the great man, gently moving her head and eyes from side to side and a couple of times
laughing quietly. Her nose was a little thick, like most Russians’, and her complexion wasn’t quite clear. For all that Arkady
decided he had never encountered such a lovely woman. He kept on hearing the sound of her voice, he thought the very folds
of her dress fell differently from those of the other ladies,
more gracefully and more fully, and all her movements were extraordinarily fluid and at the same time natural.

When the first sounds of the mazurka struck up and Arkady sat down beside his partner, he felt a bit shy inside himself and,
as he tried to make conversation, he just stroked his hair and couldn’t come up with a single word. But his shyness and confusion
didn’t last long. Odintsova’s calm communicated itself to him. In less than a quarter of an hour he was freely talking about
his father, his uncle, life in St Petersburg and in the country. Odintsova listened to him with polite interest, slightly
opening and closing her fan. His talk was interrupted when her partners called her out. (Sitnikov asked her twice.) She came
back, sat down again and took up her fan, not even out of breath, and Arkady resumed his chatter, full of the happiness of
being near her, of talking to her, looking into her eyes, at her noble brow, at her whole attractive, serious and intelligent
face. She herself didn’t say much, but her words showed a certain knowledge of life. From a number of her remarks Arkady concluded
that this young woman had managed to acquire a great deal of experience in her emotions and her thoughts…

‘Who were you standing with,’ she asked him, ‘when Mr Sitnikov brought you up to me?’

‘Did you notice him?’ Arkady asked in his turn. ‘Don’t you find he has a fine face? That’s Bazarov, my friend.’

Arkady started to talk about his ‘friend’.

He talked about him in such detail and with such passion that Odintsova turned towards him and looked at him searchingly.
The mazurka was now coming to a close. Arkady was sorry to leave his partner. He had happily spent with her something like
an hour! It’s true that the whole time he constantly felt that she was being nice to him, that he ought to be grateful to
her… but young hearts aren’t humiliated by such a feeling.

The music stopped.

‘
Merci
,’ said Odintsova, getting up. ‘You promised to visit me. Do bring your friend too with you. I’ll be very curious to see a
man who is bold enough to believe in nothing.’

The governor came up to Odintsova, announced that dinner
was ready and gave her his arm with an anxious expression. As she left, she turned and gave Arkady a final smile and nod.
He bowed low and followed her with his eyes (how elegant he found her waist, encased in the silvery sheen of black silk!),
and, as he thought, ‘At this moment she’s already forgotten about my existence,’ he felt in his heart a kind of pleasing resignation.

‘Well then?’ Bazarov asked as soon as Arkady returned to him in their corner. ‘Did you enjoy yourself? A gentleman was just
telling me that lady’s a bit of oh-ho-ho. However, I think that gentleman’s an idiot. But do you think she really is a bit
of oh-ho-ho?’

‘I don’t quite understand what that means,’ answered Arkady.

‘Come on! What an innocent!’

‘If it’s that, I don’t understand your gentleman. I agree Odintsova is very nice – but her manner is so cold and severe that…’

‘Still waters… you know!’ said Bazarov. ‘You say she’s cold. That’s what makes her tasty. Don’t you like ice-cream?’

‘Maybe,’ Arkady stammered. ‘I can’t judge of that. She wants to meet you and asked me to bring you to see her.’

‘I can imagine the portrait you gave of me! But you did well. Take me. Whatever she is, provincial star or progressive woman
like Kukshina, she’s got a pair of shoulders like I haven’t seen for ages.’

Bazarov’s cynicism grated on Arkady, but, as often happens, he took up with his friend something different from what had actually
displeased him…

‘Why won’t you admit of freedom of opinion in women?’ he said in a low voice.

‘Because, my friend, I’ve observed that the women who think freely are hideous.’

The conversation ended on that. The two young men left immediately after supper. Kukshina gave them a nervous and angry laugh
(even if it was rather a timid one). Her vanity was deeply wounded by the fact that neither had paid her any attention. She
stayed at the ball later than anyone and danced a
Parisian-style polka-mazurka with Sitnikov after 3 a.m. That edifying spectacle closed the governor’s ball.

‘… Let’s see what species of mammal this person belongs to,’ Bazarov said to Arkady the next day as together they were climbing
the stairs of the hotel where Odintsova was staying. ‘My nose tells me something here’s not quite right.’

‘I’m surprised at you,’ exclaimed Arkady. ‘What’s this? You – you Bazarov – supporting the kind of narrow morality which…’

‘What a funny fellow you are!’ Bazarov interrupted coolly. ‘Surely you know that in our language –
our
language – “not quite right” means the opposite? It means there’s gain to be had here. Didn’t you yourself say today that
she made a strange marriage, although in my view marrying a rich old man isn’t at all strange but, on the contrary, very sensible.
I don’t believe town gossip, but I like to think, in the words of our learned governor, that it is justified.’

Arkady made no reply and knocked on the door of the apartment. A young footman in livery led the two friends into a big room,
poorly furnished, like all Russian hotel rooms, but full of flowers. Odintsova herself soon appeared, wearing a simple morning
dress. In the spring sunshine she looked even younger. Arkady introduced Bazarov to her and was secretly surprised to observe
that he was awkward, whereas Odintsova remained quite calm, as she had been the day before. Bazarov himself was aware of his
awkwardness, and he was cross. ‘Just look at you! You’re scared of this bloody woman!’ he thought and, sprawled in his chair
like a Sitnikov, he began to speak with exaggerated assurance. Odintsova didn’t take her bright eyes from his face.