Fathers and Sons (27 page)

But she immediately felt ashamed of herself and quickly ran upstairs.

Arkady walked down the corridor towards his room. The butler found him and reported that Mr Bazarov was sitting in there.

‘Yevgeny!’ Arkady stammered, almost scared. ‘Has he been here long?’

‘The gentleman came only this minute and asked not to be announced to Anna Sergeyevna but told me to take him straight to
you.’

‘Has there been an accident at home?’ Arkady wondered. He hurriedly ran up the stairs and threw open his door. Bazarov’s expression
reassured him, though a more experienced eye would have detected signs of inner agitation in the features of his unexpected
guest – they showed their usual energy but were drawn. A dusty overcoat over his shoulders and a cap on his head, he was sitting
on the window-sill. He didn’t get up even when Arkady rushed to embrace him with noisy greetings.

‘What a surprise! What has brought you here?’ he repeated, walking round the room like a man who fancies himself pleased
and wants to show it. ‘Is everything all right at home, is everyone well?’

‘Everything’s all right at your home but not everyone is well,’ said Bazarov. ‘Stop chattering and tell them to bring me some
kvass,
²
sit down and listen to what I’m going to tell you, briefly but, I hope, forcefully.’

Arkady fell silent, and Bazarov told him about his duel with Pavel Petrovich. Arkady was quite astonished, even upset, but
he didn’t feel he should show that; he only asked if the wound was really not serious and, having got the reply that the wound
was a most interesting one, only not in a medical sense, he gave a forced smile. But at heart he felt wretched and somehow
ashamed. Bazarov seemed to understand this.

‘Yes, my friend,’ he said, ‘that’s what comes of living with feudal barons. You become one yourself and take your part in
knightly tournaments. So I set off for “the home of my fathers”,’ Bazarov concluded. ‘And on the way I called in here… to
report all this, I might have said, if I hadn’t thought it stupid to tell a pointless lie. No, I called in here – devil knows
why. You see, a man must sometimes grip himself by the hair and pull himself out, like a radish from its bed in the soil.
The other day I did that myself… But I wanted to take a look once more at what I had left, at the bed where I lay.’

‘I hope those words don’t refer to me,’ Arkady exclaimed with feeling, ‘I hope you aren’t thinking of parting from
me
.’

Bazarov gave him a fixed, almost piercing stare.

‘Would that really so upset you? It seems to me you’ve already parted from me. You’re so very fresh and clean… your affair
with Anna Sergeyevna must be going really well.’

‘What affair with Anna Sergeyevna?’

‘Wasn’t it for her you came here from the town, my little fledgling? By the way, how are the Sunday schools coming on? Aren’t
you in love with her? Or do you feel it’s time to be coy?’

‘Yevgeny, you know I’ve always been open with you. I can assure you, I swear to God that you are mistaken.’

‘Hm! That’s a new word,’ Bazarov said in a low voice. ‘But you needn’t get all hot under the collar. I really don’t care.
A
romantic would say, “I feel our ways are beginning to part,” but I simply say we’ve had enough of each other.’

‘Yevgeny…’

‘My friend, that’s not a disaster. If that were all one has enough of in this world! But I wonder, shouldn’t we say goodbye
now? Since I’ve come here I feel really soiled, as if I’d been reading too much of Gogol’s letters to the Kaluga governor’s
wife.
³
By the way I haven’t yet told them to unharness the horses.’

‘I’m sorry, you really can’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m no longer speaking of myself, but it would be extraordinarily rude to Anna Sergeyevna, who will certainly want to see
you.’

‘Well, there you’re wrong.’

‘On the contrary, I’m certain I’m right,’ Arkady countered. ‘And why are you pretending? If it comes to that, haven’t you
come here for her?’

‘That’s perhaps fairly said, but you’re still wrong.’

But Arkady was right. Anna Sergeyevna did want to see Bazarov and sent a message by the butler for him to come to her. Bazarov
changed his clothes before he went in to her: he turned out to have packed his new clothes since they were there to hand.

Anna Sergeyevna received him not in the room where he had so unexpectedly declared his love for her but in the drawing room.
She amiably extended to him the tips of her fingers, but her face involuntarily showed strain.

‘Anna Sergeyevna,’ Bazarov said hurriedly, ‘first I must give you some reassurance. Before you is a mortal who long ago came
to his senses and hopes that others too have forgotten his folly. I am going away for a long time, and you must agree that,
though I’m no soft creature, it would be depressing for me to take away with me the thought that you remember me with disgust.’

Anna Sergeyevna sighed deeply like someone who has just climbed a high mountain, and her face came to life with a smile. She
gave her hand to Bazarov a second time and responded to his handshake.

‘Let bygones be bygones,’ she said, ‘especially since, in all conscience, I too was to blame, if not by flirting then in another
way. In a word – let’s be friends as before. That was a dream, wasn’t it? And who remembers dreams?’

‘Who does remember them? Besides love… is just a feeling one assumes.’

‘Really? I very much like hearing that.’

Those were Anna Sergeyevna’s words, and those were Bazarov’s; both thought they spoke the truth. Did their words hold the
truth, the whole truth? They didn’t know it themselves, much less does the author. But their conversation went as if they
completely believed one another.

Anna Sergeyevna asked Bazarov among other things what he had done at the Kirsanovs’. He almost told her about his duel with
Pavel Petrovich but he restrained himself as he thought she might suppose he was showing off and answered her that he had
been working the whole time.

‘At first,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, ‘I became depressed, God knows why. I even planned to go abroad, imagine that!… Then the
mood passed. Your friend Arkady Nikolayevich came, and I again got into my routine, into my true role.’

‘What role is that, if I may ask?’

‘That of aunt, teacher, mother, whatever you want to call it. Oh, you must know that at first I didn’t properly understand
your close friendship with Arkady Nikolaich, I found him rather insignificant. But now I’ve got to know him better I’m sure
he’s intelligent… But, most importantly, he’s young, young… not like you and me, Yevgeny Vasilyich.’

‘Is he still so shy in your presence?’ asked Bazarov.

‘But surely he wasn’t…’ Anna Sergeyevna began and after a moment’s thought went on, ‘Now he has become more confident, he
talks to me. Before he used to avoid me. But I didn’t seek his company. He and Katya are great friends.’

Bazarov felt annoyed. ‘Women can’t help pretending!’ he thought.

‘You say he avoided you,’ he stated with a cold smile, ‘but I don’t suppose it was any secret to you that he was in love with
you.’

‘What? He was too?’ Anna Sergeyevna burst out.

‘He was too,’ Bazarov repeated, making a humble bow. ‘Did you really not know that, and have I told you something that is
news to you?’

Anna Sergeyevna lowered her eyes.

‘You are wrong, Yevgeny Vasilyich.’

‘I don’t think so. But perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that.’ ‘And don’t go on pretending,’ he added to himself.

‘Why not mention it? But I suppose that here too you are attaching too much significance to a momentary impression. I am beginning
to suspect that you’re inclined to exaggeration.’

‘We’d better not talk about that, Anna Sergeyevna.’

‘Why not?’ she retorted but she herself led the conversation on to another subject. She still felt awkward with Bazarov although
she had both told him and also assured herself that all was forgotten. As she exchanged the simplest remarks or even joked
with him, she felt a tremor of fear. In the same way people on a steamship at sea talk and laugh light-heartedly exactly as
on dry land, but if there is the slightest halt, the slightest sign of something untoward, at once every face shows an expression
of special alarm – evidence of their constant awareness of constant danger.

The conversation between Anna Sergeyevna and Bazarov continued for not much longer. She began to think her own thoughts, to
answer distractedly and eventually proposed to him they went to the saloon, where they found the princess and Katya. ‘But
where’s Arkady Nikolaich?’ asked the hostess and, learning that he hadn’t shown himself now for more than an hour, she sent
for him. He wasn’t found quickly: he had gone off to the bottom of the garden and was sitting there, cupping his chin on his
folded hands and lost in his thoughts. Those thoughts were deep and important ones but they weren’t sad. He knew that Anna
Sergeyevna was sitting alone with Bazarov and he felt no jealousy as he used to. On the contrary his face was quietly radiant;
he seemed to be wondering at something and to be happy and to be making some decision.

The late Odintsov didn’t like innovations but he tolerated ‘a certain play of refined taste’ and consequently had erected
in his garden, between the hothouse and the pond, a building like a Greek portico constructed of Russian brick. In the blind
rear wall of this portico or gallery were made six niches for statues which Odintsov intended to order from abroad. These
statues were going to represent Solitude, Silence, Meditation, Melancholy, Modesty and Sensibility. One of them, the goddess
of Silence, with her finger to her lips, had been brought and set up, but the very same day the farm boys had knocked off
her nose, and, though a local plasterer had undertaken to make her a nose ‘twice as good as the old one’, nevertheless Odintsov
had ordered her to be removed, and she found herself in a corner of the threshing barn, where she stood for many long years,
exciting the superstitious terror of the peasant women. The front part of the portico was overgrown with thick shrubs: only
the capitals of the columns could be seen above the dense foliage. Inside the portico itself it was cool even at midday. Anna
Sergeyevna didn’t like to visit this place ever since she had seen a grass snake there, but Katya often came to sit on a big
stone bench which had been set up below one of the niches. Surrounded by freshness and shade, she used to read or work or
surrender herself to that sensation of complete quiet which probably is familiar to everyone and the charm of which lies in
the barely conscious, mute observation of the broad current of life, ceaselessly flowing around us and within ourselves.

The day after Bazarov’s arrival Katya was sitting on her favourite bench, and next to her again sat Arkady. He had prevailed
on her to go with him to the ‘portico’.

There was still about an hour before luncheon; the heat of the day had already succeeded the dew of morning. Arkady’s face
had kept its expression of the previous day; Katya looked anxious. Immediately after tea her sister had called her into her
study and, after a caress, which always scared Katya, had
advised her to be more careful in her behaviour with Arkady and particularly to avoid conversations with him alone, which
had apparently been remarked by their aunt and the whole household. Moreover, the previous evening Anna Sergeyevna had been
in a bad mood, and Katya herself had felt awkward as if she were acknowledging guilt. Acceding to Arkady’s request, she told
herself it was for the last time.

‘Katerina Sergeyevna,’ he began with a kind of shy forwardness, ‘ever since I had the happiness of living in the same house
as you, I have talked to you about many things, but now there is one, for me very important… question, which I haven’t yet
touched on. Yesterday you remarked that I had been changed here,’ he added, both catching and avoiding the questioning look
which Katya turned on him. ‘Indeed I have changed in many respects, and you know that better than anyone else – you, to whom
in fact I owe that change.’

‘I do?… To me?…’ said Katya.

‘I am no longer the arrogant boy who came here,’ Arkady went on. ‘After all, I am now twenty-three. I still want to be of
service, I want to devote all my strength to the truth. But I won’t be looking for my ideals where I once did. They now present
themselves to me… somewhere much nearer by. Up till now I haven’t understood myself, I’ve given myself tasks which are beyond
me… My eyes have recently been opened thanks to a certain feeling… I’m not expressing myself very clearly but I hope you will
understand me…’

Katya made no answer but stopped looking at Arkady.

‘I suppose,’ he began again in a more agitated voice, while above him a chaffinch sang its carefree song in the leaves of
a birch tree. ‘I suppose that it’s the duty of every honest man to be completely open with those… with those… with those people
who… in a word with people close to him, and therefore I… I intend…’

But here Arkady’s oratory let him down, he became confused, stumbled in his words and had to be silent for a moment. Katya
still didn’t raise her eyes. She seemed not to understand where he was leading with all this, and to be waiting for something.

‘I can tell I’ll surprise you,’ Arkady began plucking up his courage again, ‘especially as this feeling relates in a way…
in a way, I say – to you. Yesterday I remember you reproached me for lack of seriousness,’ Arkady went on with the look of
a man who has gone into a swamp and feels that with every step he is sinking deeper and deeper and still hurries on, in the
hope of extricating himself sooner. ‘This reproach is often directed at… falls… upon young men, even when they no longer deserve
it. And if I had more self-confidence…’ (‘Well, help me, help me!’ Arkady thought desperately, but Katya still didn’t turn
her head.) ‘If I could hope…’

‘If I could be sure of what you’re saying’ – at that moment they heard the clear voice of Anna Sergeyevna.

Arkady at once fell silent, and Katya went pale. A path ran past the shrubs which screened the portico. Anna Sergeyevna was
walking down it, accompanied by Bazarov. Katya and Arkady couldn’t see them, but they could hear every word, the rustle of
her dress, their very breathing. Anna Sergeyevna and Bazarov took a few steps and stopped right in front of the portico, as
if deliberately.