Fathers and Sons (17 page)

‘How should one not value oneself? If I have no price, who needs my devotion?’

‘That’s not my concern now. It’s for someone else to work
out what’s my price. The important thing is to be able to surrender oneself.’

Odintsova leant forward in her chair.

‘You speak,’ she began, ‘as if you’d had experience of all this.’

‘It just came to mind, Anna Sergeyevna. You know, all this isn’t my kind of thing.’

‘But you would know how to surrender yourself?’

‘I don’t really know, I don’t want to boast.’

Odintsova said nothing, and Bazarov fell silent. The sounds of the piano came to them from the drawing room.

‘Why is Katya playing so late?’ she said.

Bazarov got up.

‘Yes, it really is late, it’s time for us to go to bed.’

‘Wait a moment. Where are you hurrying off to?… I need to tell you one thing.’

‘What?’

‘Wait a moment,’ she whispered.

Her eyes came to rest on Bazarov. She seemed to be examining him attentively.

He walked across the room, then suddenly came right up to her, quickly said ‘goodbye’, gripped her hand so hard she almost
screamed and went out. She lifted her fingers, still all squeezed together, to her lips, blew on them and then jumped up from
her chair and hurried towards the door as if to bring Bazarov back… A maid came into the room with a carafe on a silver tray.
Anna Sergeyevna stopped, told her to leave and sat down again, and again became lost in her thoughts. Her hair became unloosened
and fell on her shoulders like a dark serpent. The lamp went on burning in Anna Sergeyevna’s room for a long time, and for
a long time she sat without moving, just occasionally moving her fingers over her arms, which were being gently nipped by
the night chill.

Two hours later Bazarov came back to his bedroom, his boots all wet with the dew, looking dishevelled and gloomy. He found
Arkady at the writing table, with a book in his hands, his coat still buttoned right up.

‘Haven’t you gone to bed yet?’ he said almost with annoyance.

‘Did you sit up a long time with Anna Sergeyevna?’ said Arkady, not answering his question.

‘Yes, I sat with her the whole time you and Katerina Sergeyevna were playing the piano.’

‘I wasn’t playing…’Arkady began and then fell silent. He felt tears coming into his eyes and he didn’t want to cry in front
of his mocking friend.

The following day, when Anna Sergeyevna came down to tea, Bazarov sat for a long time hunched over his cup, then suddenly
looked up at her… She turned to him, as if he had pushed her, and he thought her face had become slightly paler overnight.
She soon went to her room and only reappeared at lunch. It had been raining all morning, and there was no possibility of going
for a walk. The whole company assembled in the drawing room. Arkady got the latest issue of a journal and started to read
aloud. The princess, in her usual way, at first looked surprised, as if he had done something indecent, and then gave him
a malevolent stare; but he didn’t pay her any attention.

‘Yevgeny Vasilyevich,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, ‘let’s go to my room… I want to ask you… Yesterday you mentioned to me the title
of a textbook…’

She got up and moved towards the door. The princess looked around, making a face which meant ‘Look, look how shocked I am!’
and gave Arkady another stare, but he raised his voice and, exchanging a look with Katya, by whom he was sitting, continued
to read.

Anna Sergeyevna walked quickly to her study. Bazarov briskly followed her, without raising his eyes from the ground, and it
was only his ears that caught the delicate swish and rustle of her silk dress gliding before him. She dropped into the same
chair she had sat in the evening before, and Bazarov took his place of yesterday.

‘What is the name of that book?’ she began after a short silence.

‘Pelouse et Frémy,
Notions générales
…’ Bazarov answered. ‘But I can also recommend to you Ganot’s
Traité élémentaire de physique expérimentale
.
¹
In that the illustrations are clearer, and generally speaking this textbook…’

She held out her hand.

‘Yevgeny Vasilyevich, forgive me, but I didn’t ask you in here to talk about textbooks. I wanted to come back to our conversation
of yesterday. You went out so suddenly… Will this bore you?’

‘I am at your service, Anna Sergeyevna. But what were we talking about yesterday?’

She gave Bazarov a sideways look.

‘I think we were talking about happiness. I was telling you about myself. Now I just used the word “happiness”. Tell me, why
is it that even when we enjoy, for example, music, or a good party, or conversation with sympathetic people, why is it that
all that seems to be a hint of some infinite happiness existing somewhere else rather than a real happiness, that is one we
own ourselves? Why? Or perhaps you don’t feel anything of the kind?’

‘You know the proverb “the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill”,’ replied Bazarov, ‘and you yourself said
yesterday that you’re not satisfied. But really such thoughts don’t enter my head.’

‘Perhaps they seem ridiculous to you?’

‘They don’t, but they don’t enter my head.’

‘Really? You know, I’d very much like to know what
you
think about.’

‘What? I don’t understand you.’

‘Listen, for a long time I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this. I don’t need to tell you – you know it yourself – you’re
no ordinary man; you’re still young – you have your whole life in front of you. What are you preparing yourself for? What
future awaits you? I mean to say – what goal do you want to reach, where are you going, what are your innermost feelings?
In a word, who are you, what are you?’

‘You astonish me, Anna Sergeyevna. You know that I am
studying the natural sciences, and as for who I am…’

‘Yes, who are you?’

‘I have already stated to you that I am a future district doctor.’

Anna Sergeyevna made an impatient movement.

‘Why do you say that? You yourself don’t believe it. Arkady could give me an answer like that, but not you.’

‘How does Arkady…?’

‘Stop it! Is it possible that you’d be satisfied with such a modest occupation, and aren’t you yourself always claiming medicine
has no meaning for you? A district doctor? You, with your pride? You are giving me that answer to fob me off, because you
have no trust in me. But do you know, Yevgeny Vasilyich, I could understand you: I was poor and proud like you; I underwent
maybe the same experiences as you.’

‘All that is very fine, Anna Sergeyevna, but you must excuse me… I am generally not accustomed to baring my heart, and there
is such a distance between you and me…’

‘What distance? Are you going to tell me again that I am an aristocrat? Enough of that, Yevgeny Vasilyich; I think I have
proved to you…’

‘Yes, and besides,’ Bazarov interrupted her, ‘why all this talking and thinking about a future which very largely doesn’t
depend on us? If we have the chance to do something, well and good, but if we don’t, then we can be thankful we did without
all the pointless chatter about it beforehand.’

‘You call conversation with a friend chatter… Or perhaps you don’t consider me, as a woman, worthy of your trust? Since you
despise us all.’

‘I don’t despise you, Anna Sergeyevna, and you know that.’

‘No, I don’t know anything… but let’s make an assumption: I understand your not wanting to talk about the future of your work;
but with all that’s going on inside you at this moment…’

‘Going on inside me!’ Bazarov repeated. ‘As if I were some kind of state or society! At all events it’s completely without
interest; and also can a man say out aloud everything that is “going on” inside him?’

‘But I don’t see why you can’t speak out everything in your heart.’

‘Can
you
?’ asked Bazarov.

‘Yes, I can,’ Anna Sergeyevna answered after a brief hesitation.

Bazarov bowed his head.

‘You’re more fortunate than me.’

Anna Sergeyevna gave him an inquiring look.

‘As you choose,’ she went on, ‘but all the same something tells me that there is a reason for our having become close to one
another, that we will be good friends. I am sure that your, what should I call it, your tenseness, your reserve will eventually
disappear.’

‘So you’ve noticed reserve in me… what did you also call it… tenseness?’

‘Yes.’

Bazarov got up and went to the window.

‘And you would like to know the reason for that reserve, you would like to know what is going on inside me?’

‘Yes,’ Anna Sergeyevna said again, with a fear she didn’t yet understand.

‘And you won’t be angry?’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘You won’t?’ Bazarov was standing with his back to her. ‘So you must know that I love you, foolishly, madly… That’s what you’ve
got out of me.’

Anna Sergeyevna held both her arms out in front of her while Bazarov pressed his forehead against a window pane. He was choking;
his whole body was visibly trembling. But it wasn’t the tremor of a young man’s shyness he was feeling, nor the pleasurable
terror of a first declaration of love. It was passion fighting in him, a strong and oppressive passion – one that looked like
anger and was perhaps indeed akin to it. Anna Sergeyevna felt both frightened of him and sorry for him.

‘Yevgeny Vasilyich,’ she said, and in spite of herself there was tenderness in her voice.

He quickly turned round, devoured her with his eyes and, grabbing both her arms, pulled her to his breast.

She didn’t escape from his arms at once; but a moment later she was already standing far from him in a corner, and from there
she looked at him. He rushed towards her…

‘You haven’t understood me,’ she whispered hurriedly in fright. If he’d taken one more step, it seemed she would have screamed…
Bazarov bit his lip and went out.

Half an hour later a maid gave Anna Sergeyevna a note from Bazarov; it consisted of a single line: ‘Must I leave today – or
can I stay until tomorrow?’ ‘Why must you leave? I didn’t understand you – and you haven’t understood me’ was Anna Sergeyevna’s
reply to him, and she herself thought: ‘And I didn’t understand myself.’

She didn’t appear again till dinner and kept pacing up and down in her room, her hands behind her back, from time to time
stopping before a window or before the mirror and slowly rubbing a handkerchief over her neck, which felt as if it had a burning
patch on it. She kept on asking herself what had made her get that admission out of him (to use Bazarov’s phrase), and if
she hadn’t suspected anything… ‘I am to blame,’ she said aloud, ‘but I couldn’t have foreseen this.’ She became lost in her
thoughts and blushed when she remembered the almost animal expression on Bazarov’s face when he dashed towards her…

‘Or maybe?’ she suddenly said and stopped her pacing and shook her curls… She caught sight of herself in the mirror; her head
thrown back and the enigmatic smile of her half-closed, half-open eyes and lips seemed to be telling her in that moment something
which made her feel embarrassed…

‘No,’ she decided finally, ‘God knows where that might have led, one mustn’t play about with this, after all, peace of mind
is the best thing in the world.’

Her peace of mind was not disturbed; but she became melancholy and even wept once without knowing why, only not from being
insulted. She didn’t feel herself to have been insulted: it was more that she felt herself guilty. Under the influence of
various confused feelings, and the consciousness of life moving on, and a desire for novelty, she had made herself go up to
a limit and had made herself look beyond it – and she had seen beyond not even an abyss but emptiness… or ugly things.

For all Anna Sergeyevna’s self-control, for all her being above prejudice, she still felt awkward when she came into the dining
room for dinner. But dinner went quite successfully. Porfiry Platonych came and told various stories; he had just come back
from the town. He told them among other things that Governor Bourdaloue had instructed his officials on special assignments
to wear spurs in case he should send them somewhere on horseback, in the interests of speed. Arkady had a discussion with
Katya in a low voice and paid diplomatic court to the princess. Bazarov maintained a stubborn and gloomy silence. Anna Sergeyevna
a couple of times looked – openly, not covertly – at his stern and bitter face, with lowered eyes, with the mark of scornful
determination stamped on every feature, and thought to herself: ‘No… no… no…’ After dinner she and the rest of the company
went into the garden and, seeing that Bazarov wanted to talk to her, she took a few steps to one side and stopped. He drew
near her, though without raising his eyes even now, and said in a dull voice:

‘Anna Sergeyevna, I must apologize to you. You can’t not be angry with me.’

‘No, I’m not angry with you, Yevgeny Vasilyich,’ she answered, ‘but I’m disappointed.’

‘So much the worse. In any case I am punished enough. My situation is extremely silly – you must agree. You wrote to me, why
must you leave? But I cannot and do not want to stay. Tomorrow I won’t be here.’

‘Yevgeny Vasilyich, why are you…’

‘Why am I leaving?’

‘No, that wasn’t what I meant.’

‘One can’t bring back the past, Anna Sergeyevna… and sooner or later this was bound to happen. Consequently, I have to leave.
I can see only one condition under which I could stay; but that condition can never be. Excuse my impertinence, but you don’t
love me, do you, and you can’t ever love me.’

For a second Bazarov’s eyes flashed from under his dark brows.

Anna Sergeyevna didn’t answer him. ‘I am frightened of this man,’ was the thought that went quickly through her mind.

‘Goodbye, madame,’ Bazarov said, as if he had guessed her thought and went towards the house.

Anna Sergeyevna quietly followed him and, calling Katya, took her arm. She didn’t leave her side the whole evening. She wouldn’t
play cards and did little but laugh, which didn’t at all accord with her pale and troubled expression. Arkady was perplexed
and watched her, as young people do, that is he kept asking himself, ‘What does this mean?’ Bazarov had shut himself in his
room. However, he did come back for tea. Anna Sergeyevna wanted to say a kind word to him but she didn’t know how to open
the conversation…