‘Why is she talking like this?’ thought Bazarov.
‘All that has absolutely no interest,’ he said aloud, ‘especially for you. We’re humble people…’
‘And you think I’m an aristocrat?’
Bazarov raised his eyes to her.
‘Yes,’ he said with exaggerated emphasis.
She smiled.
‘I see you don’t know me very well, although you claim all men are like one another and there is no point in studying them. One day I’ll tell you the story of my life… But first you’ll tell me yours.’
‘I don’t know you very well,’ Bazarov repeated. ‘Perhaps you’re right; perhaps everyone effectively is a riddle. You, for example. You shun society, it wears you down – and then you invite two students to come and stay. Why, with your intelligence, with your beauty, do you live in the country?’
‘What? What did you say then?’ Anna Sergeyevna interrupted him animatedly. ‘With my… beauty?’
Bazarov frowned.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled, ‘I meant to say I don’t really understand why you’ve gone to live in the country.’
‘You don’t understand… However, do you have a way of explaining it to yourself?’
‘Yes, I do… I suppose you stay the whole time in the same place because you are spoilt, because you’re very fond of comfort and convenience, and are pretty indifferent to everything else.’
She smiled again.
‘You really don’t want to think I’m capable of passion.’
Bazarov looked at her with a frown.
‘Out of curiosity perhaps, but not otherwise.’
‘Really? Well, now I understand why we get on so well. You’re just the same as me.’
‘We get on so well…’ Bazarov said in a low voice.
‘Yes!… But I forgot that you want to leave.’
Bazarov got up. A lamp was feebly burning in the dark, scented, secluded room. The blind stirred lightly and let in the irritating freshness of the night and its mysterious rustling. Anna Sergeyevna didn’t move but she was gradually overcome by a hidden emotion… which communicated itself to Bazarov. He suddenly felt himself alone with a young and beautiful woman…
‘Where are you going?’ she said slowly.
He didn’t reply and sat down again on his chair.
‘And so you think me an effete, spoilt creature, with no troubles,’ she went on in the same tone of voice and keeping her eyes fixed on the window. ‘But I know about myself that I’m very unhappy.’
‘You’re unhappy! Why? Surely you can’t attach any importance to worthless gossip?’
She frowned. She was annoyed that he had misunderstood her.
‘That gossip doesn’t even make me laugh, Yevgeny Vasilyevich, and I am too proud to let it worry me. I am unhappy because… because I have no desire, no urge to live. You’re looking at me distrustfully, you’re thinking – there’s the “aristocrat” speaking, all dressed in lace, sitting in her velvet chair. I am quite open: I like what you call comfort, and at the same time I don’t have much wish to live. Reconcile that contradiction as you choose. But of course all that to you is romanticism.’
Bazarov shook his head.
‘You’re healthy, independent, rich: what else? What more do you want?’
‘What more do I want?’ she repeated and sighed. ‘I’m very tired, I’m old, it seems to me I’ve been alive for a long time. Yes, I’m old,’ she went on, slowly pulling the edge of her mantilla over her bare arms. Her eyes met Bazarov’s and she went slightly red. ‘I have already so many memories behind me: life in St Petersburg, riches, then poverty, then my father’s death, marriage, then the usual trip abroad… I have many memories, but nothing worth remembering, and ahead of me lies a long, long road, and no goal… I don’t want to take that road.’
‘Are you so disillusioned?’ asked Bazarov.
‘No,’ she said after a pause, ‘but I’m not satisfied. I think that if I could form a strong attachment to something…’
‘You want to love,’ Bazarov interrupted her, ‘but you can’t. That’s where your unhappiness comes from.’
Anna Sergeyevna began to examine the sleeves of her mantilla.
‘Can’t I love?’ she said.
‘No! Only I was wrong to call that unhappiness. On the contrary, one should feel for someone to whom that thing happens.’
‘To whom what happens?’
‘Love.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘From hearsay,’ Bazarov said crossly.
‘You’re flirting,’ he thought, ‘you’re bored and you’re playing with me from having nothing to do while I…’ His heart really felt as if it was bursting.
‘Besides, perhaps you’re too demanding,’ he said, leaning right forward and playing with the fringe of his chair.
‘Maybe I am. For me it’s all or nothing. A life for a life. What I give I expect to be given – no regrets and no return. Otherwise better not.’
‘Well then,’ said Bazarov, ‘those are fair conditions, and I am surprised you haven’t yet… found what you want.’
‘But do you think it’s easy to surrender oneself completely to something?’
‘It’s not easy once you start reflecting on it, and playing a waiting game, and putting a price on yourself, that is valuing yourself, but if you don’t reflect, it’s very easy to surrender yourself.’
‘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.
XVIII
The following day, when Anna Sergeyevna came down to tea, Bazarov sat for a long time hunc
hed 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.
XIX
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:
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