Fathers and Children, Ivan Turgenev [best book reader .TXT] 📗

must set your mind at rest. Before you is a poor mortal, who has come to his senses long ago, and hopes other people too have forgotten his follies. I am going away for a long while; and though, as you will allow, I’m by no means a very soft creature, it would be anything but cheerful for me to carry away with me the idea that you remember me with repugnance.”

Anna Sergyevna gave a deep sigh like one who has just climbed up a high mountain, and her face was lighted up by a smile. She held out her hand a second time to Bazarov, and responded to his pressure.

“Let bygones be bygones,” she said. “I am all the readier to do so because, speaking from my conscience, I was to blame then too for flirting or something. In a word, let us be friends as before. That was a dream, wasn’t it? And who remembers dreams?”

“Who remembers them? And besides, love⁠ ⁠… you know, is a purely imaginary feeling.”

“Really? I am very glad to hear that.”

So Anna Sergyevna spoke, and so spoke Bazarov; they both supposed they were speaking the truth. Was the truth, the whole truth, to be found in their words? They could not themselves have said, and much less could the author. But a conversation followed between them precisely as though they completely believed one another.

Anna Sergyevna asked Bazarov, among other things, what he had been doing at the Kirsanovs’. He was on the point of telling her about his duel with Pavel Petrovitch, but he checked himself with the thought that she might imagine he was trying to make himself interesting, and answered that he had been at work all the time.

“And I,” observed Anna Sergyevna, “had a fit of depression at first, goodness knows why; I even made plans for going abroad, fancy!⁠ ⁠… Then it passed off, your friend Arkady Nikolaitch came, and I fell back into my old routine, and took up my real part again.”

“What part is that, may I ask?”

“The character of aunt, guardian, mother⁠—call it what you like. By the way, do you know I used not quite to understand your close friendship with Arkady Nikolaitch; I thought him rather insignificant. But now I have come to know him better, and to see that he is clever.⁠ ⁠… And he’s young, he’s young⁠ ⁠… that’s the great thing⁠ ⁠… not like you and me, Yevgeny Vassilyitch.”

“Is he still as shy in your company?” queried Bazarov.

“Why, was he?”⁠ ⁠… Anna Sergyevna began, and after a brief pause she went on: “He has grown more confiding now; he talks to me. He used to avoid me before. Though, indeed, I didn’t seek his society either. He’s more friends with Katya.”

Bazarov felt irritated. “A woman can’t help humbugging, of course!” he thought. “You say he used to avoid you,” he said aloud, with a chilly smile; “but it is probably no secret to you that he was in love with you?”

“What! he too?” fell from Anna Sergyevna’s lips.

“He too,” repeated Bazarov, with a submissive bow. “Can it be you didn’t know it, and I’ve told you something new?”

Anna Sergyevna dropped her eyes. “You are mistaken, Yevgeny Vassilyitch.”

“I don’t think so. But perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it.” “And don’t you try telling me lies again for the future,” he added to himself.

“Why not? But I imagine that in this too you are attributing too much importance to a passing impression. I begin to suspect you are inclined to exaggeration.”

“We had better not talk about it, Anna Sergyevna.”

“Oh, why?” she retorted; but she herself led the conversation into another channel. She was still ill at ease with Bazarov, though she had told him, and assured herself that everything was forgotten. While she was exchanging the simplest sentences with him, even while she was jesting with him, she was conscious of a faint spasm of dread. So people on a steamer at sea talk and laugh carelessly, for all the world as though they were on dry land; but let only the slightest hitch occur, let the least sign be seen of anything out of the common, and at once on every face there comes out an expression of peculiar alarm, betraying the constant consciousness of constant danger.

Anna Sergyevna’s conversation with Bazarov did not last long. She began to seem absorbed in thought, answered abstractedly, and suggested at last that they should go into the hall, where they found the princess and Katya. “But where is Arkady Nikolaitch?” inquired the lady of the house; and on hearing that he had not shown himself for more than an hour, she sent for him. He was not very quickly found; he had hidden himself in the very thickest part of the garden, and with his chin propped on his folded hands, he was sitting lost in meditation. They were deep and serious meditations, but not mournful. He knew Anna Sergyevna was sitting alone with Bazarov, and he felt no jealousy, as once he had; on the contrary, his face slowly brightened; he seemed to be at once wondering and rejoicing, and resolving on something.

XXVI

The deceased Odintsov had not liked innovations, but he had tolerated “the fine arts within a certain sphere,” and had in consequence put up in his garden, between the hothouse and the lake, an erection after the fashion of a Greek temple, made of Russian brick. Along the dark wall at the back of this temple or gallery were placed six niches for statues, which Odintsov had proceeded to order from abroad. These statues were to represent Solitude, Silence, Meditation, Melancholy, Modesty, and Sensibility. One of them, the goddess of Silence, with her finger on her lip, had been sent and put up; but on the very same day some boys on the farm had broken her nose; and though a plasterer of the neighbourhood undertook to make her a new nose “twice as good as the old one,” Odintsov