Fenechka rushed to Nikolay Petrovich and, putting her arms
round father and son, laid her head on his shoulder. Nikolay Petrovich was astonished. Shy and modest Fenechka never showed
him signs of affection in the presence of a third person.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said and with a look at his brother he handed Mitya to her. ‘Are you feeling worse?’ he asked,
going up to Pavel Petrovich.
He pressed his face into a batiste handkerchief.
‘No… it’s… nothing’s the matter… On the contrary I’m much better.’
‘You were too hasty in moving to the sofa. Where are you off to?’ Nikolay Petrovich added, turning to Fenechka, but she had
already slammed the door behind her. ‘I was bringing in my big boy to show him to you – he was missing his uncle. Why did
she take him away? But what’s the matter with you? Did something happen in here between you?’
‘Brother!’ Pavel Petrovich said solemnly.
Nikolay Petrovich shivered. He felt scared, he didn’t understand why.
‘Brother,’ Pavel Petrovich repeated, ‘give me your word you’ll meet one request of mine.’
‘What? Tell me.’
‘It’s very important. In my view the whole happiness of your life depends on it. All this time I’ve been reflecting a lot
on what I now want to say to you… Brother, do your duty, your duty as an honest and noble man, put an end to the seducer’s
role, to the poor example you set, you who are the best of men!’
‘Paul, what do you mean?’
‘Marry Fenechka… She loves you, she’s the mother of your son.’
Nikolay Petrovich stepped back a pace and raised his hands.
‘Are you saying this, Pavel? You whom I always thought the most inflexible opponent of marriages like that? You are saying
this! But don’t you know that it is solely out of respect for you that I haven’t done what you have justly called my duty!’
‘In this case your respect for me was pointless,’ Pavel Petrovich retorted with a melancholy smile. ‘I am beginning to think
that Bazarov was right when he accused me of aristocratism. No, dear Brother, that’s enough of putting on airs and thinking
about the wider world: we are now old and meek. It’s time for us to put all vanity aside. Precisely as you say, we’ll start
doing our duty. And, mark you, we’ll get happiness into the bargain.’
Nikolay Petrovich rushed to embrace his brother.
‘You have finally opened my eyes!’ he exclaimed. ‘I always maintained you were the kindest and cleverest man in the world,
and I was right. And now I see that you are as wise as you are big-hearted.’
‘Shush, shush.’ Pavel Petrovich interrupted him. ‘Don’t hurt the leg of your wise brother, who at the age of nearly fifty
has gone and fought a duel, like a subaltern. And so, that’s decided. Fenechka will be my…
belle-sœur.
’
10
‘My dear Pavel! But what will Arkady say?’
‘Arkady? He’ll be in ecstasy, I should think! Marriage is not one of his principles, but his sense of equality will be flattered.
And indeed how can class matter
au dix-neuvième siècle
?’
11
‘Oh Pavel, Pavel! Let me kiss you again. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.’
The brothers embraced.
‘What do you think, why not declare your intentions to her here and now?’ asked Pavel Petrovich.
‘Why such a hurry?’ Nikolay Petrovich answered. ‘Did you have words?’
‘Words?
Quelle idée!
’
12
‘Very well, then. First recover your health; this matter isn’t going to run away from us, we must think it through, and consider…’
‘But you’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have and I thank you from my heart. Now I’ll leave you, you must rest. Upsets are bad for you… But we’ll talk
more. Go to sleep, my dear, and get well, with God’s help!’
‘Why is he thanking me?’ thought Pavel Petrovich when he was alone. ‘As if it didn’t depend on him! And as soon as he marries
I’ll go off somewhere far away, Dresden or Florence, and live there till I drop dead.’
Pavel Petrovich moistened his forehead with eau de Cologne and closed his eyes. Lit by the bright light of day, his handsome,
wasted head lay on the white pillow like the head of a dead man… And he was indeed a dead man.
At Nikolskoye Katya and Arkady were sitting on a turf seat in the garden, in the shade of a tall ash. On the ground by them
lay Fifi, her long body forming the elegant curve sportsmen call a ‘hare’s lie’. Neither of them spoke. He held in his hands
a half-open book while she took from a basket the remaining crumbs of white bread and threw them to a small family of sparrows
which with their usual mixture of timorousness and cheek hopped and chirruped right by their feet. A slight breeze stirring
in the leaves of the ash gently shifted pale golden patches of light back and forth over the dark path and Fifi’s yellow back.
Arkady and Katya were in full shade; only occasionally a bright streak of light played in her hair. Both were silent, but
their very silence and the way they sat next to one another spoke of their trust and intimacy. Neither appeared to be thinking
of their neighbour, but each was secretly glad of the closeness. And their expressions had changed since we saw them last:
Arkady seemed calmer, Katya livelier and bolder.
‘Don’t you find,’ Arkady began, ‘that the ash tree –
yasen’
– is very well named in Russian: there is no tree with its light, clear –
yasny
– transparency in the air?’
Katya raised her eyes and said ‘yes’ – and Arkady thought, ‘Well, she doesn’t criticize me for fine phrases.’
‘I don’t like Heine,’
1
said Katya looking at the book in Arkady’s hands, ‘when he’s laughing or when he’s weeping. I do like him when he is pensive
or melancholy.’
‘But I like him when he’s laughing,’ said Arkady.
‘Those are still the old traces of your satirical way of thinking…’ (‘Old traces!’ thought Arkady. ‘If Bazarov heard that.’)
‘Wait a little and we’ll change you.’
‘Who will change me? You?’
‘Who will? My sister, and Porfyry Platonych, with whom you no longer quarrel, and my aunt, whom you took to church the day
before yesterday.’
‘I could hardly refuse! As for Anna Sergeyevna you’ll remember that she herself agreed with Yevgeny about many things.’
‘My sister was then under his influence, like you.’
‘Like me! Have you noticed that I’m already liberated from his influence?’
Katya said nothing.
Arkady went on. ‘I know you never liked him.’
‘I can’t judge him.’
‘You know, Katerina Sergeyevna, every time I hear that reply, I don’t believe it… There is nobody whom none of us can judge!
It’s just an excuse.’
‘Well, then I’ll tell you that he… it’s not that I don’t like him, but I feel he’s alien to me, and I to him… and you’re alien
to him.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘How can I say it… he’s a predator and you and I are domestic animals.’
‘I’m one too?’
Katya nodded.
Arkady scratched behind his ear.
‘Listen, Katerina Sergeyevna, that’s really offensive.’
‘Would you like to be a predator?’
‘Not a predator, but strong, energetic.’
‘That can’t be had by wishing… Your friend doesn’t wish that, but he is that.’
‘Hm! So you think he had a big influence on Anna Sergeyevna?’
‘Yes. But no one can have the upper hand over her for long,’ Katya added in a low voice.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘She’s very proud… I didn’t mean that… she very much values her independence.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ Arkady asked, while the thought ‘Why does she?’ went through his mind. The same thought went through
Katya’s. Young people who meet often and become intimate constantly have the very same thoughts.
Arkady smiled and, moving a little closer to Katya, whispered:
‘Admit you’re a bit scared of her.’
‘Scared of whom?’
‘Of
her
,’ Arkady repeated, with emphasis.
‘And what about you?’ Katya asked in her turn.
‘I am too. Note that I said I am too.’
Katya wagged her finger at him.
‘I am surprised about that,’ she began, ‘my sister has never been so fond of you as right now, much more than when you came
here first.’
‘Oh really!’
‘Didn’t you notice that? Aren’t you pleased?’
Arkady thought a moment.
‘How could I have earned Anna Sergeyevna’s goodwill? Maybe because I brought her your mother’s letters?’
‘Yes, that, and there are other reasons, which I won’t say.’
‘Why?’
‘I won’t say.’
‘Oh, I do know – you’re very stubborn.’
‘I am.’
‘And observant.’
Katya looked sideways at Arkady.
‘Does that perhaps annoy you? What are you thinking about?’
‘I’m wondering where you got these powers of observation, which you really do have. You’re so apprehensive and mistrustful,
you keep at a distance from everyone…’
‘I’ve lived a lot by myself: willy-nilly one starts to reflect on things. But do I really keep at a distance from everyone?’
Arkady gave Katya a grateful look.
‘That’s all very well,’ he went on, ‘but people in your position, I mean to say with your fortune, seldom have that gift:
it’s as hard for the truth to get through to them as to the Tsar.’
‘But I’m not rich.’
Arkady was taken aback and didn’t immediately understand Katya. ‘So in fact the estate is all her sister’s!’ was the thought
that then came into his head: he didn’t find it unpleasant.
‘How well you said that!’ he pronounced.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said that so well – simply, without being ashamed and without dramatizing. By the way, I imagine that the feelings of
someone who knows and says that they are poor do have something special, a particular kind of vanity.’
‘I never experienced anything of that kind, thanks to my sister. I mentioned my lack of fortune simply because the subject
came up.’
‘Very well. But do admit you have a bit of that vanity I was just talking about.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘For example – you must excuse my question – you wouldn’t marry a rich man, would you?’
‘If I loved him very much… No, I suppose even then I wouldn’t.’
‘Ah, you see!’ Arkady exclaimed and after a pause went on: ‘But why wouldn’t you marry him?’
‘Because the old song says like should go with like.’
‘Maybe you want to dominate or…’
‘No, no. Why do you say that? On the contrary I am ready to submit, only inequality is hard to bear. To have self-respect
and to submit – that I do understand; that’s happiness. But a subordinate existence… no, I’ve had enough of that.’
‘Enough of that,’ Arkady repeated after Katya. ‘Yes, yes,’ he went on, ‘you’re not Anna Sergeyevna’s sister for nothing. You’re
as independent-minded as she is. But you’re more reserved. I am sure you would never be the first to declare your feelings,
however strong or sacred they might be…’
‘How else could I act?’ asked Katya.
‘You’re just as clever, you have just as strong a character as she has, if not stronger…’
‘Please don’t compare me with my sister,’ Katya quickly interrupted. ‘It puts me too much at a disadvantage. You seem to have
forgotten that my sister is both a beauty and very clever,
and… you especially, Arkady Nikolayevich, shouldn’t be saying such things, and with such a serious expression.’
‘What does that mean – “you especially” – and what makes you think I am joking?’
‘Of course you’re joking.’
‘Do you think so? But what if I’m convinced of what I’m saying? If I find that I haven’t yet expressed myself strongly enough?’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Don’t you? Well now I see – I really overestimated your powers of observation.’
‘In what way?’
Arkady made no answer, and Katya looked in the basket for a few more crumbs and began to throw them to the sparrows, but she
moved her hand too brusquely, and they flew away before they could peck at the bread.
‘Katerina Sergeyevna!’ Arkady said suddenly. ‘You probably don’t care, but you must know that I wouldn’t exchange you for
your sister – or for anyone else in the world.’
He got up and quickly went away as if he was frightened of the words that had burst from his lips.
And Katya let both hands and her basket drop on to her knees and, bowing her head, looked after Arkady for a long time. Slowly
a crimson colour lightly flushed her cheeks, but her lips didn’t smile, and her dark eyes showed bewilderment and another
feeling too, which didn’t yet have a name.
‘Are you alone?’ She heard Anna Sergeyevna’s voice close by. ‘I thought you went into the garden with Arkady.’
Katya slowly raised her eyes to her sister. Elegantly, even exquisitely dressed, she was standing on the path and tickling
Fifi’s ears with the tip of her open parasol. ‘I’m by myself,’ Katya said slowly.
‘I can see that,’ the other said laughing. ‘So he must have gone to his room.’
‘Yes, he has.’
‘Were you reading together?’
‘Yes.’
Anna Sergeyevna took hold of Katya’s chin and raised her face.
‘I hope you haven’t quarrelled.’
‘No, we haven’t,’ said Katya and gently moved her sister’s hand away.
‘What a solemn answer! I thought I would find him here and suggest he came for a walk with me. He is always asking me. Your
boots have come from the town. Go and try them on – I noticed yesterday your old ones are quite worn. In general you don’t
bother enough about that kind of thing, and you have such pretty feet. And your hands are nice… only they’re rather large.
So you must make the most of your feet. But you aren’t a flirt, my dear.’
Anna Sergeyena walked on down the path, her beautiful dress gently rustling. Katya got up from the bench and also went off,
taking Heine – but it wasn’t to try on the boots.
‘Pretty feet,’ she thought, slowly and lightly climbing the stone steps of the terrace baking in the sun. ‘Pretty feet you
say… Well, he’ll be at those feet.’