Fathers and Children by Turgenev Ivan

Author:Turgenev, Ivan
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-80662-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

1 See note on p. 12.

1 In French in the original.

XVIII

ON the following day when Odintsova came down to breakfast Bazarov sat for a long time bent over his cup, then suddenly he looked across at her. She turned sharply towards him as though he had pushed her and it seemed to him that her face had grown somewhat paler overnight. She soon retired to her own room and did not reappear until lunch time. The weather had been rainy all morning and there had been no possibility of getting out for a walk. The whole party assembled in the drawing-room. Arkady took up the latest number of a periodical and began to read aloud. The princess, as was her wont, at first schooled her expression to register pained astonishment, as though he had ventured on some unseemly occupation, and then continued to stare at him with concentrated malice; but he took no notice of her.

‘Yevgeny Vasil’evich,’ uttered Anna Sergeyevna, ‘let us go up to my room. I wanted to ask you – yesterday you mentioned a certain handbook.…’

She rose and made for the door. The princess gazed about her as though to say ‘Just look, just look how I am lost in amazement!’ and once more fixed her eyes on Arkady, but he merely raised his voice and, exchanging glances with Katya, next to whom he was sitting, continued his reading.

Odintsova went with swift steps to her study. Bazarov was prompt to follow her, not raising his eyes but hearkening intently to the thin swish and rustle of the silk dress sweeping on before him. Odintsova sank down into the same armchair in which she had been sitting the previous evening, and Bazarov reassumed his place of the day before.

‘What was the title of that book?’ she began after a brief pause.

‘Pelouse et Frémy, Notions générates,’1 answered Bazarov. ‘Now I come to think of it you might also try Genot, Traité élémentaire de physique expérimentale.1 In that work the figures are clearer, and generally speaking that textbook—’

Odintsova stretched out a hand towards him.

‘Yevgeny Vasil’evich, forgive me, but I did not invite you up here to speak of textbooks. I wanted to go on with our conversation of yesterday. You left so suddenly. It won’t bore you?’

‘I am at your disposal, Anna Sergeyevna. But what was it that we were discussing last night?’

Odintsova shot a sidelong glance at Bazarov.

‘We were talking of happiness, I believe. I was telling you about myself. By the way, since I mentioned the word happiness … Tell me, why is it that when we are enjoying something, music for instance, a fine evening, conversation with people who are sympathetic to us; why is it that all this seems to be a foretaste of some joy without measure which exists somewhere apart and beyond, rather than real happiness, that is a happiness which is actually within our grasp? Why should this be? Or are you, perhaps, not visited by such feelings?’

‘You know the saying, “Happiness is always just round the next corner”,’ retorted Bazarov.

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