On the hotel stairs the next day Bazarov says he scents impropriety. Arkady is shocked that he of all people should hold a narrow morality. Idiot, Bazarov says. In their jargon, improper has come to mean the same as proper. What he scents is money. Marrying a rich old man does not seem strange to him. It seems prudent. He does not trust town gossip, but he prefers to suppose it has, as the Governor would say, a basis in fact. Arkady knocks and does not answer.
A liveried servant shows them into a large, hideously furnished room, saved only by flowers. Anna Sergievna enters in a plain morning gown and looks younger than she did at the ball. Bazarov is confused. She is not. He notices his own awkwardness and is vexed at the idea that he should be afraid of a woman. He sits and talks with exaggerated emphasis, her brilliant eyes fixed on him. Her history sits behind that calm. Her father, a gambler and a beau, died in the country and left Anna, twenty, and Katerina, twelve, almost nothing. An aunt took the best rooms and raged, and would not walk in the garden without her one sullen serf. Anna endured her, taught her sister, and had resigned herself to seclusion when Odintsov, rich, bloated, forty-six, neither stupid nor cruel, offered marriage. She consented. Six years later he died and left her everything. Germany wearied her. She came home to Nikolskoe, forty versts from town, and rarely appears in the provincial society that gossips about her marriage and her tour. She ignores the rumours.
For three hours she listens with her hands crossed and her face faintly polite. Bazarov, anxious to interest her, does not talk about believing in nothing. He talks medicine, homoeopathy, and botany. The vehemence first strikes her like a bad smell. Then she understands that it comes of being ill at ease, and she is flattered. Only the paltry repels her. When she turns to music and sees that he will not recognise the art, she goes back to botany, though Arkady would rather have stayed with national melodies. She still treats him as a younger brother. What she values is the good humour and simplicity of youth, nothing more. At the door she hesitates, then asks whether a visit to Nikolskoe would be tedious. Arkady says it would be the greatest pleasure. Bazarov only bows. His face is flushed.
In the street he calls her an icicle, then an imposing great lady who lacks only a train and a coronet. She has undergone a rebirth, he says, and eaten of our bread. Arkady speaks of her charm. You mean a splendid body, Bazarov answers, the very thing for a dissecting theatre. Arkady begs him to stop. No need to lose your temper, young innocent. She stands in the front rank. They will go the day after tomorrow, not stay to drink champagne with Kukshin or listen to the Liberal kinsman. His father's place lies near Nikolskoe. Only fools and clever people procrastinate. Her anatomy, he repeats, is splendid. Three days later they bowl along the road in bright weather, and Arkady, for a reason he does not know, smiles. Bazarov tells him to offer congratulations. Today is the 22nd of June, the feast of his patron saint. The saint looks after him. Then, lower: today they are expecting him at home. Well, let them expect him.
