Blinking in the green sunshine under a birch
tree, Ada explained to her passionate fortuneteller that the circular marblings
she shared with Turgenev’s Katya, another innocent girl, were called ‘waltzes’
in California (‘because the señorita will dance all night’). (1.17)
From Chekhov's letter to Suvorin: The negative types of
women where Turgenev is slightly caricaturing (Kukshin) or jesting (the
descriptions of balls) are wonderfully drawn, and so successful, that, as the
saying is, you can't pick a hole in it [komar nosa ne
podtochit].
In Turgenev's Fathers and Children (Chapter XIV) it is Mme Kukshin
who dances all night at the governor's ball:
She [Mme Kukshin] stayed
later than anyone else at the ball, and at four o'clock in the morning she was
dancing a polka-mazurka in Parisian style with Sitnikov. The governor's ball
culminated in this edifying spectacle.
Alexey Sklyarenko