Fathers and Sons

  Vasily Ivanovich listened and listened, he blew his nose, rolled his handkerchief between both hands, coughed, passed his hands through his hair – and finally couldn’t contain himself: he leant over to Arkady and kissed him on the shoulder.5

  ‘You have made me completely happy,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I must tell you that I… worship my son. I won’t mention my old lady – of course she has a mother’s feelings! But I don’t dare to speak out what I feel in front of him because he doesn’t like that. He is the enemy of all emotional talk. There are many who criticize him for hardness and see in that a sign of pride and insensitivity; but people like him can’t be measured by the normal rule, can they? For example, someone else in his situation would have gone on taking from his parents. But can you imagine, he hasn’t taken a spare penny from us in his life, as God’s my witness!’

  ‘He is a selfless, honourable man,’ said Arkady.

  ‘Selfless indeed. And, Arkady Nikolaich, I not only worship him, I am proud of him, and all my vanity lies in the hope that some day his biography will contain the following words: “The son of a simple army doctor, who early saw his true nature and spared nothing for his education…”’ The old man’s voice broke.

  Arkady pressed his hand.

  ‘What do you think?’ Vasily Ivanovich asked after a moment of silence. ‘He won’t win that fame you forecast for him in the field of medicine, will he?’

  ‘No, of course not in medicine, though in that respect he’ll be one of our leading scientists.’

  ‘Then in what, Arkady Nikolaich?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say now, but he will be famous.’

  ‘He will be famous!’ the old man repeated and became absorbed in his thoughts.

  ‘Arina Vlasyevna has told me to ask you to come and have tea,’ announced Anfisushka, passing by with a huge dish of fresh raspberries.

  Vasily Ivanovich roused himself.

  ‘And will there be chilled cream with the raspberries?’

  ‘Yes, sir, there will.’

  ‘Make sure it is chilled! Don’t be polite, Arkady Nikolaich, take more of them. Why hasn’t Yevgeny come?’

  ‘I’m here.’ Bazarov’s voice came from Arkady’s room.

  Vasily Ivanovich turned round.

  ‘Aha! You wanted to visit your friend, but you were late, amice,6 and he and I have already had a long conversation. Now we must go and have tea, your mother’s calling. By the by, I must have a word with you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘There’s a little muzhik here, he’s suffering from icterus.’

  ‘You mean jaundice?’

  ‘Yes, a chronic and very resistant icterus. I’ve prescribed him centaury and St John’s wort, I’ve made him eat carrots and given him soda. But all these are just palliatives, one needs something more effective. Though you mock medicine, I am sure you can give me some useful advice. But we’ll talk about this later. Now let’s go and have tea.’

  Vasily Ivanovich got up nimbly from the bench and sang the following lines from Robert le Diable:7

  ‘It is our rule, my friends, it is our rule –

  To live by joy, by jo-o-oy alone!’

  ‘He is full of beans!’ Bazarov remarked, moving from the window.

  It was midday. The sun was hot, and there was just a thin veil over the sky of whitish clouds. Everything was quiet, only the village cocks gaily crowed to one another, inspiring in everyone who heard them a strange feeling of sleepiness and languor; and from somewhere high in the crown of the trees came the plaintive call of a young hawk, on and on. Arkady and Bazarov were lying in the shade of a small haystack, having spread out beneath them a couple of armfuls of crackling-dry but still green and fragrant hay.

  ‘That aspen,’ said Bazarov, ‘reminds me of my childhood. It grows on the edge of a pit, all that remains from a brick shed, and I was convinced then that the pit and the aspen possessed a special magic talisman. I was never bored when I was by them. I didn’t understand then that the reason I wasn’t bored was that I was a child. Well, now I’m a grown man and the talisman doesn’t work.’

  ‘How much time in all did you spend here?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘Two years at a go. After that we came for short visits. We led a wandering existence – usually trailing from town to town.’

  ‘And has this house been standing long?’

  ‘Yes. It was built by my grandfather, that is my mother’s father.’

  ‘What was your grandfather?’

  ‘The devil only knows. Some of kind of major adjutant. He served with Suvorov8 and always used to tell stories about crossing the Alps. All lies, I should think.’

  ‘So that’s why you have a portrait of Suvorov hanging in the drawing room. I love little houses like yours, that are old and warm and have a kind of special smell to them.’

  ‘Yes, of lamp oil and sweet clover,’ Bazarov pronounced with a yawn. ‘And the flies in these dear little houses… Pfui!’

  ‘Tell me,’ Arkady began after a short silence, ‘they weren’t hard on you as a child, were they?’

  ‘You can see what kind of people my parents are. They’re not very strict.’

  ‘Do you love them, Yevgeny?’

  ‘Yes, Arkady, I do!’

  Bazarov was silent for a moment.

  ‘Do you know what I am thinking about?’ he said eventually, putting his arms behind his head.

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘I am thinking what a good life my parents have on this earth. My father at sixty fusses about, talks of “palliatives”, treats his patients, is all magnanimous with his peasants – in short he has a ball. And my mother too has a good time, her day is so crammed with all kinds of things to do, with ohs and ahs, that she has no time to think. While I…’

  ‘While you?’

  ‘While I think that here I am lying under a haystack… The tiny area I occupy is so minute by comparison with the rest of space, where I don’t exist, which doesn’t bother with me. And the span of time I’ll be able to live out is so insignificant before the eternity where I haven’t been and where I will not be… Yet in this atom, in this mathematical dot blood is circulating, a brain is functioning and wanting something too… What a monstrous state of affairs! What nonsense!’

  ‘Can I say something to you – what you are saying applies in general to everyone…’

  ‘You’re right,’ Bazarov went on. ‘I meant that they, that is my parents, are busy and don’t worry about their own insignificance, they don’t find it’s obnoxious… while I just feel bored and angry.’

  ‘Angry? Why angry?’

  ‘Why? What do you mean why? Have you forgotten?’

  ‘I remember it all, but still I don’t think you have the right to be angry. You’re unhappy, I agree, but…’

  ‘Ah, I see, Arkady Nikolayevich, your understanding of love is like all modern young people’s: cluck, cluck, cluck, little chick, but as soon as the chick begins to get close, you’re off! I’m not like that. But that’s enough on that subject. What can’t be helped, one should be ashamed of talking about.’ He turned on to his side. ‘Hey! Here’s a splendid ant dragging along a half-dead fly. Go on, boy, go on! Ignore its struggles, take advantage of your right as an animal not to feel any sympathy with it – not like self-destructive creatures like us!’

  ‘You oughtn’t to say that, Yevgeny! When did you destroy yourself?’

  Bazarov lifted his head.

  ‘That’s the one thing I’m proud of. I didn’t destroy myself, and a woman isn’t going to destroy me. Amen! That’s the end of that! You won’t hear another word from me about this.’

  The two friends lay a while in silence.

  ‘Yes,’ Bazarov began, ‘man’s a strange being. When you look at a quiet, dull life, like my good parents’ life here, cursorily or from a distance, you think – what could be better? Eat, drink and know you’re acting in the most correct, most sensible way. But that’s not how it is. Boredom descends. You want
to engage with people, even if just to shout at them, but still engage with them.’

  ‘One must organize one’s life so every moment in it has significance,’ Arkady stated thoughtfully.

  ‘Who’s talking? Significance, even if it’s false, is very nice, and you can make do even with insignificance… but petty little problems… they’re the trouble.’

  ‘Petty problems needn’t exist for anyone, provided he refuses to admit them.’

  ‘Hm… you’re stating an inverted commonplace.’

  ‘What? What do you mean by that term?’

  ‘I mean this. You say, for example, that education is useful. That’s a commonplace. But if you say that education is harmful, that’s an inverted commonplace. It’s a bit flashier, but really it’s the same.’

  ‘Where is the truth then, on which side?’

  ‘Where? I’ll answer you like an echo – where?’

  ‘You are in a depressed mood today, Yevgeny.’

  ‘Really? I must have caught the sun and I shouldn’t eat so many raspberries.’

  ‘In that case it might be a good idea to have a nap,’ Arkady remarked.

  ‘Right, only don’t look at me. Everyone looks stupid when he’s asleep.’

  ‘But what does it matter to you what people think of you?’

  ‘I don’t know how to answer you. A real man oughtn’t to care about that. You don’t think about a real man, he’s to be obeyed or loathed.’

  ‘That’s odd! I don’t loathe anyone,’ Arkady said, having thought a moment.

  ‘But I loathe so many. You’re so gentle, a softy, you’re not going to loathe anybody!… You’re shy, you lack self-esteem…’

  Arkady interrupted: ‘So you do have self-esteem, do you? You have such a high opinion of yourself.’

  Bazarov paused.

  ‘When I do meet a man who can hold his own with me,’ he said deliberately, ‘then I’ll change my opinion of myself. As for loathing… ! For example, today you said as we walked past the cottage of our village headman Filip, that nice white one – “There,” you said, “Russia will come to a perfect state when every last muzhik has a house like that, and every one of us must try and bring that about…” But I conceived a loathing for that last muzhik, Filip or Sidor, for whom I must work myself to the bone and who won’t even say thank you to me… and what do I need his thank you for? Well, he’ll be living in a white cottage while I’ll be pushing up the daisies. So, next point?’

  ‘Yevgeny… I’ve had enough of listening to you today. Willy-nilly it makes one agree with those who criticize you for lack of principles.’

  ‘You’re talking like your uncle. Principles don’t exist – you haven’t grasped that yet! – but sensations do. Everything derives from sensations.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘Like this. Take me, for example. I advocate a negative attitude – by virtue of a sensation. I like negatives, my brain’s made that way – and that’s all it is! Why do I like chemistry? Why do you like apples – also by virtue of a sensation. It’s all one and the same. People won’t ever penetrate deeper than that. Not everyone will tell you this, and I won’t tell it to you another time.’

  ‘So – honesty is a sensation?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Yevgeny!’ Arkady began in a sad voice.

  ‘What? You don’t like it?’ Bazarov interrupted him. ‘No, my friend! Once you decide to bring down everything, you cut yourself down as well!… But we’ve talked enough philosophy. “Nature brings on the silence of sleep,” as Pushkin said.’

  ‘He never said anything of the kind,’ said Arkady.

  ‘Well, if he didn’t say it, he could and should have done, as a poet. By the way, Pushkin must have served in the army.’

  ‘Pushkin never was a soldier.’

  ‘Excuse me, he has it on every page – to arms, to arms, for the honour of Russia!’

  ‘What nonsense you’re inventing! It’s actually slanderous.’

  ‘Slanderous? You are being pompous! What a word you’ve dug up to scare me with! However much you may slander someone, in reality he deserves something twenty times worse.’

  ‘We’d better have some sleep!’ Arkady said crossly.

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ answered Bazarov. But neither of them felt like sleeping. Something like hostility had come over the two young men. Five minutes later they opened their eyes and looked at one another in silence.

  ‘Look at that,’ Arkady said suddenly. ‘There’s a maple leaf which has come off and is falling to the ground. Its movements are just like the flight of a butterfly. Isn’t that odd? That something so melancholy and dead should be like something so happy and alive.’

  ‘Oh, Arkady Nikolaich, my friend!’ exclaimed Bazarov. ‘I ask one thing of you: no fine language.’

  ‘I talk as best I can… Actually this is tyranny. I have a thought, why can’t I say it?’

  ‘Quite so. But why shouldn’t I say mine too? I find fine language obscene.’

  ‘So what isn’t obscene – abuse?’

  ‘Hey! I see you are really set on following in your uncle’s footsteps. How pleased that idiot would be if he heard you!’

  ‘What did you call Pavel Petrovich?’

  ‘I called him what he should be called – an idiot!’

  ‘But you’re being intolerable!’ cried Arkady.

  ‘Aha! Family feeling speaks,’ Bazarov said calmly. ‘I’ve noticed it’s very persistent in people. A man is ready to give up everything, to renounce every prejudice, but to admit, e.g., that his brother, who steals people’s handkerchiefs, is a thief – is quite beyond him. That’s what it is: my brother, mine – isn’t a genius. How can that be?’

  ‘It was only a feeling of fairness in me, not any kind of family feeling,’ Arkady retorted angrily. ‘But since you don’t have that feeling, that sensation, you can’t pronounce judgement.’

  ‘In other words: Arkady Kirsanov is too elevated for anyone to understand him – I bow down and am silent.’

  ‘Yevgeny, stop it, please. Otherwise we’re going to quarrel.’

  ‘Oh, Arkady, do me a favour, do let us for once have a really good quarrel – no holds barred, to the death.’

  ‘But if we do, it’ll end in…’

  ‘Blows?’ Bazarov continued. ‘What if it does? Here, in the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men – it doesn’t matter. But you won’t beat me. I’m going to take you now by the throat…’

  Bazarov spread his long, hard fingers… Arkady turned and got ready to resist, as if in play… But his friend’s expression seemed so full of menace, he saw such a very real threat in the twisted smile on Bazarov’s lips and in his angry eyes that in spite of himself he felt afraid…

  ‘Ah, that’s where you’ve got to!’ At that moment they heard the voice of Vasily Ivanovich, and the old army doctor appeared before the young men, wearing a home-made canvas jacket and a straw hat, also home-made, on his head. ‘I’ve been looking and looking for you… But you’ve chosen an excellent spot and a wonderful pastime. To lie on “mother earth” and look at “the heavens”… You know, that has special significance!’

  ‘I look at the heavens only when I want to sneeze,’ Bazarov muttered and, turning to Arkady, said in a low voice, ‘What a pity he stopped us.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Arkady whispered and surreptitiously shook his friend’s hand. But no friendship can long stand collisions like that.

  ‘I look at you, my young symposiasts,’ Vasily Ivanovich was saying meanwhile, shaking his head and leaning, hands crossed, on an ingeniously turned cane (of his own manufacture) with the figure of a Turk as a handle, ‘I look at you – and I have to admire you. You have such strength, such perfect youth, ability, talents! You’re just… Castor and Pollux!’9

  ‘He’s now gone off into mythology,’ said Bazarov. ‘You can see at once he was a fine Latinist in his day! I seem to remember, you got a silver medal for com
position, didn’t you?’

  ‘Dioscuri, Dioscuri!’10

  ‘Now Father, shut up, don’t be silly.’

  ‘Once in a while that’s allowed,’ the old man stammered. ‘But I didn’t look for you, gentlemen, in order to pay you compliments; but first to tell you that soon we’ll be having dinner, and second I wanted to warn you, Yevgeny… You’re a clever man, you know people, and you know women, and so you’ll excuse it… Your mother wanted a service held for your coming here. Don’t think I’m asking you to attend the service. It’s over. But Father Aleksey…’

  ‘The reverend?’

  ‘Yes, the priest. He’s going to… eat with us… I wasn’t expecting that and even advised against it… but it happened… he didn’t understand me… Well, and Arina Vlasyevna… But he’s a very good and sensible man.’

  ‘So he won’t eat my share of dinner?’ Bazarov asked.

  Vasily Ivanovich laughed.

  ‘Yevgeny, stop it!’

  ‘That’s all I ask. I’m prepared to sit down at table with any man.’

  Vasily Ivanovich straightened his hat.

  ‘I knew beforehand,’ he said, ‘that you were above all prejudice. Here I am, an old man, I’m sixty-one, I don’t have any prejudices either.’ (Vasily Ivanovich didn’t admit that he himself had wanted a service… He was no less devout than his wife.) ‘And Father Aleksey very much wanted to meet you. You’ll like him, you’ll see. He doesn’t mind a game of cards and he even – but that’s between us – smokes a pipe.’

  ‘Why not? After dinner we’ll get down to whist, and I’ll thrash him.’

  ‘Ha ha ha, we’ll see! Don’t be too sure.’

  ‘So are you up to your old tricks?’ Bazarov said with particular emphasis.

  A dark flush came over Vasily Ivanovich’s bronzed cheeks.

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Yevgeny?… That’s over and done with. Yes, I’m ready to confess in front of your friend, I did have that passion when I was young – I did. And I’ve paid for it! May I sit down with you? I’m not in the way, am I?’

  ‘Not at all,’ answered Arkady.

  Vasily Ivanovich lowered himself on to the hay with a painful grunt.