Fathers and Sons

  At last there appeared the lofty roofline of the familiar house… ‘What am I doing?’ went suddenly through Arkady’s head. ‘But I can’t go back!’ The troika of horses sped on together, the driver ‘whooped’ and whistled. Now the little bridge rumbled beneath their hooves and wheels, then came the avenue of clipped firs… There was the flash of a woman’s pink dress amid the dark green, and a young face peeped out from under the delicate fringe of a parasol… He recognized Katya, and she recognized him. Arkady told the driver to stop the galloping horses, jumped out of the carriage and went to her. ‘It’s you!’ she said and slowly blushed all over her face. ‘Let’s go to my sister. She’s here in the garden. She’ll be pleased to see you.’

  Katya took Arkady to the garden. Meeting her seemed to him a particularly happy omen. He was overjoyed to see her, just like one of his family. Everything had gone so well – no butler, no announcement. At a turn in the path he saw Anna Sergeyevna. She was standing with her back to him. Hearing footsteps, she quietly turned round.

  Arkady might have been embarrassed again, but the first words she uttered reassured him at once. ‘How are you, runaway?’ she said in her even, friendly voice and came to greet him, smiling and screwing up her eyes against the sun and wind. ‘Where did you come across him, Katya?’

  ‘Anna Sergeyevna,’ he began, ‘I’ve brought you something you surely didn’t expect…’

  ‘You’ve brought yourself, that’s best of all.’

  XXIII

  Bazarov saw Arkady off with a sarcastic expression of regret, letting him know that he wasn’t at all deceived about the true purpose of his trip. Bazarov then removed himself completely – he was overcome by a fever for work. He no longer argued with Pavel Petrovich, especially since the latter assumed in his presence an exaggeratedly aristocratic expression and gave vent to his opinions with sounds more than with words. Just once Pavel Petrovich was on the point of crossing swords with the ‘nihilist’ on the subject of the then fashionable question of the rights of the Baltic barons1 but he stopped himself, pronouncing with cool politeness:

  ‘But we cannot understand each other; at least I don’t have the honour of understanding you.’

  ‘What next!’ Bazarov exclaimed. ‘A man is capable of understanding everything – how the ether vibrates and what happens on the sun. But to understand how another man can blow his nose differently from the way he blows his own is something beyond his capability.’

  ‘So, is that witty?’ Pavel Petrovich inquired and went off.

  However, he sometimes asked permission to be present during Bazarov’s experiments and once even brought his scented face, washed with some choice concoction, down close to the microscope so he could watch a transparent infusorian swallowing a green speck of dust and carefully chewing it with some very dextrous discs located in its throat. Nikolay Petrovich came to see Bazarov much more often than his brother. He would have come every day, to ‘study’ as he said, if he hadn’t been distracted by his estate problems. He didn’t bother the young scientist: he sat down somewhere in a corner of the room and watched attentively, from time to time letting himself put a careful question. During dinner and supper he tried to bring the conversation round to physics, geology or chemistry, since all other subjects, even estate management, not to mention politics, could lead, if not to collision, at any rate to mutual displeasure. Nikolay Petrovich suspected that his brother’s hatred for Bazarov had in no way diminished. An insignificant event, among many others, confirmed his suspicions. Cholera had begun to manifest itself here and there in the neighbourhood and even ‘carried off’ two people from Marino. One night Pavel Petrovich had quite a severe attack. He suffered until morning but would not have any recourse to Bazarov’s skills. When he saw him the following day, in answer to Bazarov’s question why he hadn’t sent for him, he replied, still quite pale but already shaved and with his hair brushed, ‘But don’t I remember you saying you didn’t believe in medicine.’ So the days passed. Bazarov worked, determinedly and morosely… Meanwhile there was in Nikolay Petrovich’s house a being to whom, if he didn’t exactly open his heart, he nonetheless willingly chatted… That being was Fenechka.

  They usually met in the mornings, early, in the garden or the farmyard. He didn’t go into her room, and she only once went to his door to ask him whether she should bath Mitya or not. Not only did she trust him, not only did she have no fear of him, she behaved with him more freely and more easily than with Nikolay Petrovich himself. It’s difficult to say why this happened. Maybe because she unconsciously sensed in Bazarov the absence of anything aristocratic or superior, which can be both attractive and alarming. He was in her eyes both an excellent doctor and a straightforward man. His presence while she looked after her baby didn’t make her nervous and once, when she suddenly felt giddy and a headache coming on, she accepted a spoonful of medicine from him. In front of Nikolay Petrovich she seemed to avoid Bazarov: she did this not out of guile but from some kind of feeling of propriety. She was more frightened of Pavel Petrovich than ever. For some time he had started to watch her, and he used to turn up unexpectedly as if he had sprung out of the ground behind her back in his ‘suit’, with his sharp-eyed, immobile features and his hands in his pockets. ‘It makes a shiver go down your spine,’ Fenechka complained to Dunyasha, who in response sighed and thought of another ‘unfeeling’ man. Bazarov, without suspecting it, had become the cruel tyrant of her soul.

  Fenechka found Bazarov attractive and he too found her attractive. Even his face became different when he talked to her: it assumed a serene, almost benign expression, and his normal casual manner took on a touch of playful attentiveness. Fenechka became prettier each day. There comes a time in the life of young women when they suddenly begin to blossom and open out like summer roses: that time came for Fenechka. Everything contributed to that, even the July heat which came on then. Dressed in a light white frock, she herself seemed more white and lighter. She wasn’t caught by sunburn, but the heat, which she couldn’t escape, lightly tinged her cheeks and ears with red and, infusing a gentle indolence over her whole body, had its effect in the dreamy languor of her pretty eyes. She was almost unable to work, her hands just slipped down on her knees. She didn’t walk much and kept moaning and complaining with a helplessness that was comical.

  ‘You should bathe more often,’ Nikolay Petrovich said to her. He had constructed a big bathing place covered with canvas in his one pond that hadn’t completely dried up.

  ‘Oh, Nikolay Petrovich! But one just dies of heat getting to the pond, and one dies of heat coming back. There’s no shade in the garden.’

  ‘You’re right, there’s no shade,’ Nikolay Petrovich answered and wiped his brow.

  Once after six in the morning Bazarov was returning from a walk and came across Fenechka in the lilac arbour which had long lost its flowers but was still thick and green. She was sitting on the bench. As usual she’d put a white kerchief over her head. Next to her lay a whole bunch of red and white roses, still wet from the dew. He greeted her.

  ‘Ah! Yevgeny Vasilyich!’ she said, lifting the edge of her kerchief a little in order to look at him, and as she did it she bared her arm to the elbow.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Bazarov, sitting down by her. ‘Are you making a bouquet?’

  ‘Yes, for the lunch table. Nikolay Petrovich likes it.’

  ‘But it’s a long time till lunch. What a huge number of flowers!’

  ‘I’ve picked them now, otherwise it’ll get hot and one won’t be able to go out. It’s only now one can breathe. I’ve become quite weak from this heat. I’m worried I’ll get ill.’

  ‘You’re imagining things! Let me take your pulse.’ Bazarov took her hand, found an evenly beating vein and didn’t even bother counting the beats. ‘You’ll live to be a hundred,’ he said, letting go her hand.

  ‘Oh, God forbid!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Why? Don’t you want to live a long time?’

  ‘
But to a hundred! My granny was eighty-five – and she was a real misery! Black and deaf and hunched and always coughing. Just a burden to herself. What kind of life!’

  ‘So it’s better to be young?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘Why is it better? Tell me!’

  ‘Why? Here I am, young, I can do everything, I can come and go and carry things, and I don’t have to ask anyone… What can be better?’

  ‘But I don’t care if I am young or old.’

  ‘Why do you say you don’t care? What you’re saying isn’t possible.’

  ‘Well, Fedosya Nikolayevna, you judge for yourself what good being young is to me. I live alone, no family or friends…’

  ‘That’s always up to you.’

  ‘Not altogether! If only someone felt sorry for me.’

  Fenechka looked sideways at Bazarov but said nothing.

  ‘What’s that book of yours?’ she asked after a short pause.

  ‘This? It’s a scientific book, quite difficult.’

  ‘And are you still studying? Don’t you get bored? I think you know everything already.’

  ‘Obviously I don’t. Try and read a bit yourself.’

  ‘But I won’t understand any of it. Is it in Russian?’ Fenechka asked, taking the massively bound book into both hands. ‘It’s so fat!’

  ‘Yes, it’s in Russian.’

  ‘I still won’t understand any of it.’

  ‘But I’m not asking you to understand. I want to look at you and watch how you read. When you read, the end of your nose moves in a very sweet way.’

  Fenechka, who was attempting to make sense of an article she had opened the book at – ‘On Creosote’ – by reading it out in a low voice, burst out laughing and dropped the book… it slipped from the bench on to the ground.

  ‘I also like it when you laugh,’ said Bazarov.

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘I like it when you speak. Like a babbling stream.’

  Fenechka turned her head away.

  ‘You do go on!’ she said, picking at the flowers with her fingers. ‘And why do you want to listen to me? You’ve talked to such clever ladies.’

  ‘Oh, Fedosya Nikolayevna! Believe me, all the clever ladies in the world aren’t worth your little elbow.’

  ‘Some more of your nonsense!’ Fenechka whispered and pressed her hands together.

  Bazarov picked up the book from the ground.

  ‘It’s a medical book, why did you drop it?’

  ‘A medical one?’ Fenechka repeated and turned towards him. ‘Do you know something? Ever since you gave me those drops, do you remember, Mitya sleeps so well! I don’t know how to thank you. You’re so kind, you really are.’

  ‘But actually doctors should be paid,’ Bazarov said with a smile. ‘As you yourself know, doctors are mercenary folk.’

  Fenechka raised her eyes towards Bazarov; they seemed darker from the whitish reflection falling on the upper part of her face. She didn’t know if he was joking or not.

  ‘If that’s what you want, we’ll gladly… I’ll have to ask Nikolay Petrovich…’

  ‘Do you think I want money?’ Bazarov interrupted her. ‘No, I don’t need money from you.’

  ‘What then?’ said Fenechka.

  ‘What?’ Bazarov repeated. ‘Guess.’

  ‘I haven’t got second sight!’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you. I want… one of those roses.’

  Fenechka again burst out laughing and even gestured with her hands. She found Bazarov’s wish so funny. She laughed and at the same time felt herself flattered. Bazarov looked fixedly at her.

  ‘If you like, if you like,’ she said finally and, leaning down over the bench, she started to sort the flowers. ‘What colour shall I give you, red or white?’

  ‘A red one, not too big.’

  She stood up straight.

  ‘Here you are, take it,’ she said but immediately took back the hand she had held out and, biting her lips, glanced towards the entrance of the arbour and then listened.

  ‘What is it?’ Bazarov asked. ‘Nikolay Petrovich?’

  ‘No… He went off to the fields… and I’m not scared of him… but now Pavel Petrovich… I thought…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought he was walking round here. No… there’s nobody. Take it.’ Fenechka gave Bazarov the rose.

  ‘What makes you scared of Pavel Petrovich?’

  ‘He’s always making me feel scared. It’s not so much what he says, but he gives such strange looks. But you don’t like him either. Do you remember, once you were always quarrelling with him? I don’t know what your quarrel is about, but I see you can twist him this way and that…’

  Fenechka showed with her hands how she thought Bazarov twisted Pavel Petrovich.

  Bazarov smiled.

  ‘But if he started to get the upper hand,’ he asked, ‘would you stand up for me?’

  ‘Why would I have to do that? No one is going to beat you.’

  ‘You think so? But I know a hand which, if it wanted to, could knock me down with one finger.’

  ‘Whose hand is that?’

  ‘Don’t you know? Smell how sweet’s the scent of the rose you gave me.’

  Fenechka stretched her neck and brought down her face to the flower… The kerchief slipped from her head on to her shoulders, disclosing the soft mass of her black, glossy, slightly disordered hair.

  ‘Wait, I want to smell it with you,’ said Bazarov. He bent down and kissed her firmly on her parted lips.

  She shivered and pushed his chest away with both hands. But she pushed feebly, and he was able to renew and prolong the kiss.

  A dry cough came from behind the lilac. Fenechka instantly moved away to the opposite end of the bench. Pavel Petrovich appeared, bowed slightly, said, ‘So you are here,’ with a kind of malevolent despondency and went off. Fenechka at once gathered up all the roses and left the arbour. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Yevgeny Vasilyevich,’ she whispered as she left. There was genuine reproach evident in her whisper.

  Bazarov recalled another recent episode and he felt a pang of conscience and contempt and vexation. But he immediately shook his head, ironically congratulated himself ‘on his formal enrolment into the Philanderers’ and went to his room.

  But Pavel Petrovich left the garden and walked slowly as far as the wood. There he remained quite a long time, and, when he returned for lunch, Nikolay Petrovich asked him with concern if he was feeling all right, he looked so sombre.

  ‘You know I sometimes have a bilious attack,’ Pavel Petrovich quietly answered him.

  XXIV

  Two hours later he knocked on Bazarov’s door.

  ‘I must apologize for disturbing your scientific work,’ he began, sitting down on a chair by the window and leaning with both hands on a beautiful cane with an ivory knob (he usually walked without one), ‘but I must ask you to give me five minutes of your time… no more.’

  ‘All of my time is at your disposal,’ Bazarov answered. Something in his face quivered as soon as Pavel Petrovich crossed the threshold of the door.

  ‘Five minutes is enough for me. I have come to put a question to you.’

  ‘A question? About what?’

  ‘Be so good as to hear me out. At the beginning of your sojourn in my brother’s house, when I still didn’t deny myself the pleasure of conversing with you, I had the occasion of hearing your views on many subjects. But in so far as I can remember, neither between us two nor in my presence did the conversation turn to fighting a duel or to duelling in general. May I ask your opinion on this subject?’

  Bazarov, who had got up to meet Pavel Petrovich, sat on the edge of the table and folded his arms.

  ‘My opinion is this,’ he said. ‘From a theoretical point of view a duel is an absurdity, but from a practical one it’s another matter.’

  ‘So you mean, if I have understood you just now, that whatever your theoretical view of duels, in practice you woul
dn’t allow yourself to be insulted without demanding satisfaction.’

  ‘You have divined my thoughts entirely.’

  ‘That’s very good. I am very pleased to hear that from you. Your words remove me from uncertainty…’

  ‘From indecision you mean.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. I use those phrases to be understood. I… am not a seminarist rat. Your words spare me a sad obligation. I have decided to fight you.’

  Bazarov opened his eyes wide.

  ‘Fight me?’

  ‘Yes, fight you.’

  ‘But why? Please tell me.’

  ‘I could explain the reason to you,’ Pavel Petrovich began, ‘but I would prefer to say nothing. In my view, you have no place here. I cannot stand you, I despise you, and if that isn’t enough for you…’

  Pavel Petrovich’s eyes lit up. Bazarov’s too flashed.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Further explanation is unnecessary. You have had the fantastical idea of trying out on me your spirit of chivalry. I could deny you the pleasure, but so be it!’