Fathers and Sons

  ‘You see,’ Anna Sergeyevna went on, ‘you and I have made a mistake. We’re neither of us in our first youth, especially me. We have lived, we are tired. We are both – why pretend otherwise – intelligent people. At first we interested one another, curiosity was aroused… but then…’

  ‘But then I lost my appeal,’ Bazarov continued.

  ‘You know that wasn’t the reason for our disagreement. But whatever it was we didn’t need one another, that’s what was important. We had too much… how to say it… in common. We didn’t understand that at once. On the contrary, Arkady…’

  ‘Do you need him?’ asked Bazarov.

  ‘Stop it, Yevgeny Vasilyich. You say that he’s not indifferent to me, and I myself have always felt he likes me. I know I could be his aunt, but I don’t want to conceal from you that I’ve begun to think about him more often. This fresh, young feeling has some charm…’

  ‘The word fascination is more generally used in such circumstances,’ Bazarov interrupted – one could hear the seething bile in his calm but hollow tone. ‘Arkady was being a bit secretive with me yesterday evening and didn’t talk either about you or your sister… That’s an important symptom.’

  ‘He’s just like a brother with Katya,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, ‘and I like that in him although perhaps I shouldn’t allow such intimacy between them.’

  ‘Is that the… sister speaking in you?’ Bazarov said, drawing out the words.

  ‘Of course… But why are we standing here? Aren’t we having a strange conversation? And could I have expected that I’d be talking to you like this? You know that I’m frightened of you… and at the same time I trust you because you’re really very kind.’

  ‘First, I’m not kind at all, and secondly, I’ve lost any importance for you, and you tell me I’m kind… It’s exactly like laying a wreath of flowers at a dead man’s head.’

  ‘Yevgeny Vasilyich, we don’t have the power…’ Anna Sergeyevna began, but the wind started up, rustled the leaves and carried away her words.

  ‘Now you are free,’ Bazarov said after a short pause.

  Nothing more could be heard, the footsteps moved on… everything became quiet.

  Arkady turned to Katya. She was sitting in the same position, only she had lowered her head further.

  ‘Katerina Sergeyevna,’ he said in a trembling voice, clenching his hands, ‘I love you, for always, irrevocably, and I love no one but you. I wanted to tell you that, to learn what you thought and to ask for your hand, because I too am not rich and I feel I am ready for every sacrifice… Why don’t you answer? Don’t you believe me? Do you think I’m speaking frivolously? But look back on these last days! Haven’t you realized long ago that everything else – understand that – absolutely everything else has vanished without a trace? Look at me, say one word to me… I love… I love you… believe me!’

  Katya gave Arkady a meaningful look, with radiant eyes, and after a long pause for thought she said:

  ‘Yes.’

  Arkady jumped up from the bench.

  ‘Yes! You said yes, Katerina Sergeyevna! What does that word mean? That I love you, that you believe me… Or… or… I daren’t finish…’

  ‘Yes,’ Katya said again, and this time he understood her. He took her big, beautiful hands and, breathless from joy, he pressed them to his heart. He was barely able to stand and only repeated ‘Katya, Katya…’ while she started crying in an innocent way, quietly laughing herself at her tears. He who hasn’t seen such tears in the eyes of a beloved hasn’t yet experienced the full degree of happiness a man can have on this earth, overcome by gratitude and shame.

  The following day, early in the morning, Anna Sergeyevna had Bazarov called to her study and with a forced laugh handed him a folded sheet of writing paper. It was a letter from Arkady: in it he asked for her sister’s hand.

  Bazarov quickly skimmed the letter and made an effort not to reveal the feeling of malice which suddenly surged in his breast.

  ‘So that’s it,’ he said, ‘and I think only yesterday you were supposing that his love for Katerina Sergeyevna was the love of a brother. What do you intend to do now?’

  ‘What is your advice to me?’ asked Anna Sergeyevna, continuing to laugh.

  ‘Well, I think,’ said Bazarov, also laughing, although he didn’t feel at all cheerful and, like her, didn’t feel like laughing at all, ‘I think one should give the young people a blessing. It’s a good match in every respect. Kirsanov is not badly off, he’s his father’s only son, and the father’s a good fellow, he won’t object.’

  Anna Sergeyevna walked up and down the room. She went red, then pale in turn.

  ‘Do you think so?’ she said. ‘All right. I don’t see any obstacles… I am happy for Katya… and for Arkady Nikolaich. Of course I’ll wait for his father’s response. I’ll send Arkady himself to him. And so it turns out I was right yesterday when I said to you we’re both old people now… Why didn’t I see this? That astonishes me!’

  Anna Sergeyevna again started laughing and at once turned away.

  ‘The young people of today have become seriously crafty,’ said Bazarov and also laughed. ‘Goodbye,’ he said after a short silence. ‘I hope you close this affair in the most agreeable way, and I will rejoice from afar.’

  Anna Sergeyevna quickly turned to him.

  ‘Are you really leaving? Why now don’t you stay? Do stay… it’s fun talking to you… like walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one’s nervous but then courage takes over from somewhere. Do stay.’

  ‘Thank you for the offer, Anna Sergeyevna, and for your flattering opinion of my conversational talents. But I find even now I’ve spent too long in a world alien to me. Flying fish can stay a while in the air but they soon have to flop down into the water. Let me splash back into my element.’

  Anna Sergeyevna looked at Bazarov. A bitter smile played over his pale features. ‘This man loved me!’ she thought – and she felt sorry for him and held out her hand to him in sympathy.

  But he understood her.

  ‘No!’ he said and took a step backwards. ‘I’m a poor man but I’ve never yet taken charity. Goodbye and good luck.’

  ‘I am sure that this isn’t the last time we shall meet,’ Anna Sergeyevna said, making an involuntary movement.

  ‘Anything can happen!’ Bazarov answered. He bowed and went out.

  ‘So did you have the idea of building yourself a nest?’ he said that same day to Arkady, as he squatted down to pack his trunk. ‘Why not? It’s a good thing. Only you shouldn’t have pretended. I was expecting you to go in a completely different direction. Or maybe it surprised you yourself.’

  ‘I certainly wasn’t expecting this when I left you,’ said Arkady. ‘But you too shouldn’t pretend and say “it’s a good thing”, as if I didn’t know your view of marriage.’

  ‘Oh, my good friend!’ said Bazarov. ‘What a way of speaking! You see what I am doing – there’s some empty space left in my trunk, and I pack hay in there. So it is in our trunk of life: whatever we pack it with, don’t leave any empty space. Please don’t take offence. You probably don’t remember what was always my view of Katerina Sergeyevna. Some young ladies have the reputation of being intelligent because they sigh intelligently, but yours will stand up for herself, and in doing so she’ll take you in hand too – and that’s how it should be.’ He slammed shut the lid of the trunk and got up from the floor. ‘And now in saying goodbye I’m going to say it again… because there’s no point in deceiving ourselves: we’re saying goodbye for good, and you sense that yourself… you have acted intelligently, you’re not made for this hard, bitter, solitary life of ours. You don’t have audacity or anger in you – you have the courage and the fervour of youth, but they’re not up to our task. You aristocratic lot can’t get beyond noble resignation or noble ardour – that’s just nonsense. You don’t fight, for example – and you think yourselves fine fellows – but we do want to fight. We will too! The dust we make will
blind you, our dirt will soil you – we’ve grown up and you haven’t, you’re wrapped up in yourself without realizing it, you enjoy criticizing yourself – but we find that boring. Give us some others! We need others to bring down! You’re a nice fellow, but you’re still a soft little gentleman’s son – e volatu,1 as my good father says.’

  ‘Are you saying goodbye to me for good, Yevgeny?’ Arkady said sadly. ‘And have you no other words for me?’

  Bazarov scratched the back of his head.

  ‘Yes, Arkady, I do have other words, but I’m not going to say them because that’s romanticism – that means becoming all sugary. Get married quickly, get your nest going, have lots of children. They’ll be clever just because they’ll be born at the right time, not like you and me. Aha! I see the horses are ready. It’s time. I’ve said goodbye to everybody… So… what now? Give me a hug.’

  Arkady threw his arms round his old teacher and friend, and the tears gushed from his eyes.

  ‘That’s youth!’ Bazarov said quietly. ‘I rely on Katerina Sergeyevna. You just see how quickly she’ll calm you down!’

  ‘Goodbye, my friend!’ he said to Arkady as he got into the carriage, and added, pointing to a pair of jackdaws sitting side by side on the stable roof: ‘Look at them! Learn!’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What? Are you so bad at natural history or have you forgotten that the jackdaw is the most worthy family bird? A model for you!… Goodbye, signor!’

  The carriage rolled away with a jingle of harness.

  Bazarov spoke the truth. Talking to Katya that evening, Arkady completely forgot about his teacher. He was already beginning to submit to her, and Katya sensed that and was not surprised. The next day he was due to go to Marino to see Nikolay Petrovich. Anna Sergeyevna didn’t want to constrain the young couple and only for form’s sake didn’t leave them too long alone. She kindly kept the princess away from them – the news of the coming marriage had sent her into a tearful rage. At first Anna Sergeyevna was afraid that the sight of their happiness might be somewhat depressing for her. But quite the opposite happened – it not only didn’t depress her, it engaged her and eventually moved her. That made her both happy and sad. ‘Bazarov was obviously right,’ she thought, ‘curiosity, just curiosity, and love of a quiet life, and egoism…’

  ‘Children!’ she said loudly. ‘So, is love just a feeling one assumes?’

  But neither Katya nor Arkady understood her. They felt shy of her; they couldn’t get the conversation they had accidentally overheard out of their heads. However, Anna Sergeyevna soon set their minds at rest. And it wasn’t difficult for her – her own was at rest too.

  XXVII

  The old Bazarovs rejoiced all the more at their son’s sudden arrival because they hadn’t expected it. Arina Vlasyevna got into such a state and scurried about the house so much that Vasily Ivanovich compared her to a ‘little partridge’: the cut tail of her short blouse indeed added something birdlike to her appearance. But he himself just mumbled and chewed the side of his pipe’s amber mouthpiece and turned his head, gripping his neck between his fingers, as if he were testing whether it was properly screwed on. Then he suddenly opened his wide mouth and let out a soundless laugh.

  ‘Old man, I’ve come to stay with you for a whole six weeks,’ Bazarov said to him. ‘I want to work, so please don’t get in my way.’

  ‘You’ll forget what I look like, that’s how much I’ll be in your way,’ answered Vasily Ivanovich.

  He kept his promise. Having installed his son in his study as before, he virtually hid from him and kept his wife from making any excessive declarations of affection. ‘Mother,’ he said to her, ‘on Yenyusha’s first visit we got on his nerves a bit. Now we must be wiser.’ Arina Vlasyevna agreed with her husband but she didn’t gain much from this because she only saw her son at table and was completely scared of talking to him. ‘Yenyushenka!’ she would say – and he would hardly have time to turn round before she was fiddling with the strings of her bag and mumbling, ‘Nothing, it’s nothing, I was just…’ Then she would turn to Vasily Ivanovich and say to him, resting her cheek on her hand, ‘How can we find out, dear, what Yenyusha would like for dinner today, cabbage soup or borshch?’ ‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ ‘But I’ll get on his nerves!’ However, it was Bazarov himself who stopped shutting himself away: the work fever had left him and was replaced by a dull boredom and a vague feeling of anxiety. A strange fatigue was apparent in all his movements; his way of walking had been firm, fast and assured, and now even that changed. He stopped going for solitary walks and looked for company. He drank tea in the drawing room, strolled round the vegetable garden with Vasily Ivanovich and smoked a silent pipe with him; once too he inquired after Father Aleksey. At first Vasily Ivanovich was happy at this change, but his happiness didn’t last long. ‘Yenyusha is breaking my heart,’ he quietly complained to his wife. ‘It wouldn’t matter if he were dissatisfied or angry, but he’s distressed, he’s wretched, that’s what’s so terrible. He doesn’t speak – if only he would shout at us both. He’s getting thin, and the colour of his skin is so bad.’ ‘Lord, lord!’ the old woman whispered. ‘I’d like to put a holy amulet round his neck, only he wouldn’t let me.’ Vasily Ivanovich tried several times very cautiously to ask Bazarov about his work, about his health, about Arkady… But Bazarov gave him a brusque and reluctant answer, and once, noticing that his father was gradually leading the conversation up to something, said to him crossly, ‘Why do you always tiptoe around me? That habit’s worse than your old one.’ ‘There, there, I didn’t mean anything!’ poor Vasily Ivanovich hastily answered. His political hints were just as fruitless. He once started talking about progress in connection with the imminent liberation of the serfs and hoped to engage his son’s sympathy. But Bazarov said, showing no interest, ‘Yesterday I was walking by the fence, and the local peasant boys, instead of some old song, were bawling out, “The time of truth is coming when hearts can feel it’s love…”1 That’s progress for you.’

  Sometimes Bazarov would go out to the village and start up a conversation with a muzhik, sarcastic as usual. ‘Well, mate,’ he would say to him, ‘give me your views on life. They tell us that in you lie Russia’s strength and the future. A new age in history is beginning with you, and you’ll be giving us a true language and our laws.’ The muzhik would either not answer or utter something like the following: ‘Well we can… because we also, that is…that’s our boundary, like.’ Bazarov interrupted him: ‘Explain to me the world of your mir, your commune – and is it the same mir which rests on three fishes?’2

  ‘It’s the earth, sir, that rests on three fishes,’ was the muzhik’s soothing reply, given in a genial patriarchal singsong, ‘but set up against our mir you know we’ve got the master’s will – because you are our fathers. And the stricter the master’s demands, the dearer they are to his muzhik.’

  Once, after hearing a speech like that, Bazarov scornfully shrugged his shoulders, and the muzhik went on his way home.

  ‘What was he going on about?’ he was asked by another muzhik, middle-aged and sombre-visaged, who had witnessed his conversation with Bazarov in the distance from the door of his hut. ‘Was it the rent we haven’t paid?’

  ‘What rent, my friend!’ the first muzhik replied and his voice now had no trace of the patriarchal singsong. On the contrary it had in it something rough and grim. ‘He was just blathering something or other, he was itching to talk. Of course, he’s a master, what can he understand?’

  ‘Nothing!’ replied the other muzhik. They shook out their caps and straightened their belts, and both began discussing their own affairs and needs. Alas! The Bazarov who had scornfully shrugged his shoulders, who knew how to talk to the muzhiks (as he had boasted during his quarrel with Pavel Petrovich), that self-confident Bazarov didn’t even suspect that in their eyes he remained some kind of buffoon…

  However, he finally found himself an occupation. Vasily Ivanovich
was binding up a muzhik’s injured leg, but the old man’s hands shook, and he couldn’t cope with the bandages. His son helped him and from then on began to take a part in his practice, at the same time continuing to mock both the methods he himself counselled and his father, who immediately applied them. But Bazarov’s mocking remarks didn’t upset Vasily Ivanovich at all; they even reassured him. Holding together his greasy dressing-gown over his stomach with his fingers and smoking his pipe, he listened to Bazarov with delight, and the more edge there was in his sallies the more genially his delighted father laughed, showing every one of his black teeth. He even repeated his sallies, which were often crude and absurd, and, for example, for several days he kept on repeating ‘that comes last at number nine’ quite irrelevantly, just because his son had used that expression on learning he was going to morning service. ‘Thank God! He’s stopped being depressed!’ he whispered to his wife. ‘He really worked me over today. Wonderful!’ Moreover the thought that he had such an assistant made him ecstatic and filled him with pride. ‘Yes, yes, my dear,’ he would say to some peasant woman in a man’s coat and horned headdress as he gave her a bottle of Goulard water3 or a pot of henbane ointment, ‘you must thank God every minute that I have my son staying with me. You’re being given the most scientific and up-to-date treatment, do you realize that? The Emperor of the French, Napoleon4 himself, doesn’t have a better doctor.’ And the woman, who had come to complain she’d been taken by the ‘cramps’ (though she couldn’t have explained the meaning of these words), only bowed and reached into her bodice, where she had four eggs wrapped in the corner of a towel.

  Bazarov once pulled a tooth for a visiting cloth pedlar, and, although the tooth could be classed as ordinary, Vasily Ivanovich kept it as a rarity and, showing it to Father Aleksey, kept repeating: