Fathers and Sons

  ‘Thank you,’ he said with an effort. ‘I didn’t expect this. It’s kind of you. Now we are meeting once more, as you promised.’

  ‘Anna Sergeyevna was so kind,’ Vasily Ivanovich began.

  ‘Father, leave us. Anna Sergeyevna, you won’t mind… I think that now…’ He pointed to his wasted prostrate body.

  Vasily Ivanovich went out.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘A tsar’s kindness. They say tsars too visit the dying.’

  ‘Yevgeny Vasilyich, I hope…’

  ‘Oh, Anna Sergeyevna, let’s speak the truth. I am finished. I’ve fallen under the wheels. And in the end there was no point in thinking about the future. Death is something ancient, but it comes fresh to each of us. Up till now I haven’t been scared… but then will come unconsciousness and phut!’ (He made a feeble gesture with his hand.) ‘So what shall I say to you… I loved you! That didn’t make any sense then, and now even less. Love is just a form, but my own form is already disintegrating. Let me say rather – how wonderful you are! And now you’re standing here, so beautiful…’

  Anna Sergeyevna shivered involuntarily.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, don’t be alarmed… sit down there… Don’t come near me: my illness is infectious.’

  Anna Sergeyevna quickly walked across the room and sat down in a chair next to the couch on which Bazarov lay.

  ‘You are so generous!’ he whispered. ‘Oh, so near and so young, fresh, pure… in this foul room!… Well, goodbye! Live a long life – that’s best of all – and take advantage of it while there’s time. Look at this hideous sight: a worm that’s half crushed but still wriggling. And I also used to think I’ll achieve a great deal, I won’t die, not me! I have a task ahead and I’m a giant! And now the giant’s whole task is how to die a decent death, although no one else cares about that… No matter: I’m not going to start wagging my tail.’

  Bazarov fell silent and began to feel for his glass with his hand. Anna Sergeyevna gave it to him so he could drink, without taking off her glove and breathing nervously.

  ‘You will forget me,’ he began again, ‘a dead man is no friend for the living. My father will say to you, what a man Russia is losing… That’s nonsense but don’t disillusion the old man. Anything to keep a child happy… you know. And be kind to my mother. You won’t find people like them in your big world even with a torch by daylight… Russia needs me… No, she clearly doesn’t. And who is needed? A cobbler is needed, a tailor is needed, a butcher… he sells meat… a butcher… Wait, I’m getting confused… There’s forest…’

  Bazarov put his hand on his forehead.

  Anna Sergeyevna leant over him.

  ‘Yevgeny Vasilyich, I am here…’

  He quickly removed his hand and raised himself.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said in a sudden surge of energy, and his eyes flashed one last time. ‘Goodbye… Listen… I didn’t kiss you then… Blow on the dying lamp and let it go out…’

  Anna Sergeyevna put her lips to his forehead.

  ‘That’s enough!’ he said and fell back on the pillow. ‘Now… the dark…’

  Anna Sergeyevna quietly went out.

  ‘What happened?’ Vasily Ivanovich whispered to her.

  ‘He’s gone to sleep,’ she answered barely audibly.

  Bazarov was never to wake again. Towards evening he went into complete unconsciousness and died the next day. Father Aleksey performed the last rites over him. When he was given extreme unction, when the holy chrism touched his breast one of his eyes opened and it seemed as if for a moment, at the sight of the priest in his robes and the smoking censer and the candles before the icons, something like a look of horror passed over his deathly pale features. When he had finally given his last sigh, and the whole household raised its lament, Vasily Ivanovich was seized by sudden fury. ‘I said I would cry out in defiance,’ he shouted hoarsely, his face twisted and aflame, shaking his fist in the air as if threatening someone, ‘and I will cry out, I will cry out!’ But Arina Vlasyevna in tears put her arms round his neck and they both fell prostrate to the ground. ‘So side by side,’ Anfisushka recounted later in the servants’ room, ‘they laid down their heads like lambs at noon…’

  But the heat of noon passes, and evening and nightfall, and there comes the return to the quiet refuge where there is sweet sleep for the tormented and the weary…

  XXVIII

  Six months passed. Midwinter had come – cloudless frosts, harsh and still, thick, crunchy snow, pink hoar-frost on the trees, a pale emerald sky, caps of smoke on the chimneys, puffs of steam coming out of doors opened for a moment, people’s fresh faces looking as if they’d been nipped and the measured trot of horses, chilled to the bone. The January day was already drawing to a close. The cold of evening held the windless air in a tighter grip, and a blood-red sunset faded quickly. Lights were being lit in the windows of the Marino house, and Prokofyich, in black tail coat and white gloves, was laying seven covers on the table with special ceremony. A week before, two weddings had taken place in the little parish church, quietly and with almost no witnesses – those of Katya and Arkady, and of Nikolay Petrovich and Fenechka. Today Nikolay Petrovich was giving a farewell dinner for his brother, who was leaving for Moscow on business. Anna Sergeyevna had gone there immediately after the wedding, having generously provided for the young couple.

  They all came to the table at exactly three o’clock. A place had also been laid there for Mitya, who had already acquired a nursemaid in a brocade kokoshnik.1 Pavel Petrovich took his seat between Katya and Fenechka. The ‘bridegrooms’ were placed on either side of their wives. Our friends have changed recently: they have all gained in looks and in maturity. Only Pavel Petrovich has become thinner; that incidentally has given his expressive features even more of the elegant look of a grand seigneur2… Fenechka too has changed. In a new silk dress, with a broad velvet snood over her hair and a gold chain round her neck, she sits calmly, with a sense of respect towards herself and towards all around her, and with a smile on her lips as if she would say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not my doing.’ And she wasn’t the only one smiling – the others also all smiled apologetically. Everyone felt a little awkward, a little sad but, if truth be told, in a very good mood. Everyone looked after their neighbours with comic attentiveness as if they had all agreed to play out some artless comedy. Katya said less than anyone. She looked trustingly around her, and it was obvious that she had already completely won the heart of Nikolay Petrovich. Before the end of the meal he rose and, taking a glass in his hand, turned to Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘You are leaving us… you are leaving us, dear Brother,’ he began, ‘however, not for long; but still I can’t tell you what I… what we… how much I… how much we… The problem is, we don’t know how to make speeches! Arkady, you speak.’

  ‘No, Papa, I haven’t prepared anything.’

  ‘And you think I’m well prepared! Brother, let me simply embrace you and give you our best wishes – and come back to us very soon!’

  Pavel Petrovich exchanged kisses with everyone, naturally including Mitya. He also kissed Fenechka’s hand – which she didn’t yet know how to offer properly – and, drinking from his refilled glass, with a deep sigh he uttered the words, ‘Be happy, my friends! Farewell!’3 This little English flourish went unnoticed; but all were touched.

  ‘To Bazarov’s memory,’ Katya whispered in her husband’s ear and clinked glasses with him. In response Arkady pressed her hand hard but he wasn’t brave enough to propose that toast.

  This surely would seem to be the end. But perhaps some of our readers would like to know what each of the characters I have portrayed is doing now, at this moment.4 I am ready to satisfy their curiosity.

  Anna Sergeyevna has recently married, out of principle rather than love, one of our future Russian statesmen, a very clever man, a legal brain, with a powerful practical sense, a firm will and a remarkable gift for words – a man still young, amiable and cold as ice. They live tog
ether very harmoniously and one day perhaps they will find happiness together… perhaps even love. Princess Kh–aya is dead, forgotten the day she died. The Kirsanovs, father and son, have settled in Marino. Their business is beginning to improve. Arkady has become a keen landlord and the ‘farm’ is already bringing in a significant income. Nikolay Petrovich has been made an arbitrator5 and is working extremely hard. He never stops travelling round his district and makes long speeches (his view is that we must get the muzhiks to ‘hear the voice of reason’, namely, reduce them to a state of exhaustion by the frequent repetition of the same words). And yet, to tell the truth, he isn’t altogether to the taste either of the educated gentry, with their fashionable or glum talk of mancipation (pronounced with a nasal French an), or their uneducated fellows who roundly swear at thut muncipation. Both sides find him too soft. Yekaterina Sergeyevna has had a son, Kolya, and Mitya is now a splendid little boy running about and chattering away. Fenechka – now Fedosya Nikolayevna – adores her ‘daughter-in-law’ only less than her husband and Mitya, and when Katya sits down at the piano, she will happily stay with her all day. A word now about Pyotr. He has become quite rigid with stupidity and self-importance and is so refined he pronounces all his e’s as u’s,6 but he too has married and got a sizeable dowry with his bride, the daughter of the town market gardener, who had turned down two decent suitors just because they didn’t have watches: whereas Pyotr didn’t just have a watch, he had patent leather boots.

  On the Brühl Terrace7 in Dresden, between two and four o’clock, at the most fashionable time for the promenade, you can meet a man of about fifty, now gone completely grey and limping as if he has gout, but still handsome, elegantly dressed and with that special mark given to a man only by a long sojourn in the highest society. It is Pavel Petrovich. From Moscow he went abroad for his health and took up residence in Dresden, where he associates mainly with the English and with visiting Russians. With the English he behaves simply, almost modestly, but not without dignity. They find him a little dull but admire him as ‘a perfect gentleman’.8 With Russians he is more open, he gives vent to his bile and mocks himself and them but he does it all very endearingly, with easy good manners. He holds Slavophile9 opinions: that is well known to be thought très distingué10 in the highest circles. He reads nothing Russian but has on his writing table a silver ashtray in the shape of a muzhik’s bast shoe.11 Our Russian tourists pay great court to him. Matvey Ilyich Kolyazin, finding himself ‘temporarily in opposition’,12 has paid him a state visit on his way to take the waters in Bohemia.13 And the local inhabitants, of whom incidentally Pavel Petrovich doesn’t see much, almost worship him. No one can get a ticket for the Court choir, for the theatre and so forth as easily and speedily as der Herr Baron von Kirsanoff. He still does some good, to the extent he is able to; he still causes a bit of a sensation in society – he really had been a lion once; but life is hard for him… harder than he himself suspects… One only needs to look at him in the Russian church leaning against a wall to one side. For a long time he stands motionless, lost in thought, and bites his lips with a bitter expression, then he suddenly remembers where he is and almost imperceptibly begins to cross himself…

  Kukshina too has gone abroad. She is now in Heidelberg, no longer studying the natural sciences but architecture, a subject in which she claims to have discovered new laws. She still makes friends with students, especially with young Russian physicists and chemists. Heidelberg is full of them. They first amaze the naive German professors with their sober view of life, and go on to amaze those same professors with their total inertia and absolute sloth. Sitnikov is in St Petersburg. There he goes around with two or three chemists of that sort, unable to distinguish oxygen from nitrogen but full of rebellion and self-esteem. He also keeps company with the great Yelisevich14 – since he himself aspires to greatness. In all this he professes to be continuing Bazarov’s ‘work’. There’s a rumour he was recently beaten up, but he’s got his own back – with an obscure little piece printed in an obscure little journal: in it he hints that his assailant is a coward. He calls that irony. His father is still ordering him about, and his wife thinks him an idiot… and a man of letters.

  There is a small village graveyard in a remote corner of Russia. Like almost all of our graveyards it has a sad look. The ditches round it are long overgrown. The grey wooden crosses are leaning and rotting under their gables, which once had a coat of paint. The stone slabs have all shifted as if being pushed them up from beneath. Two or three wretched trees barely give meagre shade. Sheep wander freely over the graves… But among them is one grave untouched by man, untrodden by beast: only birds rest there and sing at daybreak. It is surrounded by iron railings and two young fir trees are planted at either end. Yevgeny Bazarov is buried in that grave. Two old people often come to it from a little village near by – a husband and wife, now infirm. Supporting each other and with heavy steps, they go up to the railings, fall down on their knees and weep long and bitterly, and long and fixedly they look at the mute stone, under which their son lies. They exchange a few words, they wipe the dust from the stone and adjust a fir branch, and they say another prayer, unable to leave this place, where they feel nearer to their son and their memories of him… Are their prayers and tears really in vain? Has love, holy, devoted love, really lost its power over all? No, no! The grave may hold a passionate, sinful, rebellious heart, but the flowers growing on it gaze serenely at us with their innocent eyes. They do not only speak to us of everlasting peace, of that great peace of ‘indifferent’ nature. They also speak of eternal reconciliation and of life without end15…

  Notes

  Dedication

  1 BELINSKY: V. G. Belinsky (1811–48), the leading Russian literary critic of the first half of the nineteenth century. His radical, Westernizing views were extremely influential and remained so after his death. He had given a very positive review to Turgenev’s first book, Sketches from a Hunter’s Album, and had become a close personal friend. The text was also originally preceded by an epigraph, which Turgenev subsequently dropped:

  ‘Young man to middle-aged man: You had substance but no strength.

  Middle-aged man: And you have strength without substance.

  (From a modern conversation.)’

  Chapter I

  1 20 May 1859: Among other things Turgenev’s novel is placed very exactly in recent time, almost two years before the momentous Emancipation of the Serfs in February 1861.

  2 souls: Estates before Emancipation in 1861 were traditionally measured in the numbers of ‘souls’ of (male) serfs owned.

  3 War of 1812: ‘The Patriotic War’ against Napoleon after his invasion of Russia.

  4 Agathe: Young girls of good family would speak as much (often bad) French as Russian and would be known by French versions of their name.

  5 dacha: Suburban villa, usually of wood and for summer use.

  6 1848: That year saw revolution in many European countries, including the German states, the Austrian Empire and France.

  7 tarantas… trio of carriage horses: A four-wheeled Russian carriage without springs. This tarantas uses a traditional arrangement of carriage or sleigh horses harnessed as a troika or trio.

  Chapter II

  1 Vasilyev: The usual Russian combination of Christian name and father’s or patronymic, the latter often abbreviated as here from Vasilyevich to the more plebeian Vasilyev.

  2 shaft-horse: The control horse of the troika, harnessed between the shafts.

  Chapter III

  1 quit-rent: Under the quit-rent system peasants farmed a landowner’s land in return for an annual rent in money or kind.

  2 bailiff: A bailiff or steward, often a liberated serf, would run an estate for a landowner.

  3 house serfs: Serfs attached to household duties as opposed to outdoor or agricultural ones.

  4 Il est libre, en effet: He is indeed free (French).

  5 townsman: Or meshchanin, one of the historic and legally define
d ‘classes’ in Russian society at the level below merchants.

  6 roubles: 250 roubles, presumably the more valuable silver rather than paper currency, would be approximately £750 or US $1,500 in modern terms. But it is probably more useful to give a few examples of contemporary value. The poll tax a peasant paid in 1861 was one silver rouble p.a.; the obrok or quit-rent paid by peasants to landowners (outside the wealthier black-earth areas) was 10.5 silver roubles per male p.a. And a ‘bucket’ (vedro, a measure of something like 2½ gallons) of vodka was supposed by law to cost three roubles.

  7 Catherine the Great: The Empress Catherine II reigned 1762–96.

  8 Pushkin…Eugene Onegin: A. S. Pushkin’s famous novel in verse (1825–31). The quotation is from the second stanza of chapter VII.

  Chapter IV

  1 new silver: This is meaningful if one knows that Russian silver, though polished, is traditionally not cleaned of its dark oxidization.

  2 shake hands: In English, thus, in the original.

  3 s’est dégourdi: Has lost his rough edges (French).

  4 Gambs: For two generations the Alsatian Gambs (more properly Hambs) firm had been the most fashionable cabinet-makers in St Petersburg, supplying furniture to among others the imperial family and Pushkin.

  5 Galignani: Galignani’s Messenger, a liberal English-language daily newspaper published in Paris.

  Chapter V

  1 settled boundaries: Part of the preliminary reorganization of land leading up to Emancipation.

  2 Vous avez changé tout cela: You have changed all that (French).